Creating a local notebook

In order to move a notebook to SharePoint you need to have a notebook to move. You probably already have one so I’ll just leave you with a screenshot of creating a new one.

So now you have your local OneNote notebook.

Creating a Document Library on SharePoint

You will need to create document library on SharePoint to hold the notebook. You can either create a new one or using an existing one. From a logical separation point of view you should use it’s own library.

Give it a name and set the document template. The document template choice simply changes what happens when you click on the New Document item in the library, nothing more. You could pick anything you like from the list.

Before leaving the page you need to copy the link to the library. Make sure you only copy up to the the library. Don’t copy the /forms/allitems.aspx bit, it won’t work. If you are having trouble with this part, you can also get the exact link by clicking on the “Email a Link” button and copy it from there.

Moving the local notebook to SharePoint

Back in OneNote, right click on your notebook and on “Properties”.

Click on “Change Location”.

Paste in the link to the new library and click on “Select”.

OneNote will now move your notebook to SharePoint.

Once it’s done you will see a confirmation, click on “OK”.

That is it, simple and quick. You can how invite people to work with you on your notebook and the changes will sync pretty much live between everyone’s machines and also be available offline.

Now more than ever, productivity is at the top of every business leader’s agenda, while proven security, reliability, usability and absolute control are essential.

Productivity comes from empowering your people. Giving everyone in your organisation the ability to work together in real time, and collaborate from anywhere on any device.

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a familiar user experience with a reduced learning curve for greater overall employee productivity; driving connections across people, processes and ecosystems.

· Microsoft Office 365, the evolution of Microsoft Online Services, helps people connect in new ways – harnessing all the productivity benefits of Microsoft Office, together with the undisputed convenience of Cloud services.

At this event, we’ll share insights and demonstrate how Microsoft and the Cloud work together. You’ll discover how to get the scalability your organisation needs, while achieving measurable productivity through improved business gains and cost savings.

K2 – Dr Katy Ring, www.K2advisory.com

Martini Solution – Anytime, Any place, Anywhere (Business viewpoint), IT professional view is somewhat different.. how to keep secure, deploy, manage, etc.

Four main ways to deploy..
Public – e.g. Salesforce, GoogleApps
Private –
Community
Mixed model

a key is a common code-base across on-premise, private, and public.. something that is key to Microsoft’s strategy

Cloud & FUD

Fear about Security – is diminishing, only 42% believe it is a greater threat

Uncertainty about integration – although often easier & quicker than moving an on premise solution

Doubts about the business case – regulatory e.g. no PCI compliance therefore prohibits some industries, cost/benefit concerns

Key Message:
Cloud Computing is the IT industry’s best effort to provide the business solutions we need in the era of the Internet

Using Cloud Services to drive productivity

John Jester, General Manager – UK EPG, Microsoft (john.jester@microsoft.com)

Change of priorities:
2008 – More for Less
2009 – Cost Reduction
2010 – Cloud.. Opportunities provided through Cloud Computing
2011 – Add capabilities to the business, more business insights but lower cost & more effective

$9.5B in R&D, 75% on Cloud related activities, 30,000 engineers on Cloud Services
$2.3B invested in Cloud Infrastructure (geo-replicated customer data, public & private, 30,000 engineers, regional DCs in Americas, EMEA, and APAC)

Cloud = more speed, agility, productivity

SharePoint – fastest product to $1B sales

show of hands for who is virtualised in the data center – about 25%, but John saw 100%..
More new servers are virtualised than not, existing install base is c. 50/50 – virtualization has worked

Office 365 – was BPOS but now with Office, plus Exchange, SharePoint, Lync

Who is using – some very large enterprises inc. >300,000 employees

Security concerns from IL0->6 – “no one wants their data in the US”

What happens if you loose your network connection?  building more offline caching capabilities like Outlook

When will Office 365 be available?  “in the first half of the year” June! was the answer from the 365 team

Drive Business Success: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Brad Wilson, General Manager – CRM, Microsoft

Microsoft claim the leader in CRM with 23,000 customers with 1,400,000 users in 80 countries with 40+ languages, and 1,200 software & services partners
100+ hosted services providers for specialized solutions and territories

Microsoft is the biggest user of Dynamics CRM with 40,000 users and 10,000 on CRM 2011

How much in the UK? Launch promotion of £22.75 per user./month for first 12 months if signed by June 30th.

Look and feel like Outlook – Office fluent, Contextual SharePoint

Lots of incentives to move from competing products such as Salesforce & Oracle

Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 commonality between SharePoint & Dynamics CRM

Release cadence for CRM online is planned to be 6-9 months, in last 30 months has been 5 releases (in US market).

Cloud Productivity Brought to Life

Hayley Bass &

Demo of a CRM online customised property sales & management application interfaced with an Azure web portal to provide a feature rich public website and back-office system utilizing Lync and SharePoint.

https://contosoproperties.cloudapp.net
https://contosoprop.sharepoint.com

Cloud Productivity in Action

Alex Montgomery, Solutions Consultant, Microsoft UK

speakers from 3 customers using CRM Online:

- NSPCC

- Wise Group www.cloudwise.com

-

As a UK Microsoft Gold partner (www.thefullcircle.com) staying up to date with the latest trends in technology, and in particular Microsoft’s take on those trends is essential.

Today we are at the ExCeL London conference centre in the heart of Docklands to hear Steve Ballmer and others tell us about Cloud computing solutions in a Microsoft Partner Business Briefing called ‘Transitioning to the Cloud’

Below is Microsoft’s marketing introduction on the event and then the agenda, then my notes from the day..

Event Overview

There is no doubt that the market around us is in a transition period, whether this is from an economic, societal or technological standpoint, and we want to work together with you to ensure we are all making the most of these opportunities in 2011. 

We’ve made a Microsoft-sized commitment to the cloud and through our London Partner Business Briefing we want to share our vision with you and your sales teams. Cloud technology is now a CIO’s #1 priority. Worldwide more than 40 million people have adopted Microsoft cloud services, and AMI Research predicts a rapid transition through 2010-2013 in the UK as businesses purchase cloud solutions. Join us for an exciting day with guest speakers and Microsoft executives.  Expect to receive more information on this event and how to prepare over the coming weeks.

Agenda

My  notes from the day..

Welcome – Katie Ledger
Various marketing videos featuring partners who have embraced..
ThinkScape “I used to go out to customers, now they come to me!”
MD’s and CFO’s love the cloud – move from capex to opex
Katie presented/hosted a Microsoft Cloud event 2 years ago.. – show of hands on who was there and who’s changing their business to embrace cloud… not many!  Will the show of hands be different at the end of the day?

A Changing World – Barry Ridgeway, new GM of SMS&P
Small Medium Business is the fastest growing part of the Microsoft business.
A new acronym.. PaaS – Platform as a Service e.g. Azure
Opportunity – projection in 3yrs $148B… Microsoft investing $10M in UK marketing (opportunities to ride on that wave by timing marketing releases carefully to coincide)

Customer: Why we chose Microsoft – Bert Craven, Architect, easyJet
65 IT team (59 full-time), IT Budget only 0.75% of revenue, 100% SLA requirement, £3B retail business, 20% per year growth! – a challenge!
Reliance on partners
Started with classifying systems – a commodity tier, airline system tier, easyJet specific tier – silver, gold, platinum – then defined SLA strategy for each – top tier is 100% uptime and has been achieved
Simple, standard systems by default!
The potential cloud offers as a Integration platform cannot be understated – Azure AppFabric “the ace in the pack” (origins in BizTalk)
 - small step – easy to swallow, perceived as lower risk
misconception of putting your data in the cloud makes it more vulnerable – a double edged sword
Project Sydney VPN’s…?  wazthat!?!

James Akrigg – Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist
Enterprise class systems used to require Enterprise class infrastructure – not anymore!

Why partner with Microsoft – Martin Neale, MD ICS Solutions
Started a cloud practise after the event 2yrs ago, built up on BPOS at the start of ’09 – 23 customers in the last year, but signed 6 in the last week!  both public & private sector, a lot of support from Microsoft – the best they have had in all their time as partners… did I tell you about our 7 account managers in 7 years…!?!?  (You’ll be one of few I haven’t.. )

Dealing with change.. – Chris Moon (www.chrismoon.co.uk)

Chris is an inspirational & motivational speaker extraordinaire – a former Army officer who then worked for the charity HALO clearing landmines in Asia and Africa, and is one of the few westerners to have survived kidnap by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia.

Two years later he became a double amputee when blown up whilst walking in a supposedly cleared minefield in 1995, the blast resulted in the loss of his lower right arm and leg. Doctors say he survived against the odds due to his determination and fitness.

Within a year of leaving hospital he then ran and finished the London Marathon, plus threw in a Masters Degree in Security Management for good measure!

He’s since done numerous marathons and many of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons including the Great Sahara Run and Badwater – the 135-mile ‘fun run’ through Death Valley to the mountains on the hottest day of the year – mental! (yes mentally a hero and physically a superman!).
During his amazing speech he described the Death Valley run as ‘the death fun run’ and revealed comments from others re: ultra-distance as runs that amputees simply don’t do – he clearly doesn’t believe in don’t or can’t

Chris was inspirational, motivational, heart-warming, and very funny at the same time, a few notes from his speech are below:

Keep up or get left behind!  The biggest issue to keeping up is the way that you think..

Never be a victim, take the initiative

What can I do to avoid Being a victim and Create a victimless environment?
Engage-Listen-Understand

Why don’t we like change?
- fear of the unknown
- maybe worse off as a result
- out of comfort zone
- requires effort & hard work
- easier not to
- can cause headaches
- creatures of habit
- loss of territory or control
- puts us in the spotlight
- previous efforts maybe wasted
- we don’t like imposition or ‘have to’

crossing the change curve, instead of following the U-bend, get across it to Aspirational

Stay calm.. see the wood and trees – lead by example

Who doesn’t finish an ultra-marathon?  Those who don’t believe that they can
Never underestimate the power of belief

Dealing with sudden change
- be realistic
- choose a positive perspective
- choose a positive attitude
- use imagination

No matter how great the change, never adopt an attitude that allows you to be crushed
(followed story of an auzzie vet castrating a water buffalo – circle of life, what goes around comes around, next life, past life..)

And finally.. What is it like being blown up?   ….VERY LOUD!  (what a guy!)

Chris has published an autobiography called ‘One Step Beyond’ – indeed I’ve just bought 4 copies for our company from Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Step-Beyond-Chris-Moon/dp/033037155X
Our Commitment to the Cloud – Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft
A new era of opportunity…
What is the Cloud – lots of things!
Cloud services for business – Microsoft claim to be the market leader in cloud services with the largest spread of cloud offerings
A key question was how important will the private cloud vs. public cloud be – we are discovering that now..
Factoring in the connectivity costs into the equation – it’s in the calculations

Steve had never been east of Tower Bridge… I think that was obvious! and it sounded like the guys at the front were lined up with pre-screened questions…?  Is that cynical or just an obvious safety net..?

Overall I didn’t really get Ballmer, whilst he’s a passionate and powerful speaker (boy does he project!) I can’t say I really took anything major away from his speech whereas seeing Gates in the flesh you really got the feeling that he truly believed in the role of technology to help improve people’s lives for the better.
The main point that came across was the insistence that the shift to the cloud was one of the most important changes in the history of computing after the Internet – maybe that’s all he wanted to get across, that and the key numbers from Microsoft’s view being:
- 580M Windows Live customers
- 40M users of Azure
- $10M spend in the UK alone on Cloud marketing

What he did leak was that Windows Phone 7 release in UK in next week or so – I’m keen to jump from the iPhone back to a Windows phone so will be keen to watch the last session of the day… a Windows Phone 7 preview.
Microsoft Online Services - Shaun Frohlich, James Akrigg, Myles Jeffery (ThinkScape), Katie Ledger

Demonstration of Software plus Services – SharePoint online, PowerPoint, Outlook migration from a.n.other Email platform to Exchange online, etc.  Lots of tools to make it easy!

Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner with Microsoft for Online Service
Myles Jeffery, MD ThinkScape
Embraced MS cloud technology after watching an online Ray Ozzie presentation in 2008 – a software development company realised they could focus on development and integration rather than platform.  Moved internally (small IT consultancy <10) to BPOS in early 2009 and recommends any prospective partner to do the same.
Believes the sweet spot for ease of migration is up to 25.
Coexistence tools are available to assist trials – SharePoint easy, but what about Exchange..? sub-domain for a project team or something better?

40-million Azure users already, caching in 22 countries keeps the performance good, plus offline caching capabilities

Product Demonstration/Roadmap – Microsoft CRM Online
Dynamics CRM 2011 online – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg & Roger Collins
Outlook experience, very BCM 2010 look and feel… however its better..
Can we move to it although we have traditional on-premise Exchange? Yes!
Is the only CRM application available today that can be switched between on-premise and cloud and vice-versa – is the same codebase.
Top tip – 40% margin available for new business.
Dynamics CRM 2011 is available in beta now, and should be publically available in March-April 2011.
Partners have inclusive seats for CRM online – e.g. as a Gold Partner we would get 250!

Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner adopt Windows Azure – James Scarfe, Dot Net Software

How do you make money from selling Azure… there is a small kickback on the referral (5%), however services revenue is where the money is.
Reduction in time to market is one of the major advantages
Software virtualisation rather than hardware virtualisation – removing the dependancy on IT platform builds, and the delays in architecture planning such as capacity & resliance planning that a typical corporate IT department needs to do and can take months.  With Azure you can deploy the envionment in minutes and start developing on the production platform striaght away!

Windows Intune – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg
Microsoft recently announced the Windows Intune Beta, a new solution that aims to simplify how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7.
Intune is designed for businesses without an existing PC management infrastructure that need a cost-effective, simple way to manage and secure their PCs (not servers.. for servers and/or over 250 desktops there is System Center Essentials – SCE, or for larger environments Operations Manager).

For businesses with a highly mobile and/or distributed workforce, the Windows Intune cloud service can help manage and secure PCs across multiple offices, remote & mobile and manage them from anywhere.  If you have multiple smaller offices not on the corporate VPN then Cloud services can work very well, especially for security & remote management avoiding costly site visits.

Intune fits very well with our long term support of ASP, and now cloud based solutions – two of the three directors of The Full Circle have been heavily involved in managed AV and Security-as-a-Service since early 2002 building one of the first McAfee ASaP (formerly MyCIO) UK platforms, then as a reseller for SecureResolutions, and now with Panda Security with their Managed Office & Email Protection services.

So in summary it’s a cloud based PC management solution aimed at the small to medium market that takes key parts of Operations Manager, WSUS, ForeFront plus an Enterprise license of Windows 7 to deliver:

-          Updates (from what I could I see the interface is quite simple and not as feature rich as WSUS, nor as complicated)
-          Malware protection (based on Security Essentials and Forefront)
-          Monitoring (alerting for all major functions;  malware, updates, etc.)
-          Remote Assistance (EA taken as used by Microsoft Support, initiated by the end user, allows remote control & file transfer, is firewall friendly as uses TCP Port 443 – same as https)
-          Security Policies (malware, updates, Windows Firewall, what about existing Group Policy?)
-          Hardware and software inventory (quite a simple inventory solution)
-          Licensing (only Microsoft software)

Goto http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/windowsintune-experience.aspx for more info, and if you are lucky enough to be on the beta login to the console via https://manage.microsoft.com

Intune is due to be released in 2011 for 11$ per PC per month, and possible another dollar for MDOP on top – which as you can pay £40 per desktop per year for AV alone makes it a compelling offer esp. if you are currently running XP or Vista due to the upgrade license to Windows 7 Enterprise.

There are c.450 UK partners in the 1^st technical beta (now closed – worldwide cap at 10,000), but the next beta wave will be in the New Year – signup for notification of next wave at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/register.aspx

Windows Phone 7 preview – more to follow…

http://www.windowsphone7.com/

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/five-uk-networks-will-carry-windows-phone-7-10003
other useful links..

https://www.quickstartonlineservices.com/pages/default.aspx

Summary
Step-by-step understanding is key to successfully implementing and deploying SharePoint 2010. This 15-module course will guide you through each critical stage, giving you exactly the skills you need to leverage full value from the latest SharePoint technology.

Agenda
Module 0 – Getting Ready for a SharePoint 2010 Implementation: Why Governance and Business Requirements are Essential for a Successful Implementation.
Module 1 – Understanding the Architecture of SharePoint Server 2010
Module 2 – Installing SharePoint Server 2010.
Module 3 – Administrating and Configuring Farm Settings in SharePoint Server 2010
Module 4 – Understanding and Administrating Web applications
Module 5 – Managing Web Applications
Module 6 – Introduction to Site Collections
Module 7 – Creating Site Collections
Module 8 – Managing Site Collections
Module 9 – Working with SharePoint Server 2010 Portals
Module 10 – Governance and Information Assurance
Module 11 – Enterprise Content Types & Managed Metadata
Module 12 – Managing Documents and Records
Module 13 – Workflow
Module 14 – Implementing and Managing Search
Module 15 – People & Social Networking
Module 16 – Disaster Recovery

A handful of notes from the week..

Installation Preparation for Service & Install Accounts 

The SharePoint Installation Account

While I’ve become used to installing applications on servers with either the local or domain admin account, SharePoint 2010 really really really needs to have its own account created for the installation process. If you don’t you’ll have to correct the various service and app pool accounts later and that’s a pain.

Key points about the account used to install with -

• It will become the application pool account used in IIS for the Central Admin
• If you do plan to let SharePoint create your databases (content DBs’ etc…) this account needs rights to the SQL database to create DB’s (DBCreator and DBAdmin)
• If DB’s are already created then it only needs DBAdmin
• It only needs Local Admin permissions on the installation machine
• Not to be used in day-to-day admin
• Imagine this account to be “enterprise admin” of SharePoint.
• It should never be used again after the initial install, obviously that doesn’t mean disable or delete it.

Example User Account – spinstall

The Farm Admin Account

 The farm admin account is an account that should be used by as few people as possible.

• It either needs to be a local admin on the SharePoint front end or create a new supper user or login as spinstall(logging in as spinstall is not recommended)
• The farm admin account change services running on the machine hence the need for local admin rights, farm admin right in SharePoint central admin isn’t enough

Example User Account - spfarmadmin

During the SharePoint 2010 install

 Make sure you move index location during install off from the C:…14data location

 This index file is a flat file used in search and can grow very large in next to no time.

After the install – the Configuration Wizard

Do not use it, it doesn’t follow best practice.

 Performance Tip for SharePoint databases 

Turn off Auto Growth

While it’s been mentioned a thousand times and shouldn’t need to be mentioned…

To prevent it happening in existing installations for any new databases:

SQL Management  Studio > Database > Model. Under the file groups section  change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Fixing it for existing databases:

Open the properties of each database and under the file groups section, change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Note: Why 50MB? Because it’s just right for SharePoint since it aligns with the default maximum upload file size.

Registering Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

• Best practice is to add them here first then start to use them to run services
• All are generally fine  as just domain user accounts without elevated privileges

Application Pool Accounts in IIS for SharePoint 2010

 Never change the app pool account from inside IIS as the config DB will not know about the change, web apps will not know about the change and new servers added to the farm will not know which account to use.

One of the few things you can and do need to configure in IIS is SSL certificates and also needs to be done on each and every web front end.

Copying https://sharepoint.fqdn.com:PortNNN/General%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fGeneral%20Documents%2fFoldrer1%2fFolde2%2fFolder3 out of the IE address bar to paste into the Save As File name entry in hope that it would then enumerate the target folder..

Anyway, clearly its the wrong thing to do and in this case replaced the Allitems.aspx with a word document, this broke the browser view of all SharePoint pages on the site collection although using Windows Explorer to access SharePoint folders continued to work okay.

Our resident SharePoint expert and Development Director (Chris Hermon) used SPD 2007 to try and replace/restore the Allitems.apsx but whilst this initially appeared to resolve the issue, the basic SharePoint object controls were still broken such as not having the drop down available e.g.

We took a view on this and decided to perform an stsadm restore from the last content dB backup. This was a relatively straightforward decision for us as we knew and had made copies of documents changed since the last backup (daily), however in a busier enviornment this would not be so easy.

Restoring the stsadm backup resolved the issue it’s a rather drastic resolution for a incredibly easy issue to create (and no, I was not using an Admin account or the collection administrator, just a normal author).

I’ll try the same on SP2010 and see if Microsoft have fixed this rather obvious gap in system integrity protection!

For the dinner, the UK team chose a fabulous Italian restaurant called Bacco (www.bacco.de/english/restaurant/restaurant.html) which I’d definately go back to and hosted a great evening… many thanks to Stuart, Gareth, Neil, Alex, etc. from Microsoft UK. 

We were also joined by Allen Stewart & Rajesh Dave from corp.  Allen is Principal PM for Windows Server and Raj is a PM for Windows Hyper-V.  Both very interesting & incredibly knowledgable guys with deep understanding across a wide range of topics (and not just Microsoft!).
I pestered them for info on Hyper-V thin provisioning of memory and whilst they couldn’t confirm anything as we all said ‘we live in hope!’ ;-) 

…as for the  night, I’d been invited to the 1E TechEd Europe party at Spindler & Klatt www.spindlerklatt.de - an uuber trendy restaurant/club in East Berlin frequented by the likes of Angelina, Clooney, and now Cook! 

What a great party and many many thanks to the team at 1E (www.1e.com).  Did I mention I was the 4th member of the business in the founding year?  (yes I probably did & several times.. lots to drunk! ) We went our separate ways in 1999, oh for a slice of that now… anyway, moving on! 

Seriously though hats off to Samir, Mark, and Phil – they have built a company that knows how to throw a great party (regarded as the best at TechEd), and a team of very bright, talented people who have a lot of respect for the company and its founders. 

Ouch my head is pounding!  time to go to sessions, starting with… 

ITS211 Keeping Your CIO Happy: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SLA Scorecarding with Operations Manager 2007 and SQL Server 2008

Presenters: Gordon McKenna, Sean Roberts, www.inframon.com

Thu 11/12 | 10:45-12:00 | London 2 – Hall 7-1b

Learn how you can create CIO level SLA scorecards in SharePoint Server 2007 for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 using some of the new features in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and to create Executive SLA views of your Operational Environment. The session looks at why these types of views are important to many companies, what impact this can have on your business, and what simple steps you can take to achieve very effective, high-level executive views of everything from performance and availability of your key LOB services and applications, whether important SLAs and KPIs are being achieved and whether your IT department is meeting the day-to-day needs of your business. The key demos in this session take you through the steps you need to implement effective business scorecarding in SharePoint Server 2007 using key metrics collected in the Operations Manager 2007 Datawarehouse based on “real-world” experiences gained from the field. After attending this presentation you will have a good insight into how CIO Scorecards can help you add value to your Operations Manager deployments, helping you to show real value to your executives.

Tip – to remove parameter data from Ops Mgr reports imported into a SharePoint webpart, suffix the url with &rc:Parameters=collapsed

Cracking session from Gordon & Sean on how to try and keep your CIO happy (if that’s possible! )

blog Daniel Savage

Service Level dashboard – free solution accelerator dashboard on Microsoft 

SVR401 & 402 DirectAccess Technical Drilldown, Part 1 of 2: IPv6 and Transition Technologies + Part 2 of 2: Putting It All Together

 

Presenter: John Craddock (www.xtseminars.co.uk)

Thu 11/12 | 13:30-14:45 | Helsinki – Hall 7-2a

Take a sprinkling of Windows 7, add Windows Server 2008 R2, IPv6 and IPsec and you have a solution that will allow direct access to your corporate network without the need for VPNs. Come to these demo-rich sessions and learn how to integrate DirectAccess into your environment. In Part 1 learn about IPv6 addressing, host configuration and transitioning technologies including 6to4, ISATAP, Teredo and IPHTTPS. Through a series of demos learn how to build an IPv6 Network and interoperate with IPv4 networks and hosts. In Part 2 we add the details of IPSec, and components that are only available with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to build the DirectAccess infrastructure. Learn how to control access to corporate resources and manage Internet connected PCs through group policy. Part 1 is highly recommended as a prerequisite for Part 2.

John Craddock is an extremely talented AD/identity expert, and deeply technical across many other fields – in this case IPv6 & DA.

I was also lucky enough to have a drink with John and my old Microsoft PSS chum Paul Duffy on Monday night at the cleverly named hotel ‘Berlin Berlin’.

John is a genuine international industry expert and a thoroughly nice bloke with it!   Paul, another ‘genie-I’ went on to become PM for Office Communicator and knows a thing or ten about OCS amongst other subjects to a deep level.  This probably explains why these two know each other!

Anyway, back to the session plus my own notes, links, etc.

Gems & Tips

- be careful, not all apps will be compatible – test!
- to be native will likely mean new network gear, is new network layer (layer 2 unchanged)
- hex is back!  use of double colon notation, but can only be used once per address
- cannot mix with ipV4 mask bit notation
- host derived with mac address which has privacy issues, Win7 & R2 generate random based on interface, can be disabled (revert to mac based) with netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled

- route print -6 will show IPv6 route table

- ::1 is IPv6 loopback

- if you have a registered IPv4 address then you automatically have an IPv6 address on the 6to4 network

6to4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4 states 6to4 performs three functions:

1. Assigns a block of IPv6 address space to any host or network that has a global IPv4 address.
2. Encapsulates IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets for transmission over an IPv4 network using 6in4.
3. Routes traffic between 6to4 and “native” IPv6 networks.

- you need to manually unblock ISATAP entry in DNS which can be done via the registry or command line, e.g. 

C:>dnscmd /config /globalqueryblocklist wpad 

Registry property globalqueryblocklist successfully reset.
Command completed successfully. 

ISATAP is a huge subject in it’s own right, the Intra-site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol Deployment Guide is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0f3a8868-e337-43d1-b271-b8c8702344cd&displaylang=en 

Putting it all together..

- Check tunnel endpoint authentication using ‘klist’ to list Kerberos data
- Use NRTP to direct DNS queries to a specific server for a particular names space (view using ‘netsh namespace show effectivepolicy’)
- PKI needs to be right as certificates are the foundations
- you must publish the revocation list
- NLS (Nework Location Server) is just a https website accessible from the DA server, e.g. nls.corp.example.com
- if it doesn’t work, it could be a couple of days troubleshooting! 

If you’re thinking of setting this up in a virtual lab, I also took note from Allen Stewart’s blog at http://blogs.technet.com/wincat/

…if you’re planning to virtualize your lab environment on Hyper-V, you should ensure you’re using Legacy Network Adapters for the child partition where you’re running the DAS. Using the default synthetic NICs is OK for all the other resources in the test lab, but for the DAS itself, it’s important to have both the Internet and Corpnet NICs as legacy ones, to ensure proper passing of traffic between both sides of the DAS. If you use the default synthetic adapters, you may end up in a situation where traffic doesn’t properly flow from the outside to the inside, even though all your IPsec, 6to4, Teredo, and IP-HTTPS settings are correct. Basically, you’ll be in a situation where connectivity will fail at a basic level, with you not even being to successfully ping the internal DNS server using its ISATAP address.If you’ve already built your lab on Hyper-V using the synthetic adapters, the fix is pretty simple. Just replace them with legacy ones, reconfigure the IP addressing as specified in the guide and rerun the DirectAccess wizard, again supplying all the information specified in the guide. After doing so, all your traffic should flow properly.

- Thanks Allen!

DAT312 All You Needed to Know about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering

Presenter: Gopal Ashok

Thu 11/12 | 17:00-18:15 | London 3 – Hall 7-1b

There are major architectural changes in SQL Server 2008 for failover cluster setup and management, geared towards increased reliability and high-availability. To learn all the benefits and changes, attend this session for a comprehensive overview direct from the product development group. We cover SQL Server 2008 failover clustering setup, underlying Windows Server cluster and how SQL Server uses it, what’s new in SQL Server 2008 for failover clustering, differences from previous versions of SQL Server and future directions. This includes details of SQL Server 2008 failover clustering setup operations together with demos to illustrate the new setup.

- new features
- applications need retry mechanisms built in to provide seamless failover
- no longer have to take down the cluster to upgrade, supports rolling upgrades 

Want to deploy stretched clusters?  lots do.  As in separate geo-redundant clusters, not separate nodes e.g. 

Stretched SQL Clusters or the doodles of an artist?

- sql 2008 failover clustering install breaks on windows server 2008 R2 and needs to be slipstreamed with SP1 (If only we knew this last weekend!)
(slipstreaming is incorporating patches into the installation media to effect a higher level of install base over RTM – Microsoft tend to do this but not always quickly!)
see http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/03/17/how-to-fix-your-sql-server-2008-setup-before-you-run-setup-part-ii.aspx for more info
- during upgrades to a 2-node cluster there will be a period of time when you are exposed to node failure, and must not have a failover attempt for fear of corruption.  removing the node from the cluster owners will stop premature attempted failover. 

Further Microsoft resources.. (will add others also) 

      SQL Server ^® 2008 Failover Clustering White Paper: http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2009/07/08/sql-server-2008-failover-clustering.aspx 

      Recommended  Books Online  Doc Refresh #7 (May, 2009), or later: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214.aspx 

      Failover Clusters – Getting Started: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189134.aspx 

      Rolling upgrade process and best practice: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191295.aspx 

      Maintaining a Failover Cluster: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178061.aspx 

      Setup command line usage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144259.aspx 

      Configuration.ini file usage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239405.aspx 

Not the best day for me in terms of TechEd objectives (i.e. attending learning sessions, etc.) with the first post of the day saying ‘decisions decisions… for sessions just 09:00-10:15′ as struggled to choose between:

DAT302 Top 10 Best Practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
or
MGT11-IS Get Virtualized with Microsoft System Center Essentials!
or
OFS322 Overview of Social Computing in SharePoint 2010
or
SVR207 Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure: Managing your file data more effectively.
or
SVR319 Multi-Site Clustering with Windows Server 2008 R2

Ended up doing none of the above, but did have a productive breakfast meeting with Stuart Leddy, UK Windows Server Product Marketing Manager.  Stuart has been heading up the Windows Server 2008 R2 UK EAP activities that we have been involved in with Ascom Network Testing (http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2009/11/05/the-full-circle-secures-ascom-network-testing-for-windows-server-2008-r2-early-adopter-program/)

The day turned into going from one full session to the next, and walking back and forth for what seemed like miles in between!
my TechEd tip for the day - for popular sessions get there 10 minutes before they start!

Eventually did get into a 1st choice session I wanted at 12:20…

MGT03-DEMO Introduction to Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010

SVR307 Security Best Practices for Hyper-V and Server Virtualisation

Jeff Woolsey, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Virtualization
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/

Virtualisation is one of the hottest topics in IT today and security is a top priory for IT staff. In this session we cover security best practices for Hyper-V and introduce the Hyper-V Security Guide. This guide is Microsoft’s reference for hardening servers running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V enabled.

- Use of BitLocker
- AV scanning of offline VHD images… stale/dormant VMs that get reintroduced to the corporate network then can wreak havoc to new vulnerability exploits.  first product to do this is McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for Offline Virtual Images (rolls off the toungue!)
- AV configuration… added benefit of passthrough disks – host AV will scan these disks.  install AV on the guests!
- VHD performance, 2nd most popular VM workload in Microsoft is SQL! fixed disk performance is now on par with raw/real disk!  but remember spindles still count!
- Dynamic VHDs are now up to 15x faster with R2 – still a 10-15% performance hit over fixed, and the risk of disk over commit
- Multipath I/O (MPIO) in R2 & Win7 is soo much easier with iSCSI Quick Connect
- Advanced Storage Capabilities… storage dedupe and replication, if it is block based it will work
Hyper-V Networking – don’t forget the parent is a VM too!  the Hypervisor slides in beneath the O/S once enabled.  More NICs the better, min 2, min 3 with iSCSI
Jumbo Frames… Significant performance increases, but the infrastructure must support it.  also needs to be end-to-end.  confirm test with ping host -l 4000 -f – if you get a response you have jumbo frames
Virtual Machine Queues - Hyper-V R2 supports processing offloading to newer network adaptors (Intel, Broadcom, etc.), most benefit with 10Gb/E
- more tips… turn off screen savers in guests, in Windows Server 2003 create using 2-way to ensure MP HAL

more of a best practise and walkthrough of some basic tasks like not forgetting to install Intergration Component, good session and great blogger (not me – Jeff! )

Continuing the post on TechEd Europe started on Monday I’ve decided to write daily, there is just too much for one mega-post.  In fact, most sessions have enough quality content to justify their own posts, but I’ll save you from this!    It’s a massive geekfest!  ja!

First session of the day for me is:

CLI302 – How Windows Storage Is Changing: Everything’s Going VHD!

Mark Minasi, internationally recognised technical guru, funny guy, great speaker (his next session on IPv6 in the afternoon was one of the most over-subscribed sessions of the event and I didn’t get in )

Load Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 on a system, and you’ll notice something sort of strange: there’s no boot record or BCD folder. Look at other Windows 7/R2 systems, and you may notice something even stranger: there’s only one file on the hard disk, and yet you can boot the system and run a normal Windows system. What’s going on here? Simple: Windows 7 gets a lot of press for its faster-than-Vista performance and newer user interface, but there’s a lot more to it also, including native support of VHD files (that’s how a one-file system boots) as well as a new default disk structure, support of direct-to-disk ISO burning, and more. Whether you’re going to Windows 7 sometime soon or five years from now, you’ll want to be prepared for the changes that Windows 7 brings to storage—and who better to prepare you than veteran Windows explainer Mark Minasi? Join Mark for this quick look at Windows 7/R2 storage and save yourself having to read a small mountain of whitepapers!

Mark Minasi: “come to the command line, the command line will set you free!.  If we want the full power my friends… the command line!”

Also, ignore the V in VHD, there’s nothing Virtual about VHD’s

How easy is it to create a VHD?

diskpart
  create vdisk file=filename maximum=sizeinmegabytes [type=fixed|expandable]
  select vdisk=drive:path
  attach vdisk  (can attach as read-only)

Of course, it can also be done through the GUI, although this is lame!  come to the command line!  (I like this guy lots!)

Creating a bootable VHD image:
  1) Take your gold image machine and sysprep it
  2) Attach an extra drive
  3) Image the system to the drive  (/verify /check)
  4) Create a new vhd
  5) Select the vhd
  6) Apply the wim file to the vhd (imagex /apply)
  7) Detach the vhd

You now have a sysprep’d gold image that you can deploy and boot from on as many machines as you like.  Sysinternals also have a tool that does the same and used the same API’s so is functionally identical

Basic VHD boot:
  1) Copy the VHD to a local hard drive
  2) Use BCDEDIT to create a new OS entry that points at the VHD

bcdedit /copy (copy the resultant GUID to the clipboard!)

What about making a system that has no installed O/S – just a pure boot from VHD

If you do this – insomnia!  you cannot hybernate a VHD system!

How to setup WinPE – newsletter #59 on www.minasi.com
Create the system.wim – newsletter #61

MGT213 – Introducing Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager v3 Beta

Jason Buffington, Technical Product Manager, DPM
http://jasonbuffington.com/
http://blogs.technet.com/DPM
dpminfo@microsoft.com

The third generation of Microsoft’s backup and recovery solution began public beta in October 2009. In this session, we spend most of the hour demonstrating what’s changed, the new capabilities, and what you should be planning for with Data Protection Manager.

Agent deployment changes, can install as before, but also attach to an existing agent which covers for agents behind firewalls, externally installed, etc.

Disk Allocation – changes to support collocating data in the  DPM storage pool, also the ability to Automatically grow the volumes – woohoo!!  (single biggest request for DPM into Microsoft)

Client support – as in client workstations, laptops, etc.  Much improved support for remote clients over long, thin links.  Capabilities to enforce an IT policy for backup but also allow the end user to add to the protection (with controls, i.e. IT can still enforce exclusions such as no MP3s).

“I like one throat to choke” – i.e. using a Microsoft backup tool to backup Microsoft

Using DPM to provide Disaster Recovery, i.e. replace a.n.other replication technologies by having another offsite DPM server (can do very funky automated recovery into a VM using VMM).

One thing to remember if you don’t attend another DPM session.  For compliance, PCI, Sarbanes, whatever!  If you have your offsite DPM server with the tape drive at that location you are already backing up and storing in a seperate geographic location – “You don’t have to pay the guy to lose your tapes for you!”

DPM 2010 Scalability
100 servers, 1000 clients, up to 2000 databases per server
Significantly increases fan-in of data sources per DPM server

DPM Recovery – specify ‘latest’ will not just restore the last DPM replica point, but also play back the transaction logs to the point of failure

www.inframon.com – “scary smart people who have taken DPM management to a whole new level”

you heard it hear 1st…
DPM 2010 from RC onwards will support backup of non-domain joined clients, i.e. none AD clients – this got a major applause (fortunately no ‘high-fives’).

Feedback – Jason is an excellent, engaging presenter with deep understanding of the product with massively relevant content, way more interesting than the SQL performance tuning I was going to do.

BOF04 – Snapshots in Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Marcos Nogueira
Snapshots in Hyper-V are a very powerful feature that when used properly can save you from disaster. On the other hand, snapshots, if used incorrectly, can bring a server down. Can snapshot replace a backup? At this BoF session we discuss the best practices for snapshots and some common usage scenarios.

Interactive, audience led session.  Not helped by folks not that keen on talking, and the speaker, sorry host (is not a demo, presentation), didn’t sound confident although should do with 3000 VM’s in his enviornment!

My question about snapshot avhd merge issues, even if you delete the snapshot striaght after the test the avhd/s will continue to grown until either the VM is shutdown or saved.  Is there any other way of merging the AVHD files back in e.g. a ‘live merge’

Using snapshots in development through test, qa, etc. to manage iteration testing

MGT314 – How to Protect SharePoint and Other Application Servers with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager

Another session with Jason Buffington of DPM fame, we are now the DPM’ers!

In this session we look at the challenges and special requirements for protecting and recovering Microsoft SharePoint Server, as well as Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. We discuss how Data Protection Manager (DPM) uses the native application VSS writers to ensure supportable backups and recoveries, and discuss the implementation specifics for protecting these key platforms. The discussion focuses mainly on DPM 2007 SP1 implementations for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Exchange Server 2007, but concludes with a glimpse into what DPM v3 is planning for O14 and E14.

DPM2010 new features for SharePoint – auto protection of new content dB’s, no need for a recovery sharepoint farm

Tip – for workload specific DPM information goto www.microsoft.com/dpm/yourworkload e.g. www.microsoft.com/dpm/sharepoint - how to’s, videos, sandboxed demo enviornments, why you need it (for the boss), etc.

Tip – DPM can restore to tape, e.g. when asked for a copy of last month’s backup for the auditor, rather than give them a tape containing EVERYTHING (and you know you’ll never get it back), you can just give them the data they need from the time they want it.

Further training… TechNet virtual labs – for hands-on learning with DPM 2007 SP1

SVR308 – Storage and Hyper-V: The Choices You Can Make and the Things You Need to Know

 
Storage and virtualisation are two of the hottest technologies in IT right now—and they’re even better together. Microsoft is delivering new products into both spaces, and understanding the impacts that storage has on a server virtualisation design is key to understanding and successfully building a virtual infrastructure. This session talks about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going. We give you the information you need to know to make the right storage decisions in this new virtual world.

Hyper-V Architecture overview
Key to have the HCL/supported hardware (we know this, but it’s especially important for clustering)

Hyper-V Storage
DAS: SCSI, SATA, eSATA, USB, Firewire
SAN: iSCSI, Fibre Channel, SAS
NAS is not supported (stick an iSCSI target on it!)

Storage parameters / constraints..
Max VHD size 2048GB / 2TB

Tip – ISO”s on network shares, and especially with remote management.. needs a computer account & constrained delegation!  (gets round issue of needing local ISO’s on the nodes… ahhh!  learnt something! )

Hyper-V Constrained Delegation

Differencing VHDs – performance vs. chain length – above 8 the performance delta becomes significant

Hyper-V and AV..

SAN Boot and Hyper-V
  Boot host from SAN (FC or iSCSI)
  Boot child VM frin iSCSI (PXE solution such as emmboot)

iSCSI performance best practises with Hyper-V..
  Jumbo Frames since R2
  ..

Live Migration/HA Best Practises
  CSV
  Multi-Path IO (MPIO) is your friend
  Standardise names of virtual switches
  Use ISO’s not real CD/DVD as will break live migration

Sizing Storage for Hyper-V
  see pic

HA with Hyper-V using MPIO & FC SAN
  see pic

DAT306 – Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Best Practices

Chris Baldwin (chris.baldwin@microsoft.com)

Chris started by admitting to talking far too quickly, so excuse this post, maybe disjointed!

Is there anything you could be doing better with SQL Server Reporting Services? This session explores some of the best practices associated with report design and report server deployment. Topics range from the best way to plan your scale out architecture, to the best way to optimise your reports design for performance.

Agenda..

Server Deployment
  Backup/Restore… see pic
  Security – use read-only accounts, be wary of unecessary use of Windows Integrated, if really paranoid can be disabled for RS (server properties)
  Monitoring & Planning – use VS2005 to perform load testing on RS, RS caches so beware testing results, can use ‘NullRenderer’ subscription to pre-process and prime the cache ahead of use
  One-Box deployments useful, but not great for production due to lack of scale

Report Design and layout
  Understanding Tablix
  Report performance analysis and optimisation – subreports can negatively impac, move subreport layout up into main report, merge main report and subreport datasets

Data Visualisation
  .. will post pics!

RS Architecture..

pics to post!