Course code: 44CO120 – M6445 – Implementing and Administering Windows Small Business Server 2008

Where: QA Tabernacle Street, London, EC2A 4DT

Who: Mark Cresswell (mark.cresswell@qa.com)

44CO120 – M6445 – Implementing and Administering Windows Small Business Server 2008

Summary:
This four-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to plan, implement, and manage Windows Small Business Server 2008
This course is intended for technology consultants, system integrators, and in-house technology staff that serve small and medium- sized businesses

Prerequisites:
In addition to their professional experience, students who attend this training should have technical knowledge and skills equivalent to the following courses:
  Course 6420: Fundamentals of a Windows Sever 2008 Network and Applications Infrastructure
  Course 6424: Fundamentals of Windows Server 2008 Active Directory
  Course 5115: Installing and Configuring the Windows Vista Operating
  System
  Course 5116: Configuring Windows Vista Mobile Computing and Applications

Objectives:
Delegates will learn how to Install Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008.
Migrate to Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008.
Configure Windows Small Business Server 2008 using the Windows Small Business Server 2008 Console.
Manage users and groups in Windows Small Business Server 2008.
Manage messaging and collaboration in Windows Small Business Server 2008.
Manage and monitor Windows Small Business Server 2008.
Secure a Windows Small Business Server 2008 network.
Expand a Windows Small Business Server 2008 network

Top tips & links picked up during the course…

Microsoft SBS docs – http://tinyurl.com/sbs-docs

Known Post Installation Event Errors from SBS 2008 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/957713

Microsoft blog guide to WSS3/MOSS alternate access mappings – http://tinyurl.com/wss-aam

more tiny urls..  /sbs-rsg,  /sbs-docs, /sbs-grp

Microsoft OEM site – http://oem.microsoft.com

Top 100 public SharePoint sites – http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx

Free Block List provider – http://www.spamhaus.org/zen
This is gold!  add zen.spamhaus.org to your Block List Providers and switch on connection filtering.
One caveat to note, every time an email is processed by your server it performs a lookup to zen.spamhaus.org – if they receive too many lookups they will suggest that you take up their paid service.  The threshold for this is huge (100,000 SMTP connections per day or 300,000 lookups), and you must not be using it commercially i.e. providing a managed service incorporating their service.

Why disable or rename the Administrator account… because it has a well-known SID! (… -500).

Use child domains for all external domain records just like the default remote.yourdomain.com so to get round duplicate maintainence of internal and external resources (and prevent confusion when vpn’d in!)

SBS default groups have an attribute that mark them as created by the SBS setup process or management console.. so be mindful if creating outside of the console!
Fool it by opening AD Users & Computers, open the attribute editor for the group and edit the msSBSCreatedState to ‘Created’

Roaming profiles – SBS has not been designed to support roaming profiles and Microsoft will not support issues with them (in this context), e.g. production of a SBS specific hotfix to address an issue.
Advised not to use roaming profiles bar controlled environments such as standard build, lack of local admins, quotas, group policy lockdown, etc.

Client migration – above half a dozen client machines consider using the User State Migration Toolkit (USMT) to script the process,  ROI should be worthwhile in configuration time vs time saved at the desktop.

Segway! – the BBC iPlayer program is a P2P service that shares out content, based on Ch4 4oD package – remove it!

Need to inject drivers into WinRE or WinPE boot environments..?  don’t be scared!  use drvload and PEImage, more on TechNet Edge – http://edge.technet.com/Media/WinRE-and-free-stuff-with-Sean-Kearney/

SSL certs for SBS – don’t buy single certs unless you have to.   Host headers and ssl is tricky, has to be a ucc cert or wildcard cert to support.
Default cert purchase from now on will be a wildcard cert, unless a bloody good reason (or lots of small ones… read $’s) not to!

Security cost triangle – you can have any two but not all 3!
low cost, usability, security

Relability and Performance monitor – what a gem!

migration to SBS2008..

My recommendation is to start with Philip Elder’s great posts at http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/
SBS 2008 deployment checklist – http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/05/sbs-2008-setup-checklist-v111.html
SBS2003 to 2008 migration guide – http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/06/sbs-2003-to-sbs-2008-migration-guide.html

Exchange & Circular Logging…
A potential for lots of debate, but I’d agree with Mark that whilst migrating mailboxes, if circluar logging is not enabled, enable it otherwise run the risk of filling up disks with log files!

Disable circular logging post event and let the Exchange aware backups submit the log clear down.  However, if the store data and logs are on the same spindle you may as well leave circular logging on as you get little or no recovery benefits.

How to remove the last legacy Exchange server from an organisation – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288905.aspx (http://tinyurl.com/sbs-exmig)

Common mistakes when upgrading Exchange 2000/2003 to 2007 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555854/en-us

ipconfig /displaydns

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/bb899442.aspx
Advanced Group Policy Management – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749396(WS.10).aspx
Asset Inventory Service – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/mdop/ais.aspx
Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT)
System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM)
Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS)

So a clean-up is required…

1st thing to delete was several hundred megabytes of files taken up with various language versions of MS Virtual Server 2005 binaries in:
C:\Program Files\System Center Essentials\SCVMM 2008\vs\  i386 & amd64
the ‘1033′ folders contain the english versions, the rest deleted

Next on the list is the SQL database files used by SCE, by default (no installation choices given, hopefully better by RTM!), these are installed into:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ESSENTIALS\MSSQL
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.ESSENTIALS
each currently taking after about a week of SCE2010 running, some 748 & 580MB respectively!

in our case we also found another 417MB in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Update Cache\KB968369\ServicePack – will come back on this one, but have moved in the meantime…

and another 641MB in C:\Program Files\System Center Essentials\Health Service State\Health Service Store (one in particular, the HealthServiceStore.edb at 598MB!)

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!

Microsoft TechEd Europe 2009, Berlin 8-13^th November, 2009

So this week I’m a TechEd & Berlin virgin, although I guess I’m not alone as there are over 7200 people from 104 countries attending this event! (ignore the later picture, it’s out of date before it was taken).

MD of German MS Business

www.citymosiac.de – Berlin Social Media project to mark 20yrs since collapse of the Berlin Wall

Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division
you can’t save your way to success, simply cost cutting not the answer
do more with less has become “with less, do more” – the new efficiency
UK govnt. Embracing cloud computing to increase efficiencies

Customer evidence from Statoil (Petter Wersland), NASDAQ OMX (Carl-Magnus Hallberg), Chester Zoo (Phil Morris)

Statoil – Exchange 2010 TAP, reduced storage by 60% but increased mailbox size 40-fold!
Identity & access & the cloud – complexities need to be addressed.

NASDAQ – latency issues due to disperse geography with low-long bandwidth, use of Win7 & Branch-cache.  Emphasis on IT & technology alignment with business projects, close to the strategy of the business.

Chester Zoo – Virtualisation saved £11K in electricity alone, being a Zoo obvious green agenda alignment.  Chester Zoo installed 50km of fibre optics, and have wireless cameras throughout the complex, inc. In cages – IT manager has been attacked by monkeys.. (literally!)

Windows 7 had over 7m beta users
Win7 was the biggest pre-order product on amazon.co.uk, dethroning Harry Potter “Windows 7 is King””  (oh dear!)

Cloud Computing

Microsoft Online Services

Exchange Online – adopters inc. GSK, Aeon, etc,  often in conjunction with on premises Exchange

Exchange 2010 GA today, RTM launch

Julia White, Director, Exchange 2010 Product Team

Demoed a mailbox move whilst in use…. err? Is that new?  Didn’t show the client at the end of the move process… was there a prompt?

Exchange 2010 mail tips that advise the user of issues before they click send, e.g. incorrect distribution groups, Out of Office, etc.

Speech to text and vice-versa

Outlook Web Access now, Outlook Web App

Unified Messaging improvements, also integrated into OWA

Transport rules that can apply actions to email types regardless of sender choices (or lack of – e.g. adding DRM to certain types of email)

DRM working across access types (mobile, browser… demo used FireFox)

Multi-mailbox search capabilities

Forester claim a complete ROI on Exchange 2010 deployment in 6 months!
Various ForeFront launches announced today

IT Infrastructure

Apparently (allegedly) 70% of the world’s servers are running Windows

-          Windows Server 2008 R2 stats – 460,000 downloads thus far

Robert Whabe, Corporate VP, Microsoft Server & Tools Business

Evolution of the Datacenter – green IT, virtualisation moving to private then public cloud

BranchCache reduced MS Mexico sales office bandwidth by 90%

SCOM/OpsMgr Dashboard demo showing KPI & summarised

Jeff Wettlaufer, Technical PM, System Center
Bunch of redelivered stuff around SCVMM e.g. PRO, Live Migration, power mgmt, etc.

Devlopers! Developers! Devlopers!

An auditorium for over 7000

Many signs pointing to TechEd, but where is it?!?!

F'F'F'Five degrees in Berlin

System Center Service Manager 2010
Nigel Cain, Senior PM, nigelc@microsoft.com

Service Manager – front end/management, reporting, SS portal to CfgMgr & OpsMgr.. e.g. a end-user could request an app, and CfgMgr would deploy… no manual intervention req’d! J

Solutions to automate common IT processes, integrated with rest of SC suite,

-          Beta 2 is available on Connect now, go download it!

-          no extra agents required to populate CMdB

-          engineer/activity tracking built in for measuring against SLA

-          service level management, differing service levels across customer

-         

SCVMM 2008 R2

Single pane of glass view, all orchestration is performed through PowerShell hence powerful scripting, etc.

-          How to manage VM sprawl..

-          PRO tips to manage the Hyper-V host environment

SCDPM 2007 & 2010
Jason Buffington, jbuff@microsoft.com (jasonbuffington.com)
blogs.technet.com/DPM

-          DPM 2010 x64 bit only

-          Use the Exchange & DPM storage calculator

-          SQL sizing using perfmon to capture write bytes/min, run for a day then extrapolate

-          LCR dropped for Exchange 2010…

-          DPM DR, run the tapes at the backup site – compliance with off-site, they are already!

-          All Exchange replication technologies are for HA, not archive – DPM is for archive!

-          2010 will auto protect new databases when they come online

-           

More recently and formally, we have been working with Microsoft Hyper-V since the v1 Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) in spring 2008.  We attended various RDP Bootcamp training and used pre-release/beta versions of Hyper-V extensively to accelerate testing and migration for our Microsoft Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customer, Newman Martin and Buchan – read more at http://reubenjcook.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/windows-essential-business-server-2008-launch/

For Hyper-V v2 we are a UK Early Adopter Program (EAP) partner for Windows Server 2008 R2, with a focus on virtualisation, specifically Hyper-V with failover clustering.  We’ve been working with various builds and flavours of Hyper-V v2 including the command line only and free Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, and also the full GUI versions available in the full Windows Server 2008 R2 product.

For an EAP, or TAP for that matter, you need a customer who’s willing to participate in deploying and testing early release software (Beta’s and Release Candidate builds) in a production environment, and then talk about it through press releases, case studies, etc. also known in Microsoft speak as ‘customer evidence’.
The benefits are many!  Microsoft gets real world deployments of their new product ahead of general release which helps with convincing the wider market that the technology is dependable and fit to deploy.  The customer gets to the latest technology for their business ahead of their competition, and often assistance/support such as sponsored consulting, licenses, etc.  The partner (us) gets supported training, technical assistance, and exposure to new products ahead of our competition, plus, of course, exposure in the market through PR & various co-marketing activities.

Our EAP customer deployment was with Ascom Network Testing (formerly Argogroup – www.argogroup.com).  Ascom Network Testing is part of the Mobile Test Solutions business of the Swiss company Ascom (www.ascom.com), and is a global provider of mobile test & measurement solutions for some of the worlds largest mobile network operators (the likes of Verizon, T-Mobile, Orange, etc.). 
Specifically Ascom wanted to update and improve the backend server components of a product called Monitor Master.  Monitor Master is an end-to-end solution for measuring ‘User Experience’ and collates and presents measurement data from mobile services probes out in the field.  Monitor Master is a Business Intelligence (BI) platform with a data warehouse back-end running on Microsoft SQL Server.

The project was given the title ‘EPIC’ due to the scale of the larger deployments which can be several hundreds of Gigabytes of data.  The primary goals were to accelerate the quality and consistency of customer deployments of the Monitor Master server components.  This was achieved by defining and testing new reference architectures including O/S setup, database configuration, hardware platform architecture, and operational procedures to manage the environment.

Clearly Virtualisation can help accelerate almost any platform development project and due to the timings of the project, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V v2 was an obvious choice.  Soon into the project we came to realise that due to the performance and other benefits of Hyper-V v2 it could actually form part of the solution, not just a tool to help develop it!

Our old mate, business associate & mentor (for all things PR & communications), John Dean (COO of www.showmethegolf.tv) helped us put together a short release that announced this exciting project, it went out to coincide with the global Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows 7 launch events and is available online via PRWEB (http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2009/10/prweb3039184.htm), but also below for your enjoyment!:

PRESS RELEASE

The Full Circle Secures Client for Windows Server 2008 R2 EAP

Ascom Network Testing Enrolled as Early Adopter for Hyper-V Virtualisation

London, 15 October 2009 – The Full Circle, the Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in virtualisation and infrastructure deployments, announced today that it had secured Ascom Network Testing’s participation in the Windows Server 2008 R2 UK Early Adopter Program (EAP).

Ascom Network Testing is a global mobile data software systems provider. They offer test and measurement solutions to many of the world’s largest mobile network operators, including Verizon, Orange, and T-Mobile.

The EAP enables selected partners to take part in co-funded consulting engagements to drive product deployments prior to full launch. This gives partners and customers strategic advantage while enabling Microsoft to develop public references for their marketing efforts.

Reuben Cook, Founder, The Full Circle – “We are delighted that Ascom Network Testing will be part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 EAP. We are confident it will offer tremendous value as it will enable them to reap the benefits that the new technologies can deliver to the business well in advance of their competitors.  Windows Server 2008 R2 is planned for release October 22nd”

Kit Smithers, Chief Technical Officer, Ascom Network Testing Ltd – ”We immediately recognised the benefits of participating in the program. We have a particularly strong interest in the benefits of virtualisation and consolidation, and look forward to enjoying the performance and flexibility benefits that it will give us.”

Mike Peers, Channel Development Manager, Virtualisation, Microsoft – “The Full Circle have been an active partner on our Windows Server 2008 R2 Early Adoption Programme.  The programme is designed to help partners gain early experience deploying Hyper-V, whilst also benefitting customers in the early adoption of the technology.”

Cook concluded: “At first we saw Hyper-V as a component that could accelerate Ascom’s internal solution development process.  But it has quickly become apparent that Hyper-V could in itself become part of their client solution offering, due to the power, performance and stability it offers.  It has been a great success.”

Ends:  340 Words

What Microsoft had to say before the event…

Event Overview
Please join the Microsoft UK team and a number of our executives for our primary UK channel event, Microsoft Partner Network 2009.
Targeted at Partner executive level contacts and sales leads we want to provide you with insights into Microsoft’s current strategies, the direction of our business, a selection of the innovative technology we’re launching this year and how we hope to work with you, our Partners, to drive joint success.

It’s a big year as we transition the Microsoft Partner Programme to the Microsoft Partner Network and we want to take the time to ensure you are getting the most out of your relationship with Microsoft.

This event will take a fresh look at the market opportunities, highlight potential strategies to ensure you continue to be ready to meet customers’ needs, and are ready and able to exploit opportunities that arise.

Exploring Microsoft Technology – James Akrigg, UK & British! Microsoft Technology Specialist

SharePoint on the Internet
investors in people and Ferrari website is SharePoint!

The Windows Wiggle

Business value benefits of Windows 7…
Power saving via group policy
City of Miami claim $53 per desktop per year
Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 – Direct Access… no more VPN!
Bitlocker to go – USB key encryption

R2 & Hyper-V – Live Migration, etc.

New version of SCE 2010 launched last week

UM demo with LCS, Exchange, Outlook to setup a conference call from a calendar item.

Live speech to text demo and it worked!

Windows phone announced yesterday

Microsoft Innovation – Andrew Herbert, MD MS Research Cambridge

MS Cambridge Labs…
F#
next version of xbox with vision technology for natural user interface

“create seamless experiences that combine the power of software across the Internet using any device”

More at Microsoft Research

UK Perspective – Gordon Frazer, GM Microsoft UK

“the biggest room in my house is the room for improvement!”

R&D $9.5B – long term, tenacious innovation

The Journey to Success – Andrew Akrigg
The tools are there – use them!
e.g.
Microsoft GearUp Toolkit

Product Lifecyle information (www link…)

Microsoft Pinpoint

Microsoft RSS feeds

Microsoft Partner Player (web link)

Doing more…
MVP program
sharing your code on codeplex