Personal happiness and a bit of WDS.
Today I got a really exciting mail from TechEd. The final evaluation results were in on the sessions this year. My session was rated the 5th of all the interactive sessions this year!! That’s really exciting and fun. It makes me focus even higher on the presentations that are ahead.
Anyways there is not so much time before Christmas and I’m currenty building a deployment system with over 350 computers that will be refreshed almost nightly, the solution will be based entierly on the MDT, WDS and other “build-in” tools of Windows Server 2008 R2. The clients will be Windows 2008 R2 running Hyper-V. We will also bridge country borders with this solution. The comming weeks I will be publishing some scripts and how-to’s based on the work we now do. So if you wonder why the blog is a bit quiet just now thats because I’m so into this project.
Install your own self-contained SharePoint 2010 lab enviroment.
Since a couple of days the public beta of Sharepoint 2010 is out in the wild. The official name is Beta 2. Keep in mind that this is for lab only and that migration to RTM will NOT be supported by Microsoft. Here is how to do it. Use Hyper-V or other virtualization that support 64-bit guests.
1. Install a 64-bit Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 machine, 32-bit is not supported any more! The machine should atleast have 8 GB of RAM to function pretty smoothly. More is recomended if you wish to test Web Applications and extensive Excel Services or Sandboxing. Web edition, Foundations, SBS is not supported nor recomended!!
3. Modify the ACL for registry HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName and make sure users got full control over that key (because you machine is a DC).
4. Install the WCF fix that will allow the service applications to work (it’s actually allowing WCF to communicate unsecured). This must be installed regardless of your operating system. For Windows 7 and 2008 R2 you need this, and for Windows Vista and 2008 you wil need this.
5. Install a SQL server, you will need 2005 SP 3 with CU 3 or 2008 SP 1 with CU 2. Cumulative updates are part-way service packs which isn’t fully tested. Thats why you will have to order them by email.. but remember this is not a production enviroment.
6. Download the installer. Start the Sharepoint 2010 Pre-requisite installer, it’s reachable form the installer main menu. The program will (download,) install and configure all needed supporting functionallity for Sharepoint 2010. You will need Internet Access for this step to complete.
7. Setup a new farm. Use Complete installation. Never, ever, use Standalone install. Follow the wizards, also launch Central admin when requested as you will go through the Farm configuration wizard.
9. Install Office 2010 Pro Plus, Visio 2010 and Sarepoint 2010.
11. Reboot. Enjoy you lab enviroment.
I was the 7:th highest rated interactive session of the whole TechEd!! Thats scary – and very nice! =) My session was about getting certified in Windows 7, the 70-680 exam to more specific. I also recorded another session about IPv6 for TechEd online. I was very tired yesterday and took every chance I got to relax in the lounge and did not attend many sessions at all.
Watch the Panel Discussion on IPv6 at TechEd Online here, also my meeting with Tiberiu Covaci about application security in the eye of a IT-pro is available here.
Day one was started with sessions directly in the morning, people everywhere. There is 7500 at site here in Berlin. In the last two weeks of registration 3500 participants registered for the event. Some logistical issues with that ofcause. Yesterday was a very special day. It was twenty years since the berlin wall fell and germany, and berlin was joined as one again. This history lay as a cover of expecations during the whole day. Even if it was a light rain during the evening the spirit was high. Great day to be here, a great day to experience. Fantastic stuff.
I thew myself in with Windows 2008 R2 Foundations, which is a udpated version of the Windows 2008 Foundations (was limited to Emerging Markets). It’s a server, requiring no cal-licenses for windows, for up to fifteen simultaneus users. Its a product for small businesses but it does not replace the Windows 2008 solutions that are out there such as the Small Business Server. Foundations is just a bare installation, just like a standard server but with some limitations. You are limited to one socket, 8gb of ram and you cannot run Hyper-V on it, also you cannot have any cross forrest trust or be the child domain root. This product is mostly for Emerging Markets but have a general availiablity over the whole world.
After that I went down to the Community area and recorded some TechTalk sessions. After which it was “Key-note time”. They unveiled that Exchange 2010 is generally available, which was of no news to most of us and thats it. Personaly I think this was one of the worst key-notes in the TechEd history, people by the hundreds walked out during the session. To bad. It could have been much better. But nevertheless Exchange 2010 was released and I think that brings time of upgrade for many of you out there..
This is really going to be a busy week, I got that already before arriving. But now when in the middle of the TLC running between engagements I kind of underestimated the task I think. Anyway, yesterday was Day Zero of TechEd, and for me that meant going to the MCT Summit at TechEd. During a couple of hours we discussed some of the new stuff thats out there for us in the learning bussiness: dMOC (Digital MOC) and Online labs.
First things first. Digital MOC. Over 70 of Microsofts courses have been adapted for the new time of electronic documentation and now offers the courses as PDF instead of the books. This have several advantages as I can see it. 1) You can have access to the materials before going to the course which can make you more prepared, 2) you are able to copy-paste between examples in the books and the virtual machine and 3) you dont have to break you back with a 700-page manual to bring home. It also saves a lot on the enviroment and thats allways a good thing! The price for the course materials actually goes down also. But the bottom line is if you prefer a book then you will have that. And if you are like me moving in to electronic documentation then you will have PDFs.
Second big thing. Online labs. This means that the training companies no-longer need to purchase and install local lab machines for use during courses but rather rent them from Microsoft the duration of the course. This means that training center will be able to step down their hardware, saving some money perhaps, and in the end lowering prices as machines are a great cost to training centers. But for students? The advantage will be that the lab will be availiable both before and after the course (the duration of lab availablity is not yet decided). Then you could really follow up and redo the labs again, or perhaps prepare for the course in advance. Online labs will be available some time under Q1 of 2010.
This year is busy at TechEd for me… I will deliver two sessions on Windows 7 Certification lead a BOF about Microsoft Communities, lead a panel debate on IPv6 and record a number of TechTalks and participate in yet another panel. And now I got a mail about my application for Speaker Idol. The Speaker Idol is a competition where you get five minutes and you are supposed to deliver the very best of best presentations you can, the best of the best then meet in a final.. wish me luck! =) See you in Berlin!
I don’t know why IPv6 haven’t been a big success yet. I have native IPv6 networks and loving every minute of it; but I’m almost alone about that I think. What do you think? Come and join the panel discussion about IPv6 and ask me and the other experts on the board about IPv6 and adoption. We’ll try to stay clear of the technical details but rather looking on the question why are we not ready? or are we?
Interesting post by Mark about Machine SID duplication..
I have never used the NewSID tool because I never had problems with duplicate SIDs (I hate doing things just because someone tells me I need to – I do whats needed so the app/solution works). So I have always felt ashamed not to follow the best practices in this area – you should do that – offen it has good reasons. Today it feels nice when Mark in a recent post explains everything about Machine SID Duplication problems and why Microsoft now changes the recomendations and retires the NewSID tools. I’ll just pretend I knew that all along. =) Read the article at Mark’s blog.
Here I am in Amsterdam attending a Sharepoint Ignite at Microsoft with some of the brightest guys around. Nice to have some time and deep-dive into the stuff that I don’t find time for in “real life”.
I was expecting to see some pre-beta code and perhaps to deep into the Technical Preview I’ve seen since before. But to my suprise: When starting the virtual machines it feelt almost complete: all the icons where there, most features work. And behold: the build was 14.0.4514.1009 which I would expect to be Beta 2 code or atleast a interim build on the road to Beta 2. The build is about three weeks old by looking on the dates on the files.
For me as IT-Pro there is some really nice features: Sandboxing, Unified Logging, No more SSP (well kind of.. there is “proxies/connectors” instead), Flexible delegation and administration, Tenant Administration and lots more of exciting stuff. There is even really nice features in Backup, and continuity such as support for database mirroring. In regards to security many features are the same, but I have much more granual control of who can do what. And I can have sub-administrators in Central Administration. Files can be stored externally (using SQL-FileStreams) and much more. I WILL be back on this really soon!