Todd's Blog

I Got Some Tail in Ottawa (Hyper-V Course, Day 1)

posted on April 14, 2009

I headed down to Byward Market this evening and picked up a Beaver Tail for Tracey and I to split. I am in Ottawa on my Hyper-V course and Tracey has come along for some rest and relaxation. Supper was wonderful and the walk around town was nice as well.

The Hyper-V course I am taking is 6422A – Implementing and Managing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V at CTE Solutions. It is part of their Microsoft Skills Week promotion they had going on. So far it has been pretty good. I am already using Hyper-V in the production environment at work, but I was looking to expand on my skills a little more. A lot of times when we learn things on our own, we learn what we need to know and don’t get to know some of the other features which can help us out. By taking the course, I find myself picking up new things and getting ideas for how I can better support my environment.

So far, I am Day 1 of 2 (the course was compressed into a 2 day course from 3). Our first day saw us creating Virtual Machines, creating VHD disks for use later. We also learned about snapshots. remote administration and high availability. Tomorrow we will learn about physical to virtual migrations, using Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and Powershell scripts for use on Hyper-V.

EnergizeIT: Install Fest for Windows 7 – Ottawa Event

posted on April 9, 2009

The EnergizeIT Windows 7 Install Fest ran in Ottawa and the session went great. There were 71 people out tonight with laptops to install Windows 7 onto their computers and a few more people from the OWSUG walking about and helping people with problems. Windows 7 was installed to computers as fresh installs, dual boots, upgrades and installs to virtual machines. We used both DVD media, USB sticks and ISO images. There were even two Macs in the crowd installing Windows 7 on their machines. (Who says you can’t make your Mac better?) One was using Boot Camp and one was using Parallels. Rick, Pierre and Christian had several demos, covering different Windows 7 scenarios. We saw how to boot from USB stick and how to enable Bitlocker to go. We learned about shims using the Application Compatibility Toolkit and new features in programs that have been with Windows since the Windows 3.1 days. Having been at the Windows Vista Install Fest in Mississauga a few years back, it was nice to be at the EnergizeIT: Install Fest for Windows 7. It was a great event and an evening well spent. Here are some photos from the event.

Crowd Shots

Windows 7 gets installed onto Macs

I Passed the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Exam

posted on April 3, 2009

I wrote the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit exam this past Wednesday. The exam number is 70-635, TS: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Desktop Deployment and I managed to pass. I don’t use the Zero Touch (ZTI) features of MDT, no SCCM, no SMS, no MOM. I exclusively use Light Touch (LTI) with WDS and sometimes a USB boot key for my installs in my production environment, which put me at a slight disadvantage for the exam. Unfortunately, there are no training guides for this exam as of yet. There are study guides for 70-624 which cover BDD, the predecessor to MDT. So those will help a little. There were also some podcasts which covered ZTI and the preparation I did for TechDays helped me cover the areas I didn’t know as solid for this exam.

There was close to 80 questions on this exam, so this is not for the faint of heart. All in all, 70-635 was a good solid exam covering all facets of Office 2007 and Windows Vista deployment with MDT. With 76 or so questions to write, it is time consuming, but worth it if you want to prove your worth with Microsoft Deployments.