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Ask Your Peers – User Group Event Tonight in Ottawa

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The weather is being uncooperative down here in Kingston, so I won’t be able to attend the event tonight. But if you are in the Ottawa area and not overcome by Obama fever, I strongly suggest you go register for the event. You get a chance to ask questions and have them answered by very knowledgeable people.

February 19th 2009 User Group Meeting

Topic: Asked your Peers!

Description: Have you ever wanted to know, How to deploy Windows 7 easily? or How do I setup my physical server to maximise the number of hyper-v virtual machines? Well this is your chance to ask the burning questions that you have!

If those questions above are not to your liking try something like these:

  1. My office is looking at mobile devices, I there anything that I need to know about managing them? How can I protect our data is the device is stolen?
  2. My users are complaining about how we are deploy software updates, How do other deploy software update to their user?
  3. What effect does DNS scavenging have on AD? Will this increase my network traffic on my WAN link?
  4. I love SharePoint, and I want to help “sell it” to management to solve our problems, what can I do?
  5. I’m getting Error “Sync failed: WSUS server not configured. Source: CWSyncMgr::DoSync”, do you have any ideas how I should troubleshot this?

This session will be moderated by Brad Bird and some of your answers will come from:

Rick Claus – Microsoft

Pierre Roman – Microsoft

Garth Jones – Enhansoft

And many others including your peers

Q&A: If you have details questions or would like to help ensure that your question is answered, please email your question in advance to [email protected]. We will try and research any of the tricky questions in advance so get your question in early and make sure that you are there to hear the answer!

Location:
Microsoft Canada Co.
100 Queen Street Suite 500
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 1J9

Agenda:

5:00 p.m.  Event registration
5:30 p.m.  Q & A
8:00 p.m.  Door Prizes

Notes:

· Pizza and Pop will be served, Please RSVP to help us order enough of both.

· Please note that no one will be admitted after 5:55 p.m.!

RSVP: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=135784

Windows Server Administration 70-646 – Chapter 1 – Lesson 1

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My exam studying didn’t go so well last weekend, so I pushed the exam out until the end of February as I try to be more realistic. This long weekend, I did manage to start doing a little reading. As I said in a earlier post, the book I am using to study is the Microsoft Press book, Windows Server Administration Self Paced Training kit.

As I am reading the book, I am summarizing key points as this helps me to remember what I have read, and I will post my summaries to my blog, one chapter per week, with lesson’s spread throughout the week. Remember, this is only a highlight of the book and I am not trying to rewrite the book on this blog.

Chapter 1 – Lesson 1: Planning Windows Server 2008 Installation and Upgrade

This week, we start at the beginning, Chapter 1 – Lesson 1. This lesson covers the basic points on Windows 2008 which are:

  • System Requirements
  • Editions
  • Server Core
  • Upgrade Path
  • BitLocker

System Requirements

The minimum system requirements are 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and 15 GB of hard disk space. Recommended are 2 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM and 40 GB of hard disk space.

Editions

Considerable information is presented on the various versions of Windows Server 2008. There is Web, Standard, Enterprise and Data Center, each available are 32bit and 64bit and that Core editions are available for each. There is also an Itanium edition as well.

  • Standard Edition – network load balancing supported, failover clustering is not supported. 32bit – supports 4 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 32 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Enterprise Edition – supports network failover and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). 32bit – supports 64 GB of RAM and 8 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 2 TB of RAM and 8 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Datacenter Edition – supports failover clustering and ADFS. Unlimited virtual image rights. 32bit – supports 64 GB of RAM and 32 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 2 TB of RAM and 64 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Web Edition – domain services not supported, network load balancing supported. As the name implies, meant for web servers. 32bit – supports 4 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 32 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Itanium Edition – limited number of roles supported. Requires Itanium 2 processor. Supports 2 TB of RAM and 64 processors in SMP configuration.

Server Core

Benefits of Server Core:

  • Reduced Attack Surface
  • Lower Hardware Requirements

You will need to learn how to join a machine to the domain and some of the other basic commands you will need to know for server core. Check out Pierre’s post titled  My Core box. How to turn a near obsolete PC in a Lab Domain Controller for a description of how to get a machine up and going running Server Core. The book also mentions ocsetup.exe to install roles and oclist.exe to see what roles are available.

Upgrading From Windows Server 2003

This section covers upgrading. You can upgrade from Windows Server 2003. To upgrade from Windows Server 2000 you will need to upgrade 2003 first. The book doesn’t mention Windows NT 4 Server, so neither will I.  You can only upgrade to the same processor edition, i.e., 64 bit to 64 bit, not 32 bit to 64 bit. Also you can’t upgrade to a core installation and most editions can only upgrade to the same edition. The exception is Windows Server 2003 Standard. You can upgrade to Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise. Upgrades must be initiated by starting the installation from within Windows Server 2003.

BitLocker

Windows Server 2008 now contains BitLocker. BitLocker protects the server data through volume encryption and also provided integrity-checking. A system administrator must disable BitLocker during maintenance windows. To support BitLocker, prior to installing Windows Server 2008, a partition of 1.5 GB in size must created and, formatted and made the system partition prior to creating a larger partition. Also available are BitLocker group policies and the book lists some of them. Be sure to also know the difference between BitLocker and Encrypting File System. Finally, the last part covers turning off BitLocker.

That’s the extent of the material covered in Lesson 1. Lesson 2 covers Automated Server Deployment.

*Disclaimer:

My notes in helping me prepare for the 70-646 Exam, PRO: Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator are just those, notes and I am trying to help highlight what is covered in the book, not replicate it. If you want to pass the exam, you will need more than just these notes to pass. I suggest you get a good book and get familiar with the product. The expectation is that you have about one year of experience with Windows 2008 Server (your mileage may vary) when writing this exam. The book I am using for my preparation and where I am drawing the information for these notes is the Microsoft Press book, MCITP Exam Prep 70-646: Windows Server Administration; ISBN: 0735625107.

Microsoft to Open Retail Stores

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You knew it was just a matter of time before Microsoft followed Apple’s lead and opened their own brand of stores.

In the past, Microsoft has always worked with partners to sell their business/enterprise products. The consumer line of products was left to the retail stores, like Best Buy, small computer stores, etc., who may not be doing justice to the MS platform. So having a store where consumers can go and see MS product in action with an experience Microsoft can manage, I don’t think is bad. What I am wondering is how far up the food chain Microsoft plans on going with these stores? Will they also have techs which will compete against the likes of Geek Squad or Nerds on Site. Will Microsoft go after the SOHO market, which is where they have partners and compete against them or direct these SOHO customers to partners? All questions that will be answered in good time. Heck, the person they tapped to run the retail section doesn’t start until Tuesday, so they really are just getting going on this.

I am not surprised at all that Microsoft is opening retail stores. I wrote two retail store type Microsoft certifications last year, 70-626 – Consumer Sales Specialist and 70-625 – TS: Connected Home Integrator. Both of these exams were aimed at retail sales type people, with 626 being strictly sales and 625 being more of a support type role. Either these exams were written for the big chains or they have been planning this for a while.

By having a retail presence, not only does Microsoft have the opportunity manage their brand but also to gather direct feedback from customers via face to face encounters.

Link: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090213/microsoft_090213/20090213?hub=SciTech