Latest Posts
No, I am not in the bathroom (or potty, as my kids like to say). The book that Kevin Martin and I have been working on, Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007, is in the can (i.e., it shipped yesterday). So, if you have ever created or thought about creating document-centric SharePoint solutions, you might want to add this book to your holiday shopping list. If anything, it should be a great bedtime read for young ones. :-)
I am grateful to everyone who helped or offered to help with this project. I especially want to thank Jen Blaney (our editorial assistant at Charles River Media), Marta Justak (our project editor), and Stacia Misner (our technical editor). Without them, none of this would have been possible.
Thanks to all who attended my sessions last week at SharePoint Connections. I was especially pleased with the attendance of my last session (Developing InfoPath Browser Forms for SharePoint). Asking people to get up for a session at 8am on the last day of a conference in Las Vegas can be a challenge, but the turnout was still high, and there was no shortage of good questions.
As I promised, the code from my two InfoPath sessions is available for download here. I could not include the form templates used for the demos, as they are owned by a third party, but the code snippets are there and can be included in your Visual Studio solutions. You will just need to modify the code to fit your form data source.
Last week I somehow managed to get a Xobni beta version that I was not supposed to talk about. The owner of the company called me and asked me to take my post down.. I obliged via my Windows Mobile phone while riding a Washington state ferry. A few days later, as a thank you, I got a person note from Matt and a new T-shirt in the mail. I love it when a company with a brilliant product has a team that lives up to what they say. Here is a shot of my in my new shirt.
Here is shot of back of the shirt, and of the note that Matt sent to me with the Shirt. I love this company more and more. Matt was excited that I mentioned in my blog post that Xobni is part of my base system install. I don't let a machine leave my desk without Xobni install on it.
http://www.xobni.com get it, love it, email more efficiently. That's what I tell people.
Update (11/15/08 1240PST): Fixed the URLs in the links to point to the actual decks. Sorry!
Time this year has flown! Hard to believe that I've just finished up my last conference for the year -- Exchange Connections Fall at the fabulous Mandalay Bay resort and conference center in Las Vegas. This was my second trip to Vegas this year (the first was in May for the Exchange/DPM session at MMS), and I really prefer the city in November: far fewer people, much more pleasant temperatures.
I gave the following three sessions yesterday:
- (EXC16) The Collaboration Blender -- This session is adapted from the Outlook and SharePoint: Playing Well Together article I wrote for Windows IT Pro magazine (subscription required). Exchange and SharePoint are both touted as collaboration solutions and have some overlapping functionality, so this session explores some of the overlaps and compares and contrasts what each is good for. (In other words, we spend a lot of time talking about Exchange public folders.) And where does Outlook fit into this mess? There's even a handy summary table!
- (EXC17) Exchange Virtualization -- As I confessed to my attendees, this session was a gamble that paid off. Back when I proposed the topic, there was no official statement of Microsoft support for Exchange virtualization (no, "Don't!" doesn't really count). I guessed that by the time November rolled around, Hyper-V would have finally shipped and they'd have shifted that stance -- and I was right. Because I focus more on the Hyper-V side of things, I invited VMWare to send a representative to the session to present their take on the subject. The resulting session was very good, and I learned a bunch of things too.
- (EXC18) Exchange Protection using Data Protection Manager -- Although a lot of the content here was the same material that I've already presented this year (what, 4-5 times now?), I did have to make some changes thanks to the brilliant curve ball that Jason Buffington and his crew in the DPM team threw me. You see, Connections now has all Microsoft speakers speak on one day (imaginatively named "Microsoft Day" for some reason), and that day was Tuesday. While Jason couldn't be here, Karandeep Anand (who is the DPM bomb!) was -- and I've been trading decks and VMs and material back and forth with Jason and Karandeep for over a year now. Rather than give a less brilliant copy of the session Karandeep had already done, I added in some new material focusing on the internals of the Exchange store and how that affects Exchange protection, removed the demo, and really attacked the topic from the Exchange side of things. I think it worked. Either that or it was people staying to get free copies of the DPM book that my publisher thoughtfully provided.
A lot of my fellow speakers dread speaking on the last day, but I've found that I've come to enjoy it. Sure, you have smaller attendance numbers -- but the people who are there (especially if you get lucky enough to do the last session on the last day) are the people who really want to be there. I also encourage questions from the audience during the presentation, with the caveat that if they're too detailed or going to be answered later I'll defer them; I like the interactivity. I usually learn something from my attendees, which makes it a good time for everyone.
Back to the grind. I know I've been way too quiet on the blogfront lately, and I promise, I've got some fresh new content in the works. First, though, I have to catch up on the paying work. For some reason, my corporate overlords seem to expect me to do billable work too, not just speak and blog. Ah, well. At least I didn't get RickRolled on my birthday!
It's interesting to talk to people in this business and find the religious fanaticism that revolves around the support of different hardware vendors. I've met systems people who have variously sworn by HP, Dell, and IBM. But what about the good old white box? If you look at it closely, a lot of businesses are throwing away good money for name brands when a white box machine could be built with the exact same chipset for a lot cheaper.
For example, we do a LOT of work with VMs here at 3Sharp. I built us a VM server with 2 quad-core Xeon procs (2.2Ghz), 32GB of RAM, in a 1u form factor with mirrored 500GB SATA 2 drives. This server cost about $1750 to build, a server from Dell with the same chipset, procs, RAM, and HDD costs $6911, and if I were to switch it out with Opteron procs, the price would still be $5196.
The objections to this approach to hardware generally tend to revolve around convenience and support. My take on it is that if you can save 40-70% on your hardware costs, you can then easily afford to have spare parts for every system you have on hand. That also means that you can have a better response time than the 4-hour onsite.
There are a few keys to making this work though. First, you have to have at least one IT staff member who REALLY knows his hardware. This means knowing when a 20-pin power supply will be able to power a 24-pin motherboard and not void the warranty (the answer is that if you're not going to be putting in a lot of add-in pci or pci-x cards, you should be ok). Second, pick a standard. If you're whiteboxing your servers, that means you settle on one or two motherboards to be your standards. The less variety you have, the fewer spare parts you'll need to keep around. Third, pick your vendor very carefully. The best price is definitely not always the best deal.
Other keys to success with whiteboxing include using a good system monitoring solution. We use Microsoft SCOM, but I've also used Nagios with good success. I've also seen comparable reliability to brand name servers with the units I've built here.
While it may not be practical for large organizations to use whiteboxing, small to medium sized businesses can benefit greatly from it. Their IT staff will be much more intimately familliar with the hardware, and costs will be reduced.
Mikey, Jeremy and I were starting of an Office war at 3Sharp. I enjoyed messing with their unlocked computers, turning desks around, borrowing chairs wheels, and other great small gotchas. Jeremy got back at me a few times. Mikey was saving up and getting ready to get me as I was leaving. Mikey dedicated his considerable programming skillz to building an application to get me; it's an amazing application for evil. It's so amazing that I feel the need to share it here. To find out what it does you will have to download it and run it.
Right click and Save as (you might be able to just click on it)
on the picture of Jeremy, Mikey, Anup, and I taken on no pants Friday to download the application. Then remove the .rename from the file and run EvilThing.exe.
You will need to remember the following key stroke once you run the application F7+A+N if you want to hear about the ninjas vanishing, and stop hearing NOOO… In case you were wondering, yes I am wearing a kilt in that shot, and no I will not tell you what I am wearing under it.
Today is my last official day as a full time employee at 3Sharp. The images below have been the alternating backgrounds on my 8 core workstation for the past few months. I think that 3Sharp has a brilliant logo, and that the logo creators picked a sexy green for the colour scheme.
My tasks for the day; clean out my desk, clean out my office, eat some pizza, say see you later to my co-workers, then head home. I am both excited for new job, and sad to be leaving here. I VERY much enjoyed my time at 3Sharp. Yesterday in an exit interview I was asked if I would ever come back. I answered that question with an exuberant yes. That yes answers speaks to how much I have enjoyed it here. I cannot think of many jobs that I have left that I wanted to come back too before I had even left them.
To anyone that might be looking to be employed by 3Sharp I have this advice | take the first offer they give you and start as soon as you can. You will love the job.
I have gotten a lot of email from people who wished me well and wanted to find out the status of my recent Masters rotation. I'm working on a bigger write-up, but here's the short form:
- It was intense. I had a ton of fun, I learned more than I thought I could, and I met a lot of great people who are scary smart. I was also exhausted after it was all said and done.
- It was worth the money. Paul breaks it down for you here, and I agree with every data point. I think it's fair to ignore the cost of travel, because no matter where you go for training, you'd have to pay it.
- I'm not yet a Master. There's four tests you have to pass, and I only nailed three of them. I'm now patiently waiting word for retests, as are several of my classmates, and then we'll knock 'em dead.
Thank you, everyone, for your well-wishes and questions. As I said, I'm working on a longer post or series of posts, but those will be a bit delayed in coming because I want to run them by the folks at the MCM/MCA program to make sure that I'm not talking about stuff I shouldn't be.
Living so close, and having worked at Microsoft I've heard about the local data center that Microsoft built in a little town called Quincy. This morning, I found link this from the BBC that talks about the data center and has a short video tour of the facility. I find it interesting that my first peak inside of the building comes from across the pond.
The author of the post seems to have more will power then me... If saw the following sign above a huge red button while leaving the facility that I would've been compelled to press it, and it would have been VERY hard to resist the urge.....
As a child (age 12) I once shutdown the power for a few city blocks in my home town. There was this power pole that I would ride my bike by on the way to the store that rented Nintendo games. On the pole was a huge On and Off switch that taunted me for months. Eventually the switch, and a dare won out, and I flipped it. When the switch hit off, the lights in all of the buildings near by went dark....... Being 12, I got on bike and rode away as fast as I could scared for my life.
The next time I went to the store, to return my Nintendo game, there was a huge padlock on the switch. I think the padlock should have been there to start with, to protect the power from overly curious people like me.
So, there's been all this hooplah (created by me) about the MacBook Pro that I'm using at the moment. I have been really enjoying my time spent with it, and I've been able to overlook some of the minor issues that I've run into. I do wish that it had more RAM. I do wish that Excel could open my timesheet. I do wish that I could easily sync offline files (Paul tipped me on a product, but I don't want to write about it until I've fully tested it).
Those are all small issues, but what I've run into now is bigger than that. Apparently, I am running a 32 bit operating system <pausing for the collective gasps>! I made the attempt to create a new virtual machine running Windows Server 2008, so that I could run a couple of the management tools that I can't run in OSX. My attempt resulted in this screen:
Shocking, I know. Now, I also understand that with a smaller amount of RAM in my system, it's really not a big deal to not have all 64 bits of addressable space, but the outrage is justified. In doing some research, I found out that the chip that was shipped was 64 bit CAPABLE, just not ENABLED. I'm not going to futz around and try and make it work, but that is something that I want to make sure my next hardware purchase can handle. I know this sounds silly, but I try to research these things, and I've walked away from buying hardware because it lacked a single feature that I wanted. NOTE: This should be taken with a hearty understanding that a) this is a WORK laptop and that I didn't pay for it and b) I am very grateful for the chance to use it and experience the goodness that is a MacBook Pro.
That all being said, I'm off to dig up my 32 bit version of Windows Server 2008 to install. Whee!
Last month I provided a teaser about the book I am writing with Kevin Martin (a 3Sharp colleague) titled Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007. We are in the final editing stages now and should be completely done in the next few weeks. If all goes well, I will have a flier to pass out at SharePoint Connections for those interested. The chapter titles (which may be subject to change) are as follows:
- What Is a Content Type?
- Included Content Types
- Site Columns
- Document Template
- Document Information Panel
- Workflows
- Information Management Policies and Document Conversions
- Out-of-the-Box Solution Walkthrough
- Automating the Performance Appraisal Solution
- Completing and Deploying the Appraisal Process
The last mile is always the most difficult...
Last year we worked with Gary Devendorf to create a two-day training course about 2007 Microsoft Office system interoperability with Lotus Notes 7. The course was geared toward Notes developers and had sessions about Visual Studio 2005 and Domino Web services, ASP.NET, the Open XML Formats, InfoPath, Access, and Excel, to name a few.
For the next month or so we will be working with Gary again to upgrade the materials. The new training course will still use Lotus Notes 7, but we will convert the Visual Studio 2005 projects to Visual Studio 2008 and add new content for subjects such as the Business Data Catalog, InfoPath Forms Services, custom workflows, and mobile development activities. Gary will be providing training updates on his blog. For more interoperability information, check out the InteropTips Community Site for developers of .NET and Lotus Notes applications.
I'm out in Los Angeles, supporting some of the demos for PDC and I have to say that tons of cool things are going on. Since I've been busy actually working, I don't have the time to actually summarize all of the things that have been presented on the stage, but I'll be posting several follow-up articles on some of the new things that are coming out. I'll also make sure to include some neat stuff about how demos are set up, run, and torn down, while the attendees are all going crazy over all the new products. Just to keep the pot warm:
- Software as a service is big. Azure Platform.
- Windows 7 is the R0X0R.
- Live Mesh is full of Silverlight goodness.
- .Net 4 is neat. I'm not sure I understand WHY, but it is.
- Office 14 is going to blow the socks off the people who actually have to use it!
I'm getting ready to head out to PDC to do some support work and I'm faced with a very difficult decision, in my mind. As I stated in my last post, I just got a shiny, new (old) MacBook Pro. I've been using it for two days now and the only thing I've found that was kind of wonky has been working on my timesheet in Excel (the Mac Office 2008 version). The dilemma, to cut to the quick, is that I am worried that something will come up at the PDC where the MacBook Pro will not suffice. If there was an issue I could be concerned about, straight up, I would address it, but this is more of a nebulous fear.
I currently use a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with 8GB of RAM and a 160GB drive as my primary work machine. It's been doing "OK," but there are always quirks. The new MacBook Pro has less RAM, and a slightly slower processor, but it also has much more hard drive space. Most of these things are a non-issue, but that is where the fear comes into play.
I think that what I'm going to do is just end up taking both machines with me. The nice thing about working backstage is that I'll be able to (mostly) set up my stuff and then not have to worry about it. I don't think having a "backup" Thinkpad is going to be an issue, but I can have it there as a security blanket, just in case things go belly-up. If someone DOES point out that I'm a huge geek and I should just pick one machine and stick to it, I can claim that the Thinkpad is a backup for the demo! Woo! I win!
Today's Question| " Is there some way I can tell if my emails are being blocked"
I regret to say that I was not really able to dazzle the questions asked with my answer. I had to tell the user that you can't tell. I explained that there are too many different ways to block spam, and there are too many different obeyed and unobeyed rules in SMTP to be able to accurately tell. What one company blocks another might not block, and both of those companies might not tell you that they blocked anything.
My user asked me a few follow on questions that I had to say no to as well:
- He asked me about read receipts. I had to tell him that those work great inside of the company, but they don't work outside of the company. They don't work because there is no guarantee that the recipients sever will do anything with them.
- He asked me about NDR's. I had to tell him that some companies don't send NDRs. Some companies send blocked emails to blackholes because an NDR can notify spammers that they have something real or false, and it can add to the work load of an email server.
- He asked about message tracking. I told him that is only good inside of the Exchange organization. Once the email is handed to the recipients server we have no clue what happens to it.
- He asked about putting a URL in the email that would tell us if someone opened the message. I told him that this was a great idea that spammers used a few years ago that is almost totally blocked and busted now, so that Idea won't work.
In the end I told him that the only sure way to know was to call the person, or talk to them on IM to verify that the email made it there. I wish that I had a better answer but I don't see that happening in the near future.
I love finding new little things that I know should be there but have never bothered to look for, like, you can minimize the ribbon.
My boss helped me learn this when he came into my office today and asks " I need you for two minutes " Then he takes me into his office and shows me his send mail window and asks "where is the reply button?" Looking at his screen I saw what he saw, the buttons were missing. His screen looked much like the email picture below that's trying to tempt me with evil forbidden donuts.
I did some poking around and found that the Minimize the Ribbon option had been selected. I guess you can minimize the ribbon on Office 2007 applications, cool. This makes it two things that I have learned today; I'm on a roll.
I got a call from Joe at Verizon this morning, and he says " I need you to put a cross over cable between the 871 and the 1841 routers that we installed last week" I get this odd look on my face, think to my self WTF, and respond " aren't all ports on the planet auto-mbx" he says "he is not sure but that is what his engineer tells him we needs" We needs a crossover cable. At this point I feel like my chain is being yanked, but there is not much arguing with a Telco, so I agreed to do it. I hung up on Joe and instantly got in IM with some Cisco geeks, and called the TAC, and the TAC tells me that Joe is right........ My friends tell me that Joe is right......
Apparently there are very few Cisco routers that do auto-mbx..... now I know. My momma always said that it is good to learn something new everyday. I guess that I can go home now.
So my boss has gone and done something terrible to me. He's given me his old MacBook Pro for a project. The main reason why I think of this as a terrible thing is that I am absolutely loving it, and I am going to hate to have to wipe it if the project requires it. I have been a big fan of Apple and the Mac line since I inherited my first Macintosh Plus from my brother, back many, many years ago. While I have been a big Apple fan, my work has required me to mainly use Windows based machines as my primary device, but I think that I'm going to use this as a chance to try to move over to a Mac based solution. If I can work this and really move to it as a full featured work solution, I'm going to seriously think about making my next machine purchase a MackBook Pro, instead of a new iMac, and use one machine for work and home.
My plan for trying this out has required that I use (and find) some software that I know I will use a lot. This is the short list of things that I've installed so far:
ecto -- This is an application that Paul (my brother and ultimate boss at work) mentioned in a blog post and now I'm hooked. It looks like it supports Drupal (my home blogging platform) and Subtext (my work blogging platform).
CoRD -- In my role as a system administrator, I have to spend a lot of time logged into multiple machines. It's not really required, but I don't want to have to walk down to the server room for every little thing. I've been using this tool for a couple of hours now and it looks like it can handle everything that I need. It is a beta piece of software, but I always have Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Client to fall back on. It's just not nearly as elegant.
Microsoft Messenger 7 -- The company I work for is primarily a Microsoft shop. With this in mind, and the fact that my official title is "Unified Communications Consultant," it's important for me to be able to stay connected with the people in my company. The reason why I am pointing out this tool is simply for the fact that version 7 of Messenger can connect to an OCS 2007 environment. This is cool, almost beyond belief.
Microsoft Office 2008 -- Okay, I'm sure no one is really surprised by this. With Entourage (which I still have to think about spelling correctly) and Word, this suite is a HUGE part of my daily work of technical writing. I've been using it at home for a while for schoolwork and a bit of this and that, but this is my chance to use it in the workplace as more than just a curiosity. Who knows, maybe if I use it and talk about it enough I might get selected for any beta programs for the next version of Office or Entourage!
Firefox 3 -- Once more, almost a no-brainer in the IT world. I don't know many people who don't have at least two, if not three web browsers installed.
VMWare Fusion -- This is just a ROCKING application! I don't have any VMs running right now, but if I get to use this as more than just a project clunker or if I decide to purchase one "for real," I'm going to follow these simple steps to put my current laptop's OS into a VM, and then I won't have to worry about Windows-only management tools!
As excited as I am, I know that there is a very real possibility that I won't be able to do everything that I need/want to do, since I'm going to have to use this to make money for 3Sharp. Along with that healthy dose of reality (it's not MY toy (; ) is also the very real limitation that this laptop only has 2GB of RAM. If I was doing nothing but surfing the web and using MS Word, this would not be an issue, but for example's sake, my current work laptop has 8GB of RAM (I use almost all of it, constantly), and I'm upgrading the drive to 320GB because I keep running out of room. With those warnings in hand, I'm still willing to give it a go. Now that I've really established my value to the company and to myself, I think I'm better prepared to do something like make a major purchase of Apple hardware. (Just for clarification, anything that I would purchase would have to be major, just to fit my RAM and space requirements)
P.S. Does anyone have a good recommendation on a tool that will be able to sync offline files with our company file server?
It's been years since I remember feeling compelled to install a patch. Even longer since I felt the need to tell people about a patch. I think that says something about how much better companies are getting at building secure systems and patching their systems.
Exploits are in-the-wild. This affects the “Server” service, so there are no satisfactory workarounds. Get to patching!
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx
If you’ve ever wanted a reason to not have AD computers in your DMZ – here is one.
Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager has been RTMified. The following link covers more: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/virtualmachinemanager/en/us/default.aspx
Number 5 on the list of "what can VMM do for you" makes me the most excited
Machine conversions are a snap!
Converting a physical machine to a virtual one can be a daunting undertaking—slow, problematic, and typically requiring you to halt the physical server. But thanks to the enhanced P2V conversion in VMM, P2V conversions will become routine. Similarly, VMM also provides a straightforward wizard that can convert VMware virtual machines to VHDs through an easy and speedy Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) transfer process.
Last week I posted about thinking about trying a RedFly for 30 days and fully replacing my laptop with it. I asked RedFly if they would be interested in letting me write for them about my experiences in exchange for them giving me a unit. Turns out that they like the idea enough to have already shipped me a RedFly. I guess that means that I actually have to do this. I think that I am exited it, well as excited as you can be with an expression like this.
The first thing I am going to do, while waiting for my new toy to be delivered, is list all of the tasks that I do on a regular basis, and identify a way to complete the tasks on my mobile phone. In addition to replacing my laptop I am going to try to replace my desktop at work. I'm not sure how that will work, but I willing to give it try. Before making the move, this is my best guess list of stuff that I do on my laptop on a regular basis
- RDP to my home server to view my home email -- I will switch my home email reading to ActiveSync, and I'll try to restrain myself from cheating and using my home RDP server.
- Read a heap of websites on a regular basis -- I've read that Opera is the way to go for this, I will have to do some testing on this one
- Blog post about whatever is in my mind for work, and personal -- I currently use Word 2007 and LiveWriter for all of my blogging. I will have to find a replacement that can talk to both WordPress and Subtext
- Write and review documents in Word, Excel, and Power Point -- I should have no problem writing and creating basic content in Pocket Office, but I see a blocker here. Pocket office appears to be lacking in document review functionality that I use on a regular basis.
- RDP into servers to work on them-- This should not be too much an issue with the native RDP client in Windows Mobile, other then the limited screen resolution
- Connect to my work network -- We have wireless here, my phone supports wireless so this should be simple
- Work with pictures on and for my picture website -- I should be able to do most of picture website management via a web browser. I am not so sure about photo editing; I am going to look at what my camera can do, and look for tools on the phone.
- Power – I just discovered that my phone does not charge via USB ( some USB voltage thing ) so I might have issues tethering the phone and running Wifi. I guess if it comes to it that I could connect to RedFly with Bluetooth and plug my phone in at the same time
Based on this list, giving up my laptop might not be too hard to do; We'll see.
Today's Question | I have four Dell servers. We are installing Exchange Server 2007. We are going to implement CCR. What should we do with the other two servers?
Answering this Question proved to be harder then you might think. Harder, due to all of the server implementation options available with Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2007. In thinking about this question, a number of thoughts ran around in my head before I landed on a good answer. Once I thought that I had a good answer I consulted a group of fellow Exchange geeks who provided me with more ideas and things to think about. After wading through their ideas and my own, I finally come up with two answers that I stand behind
Answer One - Hyper-V
It is my personal feeling that all servers should be built as virtual servers. My main reasoning behind this thought is that this makes your server installs hardware agnostic, and whole server backups are simpler. With hyper-v if you want to add more hardware to a server you don't have to build a new one and migrate to it anymore. With virtual servers If you need more power you reallocate resources to the virtual or you move the virtual to a new server; no more build new server and migrate. I like to kick this up another notch and implement my virtual server host servers as clusters; that's a story for a different post.
I would build this four server deployment as a four node clustered Hyper-V server. I would install the two CCR nodes on node 01 and node 02 of the cluster. I would install a CAS and Hub Transport server on node 03 of the cluster, and Node 04 of the cluster would be the passive node. This implementation would look this:
This is the more redundant and expandable configuration of the two options, but is also the most complicated. That extra complication can lead to less downtime if you are not prepared for a cluster. I do not recommend this implementation unless you are very comfortable with Microsoft Clustering services. That being said, I have built this setup before and I have always been very happy with the functionality.
Answer Two - CCR + NLB
Solution two offers a less expensive high redundancy solution. I offer this as option two because I like the hyper-v option better for it being hardware agnostic. On a big cost savings note. this solution does not require shared storage for the Hyper-V MSCS cluster; this could be a big deciding factor for some ( 2-100k+ in cost for the NAS depending). In this option I would install CCR on server1 and server2. I would install the CAS and Hub Transport server roles on server3 and server4 and implement Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) on both serves. NLB is supported on both roles post SP1, prior to that it was only supported on the CAS server role. This implementation would look this:
Either of these solutions would be a great way to setup Exchange Server 2007 with four servers. Which one you choose depends on your personal preferences and comfort level with the technologies--- happy installing.
I was reading some more about Windows 7 and the version numbers over the weekend and I came across these great quotes made by Brian Nash
“We decided to ship the Windows 7 code as Windows 6.1 - which is what you will see in the actual version of the product in cmd.exe or computer properties,”
“We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues. So we decided to ship the Windows 7 code as Windows 6.1 - which is what you will see in the actual version of the product in cmd.exe or computer properties,”
I guess Windows 7 will actually be Windows 6.1, and the math gets even more interesting.
Yesterday I went to Microsoft campus to meet with some people there about an insanely cool new E14 project that we are starting. I wonder if I can talk about what the project is? I will check on that. I had a great time on campus; I ran into one my old office husbands, ran into some people I used to work with regularly, and I ran into my old MVP lead. He was kind of enough to offer me one piece of swag from his shelf of swag.
I chose the E14 blanket / sleeping bag. Here is a picture of me holding the new swag. Also of note in this picture is shirt I am wearing that fellow MVPer Chris gave to me a few years when he stayed at the house for a few days ( it says something about Austin Texas, where Chris lives)
I call this my "Oh, you wanted one too?" face
I can be an extremist in some of my views on technology; some might call me jaded, or hardened by fire. I lean heavily towards the simplest, least expensive solutions. I would never say that my solutions are better than anyone else's, but I will stand behind them, and proclaim that they effective. There are many different ways to solve any given issues. Some days I feel like people look at my solutions like they are very odd, until I explain myself. Before I explain myself I often think that people see some of my solutions look this picture; they scratch their heads and think WTF Mate?
Earlier this week a wink and a cute smile roped me into fixing a handful of computers in a small office in Kent. They complained that the computers did not function, functioned poorly and or that were filled with porn based pop-ups. The owners of the office and the previous computer care takers wanted to solve the problem by very haphazard installing Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Adware, Firewalls, and Computer Cleanup software packages. That might be a great solution, when implemented properly, but it is not the my idea of a solution.
There was one computer that had three different AV software packages, two firewalls, and three Adware products installed; that computer hardly even started. To make it worse the normal user account had full admin rights, and updates had never been run on the machine. Most of the computers in the office were in similar states. With my bullheaded dedication to simplest and least cost solutions I took the following steps to solve this office's problems:
- Removed all AV, AS, Adware, Firewall, Computer cleanup, and any other junk software from all machines
- Updated all of the machines to the latest service pack and patchs (One did the SP3 reboot loop on me, that was fun to remember how to fix, something about an Intel driver on an AMD box)
- Turned on automatic updates to run nightly and reboot automatically (I never trust users)
- Ran "msconfig" and turned off everything that runs on startup on all machines
- Turned off all none essential Windows services (Like Wireless config on a wired desktop)
- Created a "root" account on all of the machines with admin rights to use to work on the machines
- Set a password for the default Administrator account (XP home does not have one)
- Changed all users from Administrators to Limited users - This ends nearly all viruses in my mind. If the registry cannot be changed, and users cannot install software, how are they going get a virus?
- Setup a File level Anti-Virus scanner on their file server and set it scan all of their shared documents - In my mind this catches most virus
- Installed VNC so I can help them out remotely if they need any future help
I left this office making all of their computers run better, and operating in a much safer way then they were before I got there.
My belief is that you solve Anti-stuff problems at the entry and movement points. You protect the email in transit, you protect the network entry and exit points on the backbone servers, and workstations, and you make it impossible for the user to install stupid things like smiley toolbars. I've never run AV on a workstation and I never will. I have yet to be infected by a virus on any of my workstations. What works for me might not work for every user. In the right environment, properly managed, properly maintained, and implemented in addition to other things I do support desktop AV; I am not totally anti anti-av. This small office was not the properly place for it, nor is my mothers house. Yes I don't run AV on my parents computers. I do just what I did for this office. I took away all of their rights to do anything and consider the problem solved.
I was hunting for the perfect picture for a blog post last night when I was confronted with an annoying little bit of website coding trickery. Some websites don't want you to borrow their pictures. That's cool with me if they own the picture and they say somewhere that they dont want you to have them. What bugs me is when they do this with stock photos and they don't indicate anywhere that they are don't want you to have "their" pictures.
Last night when I right-clicked on the picture that I wanted and selected Save Picture As... the dialog box that came up asked me to save an untitled.bmp file, like in the below picture.
From past experience I now that this will not get me the picture that I want. My trick to get around this is simple. I right-click on the image and select E-mail Picture... . This brings up a new email message with the picture attached to the email. From the email message I can save the picture to my Blog_Pictures folder and include it in my blog.
It turns out that my original math was wrong, and I have a comics who read what I post. After some more research and looking around I've updated my graphic by adding a 5.1 build. I stuck Longhorn in the background between 5, and 6, above 5.1 because it was supposed to come out in there, but it never really did. It was however, striped apart and parts of it made it into builds 5.1 and 6. and some of it might make it in 7.
According the ver command Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are version 5.1 and 5.2 of the NT code stream, which skiped 1 and 2 and started at version 3. According to the ver command Windows Server 2008 is 6.0. Les helped me figure that out with a subtle hint.
One of my co-workers thought that the Xbox had an internal name of Xbox making it the first product to ship with it's internal code name. I did some digging and discovered that was not the case. It was harder to find that information then you might think. I looked at a number of internal code name to real name lists and none of the them listed the Xbox; so I had to take some search paths. Eventually I found a reference that makes sense to me "According to Dean Takahashi's book, Opening the Xbox, the Xbox was originally to be named "DirectX-box", to show the extensive use of DirectX within the console's technology."
An Ex-worker of mine told me that my math was correct, but that Microsoft was trying to replace the Vista build and make us forget that it ever existed. His comment was "it is simple. Microsoft does not want you to count Vista…." While this might be fun, I don't think that it is the case.
IFilters are used by Microsoft Search products to index different content types and document formats. This latest release contains IFilters for the Office 2007 document format. This Filter Pack includes IFilters for the following document formats: .docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx.
Meaningful to me in my Microsoft world is the Exchange 2007 Ifilter pack, found and installed with the following links:
Download -- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60c92a37-719c-4077-b5c6-cac34f4227cc&DisplayLang=en
Exchange 2007 Install -- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;944516
There are a number of other products capable of consuming this update; Office SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services v3.0, SQL Server 2005, and SQL Server 2008. See the Download link above for installation steps.
The OCS team officially announced the R2 release of Office Communications Server 2007. I've been writing about and playing with features of R2 for internal products for a while now; it's great that this stuff is now out in the public. The new features that have me the most excited, are as follows:
- Dial in Audio conferencing I can stop paying the conferencing calling center to host bridges for me. I can do it on my OCS sever.
- Persistent group chat kind of like an IRC chat room that I can leave open with my group.
- Single number reach You call my desk phone and it rings my Cell phone and my desk phone at the same time, or in order, or however I want it to ring them
Check out the official release here -- http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-14OCSR2PR.mspx
Microsoft has officially announced that the name for the next version of Windows, currently code named Windows 7, will be Windows 7. This is the first time that an internal code name has made it to the final product name. My office mate and I were trying to work out on the marker board where the 7 comes from.
I've been working with Windows since it started, but I cannot recall where the .5 release is that makes the next build number 7. If you look at it from the outside you want to think that the next build should be Windows 8, but there is some logic behind the 7.
After the marker board I drew a picture in Visio of the major released builds roughly based on when they came out and the code base. When I get some more cycles I will do some more research and answer my Question -- where is the .5 build in this picture.
I am strongly considering a 30day no laptop, minimal desktop, all Windows Mobile challenge.
One of my longer term 3-4 year plans is to take a year plus off work and motorcycle around Central and South America with my kid and a group of other travelers. We can get Trenton a drivers license and motorcycle endorsement in Idaho at 15. We can convert that license into an international drivers license that would be legal in all but one of the countries that we would travel in. Trenton could take online schooling and be good to go with enough education to keep him graduating on time, and he would have some amazing stores and adventures that will hopefully fuel a life time of exploration and fun.
One of the travels is thinking that a car might be better then a motorcycle; which works out for the rest of us. With a car we can travel with a support rig to haul gear. More cargo would enable us to camp in better style and have the room to carry some camera gear and such to film the adventures for possible marketing later.
One of the things that rolls around in my head when I think about trips is what kind of computer gear do I need to carry with me vs. how little can I get away with. On one hand I know that I would need a full blown laptop for video editing, an in car NAS to store video footage, and maybe a satellite link to trickle things up and down for communications and backups. On the other hand I think about what's the least I could travel with. I've often wanted to travel with only my Windows Mobile phone for my computer. It has a keyboard, email, Office, video stuff, picture storage, and a browser; it lacks a large screen, a large keyboard, and a vast amount of processing, but I think that it could do 90% of what I need to do. For short trips it gives me Email and Blogging that are two of my bigger user functions.
I think that I can solve the keyboard and screen issue with a device that I just read about called a Redfly. Redfly is a 8" screen and a keyboard about the same size as currently offered ultra compact laptops. Redfly claims to have 8 hours of battery time and the capability of connecting to my phone via USB and charging my phone or connecting via Bluetooth. Redfly can do all for the low price of 199$, which is not that much if you consider a keyboard for a Windows Mobile phone costs around 100$. I just signed up for their 30 day trial. If they let me have one for 30 days I think that I will sign up and try to use only my windows mobile phone for all of my computer tasks. I want to see how close I can come to living with only my Windows Mobile phone.
Below is a picture of the Redfly next to an HTC tilt phone.
This is one of the articles that I will use for tips if I do this http://www.pocketpcmag.com/cms/_archives/Apr08/SmartphoneReplaceLaptop
Today we can say "3Sharp, now with more internets" A few weeks ago I ran some new cables into the server room to supply some new bandwidth. Today that new Bandwidth showed up in the form a 7 bound t1 lines from XO communications that form a 10MB Ethernet connection that we will add to our internets access. I cannot wait to download stuff over this new connection.
The front of the router and concentrator in the rack get a big thumbs up from Tim.
The back of the router and all of the pretty new wires run into the concentrator
The next post about this will have some speed tests with our results!! It would be cool if there are as good MajorNelson got in his hotel room in Japan, but I doubt that they will be.
Question of the morning | How do I tell if a rule is server side of client side?
Answer | When you look at the rules the rules indicates that is (client-only) if it is client only. If you look at the bottom two rules in this screen capture of my some of my rules you can see the (client-only) indication on two rules that I have the categorize messages for me
You can also tell where the rule will be stored if you know which rules cannot exist on the server side. The following list of conditions and actions cannot be part of server side rules. If you have a rule with one of these in it then the rule will have to be Client-only
Conditions:
- Flagged for Actions
- Outlook specific features that involve: flags, categories, or forms
Actions:
- Notification actions that involve: printing, playing a sound, a desktop alert, or displaying a custom alert message
- Replying using a template
- Running a script
- Assigning a category – This is the big one to me. Most of my none folder based email management is based on categories
- Moving or copying messages to a folder outside your mailbox
I set up an account with http://12seconds.tv this morning. I logged into the account planning to make my first video post. Every time I logged in I kept getting an error that the service could not find my web cam. The next few minutes were filled with trouble shutting;
- I unplugged my cam and plugged it back in.
- I had a cam conversation with a messenger contact to verify that the computer could see the cam
- I closed the webpage and opened it again in a new browser window and it still was not able to see my cam.
Then I got annoyed with it, bored, and distracted so I started to clean my office. Fast forward to a few hours later when I was making a twitter post the answer came to me; and it was so simple I wanted to slap myself. My desk at work as two monitors on it, the one I work in, and the one that I open an RDP session to my home server in. The 12seconds webpage was open on the window in my home server on my home server. No wonder it could not find my camera, I don't have a camera on my home server. The problem was solved by coping and pasting the link from home to the work computer; amazing, the webpage can see the hardware when it is open on the right computer. I love it when I create my own problems.
I will post the link to my 12second site once I make some posts and work out how it all works.
This service (12 seconds) seems to be a bit like Twitter only it's for Videos. http://12seconds.tv/
If I get a round Tuit, much like the one above, this weekend maybe I will setup an account and record some videos. I bet there is a way I can do this from my Windows Mobile device. I can see this being almost as fun as twitter. I twitter all the time; I've become obsessed. Follow me if you want. I found this site from a link that I found on Major Nelsons Twitter feed. You can see His 12 second site at the following link : http://12seconds.tv/channel/majornelson