ronaldg's ramblings

Just for fun, check this out! An IT superhero-based comic strip...

 http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/cool-stuff/comic/default.mspx

Microsoft launching a contest to test OEM partners' licensing knowledge

Microsoft has launched a contest for our channel partners that we hope will encourage you to become more knowledgeable on our software licensing agreements.  Yes, there are prizes involved and it really only needs to take 5-10 minutes of your time (I did it in less than 5 minutes).  It's supposed to run from now thru late June.  Here's some more details.

Check out the Microsoft Licensing Quiz, the page is labeled "Microsoft OEM Quiz", but apparently the only requirement to participate is that you be a registered Microsoft Partner (presumably any level).  After clicking on the "Get Started" link on the home page, you are given a series of multiple choice questions (10) related to common misconceptions about Microsoft's licensing.  The site also includes numerous links to reference materials (here's a direct link to the PPT: background training materials) as well as other online resources.

As far as the quiz, it's pretty straight-forward.  For example, did you know that all Microsoft's volume licensing agreements are for Windows desktop upgrades only, and that an "underlying qualified full" Windows desktop license must be in place before a customer can exercise the volume licensing agreement to "upgrade" the Windows license.  Also, did you know that Microsoft doesn't allow OEM licenses to be transferred to other PCs, even if the original PC has been retired.  IF you knew those you're already 20% of the way toward passing the quiz and becoming eligible for some pretty cool prizes, like a laptop, home gamer PC, and home theater PC, as well as other great prizes.

We're hoping that this is a reasonably simple and entertaining way to help you assess your current state of knowledge around basic licensing (with a focus on OEM-oriented questions).  Of course, there's a LOT more to know about Microsoft licensing, but this is an easy way to see if you're up to speed on the basics and possibly walk away with a cool prize for your efforts.  Give it a shot, for 5 minutes of your time, you might win one of those cool PCs mentioned above.  if you do remember you heard it here first <grin>.

NEW! SBSC 70-282 Exam Prep forum site now online.

I mentioned that Bea Mulzer and I are doing a 2008 version of the 70-282 Exam Prep webcast series - well that was this week, so if you've missed it, you can still get it on-demand.   One of the things that I found out was that she has built a new 70-282 Exam Prep forum.  It's pretty sweet.  If you are looking to do SBSC and haven't taken that exam, this forum site could be a good additional resource for you.   You'll find it at: www.70-282examcram.com.

More Windows Server Launch info

A couple of weeks ago I put up a post around the upcoming Windows Server Launch.  In that post I primarily focused on partner-facing, technical resources around getting you ramped up for this new product.  Hopefully, many of you have already started doing some of your preparation.   Along the way I've run across some more links to info that you might find useful on the less technical side.

Here's the customer-facing launch site with all event details: http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/default.mspx

And here's the link to Partner sales and marketing resources in "Launch Central" on the partner portal:   https://partner.microsoft.com/US/salesmarketingsection/smcampaigns/40016191 

From here, you can click on the Sales & Marketing tab to see some of the specific sales/marketing resources and opportunities (some shown below), such as the Sneak Peek events which offer partners FREE trial software for all their attendees!

Sneak Peek Events -- By hosting a unique Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio™ 2008, and SQL Server 2008 preview event, you can be one of the first partners to give insight on the latest. Learn more on how to execute a Sneak Peek event (use this link then click on the "Sales and Marketing" tab to access the Sneek Peek stuff)!

Ready-to-Go Campaigns! -- Ready-to-Go Campaigns are designed to help you capitalize on the Windows Server 2008 sales opportunity, while saving time and money by utilizing professionally developed and customizable marketing materials.

Upcoming Partner-focused events

Here's a quick list of some of the major partner-focused events coming up in the next few months.  Hopefully you're already aware of them, but just in case, here they are (with links).

Microsoft Small Business Summit  (https://www.sbsummit.com/)
       ONLINE, March 24-27, 2008

SMB Nation Conferences (www.smbnation.com)
      New York, NY, March 29-30, 2008
      Toronto, Canada, May 03-04, 2008
      Seattle, WA, October 04-06, 2008

SMB Technology Network (www.smbsummit.com)
     Irving, TX April 18-21, 2008

IT Pro Conference 2008 (www.sbsmigration.com)
      New Orleans, LA, May 09-11, 2008

Small Business Symposium (at WWPC 2008)
      Houston, TX, July 2008 (link not available yet)

In particular I want to call out two of these events for your consideration.  First, the Small Business Summit, basically because it's free and should have some worthwhile info.  Here's a short description from the website:

"This FREE online event provides hours of valuable small business programming each day. You'll get tips, advice, and secrets from experts, all designed to make the hats you wear each day fit more comfortably."

Next, the SMB Summit (shown as SMB Technology Network above), this is a full blown conference, with a fee, but if you're serious about SMB technology this is one you should really consider.  For starters, on the first 2 days, they will be doing technical drill-downs on Cougar and Windows Essential Business Server (formerly known as Centro) including Hands-on labs!!  And, they will have technical experts including Microsoft Product folks as well as MVPs - what great way to get a jump start on these important new technologies.   Then, on days 3-4, they will transition to sessions, again put on by experts, for solution provider Owners/Managers.  If there is one conference, besides Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, that you should go to this year, this is one you should consider.  You can find out more at the link above, plus the conference will have a full page ad in the February Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

Of course the SMB Nation conferences are always good as well, but they are 2 day sessions focusing mainly it appears on the business side and will not have the technical content that SMB Summit has. 

You should check them all out!!  And, hopefully, I'll see you at WWPC in Houston as well.

NEW! SBSC Exam Prep webcast series and book update.

hey all, I mentioned in a post on Nov 8th that Bea Mulzer (SMB Nation Press) was publishing an updated edition of the SBSC Exam Prep book (aka Microsoft Small Business Specialist Primer, see cover shot below).  It released in December.  If you are not already an SBSC, and are interested in elevating your partner relationship with Microsoft, then I have some good news for you.

Bea and I are doing another Exam Prep webcast series next week (Jan 29-31).  This will be a 4-part series, part 1 on Tues (1/29), Part 2 on Wed (1/30), and Parts 3 & 4 on Thur (1/31).  If you don't see this in time to join us for the "live" webcast events, of course, you can take advantage of them on-demand.   You can access these thru MSReadiness partner training site (www.msreadiness.com), then search for the keyword "SBSC" and you should find them (here's the direct link incorporating the search http://www.msreadiness.com/TrainingSearch.aspx?prodid=0&keyword=sbsc).   You might notice while there that there's a couple of other SBSC-focused webcasts coming up in FEB: one around "Why become an SBSC" and the other around the Sales and Marketing Assessment. 

One thing to note is that the "Red Book" (altho it's not all red any more) now includes sections on the 70-631 (Sharepoint) Exam which can be used as an SBSC exam now in addition to the ever popular 70-282.  As a blog reader I'll give you a heads-up that we will be giving away 200 100%-off vouchers for the SBSC exams, but you'll need to be there for all 4 of the "live" sessions to qualify (sorry can't give out to on-demand viewers).  We will also be giving away a couple of copies of the book in each session as well.  If you sign up for the webcasts because of this blog post, please "chat" me  before one of the webcasts to let me know (but do that before it starts please).

Hyper-V (Cliff's notes version)

While I'm on the Subject of WS2008 (see an earlier post on getting ramped up), IMHO one of the most compelling aspects of this new OS is the enhancements we've made in the Virtualization space.  One of the new things you'll be seeing and hearing about is Hypervisor, so here's my "Cliff's notes" version of the essential things you need to know around Hyper-V.

Hyper-V, (formerly codenamed Viridian), is essentially a thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and maintains strong isolation between the partitions (partition=VM).  It has a minimal attack surface and does not contain any third-party device drivers.  This is obviously a major security benefit, but also means that the VMs running on it are taking advantage of a streamlined platform architecture so they will be more efficient and performant.  You can run Hyper-V as a Server Core role for the utmost in minimal footprint, in fact this configuration is considered a best practice.

Hyper-V must  be run on 64-bit hardware that supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) but not on Itanium (IA-64) processors.  And it must be a clean (new) install.  It will provide x64 guest support, as well as the ability to run guest machines in a multi-processor environment (up to 8/vm), with large memory allocation per virtual machine (>32gb/vm), and integrated virtual switch support.  The only limits on the number of VMs is around server capability and sizing.  And the UI is not MMC v3, not web-based as VS2005.

Since the hypervisor restricts itself to managing a minimum set of hardware (essentially procs, local APICs, and RAM), a "parent" partition (VM) is the go-between for comm between "child" VMs and the Hyper-V layer.  The comm between the parent and all child VMs happens over something called the VMBus.  Briefly, a parent component called the Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) handles IO requests from a Virtualization Service Consumer (VSC) at the "bottom" of each of the child virtualization stacks over the VMBus so there is not the stack redundancy that we had in previous architectures, thus it is a much more efficient way of operating.  The parent partition also holds the IHV device drivers.  Virtual devices can be either "core" or "plug-in" (aka enlightenments, or enlightened IO) - it's beyond the scope of this post to try and explain these, but now you're aware of the nomenclature and you can do further research as your needs or desires dictate.

Hyper-V incorporates an open architecture that enables Microsoft as well as third-party software developers to build enhancements to the technology and tools.  There's also a built-in Virtual Machine Management Service that controls and manages all the VMs, interestingly using the RDP protocol.  And, of course, WMI plays a big role as well. Yes, Microsoft will provide integration components and technical support for customers running select Linux distributions as guest operating systems within Hyper-V (which is more important to enterprises than my normal small-biz audience, but I thought I'd mention it since it's a common question).

Another interesting point to note is that Hyper-V uses Windows Server 2008’s Volume Shadow Copy Services to enable fast and reliable disaster recovery as well as P2V (physical to virtual) migration. 

Well, I hope this has served as an essential "primer" to help you have a better idea of what's coming to you in Hyper-V.

Here's a link to the home page for Hyper-V info on Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/virtualization/default.mspx

Vista Security - 1 year update - you make the call

I alluded in the previous post around deployment that I believe there's some subtle negativity around Vista in some of the trade press.   I ran across this article last week that provides an example (see article, Microsoft Touts Windows Vista Security), I believe, of my point – I'll let you read the article yourself and determine if you feel it tends to take a negative approach vs neutral or (heaven forbid) a positive one.  To put my position up front, I'd say a neutral approach would have just been to cover the facts of Jones' report, which was also the basis for Wilson's remarks.  To make a focus of the article (note title ends with "but analysts remain skeptical") the anecdotal skepticism of a few hand-picked folks, who supposedly represent analysts everwhere, is why I feel there's a bit of negative bias going on. My point in this post is not to rebut or challenge the "analysts" remarks point by point (although I certainly could), but rather, assuming you might read the article, to point out a few things by way of clarification and hopefully give you some food for thought around the real security gains that have been realized in the Longhorn generation of software (Vista being the client piece of that) as a result of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative, which began some 5 years ago. And, also to encourage you to keep a big grain of salt handy as you read articles such as the one above.

But the main point of this post is to give you an update on Vista security, so first, let me point you to this post on Jeff Jones' blog on TechNet -- this should be required reading IMHO:   http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2008/01/23/download-windows-vista-one-year-vulnerability-report.aspx

From there, you can download the Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report - as the site states: "This paper analyzes the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista and looks at it in the context of its predecessor, Windows XP, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products." 

Jeff did previous Vulnerability Reports at the 3-month and 6-month time frame which I told you about in my 3/21/07 post.  Jeff is a Microsoftie, but if you read his reports, I think you'll find that he's very upfront about his position with Microsoft and, moreover, I don't believe I've ever seen anyone do the "due diligence" he exhibits in his reporting around trying to put forth objective and factual information.  Be sure and read the Exec Summary and the opening section about "Interpreting the analysis" as well as the Final Observation section AND the Appendices (for sure). 

Case in point, essentially Jones specifically compares the number of CVEs to CVEs for the different OSes (check out CVEs at http://cve.mitre.org/), this is about as "apples to apples" as it can get IMHO, hopefully you'll agree.  Now one could rightly agrue that CVEs are in no way a specific, definitive measure of security, but, Jones acknowledges that and makes his case for why this comparison is relevant (see the "interpreting the analysis" section mentioned above). 

Along the way you'll notice that he even makes sure he compares the CVE stats to a "reduced component set" of some other OSes to try and keep it as "apples to apples" as possible.  He even includes the severity ratings of the applicable Security Bulletins in his comparisons with XP (notwithstanding the intimation to the contrary by one of the "analysts" in the article above when he states: "But he's not telling you about the number of patches which were more critical on Vista than on Windows XP" - but perhaps I misunderstood his comment).  And even though one of the analysts suggests that Microsoft is "bending the stats", these CVEs are not Microsoft generated stats, and math is math (1 CVE=1 CVE) in my book, so you make the call on that. 

Bottom line here is that I wanted to call your attention first to Jones' updated 1-year Vista vulnerability report in hopes that you would download and read it.  I think it's some pretty compelling info that will give you insight into, and confidence in, Microsoft's commitment to security. That's the most important thing I can do for you as a partner. <soapbox on> Then, if you read it and afterwards the article I referenced above, I'm hoping you will get a feeling for some of what I see as a negative bias around Vista in the press AND you will be more aware of the risks of giving more credibility to the anecdotal quotes that you so often see in these articles than what is deserved. <soapbox off>

Vista Deployment tools redux

Well, it's been almost a year since the Vista-Office-Exchange launch.  Altho Vista has been popular (trade rag negativism notwithstanding - see my next post), there are many partners who are just now really getting into larger Vista deployments. Infact, one of them sent me a request the other day for info on "the difference between how Vista does an upgrade versus how previous Windows OS did them...". He also requested that I "please create a short blog post on this or provide a link [to] this information?". Well, since I'm pretty sure he's not the only one who can't remember all the launch content a year later, here's some info and links that will hopefully be helpful if you are asking the same question.

Remember, that for Vista, MS has implemented a new, significantly improved, imaging format (WIM) that's the key to the easier upgrade and deployment scenarios.  Essentially, ALL the bits for all the “editions” are there so you only ever need the one DVD, you then only need to buy the license for the upgraded OS to “unlock” it from the existing media.  Since he wanted me to keep this short, I'll encourage all of you to search TechNet for, and do your own additional research on, the new WIM imaging format and the ImageX tool.  Also, you'll want to check out the BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) tool (this is what we demo'd to you at the launch events).  Here’s the main TechNet link to Deployment TechCenter (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/desktopdeployment); from there you should see links to more detailed info, esp the top 2 links) to get you jump started.  You can also find more info around Vista deployment at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905068.aspx (in fact you can drill down there on the deployment tools link to find more info on ImageX and Windows System Image Manager, which includes some info on WIM as well.)

Hopefully that was short enough, but enough to refresh you on the significant enhancements in Vista to aid in your deployments and upgrades.

Windows Server 2008, R U ready?

The Launch is coming, the launch is coming....here are some links I hope will helpful in getting you ramped up on this important new operating system.

Register for the Launch Webcast Series:  This is a partner webcast series, the first installment was done on Jan 15th and is already available for on-demand viewing; the second installment (which will build on the first) is scheduled for Feb 12th - you can register for either or both at this link. The webcasts are intended to enable partners to better understand the launch opportunity as well as how to talk to your customers about the launch. 

In addition to this Launch-focused series, TS2 has done a more technical series on WS2008, you can find it at: http://www.msreadiness.com/custompage.aspx?pageid=1557

There is also a hands-on, live, instructor-led 3-day course (Windows Server 2008 Partner Preparation) being offered in select cities across the US between now and end of March.  Here's the link: http://www.msreadiness.com/CourseDetail.aspx?id=6686

Here are some links to general information around Windows Server 2008: 
This one is Microsoft Events & Webcasts, this is an outstanding resource (btw, it includes virtual labs)
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/windowsserver2008.aspx

These are to the Windows Server Home page on Microsoft.com and the TechCenter Home (TechNet)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/default.mspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/2008/default.aspx

I hope these links will facilitate your ramp up on Windows Server 2008.

New MS Press book on Networking and NAP in Windows Server 2008

Network Access Protection (NAP) is arguably one of the more compelling new technologies in Windows Server 2008.  NAP will protect your network from harm by any client getting on without meeting your security requirements (i.e. updates, signatures, firewall status, etc.).   There is a new book from MS Press that goes into serious technical detail about NAP as well as other networking and network security services such as authentication infrastructure, IPv4 and IPv6, remote access, VPNs, IPSec, QoS, scalable networking, wireless infrastructure and security, DNS, DHCP, Windows Firewall, and more.  Below are some details on the book and how to get it.

Windows Server® 2008 Networking and Network Access Protection (NAP)

Authors: Joseph Davies and Tony Northrup with the Microsoft Networking Team
Pages: 848
1 Companion CD included that also has the fully searchable eBook version
Published: Jan 2008
ISBN: 9780735624221 or ISBN-10: 0-7356-2422-4
ERP: $59.99, but here's some links to discounted prices on several major resellers.

Barnes&Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=9780735624221
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735624224/sr=1-1/qid=1156801743/ref=sr_1_1/104-6313703-3867159?ie=UTF8&s=books
Quantumbooks: http://www.quantumbooks.com/mspress.mvc?id=9780735624221

Here's a great deal if you can host a customer event around our upcoming launch

As you should know, we are launching Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 around the end of February.

Here's the link to the page the partner-focused launch site (Launch Central): https://partner.microsoft.com/US/salesmarketingsection/smcampaigns/40016191
from there, click on the Sales and Marketing tab, then click on "Execute a Sneak Peek event"

and here's the customer-focused launch site:
http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/default.mspx

The gist of the offer is as a Microsoft® partner (in the US), you have the opportunity to provide Microsoft Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 & Visual Studio 2008 evaluation software to your customers at no cost.* Microsoft is offering this giveaway program as an incentive for partners who hold events for their customers and prospects around the "Sneak Peek: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008" Microsoft Partner Events (MPE) campaign

The eligibility reqs, offer details, and other resources including Campaign Content and Resources are outlined on the following page https://www.microsoftpartnerevents.com/partners/campaign_details.aspx?id=2537 (which is also where you are re-directed from the "Execute a Sneak Peek event" link above)

There are some limitations, including User Groups are not eligible and that the offer expires when the supply of eval software runs out, and others, so check it out today...