ronaldg's ramblings

and having mentioned SMB Summit, here's some info on the upcoming SMB Nation East conference (Mar 29-30th in the NYC area)

Many of you are already familiar with Harry Brelsford's SMB Nation events.  These are now held several times a year, typically the West (main one) is held in Redmond in the Sep-Oct time frame, but as you figured out by now, he's added an East Coast version of the conference.

SMB Nation East Information(Click this link to register) is a two-day conference dedicated to topics of interest to SMB channel partners, Small Business Specialists, VARs\VAPs, resellers and consultants.  The multi-disciplinary content is designed to insure a well-rounded weekend of learning for SMB partners.  In the NY conference, learning areas include Microsoft Response Point, Business, Technical and Small Business Specialist Community. Over the 2 days there will be 12+ lecture opportunities.

Here's some session highlights:

How to SELL managed services! led by MATT MAKOWICZ (partner and author)

Success Secrets

Web 2.0 for SMBs

Microsoft Response Point Readiness

Telephony and Microsoft Response Point Deep Dive

Microsoft Response Point Hands-On Lab(s)

Virtualization solutions and business opportunities

Cougar, Home Server and Windows Essentials Business Server FIRST LOOK! led by a Microsoft Windows Server development team product manager.

Unified Communication Server led by STEPHEN DEMING (Microsoft TS2 team!)  

Click the link above to go direct to registration, or click the link below to go to the conference home page to find out more (including complete descriptions of all the sessions):

http://www.smbnation.com/products_listpage.asp?Category=Events&Category2=SMB~Nation~East~(NYC~area)

Speaking of SBS 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (and SMB Summit!)...

Since the first of the year, we have been talking about these coming products in our TS2 events.  Microsoft has now put both of these products under the "Windows Essential Server Solutions" brand.  Each will have a Standard and Premium version, but I won't go into detail on that here.  With these 2 product lines, Microsoft will now cover businesses from <5 client PCs all the way up to 300 PCs with a server-based infrastructure that will continue, and even expand upon, the great integration, simplification, and automation story that we saw in previous versions of SBS.  I am already excited about these new solutions.

For those of you who want to "get a leg up" on these great new technologies, I want to encourage you to do 3 things:

1) check out the Windows Essential Server Solutions home page.  From here you'll get links to both SBS 2008 and WEBS 2008 pages as well as links to other relevant info: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/default.mspx

2) keep checking MSReadiness for past and upcoming webcasts around these products (you might also search on their codenames: Cougar and Centro), and

3) check out this webcast coming up March 4, 2008
https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?publisher=12&delivery=243596

this webcast will give you some more details on the SMB Summit event coming up in the Dallas area in mid-April.  SMB Summit is a 4-day event, that features hands-on technical training for SBS 2008 and WEBS 2008, as well as some serious business-oriented content, both of which are sure to help you be more successful.  Of course, there's a fee associated with this level of event, but I can tell you from the testimonials of partners I've talked to who have been to this event before, that the value proposition is worth it.  IF you're already convinced, you can go direct to: http://www.smbsummit.com to sign up now.  Hopefully, I'll see you there.

Here's a brief rundown on some of the highlight sessions:

· Mergers and Acquisitions - Learn From Partners Who Have Done it Successfully

· How to Position and Build a Business on Managed Services

· Key Business Productivity Indicators that Your Business Needs and How to Implement them

· Growing Your SMB Business - A Panel of Partners Who are at the Top of Their Game

· Is your Business Creating a Life or a Living! Or Creating a Life, not a Living!

· VoIP for Small Businesses - Technology, Products, and Solutions

· Virtualization – What Windows Server 2008, System Center 2007, and Hyper-v mean to you, and how to Develop your Service Offerings!

Windows Small Business Server 2008 UI sneak peek

Hey all, in case you haven't seen it, here's a look at the new UI in SBS 2008.  So far it's getting rave reviews from the beta users.  For those of you who have seen Home Server, the similarities are no coincidence.  And, for those of you who will be coming to the Launch 2008 and TS2 events in the next few months, you will notice that this type of UI (tabs vs the familiar Outlook theme) will also be adopted for the Windows Essential Business Server product.  Hopefully, we'll be getting to the point where many of you will able to start testing SBS 2008 in the near future.  

SharePoint leading the way to "Enterprise Web 2.0" says Forrester research

Wikis, blogs, and social networks are gaining traction within enterprises, and Microsoft's SharePoint Server will continue to be the dominant tool in that space says Forrester.  In a report released in late Jan08, Forrester Research indicates that businesses will leverage RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, mashups and social networking tools to help make their employees' collaboration efforts more efficient and productive.  Technologies and tools such as these are part of what is increasingly being referred to as "Web 2.0".  Up to now many IT departments have resisted Web 2.0 technologies because they believed them to be consumer tools, however, Forrester analysts expect a sizeable portion of those companies will put these on their priority list to add it by year's end, and this will be part of the evolution from the consumer-oriented Web 2.0 to the Enterprise Web 2.0.

There are several reasons for this, including things like many knowledge workers posting their own blogs or using social networks such as Facebook to connect with people in the workplace.  So moving forward, IT managers will deploy enterprise-ready tools to give their employees a more secure outlet for such collaboration.  Of course, SharePoint Services (WSS) has functionalities such as RSS feeds, wikis, and blogs built in and accessible to the workers, but at the same time providing a secure platform.   One Forrester researcher points out that even though challengers will attempt to "downplay the quality of SharePoint's wiki, blog and social networking functionality, Microsoft will still get a lot of traction with its collaboration suite in 2008".   Of course, it doesn't hurt that these features are built into Sharepoint Services v 3.0 (which is a free add-on to the Server 2003 platform and built into Server 2008), and that WSS is highly integrated with the Office platform, and last, but not least, that it has already captured a significant share of the knowledge worker customer space.

I thought this would be an interesting post.  I'm hoping it will do a couple of things: 1) remind my partner audience of the capabilities and functionality in WSS v3.0 that can be used to help their customers collaborate more efficiently and productively, 2) show that industry analysts are recognizing that there is significant potential in using these features for business collaboration purposes, and 3) point out, or reinforce, why they (partners) should be considering how they can leverage WSS as a value-add solution for every infrastructure proposal they do.  In fact, there are many partners out there who already consider a WSS implementation as a standard part of every deal they do.  

Got WSS?

Article on the Secure Windows Initiative (SWI)

You know by now that Windows security is passion of mine, and I really want all our partners to understand the impact that the SWI has had over the last 8+ years.  I've pointed this out in several previous posts.  I just found what I think is a great article around our security process based on an interview with one of our lead SWI engineers.  I hope you'll find this interesting and also learn a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes to help you understand why I believe we have a great security story now, and an even better one going forward.  And with this infrastructure in place, I'm confident that we'll continue to improve.  I could go on at length about this, but I think I'll stop and let "you make the call"...

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Behind-the-Scenes-at-Microsofts-Secure-Windows-Initiative/

Refresh your Action Pack knowledge

Actually one of my main charters for this blog is around providing information that is pertinent to Microsoft Registered Member Partners, and especially around Action Pack.  I just did a post about the special mid-March update and it occurred to me that this would be a good time to do one of my "redux" on Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS).

There are some changes that you need to be aware of, so this would be a good time for you to do a "refresh" on your MAPS knowledge.  You can start with the Action Pack home page (https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/managemembership/actionpack).

One important thing to note here is that the renewal assessments will kick in for everyone on Mar 1.   Please review the information in this link: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/managemembership/40044196.  One of the things that may not be intuitively obvious is that start this process by taking one of the courses in the Partner Learning Center.  You can follow the links in that section for more info.  Currently, however, you should note that the default course search is for worldwide courses (all languages), you can save your own search for US (English) only or you can use this URL (that I've conveniently provided <grin> https://partner.microsoft.com/us/program/managemembership/40053261)

The home page also has your link to the managed newsgroup, as well as the contact info for the Regional Service Centers, which should be your primary resource for any issues with MAPS or other Partner Program issues.  The link for the Technical Demonstration Toolkit is also at the bottom of the page.

The Standard Contents section is where you can find info on what's in the welcome kit and updates as well as the SBSC and Web Solutions Toolkits.  This is also where you can get the ship dates for the updates.

As you will note there are also sections on Licensing and Eligibility as well as FAQs if you should need that information.

Special Action Pack update to include Vista SP1

Check out this special Action Pack shipment to partners in mid-March 2008 that will include Microsoft Windows Vista Business with SP1 - full code no less, not just the upgrade!

And, in response to your feedback, the April 2008 Action Pack shipment will include a license for Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1.

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40052827

Also, check out this link for additional resources on Windows Vista SP1 including whitepapers, training, deployment aids, and even customer brochures.

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40052721

New Solution Accelerator migration tool launching soon

If you are planning, or even thinking about, a migration to Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Office 2007 and/or the Microsoft Virtualization technologies (which we've been talking about in the current TS2 seminars)., then this is something you should definitely check out. 

Also, along with the MAP Solution Accelerator, Microsoft is also updating other Vista migration tools, including the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT ) 5.0, and Microsoft User State Migration Tools (USMT) 3.0.

Over the past two years, Microsoft has launched several versions of its migration assessment platform starting with the Assessment and Planning Solution and most recently the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool (WVHA).  Along the way, each tool or solution has typically built on or added functionality to the previous one.  WVHA will be folded into the MAP tool this time around. 

Among other things, MAP will allow IT staff to discover how many servers and desktops they have, which servers are ready to migrate to Windows Server 2008 or which desktops can be brought up to Vista SP1 with little modification or minimal investment.  It will also show which servers are candidates for consolidation via virtualization.  And, best of all, it doesn't require any agents to be installed.  Also, if you care, it can inventory up to 100,000 computers. 

Along with the above capabilities, the MAP tool can discover and collect data from computers and devices on networks that support Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).  I might point out that the hardware assessment tool does its analysis of specific hardware and device compatibility based on the requirements published by Microsoft, which is to be expected, but I thought I'd remind you anyway.

Lastly, the new MAP UI offers a "resource center" where users can download other relevant tools and useful resources such as white papers and technical guidance from Microsoft and other sources from the IT community.

So, if you or your customers are even considering moving to some of our newer technologies listed in my second paragraph above (and we hope you are), then you might find this new tool handy.  I don't have the exact launch date for it, but it is generally expected to be available in the Server launch time frame around the end of Feb.

BTW, here's the link to the tool (on Microsoft Connect), so you can get more info or download it and try it out: http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=297

DEP Primer

I mentioned in my earlier post around Hyper-V that hardware enabled Data Exection Prevention (DEP) was a requirement.  DEP is not new, been around since XP SP2, but has not gotten a lot of "airtime", so here's a primer on this technology to help you out.

DEP is a set of both hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system (e.g. preventing executable code from running in memory that's supposed to be reserved for data). This scenario would be considered  an "exploit" -- specifically, DEP is designed to stop the kind of exploits  known as "buffer overflow" attacks, like the code running in the data area of RAM mentioned above.  DEP, which also goes by NX (for No eXecute) on AMD chips and by XD (for eXecute Disable) on Intel chips, was introduced by Microsoft in Windows XP SP2 but it's API's have been expanded for Windows Vista and Server 2008 (and these updated APIs will also be included in XP SP3).  As noted above, It has both hardware and software components (e.g. it can be hardware-enforced or software-enforced - see article linked below for more details).  A benefit of the updated APIs is that they can be used by developers working with older programming constructs known as ATL's (Active Template Libraries) to enable DEP at runtime, or when the application actually launches. Previously, those programmers were forced to decide ahead of time whether their software would try to protect itself using DEP. As a  result, DEP has only been turned on (by default) for essential Windows operating system programs and services in it's initial implementation in XP and Server 2003.  The updated API's will make it easier for the developers to insure compatibility and still leverage this protection as they can essentially allow the app user to turn DEP on/off as a configuration option (turning off if the users' hardware was not DEP compatible would presumably be the main use here).  

Microsoft has been much more aggressive in using DEP to protect components in Vista as compared to XP.  You might remember the post I did a little while back about the "Vista security 1-year update" and hopefully you can recognize how embedded technologies such as DEP are a factor in helping Vista have the lowest number of exploits (CVEs), in its first year, of any modern OS (incl the supposed bullet-proof ones used by fruit-named companies).

Here's link to a support article with more information on buffer overflow exploits:  Protecting against buffer overflows

And here's a link to a support article on DEP if you want even more in-depth info and details: DEP Technical Drilldown

Virtualization whitepapers

And since I seem to be on the subject of Virtualization a lot recently, here's links to some whitepapers around virtualization in general (mostly around Virtual Server) that might be of interest (just click the link and you should be prompted for the download):

 Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
The goal of this cookbook is to provide the steps and guidance necessary for you to successfully install and configure Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You may then create and manage virtual machines, and perform P2V migration. 

 Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
The scenario presented in this cookbook will take you through the steps necessary to install Virtual Server and SCVMM, and then convert a workload to a virtual machine. This cookbook also includes the steps necessary to install DPM and to back up a running virtual machine, as well as information about monitoring and reporting using DPM.

 Mobile User Access of Applications. Terminal Server running on virtual machines using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1
In this cookbook we will install Terminal Server on a virtual machine and access the terminal server remotely. We will also show how to install Remote Desktop Web Connection and how to configure Windows® Firewall to allow remote clients to access the terminal server.

 Hosted Backup and Recovery Solutions for Service Providers using Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Virtual Server (VS)
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience providing data backup and recovery to customers as a hosted solution using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

 Simple Offsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring virtual machines running in an offsite location using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

 Simple Onsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring running virtual machines using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

 Application Isolation and Operation in Branch Offices Using VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for isolating and operating applications on separate virtual machines in branch offices using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, in an Intel-based hardware environment for regulatory compliance and improved legacy workload performance.

Hyper-V redux - some more facts about HV

Since I've gotten "into" the virtualization technology more as a result of TS2's current content, I'm passing some more info around Hyper-V on to you.   Most of this is just a bit more tech info fleshing in some of the things discussed in the previous post as well as adding some new facts that I think will be of interest.  And I'm including some links to more tech info on HV at the end.  read on...

2. Hyper-V is a role of Windows Server 2008 and requires Windows Server 2008 x64 Editions (either Full installation or Server Core on Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter x64 editions) for the parent partition. Specifically, Windows virtualization will not run on Windows Server 2008 32-bit Editions, nor will it run on Vista.
3. Hyper-V requires hardware assisted virtualization support in the form of Intel VT or AMD AMD-V technology. Windows virtualization will not run on hardware without VT or AMD AMD-V which includes any x86 or Itanium-based platform. Note: In the case of AMD, you either need a rev. F3 processor (latest Opterons and all new quad-core Barcelonas should work) or a rev. F2 processor with a “half and half” BIOS implementation.
4. Hyper-V requires that hardware data protection (DEP) be enabled. Hardware DEP is a feature of x64 processors and is typically enabled in the BIOS. The primary benefit of DEP is to prevent code execution from data pages, a frequent exploit in times past (see my DEP primer in another post if you want a little more tech detail).
5. Since my readership is likely not Enterprise-focused, I'll not go into quick migration info here, but you can easily find info about that in the docs and resources available in TechNet if you need it.
6. All Hyper-V implementations have a parent partition. This partition manages the Hyper-V installation and the Virtualization console runs from the parent partition. In addition, the parent partition can be used to run legacy VMs that run under a hosted virtualization product such as Virtual Server.
7. The Guest VMs run on Hyper-V child partitions. Hyper-V’s child partitions support two types of VMs: high performance VMBus-based VMs or hosted emulation-based VMs (mentioned above). VMBus is a totally new VM architecture and is essentially a high performance in-memory pipeline that connects Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs) in the guests with the host’s Virtual Service Provider (VSP) which I also alluded to in the earlier post.  Hosted emulation-based VMs, obviously, support guest OSs that don’t support the new VMBus architecture.
8. Hyper-V supports host systems with up to 1TB of RAM, and Hyper-V doesn’t limit the number of active VMs; the only limitation comes from the capabilities of the host server hardware. In addition, the Hyper-V VMs are more scalable supporting up to 4 virtual processors per VM and up to 32GB of RAM per VM (note: to take full advantage of this support, the host system must have at least 4 cores and more than 32GB of physical RAM).
9. Hyper-V provides new storage features including booting VMs from SAN.  And it provides for guest-to-guest failover clustering, as well as virtual server host failover clustering.  Hyper-V also introduces the pass-through VM access storage feature which lets you access virtual hard disk (VHD) images without mounting the VHD image in a VM. Hyper-V can also take advantage of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for live VM backup and  allows multiple snapshots of running VMs with the ability to revert back to any of the saved snapshots.
10. On the networking side, Hyper-V includes a new virtual switch with support for Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) across VMs on separate servers.
11. Hyper-V beta now supports remote management and also provides a Hyper-V MMC only installation option for a separate management node.

So what do you think, is this some cool stuff or what.  Before I close this thread I'd like to share some additional observations around why there won't be a 32-bit Hyper-V:

Perhaps you're wondering why we didn't develop Windows Virtualization (incl HV) for 32-bit, since we know that many of you have significant investments in that hardware genre.  Basically there's just too many limitations in scalability and performance on the 32-bit platform to make it a worthwhile product development investment going forward.  For example, when running Virtual Server R2 (32-bit) on Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) on a large server we’ve found that the limit is approximately 30 virtual machines. However, when running Virtual Server R2 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition on a large server, we’re been able to successfully run over two hundred of virtual machines concurrently.  How many of you just said, "but I don't need it do >30 servers on a box"?  Well, if Microsoft's platform development strategy was entirely focused on you, that would be a great comeback.  BUT, we have a whole world of customers to support out there, many of whom are very large.  One of virtualization's main pillars is (and has been) server consolidation.  And besides, I doubt that many of you would argue, at this point, that the main hardware platform going forward is the 64-bit architecture.

Here's the Hyper-V home page on Microsoft (again): Hyper-V: A Key Feature of Windows Server 2008

Here's one to a good, recent article in IT Pro Magazine: Windows IT Pro took a first look at Hyper-V

Here's another one to a TechNet article on how to get up and running with Hyper-V: Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Hyper-V

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