Category Archives: What is?
Quick product or technology summary.
Infrastructure Planning and Design guide for Exchange Server 2010 now available!
I cannot speak highly enough about the content being published by Infrastructure Planning and Design staff at Microsoft. They provide concise, informative design and planning guides for the Microsoft product line. Via Microsoft Connect you can provide the team value feedback regarding the latest offering.
Download the Beta Now!
This particular IPD guide takes the IT architect through a step-by-step process for successfully designing an Exchange Server 2010 infrastructure. Exchange Server 2010 supports a variety of infrastructure topologies that enable IT departments to deploy the messaging architecture that best suits their business needs. This guide will help organisations make informed decisions about the design of fault tolerance and scalability so that their overall requirements are met.
The guide covers these key steps in the Exchange Server 2010 infrastructure design process:
· Defining the project scope by identifying your individual business and IT requirements for a messaging infrastructure.
· Mapping features and functionality based on the defined scope to develop the appropriate Exchange Server 2010 design.
· Designing the infrastructure and role requirements for the proposed Exchange Server 2010 architecture.
· Determining the sizing, fault tolerance, and physical placement of Exchange Server 2010 roles.
The IPD Guide for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 with Service Pack 1 can help you reduce planning time and costs, and ensure a successful rollout of Exchange Server 2010-helping your organisation to more quickly benefit from this flexible and reliable platform.
Download the beta guide and tell Microsoft what you think!!! The Microsoft IPD team provide a comprehensive value add service for all IT industy professionals, keep up the good work!!!
If you have never heard of IPD guides before please review the complete Infrastructure Planning and Design guide series here . The team has provided a comprehensive listing for other Microsoft infrastructure products.
Microsoft Career Factor – Casting Still Open
If you haven’t already heard about this exciting new show there is still time available for Microsoft Career Factor casting. The story arc of “IT Manager” certainly sounds very interesting and I encourage applying if you satisfy the requirements. Details of the show can be found here but please find a little introduction from the site provided below.
Microsoft is introducing a new reality show called “Career Factor” that needs a few outgoing, social media-savvy individuals who need help with their technology careers. Career Factor is a reality show, told online via social media and web videos, where each participant will receive guidance, training, and resources from Microsoft and its partners as they work towards their goals. Starting in January 2011, individuals will have an opportunity to change their lives and advance their career with the help of Microsoft.
Being social media-savvy myself and with a track record in Microsoft technologies over the last fifteen years it will come as no surprise the show presents an exciting opportunity and new career challenge just when I need it. I had a look if there was suitable story arcs which I could apply for. Indeed “The Aspiring Microsoft Certified Master” in Lync Server 2010 is exactly what I should be considering as my next venture.
Frankly without financial support from the Microsoft show this opportunity would simply be out with my reach (young family, daughter wants a pony, son wants…. you get the picture). It also presents a very interesting venue for spreading the word about Microsoft unified communications in the wider industry. Indeed being from the country which invented the telephone I’m hoping I can continue a proud tradition in communications!!!
Last week I carefully reviewed the requirements and put in place a plan for completing my application. As you can imagine the barrier understandably is set high for entry, indeed for the Microsoft Master Program it will be reviewed in the normal manner as well as casting for the show. Having the support from friends, family, colleagues, employer and Microsoft peers was very reassuring as I progressed my application.
As if the week wasn’t busy enough I received a welcome call from Claire Smyth, CSS Community Program Manager at 
Microsoft. Claire advised I’m a nominee for the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award this year in my area of specialisation. Being nominated is fantastic recognition for my efforts in the wider unified communications community and I’m obviously very proud regardless of the result later this year.
So now I sit writing this blog posting from the comfort of my home hoping I receive positive news. Like every other candidate I can only hope for good news and the experience of applying has certainly been interesting, wishing you all the best if you also applied!!!
Do you believe in things coming in threes? If the Microsoft Career Factor and Microsoft Most Valued Professional have put a big smile on my face what is just round the corner? Certainly my “Casting Video Premiere” in the office put a smile on the face of my colleagues yesterday, perhaps not in the manner intended. I don’t recall receiving so many insults about my looks, age, clothing, lighting, video effects and even my career but the laughter and comments was all taken in jest. You can view the casting video below as long as you don’t replying saying I have the perfect face for radio…
Why the Lego man in the background you ask? Well it was my son watching me present at an event which is the inspiration for the blog name. He stated I was his favourite TechTrooper and I’ve cherished the lego man he presented as a gift for my efforts ever since!!!
System Center Configuration Manager R3 Released
I love all System Center products so it is great hearing news today from the System Center team – Configuration Manager R3 has been released.
System Center Configuration Manager R3’s (SCCM R3) release is notable as is it provides centralised, policy-based Power Management for Windows PCs. This capability will reduce energy use of these PCs in a centralised manner and will help IT departments reduce costs significantly. Organisations can plan and apply a power management policy for high and low PC usage periods, monitor user activity to avoid any productivity interruptions and correct non-compliance. Detailed reports of trends and settings help you make smart power management choices, and also validate Green IT projects with summaries of power, money and CO2 savings.
The System Center team blog highlights one 20,000 seat organisation that recently reported through early conservative power management policies, they will save approx. $500,000 per year. That’s big time savings in energy too.
To learn more about Configuration Manager, go here. To download the evaluation software, go here.
Windows Intune – Under the hood
The range of Microsoft System Center products provide a very feature rich and comprehensive toolset for IT professionals. However it doesn’t meet the needs of all SMB organisations perhaps only requiring PC management, Malware protection, Windows upgrades, and more at a very cost effective price. Well if you haven’t already heard about it Microsoft Intune fits the bill and is presently available as a beta service.
Intune is a cloud based Microsoft management solution purchased on a subscription basis. During the period of subscription a Windows 7 upgrade license is also made available so your clients can operate at peak performance, from virtually anywhere. This service will deliver the following,
- Manage updates
- Protect PCs from malware
- Proactively monitor PCs
- Provide remote assistance
- Track hardware & software inventory
- Set security policies
Of course you can just purchase the Windows 7 license but as you can see above Microsoft believe the proposed service offers much more at a predictable cost. Microsoft partners can also wrap around professional services and other value adds making this a very compelling solution for the SMB market. Find out more from the below videos interviewing group program manager of Windows Intune, Joseph Dadzie.
and
Also find out more about the service here.
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 Beta 2
The latest release of the toolset is now available. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 is an agentless tool designed to simplify and streamline the IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments. This Solution Accelerator performs an inventory of heterogeneous server environments and provides you with usage information for servers in the Core CAL Suite and SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 discovery and assessment for consolidation, Windows 2000 Server migration recommendations, and a readiness assessment for the most widely used Microsoft technologies—now including Office 2010.
What’s new with MAP Toolkit 5.0 Beta 2?
Software usage tracking for Exchange Server and SQL Server
SQL Server discovery and assessment for consolidation
Migration recommendations for Windows 2000 Server
MAP Toolkit 5.0 Beta 2
The MAP Toolkit 5.0 Beta 2 includes the following features:
Heterogeneous Server Environment Inventory: Know what’s in your IT environment. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit performs a network inventory of IT assets remotely without the use of agents, identifying heterogeneous server environments consisting of Windows Server and Linux operating systems, including those running in a virtual environment. MAP 5.0 also automates the discovery of Linux-powered LAMP stacks.
Software Usage Tracker: Right-size your IT environment with MAP Toolkit 5.0 and simplify software license management and compliance processes. MAP 5.0’s new usage tracking feature provides consistent software usage reports for key Microsoft server products: Windows Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Configuration Manager, Exchange Server, and SQL Server. Run updated reports whenever you need to accurately assess current software usage and client access history in your environment. This reduces time and administrative costs for managing your server and client access licenses (CALs) and helps you to streamline the management of your software assets.
Microsoft Office 2010 Readiness Assessment: Streamline your migration to Office 2010 with MAP 5.0’s hardware compatibility proposal document. The MAP Toolkit provides readiness details and specifics of your IT infrastructure inventory, including hardware and OS requirements and upgrade recommendations for planning a seamless Office 2010 deployment. The actionable recommendations and assessments presented shorten the time it takes to plan your Office 2010 migration and prepares your IT environment for Office 2010 deployment and migration scenarios.
Database Discovery for SQL Server Consolidation: MAP 5.0’s new database discovery feature gives you the information you need to optimise your database resources and investments. MAP helps you simplify database administration and provides wide-ranging details of databases and server instances—information you can leverage for consolidation. Use the MAP Toolkit’s proposals to better utilize hardware and database resources, reduce administrative costs, and streamline your software licensing needs— all essentials for cost effective IT planning and operations.
Migration Recommendations for Windows 2000 Server: As support for Windows 2000 Server ends soon, MAP 5.0’s Migration Assessment feature helps you prepare for migration to Windows Server 2008 R2 by assessing the Windows 2000 Server environment and legacy workloads in the form of proposals and reports. The MAP Toolkit’s actionable recommendations help you to understand the potential business impact of maintaining legacy workloads and the benefits of migrating to the robust Windows Server 2008 R2 environment. With migration to Windows Server 2008 R2, you’ll be able to utilise the increased IT flexibility and efficiency from such technologies as Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services, as well as tap into power-savings features to decrease TCO.
This beta review program is now open. Beta 2 will run through mid-June, 2010. Download the beta materials today from CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MAP 5.0 BETA 2
Exchange 2010 service pack 1 overview
Being launched later this year with a beta in June I have found the following service pack inclusions the most interesting. This is by no means the complete list but will be enough to have you excited!!!!
Archiving and Discovery Enhancements
With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, Microsoft introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, they have now enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you’ve given Microsoft since product launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user’s Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organisation can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. Microsoft didn’t just stop there! They have also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user’s Personal Archive.
To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organisations retention management strategy.
Lastly, Microsoft have made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.
For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, Microsoft will include an update which will enable you to support access to a user’s Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.
Outlook Web App – Better Than Ever
Microsoft didn’t stop working with archiving and discovery, OWA gets a significant facelift with SP1 as well. With new work to pre-fetch message content, the OWA reading experience becomes faster. With delete, mark as read, and categorise operations running asynchronously, these actions feel instantaneous to the user. Microsoft have also made sure that certain long running operations, such as attaching a very large file, will not block the rest of the OWA experience, protecting the user from irritating web UI hang-ups. You’ll see a number of other UI improvements as well to de-clutter a bit; helping make it easier to find common tasks with updated action icons and menus. The simpler UI will make OWA much friendlier to the smaller screens of ever popular Netbooks. Users will also be able to share their calendars to anonymous viewers via the web, assuming you enable this functionality as the admin.
For a more detailed description of what is coming check out the Microsoft Exchange team blog at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/04/07/454533.aspx
Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Architecture Explained
Very informative and clearly explained architecture overview of Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Architecture was recently published by Yung Chou from the Microsoft virtualisation team. In Windows Server 2008 R2 (WS2008R2), Terminal Services (TS) has been expanded and renamed to Remote Desktop Services (RDS). The new and enhanced architecture takes advantage of virtualisation and makes remote access a much flexible solution with new deployment scenarios. To realize the capabilities of RDS, it is essential to understand the functions of key architectural components and how they complement one another to process a RDS request. There are many new terms and acronyms to get familiar with in the context of RDS. For the remainder of this post, notice RDS implies the server platform of WS2008R2, while TS implies WS2008.
There are five main architectural components in RDS, as shown, and all require a RDS licensing server. Each component includes a set of features designed to achieve a particular function. Together, the five form a framework for accessing Terminal Services applications, remote desktops, and virtual desktops all with WS2008R2 capabilities. Hence, WS2008R2 offers a set of building blocks with essential functions for constructing an enterprise remote access architecture.
To start, a user will access a RDS webpage by specifying an URL where RDS resources are published to. This interface, provided by Remote Desktop Web Access (RDWA) and configured with a local IIS with SSL, is the web access point to RemoteApp in RDS. The URL is consistent regardless how resources are organized, composed, and published behind the scene. By default, RDS publishes resources at https://the-FQDN-of-a-RDWA-server/rdweb and this URL is the only information a system administrator needs to provide to a user for whom to access authorized resources via RDS. A user will need to be authenticated with one’s credentials when accessing the URL and the RemoteApp programs presented by this URL is trimmed with access control list. Namely, an authenticated user will see and be able to access only authorized RemoteApp programs.
Remote Desktop Gateway (RDG) is optional and functions very much the same with that in TS. A RDG is to be placed at the edge of a corporate network to filter out incoming RDS requests from Internet by referencing criteria defined in a designated Network Policy Server (NPS). With a server certificate, RDG offers secure remote access to RDS infrastructure. As far as a system administrator is concerned, RDG is the boundary of a RDS network. There are two policies in NPS relevant to an associated RDG:
- One is Connection Authorisation Policy or CAP. I call it a user authorization list, showing who can access an associated RDG
- The other is Resource Authorization Policy or RAP. In essence, this is a resource list specifying which devices a CAP user can connect to via an associated RDG.
In RDS, applications are installed and published in a Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) similar to a TS Session Host, or simply a Terminal Server in a TS solution. A RDSH loads applications, crunches numbers, and produces results. It is our trusted and beloved working horse in a RDS solution. Digital signing can be easily enabled in a RDSH with a certificate. Multiple RDSHs can be deployed along with a load balancing technology. Which requires every RDSH in a load-balancing group to be identically configured with the same applications.
A noticeable enhancement in RDSH (as compared with TS Session Host) is the ability to trim the presence of a published application based on the access control list (ACL) of the application. An authorized user will see, hence have an access to, only published applications of which the user is included in the ACL. By default, the Everyone group is included in a published application’s ACL, and all connected user will have access to a published application.
Remote Desktop Virtualisation Host (RDVH) is a new feature which serves requests for virtual desktops running in virtual machines, or VMs. A RDVH server is a Hyper-V based host, for instance a Windows Server with Hyper-V server role enabled. When serving a VM-based request, an associated RDVH will automatically start an intended VM, if the VM is not already running. And a user will always be prompted for credentials when accessing a virtual desktop. However, a RDVH does not directly accepting connection requests and it uses a designated RDSH as a “redirector” for serving VM-based requests. The pairing of a RDVH and its redirector is defined in Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RDCB) when adding a RDVH as a resource.
Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RDCB), an expansion of the Terminal Services Session Broker in TS, provides a unified experience for setting up user access to traditional TS applications and VM-based virtual desktops. Here, a virtual desktop can be running in either a designated virtual machine, or a virtual machine dynamically picked based on load balancing from a defined virtual machine pool. A system administrator will use the RDCB console, called Remote Desktop Connection Manager, to include RDSHs, TS Servers, and RDVHs such that those applications published by the RDSHs and TS Servers, and those VMs running in RDVHs can be later composed and presented to users with a consistent URL by RDWA. And with this URL, authenticated users can access authorized RemoteApp programs and virtual desktops.
A Remote Desktop (RD) Client gets connection information from the RDWA server in a RDS solution. If a RD client is outside of a corporate network, the client connects through a RDG. If a RD client is internal, the client can then directly connect to an intended RDSH or RDVH once RDCB provides the connection information. In both cases, RDCB plays a central role to make sure a client gets connected to a correct resource. With certificates, a system administrator can configure digital signing and single sign-on to provide a great user experience with high security.
Conceptually, RDCB is the chief intelligence and operation officer of a RDS solution and knows which is where, whom to talk to, and what to do with it. Before a logical connection can be established between a client and a target RDSH or RDVH, RDCB acts as a go-between passing and forwarding pertinent information to and from associated parties when serving a RDS request. From a 50,000-foot view, a remote client uses RDWA/RDG to obtain access to a target RDSH or RDVH, while RDCB connects the client to a session on the target RDSH, or an intended virtual machine running in RDVH.
What’s New in Project Server 2010?
End-to-end project and portfolio management
A single server which combines the best of Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 with deep capabilities of Project Server 2010
Built on SharePoint Server 2010
Bring together powerful business collaboration, business intelligence, and structured execution capacities.
Microsoft Project Server 2010, built on SharePoint Server 2010, delivers flexible work management solutions. The innovative new capabilities in Project Server 2010 lead to improved productivity and better business performance.
Unified project and portfolio management
Familiar SharePoint UI and a common data store make Project Server 2010 easy to use. A comprehensive API enables you to customize and extend both project and portfolio capabilities.
Effective use of resources
Select the right project portfolios and maximize resource utilization—effectively prioritizing projects from multiple dimensions.
Flexible Web-based Project editing
Easily build schedules online and conveniently make project edits from anywhere.
Demand management simplified
Capture all work from simple tasks to complex projects in a centralized repository. Develop and deploy effective governance workflows to drive accountability and capture project information, cost and resource estimates, and other valuable project data.
More powerful dashboards and reports
Gain transparency and control with the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform: Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, Visio Services, PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and SQL Reporting Services are all at your fingertips. Customise reports in a familiar Excel editor and create powerful dashboards to effectively monitor and share portfolio performance.
System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 beta overview
I’ve been working with a client recently and System Center Essentials meets all their requirements for ongoing system management. However this video certainly wets the appetite for the impending 2010 product update. Matt McSpirit from Microsoft also has a few interesting posts worth checking out.
