MMS Day One : Labs
Advice : Start the VM's as soon as you sit down! Be careful when closing items in the VM that you don't close the VM itself! You don't want to have to start the lab over. Not that I did that or anything.
Yo03 - Advanced Ops Manager 2007
First of all, the VM sessions rocked. Finally, something that can keep up. I think that the OpsMgr SP1 Console had a lot to due with my perception here, but it was quick and very useable.
The lab itself was a disappointment. I don't think any topic covered here, perhaps with the exception of the brief Powershell section, should be considered "Advanced". Is creating a basic Distributed Application "advanced"? Creating a Run-As account? Creating a basic role and notifications? If these are "advanced" topics, what are basic topics?
And for once, when we create a distributed app, can we do something besides the basic "Web Site, Back End DB, Host Server" app? How about choosing a service, monitoring it for availability, cpu and memory utilization, and creating custom alerts and subscriptions around that? THAT would be advanced.
If we must to the basic Distributed App, can we continue it on and create the alerts and subscriptions, and discuss why default alerts you get without customizations are gibberish?
Lastly, when someone from Microsoft says that they recommend not putting customizations and overrides in the Default MP, it would be nice if they explained why. An explanation would go farther towards ensuring that folks don't do it.
Yo07 - Building MPs with the Authoring Console
Great class. If you're involved in building or maintaining MPs at all in your organization, this is the class you need. Great content and an instructor willing to go off book and answer questions during the class. Even has the latest version of the MP Authoring Console, which only came out a short time ago.
Recommended.
And really, this could boil down to a philosophical choice. I'd rather the labs be a jumping off point for discussion and questions. If I want to click through the lab I can do it on my own time in the CommNet center or even off of the DVD. At the same time I know that there are folks new to the product that need the walk through.
We paid Microsoft (and The Venetian) big bucks to get in front of the insiders and developers on these systems, and I'd rather do that in the class / session setting than chasing them down the hall afterwards.