PWStrain

The great new Network Monitor from Microsoft that I blogged about in Beta is now out for official release. If you have not yet downloaded and played with this, hit the link below. It's a vast improvement over the network monitor that shipped of old with the OS, but not quite up to Wireshark standards. I've been using it since beta and it's ability to flag packets based on originating program is very helpful.

Externally Network Monitor 3.2 is available on Microsoft.com. The link is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f4db40af-1e08-4a21-a26b-ec2f4dc4190d&DisplayLang=en.

So What's New in Network Monitor 3.2?
[]  Process Tracking: Now you can identify rogue applications sending network data! View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.
[]  Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. Network Monitor 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that Network Monitor 3.1.
[]  Find conversations: You asked for this. Many of our users found conversation tracking to be difficult to use as the view grew hard to manage, and it was difficult to correlate the frames they were seeing with the conversation nodes in the tree. Now, you can quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Just right-click on a frame and select a conversation to track, and you will see all the frames in that conversation. View TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.
[]  Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! As before, the parsers are fully customizable.
[]  Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by going to ToolsOptionsParser and choose Full vs. Stub implementations.
[]  CodePlex Ready: In the upcoming months, we plan to place all our Windows parsers on the Microsoft open-source CodePlex site and allow the community to modify and contribute parsers. You can find out more information on this here. This version of Network Monitor seamlessly integrates new parser packages.
[]  Network Monitor API: Create your own applications that capture, parse and analyze network traffic!
[]  More extensive documentation of the API and NPL. Access the documentation from Help  NPL and API Documentation.
[]  IA64 builds.
[]  PCAP capture file support*.
[]  ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings.
[]  and more. See our Release Notes in the Help directory of the installation folder for a complete list of new features and known issues.

and the “State of the Nation” presentation video is not there. The one thing I missed due to scheduling that I was absolutely counting on the DVD to see.

I guess I’ll be re-arranging my scheduling priorities for next year.

Jumping off the Microsoft train for a post.

We use Cacti for circuit / router / switch monitoring. It's free, it does everything we need it to do, and it's easy to get going if you use the CactiEZ bootable distro.

So after some minor hiccups involving an ill-advised upgrade and other technician - induced error, Cacti has been humming happily along for months. It had drive space issues for a while, but that was easily resolved by adding another volume to the VM, mounting it, and moving over the MySQL and .rrd files. No mess, no fuss.

I came in this morning to the dreaded "Cacti is down" email message from one of our techs. My first thought was disk space. Occasionally someone will set the Cacti log file to verbose and forget to turn it back. This was not the case.

Mysqld was not running and would not start. However the error was not about disk space, but about the errmsg.sys file not containing the correct number of errors. This was a new one.

While searching around the installation I noticed that all of my RRD files were gone. Kaput. MIA. A quick check of the nightly backups showed that they were missing from the last three nightlies as well.

Here's what happened. The YUM installation in the Cacti-EZ distro is set to automatically update itself periodically. On July 2 it upgraded the version of MySQL. At that point MySQL would not start because the upgrade process failed to update the errmsg.sys file that was in the new partition where I moved the MYSQL data to.

As part of it's cleanup process, Cacti deletes RRD files that are over X days old. In my environment I had this set to two. This is to prevent RRD files from nodes that no longer exist from clogging your system. When MySQL quit, Cacti stopped updating the RRD files. As soon as they had a date that was over two days old, Cacti dutifully deleted them all.

I was able to copy the errmsg.sys from another location (/usr/share/mysql/english) and get MySQL started again. I restored the last good copy of the graphs, leaving a few days gap between when it quit and when I got it working.

Lessons learned? Automatic is great, until it automatically breaks things. I've set the RRD remove period to a month and changed the number of backups that I keep "live" on our SAN to five. If this happens again I'll consider a nightly copy of the errmsg.sys from the location where I know it will get updated correctly.

So I last posted about creating a collection based on a user's membership in an AD Group, and tying that to a workstation based on the TopConsoleUser field.

Of course as soon as I let it loose that we now had that functionality, our group wanted to be able to run reports against it. "No problem!", I thought. Just translate the WQL to SQL and everything will be fabulous. Long story short, after several hours spread over a couple of days I threw in the towel. The WQL just does not line up in any way with SQL; the process where we actually match userid against AD Group is somehow hidden behind the curtain.

A quick call and our SQL guru comes to the rescue. After trying to parse it and also being unable to figure it out, we ran a SQL Profiler capture when executing the following WQL query:

select distinct UniqueUserName from  SMS_R_User where UserGroupName = "<domain>\\<GroupA>"

After some searching, we found the following query in the Profiler trace:

select distinct Name0 from v_R_System INNER JOIN v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE on v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.ResourceID = v_R_System.ResourceID where v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.TopConsoleUser0 in (select  distinct SMS_R_User.Unique_User_Name0 from User_DISC AS SMS_R_User LEFT OUTER JOIN User_User_Group_Name_ARR AS __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0 ON SMS_R_User.ItemKey = __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0.ItemKey   where __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0.User_Group_Name0 = '<domain>\<GroupA>')

A bit more  complex, yes? Turns out WQL is hiding some rather hinky SQL stuff from us, including tables we're not used to dealing with. The table dbo.User_User_Group_Name_ARR0 table appears to be where we actually map user names to AD Groups, by means of the ItemKey field.

In order to get this to return the workstation ID using the TopConsoleUser field, I turned it into this query:

select distinct Name0 from v_R_System INNER JOIN v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE on v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.ResourceID = v_R_System.ResourceID where v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.TopConsoleUser0 in (select  distinct SMS_R_User.Unique_User_Name0 from User_DISC AS SMS_R_User LEFT OUTER JOIN User_User_Group_Name_ARR AS __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0 ON SMS_R_User.ItemKey = __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0.ItemKey   where __erUser_User_Group_Name_ARR0.User_Group_Name0 = '<domain>\<GroupA>')

So now by replacing <domain>\<GroupA>' with pertinent info, we get the report that people are clamoring for. I may even make it a variable, with choices that auto-populate from the table. Yeah, that's it!

Now granted you have to take care of a couple of permissions issues on the 'new' tables (specifically  dbo.User_User_Group_Name_ARR0 and dbo.User_DISC) to get them to appear in the web console view. Granting "Select" on these was not a concern for me, so I went ahead. Your shop my be a bit more touchy about that requirement.

Again this was SMS 2003, SP3, Asset Intelligence deployed. YMMV.

Having a collection based on Active Directory User Group membership has been a holy grail since we installed SMS. It seemed to make sense to everyone that since we have the user ID of the last logged in user and can pull user ID's from AD groups we should be able to marry the two into a collection of computers.

Not so much.

After investing significant time under SMS 2k3 SP2, I gave up. There are a couple of Third-Party add ons that can accomplish the task, but we weren't buying.

Today I saw the same question again in a MyItForum post, and decided to re-visit the problem now that we had SMS 2k3 SP3 and Asset Intelligence deployed. Here's the resulting query:

select distinct SMS_R_System.Name from  SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE on SMS_G_System_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USAGE.TopConsoleUser in (select distinct UniqueUserName from  SMS_R_User where UserGroupName = "<domain>\\<group>")

Just replace "<domain>\\<group>" with your site specific info and you should be good to go. Notice that we user TopConsoleUser here, which hopefully more accurately reflects the user of the computer than just "last logged on".

... and it rocks. Some quick initial testing shows that this tool finally has real value on a Windows system.

What's New since Network Monitor 3.1

Process Tracking: View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.

Find conversations: Quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Isolate TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.

PCAP capture file support*

Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. NM 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that NM 3.1

· Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! Parsers for the protocols covered by the Windows Open Protocol Specifications (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517.aspx).

· NM API: Create your own applications that capture, parser and analyze network traffic!

Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by changing the parser search order in Tools>Options>Parser

Support for frame truncation. Go to Tools>Options and limit the number of bytes captured per frame to improve performance.

More extensive documentation of the NPL which includes documentation on the new NMAPI. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation

Enhanced filtering on items within NPL while loops or arrays. You can specify an index into the array or while loop to filter on

IA64 version now available.

ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings. For example, ContainsBin(FrameData, ASCII, "msn").

More UI indications of conversation status, dropped frames and the number of frames in the capture buffer.

One of the most compelling technologies to come down the pipe from Microsoft is Application Virtualization, formerly known as SoftGrid.

One of the main holdbacks for us and the product was that applications that needed to interact had to be 'bubbled' together. Since most of our major laptops apps interact with each other and Office and Adobe, this posed a big problem. Who wants to roll all of that into one bubble?

Well, word came down in a meeting I was at on Monday with the fine folks at Microsoft that in the next version of App Virtualization you will be able to create a seperate 'bubble' for each app, and that these 'bubbles' will interact with each other.

To which I said : "Cool."

This is a big win for them. It lifts a large barrier to adoption of this product. I've been trying to find time to lab this up, but not having much luck so far. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can re-enable my SCCM / SCOM labs for further study and play time.

After much delay, uncertainty, fear and paranoia, I've finally moved our Ops Manager 2007 (SP1) DB to a new 64-bit HP behemoth server.

I can say that it went exactly as advertised. I chose not to delete the original DB, but merely backed it up and than took it offline. Once I'm sure things are happy, healthy and stable I'll delete it. Paranoia can be a pain, but I'll take it in cases like this.

The only surprise was the length of time it took to restore the DB. After copying it over I assumed that restoration would be far faster than the backup from the original server, but if anything it took longer to restore the DB to the new server. I'm not quite sure why this would be, but intend to discuss it with our SQL guru when I get the chance.

They've invented the Flux Capacitor.

Ok, so they call it a Memristor, but read what it does:

The memristor is formally defined as a two-terminal element in which the magnetic flux Φ_m between the terminals is a function of the amount of electric charge q that has passed through the device. Each memristor is characterized by its memristance function describing the charge-dependent rate of change of flux with charge.

That, to me, is a flux capacitor. And others think so as well.

Flying Deloreans and Mr. Fusions can't be far behind.

I knew it all started with D&D. If I had seen this at the age of thirteen, who knows where I'd be today?

The chart is sadly accurate. About the only thing missing is the entire BBS era. And there should be a progression of modem speeds in there, from 300 baud pulse to 56k.

Click the picture for more detail.

You know that old saying about a butterfly flapping it's wings causing a hurricane a thousand miles away? Well, a thunderstorm in Chicago causes repercussions around the world.

I finally landed at O'Hare at around 10:45, which was well after my connecting flight to scenic Champaign - Urbana has left the tarmac. And of course that was the last flight of the night.

I had already decided I would just rent a car and drive home. Unfortunately, there were several hundred people that had made similar decisions. So I got on the Hertz bus and they promptly kicked me off for not having a reservation. Then I got on the phone and started calling around, finally finding Budget who still had cars on the lot.

When I got to the Budget office, I was approximately 50th in line. With three workers behind the counter, I settled in for a long wait. When I finally got to the counter, Angel (really, that was the name on her gold nametag) hooked me up. I ended up in a enormous Chevy something or other. Turning to leave, I noticed there were more people behind me in line than there were in front of me when I started.

So at 4:10am I finally pulled in front of my house. My bag, which American would not let me pick up at O'Hare, finally arrived in Champaign at around 3:30 the next day. I figure I still spent less on the rental than I would have staying at O'Hare, and I got to sleep in my own bed.

My final thoughts on MMS? While the event was good, it wasn't great and from my perception not as good as last year. I can't quite put my finger on why. It could be that I was looking for more in-depth info this year. The newbie stuff is great for the folks that need it. But the older the conference gets, the deeper they need to dive into existing products. Let's spend on hour on the sms_def.mof (or the configuration.mof) file.  Have a session that walks through a distributed app in it's entirety, and let's have it not be the standard "web SQL Server" app. Take a group of servers, a web site, a sql back end, and a custom service. Better still, let's add some Linux monitoring in there as well. Then let's add the alerts and subscriptions, and figure out how to make them make sense.

The Meetup points were a great idea, I just wish I would have discovered them sooner.

The closing party was nice, but seemed to be geared for younger folks than me. The Halo farm was cool, the performers were OK (except for the juggler. I hope that wasn't his best stuff). But it just wasn't my thing. I'm not sure would be better, though, so I'm not going to complain too loud. My only suggestion might be, if Wayne Brady is still booked there, to get HIM to come and perform for the closing party.

I thought the venue was great. The Venetian is both beautiful and big enough to handle the crowd, and still has room to bring in more attendees. The food was OK, the service was great.

As before, the most important facet of the event was networking, making new contacts and hashing around problems, thoughts, and plans. That is what made the conference worthwhile for me this year.

See you in 2009!

Weather in Chicago delays my flight out of Vegas. Making me miss my connecting flight from O'Hare to Champaign. And since it's the last flight of the night to Champaign, looks like I get to drive home.

I should have caught the 6:00AM flight with the Richard from PS*Soft. If all goes well I'll be home by 2:00am.

How was your flight out?

Mark your calendars. MMS 2009 April 27 - May 1, Las Vegas.

See you there!

Some miscellaneous thoughts around MMS and the Venetian hotel.

Venetian Coffee - Good. Better than average, and kept stocked throughout the venue. I'd like to see the pots they use to make coffee for 4000 people. More like vats, I'd guess.

Venetian Food - When feeding 4000+, it's OK. At any particular restaurant throughout the casino, it's very good. If you're here on a budget, I recommend the food court which is somewhere in the Grand Canal shops. They have a Panda Express and a couple three other places that you can get dinner for around $10. There's also a Denny's, a Subway, and a McDonald's within walking distance.

Microsoft bought their Midwest customers dinner last night at Canaletto, and it was excellent. The main thing MMS is about for me is connecting to peers, and it was great to dine with our local TS, a specialist from the SCOM team, and other customers in my region.

Casino - apparently smoking is a prerequisite to gambling. Who knew? Seriously, I can't get used to folks smoking in public again. Not that I mind so much - I'm not an anti-smoking zealot by any means. I'm all for an individuals right to commit suicide by cigarette. I've just gotten used to the Illinois ban and it's still jarring every time I have to walk through the casino.

Rooms - wow. Suite sized rooms, two tv's in the main room and one in the bathroom, bathroom has both giant tub and separate shower. The rooms are a bit pricey, but nothing like what they would be without the MMS discount.

Air Conditioning - In Vegas they know from air conditioning. I've essentially been freezing the entire time. It took me a couple of days to realize that the room was turned down nearly all the way on the thermostat.

The Reality of the Cloud

Ok, I missed some of this due to working some last night (a new Ops Manager RMS Server!), excess sleep and work to catch up on this morning. But I did get there in time to hear internal Microsoft talk about number that are beyond comprehension : 5000 servers per server admin, hundreds of thousands of total servers, trillions of row updates per day in Ops Manager. Yikes.

They piloted Ops Mgr SP1 on a small 1000 servers. Once that's complete they'll extend it to 39,000 servers.

It's hard to think that they face the exact same problems we do, but on a much more massive scale. On top of that they have to dogfood their own products, which is something I wouldn't want to do in early pre-releases.

OS Deployment with SCCM : Part 1

This session was pretty well full. Given the capabilities of SCCM and OSD, I'm not surprised.

This slide deck is going to be a must have if you deploy OS's with SCCM, and the video should be first-watch on the DVD if you get a chance.

OS Deployment with SCCM is as complex or as simple as you want to make it, and this session does a great job giving us an overview of the process, including some custom scripting and task sequences. There is very little you can't do around OSD with SCCM.

There are four sessions around OSD and SCCM. They're going to be to complex to try and blog, so I'll just leave you with the fact that they will all be must haves (and must see) when the DVD comes out.

I also highly recommend the blog by The Deployment Guys, a TechNet(tm) blog that is not necessarily limited to deployment with SCCM but is very high - level and useful.

Ask the Experts

Where were you? Eighteen community and Microsoft experts up front, great questions, fabulous answers. This is the session not to miss, but a lot of people missed it.

MVP's and Microsoft employees from SCCM, SCOM, NAP, and other disciplines I've forgotten about were represented.

Download it if you can.

SCCM 2007 Scripting and Console Extensions : Greg Ramsey

For those of us that live and die by the community written console extensions for SMS 2003, this session is a must. Where would we be without the ability to right - click on a collection or computer and force a hardware or software inventory, or restart CCM exec, or open the logs?

Off the bat, Greg makes a reference to the great MyItForum.com as the place to go for more info and downloads. I think the only session that MyItForum.com has not been mentioned is in the keynotes. I also noticed that Greg uses the great Crimson Editor for editing text / powershell / vbs. I switch back and forth between it and Notepad++. Both are great editors.

Greg has a clever way to pull the GUID out of the console XML file so that it shows up in the console. While not something you'd want to do in production every day, this would be perfect for a test environment where you write your customizations.

It doesn't take an expert level of understanding of XML to write customizations for the console, only an understanding of the syntax needed. 

Some great info on Powershell and the SCCM extensions.

This slide deck will be one you'll want to keep handy.

 

Managing The Dynamic Desktop

Microsoft Funny Guy: Still not so much.

User - Centric Computing : Delivering an application to a user in a seamless fashion regardless of the device they use to connect. The user is the device. Deliver an app either virtualized, hosted, or 'standard' depending on bandwidth and device. Give the user the opportunity to be productive across all of their devices.

Key components in the delivery of this vision are cached and offline folders, application virtualization (Softgrid), and SCCM.

A brief demo of a consistent desktop across a laptop and remote terminal services session was impressive. With Windows Terminal Services 2008 they were able to replicate the user's laptop experience, down to the wallpaper. They then demonstrated the same thing using Citrix and then Xen Virtualization, where the Vista session was running virtually. Pretty cool.

Announcement : Config Manager SP1 Available in May. R2 Release Candidate Available in July. SP1 / R2 incorporates Intel VPro functionality and new Asset Matrix capability, with auto update capability.

New version of MDOP available Q3.

There's been a lot of talk here about separating the application from the OS and App Virtualization. I thought last year that we would see the day when Microsoft and other vendors begin delivering thier apps MDOP ready, and I think we're continuing to move closer to that today.

Using the Intel VPro add on to Config Mgr, they remotely powered off machines in the Comm-net lab, which was cool. And funny. The machines powered off within about three seconds, and they could multi-select machines. This makes WOL look like a dinosaur. Then using Out-Of-Band management they were able to remote boot a machine, watch it boot, and change BIOS settings. You can also force an IDE redirection and remote boot a PC off of a network file or image in the case of severe OS failure. This would allow you to do disk level diagnostics and copy client data.

Bill Anderson did a demo of Network Access Protection. The key thing for me was a demo of having the ability to provide NAP protection in the event of a Line-Of-Business app being out of date. It's just a couple of clicks on the deployment of any SCCM app. So you don't have to worry about users coming in and munging that critical database because their client app is two versions out of date. They won't get access until it's upgraded.

Technology Preview!

A demo of an add-on that pulls Config Manager and Ops Manager data and runs business analytics against it. It consolidates it into scorecards that enable stakeholders to view metrixs and make business decisions. It can also allow you to compare metrics and baselines to other companies that have also used the service. It surfaces data metrics from other companies without revealing anything about that company. It also includes notification services, where Microsoft and other customers can surface issues and allow them to trickle down to you based on hardware and configurations. Very promising functionality.

Summary:

I've long held that the Management space is the place to be in IT. Exciting things are happening and will continue to happen. We deliver value and savings to our clients / offices today, and will continue to drive down costs while driving up functionality. I'm totally geeked to be in this space today, thank  my company for sending me to MMS, and thank Microsoft for finally leading in this space. A MS TA once told me that Microsoft first enters the space, then gets it right, then innovates. Well in the management space Microsoft is innovating like no one else.

Extending Operations Manager

Cameron Fuller's session was well attended and well done. He went through a slew of Community and Third - Party extensions to SCOM, including (but not limited to):

Override Explorer

ReSearch This!

Savision - Live Maps

Command Shell:

Alert Close

Set Action Account

Export Alerts

Usability Extensions

MPViewer

Maintenance Mode

Proxycfg

Scheduling MP

Process Monitoring

Alert Forward

Eventid.net Lookup

The post - session Q&A was great. I was able to remind everyone that if you are running the Web Console, you can subscribe to it's RSS feed for alerts (<webconsoleServer/rss, I think) to replace the old MOM 05 Console Alerts. The RSS feed is something that's little publicized and under utilized, IMHO.

Client Health in SMS and SCCM

A good look into the complexities of "Client Health". what it is, and how to monitor and remediable it. My only wish is that I would have been to this session last year, would have saved me some pain.

How do they do that?!?

A great session from an MS Consultant giving a broad overview and some details around how clients have dealt with various situations in Config Manager. This session was very well attended in one of the larger breakout rooms.

Topics included process, planning, and some nuts and bolts. How can you tell how many machines will execute an advertisement successfully before you send it? Why should you have a Definitive Software Library and what should be in it? Why should you 'brand' your package deployments and how would you do it?

Packed full of great tips, this is one slide deck I'll be keeping on hand. Very well done.

Some awesome announcements in the keynote address.

First off, the comedian guy at the beginning : the "show of hands" line of jokes was funny last year. Not so much this year. Won't be at all funny next year. His strength is in the 'man on the street' interviews. Those are golden.

VMM 2008:

Beta announced today. Allows management and migration of VMWare ESX and Virtual Center servers from within the Microsoft VM Console. You can migrate VMWare to VMWare live, VMWare to Windows Hyper V "nearly live" (short downtime). They promise that live migration in HyperV is in the lab now and is something we'll see soon. I'm guessing it we'll see it at the next MMS.

Ops Manager Cross Platform Extensions:

Announced also was a beta of Cross Platform Extensions for Ops Manager 07. This allows you to manage Linux, Unix, HPAIX, Solaris from within the operations manager console. Working with partners and Open Source, you can now view Apache web sites, MYSql dbs, Oracle dbs, and basic OS info around these systems from within the Ops Manager console. This means that you can also report on them, pull them into Distributed Apps, and use every other Ops Manager feature (tasks!) with them.

Favorite Quote: "It's not your grandfather's Microsoft."

They understand that we all live in a heterogeneous environment, and the want us using their tools to manage it. That's a foot in the door of every space we're in for Microsoft, and there's nothing for them not to like about that.

What a zoo! I think all four thousand attendees were lined up trying to get in the doors. The line went back nearly to the casino (if not all the way there by the time the doors opened) and that wasn't single file, but three or four wide the entire way down.

Here's a really bad picture from my cell phone camera that does the crowd no justice .

My apologies to the guys in front, who probably didn't want to end up on the Internet.

As usual, the MyItForum.com booth was swamped, and by the time I finally got there they were out of party buttons. Doesn't it figure?

It was good to finally put faces to names of folks we've been talking to at both 1E and PS*Soft.

Swag was mostly in the "meh" category. Not as much furor over giving away zunes and xboxes and such this year, although some companies were.

I did manage to score three t-shirts that don't fit and one hat I can't wear. Such is life.

Keynote tomorrow.

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.

If you are an MMS Alumni, make sure you stop by the Alumni room, if only to pick up your official polo shirt.

Ok, I get it. The Venetian is gargantuan. I think it's as far from my room to the conference center as it was last year in San Diego. I exaggerate a bit, but not much. I'm finally learning the lay of the land here - to get anywhere, you must go through the casino.

Nice swag bag with registration. A nice Ogio backpack, again this year sponsored by Intel. The most interesting thing in it was a copy of the Powershell book, which tells you something about what Microsoft is emphasizing lately. Giving away 4000 copies of Windows Powershell Step-by-Step is no small gesture.

I'm sitting in the Comm-Net area, where the self-paced hands-on labs and communications workstations are. I'm guesstimating there are twice the number of stations for both this year.

I think that the growth of Microsoft Management products is going to explode in the coming years, and this conference will only continue to grow. Once Service Manager hits the streets and Microsoft can offer the entire suite, it's anyone's guess how many will be signing up for this event.

No breakfast today and keynote is tomorrow morning, so I'm free until 10:30 or so. Off to the Alumni Lounge!

Here and cranked up to start MMS tomorrow. Congratulations to the fine folks at American Airlines for getting both me and my checked bag to the same place at the same time.

This time.

Heading out to MMS tomorrow. Given past experience, I'm packing two days worth of clothes in my carry on and praying for the bag I'll check.

I'll blog things of interest while I'm there. Really looking forward to meeting folks in the community, and renewing acquaintences.

Hope to see you there!

We started having weird issues today with users in a particular site not being able to log in, not mapping drives, etc. We were getting odd DNS and KCC errors in the logs. We finally traced it down to KB948496, which was applied early this morning. Once we removed that patch, all was well.

It appears there is a conflict between that patch and the Broadcomm NIC drivers in our HP server.

There's some general chatter about the patch here.

I'd say avoid this one until fully vetted in your environment.

Arthur C. Clark has died.

The Fountains of Paradise

I could go on, and on. Clarke is the writer who really expanded my horizons, who made me think big impossible things. Who made me understand, finally, that we are living on this tiny little ball in a backwater section of the galaxy in a small corner of a vast universe. He realized the importance of satellites in communication before there were satellites.

There is apparently one more Clark book forthcoming, a collaboration between him and Fred Pohl. What a gift.

Finally got approval to attend MMS! Immediately went and signed up for initial 3 sessions, which are open for alumni now.

The session schedule is also available here.

If you've not been to MMS, it's an unparalleled chance to dig deep into the latest products in the Microsoft Management space. I learned more there in a week last year than I think I knew up to that point. The chance to talk with developers and peers in the industry is well worth the price.

When you think of what the price of admission would be to attend each of these sessions separately, it pays for itself.

Win a Zune!

Hotmail or Windows Live account required.

The Zune A Day Giveaway