Product Documentation

"Silverlight 2 First Look" eBooklet

rodtrent — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:44:05 GMT

Due to popular demand, the author and the Microsoft press team have provided the book as the attached PDF. It contains the first three chapters of Laurence Moroney’s book "Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 2.0" .

Full book available here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/073562528X/o/qid=buzzmanagement

Factsheet: Speed up Outlook 2007 - performance tips

rodtrent — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:05:26 GMT

This factsheet provides a series of useful tips to keep Outlook 2007 running at optimum performance.

Integrating FCS with SCCM

rodtrent — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:33:15 GMT

Did you know SCCM can be used to provide client updates and signature updates to Client Security?

Deploying and maintaining your Forefront client Security clients can be automated using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). With SCCM customers can quickly deploy the Forefront Client Security (FCS) agents, maintain signature updates automatically and assess the agent’s configuration compliance on a routine basis.

Xian Network Monitoring and Integration the full series

rodtrent — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:34:39 GMT

The Xian Network Monitoring and Integration series is now complete.

System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 System Requirements

rodtrent — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:19:47 GMT

DPM 2007 System Requirements provides information that you use to ensure that the DPM server and the computers and applications it is going to protect meet network and security requirements. This topic also lists the DPM supported operating systems and the recommended hardware and software requirements.

Microsoft Deployment & Dell ImageDirect

rodtrent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:34:56 GMT

by Charles O. Beima.

Dell ImageDirect is a web-based service that allows customers to create one multi-platform Windows XP Professional SP2 image that includes the most current Dell drivers and works across current and future Dell OptiPlex™, Latitude™, and Precision™ products allowing a single image to function on multiple systems. Used in conjunction with Microsoft Deployment, Dell Image Direct allows you to spend less time on driver management and more time on other activities.

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Software Updates Synchronization SuperFlow

rodtrent — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:28:08 GMT

The Software Updates Synchronization SuperFlow is a dynamic, interactive dataflow model that provides all of the information needed to understand the software updates synchronization process in Configuration Manager 2007. The SuperFlow also provides an animation for the process and resource files and links that provide information related to the process.

Overview

For many enterprise products, technical flowcharts can be an invaluable tool for IT Professionals to help them understand a feature or process within the product and to help them troubleshoot issues that might occur. The SuperFlow is a new concept that takes a technical flowchart to the next level by providing the following:

Interactive Flowchart
The SuperFlow interactive flowchart provides:

General and in-depth technical information about each step in the process.
Sample log files, status messages, including sample log file entries, procedures to accomplish tasks, troubleshooting information, and more!

Animation
The SuperFlow animation provides:

A visual representation for the steps in the SuperFlow process.
A detailed description for each step in the SuperFlow process.

Resources
The SuperFlow resources provides:

Links to internal resources such as the detailed dataflow for the process, sample log entries for the end-to-end process, verification checklists, etc.
Links to external Web resources that provide more information about the product and SuperFlow process

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003

Adobe Flash Player 9

Recommended display resolution of 1280x1024

Free Windows PowerShell workbook: server administration

rodtrent — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:10:30 GMT

Announced a while ago, now finally released: the second free Windows PowerShell booklet is available for download. This time I focus on server administration with Windows PowerShell, from a simple hierarchal storage management solution to user administration in the Active Directory. And I won't miss examples about event logs, SQL databases, WMI or .NET. And of course, Peedy cannot be missed. I round up the book with plenty of partner extensions, most of them free, to make your life as an administrator as easy as possible. And in case you haven't figured out why you should take care about Windows PowerShell: it's now a feature in Windows Server 2008 which can easily be activated and which helps to manage your server much easier than with WSH or CMD, if it's IIS or any other role you look at. So give it a try or dig deeper with this free booklet. The download includes both workshops from me with all the documentation, demo files and script examples.

SecureVantage ACS Noise Filter Guide

rodtrent — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:22:10 GMT

In most cases it is often unnecessary or impractical to collect and store all security events. While the Audit Collection Service (ACS) natively collects all security events from a target systemit includes a filtering mechanism which can be used tomanage event insertion and storage to the SQL database. Filters can be implemented based on event ID or on the contents of the events themselves.

The Secure Vantage ACS Noise Filters Guide provides sample filter sets and guidance to optimize data collection which improves both online and offline storage capabilities plus reporting performance. ACS Noise Filters are based onMicrosoft recommended event filters defined in the Security Attack and Detection Planning Guide and best practices from Microsoft Security MVP, Randy Franklin Smith.

Deploying Windows Server 2008 With System Center Configuration Manager

rodtrent — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:43:29 GMT

With Windows Server 2008, the installation process for servers has substantially changed for the first time since Windows NT 4.0. Since the underlying technologies for deploying Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista are now the same, wouldn’t it be great if you could use the same tools and leverage the same knowledge to deploy both? System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Deployment now provide that integrated toolset. In this paper, learn how to use System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Deployment to automate the deployment of Windows Server 2008 – through native integration with these new deployment processes and tools.

AdminStudio 8.0 ZENworks Edition Installation Guide

rodtrent — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:44:17 GMT

For additional information on the AdminStudio ZENworks Edition and your upgrade options, visit the

AdminStudio ZENworks Edition Web site at:

http://www.macrovision.com/products/flexnet_adminstudio/adminstudio/editions/zenworks.shtml

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization - MCS Sequencing Guidelines

rodtrent — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:05:55 GMT

Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) works with customers every day to aid in the design and deployment of Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization solutions. This guide is a compilation of practices MCS has gathered over time to help with streamlining the Sequencing process.

Running the Web Console Server on a standalone server using Windows Authentication

rodtrent — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:53:28 GMT

One of the big issues we had in OpsMgr 2007 RTM was if you installed the Database and the Root Management Server(RMS) on a standalone server with the SDK and Config services running under a domain account users could not install the Web Console Server on a standalone machine and use Windows Authentication. The only other option was to use Forms based authentication which required you to enter a user ID and password every time the web console was launched, something even I hated doing. What was even worse was if your RMS was clustered you could not use Windows Authentication because we did not support installing the Web Console on a cluster. The good news is that we have fixed this issue in OpsMgr SP1 but users will still need to step up constraint delegation which basically allows a computer to be trusted for delegation, this is a AD-Kerberos limitation and not a product limitation. The attached doc has the steps to setup constraint delegation to support this scenario. I want to thank Marc, Manish and Ranga for helping get this scenario working in SP1.

Operations Manager Data Retention and Grooming Information

rodtrent — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:51:36 GMT

The attached Word 2007 file written by Daniel Savage contains information about data retention and grooming that many of you might find useful.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Application Server Branch Configuration Guide

rodtrent — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:46:22 GMT

Streaming multiple concurrent applications across a wide-area network presents potential issues in terms of application launch times and WAN availability. These issues can be mitigated by implementing Microsoft Systems Center Virtual Application Branch Servers. This document gives a basic orientation of the components and considerations necessary for such an architecture.