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I don't think I am violating the multi-paged pre-exam NDA by offering this tip after sitting for 70-236 this morning: know they powershell syntax and commandlets. Easily 75%+ of my test involved trying to choose which syntax I should use to perform a configuration related task in Exchange 2007. I have heard there was some powershell on the exam. I even looked over the "skills being measured." This is the only item among 20 or so: "Implement bulk management of mail-enabled objects." Hmmm. I was not happy.
I am a GUI-lover! I have never been a CLI junkie ... I will do 99% of my tasks from the Exchange Management Console unless bulk modification activities are required. However, Microsoft has decided I can only be a pro if I know the command line ....
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Microsoft has released rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007. You can download it here. This rollup also contains all the fixes from rollups 1 and 2. It is also rumored to also contain a fix that allows for IMAP connectivity to the soon forthcoming Apple iPhone. Other fixes include:
• 931328 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931328/) An integer is added to the end of the legacyExchangeDN attribute of a newly created mailbox in Exchange 2007
• 930468 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930468/) The attachment is not displayed when you use Outlook 2003 to open an e-mail message that contains an attachment
• 931842 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931842/) Error message when the sender or the receiver of a meeting request has a double-byte character set (DBCS) display name in Exchange Server 2007: "The requested property was not found"
• 932207 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932207/) Error message when a user tries to open a forwarded message to accept or to deny a resource request in Exchange Server 2007: "Cannot open the free/busy information"
• 932515 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932515/) You receive a 5.2.0 non-delivery report (NDR) message when you send an e-mail message to an Exchange 2007 server that is running the Isinteg.exe tool in a dismounted mailbox store
• 934887 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934887/) DBCS characters are converted into two question marks in a forwarded e-mail message in Exchange 2007
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I am in a training class all this week in Toronto at the EMC office in Burlington, ON for EmailXtender. Usually I am a well prepared traveler having consulted for many years. For some reason though I forgot my power adapter for my laptop on this trip. I sought out the local Best Buy to see what a universal charger (like the model from Kennsington) would set me back - Yikes! $125.00 CAD. I have my Blackberry so I thought I could make it through still having email and internet access from the device. One thing I was not looking forward to, however, was taking pen and paper notes. I am a OneNote junkie! I remembered Google Notebook and Zoho Notebook and having used Google's version on occasion decided to give the Zoho product a spin. While the results were overall positive, there where definitely some show stoppers IMO that will keep me from using it more.
1. Other shortcuts and links can high jack your browser window where you are taking notes. This happened to me after I had not saved for awhile. There doesn't seem to be an auto-save in the background every time you add new data as there is in OneNote. In OneNote you never have to do a File -> Save. I lost a half page worth of notes.
2. I cannot find a way to get the data *out* of Zoho Notebook so I can distribute it to my co-workers. You can publicly publish the pages, but I don't want to do that. It seemed simple enough to cut and paste the data from the last two days in to a Word doc, but Zoho will not let me. Some inferences on the forums point to the version of IE being the problem but I have tried it on IE6 SP1, IE7 and FF2 in XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Windows Vista Ultimate. No dice in any combination of browser and OS.
3. When you re-select Zoho Notebook as the active window and click on the page to begin typing the cursor always jumps to the top middle of the page and I have to use the arrow or page down key to get my cursor down to the bottom of the page where I was before I moved my focus to another window.
4. Can someone say numbering? Bullets? Bold? Italic? And make the default tool for a new page the text tool and not the drawing tool. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out why I couldn't type on the page! I think 90% of the people will be typing ...
5. Import OneNote files in to Zoho Notebook. I am NOT doing all that work over.
6. Spell-check. Not as much of a problem in FF2 - but still ...
7. Technical support. I submitted a question to the support forum yesterday around 6PM EST and it is still awaiting approval for submission the next day at 9AM EST. This seems like an unacceptable delay.
Update: Google Notebook has basic formatting like bold, italic and other. But alas, no numbering or bullets. It does, however, auto save my work every few minutes for me.
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I am sitting in a Microsoft TechNet event presented by IT Pro Evangelist Matt "All my mates are at TechEd" Hester. Matt is covering the Windows Vista Startup Recovery Tool. This tool is accessed by booting off of a Windows Vista installation DVD. Any version will work as all the versions contain the same bits. The install key determines which version gets installed. Once you boot up to the install screen there is a hyperlink at the bottom to launch the Startup Recovery Tool (SRT). You are then presented with several options from which to choose to diagnose your problem. You can repair the startup files, restore from a previous recovery point, restore from a complete PC backup and even diagnose potentially bad hardware. I don't know for sure but it looks like a lot of the tools have been leveraged from the Winternals acquisition. This tool can certainly save you a lot of time in what would normally be a multi-hour exercise in frustration.
Matt is next highlighting the "previous versions" feature in Windows Vista that saves previous versions of all files through the Shadow Copy feature first introduced in Windows Server 2003. Now it is available at the client level automatically. This feature is not available in all versions of Windows Vista, and will consume roughly 3-5% of your hard drive space.
Some of the new auto-diagnostic features included in Vista are:
- Resource prevention exhaustion
- Hardware failures
- Networking problems
- Client performance degradation
- Corrupted system file recovery
- Program compatibility assistant
- Unbootable system
Matt just showed a great video clip of a little girl washing her mommy's laptop in the kitchen sink. Priceless. I personally have been training my kids since birth that the laptop holds a special place of honor in the household and should never be touched!
Now Matt is highlighting the Problem Reports and Solutions features in Vista. You can access a control panel of all the reported crash and hang data that Vista collects and analyzes in the background. Vista then uses this data to look for updates and hot fixes to present to you for problem remediation. In previous versions of the OS this data was collected but never exposed to the user for their benefit. The reliability monitor has a nice "health" timeline view that shows warnings and errors over time in a graph view. You can then select points in time and see what happened on the system.
A great demonstration of some of the new features in Vista: predictable, resilient, recoverable, proven and maintainable.
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Microsoft has another great podcast up around the messaging design that went in to its Exchange 2007 environment. And please Microsoft, let me download the entire podcast so I can listen to it offline. IMO that is a requirement to be a podcast. Streaming sucks.
From the download page:
Ever wondered how a large enterprise plans and implements design and architecture of its next generation of messaging system? View this content to find out how engineers from the Microsoft IT messaging team will uncover the details on how Exchange 2007 infrastructure was introduced and fully deployed in a 120,000+ mailbox production environment. Topics will include: messaging topology design, hardware planning for various Exchange server roles, Client Access Server and Mobility scenarios, Transport architecture, Mailbox server and storage designs, backup, restore and high availability strategies.
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This is a raw and unedited stream of notes from the TechEd 2007 (via Virtual TechEd) keynote by Bob Muglia. This year's theme was Back to the Future. There were a couple of funny moments ... I am watching this remotely via the web ...
- Optimization Models
- Basic, standard, rationalized and dynamic
- Very tangible
- Compare your organization vs. standardized models
- tremendous ROI
- Core Infra model
- business app model
- get better results more quickly
- come to market more quickly
- DSI
- four year journey
- dynamic systems integration
- Four technology initiatives
- User driven
- b
- c
- d
- Long term plan
- Technology is driving change to agile and dynamic
- Needs to connect (partner, supplier, etc.)
- Response time expectations are shrinking
- Experience of kids today is very different
- Get everything instantly and have no tolerance for delay
- Next gen of customers and executives
- Relationships are discovered, established, transacted and done
- Smaller and faster, need to be captured and the first to do this wins
- This is the need for agility - the differentiator
- Gap is growing between agile and non-agile
- Agility gives higher QoS
- Ability to sense a change in the environment and do something about it
- Balance between speed and operational efficiency
- Not something done in one place - it must be system-wide as any single non-agile piece can bring down the entire system.
- Business throws a need over the wall to the developers who in turn write an app and throw it over the wall to infra - but then scale and other problems crop up.
- SoA and virtualization, operationally aware apps, etc will lead the way here.
- How to measure agility? (Gartner speaker)
- Damning effect - 70% on maintaining - treading water
- Some luck ones get to 50-50
- How?
- Focus on cost - change the equation
- From more and more with less
- Pay for what the business needs
- Variable cost model
- Pay for each transaction
- QoS
- Every app doesn’t need five nines or millisecond response time. Build only what it needs.
- Is QoS a silver bullet?
- Not without agility
- Adjust for change
- If you cannot adjust for change then you are just a cost center and will be outsourced
- Outsourcing known for agility?
- Cost, agility and QoS are all a pendulum - all 3 are important
- Hard to measure QoS as businesses are hard to measure
- How do you measure agility?
- Ask the customer and then translate it to what you do in IT
- Measure and improve it
- You can then come full circle and demonstrate it to the business
- Maturity model
- CMM
- Process
- Focus on process - you will get it right
- If process is right technology will change which will in turn mess up process
- Process alone is not enough
- Process, technology and organization
- Every step needs its own ROI
- ROI is not always about $$
- Squeeze cost out in early stages
- Take IT from cost center to profit center
- Later stages require investment
- It is a system
- Focus on cost, QoS and agility
- Dynamic IT (Back to Bob)
- Foundation
- Federated
- Need to work with others more and more
- Share identities
- Share systems
- Access for customers
- SaaS
- Security
- Foundation for federation
- InterOp
- Wide variety of heterogeneous systems
- Committed to making sure your data can be shared with others
- Products are built to be interoperable
- Communities (including open source)
- Virtualization
- Virtualized and physical are cohesive and need to be managed from the same set of tools
- Windows Server 2008 and System Center 2007 demo
- Server core demo
- Sweet Windows Server 2008 wallpaper!
Well, I need to leave to a meeting so you're only getting the first half! :)