My time working at the Springboard stand ended this afternoon.  Over 4 days I met with and talked to hundreds of people about the Springboard Series, explaining how it provides a central location to find out more about Windows desktop, have a successful deployment and continue to take advantage of the features and manage the network.

Springboard Champion, Stephen L. Rose, took this photo earlier today of the 4 of us who ran the booth.  Thanks to Stephen and Melissa for selecting us!  That’s me on the left, Miklos (Bolivia), Erdal (New Zealand) and Justin (UK).

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin!

I’ve attended my last session.  Actually I attended my last half session because I walked out at the 30 minute point.  This session was like the vast majority of the content I saw this week.  It was marketing slides presented by sales people.  There were a few exceptions but not enough to make me want to return to TechEd next year. I didn’t come here to Berlin from Ireland to attend sales sessions – I can do that at home.  But at least I didn’t pay €1,500-€2,000 to come here like many others will have done.  I would have been sick to my stomach if that had been the situation for me.

Overall there were maybe 4 technical sessions that I got to.  The keynote was a dreadful omen for the rest of the week.  They opened 2 doors to let over 7,000 people into a room.  The keynote was dreadful marketing drivel and the entire event continued much on that theme, unfortunately.  The coffee docks were limited to the 2 exhibition halls.  The main exhibitor hall became a bottleneck because it was the only route to and from the conference halls.  There wasn’t enough desks, power or seating outside of the halls for people who had to work between sessions.  I found myself sitting on the floor with a near flat battery on more than one occasion.  I know MS has to cut costs but the ticket costs didn’t go down for those who paid to attend.  It was only by Thursday that some coffee docks appeared in building 7 and some additional desks were put into the previously vast empty space in the front of the CommNet room.

On the plus side the swag bag was decent.  It’s an olive green laptop bag which I’ll probably use, unlike the turkeys of Amsterdam 2004 (remember the giant orange U shaped bags stuffed into bins and lying on the outside streets?) or the plastic waste of money from Barcelona 2008 that was a logo fest?  And the wireless network performed admirably under the load of 7000 laptops and twitterers. 

Overall, I felt the event was a disappointment.  Unless there is a marked change in the speakers and content that MS is providing then I have no desire to spend a week being sold to.  I came here to learn and am leaving have learned very little that I couldn’t have gotten from a 2 hour webcast.  I hope this changes but unfortunately there seems to be a trend towards rah-rah Redmond-sugar marketing speakers who we could all do with a little less of.

Speaker: Vipul Shah, Microsoft.

Oh no, another marketing head.  It’s been Need I say Vipul is a senior product manger?  Isn’t everyone in MS a senior product manager?  It also appears to me that the majority of the virtualisation technologies are developed in the MS centre in India rather than Redmond.  We heard in Ireland, recently at the lunch events, about the global around the clock effort to develop Windows.  This is further evidence of that.

Rockstar Mark Russinovich is playing in another room in this slot in a session that I wouldn’t have much time for, i.e. UAC is/isn’t a security feature.  That story has been done to death now.  That means this room is 60% empty.

Production application virtualisation (on server VM’s) has increased maybe by 100% during 2006-2008.  Lots of reasons which we know: deployment/management time, carbon foot print, flexibility, lower costs, DR, etc. 

I walked out on this session after 30 minutes of marketing filled with incorrect statements, e.g. “sure, go ahead an use more than 64 cores in your Hyper-V server and it will be supported”.  Uh uh.  It will not be supported.

I went out last night with some of the MS Ireland folks.  They had one spare ticket to go see the Blue Man Group in Berlin.  I had no idea what to expect.  To be honest I didn’t think I would have too much fun.  As it turns out, I was belly laughing quite a bit during the show.  It was great fun even before it really started.  A trip to a Brauhaus in the Sony Centre followed and I was in bed by 01:00 with a 07:00 rise to get to the conference venue.

Friday’s schedule is not a good one for the IT Pro.  I’m on at the Springboard stand at 11:30 until the show close at 14:45.  That means I get to one session today and there’s nothing on at 09:00 that appeals to me.  That’s a pity.

Speakers: Bill Anderson, Jeff Wettlaufer, Jeffrey Sutherland, Mark Florida

This session is about the successor to Configuration Manager 2007 and not ConfigMgr 2007 R3.  It will be a demo session.

The console is like a new version of the OpsMgr/VMM console.  It almost looks like a web version crossed with MMC.  This breaks up things nicely because the 2007 version is quite cluttered now.  Locations of things have been moved around to make it more natural. 

I can see straight away that advertisements are no longer involved in software distribution.

Collections, DCM and Asset Intelligence are grouped under “Assets and Compliance” and are all renamed.

Delegation appears to have been simplified with a role model.  Currently there are 12 roles in additional to Administrator, e.g. “Application Editor” is a role for a person who creates packages but doesn’t deploy them.  This makes it much simpler than the current system.  You can copy a role and customise it according to your needs.  Security scopes are new.  This can be bound with Security Roles to define who can do what actions to what assets.  The example we see has scopes for geographic regions.

We get a demo where an AD user is added as a application administrator and is granted permissions to Europe and Sales & Marketing scopes.  The console is launched as Bruce.  Now Bruce can only see the parts of the console that he has permission to.  Much better than what we currently have.  Some existing packages are now assigned to a scope that Bruce has rights to by the overall administrator.  In Bruce’s console these applications appear automatically. 

Next up is Compliance Settings (aka DCM).  A baseline is defined for an application.  We can see there is a high rate of non-compliance.  We can be notified automatically that a baseline has a specified non-compliance rate, e.g. if compliance is less than 80%.  An alert is in the Compliance Settings summary.  Depending on the baseline, there might be action links for the alert, e.g. remediate the non-compliant component.

Each major feature will have a similar alerts section in the final product, e.g. if s/w deployment is below a certain level then your application deployment team can react immediately.  You can only see alerts within your scope.  It is also possible to do automatic remediation.  This is a tick box for when there is support for a remediation, e.g. script based, WMI or registry settings.  This means ConfigMgr could fix non-compliant machines with no human action.

We get a demo of Windows registry device compliance.  The registry setting is originally non-compliant but is automatically changed to bring it into a compliant state.

Device (mobile) management will be integrated with normal (PC) management.  You’ll get to them via the same wizard start up points.  We’re shown the configuration of some Compliance Settings for Windows Mobile devices: Device Wipe (5 incorrect login attempts are allowed and 6th will automatically wipe the device), Password  (4 character minimum PIN with idle timeout) and Platform Lockdown (prohibit camera).  This baseline is assigned to all systems.  Non-mobile devices in All Systems will report as compliant because the settings are irrelevant.  That’s good.

A demo: The settings are forced onto a Windows Mobile device.

We now have “Applications”; a generic container.  This contains deployment types.  For example, you can have a mobile device deployment or a Windows deployment for a single application.  ConfigMgr figures out the right one to use.  A Detection Method is defined (e.g. the installer code or a script).  If the s/w is there then it’s not installed.  If it’s not there then it is installed.  Requirements are specified, e.g. memory, disk space.  A new one is user device affinity.  A user’s primary device might be where you install bespoke expensive software, e.g. Visio.  If they temporarily log in else where the s/w won’t be deployed, i.e. not wasting licenses/money.  “Primary Device” can be manual, a result of Asset Intelligence or even user self-defined.

Advertisements are replaced by Deployments.  You can set an Intent, e.g. mandatory, available (puts the app in a catalog) or prohibited (the uninstaller is invoked).  The catalog is a web UI where users can elect to pull down optional software, e.g. Adobe Reader.  The s/w will install automatically for the user.  A Silverlight control on the site will immediately communicate the client on the computer to kick things off quickly.  Application deployment rules are still applied, e.g. if the app is not appropriate for the user/machine then it will not install.  OH HELL SWEET: There is a workflow built into this where software can be set up to require approval.  For example, a user requests Visio but this request must be manually approved.  This is major stuff that every SMS/ConfigMgr customer will love.

Packages and Programs isn’t changing.  However there will be file level single instance storage on the Site Server between packages.

There are now distribution point groups.  You assign software to the DP group and any distribution point in it gets the software.  You can build new DP servers and add them to the group.  They automatically get the software.  Another big improvement for larger architectures. 

… With MDOP, System Center and Virtualisation

Speakers: Jeff Wettlaufer (MS), Jeremy Chapman (MS) and Michael Niehaus (MS)

I briefly considered going instead to the Russinovich session on Windows 7 kernel changes but we noticed that it’s a PDC session, i.e. aimed squarely at developers.  So here I am at a session that will probably focus on MDOP (a product set only available to purchase by desktop software assurance customers).  I’ll probably never use anything from this session but here I am anyway.

Application Compatibility Toolkit

Jeremy Chapman: He seems a bit nervous but shouldn’t be.  It’s a good presentation.

This presentation kicks off with Application Compatibility.  We get a look at the survey and the most demo’d application on Windows 7 yet: StockViewer.  It’s a XP app with loads of problems that you need to shim using AppCompat.  First, Standard User Analyser is used and that fixes some of the bits but not all.  The Compatibility Administrator is shown and it has a huge database of application shims/mitigations to make the apps work on Windows 7/Vista. 

Tip from MS: When shimming an application then shim it’s dependencies.

Tip from MS: create a single SDB shim file for the entire company and include as many application fixes as possible.  That makes it easier to deploy/manage.

Session Virtualisation can be used for some appcompat, e.g. W2008 has WOW32 for 16-bit applications.

MED-V should be used by medium/large organisations who are considering XP Mode.  It provides centralised administration and control, e.g. change control.  You also get policy for interaction between physical and virtual, e.g.  allow copy/paste but not local disk access.

App-V DOES NOT solve appcompat OS issues.  It does solve app to app compatibility issues.  You cannot run legacy IE in App-V.

Windows 7 Deployment

Using W2008 R2 WDS multicast MS went from 17 WDS unicast servers to 1 WDS multicast server and quadrupled their total output to 2100 builds per day.

Michael Niehaus takes over with WAIK and MDT (check out my whitepaper on XP to Win7 deployment).  Now we get a demo.  This is a very demo intensive session.

MDT is light touch, e.g. LiteTouch.VBS.  To get zero touch where the admin deploys from an admin station then you need to use Configuration Manager.  SP2 adds support for ConfigMgr 2007.  MDT is free.  ConfigMgr obviously allows you to automate deployment from 0-100, e.g. report/collection for suitable machines and run a job on them to upgrade/migrate and then get success/failure reports.

Jeff Wettlaufer takes over.

ACT does integrate into ConfigMgr.  V5.5 doesn’t at the moment but there is a fix on the way.  V6.0 will integrate as well.  I wasn’t aware of this integration.

You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade Assessment reports in ConfigMgr.  Obviously you can add s/w and App-V distributions into a ConfigMgr OSD task sequence.  In the future, there will be integration with MED-V similar to the current integration with App-V.  That’s 12-18 months away with V2.0 of MED-V.

Michael Niehaus takes over again.  This time to show how MDT can integrate with ConfigMgr to add additional features.  You can create MDT task sequences in ConfigMgr and create boot images.  Why?  MDT task sequences offer more functionality.  Documentation for this integration is built into MDT in the accelerator docs.

Configuration Manager 2007 R2

Jeff is back with some ConfigMgr R3 roadmap information.

The task sequencer has a new boot media creation process.  You can do a pre-staged media boot image that contains the build, e.g. for road warriors or hardware providers.  Give them the media and they build a machine outside of your network with your image using the media you create in ConfigMgr 2007 R3 – sounds similar to the MDT 2010 solution.

… to Provide VDI, Session, and Application Centralised Publishing

Speaker: Alex Balcanuqall, Senior Product Planner, Microsoft

We’re talking about VDI (Windows desktop virtualisation in the data centre), Terminal Services and application (TermSvcs and App-V) publishing to the end user via a man in the middle broker in W2008 R2.  Hyper-V is used in some of this (VDI).  VMM and SCCM used to manage VDI.

Remote Desktop Services VS Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

• Tech Maturity: RDS Proven, VDI emerging.
• Scalability: RDS gets more users per server.
• Isolation/Security: VDI isolates the user, 1 OS per user and users _can_ run as admin.  Opposite for RDS.
• Remote User Experience: Protocol (RDP in MS) dependent
• User flexibility: User is non-admin in RDS
• Application Compatibility: RDS is a server OS and requires TermScvs compatibility.  VDI is a desktop OS.

RD Virtualisation Host

• Windows Server manages VM’s
• Install the Remote Desktop Virtualisation Host Role services
• Receives commands from the Connection Broker to start VM’s
• Collects information on VM’s and sends to Connection Broker (session information and VM-state (ie. is it running or hibernated)).

User requests VM on client –> Broker determines rights –> Broker initiates VM –> host starts up VM –> Broker redirects RDP session to VM (a direct RDP connection now)

The redirection uses the RDP 5.2 redirect packet so it’s very backwards compatible.

RDP Broker

• Connection Broker: what the client connects to initially
• Publishing service: aggregates VDI VM’s, RDS session servers or published applications
• Redirector: Most common mistake in setup is not setting this up in addition to the connection broker
• Connection broker and redirector can be separate

TS Web Access talk to Centralised Publish Service on TCP 5504

Redirector

It’s a session host in “drain”/dedicated redirector mode.  It forwards RDP sessions to the connection borker and retuns the list of IP addresses received from the broker.  Users never TS into it.

Certificates

Must be done right to keep single sign-on and to have no error popups for users.

You can use a single trusted SSL cert for all components.

Prepare VDI host

• Install Hyper-V
• Install Remote Desktop Virtualisation Host role

Sizing?

It depends:

• applications
• data used
• demand cycle of users
• depends on OS

And thing about CPU and memory requirements.  Only way to know for sure is to do a pilot with real users and real applications in real usage over a period.

Prepare Client OS VM’s

• Supports XP SP3, Vista and Windows 7
• Install the Hyper-V IC’s
• Enable RDP services (GPO)
• Add users to the groups (GPO)
• Enable Remote RPC (TermSvcs GPO)
• Open firewall for RDP and Remote Service Management
• Modify RDP Listener Permissions (manual or script).  This can only be done after a domain join.  Possibly a start up script is the way to go here. 
• There’s a script from MS for this but the URL on the screen is way too long to copy (must never have heard of Tinyurl)

Configure the Connection Broker and Redirector

• Broker: Is the RD Server Role
• Redirector: Is RD session host

When you install Remote Desktop Service Role the server is automatically put in “drain” mode so users cannot log into this server.

Unfortunately, we now get a very confusing and unrehearsed demonstration.  I’m lost.  It appears to me that the presenter is here because he is a manager, not a knowledgeable techie.

I can’t keep up with note taking in this session.  Sorry; it’s all a bit of a mess.

Pooled VDI VM’s

Often people start with this and switch to dedicated per user VM’s.  Problems: when to patch them.  S/W deployment – do you really want to install/stream non-standard s/w to a VM every time a user logs in?  Probably not.

There was some slides on tips’n’tricks and common mistakes.  He rushed through it after spending too much time troubleshooting his demo lab.  Disappointing session.

Although I do a little bit of speaking and writing about Windows deployment, I am nothing compared to gurus like Johan Arwidmark, Michael Niehaus and Rhonda Layfield.  Speaking of Johan, he released a new edition of his deployment CD.  It covers MDT 2010 and Configuration Manager 2007 OSD.  It’s a free download and well worth getting your hands on.  Johan is speaking this week at TechEd Europe 2009.  I’ll miss him unfortunately but if you are here I would recommend you go along.  Based on what I see on the Minasi forum, Johan knows this stuff inside-out.

The Irish delegation had a country party last night somewhere in East Berlin.  I finished up slightly late at the Springboard stand and made my way to my hotel.  I powered up the laptop and found lots of work waiting for me.  Add in me feeling exhausted and I was not up to a party, e.g. after lunch I was walking the halls and totally missed two Dutch friends, Wim and Ton who were calling my name … right in front of me.  I was in a world of my own.  I couldn’t find the energy to go out.  I ended up working until about 21:00 and was quickly asleep after that.

Today is day 4 of TechEd Europe 2009 in Berlin.  I’m back on the Springboard stand in the afternoon so I’ll only be able to go in the morning once again.  It looks like I’m doing a group policy and Windows performance sessions before lunch.  There’s a DirectAccess architecture session on in the afternoon that I will unfortunately miss.  I’d like to learn a bit about that even though it doesn’t really play much a role in my world.

Speaker: David Lowe, Senior Product Planner, Microsoft.  Former Dubliner working in Redmond and the first ever speaker at the Irish Windows User Group the day after the W2008 launch in Feb 2008.

This session will focus on IIS 7.5 (W2008 R2) and the free extensions to IIS 7.5.  It is aimed to be a level 300 session.

I’ve blogged about this before: The IIS team have been VERY busy.  There are a lot of extensions to expand the platform for web beyond IIS focused for the IT Pro and Dev.

Web Platform Installer

The Web Platform Installer is a small little tool that makes it easy to download and install MS and 3rd party extensions, e.g. PHP.  A demo now of the WPI v2.0.  David shows that there is stuff like Wordpress and PHP available here for download and auto-install.  DasBlog is installed in the demo.

IIS 7.5

 

• More reliable
• More control
• More secure
• More Choice

FTP 7.5 built in on W2008 R2.  Includes a secure FTP option.  Same applies for some of the other IIS7 extensions: built into 7.5.

W2008 R2

• ASP.NET on Server Core
• PowerShell Module & CmdLets
• Integrated FTP and WebDAV
• Integrated Admin Pack Modules
• Configuration Logging and Tracing
• Best Practices Analyser

.NET in Server Core

Couldn’t do it in time for W2008.  You get a subset of 2.0, 3.0 (WCF, WF) and 3.5 (WF additions from 3.5 and LINQ).  Subset of ASP.NET support for IIS.  PowerShell support and WoW64 for 32 bit applications.  No WPF, small bit from CLR missing and a few bits from ASP.NET.

Use DISM to install .NET installed on Server Core.

Now we get a demo of setting up .NET on Server Core.  The installer sits at around 99.8% for ages while .NET installs – we all know how long that installer typically runs for.  Enable remote management.  Install it and then enable it:

• dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:IIS-ManagementService
• Regedit on the Core machine to enable remote management
• net start wmsvc
• sc config wmsvc start= auto

Extensions

Possible because MS added an API to IIS.  This allows MS and 3rd parties to add functionality to IIS.  MS has added several so far that are free and supported.

FTP 7.5 built in.  WebDAV 7.5 built in and using industry standards.

PowerShell

• Seaqmless integration
• Add.configure websites, etc.
• Advanced configuration
• Run time query data

Very marketing driven slide with little info.

We get a demo now of installing and configuring the IIS PowerShell module on Server Core followed by some cmdlet demos.

Web Deployment Tool

Use this to change the location of a web site/application or to copy it to other machines.  This simplifies the task by packing the contents of the application, certs, databases, etc.  You can migrate between IIS 6.0, 7.0 and 7.5.  Integrated in IIS and Visual Studio 2010.  Can synchronize changed data.  Server admin rights not necessarily required.

We get a demo of this tool now.  It was installed using the WPI.  In the IIS manager you can right click on the site and select Deploy to get various options for the site.  This fires up a wizard, e.g. for exporting a package of the site so you can deploy it to a different web server.  This creates a zip file that you can use to transport the web application.  This zip structure also happens to be in the format that the WPI uses to distribute applications.  This means anyone can export and upload their site to MS for submission into the WPI.  When you install this Web Deployment Tool on Core you need to install every component pretty much by the sounds of it.  You then need to start the msdepsvc service using net start.  From the remote IIS Management console you need to reconnect to the server to re-query for the available modules.

IIS URL Rewriter

Any application like DNN often uses unfriendly long URL’s.  The purpose of the URL Rewriter is to give us human friendly URL’s that resolve to the application URL’s.

IIS Application Request Routing

• Balance loads across servers
• Manage and monitor multiple servers and web farms more easily through IIS Manager
• Create affinity for server requests by client or host name

V2.0 features edge caching.  I’ve been liking the look of this tool for a while.  It doesn’t do high availability so things like the F5 devices still have a place.  This V2 is still and RC.

Search Engine Optimisation

Tools you can install on your server to boost your position in search engine ranking.  It crawls your site and help with the SEO work normally done by experts.  It runs from the IIS Manager.

Demo: he crawls a tiny bit of Google.com and finds lots of SEO violations!  500 links searched and 768 violations found.

Others:

IIS Application Warm Up (in 7.5)

You can pre-load applications on your web servers so that they don’t take ages to get going.

CLR Settings per Application Pool (in 7.5)

Some ASP.NET thing :)

Configuration Logging and Tracing (in 7.5)

• R2 provides read/write audition of configuration changes
• Logging of events unrelated to reads/writes
• In Event Viewer under IIS-Configuration
• Audit what configuration changes are made on your IIS servers by administrators

Application Pool Identities (in 7.5)

You can use domain accounts for this now.

Best Practices Analyser (in 7.5)

Make sure your server is secure and configured for best performance.  You can run this tool to verify you have followed best practices.

Windows Web Server 2008 R2

The cheap but limited web server OS.  W2008 R2 is 64 bit only and this edition supports 4 processors and 32GB RAM.  Does not require CAL’s or the External Connector.

Speaker: Elden Christensen, Microsoft – owner of the failover clustering and network load balancing features.

One of the primary reasons that DR invocations plan fail is the dependence on people.  This was the result of a study after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  In the event of a disaster people focused on their personal priorities, not on their DR plan actions.

Network Options To Stretch Cluster:

• Stretch the VLAN: 2003 did this
• Dissimilar subnets: 2008 introduced this support.

Longer distance = latency.  Windows 2008 allows you to tune the heartbeat time out.  Out of the box <500ms is fine but you can tune this.  This can be tunes differently for nodes on the same or different subnets within the one cluster.

Windows 2008 inter-node communication can be encrypted for cross WAN clusters.

Client reconnect reconsiderations:

• If the nodes are in different subnets then there are DNS timing issues to consider.  A records get cached on DNS and on the client.  If there’s a failover then what happens?  The client/DNS have cached the old record and clients fail to connect until their purge/timeout the DNS cache.  Also consider DNS AD replication between sites.
• Configure a smaller TTL for the record but you need to find the right balance between too frequent and infrequent lookups.
• RegisterAllProcidersIP and/or HostRecordTTL

Alternative 1: Advanced Planning:

Have a local failover in Site A and in Site B.  Configure the cluster to failover to a local node first, e.g. a local hardware issue rather than a site failure.  If site failure then fail over to site B.  This is OK if the DR plan allows for non-instant failover.

Alternative 2: Otherwise stretch the VLAN.

The IP of the clustered resource never changes.

Alternative 3: Abstraction Device

For example, Cisco has a device to abstract and IP address to reroute it as required to the correct server in the correct site.

Storage

You need to have two copies of the data.  Single site allows for single copy storage.  But that’s not going to fly for DR.  You need to replicate the data between site A and B.  MS relies on the vendors/partners, e.g. HP LeftHand, HP EVA Controller, HP XP Controller, Compellent, DoubleTake, SteelEye.  There is also application stuff such as Exchange CCR.

Synchronous or Asynchronous can both be used – it depends on your application.  Synchronous commits data to both sets of storage and then responds to the application to confirm the write.  Asynchronous writes to one set of storage and then replicates it to the other site.  Obviously the latter is good in limited bandwidth scenarios.  There is a potential for data loss.  It stretches over great distances and has no impact on application performance.

But the former guarantees no data loss but requires more bandwidth between sites.  Latency is an issue so the stretch is a short distance (<100KM) and has an impact on application performance with greater latencies.

The storage partner writes DLL’s that integrate into clustering so it ensures consistency of storage ownership/failover during a failover of the clustered resource.

The validation tool is not written for these replicated storage solutions and will fail.  This is acknowledged by MS and is documented online.

HP StorageWorks Representative

The speaker is talking about the HP story, CLX for Windows.  CLX = Cluster Extension Resource.  This is for EVA and XP SAN.  There is support now for Hyper-V Live Migration in the new release.  This adds W2008 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 support.  This Live Migration support indicates the speed of failover.  EVA support in a month, XP next year.  Apparently this does not support CSV at the moment due to the controllers role in the replication process.  This costs around €3000 per cluster node so you better be serious about DR – and this doesn’t include SAN replication licensing.

We get a video of this demo based on W2008 R2 Hyper-V live migration on a pair of replicated EVA 4000 SAN’s.  We saw 3 failed pings on the grainy video but the HP guy claims they were retransmits, not dropped packets.  I’m not convinced that HP have real Live Migration between sites but 2-3 missed pings between sites for DR is pretty good.  You have duplicate copies of data in 2 sites in case of a disaster.

Quorum Overview

It’s all about getting a vote majority to decide who owns a resource.

• Disk only: The quorum disk (who ever is the owner of it) decides.  Even number of nodes.
• Node and disk majority: Disk owner breaks the vote
• Node majority: No witness disk
• File Share Witness: Instead of the disk

Replicated Witness Disk in DR:

Not to be used unless recommended by the storage vendor  Normally not used in replicated storage clustering because it is really 2 disks, one in each site.  MS not a fan of it.

Which to use?

• Node Majority: Odd numbers of hosts.  The majority of nodes will be in the primary data centre, e.g. 3 nodes in site A and 2 nodes in site B.  If there’s a break in comms between sites A and B then the nodes will vote.  If node 1 in site A (3 nodes) votes it can talk to itself (1 vote) and the other 2 (now 3 votes).  In site B node 4 can talk to itself and it’s neighbour (2 votes).  Therefore the resource stays in site A.  But in DR if site A burns down then you need to manually override because site B cannot win a vote.  This is called Forcing Quorum.
• Multi-Site with File Share Witness: This is normally the best one to use.  Place a file (SMB) share in a third (witness) site.  There’s nothing special about the share other than a single text file.  This allows even node numbers where the file share is the vote breaker.  If site A fails then site B can see the file share in the witness site.  Site B initiates a failover automatically.  But what it site A and site B can both see the witness site but not each other?  Seems there’s a solution with the file share but the speaker doesn’t say … I guess it’s something in that text file.  This comes up in QA.  The node that owns the file in the file share is healthy then it becomes the vote breaker.

Workloads

Hyper-V: If you use DHCP then you can use different VLAN’s.  If your VM’s use static IP then stretch the VLAN(s).  Live Migration really requires stretched VLAN’s because otherwise the IP must change in the VM and that requires a TCP outage.

CSV: Requires a single VLAN between nodes.  CAV assumes all nodes can concurrently access the LUN.  SAN replication assumes that only one array has the replicated LUN active at a time.  CSV is not a requirement for Live Migration.  MS says you should talk to your storage vendor for support statements.  The whole scenario depends on how the storage is replicated by the vendor.

SQL: Missed this because it was very quick.

Exchange 2007: It has CCR so you don’t need storage level replication.  Change the TTL to 5 minutes.  File share witness should be on the hub transport server in the primary site.  Exchange 2010 is probably very different because of the possibility of using a DAG.

Q&A

DFS-R: Can you use this for multi-site clustering? Yes and No.  DFS-R is supported on 2008 R2 clusters but you cannot use it as the replication mechanism because it only replicates at file level and file close.

Does the HP CLX support CSV? Not in this release.  They are working with MS to get this working.  HP LeftHand will do this.  Compellent does this too – I think Lakeland Dairies (Irish company) are using their solution for inter-building DR for Hyper-V on their “campus”.  I believe there’s a whitepaper on it somewhere on the MS site.  I did find this video.

What is Springboard?  It’s a program by Microsoft to help IT Pro’s do a successful deployment of the desktop operating system, e.g. Windows 7.  The site acts as a portal, gathering together articles, blog posts and videos generated by experts inside and outside of Microsoft.  That means you can go to a single location to learn about :

• Windows 7 and its features
• Plan your deployment
• Run your pilot
• Deploy Windows 7 and
• Manage your desktop network

Springboard also runs the Springboard Technical Excellence Program (STEP).  This is a global group of around 140 MCT’s and MVP’s who work with Springboard to add content and present the content to local markets.  I’m a member of STEP.  I applied to staff the Springboard stand for a few hours a day at TechEd EMEA 2009 and was accepted.  That’s why I’m here in Berlin now.

Yesterday afternoon I did my first stint at the stand.  It was hectic.  Springboard sponsored a party for MVP’s, MCT’s and IT Pro’s and tickets were limited to 300 people.  The demand was nuts and not everyone managed to do their registration correctly.  Throw in the usual conference booth competitions and the genuine interest in Springboard and you can imagine how busy we were.  I ended up answering all sorts of questions:

• What is STEP?
• Can you tell me about Windows 7?
• Hyper-V
• Boot from VHD
• SAN Storage
• MDT 2010/WDS
• “I didn’t register for the party but can I get a ticket?”

It was wide and varied audience.  I’m back on again this afternoon.

We had the party last night at a club called Watergate.  I hung out with some of the Irish folks and didn’t go wild.  The drink was flowing and plenty of folks made the most of it.  I’m still feeling a little ropey this morning despite being cautious but I suspect it’s mostly lack of sleep over the last 3-4 nights that’s got me.  We have an Irish night out tonight and I’ll be taking it easy there too.

Speaker: Jeff Wettlaufer (Microsoft)

This rooms is packed.  Standing room only at this point. 

There will be support for 300,000 support.  Jan 10 2010, mainstream support for SMS 2003 ends.  Be aware of V.Next when planning your migration from SMS to ConfigMgr.

ConfigMgr 2007 SP2

SP2 adds support for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2.  This allows them to be clients and allows those servers to host site roles.  Server 2008 R2 BranchCache is a game changer.  In MS they cut 90% of traffic to the Mexico office with this.

Improved Client Policy Evaluation:

• Faster processions.  Pre-SP2 there was a 2 minute delay
• More efficient s/w deployment configured to run at user logon
• There was a 10 minute delay pre-SP2
• User/Group targeted advertisements instantly available after logon with SP2

BranchCache Support:

• Integration with ConfigMgr reduces vastly WAN traffic and transfer loads on distribution points.
• Client downloads are faster (from local cache)
• Configuration Document guide available
• Requires R2 DP and Win 7 Enterprise/Ultimate clients

64 bit Support

• App-V x64 client
• Remote Control for x64 XP and W2003
• x64 performance counters
• Update to OpsMgr MP for 64bit OS
• x64 support for OpsMgr agent

Asset Intelligence

• Software Assurance not required
• The requirement for a cert has been removed for updates synchronisation

Intel vPro Technology

• Out of band wifi management
• Power state configuration
• Other stuff – vPro costs extra on the h/w side

KVM coming in the future.

OS Deployment

• Multiselect and delete drivers in the console
• Task sequence editor UI displays the package names as in the console.

Available as of Oct 22.

Now on to ConfigMgr 2007 R3

It’s still quite early in the engineering phase.  Support for power management – it’s the only thing they’ve talked about so far from what I can see. 

• Monitor power consumption
• Plan and create a power management policy and check for exceptions
• Apply power management policy
• Check compliance and remediate
• Report in power savings and costs savings and environmental impact

Collections will be used to apply power policies so some engineering required to group clients appropriately.

Demo:

The Power Management Client Agent has a dependency on the Hardware Inventory Client Agent.  With both configured (and with schedule noted on hardware agent) you’ll start getting data back.

In the collection you can enable power management settings in a new Power Management tab.  There is an option for a peak plan and a non-peak plan.  That allows the admin to select the Windows power plans, e.g. balanced, etc.  In the properties you can configure that Windows power plan in the ConfigMgr console, e.g. sleep after 5 minutes, etc.  This will support older OS’s because the core focus is on power down and hibernation but Win7 takes advantage of it more.

I ended up coming in a bit late for this one due to meeting a few people I know.

So far what I’ve picked up is that DPM v3 can grow storage volumes as required.

DPM v3 can back up laptops over VPN.  This supports XP, Vista and Windows 7.  It scales to 1000 clients per DPM server.  Disconnected clients will continue to backup using VSS according to DPM policies.  This is not DirectAccess aware now.  It was a huge request but release timing prevented it.  I’d guess it’ll be in SP1.

What I missed:

• Self service restore for users from Windows Explorer (Previous Versions) or Microsoft Office.  Windows 7 clients get a system tray icon with a bit more information.
• Self service restore for SQL DBA’s
• The store scales much more than 2007
• We get R2 Hyper-V support CSV and alternative host recovery

Client policies can include specific folders and exclude specified file types.  Users can also include specific folders (optional for the admin via policy).  This is new for typical corporate backup.  Products live Iron Mountain’s Connected/LiveVault had this for ages.  You won’t get moaning alerts when the client is offline.  You get 14 days allowance for the client being offline – then you get an alert.  The client has a simple synchronise now button when they get back to the corporate network to synch their VSS backups to DPMv3.

Now they talk about DPM2DPM4DR, i.e. DPM replication to a DPM site in a DR site.  This is done by setting up another DPM site and then installing an agent on the primary DPM server.  You can do this in 2007.  A powershell cmdlet allows failover.  v3 includes a GUI click to do this.  You can do production site DPM to DR DPM to tape.  You can then use the DR tape to recover in the production site … or the DPM store.  The process of selecting what to backup from the primary DPM to the secondary is that you pick which items it has backed up.  So you can tier your data backup .. maybe not everything needs to be backed up to the secondary/DR DPM.  You also can decide to use a different synchronisation schedule depending on your bandwidth.  This is also a block level differential backup like the primary backup.

Changes:

• Scalability per DPMv3 server: 100 servers, 1000 laptops, 2000 databases
• Increased fan-in of data sources per DPM server
• Up to 80TB per DPM server
• Automatic protection of new SQL/MOSS data sources
• Decreased inconsistent replica errors
• Reduced alert volume
• Automatic rerunning of jobs and improved self healing

Worst case scenario is that you lose 14 minutes and 59 seconds worth of data because it backups up every 15 minutes.  By restoring SQL to “latest” it recovers not only the DB but replays the logs to the very last transaction that was committed in the TX log.

You can produce scheduled reports of backup status for protection groups, servers or data sources, e.g. a DBA can get reports on their databases in their mailbox every morning.

Bare metal recovery for Windows Servers is now a check box.

The 2007 – 2010 upgrade path is … You must be on 64 bit 2008 or higher OS to do an in-place upgrade.

Beta is out now.  The RC is after XMas 2009.  The RTM will be Spring 2010.

Non-AD machines will be supported in DPM 2010 (not in the beta.  It will be in the RC).  It sounds like it will be drowned in scripting.  I think they should talk to the OpsMgr team.  X.509 is the future.  OpsMgr isn’t as clean as it could be in this regard but it’s easy enough.

Speaker: Mark Minasi.

The session I was originally going to wasn’t what I was expecting so I decided to go to Mark’s VHD session instead.  As usual, these are just highlights from the session and you should attend it if you get the opportunity.

This session is all about VHD.  Mark warns us it’s nearly all command prompt.  It also applies to Windows Server 2008 R2.  As announced at TechEd Barcelona 2008 by Mark Russinovich, VHD is now the MS data centre image standard.

Survey: half of the audience have used WAIK and WinPE.

BCD/BCDEDit replace boot.ini since Vista.  That first 100MB volume in Windows 7 has no drive letter and is where the BCD is stored.  You only see in in Diskpart and Disk Management.  We also can use this for BitLocker instead of the nasty Vista (non) solution of a 1.5GB partition.  This also allows us to boot from VHD files.

Normally, on a clean build that 100MB partition is at the start of your drive.  However there are upgrade scenarios where it can appear elsewhere on the drive (end or middle).  It doesn’t matter and don’t bother to move it.

Example of CompletePC backup from command prompt:

wbdadmin start backup -backuptarget:m: –allcritical –incvlude:e:

The –allcritical flag includes the 100MB partition.  Do this.

CompletePC backup uses VHD as it’s destination instead of tape.  That first backup takes and age but all the folling ones are synthetic, i.e. differential with the effect of full.

Note: You can use Disk2vhd to convert a hard disk to VHD.  Not supported in production.

Notes:

• Server 2008 R2 uses VSS now so Server Backup is 5 times faster than Server 2008.
• DFS and FRS are gone from Windows Server 2008 R2.  Watch out for AF upgrades from 2003 R2 or earlier.
• You can do S/W RAID on Windows 7.  Don’t do it.

We can mount VHD’s and we can boot from them:

• Those product samples from MS supplied as VHD can be booted up on your lab machine, not only as a VM.
• You can multi purpose a physical machine, e.g. a server with multiple VHD’s can boot up as a web server 29 days a month and as a finance/tax machine on the last day of the month.  This is not dual booting.
• You can dual boot a demo laptop with Windows 7 for office work and Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V for demo work.

VHD is 96% efficient, i.e. runs at 96% or thereabouts the speed of the underlying physical disk.

So you can have drives on your machine:

• 100MB BCD partition
• The rest of the disk: on here you place your VHD’s.

With BCDedit you configure BCD to boot from the VHD.  The VHD is mounted, boots up and becomes C:.

We will be using DISKPART – create vdisk to create the VHD.  These slides will fly past so I won’t blog them.

Here’s a note: MS got their terminology mixed up again.  The 3 types of VHD in DISKPART are:

• Fixed: all the VHD space assigned at once
• Expandable: This is known as dynamic to the rest of the world, including Hyper-V.  It only supplies disk space to the VHD as required.
• Differencing: It reads from a source but writes differences to the new differencing VHD

You can also do this in Disk Management GUI.  Note you cannot create a differencing disk in the GUI – differencing should only be used in labs.

You can use attach vdisk in Diskpart to mount/surface/attached the VHD.

Now you can initialise the disk and create a volume in it in Disk Management, etc.  It’s a new volume.  Disk Management is aware it’s a VHD.  Explorer will now present the new drive mounted (aka attached or surfaced).

Now you need to use BCDedit to configure a boot option for the VHD.

Now Mark does  a demo of a unsupported (he warns us) scenario on VMware Workstation (Virtual PC doesn’t cut it for demos).  He’s going to show how to do a empty C: drive that only contains VHD’s.  He runs Windows 7 setup.  Then SHIFT+F10.  He uses diskpart to create the 100MB partition and the rest of the disk as H:.  The 100MB is primary partition and active.  The rest of the disk is primary and marked as H:.  He exits diskpart and shows the empty H.  He creates a VHD folder in H: and goes back into diskpart to create his VHD (as above), selects it and attaches it.  He exits and returns to the Windows 7 setup.  The disk configuration now presents the H: and the VHD.  The VHD is not a possibility for installation  - but he can do it anyway!  It is not supported but it’s a great way to set up a lab machine.  You will lose hibernate with this setup.

An MS executive I’ve never heard of (Stephen Elop) is speaking.  2 things are keeping me from attending.

1. Last year’s keynote was dreadful.
2. I walked down that way and it reminded me of a cattle crush at a slaughterhouse.  5000+ people (there are 7500 in the venue this week) were trying to squeeze through 1 door.

I’ve managed to get access to one of the way too rare power sockets so I’m doing some work.

----

*This is posted after the event ended*

Screw it – I came down 10 minutes after the session started.  I expected to not find a seat.  Boy, was I wrong.  People were leaving the room in their droves.  There was a conversation going on between a bunch of executives on the stage that was BORING!  It was out of touch with the technical audience and felt very scripted and rehearsed.  I walked in and got a seat within 10 seconds.  My biggest problem was stepping by the crowds leaving.

As I type this I can’t hear the stage over the sound of people leaving.  I am not exaggerating.  This session is worse than the Visual Studio one at TechEd in 2005.  Whoever planned this one really didn’t think of the non-executives.

I wonder why there’s no wifi here.  I can’t tweet anything from the venue.  Plenty of peer-to-peer wifi honeypots in this room though :-)  It’s always the same at TechEd.

Stephen Elop starts talking about Windows 7.  I don’t know how bad he thinks MS subsidiaries have been but he’s telling us stuff we’ve known for a year at this point.  I guess I’m not alone because people are still leaving by huge amounts.  Last time I saw this sort of departure was at a DSI talk by an MS executive in the USA who couldn’t speak English.  This talk is going down like a dead balloon.  It’s high level marketing speak for the wrong audience.  I wonder if people can see this exodus on the live feed?

I also suspect that having the keynote late in the day on the 20th anniversary of the “fall of the wall” was a very bad idea.  Sure, it gets the USA online audience but at the cost of the local audience.  Every session I’ve gone to so far has been full or near full with high attendee retention.  This keynote has played a bum note for a lot of people.

Exchange 2010 Launch

Now we get the Exchange 2010 demo.  They’ve done a demo of a live mailbox migration in front of “7000” (minus the 1000 that has left so far) people.  Conversation threads, mobile, OWA all demonstrated.  UC presence awareness is shown in OWA.  Transport protection rules are shown.  Elop is using Firefox for his OWA part of the demo.  The local audience applauds with laughter. 

You know what?  I think Patrick in MS Ireland got a lot more done on Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 in his half hour during the community launch tour than these folks did.

I’m not on the right drugs.  There’s a video of a dude playing with a man in a Fox suit.  What the hell is that supposed to be?

ForeFront

Exchange 2010 is not the only launch today.  ForeFront is being launched as well – that’s logical.  And that’s all he has to say on that!  I feel for any of the product teams who are here.  They will have worked hard for 2-3 years to get a one liner for their launch.

Windows Server

The launch was done on October 22nd.  72% of global servers run Windows Server of some sort.  Hyper-V and Live Migration get a plug, along with System Center.  Out they roll Continental Airlines once again.

People still leaving.  I think they should have had 3 launch events: IT Pro, Executive and Developer.  The 3 audiences have different needs.

Robert Wahbe (corporate VP on Server) now talks.  To be honest, most of us will probably have heard most of this already.

Some claims about time savings and power savings are made.  Naturally, these are all company dependent.  For example.  If a physical machine consumes 30% of a Quad Xeon on a dedicated physical machine then it will consume slightly more than 15% of CPU on a dual quad core Hyper-V host.  There are no magic savings beyond what your company needs.

Jeff Wettlaufer is up now after the marketing speak. 

…

I’ve had enough.  I’m outta here.  I met up with Alex Yushchenko outside.  It was agreed; the keynote was dreadful.  The flow of people leaving just kept growing and growing.  I know Robert Wahbe did a double take at one point when he saw the queue of people trying to get out the single doorway.

The keynote was inappropriate for this audience.  They’re techies who don’t respond to marketing presentations.  50% of them were devs who got nothing from the session.  In fact, the European devs miss out because all the Azure stuff (and probably VS 2010) happens at PDC next week in the USA.  The IT Pro’s were bored.  Executives don’t come to TechEd.  Timing wise, TechEd Europe is late in the year.  All the big stuff is done by now, e.g. Win7 and Server 2008 R2 announcements were in 2008 in Barcelona and TechEd USA in the Spring.  MS needs to think again before repeating this mistake.

I still look forward to the technical sessions during the rest of the week.  It’s just a pity the keynote couldn’t have been a better use of the 2-3 hours.

Speaker: Rhonda J. Layfield (deployment MVP, speaker, author, trainer and journalist)

Subject: WDS.

Quick survey: More people are using WDS than have deployed Vista at work.  Not many deployed Vista out of the full room.

Rhonda says she is writing a book on her own: WDS, WAIK, MDT, ACT and volume activation.  I knew she had plans.  Great to hear this is on the way; it’ll be a good read.  Rhonda’s chapters in the Mastering Windows Server books in the past have been excellent and practical.

There are quick start guides for WDS on the way.

LOL – Rhonda not touching WSIM because “it’s a half day issue”.  Very understandable because that’s when all the questions will fire up.

WDS requirements:

• Active Directory
• DHCP (make sure DHCP server and WDS are both authorised in the DHCP console by an enterprise admin).  If WDS server is also DHCP server then you are prompted to create two 2 DHCP options.  Be aware of this because you will need to do this manually if you forget.
• DNS
• NTFS partition for the images

It is strongly recommended that you do not store your WDS images on the same volume as the operating system.

When you are setting up a pre-staged computer object in AD then pad the start of the GUID/MAC with 0’s until you have 32 characters.  You cannot continue with the dialog until you have exactly 32 characters.  Ouch – demo Gods were unkind to Rhonda and her demo of authorising new machines didn’t work out first time.  The WDS Server(s) must have permission to create computer account objects in the relevant OU/container.  Admin must have r/w permissions on the \RemoteInstall\MGMT folder. 

Delegation of domain join can be done with a registry edit on the WDS server. However, non-English DC’s can cause problems because group names might include non basic characters, e.g. á,ó, etc.  Use just a-z, 0-9, etc.

WDSUtil is the tool you’ll use to add a VHD to a WDS server.  It takes a while to add the image.

Permissions for the Service Control Point must be correct for WDS to work.  Use ADSIEDIT.MSC.  OU=Domain Controllers -> CN = WDSSERVER –> CN=WDSServer-Remote-Installation-Services Properties.

Network Issues

W2008 WDS increased block size from 512 bytes to 1,456 bytes.  If your network has TFTP block size of less than 1,456 bytes then this breaks WDS.  Install KB975710 + add REG_DWOWR MazimumBlockSize (value 512-1456 based on what your network can handle) to \registry (missed the key – go search for it).

If WDS is on a different subnet to the client then you can configure option 66 and 67 to tell the client where the WDS server is.

If WDS is also DHCP then configure option 60.  Set up “do not listen to option 76”.

General

Renaming WDS: WDSUtil to uninitialize and initialize it.

ImageX doesn’t require a Sysprep.  Of course, WDS capture does.  If you forget then the volume to capture dialog will be empty.  Sysprep generalize Vista and Windows 7.

LOL – Rhonda got confused by WDS capture like I did.  Even if you choose to store the image on the WDS server you must create the image on a local volume – this requires sufficient space.  It also takes much longer than an ImageX capture because it does some verification (cannot be turned off).

Use image groups: create specific ones for OS versions and architectures, e.g. Windows 7 x86, Windows 7 x64, Vista x86, etc.  This allows single instance storage between WIM files in the image group to save significant disk space.

Tip for WinPE: Don't create your own.  Use the ones from boot.wim from the sources folder in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD.  Try to always use the latest on because it has support for all of the latest operating systems.  Using a legacy one for a new OS gives you an “Operation failed with 0x80070002 The system cannot find the file specified” error.  This event applies to SP1 versions!

WDS will try to use IGMP v3 and then fail back to V2 when doing multicast.  Work with the network team to configure routers and switches.

Remember that PXE is broadcast based.  So DHCP needs to be forwarded on the network in multiple VLAN networks.

I’m going to be blogging each session that I can attend like I did last year.

It’s still Sunday and I’ve wandered into the not-yet-open exhibition hall.  I’ve a briefing in here in 45 minutes so it’s fine – I guess!

It’s quite flash looking in here.  You must walk pas the “The NEW Efficiency Zone”.  That appears to features lots of tech like Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.  It is surrounded by System Center booths.  I can’t call them booths because they look way too flash.  There’s lots of “chrome” on gloss black.  Further into the hall are the more typical ask-the-experts stands.  If there are 3rd party stands here then they are way at the back.

The motto for the event appears to be “Efficiency”.  There’s lots of banners as you go up the entrance escalators featuring the above products and HP.  Strange how it isn’t IBM, eh?  LOL!  Who’d associate efficiency with IBM!!!

Exchange 2010 and the Office products obviously are playing a big role this week.  Exchange 2010 is being launched tomorrow in the keynote which is actually at the end of the day for a change.  There’s also a big push on SQL 2008 R2.  There’s a 2.5 hour session every day on installing it.  I guess it must be pre-booked or something but I’ll miss it due to my work schedule anyway.

I plan on going to Rhonda Layfield’s morning session on deployment troubleshooting and playing it by ear.  I’ll be going to some of the virtualisation stuff to see what’s happening.  It’s rare (even as a virtualisation MVP) that we get to hear directly from the MS team members.  There’s also some sessions on new features of Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and 2007 R2, not to mention some V.Next stuff.  I was privvy to some of that info as a ConfigMgr MVP but it’s been a year since I could find time to attend their monthly briefings.  So I want to catch up.  I’ll obviously be dropping into one or two of Mark Minasi’s sessions to say “hi” to him.  Mark is doing 5 sessions in 2 days before flying to WinConnections in Las Vegas on Wednesday so he’ll be a busy man trying to prepare.

I thought strongly about signing up for Speaker Idol this year.  I had a topic that I though was cool.  But time was my enemy as usual.  Things just fell into place too late.  Anyway, that gives me a year to prepare for next year.  I have my demo environment (demo in a 3 minute presentation, YES!) and my topic.  TechEd 2010, watch out!

So I am waiting outside theatre 2 in TLC (The Learning Centre – maybe the exhibitors are elsewhere) for my briefing in 30 minutes.  There’s one or two others hanging about.  There’s no wifi in this room so I’ll be posting this later when I get a chance.

---

Added in the hotel 3 hours later …. We had the briefing where we were reminded that we are all effectively the face of MS this week.  We all got MS staff office shirts (in royal blue).  We were told about the layout of the venue.  The “learning centre” with all the MS stuff is in a different hall to the 3rd party exhibitors.  In fact, you have to pass them and the open comms room to even get to the very distant conference rooms.  I hung around afterwards and chatted to Irish fellow MVP (Clustering), Edwin Van Mierlo.  It’s an early night for me tonight.  I’ve got CNN International and BBC World News to put me asleep.  More tomorrow.

I’ve just registered at the Microsoft TechEd EMEA 2009 Berlin venue and I’m typing this while online on the event commnet.  I’ll be staffing the MS Springboard stand in the afternoons all week unless there’s a schedule change.  In the mornings I hope to attend as many sessions as possible.  Like last year, I’ll be blogging while listening.  And like last year, if you want, you can follow my postings on this link.

There’s some stuff open.  The hands-on-labs appear to be open as does the exam centre where you can do an exam at 25% off.  There an abundance of coffee and coke as usual.  I must remember to get some coke for the hotel room.  Luckily I remembered to bring my European power converters – unlike last year when Nathan Winters bailed me out.  I even brought a 4-way power strip to keep the laptops running and the phones charged.

I accidentally met up with a bunch of the MS Ireland folks in Dublin airport.  It turns out there aren’t too many flights from Dublin to Berlin.  We split a taxi from the airport which kept the costs down.  There hotels are some of the official ones.  They’re 4KM’s from the venue in the centre of the city.  I was cheap.  I went off the official listings and got a place about 15 minutes walk from the venue.  For 6 nights it’ll cost me 1/3 of the official hotels.  I am paying for it myself so I want to stay economic.  It turns out to be not a bad place.  It’s clean and close to here.  It’s cheap and has wifi.  I’m here to work and learn instead of partying so it suits me.

I’ve a meeting in 45 minutes where I’m to be briefed on working at a MS stand at a conference.  I guess I just need to be my usual outspoken self and to hell with whoever is in earshot ;-)  I must save my line about successful map making and successful war making!!!  Is that Basil Faulty screaming?

Anywho, I’m gonna see what’s in the fridges.  I’ll also be tweeting a bit on twitter if you want to keep up.