If your considering IaaS then you may well be interested in the Cloud Service Process Pack, a solution “coming soon” to a download center near you – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28726

I noted a few people made comments about the beta of the CSPP and that hopefully means with good feedback before an RTM this may prove to be a great solution! I’m itching to get a look as it’s one of my favourite topics.

The great question that resurfaces repeatedly in our industry concerns the value and relevance of IT certification. I have recently received a few notes from from Microsoft Learning about introducing their new certifications and I’d like to share these with you. Naturally, I have weighed in my personal opinion and lastly hope to furnish you with some useful resources including some not to be missed free training.

Is certification relevant?

I believe it is a priority requirement that information technologist keep to a routine of awareness, training and certification. I see this as a sign of good practice for both internal IT and consulting partners.

My view draws on reasonable experience stemming from countless certifications and being in the industry for 20 years; coincidently that’s how long Microsoft certification has been going. It’s worth a quick read here on the evolution of the exam development process.

New Technology brings new certifications:Private Cloud

I still meet many people that are not convinced by the number of cloud definitions. To avoid any doubt today, I’m writing about Microsoft Private Cloud technologies, as fully explained on the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform website. Taken from same source.

A private cloud delivers fundamentally new capabilities that represent a generational paradigm shift in computing.

And with these new technologies, Microsoft learning offers us new training and certifications that addresses and validate the new skills.

Available as a Beta release in April, the certification starts with the foundation of current Windows Server 2008 exams, and adds two new System Center 2012 exams, currently in beta. To learn more about the certification details head over to the Microsoft Private Cloud Certification Overview page and note there are plenty of links to help prepare, download the software and take a practice exam.

Mini Survival Guide to learning Microsoft Private Cloud

While I can’t be certain to cover every angle, let me provide several ways to get started beyond the overview page.

Stop Press -  two free courses!

It’s definitely worth considering these instructor lead courses at the Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA. There are some requirements and to find out more read here.

The Microsoft Management Summit 2012- MMS 2012

This is learning central for Microsoft System Center and Private Cloud. Last year I was there meeting Microsoft and non-Microsoft experts. While it’s sold out now, there is no harm in adding yourself to the waiting list if you do want to go. If you are going, why not try the new beta certifications.

TechDays, IT Pro Camps, Cloud camps (UK). - UK Techdays

Virtualization and Private cloud learning brought to a location near you, this looks to be a day well spent. For other countries have look at your regional websites for similar activities.

The Microsoft Virtual Academy - MVA

This great free learn at you own pace site is stacked with a wealth of information. Lunch and learn Private Cloud and so much more.

Private Cloud Solutions Hub - Reference Architecture

Loads here.

My blog roll

Great links to people and teams working in the virtualization, private, hybrid and public cloud space follow them on twitter and subscribe to their blogs.

In short

Training and certification is of great value and the benefits should reflect in our businesses activities, thus enabling us to offer better service, write better code or design improved infrastructure. It’s time to make better use of the evolving datacentre and infrastructure technologies and adopt a private cloud learning and implementation strategy.

While at the E2EVC conference I met Carsten Rachfahl who has been carrying out some interviews with fellow technologists. In this interview Carsten  asked about my presentation where I mentioned just a few areas of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.

You can follow Carsten @hypervserver on twitter for useful updates on Hyper-V and much more.

BTW, here’s two more of the recent interviews, I am sure there are many to come, I’ll tweet them when I see them…

Hyper-V, CSV and Backup: Aidan Finn

CSV and Storage Design: Didier van Hoye

Jeff Wouters: Talks about Powershell

Carsten Rachfahl, Aidan Finn, Didier van Hoye, Jeff Wouters and I talking about Windows 8 Features

Where: St Pauls Centre, Dumaresq Street, St Helier Jersey

The Jersey Windows User Group invites you to attend an evening of interactive technical talks with local and visiting technologists. Please register on eventbrite here. Ensure you cancel if your not coming as we are ordering food and refreshments.

Michael French, CCIE, local network and systems architect will talk about Windows Server 2008 R2 Certificate Services including and not limited to a brief history of cryptography, why certificates are important and how they work. Server & Client authentication, wildcard and SAN certificates, server topology for AD CS, auto Enrolment and the differences between 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2

Alex Juschin, Founder of the E2E Virtualization Conference, Microsoft MVP and Citrix CTP, will talk about some of the great things going on in the world of SBC including an update from Citrix Synergy. Alex is the technical editor for the Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Resource Kit and for those that have not already will highlight some of the key features we should know about when moving from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 R2.

Ronnie Isherwood, MCITP, local systems engineer and technology trainer will discuss in this highly interactive session the benefits of Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Clustering with Hyper-V. We will cover the known pain points and core considerations for design and support then have a preview of how Microsoft has enhanced deployment and management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Close

We will close the evening with a vote on your suggested topics for our first live technical debate (February) which we aim to be at least 90 Minutes. We would like your suggestions and will use them for a website poll, examples: IPV6, Server App-V, Private Cloud, Server Sprawl, BYO-D

We aim to record all sessions and will upload them to www.JWUG.co.uk for members to view later.

These days I attend so many events you’d think I get bored of them. Well actually no! The opposite, I just try and choose the best ones!

Flying out of Jersey I managed to sneak in a quick yet thoroughly enjoyable family visit, then ran down to the docklands for a multi-vendor programme updating me on virtualization, management and a little private cloud.

I met many great virtualization experts in a relaxed and informal environment.

Once again I have had thoroughly enjoyable learning and networking experience thanks to everyone involved from attendee to organizer. I am thrilled to join this community and have confirmed permission to attend in Vienna.

Big shout out to Citrix UK User Group for the travel tips.

This near perfect event is right up my street of great things to do and if it were any more perfect we’d probably have had some cake and eaten it .

If you would like to attend in Vienna you will get a bonus  which is access to the previous videos, head here to book – E2E Virtualization Conference

Merci et bonne continuation

I have already run a sample client through the tool and it’s a real time saver. Not only will partners benefit in time saved, clients will soon benefit as this may bring more structured approach to the cloud conversations.

How do you get running with this tool? Simply register here.

Wait for your activation e-mail

follow the link in your e-mail and start work on areas such as Messaging, Collaboration, Unified Comms, CRM or Line Of Business.

I ran my sample customer through this and from LOB application they showed Private Cloud as the clear choice.

I hope you enjoy working with it and if you don’t feel it’s enough and need that more personal touch from someone like the “Cloud Stig” to drive your cloud decisions to success?

Send an e-mail to cloudstig@whatcloud.co.uk

There are two steps. Firstly we must install the agent on the host, then we must add the host to VMM and import the security key generated during the agent setup. Here are those steps in detail.

Step 1: Agent Setup

This article is using the Release Candidate.

On the host, Launch setup.exe, from the installation screen select Local Agent

Select Next

Read the terms, select I agree the terms of this notice then select Next

You can select the path to install the agent then select Next

Select This host is on a perimeter network then enter the encryption key

Select the directory to export the file to or leave the default.

Optionally you can choose to use a CA signed certificate. When finished select Next.

Choose the network name or select IP address (You use when adding the host to SCVMM). Select Next

Update or use the default ports used for communication and file transfer then select Next.

You are ready to install the agent. Select Install.

Select Finish

Step 2: Add the host to SVMM

Copy the Security file generated in Step 1 to an area you can access from the VMM server.

Launch the SCVMM console, select Add Resources then select Hyper-V Hosts and Clusters

Select Windows Server computers in perimeter network, then select Next

Enter the Computer name or IP address that you used in Step 1, enter the Encryption key then browse to the Security File. Select the destination Host group then select Add. Select Next.

If the host has already been managed by VMM you can reassociate the machine, add any virtual machine placement paths (note this can be done later) then select Next.

Confirm the settings and select Finish.

*Note you can view the PowerShell script by select View Script.

That’s it, the job window will launch and the results of installation will appear there. On completion you will be able to manage your hosts.

* This article is using the Release Candidate.

System requirements and prerequisite information for the release candidate is available in the official TechNet deployment documentation here.

Step by Step

*Note I’m using the Release Candidate here and at this time am not creating a Self Service Portal

Extracted the installation files from VMM.EVAL.RC, choose a path then launch setup from there.

Select Install

Select VMM management server (*note I will install the self service portal elsewhere)

VMM console is automatically selected, select Next

Enter the company registration information and the product key (no key required for RC)

Select Next

confirm the licence agreement and select Next

choose whether you will join the CEIP then select Next

choose if you want automatic updates from Microsoft, select Next

Select the installation location then select Next

Review and resolve and issues with perquisites, in my case we see not enough memory but as this is my lab I’ll leave it and continue, when done select Next

Enter the SQL server name and port if not using default. Enter the user name and password for connecting to the database. Enter the SQL instance name and Select either New database or existing database. Select Next.

This screen is where you decide what user account will be used to run the VMM service. For a Highly available installation you must use a domain account. Also for a Highly available installation you must store the encryption keys in Active Directory.

I would suggest that this is better option for future proofing your installation. If you need to rebuild the server then the keys will be available in AD.

For a detailed article on VMM key management requirements and setup you can read the VMM 2012 Encryption Management article on SCVMM team blog. Additionally there is a link on the screen to the online documentation.

When ready select Next

Here you can modify the default ports used, for more information on ports look at the TechNet Wiki here. When done select Next.

Here you can select to enter a name for the library share or accept the default. Alternatively select an exiting share. Note if you are installing SCVMM on cluster these option will be greyed out and you can setup a library share later.

When done select Next.

Optional: as my install is on a Hyper-V VM? I’m taking a snapshot, if there’s any issue I won’t have to fill in all the details again!.

Review your settings and select Install

That’s it, it worked for me. Now onto some hosts…

Check out the TechNet Wiki VMM 2012 Survival guide for lots more on SCVMM

Immediately after the Jersey BCS AGM we will have a presentation and demonstrations of Microsoft’s latest innovation in Private & Public Cloud management technologies.

Monday, September 26, 2011 from 12:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Register here – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2176289340

In this fast paced session we will deliver an overview of the System Center Roadmap then dive into one of most exciting products in the suite, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.

This demonstration driven experience will highlight some of the core new capabilities of Microsoft’s Private Cloud management technology.  We will also take a look what the current System Center suite can achieve with integration of products such as Operations Manager, AVIcode, Configuration Manager and Service Manager.

We will remain after the presentation for a System Center Q&A.

Our Speaker

Simon Skinner MVP has been in the computer industry since the early 1990′s. Starting out as a VB programmer where he developed stock control systems for haulage companies. From there he moved into networking gaining a high level of experience and expertise in designing and building web farms for large organizations.

Aware of its increasing importance in the new Millennium, Simon turned his attention to System Management with Microsoft SMS and MS MOM. Simon’s talent’s continued evolving with the System Center products with specialities including Hosted and multi-tenanted System Center, System Center Application Monitoring, Web Site and .Net services.

As well as demonstrating Microsoft technologies he has architected and deployed System Center to clients around the World and is a regular Speaker at Microsoft’s TechEd and Management Summit events.

Over in Las Vegas at Microsoft Management Summit this year I attended almost every session to learn about this exceptional third iteration product. Using remote protocol I traversed back to my shuttle and installed it minutes after the beta was released, since then I have been quietly poking around enjoying the direction it’s taken.

Perhaps Microsoft do not see VMM as a flagship product today, virtualfat will go out on a limb, shake his fist and say – it should be! Not because I’m nuts about virtualization and management, because I think this whole decoupling applications from operating’s systems, rapidly deploying services, self service delegation and simple scalability (I could really on and wont just now) is the way forwards in infrastructure design and management.

I wrote to a product team member a long time ago complaining about the number of consoles in the management technologies. If they listened, chose to agree or not, I will probably never know! However what I tried to say to that program lead was… To take a look from the Server Admin perspective, visit the good old NT4.0 days when products like Hyena brought many essential tools into a single functional workspace.

Remember the launch of the MMC? That probably stunted Hyena a bit…

Around the time my e-mail went in I also got the time to say this in response to a blog question.

Anyway someone is working for System Admins because DPM2012 and SCOM integration is exactly what I see as hugely beneficial but really only the tip of the one flexi-console iceberg.

SCVMM is ultimately about to become the tool to have and thus forth its time launch my “modus operandi in nubibus“ campaign.

If you are in Jersey next week I’d strongly recommend attending the BCS AGM where we will show you SCVMM 2012 and much more. By the way this is rare opportunity to talk to a visiting enterprise System Center architect and trainer from a very well known company.

Keep your eyes peeled for JWUG sessions, upcoming Master Classes and Workshops on this subject. If you want upgrade or planning help, feel free to track me down next month!

Have you looked at the benefits of “Windows Server 8″?

I saw my first DPM 2012 demo at the Microsoft Management summit earlier this year, I was rather impressed and have eagerly awaited this download.

There’s a lot of new features for me to #like in DPM2012 and as I get through test driving it I’ll be sure to share anything interesting.

If your looking to test drive the beta yourself here’s a link to the download and document listing help with all the new features – DPM 2012 download

Also I should mention the System Center team will host a series of online meetings highlighting the features and functionality of the DPM beta, however to register you need to join one of the System Center Community Evaluation Programs. All the CEPs are great way to see what’s coming next or get an interactive introduction to a System Center technology. You can fill in a CEP survey and enrol here.

If your not familiar with the survey, it was 80 questions and received a response from 650 customers around the world. Below are the the sections to give a taster of the contents. A highly recommended read for IT managers deploying virtualization and of course for consultants and administrators.

Section 1: Why Hyper-V

Section 2: Hyper-V Implementation

Section 3: Systems Management

Section 4: Private Cloud

Section 5: The Year is 2012

To read and download the results head to the blogs of the authors by clicking on their names above.

Today I thought I would open up one of the boxes from my late mothers belongings, I found cool photo’s and my school reports. Lots of interesting stuff but this particularly inspired me. A States Of Jersey job description questionnaire from the local college dated 30 June 1987. That makes me 11 at the time and is 24 years ago.

I often wonder who influenced little @virtualfat into this industry and I think I pretty much found one of the ringleaders!

I remember spending at least one summer holiday in the college poking around in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, nothing hides from 11 year olds and that is fact.

You could find me zooming the college hallways on a go cart, I recall people taking the stairs when I filled the lift with the cart! Frankly I remember really enjoying a summer there, it was huge and mostly empty. Wasn’t there a piano? I like pianos.

Here’s a little tech details of this blast from past

So her job title was: Computer Technician

And the responsibilities were:

The knowledge and experience required?

That’s quite a bit of knowledge required and this post would be to long if I added all the other tasks and experience mention in the following pages.

What about the kit? What fun was being had up at the local college back then?

That’s a nice list I think I’m too young remember it all, I do remember using the Ferranti, Amstrad, IBM, BBC and the photocopier and I remember the day a mainframe was delivered from one of the local banks, we had to have planks of wood laid down on the floor to roll it down the corridors! Anyone remember which bank and which model?

These days I don’t know the kit list but for a small island I’d say the local college is doing pretty well with many great courses.

Oh yeah, I am the little bugger that stole many 5 1/4 disk, beat your high score on Dig Dug. I also could fly through the hanger on Microsoft Flight simulator and plaid relentless hours of rogue.

Something vaguely suggest there was a drinks dispenser with unlimited hot chocolate in the staff canteen, the chairs were orange…. Wow.

If it were not for the hate of filling in forms, I’d probably apply for the fun of it.

Not that I can spell either

Memory licencing has been written about by many analysts and experts and debated in the forums by customers and partners so I wont write up a lengthy opinion until I have fully reviewed the latest vSphere technology.

One company that’s posted a good article is vKernel If your interested to see what the leading capacity management people have to say, check out their new blog post including links to their free tools and whitepaper to help with memory sizing.

vRAM Pricing – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

While I try to remain agnostic in my consultancy one thinks I will not only recommend Hyper-V for Microsoft workloads but going forwards I’ll be avoiding vSPhere where memory hungry solutions such as document management would be very costly and are better suited with a hypervisor that doesn’t have taxes imposed!

Both sessions are delivered by the JWUG hosts and are as follows:

Wireshark Primer (Michael French)

Everything you need to know about RemoteFX (Ronnie Isherwood)

There are giveaways such as groovy T-shirts,handy component architecture posters, and a chance to win Windows 7 Ultimate along with snacks, refreshments, geek networking and…. Xbox with Kinect for those that need to unwind after work.

To find out more about this event you can read more here – http://www.jwug.co.uk

We will be online at the art centre from 5pm until 10pm and hope you can make it.

To book this event please register here – http://jwug.eventbrite.com/

To download and read more on the release head follow the link.

It’s Zooming as a Service! A consequence of running a utility called Zoomit from the cloud .

I noted this when @markrussinovich tweeted about the ability to run the Sysinternals tools direct from the cloud.

What is Zoomit? It is a great utility for presenting or giving software demo’s allowing you to quickly zoom in and highlight areas of the screen. There are lot’s of other super tools in the suite such Process Explorer and Disk2VHD, I’d recommend knowing what’s available in this free toolkit.

To access the tools direct you can enter \\live.sysinternals.com\tools into your browser. For more info and support there is a file in the directory labelled About_ThisSite.txt, it will tell you more about the…site.

If like me you use twitter and work in IT, I’d suggest following Mark Russinovich for updates on the handy set of tools.

Earlier this year at their Management summit, Microsoft announced the release candidate of System Center Advisor (formally Microsoft codename Atlanta). Essentially an Azure based cloud service which you can deploy to systems to assess server configuration and proactively avoid problems.

SC Advisor is currently capable of providing guidance on Windows Server, SQL Server, Hyper-V and Active Directory.

You can read more about and download Advisor – here.

I deployed it in my lab and found it very easy to use and it quickly alerted me to a few updates I could deploy and settings I could tweak to ensure my environment was tip top .

I’ll be brief, I like it, it’s got great potential and it’s in going in my solutions toolkit.

Check out the video – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13791202

I like the fact you can make use of technology such as Forefront Endpoint Protection and Citrix Receiver!

To find out more about the release you can read about it on the Windows Team Blog here.

“We are on a long roadmap with SCVMM”, that is what Microsoft’s virtualization team said back on September 6th 2007. Virtual Machine Manager was at RTM back then and since that announcement this System Center application has grown to be very welcome datacentre tool indeed.

In this latest upcoming edition of Virtual Machine Manager we see innovation that transforms the product from what is a dynamic datacentre tool, to the next generation of cloud, virtual machine and service management solutions.

Earlier in the year I attended the Management Summit and this slide was one shown at the beginning of a serious of session in which I was given a full overview of what I believe will become a very popular datacentre product.

To find out about this version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager in an interactive way, you can apply to the official guided Community Evaluation Program. I highly recommend this style of program to people considering deploying, migrating to or upgrading SCVMM.

To discover and enrol for the VMM Community Evaluation program Follow the link below

Apply to Virtual Machine Manager CEP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2397711/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14555

But… that would not be fair so I will tell you that the atmosphere was a unique highlight in itself.  To  discover it you would simply need to be there and be the sort of person that enjoys networking and talking about one or more flavours of virtualization or server based computing.

The Expert 2 Expert Virtualization Conference is a group of experts willing to present and share their knowledge through presentation and into the hallways and beyond.

A professionally organised yet fun and community networking event in which I got to meet quite a few attendees and presenters, including some well known experts, authors and user group leaders from many countries.

Along with great networking I’ve updated myself on a variety of products including discovering more than few companies I was not so familiar with their products, such as RES, AppSense, Sepago and SMS Passcode.

One particular achievement for me is that I presented, my session was on RemoteFX. I don’t present much and to be honest can count my presentations on my hands. Certainly the first time with experts and outside of Jersey. Albeit nervous I loved it, talking about Hyper-V and anything to do with the Virtualization is becoming a pleasure and I’ll be doing it again soon.

I have had some great feedback from more than one person in my session so I will be back and presenting at E2E in November in London. I look forward to enjoying coffee with some new virtualization friends.

To my friends and colleagues in Jersey I must say thanks for the encouragement.

The Microsoft Exchange team is enhancing positioning by including additional supported scenarios regarding Exchange Server 2010 running under hardware virtualization software. As of today, the following support scenarios are being updated, for Exchange 2010 SP1, and later:

• The Unified Messaging server role is supported in a virtualized environment.
• Combining Exchange 2010 high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers, is now supported.

Read the full article at its source here.

IMPORTANT – If you are one of these “We Don’t do Virt on our e-mail people, at least try checking out a few of the following articles, see what’s possible…

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 9000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell M610 Servers, Dell EqualLogic Storage, and F5 Load Balancing Solutions

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg513522.aspx

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 15000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Unisys ES7000 Servers and Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 Family

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4D83E5AC-7D9A-47C6-A843-A5520D118FC4

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 20000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell R910 Servers, EMC CLARiiON Storage, and Brocade Network Solutions

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6FD7E23F-30C8-4FB7-BCA3-A5DE9AA9A8E4

Business Continuity for Microsoft Exchange 2010. Enabled by EMC Unified Storage, Cisco Unified Computing System and Microsoft Hyper-V

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h7337-exchange-unified-cisco-hyper-v-wp.pdf

Private Cloud

Cisco and NetApp are participating in Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program. Together they have developed a pre-validated private cloud solution for customers who want to deploy with less risk, more flexibility and choice, and more quickly.

Read the full article here.

Capacity Management & Chargeback

vKernel now supports Hyper-V in both their capacity analyser and chargeback products, see what Bryan Semple (CMO) has to say about Hyper-V here and the product announcement here. vKernel is a System Center Alliance Partner.

OS Support

It official, Microsoft now supports CentOS on Hyper-V, CentOS is a popular Linux distribution used by many hosters.  Read more about the announce here.

Backup

Veeam have announced their backup solution will be supporting Hyper-V, check out the announcement here.

In the dark of night I had the opportunity to tour this hi tech wonder from bottom to top. Not only did I get to see it, I got to understand how it works, it’s processes, procedures, links, storage and the stringent regulation that surrounds everything that goes on within it’s boundaries.

Not only was this technically fascinating, I found the history and situation with France, UK and Channel Islands aerospace all quite intriguing.

Indeed this was most welcome overview of computing in the Airline industry, I highly recommend this as a visit to anyone regardless of computing knowledge (although some understanding of development, networking, storage and electronics make this truly more awesome)

Thanks to the hosts and of course thanks to our local Charted Institute of IT committee for arranging it.

However I found this quite moment and thought I’d jump on and quickly share some great stuff I read this month highlighting the blogs and some content from people I follow.

Blogs to watch

Hans Vredevoort – http://www.hyper-v.nu/

Posts by Hans  and the Hyper-V community in the Netherlands.  At the time of writing there are 22 posts this month and some really great content, if you use Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager I highly recommend following their twitter and or RSS feed. 

Aidan Finn – http://www.aidanfinn.com/

Aidan has been blogging loads and has produced 2000+ posts (many this month).  Of particular interest was a free How to Build a Hyper-V Cluster Using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target guide, I sent the guide to my tablet.  I enjoyed the ramblings on User Virtualisation and all the advice on Dynamic memory with XYZ Microsoft applications.

Leandro Carvalho- http://leandroesc.wordpress.com/

I’m a fan of languages and all things virtual so enjoy trying to read the content first before cheating by using translation button .  Leandro has been filling up TechNet Wiki with English articles, to name but a few a enjoyed this month:

News, Requirements and Installation of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

How to Improve the Virtual Machine Creation Using a VM Template

Kristian Nese – http://kristiannese.blogspot.com/

Kristian has written about the VMM 2012 library and Optimizing clusters with VMM2012 along with answering in the forums and tweeting about interesting articles.

Conclusion

Follow these people on twitter and or get RSS links to their blogs! 

 http://www.virtualizationmatrix.com/matrix.php

MMS has been by far the best Microsoft event I have attended and the best overall since I was working a stand selling Virtual Reality headsets demoing DukeNukem in the late 90’s.  Let me say MMS came pretty close.

But why so good? – Community!

Building up to the event a lot of advice for new attendees is posted out on community sites, yes free advice about goings on, where to find cheaper hotels, maps, transport details the weather and useful travel accessorise.  Thanks for the advice.

A great community atmosphere generated by everyone there.

What else? Software!

There certainly was a lot going on.  Lots of announcements, lots of first public glimpses etc..

Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Management and Security Division at Microsoft gave two great keynote speeches, these set the tone for the conference and summarized the efforts being made to deliver enhancements to mature technology and innovative new products to help simplify our jobs.

This product roadmap shows just how much is going on in the System Center teams:

It was great to have all those sessions to attend that back up those keynotes.  I mentioned about private cloud before, the techs here and it’s time to learn it and use it.

You can watch the keynotes over on the home page for the conference – http://www.mms-2011.com/

What else? Customers!

Throughout the days and nights I managed meet many staff from companies in differing industries, it was great to listen and share best practices with fellow customers be they in house admins or System Center consultants.  One thing I will say, from the one guy with 100 user to another with 150,000 endpoints we are all bitterly complaining about the cost of bandwidth.  Looks like Telco’s are making absolutely sure they are the bottleneck these days!  Notice how so many have their own clouds and offer greater bandwidth for less if you signup for their services!  Rant!

What else? Meeting the experts!

I managed to meet several industry experts and Microsoft staff whom I know of from twitter, blogging or reading their books & articles, that’s is part of what MMS is about.  I spent a few great evenings with a storage/cluster/hyper-v expert and apart from having fun learnt more than I would have in a course.

One System Center expert even pointed out how much younger I look than my online Avatar, bonus.

What else? Partners & Parties!

So many amazing partners with great products, I always stand in the queue ready to be looked at like a lunatic with a silly question, no such thing right? I got about half the vendor answers I could get and to be fair everyone who could not answer my questions gave me their contact card.

I didn’t really get to many vendor parties as I wanted to make sure I could make the 45 minute journey to the hotel by 8ish each day. Besides, with the Jetlag I managed to sleep once every couple of days.  But one a night for about an hour or so to talk to customers.

What else? Labs!

Instructor led labs, loads of hand on labs and a post conference DVD with all the sessions I could not get to.  What’s more the labs are available online for 6 months for a mere $250.  I think I’ll take that option.

Out of interest I read the Virtualisation teams blog post last year on how they powered the labs, this year its even more impressive, great work….  Read it here.

And finally? Feedback!

Microsoft made an effort here, as stated in the Keynote, this software giant listens on many levels and wants to know what they doing right and wrong and what there not doing that we want.

I spoke to many staff who answered my questions and acknowledged my input no matter how trivial.  A great thing about the sessions was finding experts and product teams and who could would chime in to give in depth answers to tough questions, nobody was getting rushed out the door at the end of sessions so plenty of question time (at least in all of mine).

One team I did manage to meet looking for feedback was the content team.  They take feedback on how we want consume content and any also will take product feedback.  I think that’s great and I hope others take time to make their thoughts heard.

So that’s my thoughts on the event itself, there is no question that scores of the people I have worked with would have thoroughly enjoyed this.  Next up will be my notes and thoughts on those announcements.  I’ve installed two products so far…

Thanks to all, see you next year I hope. 

The beta is available to download from here and the TechNet documentation is online and available here. 

If you are testing out the beta remember it is not supported in a production environment, also be sure to submit any issues on connect.

Personally I have spent most of today on learning about all the new functionality and I can say the new wizards are awesome and I have a lot of notes to type and share here at a later date.

As of tomorrow the Virtual Machine Manager team will be posting information on their blog here.

At the time I had implemented it to help bring some increasing virtual sprawl under control.  That sprawl was identified, agents deployed and all quickly under the watchful eye of Virtual Machine Manager.

Being the SCVMM admin aka VM lifecycle management guy I once pondered the role of a virtual librarian, always trying to keep order among iso’s, templates, vhd files, virtual machines and hosts.

Everyday I could be found loitering in the virtual library with intent to deploy or chasing people to check in outstanding VM’s they allegedly only need for a few weeks or months!

So what next with SCVMM?

SCVMM 2012

This has been talked about at length, there are two TechEd online sessions, ZDNet posted a review full of screenshots and most the bloggers I follow have shared their thoughts on it for a long time.  From what I have read and seen we will getting some significant changes, lots of new innovative features and some new terminology.

I noted in a screenshot a Cloud Library, interesting, could Cloud librarian become a job title of the future? Somebody has to keep order in the private clouds…

Next week I’ll be at MMS 2011 in learning mode discovering what’s new and finding out deployment tips and best practice from the experts. On the what’s new with VMM front, here are some of the sessions I’m most excited about.

MMS 2011: SCVMM 2012 Sessions

BD03 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: What’s In It and How It Enables Building Private Clouds and Federation to Public Clouds

BD04 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Deployment, Planning, Upgrade

BD05 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Server Fabric Lifecycle – Part 1 of 3 – Configuring Networking and Storage

BD06 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Server Fabric Lifecycle – Part 2 of 3 – OSD, OOB, and Agent Management

BD07 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Server Fabric Lifecycle – Part 3 of 3 – Cluster Creation, Update Management

BH02 – Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Modelling and Maintaining Virtualized Services in VMM 2012

Server APP-V Sessions

BD10 -Understanding Server App-V and Sequencing Datacentre Applications

BD11 – BD11 Server App-V Provisioning and Deployment Scenarios

I thought this odd as I’d been able to run 4 virtual desktops on my demo shuttle with out issue before, I’d obviously changed something.

The error mentions “Synthetic 3D Display Controller” and “insufficient resources” so looks like not enough GPU Memory is available for this RemoteFX enabled VM to start.

After shutting down some of the other guests I confirmed that I had left the default resolution of 1280 x 1024 (125MB per VM with 1 monitor) when previously I had lowered it  to 1024 x 768 (75MB per VM with 1 monitor).

The difference in my case was 50MB per guest more than last time!

There is a full table of screen resolution, number of monitors with GPU Ram available on TechNet here.

I have System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 Release Candidate running so can view GPU memory settings on a per host basis.

Another way to see the GPU memory consumption is to use perfmon with these counters:

RemoteFX Root GPU Management

VRAM: Available MB per GPU: Amount of dedicated video memory that is not being used.

VRAM: Reserved % per GPU: Percent of dedicated video memory that has been reserved for RemoteFX.

For a full list of RemoteFX related counters check out the TechNet article here.

Backup technology

I laugh now, but back then, the shift finished when the backup finished. And that could drag on when technical problems came up and little me got bored.

Did I mentioned the mess those tapes got into?

By the late 90’s I’d become an engineer and my own professional backup experiences had begun.  Starting out with the simple stuff, and progressing to the point of knowing how to create and support complex backup solutions that ignored the need to have their own protection and recovery taken care of.

When not implementing D2D capable products, I spent a lot of time working with Double-Take to enhance the simpler systems often shifting original data offsite then backing up.  I trained with a great architect in Paris who inspired me to work harder and offer clients and employers a wider variety of solution design.

What I believe in, is the importance of designing backup solutions that actually work; are tested and get tested again as regularly as is sensible and realistic.  Of course the harsh truth is this is often far from what I find.

Getting it right at project time includes the reality that you may need permanently another team member to get your backup and recovery plans in true shape.

I’m sure many reading this would admit backups are someone else’s job!  No matter who’s job it is, when the tape hits the fan its the whole department or business that could suffer.

Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager 2010

These days I like to work with Microsoft’s latest version of Data Protection Manager which I’ll refer to herein as DPM. DPM is an evolving product that’s relatively easy to use.  It fits the Microsoft workloads like a glove and that’s a key advertising point made by Microsoft.

As well as the technical details there are strategic benefits of using DPM to protect the likes of Exchange, SQL and Hyper-V hosts.  One key benefit is that “who you going to call” thing.

I have spent many nights on the phone trying to get answers from up to 3 vendors catering for a single protection solution.  If you hear me quoting “Simplicity” I don’t actually mean product, I mean life the universe and everything!  Mine is complex so I don’t want spend more time on a support call than it takes to design the backups in the first place.

With DPM and Microsoft applications I can rely on Microsoft, to go figure out what’s wrong more so than another vendor.  Other vendors may ultimately tell me to talk to Microsoft anyway!  After all its Windows and Windows applications I am backing up.

Evolving datacentres

The world of technology is moving quickly and it’s often hard to keep up. It’s something of a challenge to both the newcomers and the old timers.  Being responsible for many complex systems requires regular decision making on procurement, training and of course budget.  When this is a fine art then allocation of time is often the bit nobody can resolve.

With the transition to the Virtual datacentre and many mature applications having their own protection mechanisms we have more to consider.  Designing a modern strategy will need to take into account the new technologies.  Last year I read “Data Protection for Virtual Datacentres” by Jason Buffington, Jason is a Senior Technical Product Manager with Microsoft System Center.

The book helps the reader understand the industry, planning, cost analysis, high-availability, data protection, systems management, Hyper-V, Exchange and SQL best practices and a whole lot more.  It is recommended reading across a broad audience, if you interested to know more the books website is online here with a downloadable chapter.

Out of interest if you’re go to MMS and are considering a backup solution or just need entertaining? Make a point of attending a DPM session with Jason, he is a great speaker and has answers to tough questions.

Not sure I have any tough questions but perhaps given a chance I can ask some in French and see how that works out

Other solutions

There is of course much more to DPM and some super partner offerings; for example take a good look at i365’s Evault for DPM here.  In summary they offer a cross platform solution to protect both Microsoft and other workloads for those heterogeneous environments.

There’s inStavia’s dBeamer for DPM, well worth a review here. dBeamer transforms Microsoft DPM into a central component of a High-Availability-On-Demand infrastructure.

Learning

After all these years of juggling disks, networks and tapes I can still take time to read a book on the subject and make time to go and learn more.  I will be in Las Vegas soon, at the Microsoft Management Summit. I’m making a point to find out where the systems management evolution is taking us.

I’ve already attended most DPM sessions at TechEd but here’s some I’ll look forwards to at the summit.

BB36 System Center Data Protection Manager 2010: Help, the Datacentre is Down… Let’s Restore

BB18 A First Look at Data Protection Manager 2012

Feedback

This is the critical part of technology evolution. Moaning and making workarounds is temporary. When  you know better or want something different,tell the people who write the products you work with and  you may get the feature you need.

The bottom line? Look after the crown jewels (your assets)… With System Center obviously.

Today is the official release of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization v2, you can now download the RTM version of MED-V v2 from the MVLS site https://licensing.microsoft.com

For more information about the release please see the MDOP blog post http://blogs.technet.com/b/mdop/archive/2011/03/09/app-v-4-6-sp1-and-med-v-2-0-are-available-as-part-of-mdop-2011.aspx

Here’s a quick look at the features MED-V v2 brings over XP Mode and MED-V v1.

Note the chart is from an older presentation so I’ll update it if anything has changed since.

If you don’t know what APP-V and MED-V are be certain to look in to them!

The week after MMS 2011 two virtualisation experts are delivering online training.  The details published on the Virtual Machine Manager blog.

Symon Perriman and Corey Hynes will deliver the following:

• Day 1 will focus on “Platform” (Hyper-V, virtualization architecture, high availability & clustering)

• 10:00am – 10:30pm PDT: Virtualization 360 Overview
• 10:30am – 12:00pm: Microsoft Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture
• 1:00pm – 2:00pm: Differentiating Microsoft and VMware (terminology, etc.)
• 2:00pm – 4:00pm: High Availability & Clustering

• Day 2 will focus on “Management” (System Center Suite, SCVMM 2012 Beta, Opalis, Private Cloud solutions)

• 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT: System Center Suite Overview w/ focus on DPM
• 11:00am – 12:00pm: Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 1
• 1:00pm – 1:30pm: Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 2
• 1:30pm – 2:30pm: Automation with System Center Opalis & PowerShell
• 2:30pm – 4:00pm: Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM SSP 2.0

• Day 3 will focus on “VDI” (VDI Infrastructure/architecture, v-Alliance, application delivery via VDI)

• 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1
• 11:00am – 12:00pm: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2
• 1:00pm – 2:30pm: v-Alliance Solution Overview
• 2:30pm – 4:00pm: Application Delivery for VDI

Last year I enjoyed a preconference day learning with Corey Hynes at TechED NA 2010, I’m certain this training will have something for everyone.  For sign up details go to SCVMM blog here.

Since then I have been meaning to put that demo together and at long last I have got round to doing it!  In the likely event of forgetting how, I’m posting it here.

Some quick information about the new hyper-v memory settings we need to know for the demo

Configuring Hyper-V Dynamic memory

We need the host server running Hyper-V, with Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 installed, then our guest operating system to meet the requirements and have the latest integration services updated to the SP 1 version.

In the Hyper-V Management Console after selecting a guest we right click and select Settings then Memory, the memory management page should look like our picture below.

To enable dynamic memory we need click on Dynamic and enter some values, our options are

Startup RAM:

The amount of ram we want our virtual machine to start with (between 8 and 65536)

Note, the requirements guide above has an appendix with recommended Start-up memory settings, it suggests 512 MB minimum for all except supported versions of Windows 2003 Server which are 128 MB minimum.

Maximum RAM:

The maximum amount of ram we want our virtual machine to have access to (between 8 and 65536).

Memory Buffer:

The amount of memory we will reserve as a percentage of the memory in use, for a good explanation of how this works read Virtual PC Guys article posted here – What is the memory buffer when dynamic memory is enabled?

Memory Weight:

This where we can assign memory allocation prioritization for a given virtual machine, my machines.

So that’s a quick look at the GUI settings, moving to the host server there’s another setting consider:

Host reserve

With the introduction of dynamic memory comes a new ability to assign the amount of ram we can reserve for our Hyper-V hosts usage.  We need to set this to a figure that will allow the host to reliable run and cater for any management security agents.  My demo shuttle has 16GB and I have opted to reserve 2048MB.

To configure the amount of ram we need to set a registry key as follows:

1) Navigate to HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization

2) Create a new DWORD entry with a name of MemoryReserve

3) Enter the value of memory to reserve for the parent partition in MB

We need to reboot for this to take effect

Scripting Dynamic memory changes

One of the first things I noted in Ben Armstrong’s demo was the scripting of dynamic memory settings. 

Ben has posted a series of articles which you can read on his blog, they are

Scripting dynamic memory, part 1- reading the configuration

Scripting dynamic memory, part 2- displaying current usage

Scripting dynamic memory, part 3- looking at performance counters

scripting-dynamic-memory-part-4-configuring-memory

Scripting dynamic memory, part 5- changing minimum memory

In post 5, changing the minimum memory there’s important information to note on editing settings. 

If you do edit minimum setting to differ from the start-up RAM then n the Hyper-V Management console for the specified virtual machine, when selecting hardware settings and memory you will see a warning has appeared.

For general use I guess we best leave that setting alone until we know exactly how we can leverage something by changing it.

Changing multiple guests

I have download and edited this script written by Vlad Borodin, I have adjusted it only to enable dynamic memory, set a memory buffer and the memory weight.

Giving that a whirl it’s fired through my VM’s

Now we can start experimenting with our test host and it’s virtual guest

In the Hyper-V Console we see the following three columns

Assigned Memory

Real-time view of how much physical memory is allocated to the virtual machine

Memory Demand

How much memory the virtual machine needs at this time to meet the requirements of the active processes running in the virtual machine. The total committed memory based on data obtained from performance counters

Memory Status

How much of the buffer amount specified for the virtual machine is available

Status is displayed as one of the following:

• OK – there is enough physical memory available to give the virtual machine the full amount of memory buffer.
• Low – the current amount of memory assigned to the virtual machine as a buffer is lower than amount that Hyper-V determines should be available as a buffer.
• Warning – there is not enough physical memory available to assign any memory buffer to the virtual machine.

To start my testing I have downloaded and edited another of Ben’s scripts which is running in these guests simulating workload.

So that’s enough to get a demo running and later in the week when I have experimented with endpoints and various different applications and memory allocations I can share some monitoring and best practices.

These new features look promising and will contribute to converting a dynamic virtual infrastructure into an efficient private cloud solution.

I see and refer to this as a gateway to building a private cloud.   Perhaps it would be better branded as Gateway.  It’s a lot shorter and would fit on my slide deck.

If you going to install this, read the release notes, upgrading the current portal to the beta release is not supported.

Yesterday Iftekhar Hussain (Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist) blogged a look at the new features in SP1 for SCVMM2008 R2.

SCVMM2008R2 SP1 is due for release around 30 days after Windows 2008 R2 SP1 released, around the end of March looks likely.  With the upcoming service pack we will be able to administer the newest virtualisation features, namely dynamic memory and RemoteFX.

Read the full details here.

In frustration he has taken the play dough and he has made us a present!  Is this a hint? Is that sporty shark? I’m sure that those letter say kinet spt, sounds familiar.

Have to admire creativity.

The first demonstration I gave was on RemoteFX and for those who could not be there, I have posted a screenshot below with a quick guide of what’s needed.

In my demo I showed a film running, Aero themes and a web camera working on the Virtual Desktop.  I did load a 3D game in my personal virtual desktop but for the demo i did not show it.  We talked about business benefits for USB redirection etc.

So is VDI ready for people like me?

I heard Brian Madden (author and independent desktop virtualization expert) has confined himself to using VDI for 2 months which you can read about here. I look forwards to hearing about the results.

That must be awful, you can see below an example of what that VDI pain could be like with RemoteFX…

watching films while playing a 3D game with a USB redirected webcam and microphone to chat to mates and brag about high scores.  “Bring back the boss key I say”

RemoteFX certainly makes VDI a rich user experience and multi-tasking is no problem (for the computer)

Here’s briefly what I needed to do to get the above working.

Have a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Virtualization Host with a Windows 7 RemoteFX enabled SP 1 Guest.  The instructions for that are at the end of this post.

For USB redirection

In Group Policy on my client, navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Connection Client\RemoteFX USB Device Redirection, and edit “Allow RDP redirection of other supported RemoteFX USB devices from this computer.”

Choose to allow redirection for administrators or administrators and users

Close Group Policy and reboot for the changes to take effect

In the Remote Desktop Connection I have made the following 3 changes

1) Selected the Experience tab and changed the performance setting LAN

2) Selected the Local Resources tab, under Local devices and resources, selected More, then confirmed the devices for redirection.

3) Still in the Local Resource tab under Remote Audio, selected settings the select Record from this computer.

That’s pretty much it, just logged in via RDP and enabled aero themes.

The kit used?

Demo Server

Shuttle with a core i5 processor, 16GB ram & NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT with the latest drivers

Windows 2008 Standard R2 SP1 with the Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Virtualization Host Role and RemoteFX

Demo Client

A HP Touchsmart tablet with integrated webcam running Windows 7 64-bit and Service Pack 1

That’s about it.

Today talk was good fun and I have received some really positive feedback, I’d welcome speaking engagements anywhere, have shuttle, will travel .

For full instructions on setting up RemoteFX on a single host see the TechNet guide here.

The service pack is out now, I had been running this during the release candidate and am very pleased that customers can now use this fully supported for production use.

Lately I have been using Remotefx and will be posting my thoughts on the feature soon

For those interested – a link to support information for SP1 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976932

The updates are available from windows update services or available for manual download from the catalogue here.

The rollup package is not applicable if you are running the release candidate of service pack 1.

Well, I took some time to learn about Forefront Endpoint Protection with Microsoft’s community evaluation program. It seemed like the best way to learn about the newly released endpoint protection and understand the benefits in convergence of desktop and security management.

So in December winning a bag was great for me as I have been having some bag issues!  I ordered twice a custom bag to transport some music equipment and twice after 6-8 weeks it didn’t arrive and I had to cancel wait for refunds.

Here’s is a picture of the new bag I won with some of the kit I take around, most bags that can carry a laptop and a Torq Xponent (controller in the picture), have loads of compartments for cables, power supplies headphones, a book, clothes and wash gear?  They don’t fit in the overhead luggage or can’t fit by your feet on a or train boat .  And this bag does!!!  Woot woot!

Last week the winning got better, I won a ticket to MMS 2011 in Las Vegas!  Last year I planned to go but could not get there (Due to an unauthorised cloud setting up in European airspace and blocking most flights)!

My flights are now booked and I’m looking forward to a week of training and networking.  I’ll no doubt be talking soon about some of the sessions I’m excited about here on my blog.

To find out about more Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 you can register here for an upcoming TechNet Webcast and find out about how Microsoft IT deployed the solution. 

To see what’s going on at the Management Summit and register a place before it sells out go here.

BTW early bird registration ends today.

To resolve this I need to add some alerting and while doing so I created this guide to configuring alerts. 

Before I go into the steps I will highlight a few best practices that came to mind as by default alerting is not turned on!

1. Document what your going to configure
2. Create an alert flow to depict clear alerting routes and outcomes, agree with your recipients what they will receive and what they are to do to resolve the alert. 
3. Consider the use of ITIL or MOF, if a single alert is an incident, multiple alerts could be a problem.  Clarify with the alert recipients the different severities any additional steps required when dealing with what may be an outbreak.
4. Make sure malware installation and alerting is part of your build procedure so new or rebuilt systems are protected and alerted upon.
5. Run a pilot before rolling out to the whole enterprise and pick up and resolve any false alerts

I have been reading the malware response infrastructure and planning design guide from Microsoft which you can find out about here.  I’d suggest a read as this can save a lot of time generating your processes to follow post alert.

Here’s the guide

Configuring FEP 2010 Alerts (SCCM)

For the purpose of this guide I’ll assume we have confirmed with our e-mail admins, have permission and have authorised SMTP mail from this SCCM server.

1) Open the Configuration Manager console and expand the Forefront Endpoint Protection node

2) Right click on Alerts, select Email settings and configure the mail server details and test alerting.

3) Right click Malware Detection Alerts and select New Malware Detection Alert

* Alerts can be assigned to collections at the following levels:

High: Malware is detected

An alert will be generated when malware is detected, regardless of whether it was removed.

Medium: Action is required

An alert will be generated when malware is detected and manual action is required.

Low: Malware is active

An alert will be generated when malware is detected and is still active.

4) Browse and select a Collection, then select an alert severity, in this example I am choosing All Exchange Servers and configuring the High alert setting.  Add the e-mail recipients and select OK to finish.  You can do this for each collection at the level you require.

At this point rerunning the Best Practice Analyser resulted in compliancy for active alerts

However there are more alerts that can be configured and I suggest reviewing them all then implementing them.

Malware Outbreak Alert

This alert will allow you to specify the number of computers that detect the same malware in a 24 hour period, to configure this alert:

1) Select Malware Outbreak Alert on the left, select Properties from the Actions List

2) Select Enable Alert then select the number of computers with the same malware detected, enter the number

3) Add the recipients and select OK

Repeated Malware Detection Alerts

These alerts allows us to configure alerting at the collection / sub collection level, we can choose from 4, 8, 16 and 32 repeat alert in a 4 hour, 24 hour and 1 week timeframe.  To configure these alerts:

1) Right click on Repeated Malware Detection Alerts on the left, then select new Repeated Malware Detection Alerts.

2) Select and choose the Number of same malware detected then choose an interval. add your desired recipients and select OK to finish

Multiple Malware Detection Alerts

This alert follows the same configuration settings as the Repeated Malware, however as the alert name suggest its reporting on multiple different malware type detections.

For further reading on using alerts to monitor malware detections visit TechNet here.

Since I only need to type them in once, I have started to go back and increase the complexity of my favourite passwords, so now each site requiring authentication and Windows login is just a quick swipe of the finger.  I suppose the catch is that when the reader breaks I am in trouble if my memory fails me…

Improving security at home is forever on the back of my mind and this year I am putting a bit more effort to becoming home PC savvy!  I doubt I’m the only IT pro that treats business and workplace based security solutions with a far higher priority than my own.

Storing files such as ISO’s and scripts used for VMM and its guests in the library is good practice.

From the screenshot below you can see there are useful actions that can quickly allow you to view, run and disable the scripts (the greyed out script has been disabled).

Placing PowerShell scripts in the library is just a matter of coping them into the relevant library folder.  You can create folders for tidiness.  If you have lots of scripts, the VMM library has a search feature,  no doubt in years to come I will need that .

For more information on best practice using the SCVMM library you can review the TechNet article here.

There are 3 packs to import, the reporting and application packs are dependant on the library pack, the report pack is optional.  The installation guide is located here.

Once installed, in the Operation Manager consoles monitoring section we have a new node shown here:

To make use of the management pack you will require the Operation Manager agent and FEP client installed on your target server.  With these installed you will be able to configure discovery, receive alerts and remediate issues.

Here’s a couple of screen shots taken when reviewing this

Alerts example

Using health explorer to review and troubleshoot the antimalware service

Endpoint tasks

Endpoint reports

Time permitting I will go into FEP reporting in a future post

I spent a little time coding in Visual Studio in my early career so was naturally inquisitive about the Avicode benefits.  When the System Center team announced the release of AVIcode 5.7, I enquired and received a very informative demo were shortly in the benefits became obvious.

If you would like to learn more about AVIcode and how it relates to the System Center suite, MVP Simon Skinner and MVP Pete Zerger will demo a Level 200 introductory session this Wednesday.   You can register for the demo here.  This demo will be useful to anyone from CIO’s to technical staff.

Next month Simon and Pete will be presenting another more technical session, Driving End-to-End Process Automation with AVIcode, Opalis and System Center.  For this, register here.

In addition to the webcasts, you will find lots of useful posts on the System Center Central website, where both the presenters are blogging about and helping the community with System Center products.