Oh snap! Sounds to me like Revision3 was deliberately targeted because of their choice to distribute content via BitTorrent without regard to the legitimacy of the content itself. Typical hysteria. What really freaks me out is that there are actually companies out there who's raison d'être is to take down networks using DoS attacks. How can this be? Something is fishy, I tell ya, and I don't like it.

Revision3

Paul Thurrott is doing a series on the upcoming Small Business Server 2008 release. Since we are actively looking to deploy this in some of our overseas operations, I am very interested in learning more about the newest version.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/sbs_ebs_2008_preview1.asp

I am always amazed at how many people I meet at conferences like this that are peers of mine, but are clueless regarding Microsoft technologies. Just this morning I had breakfast with another IT Director and he had never heard of Live Communication Server (Instant messaging) or ISA server. Am I the only one that reads anymore?

Speaking of ISA server, Microsoft is sticking to their guns that ISA is "best practice" for any forward-facing application, regardless of what sort of firewall you use. I'm not entirely sure I buy this, but we are having ISA bid as an optional line item in our upcoming Exchange 2007 conversion, just in case.

TLG was featured on the PowerPoint slide used by the CRM presenter! The speaker was talking about CRM adoption in the mid-market, when he showed a slide of some key companies that are using the product. Low and behold, who's logo was prominently featured in the center of the slide? That's right... TLG. Kinda cool, but I think I was the only one in the room of 300+ that noticed. Oh well.

MSAT (Microsoft Security Assessment Tool); Security Intelligence Report (SIR); Baseline Security Analyzer. These were some security tools that were mentioned in one of the sessions. Apparently, MSAT is a very comprehensive security and best-practice analysis tool that takes several days to complete. Yikes. I guess only us uber-geeky types will find that at all interesting.

More talk about NAP (Network Access Protection). They mentioned that it required 2008 Server and Vista or XP. I need to find out more about this and how it works, but from what I gather, the PC's are loaded with Forefront (Microsoft's anti-virus and security client) which is configured to "authenticate" to a Windows 2008 server running the NAP service. The NAP service can be configured to check various things on the client such as anti-virus signatures, hot fixes and patches, and a host of other security related items. Sounds intriguing. If they incorporated some 802.1x components, it might just be a no-brainer.

A demo of Forefront "Stirling" was given. This beta software is basically a management console for anti-virus and anti-malware. It seems to have lots of cool features, but I have a suspicion that it requires lots of other things to be in place (Vista, ISA, etc). That would be unfortunate if true. UPDATE: I had lunch with a couple of Microsoft guys working in their security division and they confirmed that XP will be supported. Yipee!

HP Virtualization Strategy breakout session: Virtual Desktops (VDI); Blade PC's. These are a couple of new concepts to me. In a VDI environment, a traditional virtual server spawns VM's of client operating systems (Vista, XP) and the client connects to these via RDP. It is a one-to-one arrangement, meaning one VM for each client PC. There are a few benefits to this. First, since the operating system is only used by a single user, applications do not have to be "terminal server aware" so most applications will perform properly. Another is the ability to push a standard desktop interface to the user instead of the plain Server 2003 or 2008 interface. This does not include the Vista "Aero" interface, however, but MS hinted at that ability coming soon. Lastly, it allows administrators to assign pre-defined resources (memory, disk space, etc) for each user with great ease. The Blade PC model is very similar in concept, but each client is assigned an actual PC with dedicated processors, memory, hard disks, etc in a blade form factor. This is much more expensive, obviously, but it gives the end user the most power and flexibility yet still gives some centralized administration. I still need to think about this approach versus standard Terminal Server access.

MS Kidaro. Desktop virtualization? They only hinted at this item and suggested that it would be part of MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), a series of desktop management enhancements only available to Software Assurance customers. It is apparently based on the existing Virtual PC 2007 product and allows individual applications to be run in a virtual machine on any PC or laptop. Another funny one that I will need to get more information on.

I attended a session ostensibly on Vista implementation, but it really focused on some of the enhancements in the Server 2008 product and how those could be used at the desktop. One item that they seemed particularly proud of was the ability to synchronize user profile information back to a centralized server during each disconnect. It behaves much like the roaming profiles scenario in both Windows 2000 and Windows 2003. Heck, we might of even had that in NT 4, but I can't remember that far back. Regardless, the big pitch was using this profile synchronization in conjunction with some of their streaming application products (a product called "Softgrid which is very cool, but I will review that at a later date) allows the user to recover very quickly from a PC or laptop crash. The idea being that a user could suffer a crash, receive their new computer, plug into the network and automatically have all of their setting exactly the way that had them before. That's all well and good, but when asked how this solution worked in a remote WAN environment like the one TLG uses, the answer was "Well, I suppose you could do that if you had to". Hardly reassuring.

Over all, this was a very successful conference, and I learned quite a bit. My only beef is that most of the sessions felt more like marketing and sales pitches rather than actual hardcore information. I guess you could argue that CIO's, the audience this conference purports to target, are not as concerned with the bits and bites of solutions, but rather the 30,000 foot strategic view. That may be so, but I can tell you after three of four of these conferences, the average attendee is Director/VP level, not CIO, so I think some detail is warranted. The HP Virtualization session left me a bit flat, but I might have had my expectations set too high. I had hoped HP would knock me over with some killer server that was engineered to run Hyper-V VM technology and that could maximize network throughput and bus traffic, but alas, it was not much more than a marketing pitch on why we should consider virtualization in our network. Dear HP, we kinda already knew that. They did open my eyes to a couple new approaches to thin-client computing, though I will need to do some number crunching to see if they are worth the high cost.

See ya next time!

This week I am at the annual CIO Summit at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA. It is a conference that I look forward to all year as it gives me an opportunity to discover new MS technologies, view the roadmap and vision for the future and a chance to meet with peers. There is lots of information flying during the conference, and these are my notes and thoughts.

Everyone around me is running XP on their laptops. I think that is very telling considering these are all IT Management types. What are they so afraid of? IE dumping 3times a day perhaps?

The "compulsory" and the "freestyle". Interesting way of looking at what must be done, and what you would like to do.

Three layers of infrastructure; Core, Application, and Productivity.

CRM Online? Salesforce.com competitor? I have not heard of this.. CRM Live?

Microsoft claims that 80% of IT spend is for maintenance and 20% is for innovation. I'll bet that is not the case with Linc. Maybe 50/50?

Microsoft's 2008 DR budget? $6.9B. Wow.

Exchange and Sharepoint Online? Microsoft-hosted Exchange services. I will need to investigate backup/retention/journaling. Potential international solution? Does it provide OWA? RDP-over-HTTPS?

Exchange, Sharepoint and Communications online "Dedicated" requires 5000+ seats and runs on dedicated hardware. "Standard" version is currently in beta and runs on shared servers with no minimum seats.

http://www.microsoft.com/online

More information on rolls. Sales and Marketing = CRM, Finance = Performance Point, etc.

The Live Meeting portion of OCS has the ability to record and post meetings, including audio, video and content. Where does it store this info? Does OCS require SQL and lots of storage? I'm still not sure what sort of PBX hardware and requirements are required for the VoIP integration.

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/services/archive.mspx  A possible answer to email archiving?

System Center Configuration Manager = SMS; System Center Operation Manager = MOM

NAP = Network Access Protection? Requires Server 2008?

My son Christopher turned 13 today. I guess there is no running away from officially being an old fart now. First turning 40, now a teenage son. Next stop, the nursing home. It's funny how I can turn 40, yet Crystal is still 29?