Come Hither!

A lot has happened since my last blog post here in May of 2010, not least of which is that I've become a professional writer. Specifically a technology writer focusing on identity -a growing field.

After a long hiatus, I've rebuilt deuby.com, somewhat, and have moved my blogging to that place. I don't have a lot there at the moment. Like many other blogs I suspect, much of the content I'd put on a blog, wondering if anyone looked at it, now goes into social media where I know people will look at it (unless they block me).

But a blog is good for longer-form writing, and I will occasionally add to it when I have good examples like my exotic car driving experience. (That's a tease; you have to go to deuby.com to read about it.)

See you there!

Three New Acquaintances, And An Old Friend

This was an unexpectedly musical week for us. I started it out not even remembering we had a Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert on Saturday (last) night, and ended up seeing two world premiere performances and a very rare performance of a piece dear to our hearts.

The first new acquaintance was The Dallas Opera’s production of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, composed by Jake Heggie. The Dallas Opera, in conjunction with several other opera companies, commissioned Mr. Heggie to write a new opera for the inaugural season of Dallas’ first dedicated opera house, the Winspear (our second new acquaintance). It’s gotten excellent reviews, so we wanted to get to it somehow. Sharon managed to score a couple of musician’s comp tickets from a friend in the orchestra, so we had free nosebleed seats up in the grand tier. (The only available public tickets were $300 apiece, which was out of the question.) It was a great evening.

The opera was compelling and easy to follow, and the set – which I’m sure could only be done at a modern theater like the Winspear – was spare, yet terrific. It was cast as the inside of a ship’s hull, so the deck (which is, incidentally, what the stage floor is actually called) curves up as it goes upstage (to the rear) until it’s vertical. There are three sets of rungs that go up onto this wall, and chorus members and supers would climb up onto them…and when they had to go downstage (to the front) or exit, they’d jump off and slide down to the level section , just like a kid’s slide! Large, two-sided ladders rose up into the fly loft above the stage, and the entire cast clambered up and down them the whole production. (I’m told the casting call required one be “fearless of heights”.) And the center section of the hull could pivot forward, revealing a large platform for more action with large rendering stoves in the background.

The lighting was really innovative, showing that this was a 21st century opera. Some kind of computerized projector was used to create simple, yet evocative white line drawings I’ve never seen before in an opera. The opening sequence started with a slowly rotating star field which evolved into a sailing ship that grew, and grew until its bow filled the stage. Other images later in the opera had you flying over and around the ship, kind of like the sequence in the Titanic movie. Finally, the lighting was used to remarkable effect to turn the three sets of rungs upstage into three longboats on the water! The longboat crews sat on the rungs, and longboat outlines, spotlights, and water effects were displayed around them. When a longboat was cracked up by the whale, all slid off the rungs and disappeared offstage while a rotating and breaking up drawing sequence made it perfectly clear what had happened.

This post is long enough already, so I’ll talk about the last “new and old” next time…

Technorati Tags: The Dallas Opera,Moby-Dick,Jake Heggie,Herman Melville,Winspear Opera House

A Day In Vancouver

I’m working up in Seattle this week, and a big company meeting on Friday had me stay over the weekend. My plans for Saturday collapsed late Friday night, leaving me wondering what to do with a rare opportunity. When left with free time, interesting places to explore, and a rental car, I usually dash out of time. Last  time I did this I ended up in Chamonix, France.

Saturday it was Vancouver. It’s only about two hours away in good traffic, and so I was able to get up there, swing by the local Mountain Equipment Coop (the Canadian equivalent of REI) for a daypack for my stuff, and knock around for the afternoon. I didn’t get much beyond a little of Yaletown, Granville Island, and a trip around Stanley Park, but it was a good recon trip for further explorations. Central Vancouver, anywhere near the water – what a city of high-rises! Photos and a video of the day are here.

Technorati Tags: vancouver,granville island,stanley park

Live Mesh: Your first step onto the Cloud

Paul Thurrott just posted on how he' uses Live Mesh, and I remembered I’m overdue to jump on this particular bandwagon.

Live Mesh is one of Microsoft’s consumer-facing, free applications that gives you up to 5 GB of storage somewhere in one of their massive data centers – i.e., the Cloud. I won’t duplicate Paul’s remarks on how it works; I just think you should use it.

Live Mesh has pretty much replaced USB keys for me as the next generation of portable storage. First we had the floppy or diskette drive. (Can you imaging how limiting 1.44 MB is now? And the speed of it??) Then we started using networking to copy files. Now we have USB keys as a quick way to copy large files between computers…but they don’t keep them synchronized. I’ll be the first to admit my job no longer involves moving from server to server to server installing things, but I haven’t had to do that for oh, well over a decade.

My biggest portable need is creative work – articles, presentations, webcasts - that I typically develop on my home PC, then either use on my notebook at my company’s offices in Seattle or give presentations at a conference. Before Mesh I’d always be copying files to a key (or before that, burning it to a disc) to be absolutely sure I had the presentation and a backup in case it was corrupted, deleted, or my notebook hosed itself. (Or I forgot the power cord…but that was a long time ago :-} ).

I’ve moved all my presentation and webcast development work to a Mesh folder , and synchronize it between my home PC, my work notebook, and my Live desktop. Within minutes of updating a file on one side, I know I’ll have received the updates on the other side. It has another plus on the disaster recovery side: You can go to any internet-connected computer, go to http://mesh.com, login to your Live account, and access all the files on your Live desktop. I used this at my last conference to download the latest versions of my conference presentations to the conference director when we realized his Vista notebook didn’t recognize my portable Bitlocker-encrypted USB drive.

Here’s another use: A few months ago I set a shared folder up with a friend that was going to New Zealand. He’d take photos during the day, download them to his notebook, sync them overnight, and the next day I could browse through them here in the States. We were only limited by the bandwidth on his side to upload his big Canon DSLR images.

It’d definitely not perfect. It’s emphatically NOT for inter-company collaboration, or really any kind of collaboration with frequent updates. There’s no file locking, so more than one person could be working a file and you have a versioning mess. You also can’t put the Mesh folders anywhere other than on your desktop. I get around that by putting all the folders in a Windows 7 library I call Live Mesh. There’s a 5 GB limit in files, though as Paul points out you can get around that by simply not synchronizing a folder with the Live Desktop. Finally, when you create a new folder on the Live Desktop Mesh annoyingly creates a shortcut on ALL your shared device’s desktop, seemingly just in case you might want to add the folder to it.

Warts and all, Live Mesh is a really handy tool that gives you a very first-person feel for blurring the distinction between what’s local and what’s out there in the cloud. And though there haven’t been any recent updates to it, Mesh is one of Ray Ozzie’s pet projects, so expect we’ll be hearing more about it in the future.

Technorati Tags: Live Mesh,Cloud,Microsoft,consumer storage

Speaking at “Business Critical Virtualization” Online Conference 3/31

Fresh back from doing a pre-conference session and three breakout sessions at the Virtualization Pro Summit in Las Vegas last week, I’m giving a session on using virtualization for business critical applications at the upcoming Business Critical Virtualization conference. (Whew, that was a lot of “virtualization”s for one long sentence. My apologies.) The event is being held on March 31st.

The session focuses on benchmarks and best practices for virtualizing SQL Server, SharePoint, and Exchange, with a Q&A afterward, and a general Q&A at the end of the day.

Technorati Tags: virtualization,SQL Server,Sharepoint,Exchange

Speaking at TEC 2010!

I’ve been accepted to speak at TEC 2010 April 25^th – 28th, in LA! TEC – formerly the Directory Expert’s Conference – is a 400 level propellerhead’s conference about directory services, identity, Exchange, and SharePoint. On top of that, it holds the record in my book for being the quirkiest conference with the most unusual traditions I’ve ever attended (e.g. the DEC / TEC chicken, the Joe & Dean show, the DEC / TEC Wook Lee Memorial Pro / Am Challenge*, Stuarts Kwan ordering pizza delivery for all attendees, even the opening keynote). I’m sure all the new Exchange and SharePoint attendees will be confused :).

I’ve been invited to speak for a number of years, all my friends go, but this is the first time I’ve spoken there. I’m giving a session on AD replication troubleshooting based on my troubleshooting flowcharts at adtroubleshooting.deuby.com.

Please try to make the conference! You get to rub elbows with the top – I’ll repeat it, top – directory experts in the world, both inside  and outside Microsoft. A significant number of the Microsoft Directory Services team comes to this conference. It’s 400 level detail, beyond what you get at a Tech Ed. It’s in LA this year, not Las Vegas, so you can’t be accused of just going to party. But it’s still a heck of a lot of fun.

http://www.tec2010.com/

* No, he’s not dead. It’s a long story. Which you’ll hear if you attend.

Technorati Tags: TEC 2010,DEC,TEC

Polychrome Pass

Last week I was walking past a colleague’s desk, and did such a double-take that a couple of other heads popped up to see what was so interesting.

Satish had downloaded a new Windows 7 theme, Bing’s Best, that has what someone at Microsoft picked as the best photos from the amazing collection displayed on a daily basis at Bing. The particular photo is of a hiker standing on a point, looking out at a stunning collection of green tundra, multihued (polychrome) rocks, snow-covered mountains, and a cloud-dotted blue sky.

I saw it when it first came out and was transfixed by it. It’s an interesting photo with great colors, and a perfect example of why you want to put the point your eye moves to – the hiker – well off to one side instead of in the center. Where on earth was it?? Poking around on Bing, I saw it was called Polychrome Pass, deep in Denali National Park in Alaska. Huh, what are the odds of getting to THAT in my lifetime.

I was never able to get a clean JPEG of it, so it faded into that netherworld in your head where the eye candy of amazing photos goes. Little did I realize when I first got to see this photo I’d be standing in that very spot six months later.

Alas, I wasn’t able to duplicate the exact shot because I didn’t remember by then what it looked like exactly. This is what all of Polychrome Pass looks like, after a harrowing drive in a Park Services bus on a narrow dirt road.

The hiker’s point is in the bottom center. The Bing photo’s viewpoint is off to the left of the camera, so the photographer was actually comfortably standing on the road :). But the picture is just as stunning even with that knowledge.

We had a really terrific day ourselves, a very rare day when Denali was perfectly clear instead of being covered in clouds (it’s so big it has its own weather system), but it didn’t look as nice as that. Might be sour grapes, but I think a little Photoshop work might have been applied to it. Or at least that’s my story :).

Technorati Tags: Denali,Polychrome Pass,Alaska,Denali National Park,Bing,Windows 7 Theme Pack

Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster Available!

In a previous entry I’d mentioned the cool AD Reference posters put out by technet. Well, there’s now a Windows Server 2008 R2 poster available. It’s incredibly detailed, something any IT pro would love to have on their wall. And a magnifying glass on a string nearby.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out to us.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=64a5cc28-f8a1-4b30-a4a2-455c65bda8d7&displaylang=en

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008 R2,R2,poster

Free Lab Training On New(& newish) AD Features

Are you perhaps considering upgrading your DCs from Windows 2003 to 2008 R2, but you want to kick the tires of some of the new features available in it and Windows 2008? I’ve got a resource for you.

Doing some other research, I found that TechNet Virtual Labs has a good amount of resources on AD features in W2K8, like

• Best Practices Analyzer
• Recycle Bin, PowerShell V2
• The new Server Manager utilities

There’s also good stuff on existing W2K8 features:

• Managing AD DS
• Remotely Managing Server Core (a MUST for anyone implementing Hyper-V)
• Fine Grained Password Policy

These are well worth 90 minutes (probably less) of your time. Ironically, the Virtual Labs don’t have what I was looking for - a lab on Hyper-V virtualization :-/.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Active Directory,Best Practices Analyzer,Recycle Bin,PowerShell V2,Server Core,Fine Grained Password Policy

Winding Up Connections

I’ve just finished my annual visit to the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to speak at Windows Connections. It was a good trip, with the dual purpose of presenting sessions and catching up with my professional friends and colleagues – most of whom I’ve never seen outside of some hotel, convention center, or the Microsoft campus.

Windows Connections is a relatively small conference compared to a behemoth like Tech Ed, but that’s one of the things its attendees like about it. They get to hang out and talk to the speakers in between session, and there’s usually an attendee party where the speakers are specifically instructed to come hang out with the people that pay for them. Every year I recognize a number of returning folks. I presented three sessions covering various aspects of Active Directory troubleshooting and recovery, and shopped around version 1.0 of some AD troubleshooting flowcharts. I also did a nice little interview with Josh Hoffman for AppAssure on AD recovery. Last night I spend a little time with the Windows IT Pro crowd (a rowdy bunch!) at MiX, the nightclub at the top of THEHotel at the Mandalay. I’m not a nightclubber – this was the first time I’d been there in at least five years of coming here – but the view of the Strip from the north balcony of this southside hotel was simply jawdropping. Fortunately, a vendor was springing for the hideously expensive drinks.

On the downside, I won’t be seeing the gang at the spring Windows Connections in Orlando; the organizers had to cancel it due to the slow economy. On the plus side, I was invited to do a couple of sessions at a new conference in the spring, a virtualization summit, at the Bellagio in Vegas. So, on the road again for conference season (March and April) next spring – virtualization, (hopefully) MVP summit, possibly TEC, possibly Tech Ed. I’d like to do some European gigs like I’ve done in the past, but you never can tell what will materialize.

Technorati Tags: Windows Connections,virtualization

The REPADMIN Reference

REPADMIN is the main utility Active Directory administrators use for checking replication. It’s very powerful and can provide a ton of insight about what’s going on between your domain controllers as they merrily pass those little objects and attributes amongst each other. However, as any less-than-experienced or part-time AD admin can tell you, there are a number of pain points around working with it:

• It’s huge. REPADMIN has 69 possible commands between its old (deprecated) command set, current ones, and expert “we warned you not to break your AD” advanced ones. And most commands have a stack of switches and parameters. Even the help on how you can specify a list of domain controllers for the command prints out to three pages!
• The syntax is byzantine – even the help is. There are three levels of help within the utility, and the syntax is different for each and can change between the product releases. I mean, who ever heard of /?:<command> ? Oh, and it falls into that special category of command line utilities from hell where if you don’t get the syntax exactly right, it simply spits the general help file back at you with no hint as to what you’ve done wrong. This is clearly a case where a few hours spent by the developer will save thousands of hours administrator’s time across the globe.
• The output is equally complex and takes experience to understand.
• There are few scenario-based examples on how to use the tool – which is the handiest approach. After all, most REPADMIN users are using it to solve a specific problem.

This is okay-ish for dedicated, experienced AD admins; they can impress their geek friends at TEC with their superior knowledge :). But the majority of AD admins in the world aren’t dedicated; they have other things to do as well. (Microsoft’s TAGM – technical audience global marketing – says the majority of IT pros are generalists that have to do many roles.) These people visit REPADMIN occasionally as needed, and can remember two or three commands. They have to look up the rest, either from their own notes, an article, general searching, or trial and error. And there’s so much REPADMIN can do, even the dedicated AD admins can usually find new cool things to do.

After whining about this on a Directory Services MVP conference call with the DS team, I learned that back in 2008 Microsoft published a comprehensive (111-page!) reference document on REPADMIN, including various scenarios. The document is available on Microsoft Downloads at http://bit.ly/16xir3; every AD admin should have a local soft copy they can CTL+F their way through.

It does not include Windows Server 2008 updates, but it’s a huge help to those of us used to squinting at syntax in command prompts.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,repadmin,Active Directory,replication,Active Directory replication,replication troubleshooting

First Look & Listen At Dallas’ New Winspear Opera House

We’ve been fortunate to attend two grand openings during our time here in Dallas, once in 1989 and again today . I don’t mean gallery openings or restaurant openings; I mean the kind of opening that happens about once every 50 years for a type of venue.

In 1989 we attended the gala opening of the Morten H. Meyerson Symphony Center (aka “The Mort” for obvious reasons), a stunning design by the famous architect I.M. Pei, and the only concert hall he ever did. Twenty years later on Sunday afternoon, almost to the month, we attended the Spotlight Concert for the Margot & Ted Winspear Opera House right next door.

Everyone associated with the Opera, whether they’re attendees or performers, has been looking forward to this event for quite some time. The Dallas Opera has been performing in the Fair Park Music Hall almost since its inception. The Music Hall is cavernous (3420 seats), dark, cramped backstage, and very difficult to hear if you aren’t in orchestra or first balcony seats. I’ve spent many hours backstage in those dingy dressing rooms, so I personally can’t wait to see how the Winspear improves on them.

In contrast, the Winspear is very sleek and modern from the outside, with a large moveable louver “roof” to shade it from the Texas sun, and glass windows that are supposed to slide up and down as weather permits. It’s almost a third smaller than the Music Hall, seating 2200 people. The structure surrounding the Margaret McDermott concert hall is covered in a hard red plastic, with red neon lights inside it to display entrance names, floor levels, and even the opera house’s name. There are cantilevered stairs with exposed steps and glass-plus-chrome railings all the way up to the fifth level; it’s actually not for someone that has a fear of heights. The concert hall inside has sort of a mid-century Modern look with a bit of a Scandinavian twist. Its most prominent feature, I think, are the sculpted metal bands that ring the concert hall and (I presume) diffuse the direct sound from the stage. It has mahogany floors that may be good for acoustics, but is very distracting when they meet a latecomer during the concert wearing heels. Tap, tap, tap…does anyone ever think of taking their shoes off? It’s a thrill to walk into a distinctive concert hall like the Winspear, or the Mort, or the Disney in Los Angeles, for the very first time. I never get tired of showing visitors around the Meyerson. And there’s an extra thrill when you know you’re among the first to see the hall, period.

The Spotlight concert was a free but only word-of-mouth advertised event, held partly to thank Texas Instruments and Margaret McDermott, widow of one of TI’s founders, for their sponsorship. We got in “legally”, but hey, I’m a fifteen year TI alumnus so I didn’t feel out of place.

The main reason for the concert, however, was to test the sound of the hall for the first time. To do this, you must have bodies in seats as any concert hall sounds very different with our sound-absorbing and scattering bodies than it sounds empty. This was made immediately evident as Bob Essert of Sound Space Design of London, the chief acoustician of the hall’s design, set up an unusual speaker on stage. Instructing us to be quiet while he held up his hand, he ran a series of frequency sweeps and bursts of white noise to document the hall’s frequency response and latency with our warm bodies in it. With that completed, the concert began with Opera Music Director Graeme Jenkins leading the Opera Orchestra, chorus, and soloists.

Maestro Jenkins had selected a range of pieces, from very intimate piano and violin chamber music to the huge finale of Die Meistersinger with chorus, organ, onstage brass and percussion, and the 85-piece orchestra. I’m guessing he selected the wide range to check out how the hall sounded in different situations. Unfortunately, the audience was apparently shy of seasoned concertgoers. I suspect many of them, with little kids in tow, were there more to see the hall than sit through a somewhat lengthy concert. Children were more in evidence than usual on this Sunday afternoon, and for a particularly quiet chamber piece the Maestro turned around and asked if the children that couldn't keep quiet be kept outside for the duration of the piece. Seems a bit harsh at first, but when you consider that the main purpose of the concert was to hear and tune the hall – not the audience – a little cooperation would have been nice. The little girl and her parents behind us did NOT leave, so we were treated to 10 minutes of torture as we alternated between trying to focus on the piano / violin piece and hearing the girl just behind us. Unless we had the distraction of ANOTHER woman clicking into the hall on her heels. <sigh>

The sound of the hall was instantly, clearly different than the Meyerson. Very crisp, very dry. I’m not an expert at describing such things, but it was also the general consensus of other concertgoers we talked to. I guess this would translate to a more dominant high frequency response than the Mort, but the sound doesn’t ‘hang’, or echo about the place. It’s much less resonant than the Mort. There’s a surprising amount of detail you can hear from the orchestra – and remember, they’re in the pit in front of and under the stage. You can hear practically every note, good or bad.

There’s work to be done acoustically and physically, of course. I thought there was a little TOO much volume out of the pit, which overbalanced the soloists. Odd sound reflections, causing us to wonder if there was an offstage band or not. Separating of woodwinds and brass across the pit from each other, which created a disjointed sound. And several people crashed to the floor that afternoon; one tripped over a taped-down microphone cable, another stepped off an unmarked 4-inch riser in rear orchestra. And I really hope they just haven’t installed the hydraulic closers on the inner concert hall doors yet; the sound of a door thudding shut should not be heard in a $354 million dollar performance hall.

Technorati Tags: Winspear Opera House,Winspear,Dallas Opera,Dallas

Why Are My Photos Required To Beat Cancer?

I just ran across a Facebook app from Intel called “Progress through Processors”. It’s a new version of the distributed computing / grid computing apps we’ve had for a long time (I had lots of SETI@Home points), directed towards combating cancer, climate change, and malaria in Africa. That took about 10 seconds to decide, “Hell yeah I”ll do that!” (despite the economy hit – it isn’t free; when the processor is pegged it does use more juice). However…ahem…there’s the question of this little warning screen before you can install the app:

Allowing Progress Thru Processors access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work.

Excuse me?? Now I may not be the identity geek my friend Pam is, but I do know my way through Kim Cameron’s Seven Laws Of Identity. Law number 2 states:

The solution that discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution.

In other words, assume a systems breach is always possible, and never ask for identity information you don’t directly and immediately need. Why on earth are my photos, my friend’s info, and “other content” required to use my spare processor cycles to combat cancer?

Equally scary, over 104,000 people are fans of this app. If they’ve all installed it, that’s a hell of a lot of identity gathering. I realize this is pretty standard procedure for Facebook apps (which is why I don’t use them), but I’d hoped that Intel would know better.

I posted a comment regarding this to my old home at the Intel blogs; we’ll see what comes of it.

Technorati Tags: Intel,Identity,Facebook

Useful Active Directory Delegation Links

Delegating rights in an AD forest so that everyone gets just the rights they need – and no more – is one of the most important acts an AD administrator can take to ensure the security of that forest. In writing up an AD disaster recovery presentation, I came across several links that summarize the basic delegation recommendations, and updated features in later AD releases that make delegation a little easier. Though not exhaustive, I thought I’d simply collect these in one place.

• Windows 2003: Best Practices for Delegating Active Directory Administration
  
• Windows 2008: Administrator Role Separation on Read Only DCs
  
• Windows 2008: New “Owner Rights” Security Principal
  
• Windows 2008: Fine Grained Password Policy

Technorati Tags: Active Directory,delegation,delegation of administration,fine grained password policy,RODC

Tip: Retrieving the Prodigal Window

Have you ever worked with an external monitor on your notebook, with the desktop and applications spread out across both monitors,  then undocked the notebook and half your apps are “off the screen”? You can’t move them back on the screen because you can’t see where to place the mouse cursor to drag the windows back to the visible desktop. And if you quit and re-launch them, they go right back to where they were! Very annoying.

I helped out a coworker with this tip today and thought I’d document it. It dates back to Windows 3.1 / 3.11, back when the menu in the upper-left corner of a window was used much more. It’s still there in Windows 7, but no one seems to know about it any more.

To move a window back to where you can see it:

1. Use Alt-Tab to bring the wayward window into focus. (Even though you can’t see it, it’s still in focus.)
2. Hit Alt-Space to activate the upper-left menu.
3. Hit “m” to select the Move command. The cursor, if you could see it, turns into a four-way arrow.
4. Using the cursor keys only, move the window back to where you can see it. Use any other key or mouse click to return the cursor to normal.

Technorati Tags: moving window,cursor,use cursor to move window,hidden window,alt-space

Active Directory Reference Posters

In trolling through Microsoft downloads for some upcoming presentations, I happened across an updated version of the original Windows 2003 Active Directory Component “Jigsaw” poster published by TechNet Magazine in their March-April 2006 issue. The updated version, published in July 2007, contains the various AD feature components available in Windows 2008:

• AD Lightweight Directory Services (aka ADAM. Yes. Still.)
• AD Federation Services (ADFS)
• AD Rights Management Services (AD RMS)
• Group Policy (not strictly a feature component, though the Group Policy Management Console – GPMC – is)
• AD Management (sort of a grab bag of new AD features in W2K8, including fine-grained password policies, GlobalName zones, restartable AD, and auditing changes)
• AD Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) – the most heavily promoted new AD feature in W2K8

If that’s not enough information to cram onto a 20” x 30” poster, one side has a list of acronyms and their translation while the other is a legend of all the pretty icons being used. This is a poster to put on the wall and stare intently at, for a while.

For you non-AD people that occasionally read this blog…yeah, it is complicated :).

TechNet Magazine Active Directory Component Jigsaw Poster

Windows Server 2008 Component Poster 

Technorati Tags: active directory,ad components,AD poster,AD jigsaw,technet,technet magazine

Upgrading Windows 7 RC to RTM

If you’re like me, when you had Windows 7 beta on your system, you more or less expected to have to rebuild to move to the release candidate. With the release candidate, based on past history you fully expected to be able to upgrade from RC to RTM.

Surprisingly, that’s not the case. I don’t know the whys and wherefores of this decision, but I do know I don’t want to go through it. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to upgrade to Windows 7 RTM from RC, courtesy of Ron Schenone. Note that, strictly speaking, this scenario is not supported by Microsoft (though I highly doubt the question will ever come up). I’ll summarize the procedure here:

1. Mount your legal copy of Windows 7, either with the physical DVD or by using MagicDisc to mount the ISO.
2. Copy the contents to a writeable location (network file share, usb key / drive, etc.). I used a network file share that was available to all clients.
3. Browse to the \support folder.
4. Edit cversion.ini.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the build you’re running. If you’re running the RC, lower the number from 7100 to 7000.
6. Save the file.
7. Run setup from this modified copy, and the version check will be bypassed.

A few other notes from my upgrade experience:

• Log off all other users on the computer.
• Deauthorize any iTunes accounts for the computer. You can easily re-auth them when the upgrade is complete.
• I don’t know this last one for sure, but I believe the upgrade goes MUCH faster if you offload non-essential files from the system during the upgrade. When I upgraded my desktop computer that had a replicated file share with about 100 GB of data, the upgrade took forever. When on my second upgraded system I moved this kind of data off, it ran much faster. I do know that the Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 upgrades are actually a sort of wipe-and-load upgrade compared to the previous overwrite-in-place upgrade method, so it’s plausible.
• Use Treesize Free to compare (and clean up!) your disk space before and after the upgrade. You may find you’ve burned some space that can be reclaimed.
• You can also reclaim space after a successful upgrade by going into Disk Cleanup for the system drive (Right-click on the drive letter in Windows Explorer, Properties, the Disk Cleanup button by the pie chart). The list of of items that can be cleaned up will include “Files discarded by Windows upgrade”, but it will NOT be checked. In my case it saved about 1.4 GB of space.
• Before you copy all those files back (and you’re in the disk properties dialog anyway), go to the Tools property sheet and defrag your nice new upgraded system!

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,upgrade,RC to RTM,MagicDisc,TreeSize Free

W2K8 Metadata Cleanup without NTDSUTIL

I just learned that when you aren’t able to normally demote a domain controller in Active Directory and have to perform a metadata cleanup, if you’re running Windows 2008 or R2 it’s become much easier.

The classic method for cleaning up the DC’s metadata in Active Directory has been to go into NTDSUTIL and running through a sequence of commands to point at the right computer object representing the domain controller, then removing it. What I just learned from one of the Microsoft directory services guys is that

…you can use Active Directory Users and Computers to clean up server metadata. In this procedure, deleting the computer object in the Domain Controllers organizational unit (OU) initiates the cleanup process, which proceeds automatically.

The only place so far I’ve found this documented are those two sentences in this TechNet article. Simple! Just delete the computer object! Now I need to go try it in my test lab…

Technorati Tags: Windows 2008,Windows 2008 R2,Active Directory,DCPROMO,metadata cleanup

Good Old Fashioned American Craftsmanship

A couple of years ago I sprung for a really nice bicycle floor pump, a professional tool made by Park Tool of St. Paul, Minnesota.

If you’ve ever been at all into bicycling and their maintenance, you’ve certainly seen Park tools at your local bike shop. Usually a bit pricier than the rest, the bright blue tools are almost without exception what the professional mechanics use. (One of the nice things about bicycling is that as a grownup you can afford The Best of some things. Unlike automobiles.) They’re running a “True Blue” ad campaign that points out, for example, that every single Park repair stand you’ve seen in every single bicycle shop in the United States for the last 29 years has been welded together by one man – Bradley Reid.

One morning the gauge on my pump stuck at 60 psi. Now I didn’t know if I could simply pump my tire up to 160 and get 100 psi, or if something very bad would happen. Since the tools have a limited lifetime warranty, I gave Park a call. For such a well-known presence in the cycling world, they’re actually quite a small company.

I explained my problem to the operator, who responded, “Oh, you want to talk to Mark.” Really? No phone menus? No overseas call centers? Nope. “Hi, this is Mark. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

Mark called back very shortly. Before I’d even finished explaining my problem he knew all about it. “The earlier pumps use brass gears with teeth as small as 1/4 mm. If it got knocked over too many times, sometimes it will skip a tooth or to and stay stuck there.” I hadn’t knocked it over, but I wasn’t going to point this out as he was going to send me an updated gauge. “Be sure to recycle that gauge; under the case it’s a solid brass body.” Really?? People still do that?

I just had to ask, having had so many dodos on the other end of the phone for some many years: Does the new gauge fit the old pump? 

There was a moment’s silent on the other end of the line. Then Mark said, in a slightly offended tone, “Of course it does. This is Park.” You’re right, and thanks for demonstrating it to me.

Mark mailed me a new gauge (and a little Park sticker) for no charge of course, which I easily swapped for the old one. I haven’t been able to bring myself to get rid of the old gauge though. Now I have a second paperweight, alongside my ‘70’s Campy Nuovo Record rear derailleur :).

Technorati Tags: Park Tool,bicycling

A Really Interesting Look at W2K8 R2 Seven Days Before Ship

Windows IT Pro has just aired an interesting interview (if you’re an IT pro that focuses on operating systems – aren’t we all?) of the daily “ship” meeting for Windows Server 2008 R2, a week before it went RTM (released to manufacturing). The overall program manager Brian McNeill is the main interviewee, and the always colorful Iain McDonald also has a cameo.

My colleague Karen Forster, who handled the project, has a good blog post about it.

For those of you that still have old doubts about how reliable the Windows server product is, check out these numbers:

Those reliability statistics McDonald was looking at were noteworthy. The Microsoft study shows that the new release significantly exceeds the reliability goal that was set for its predecessor Windows Server 2008 (WS08) at its RTM. As the graph in the video shows, WS08 R2 RC demonstrated availability of 99.9987 percent (~ 7 minutes of down time per year), which exceeds WS08’s RTM availability of 99.9978 percent (~12 minutes of down time per year)."

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/102593/exclusive-video-inside-the-windows-server-2008-r2-ship-room.html 

Technorati Tags: Windows Server,Windows Server 2008 R2,R2,Microsoft,Windows IT Pro