Here’s some brief information about this episode, titled TechNet Radio Community Corner: Virtualization with Microsoft MVP Anil Desai:

In today’s Community Corner, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist John Weston interviews Microsoft Virtualization MVP, Anil Desai to the show. Tune in as they discuss cloud computing’s impact to IT, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, as well as the relationship between Virtualization and Private Cloud solutions.

Special thanks to Chris Caldwell and John Weston for inviting me and for a fun conversation!  For more shows and episodes of related shows, visit the TechNet Edge web site.

I just received notification that I have been again granted the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award in the area of Windows Server Virtualization!  Unless my memory is failing me, this is the sixth year in which I’ve received the award.  Thanks, as always, to Microsoft and the MVP program for the award and all of its benefits!

This area of specialization includes a group of virtualization-focused that have in-depth knowledge of Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and a lot of related technologies.  Obviously, virtualization and cloud computing are popular areas of IT, so it’s especially nice to receive the award this year.

Earlier this year, I had the benefit of interacting with a wide variety of IT experts at the Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, WA. I try to attend this event every year, as it’s a great opportunity to network with others and to get some inside information on the future of things from Microsoft. It’s also a good excuse to make it to the Pacific Northwest.  So far, this year has presented itself for numerous opportunities to write, speak, and consult on the topic of virtualization strategies and implementations.  I hope to keep this up throughout the rest of the year.

For more details, you can visit my profile here: Anil Desai’s MVP Profile.

Trouble in Cloud City

Several years ago, I wrote a blog post about the virtues and benefits of online backups (see Online Backup Options).  Since then, I have recommended cloud-based storage (and, Mozy, in particular) to a rather large number of IT professionals, friends, and family.  The idea itself is compelling: Online backups have the potential of simplifying the backup process for most users, while providing secure remote storage.  But what happens when something goes wrong?  Or if you just have a technical question?

I don’t often highlight specific companies for poor customer service – it’s almost to be expected from many organizations these days – but a recent interaction I had with Mozy’s Customer Support has ended in my completely giving up on trying to resolve what should have been a very simple issue.  Without getting into the technical specifics, I have been trying to perform backups of Encrypting File System (EFS)-encrypted local files to the cloud.  From the latest information I could find, Mozy supports both local and online backups of EFS encrypted files.  That wasn’t my experience, though – I received cryptic error messages and overall backup failures.  So, I decided to contact Mozy’s Customer Support, creating a case that included my log files and a detailed description of the problem. 

A Little Rain Must Fall…

In summary: It has been over two weeks now, and after three escalations, I’m no closer to resolving the problem.  Just about every response I have sent to Mozy (along with requests for escalation) have been ignored.  In fact, a US Escalations Customer Support Manager has barely managed to feign any interest in my issue at all.  An hour-long phone call with a Level 2 Customer Support technician resulted in his disabling of several necessary services on my primary Windows 7 workstation (I had to keep records of this so I could reverse the changes myself), and poring through log files that provided little useful information.  The response to my most recent request for support has been a request for me to (again) restate the original problem (it’s thoroughly documented in their support system – I just can’t get anyone to read it).  I do plan to escalate this issue to the Director- or VP-level at Mozy as I somehow hopeful that someone at the organization will care.

Cloud Compatibility

One of the most promising aspects of cloud-based service offerings is a reduction in complexity.  Rather that relying on complicated application deployments (the story goes), we can leave all of the details to services that are provided off-site.  But what about support and compatibility issues?  What happens when two or more cloud services vendors decide that their services are incompatible?  My case with Mozy might be that type of issue, though it doesn’t seem like there’s any official documentation or support boundaries related to which products can peacefully co-exist on the same system with it and which options are supported.  And what if the vendor decides that features and functionality I require aren’t important to them?  Sure, I could run into the same problems with local applications, but workarounds are far easier to find when I control both communication endpoints.

Risk Mitigation

I understand that I’m hardly the first person to suffer from poor technical support, but this experience has made me reconsider the risks of cloud-based services in general.  I’m hardly an important customer for Mozy, but I am paying for their service and I really do rely on the sanctity of my backups.  My typical response to organizations that doubt the cloud is to first compare the reliability of their own datacenter infrastructure against that of an online service provider’s.  However, in this case, I’m completely stuck – I either need to reduce security at my file system level, discontinue the use of Mozy (and transfer 25 GB of data to a competing service), or revert to local backups.

All Eggs in One Cloud?

As the entire world moves to a greater reliance on Internet connections and online services, it becomes harder to create fall-back plans and alternatives.  It’s simply not practical or cost-effective to expect your service providers to fail you.  What’s the point in online backups if I need to have a backup plan for my online backup provider?

That makes me curious: Who else has had a recent experience that has questioned their value in hosted services?  Was it downtime, client application issues, availability, poor customer support, or all of the above?  And how safe do you feel when your mission-critical IT infrastructure is resting on clouds?

For more details, including a list of speakers and their topics, see the NetIP Austin Web Site and Events Calendar (we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on, as well).  If you’d like to attend, please RSVP via our Facebook Event Page.  I hope to see you there!

So now that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released, what’s the story for report development?  Fortunately, it’s not quite as confusing.  The primary tool you’ll use for developing reports is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Report Builder 3.0.  You can download it manually using the link to the Microsoft Download site, or you can install it using ClickOnce by loading your Reporting Services web site (e.g., http://localhost/Reports).  The download is also available as part of the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack (along with a wide variety of other tools and utilities).  Report Builder 3.0 supports the creation of reports for both SQL Server 2008 and the R2 version.

If you’re moving to (or testing) the RTM version of SQL Server 2008 R2, Report Builder 3.0 is likely the best way to get acquainted with the new features of this release.  And, thankfully, the migration process should be much simpler than it was for previous versions of SSRS.  A great resource for more information is the MSDN SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Forum.  Or, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here.

The Microsoft Thrive web site is a free resource that is designed to help IT professionals in a variety of ways.  For example, the site includes the following goals and areas:

• Advance Your Career
• Enhance Your Technical Skills
• Align IT with Business

Some of the content is Microsoft-focused, but much of it applies to just about any area of IT specialization.

I’m honored to say that I’ve been chosen as the Thrive IT Pro of the Month (see Thrive IT Pro of the Month: Anil Desai)!  I recorded a brief (~9 minutes long) presentation that covers, among other things, some recommendations for IT pros to get ahead, how IT pros can demonstrate their value, details on technology-focused topics and even a mention of the importance of hobbies.

The entire audio presentation is available from download using the previous link.  Here’s an excerpt from the written transcript:

As an independent consultant, I’m fairly diversified in the area of IT. I’m also used to the ups and downs in the IT industry, starting from the dot-com days in the late 1990′s to today. I use a variety of different specializations to fill in the inevitable downtime between projects. So, I’m fairly fortunate in that I’ve been able to maintain my business through the recent crunch.

However, the downturn in the economy has certainly had an impact on my clients, especially in the area of prioritization. Many organizations have focused on cost-cutting and many organizations have removed or scaled-back many of their non-essential projects. Those changes can sometimes translate into lay-offs, increased work for remaining staff, and short-term changes at the expense of long-term gains.

All of this provides some serious challenges (as well as some opportunities) for IT professionals. One change is that it really puts the emphasis on IT professionals’ ability to work as a strategic part of their businesses. I’ve heard it said that people know when IT departments are doing their jobs when they don’t know that IT departments are doing their jobs. The idea here is that IT is traditionally seen as a behind-the-scenes force (or sometimes just as a cost center). Business leaders might feel that IT provides little strategic value to the overall business.

Tough economic environments bring this issue to the forefront: IT professionals must understand overall business goals and must be able to apply the right technical solutions to solve business problems. And, they need to demonstrate their value within and outside of their IT groups. For those IT pros that have been able to focus on just the technical aspects of their skillset, this is a good time to branch out into the rest of the business world.

Feel free to e-mail me if you’d like the entire transcript.  And please post here if you have any questions, comments, or recommendations for your IT peers.

For more details, please visit Anil Desai’s MVP Profile page.  It includes links to my upcoming events, presentations, publications, and related details.  The MVP web site is also a great place to search if you’re looking for an IT pro with a specific area of expertise.

Using VSSConverter

The VSSConverter.exe utility is Microsoft’s command-line tool for migrating Visual SourceSafe repositories to Team Foundation Server.  The utility includes analyze and migrate modes and is driven by XML-based configuration files.  The process was simple enough and is documented in the following MSDN articles:

• Migrating from Visual SourceSafe
• Walkthrough: Preparing to Migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation
• Walkthrough: Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation
• How to: Migrate Source Control Bindings from Visual SourceSafe

Migration Errors

The basic process went well until I got to the step of actually performing the migration.  That’s when I encountered the following dreaded TF31002 error:

I checked my server name, port, and other settings numerous times but still couldn’t get it to work.  Web searches provided some basic troubleshooting information, but nothing relevant to my issue.  All diagnostics that I ran (including the Best Practices Analyzer from the Team Foundation Server Power Tools) reported that everything was OK.

The Solution…

I finally stumbled upon the solution in an old bug reported via Microsoft Connect.  The defect report is titled VSSConverter cannot connect to the Team Foundation Server and offers the following problem description and solution:

When trying to migrate a Source Safe database to TFS2010 the VSSConverter tool exits with the following error:
TF60070: Unable to connect to the Team Foundation Server: ‘http://ts01:8080/’. Please ensure that the Team Foundation Server exists and try again.
The Team Foundation Server exists but at http://ts01:8080/tfs (default installation) The VSSConverter tool is unable to access this location.

UPDATE!
There is a new configuration option in the TeamFoundationServer element to specify the collection to which the sourcesafe database should be merged. It’s nowhere to be found in the documentation yet.
The solution is to add collection="tfs/DefaultCollection" to the TeamFoundationServer to specify which collection should be used.

After adding the “collection=” attribute, the migration worked flawlessly.  It took about an hour to transfer all of my code and versions, but everything looks good now.  The migration process could be simpler, but (if I’m lucky), I’ll only have to do this once.  I hope this helps some of you that might have run into the same problem.

Thursday, February 25, 2010
10AM PST / 1PM EST

With the new decade comes new opportunity to implement the best technologies and practices for IT.  Join this FREE live webinar to learn how to cost-effectively plan, implement and manage a 21st century data center to drive greater efficiency, security and compliance.

You’ll hear from leading experts about ways organizations are leveraging technologies such as virtualization and configuration management to build flexible, resilient, cost-efficient and high-performing data centers for 2010.

Join now to:

• Get a blueprint to plan and implement IT best practices to modernize, consolidate, and secure your technology environment
• Hear how to cost-effectively drive improved security and compliance across your IT infrastructure while staying agile and competitive
• Learn about the benefits of a combined solution for configuration assessment with configuration change auditing for improved data center operations

The presentation is arranged by Focus.com and is sponsored by TripWire.  I’ll begin the presentation with an overview of technical best practices.  Then, Barak Engel from EAmmune will provide specific information on products, technologies, and approaches you can use to achieve these goals.  We’ll wrap up by taking live questions from the audience.  The entire webcast should last under an hour.

In many of the apps I’ve written, users are often unaware of keyboard shortcuts, simpler ways to move between fields in web/Windows forms, and efficient methods for entering data.  I often cringe when I see people spend hours trying to manually perform tasks that are easily automated using application features.  Still, many application users will go to great lengths to avoid having to learn anything new (even if it will pay off in the long run).  But what about those who actually want to learn how to best use specific pieces of software?

Enter The Microsoft Office Labs Ribbon Hero.  Here’s a brief description of how it works:

Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007 and 2010, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka "challenges"), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office.  As a concept test, this add-in is not supported, but is an opportunity for you to try out an idea we are working on and let us know what you think.  For additional challenges and the opportunity to earn more points, download Office 2010 Beta.

The idea is somewhat unconventional, but this demo video provides a great example of how you can use it to make yourself a better Microsoft Office user.

While learning is often its own reward, the game also allows you to automatically share and compare your score with others using Facebook.  Here’s a screenshot from within Microsoft Word.

Of course it’s unsupported code.  So, don’t plan to open up a Severity 1 case with Microsoft Product Support Services if you think you didn’t get all the points you deserve.

Overall, I think the Ribbon Hero project is a fun and useful way to stretch users’ abilities with one of the world’s most popular productivity suites.  I’m planning to rack up a pretty high score.  Who’s up the challenge?

The purpose of NetIP is to serve as an organization that meets the needs of South Asian professionals in North America as they grow in their personal and professional lives. Over the years, NetIP has become a premier networking brand in our community. It has become the unequivocal voice for an emerging group of South Asians, who excel in every aspect of western society, from business to politics to the arts. The rise of NetIP and its affiliated chapters reflects a general "Coming of Age" by South Asian professionals. We are proud to state that many of our present members and past alumni now hold respected positions of leadership in the private, public, and non-profit sectors all over the world.

You can find more details about NetIP’s purpose and mission at the NetIP North America web site.

NetIP Austin

If you’re an Indian or South Asian professional in the Austin area (or you’re thinking of visiting or moving here), please do check out the NetIP Austin web site.  We have many fun and engaging events planned for 2010.  They’re organized into four main pillars:

• Professional Development
• Cultural Awareness
• Community Service
• Political Awareness

In addition, we have general social events like a monthly happy hour.  Complete details are available on our Events page with more details coming very soon.

Technology Platform

OK, on to technology: NetIP has standardized on the use of the Joomla! platform for all chapters’ web sites.  So far, I have mixed feelings about the Joomla! Content Management System (CMS).  It seems to be stable and well-designed, overall.  However, the organization concepts of articles, categories, and sections seems difficult to apply in some cases.  For now, the site has been built with completely static navigation, which makes it really difficult to manage content.  I’m working on changing this, but it seems to involve more work than it should.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to provide an update on my impressions of Joomla soon.  In the meantime, I’d be happy to hear about others’ experiences with the platform.

Of course, posters can actually be informational and useful.  Microsoft has recently made a Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster available for free download.  While it would be difficult to print this out (it’s roughly 44” x 24” in full size), it provides a really clear, concise overview of the new features in Windows Server 2008 R2.  The list of sections includes:

• Active Directory Domain Services
• Hyper-V
• File Services
• Remote Desktop Services
• BranchCache
• DirectAccess

The content helps illustrate that the R2 release isn’t just a minor upgrade – there’s probably a lot more in here than most administrators are aware of.

You’ll also find a sidebar of acronyms and plenty of useful notes and tips.  While it’s no replacement for complete documentation, I think these posters do a great job of providing a lot of information in a limited space. 

• MSDN Subscriber Downloads
• Microsoft TechNet Subscriber Downloads

Just search for “Office 2010”, and you should see the relevant downloads.  Be sure to generate keys for activation of the beta, as well.  I’m not sure about the exact plans for making the downloads available publicly, but Microsoft will hopefully make the beta easily accessible to a wide range of potential testers later this week.

For more information on what’s new, see the official Microsoft Office 2010 product site.  As far as at the client applications themselves, the changes seem to be largely incremental (all apps now have the Ribbon UI).  I’m pondering upgrading my primary computer to the newest beta and will likely post some more details here if I do.  Particularly, I’ll focus on backwards-compatibility and file format upgrade issues (such as upgrading my Outlook PST files to work with Outlook 2010).  Happy downloading!

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 development environment is a complete overhaul of the popular IDE.  It will continue to support all current Microsoft development languages and technologies, but it also features a completely revamped UI that’s based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).  If you have an MSDN or Microsoft TechNet subscription, you can download the files now.  The available editions include:

• Visual Studio 2010 Professional
• Visual Studio 2010 Premium
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
• Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server

You can also find a number of “Additional Resources”, including web installer packages and tools for testing and team-based development.  More information is available on the Visual Studio 2010 Product Information Site (note that, as of this writing, the site still provides links to the Beta 1 version of VS 2010).

Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet’s Microsoft Watch provides some more details in Testers to get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this week; final by March 2010.  It looks like the plan is to open up the beta to all testers later this week.  The article also provides some basic details about the various editions, their estimated prices, and how you can get hold of them upon release.

The first official beta version of VS 2010 came out in May, so it has been a refresh is very welcome.  I have done some informal testing of the first beta and it seems to be fairly stable overall.  That version was clearly nowhere near the polish that the release version should have, but it was certainly usable and provided some exciting new features (I’ll cover the highlights in an upcoming post).

Currently, it looks like the final version will be available in Q1, 2009 (based on reports from ZDNet and other bloggers).  Let’s hope that it provides all the improvements and new features we’ve been waiting for!

You can also view a list of system requirements and your current specifications:

For the most part, users shouldn’t have much trouble when upgrading to Windows 7.  The magnitude of under-the-hood architectural changes is much less than it was during the leap from Windows XP to Windows Vista.  And, third-party hardware and software vendors have finally caught up (for the most part) and are providing reliable drivers.

From my experience, Windows 7 seems to run about as fast as Windows XP (which means it’s much faster than Windows Vista).  I have upgraded numerous desktops and notebooks to Windows 7 without any problems that I couldn’t quickly and easily resolve.  I think it will be a worthy upgrade for most users, and the Upgrade Advisor should be able to provide some warnings related to potential problems before you take the plunge.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

You can download Disk2Vhd directly from the Microsoft TechNet SysInternals site (it’s only 704KB).  You can then run it directly from your file system to launch the GUI.

While it’s easy to create a VHD, it’s important to keep in mind potential issues with using this approach to “clone” an already-running machine.  Depending on your environment, you might need to consider the impacts of network addresses, MAC addresses, computer names and Security Identifiers (SIDs).  Most of this only applies if you’re using this approach to clone a non-OS hard disk.  Overall, the utility makes it really simple to perform a P2V conversion of a hard disk.

Of course, power frugality should start in the home.  When looking into getting a new TV, I noticed that actual power consumption statistics were really hard to come by.  Wattage ratings sometimes give a partial picture, but they’re far from real-world usage stats.  So, taking the problem into my own hands (literally), I used a handy power consumption meter to measure how much juice each of these devices used.  Below are details of my “test environment”.  The information is just for one configuration of devices and is completely anecdotal.  Still, I hope the information will be useful in some way and will inspire others to do the same types of tests.

The Test Environment

My current home theater setup is somewhat outdated (would-be thieves, please take note).  It includes the following:

• A Microsoft Xbox 360: This is one of second generation units with a 120GB hard drive upgrade, obtained after a warranty replacement.  It has been running without problems for several years now.
• Samsung LN52A630 TV: It’s a 52” LCD display; 120Hz refresh rate.
• ReplayTV 5500 Series DVR: A standard-definition hard driver-based DVR.
• Onkyo TX-SR507 Receiver: It’s in a standard 5.1 configuration.
• Yamaha NS-A1738 Speakers: These are single-amped and hooked up to the received.  I also have a Polk center channel speaker and some small Polk Audio rear channels (yes, it’s a Frankenstein setup).

Power Consumption:The Results

The below tables provide details on instantaneous power consumption (in Watts) of each component in the setup.  I have tried to show the various modes, settings, and operations of the different devices.

LCD TV Power Consumption

Below are the results for various modes of my Samsung LCD TV.  The X360 uses component video cables, and the TV’s speakers are powered off (unless otherwise noted).

Xbox 360

Below is X360 power usage, based on various operations.

Replay TV Power Consumption

As a note, the device never spins down the hard drive – it’s always running as long as the unit is plugged in.

Do It Yourself

Power usage meters such as the Kill-a-Watt are readily available and fairly inexpensive ($20 at NewEgg, at the time of this writing).  The general process is to simply place the meter between a plug and a wall socket.  Most of these meters will allow you to enter your cost-per-kWh rates to get estimates on daily, weekly, and annual costs. 

Summary

Hopefully this information is somewhat interesting to readers of this blog.  The fact remains that, at least in the United States, electricity costs are still far lower than they should be (based on the global impact of our consumption).  That makes this information academic, for the most part – it’s unlikely to result in significant costs savings.  Still, I somehow feel better with knowing how much power I’m burning when I’m being thoroughly destroyed in Halo online matches.

I’m also interested in seeing some other results, so please post them if you’ve got them!

That’s the topic of my SearchServerVirtualization.com article, Combining virtualization approaches for a data center’s ‘secret sauce’.  From the introduction to the article:

Being an IT professional is similar to being a good cook. Even if you have great ingredients, success is realized only when you combine these ingredients in the ideal way. The same holds true for virtualization — many technologies can work well together. The art is in determining which applications and services will benefit from one another.

The good news is that virtualization doesn’t come in just one flavor — administrators have numerous options from which to choose. You can combine different virtualization approaches to address some of the more difficult data center management tasks.

As long as you can handle some cooking-related puns, I hope the information provides to be useful.

Well, Windows 7 is about to hit the stage, and it looks like a winner from a usability standpoint.  A simple web search will return dozens of articles that look at many of the UI changes and improvements and blogs like Engineering Windows 7 go into some of the decision decisions in significant depth.  Rather than repeat the content of those articles, I’ll briefly highlight the features I’ve enjoyed most during my past few months with Windows 7:

• The new taskbar: There are also some features that might not be readily evident.  For example:
• You can see icons for all of your most-used programs, whether they’re running or not.  They’re always right where you expect them, which really saves time when you have a bunch of different programs open at the same time.
• Applications can support jump lists, recent documents, and other special features that are available by hovering over an application icon or right-clicking on it.  Apps such as IE already support this quite well.
• You can easily dock the Taskbar to the left, right, top, or bottom of the window.  In fact, this even works properly with multiple monitors.  So far, I have stuck with the standard bottom-of-screen layout, but I have tried docking it to the left, and it works well.



• Improved multi-monitor support:  Windows 7 makes it much easier to work with multiple monitors but allowing you to quickly drag windows (even when they’re maximized) to other monitors.  In fact, my eVGA USB-to-DVI adapter is working great on Windows 7 (though I did need to download and and install the beta drivers manually).
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Window Management: Using intuitive keyboard shortcuts is far more effective and efficient than using the mouse to arrange windows.  For example, think of all the work it typically takes to view two windows side-by-side (I never bothered to try it manually and relied on third-party utilities like DisplayFusion to help).  Using the Windows Key in conjunction with the arrow keys allow you to maximize, minimize, and move windows to any part of any monitor.  This alone saves a lot of time and really takes advantage of my three-monitor setup.  Finally, you can use Windows Key – # to open the appropriate program or folder on your computer based on its located on the taskbar. 
• Overall Stability:  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I had been quite disappointed with Windows Vista’s performance and reliability (even after applying both service packs).  On the whole, Windows 7 responds much more quickly and the desktop, UI, and applications are completely reliable.  In fact, I typically reboot my computer (which runs a ton of development stuff) once a week or so.
• New wallpapers and desktop themes: Sometimes, it’s the little(r) things that count the most.  Windows 7 ships with a great collection of default themes and backgrounds.  And, you can also download many more from the Windows 7 Personalize Your PC site.  The download process is seamless and I hope Microsoft will continue to add content frequently (as opposed to the rather missed opportunity with Windows Vista Ultimate Extras).  Furthermore, the UI improvements for switching between desktop settings has been streamlined, making it simple to make changes without third-party utilities.
• Sidebar Gadgets: They can now be placed anywhere on the desktop and seem to use fewer system resources (just a subjective observation – I haven’t done any testing).  Unfortunately, there’s still a relative dearth of useful gadgets, but hopefully that will finally change.
• Expanded right-click menu:  Hold SHIFT and right-click on a file or folder to see some useful new options, such as “Open Command Window Here”.  You could enable this feature in XP/Vista, but it required a Registry change and would always appear in an already long list of options.
• ClearType and Color Tuner: Matching colors on multiple monitors has always been a pain.  While drivers from Nvidia and ATI allow you to change RGB values, these settings never seemed to “stick” for me.  Windows 7 includes built-in functionality for handling this, and it seems to work.  Better yet, it efficiently supports a multi-monitor setup.

Overall, I think Microsoft has done a great  job of balancing usability for less-technical users with the features that those of the geekier persuasions can appreciate.  I have (against some practical warnings and advice) switched to using the Windows 7 Release Candidate as my primary O/S.  I’ve run into very few problems so far.  So… which useful features have I missed?

Austin Code Camp 2009 is scheduled for Saturday, May 30, 2009 and will be held at the St. Edwards Professional Education Center.  Past events have had hundreds of attendees with dozens of sessions.  If you’re in the area, I highly recommend attending at least part of the event.  Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?  

This year, I’ll be presenting on three topics (listed below, with abstracts).  Each session is scheduled to last two hours and will focus on practical demonstrations.  Specific presentation times have not yet been posted, but keep checking the web site for more details.  In the meantime, be sure to register to attend and vote on proposed topics.  If you can’t make it, I plan to post the presentation slides and sample code on my web site just prior to the event.

Presentation Topics & Abstracts

SQL Server Reporting Services: Report Creation and Deployment:

Using SQL Server Reporting Services, developers can author and distribute complex reports that come from a variety of data sources. The session will begin with an architectural overview of Reporting Services and how developers can install and configure the required services. Then, we will walk through the process of creating new reports by building connections and data sets using Report Builder 2.0 and Visual Studio 2008. Reporting design features including dynamic drill-downs, matrix reports, charts, and sorting will be provided. Also included will be methods by which multiple levels of report parameters can be used to filter data and increase performance. Next, we’ll look at deployment details, including scheduling reports, configuring caching, creating snapshots, and managing security. Time permitting, the presentation will include a demonstration of using Report Viewer controls within ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications.

SQL Server Basics for Non-DBAs

Although relational databases are a critical component of most applications, many developers often have only a basic understanding of how they work. This session will describe the architecture of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and its many features can be used to improve the end-user experience. The presentation will begin with an overview of the SQL Server platform, including installation and configuration of the server. Then, we’ll look at ways in which you can manage logical databases and their constituent files. Recommendations for regular database maintenance and data protection will be covered next. Other important tasks include managing security, including techniques such as role-based security, permissions hierarchies, and data- and object-level encryption. Finally, we’ll conclude with some best practices for managing database schemas and objects. Attendees are encouraged to bring their server and database management questions.

SQL Server Performance Monitoring & Optimization

Developers can dramatically improve performance by understanding how their queries are executing in the "real world". This session will cover ways in which attendees can monitor performance at various levels, and how they can use this information to optimize queries and improve overall application performance. We’ll start with a discussion of developing a performance optimization strategy and how various tools can help. Then, we’ll walk through the process of using SQL Profiler to collect data in a real-world case: Generating a "hit list" of worst-performing queries based on execution times and frequency. Next we’ll look at using the Database Engine Tuning Advisor to make suggestions related to physical database structures such as indexes and partitions. Also included will be ways in which built-in reports and dynamic management views can be used to monitor performance of production systems. Time permitting, the presentation will include methods for reducing deadlocks and managing long-running transactions. Finally, the presentation will include an overview of analyzing query plans. The overall emphasis will be on solving practical, real-world database performance problems.

Over the last couple of decades, practical PC bottlenecks have moved.  I remember a time when upgrading CPUs could provide a near-linear speed increase with respect to clock speed (does anyone remember the thrill of going from a 33MHz 486 processor to a a 486/66?).  Later, keeping the processor fed became more important.  Improved memory bus speeds, lower cache latency, larger cache sizes, and more RAM often provided the best performance increase.  And of course, we had network issues – starting with dial-up performance.  Thankfully, most of those resources are no longer the slowest components in modern PCs.  In fact, CPUs have increased in performance to the point that clock speed increases give little practical benefits for most users (on the client side, at least).

Wringing some[Bottle]necks…

Over the last several years, the primary bottleneck on most of my machines (notebooks, development desktops, and music production machines) has been hard disk performance.  If I was waiting for something, it was more than likely that hard drive.  The high number and frequency of random I/Os often resulted in significant delays.  Even with large amounts of RAM, launching programs, loading web pages, and performing builds in Visual Studio could take a lot of time.  High-speed, low-latency hard disks helped a little.  And, if you can stomach the risk of data loss, RAID-0 configurations could alleviate some of the pain.  But, disk access remained the slow step in many processes.

One of my clients, TechTurn, was kind enough to lend me a Samsung 128GB Solid State Disk (SSD) to test.  At first, I imaged my notebook Windows 7 Release Candidate installation and placed it on the SSD.  I was expecting an incremental increase in performance (at least for random, small reads).  The overall results, however, were amazing!  Applications launched in a just a few seconds, and some basic benchmarks provided all the evidence I needed to place the new disk in my primary development machine (a Dell Dimension XPS 420 with two 500GB, 7200RPM drives).  Now, after just a couple of weeks, I can’t imagine going back to “old school” physical drives.

SSD’s are new to the marketplace and they’re not without significant potential drawbacks.  In the coming weeks, I’ll provide some more details on the experience.  For now, here are a couple of basic benchmarks created using HDTune.  The basic comparison is between a Samsung 500GB, 7200 RPM hard disk (16MB cache) and the 128GB Samsung SSD.  I did absolutely nothing to optimize the performance of the SSD, so consider this just a baseline.

Benchmarks

HDTune – Disk Benchmarks

Figure 1a: HDD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

Figure 1b:  SSD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

HDTune – Random Access Performance

Figure 2a: HDD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

Figure 2b: SSD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

I realize that this data is completely anecdotal and unscientific, but it’s a promising start.  So far, the general performance improvement from using an SSD has been the single most noticeable upgrade in several years.

More to come…

Again, I hope to post some more detailed data (with a focus on benefits for development workstations) in the coming weeks.  Now if only my own sequential writing speed could match that of the SSD drive…

Update: The Engineering Windows 7 blog has a post that covers Support and Q & A for Solid-State Drives.  It helps provide some technical background related to the different between random vs. sequential I/O’s and issues related to random writing.

In today’s economy, ensuring you have a network that is reliable and secure 24×7 can help you to recession-proof your business even with a limited IT budget. Learn step-by-step about how your company can build a cost-effective, energy-efficient and secure network in ’09!

Join us now and learn:

• Easy steps to build a cost-effective, energy-efficient and secure network in ‘09
• Best practices to recession-proof your network on a limited IT budget
• How to reduce your TCO while increasing ROI across your company
• Low-cost ways to maximize and extend your network capabilities

The free webcast is scheduled for 10:00am Pacific Time on Thursday May 7, 2009.  My portion will focus on suggestions for justifying network improvements such as investing in Unified Communications (UC) and ways to sell that idea to the rest of the organization. 

• AutoPager: The page-based nature of the Web can make it really difficult to navigate through large documents.  Often, you’ll have to click through pages one-by-one.  What if the Google Search result you want didn’t make the first page?  You generally would have to manually navigate to the next page of results (or change the default view to include more results).  And don’t get me started on sites that force you to click through a dozen pages to read an entire article.  AutoPager can automatically load content from additional pages without losing context.  It supports hundreds of sites out of the box and provides an easy way to add support for new sites.  I highly recommend it, at least until the Web (and advertising) start supporting better ways to view large amounts of information.
• FoxTab: A great multi-tab browser that allows you to choose from a wide variety of different “gallery” views that show thumbnails of open tabs.  It seems to scale and perform well, even with dozens of open tabs.

• SpeedDial:  Most of us frequent the same sites many times per day.  The default user behavior – typing URLs or choosing them from the Bookmarks list – can be quite cumbersome.  As its name suggests, SpeedDial provides users with thumbnails of their most common web sites whenever they open a new tab.  ~80% of the time, I use the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-# or CTRL-#) to open the sites I use the most.
• Read It Later:  It might seem a little strange, but I’ve all but abandoned the use of bookmarks in my browsers.  I am usually very organized, but I found that it takes too much effort to store and organize separate links (many of which tend to quickly become outdated).  Read It Later provides a great way to keep track of specific articles and content that you plan to read later without requiring you to create bookmarks.  When you’re bored, you can just click on its icon, and you’ll be presented with on of the pages from its list.  You can easily mark something as “read” without having to deal with deleting bookmarks.
• IE Tab: Despite a strong push to work on standards-based sites and browsers, the need to launch IE is sometimes inevitable.  An example that comes to mind is the SQL Server Reporting Services web site which doesn’t seem to render properly in Firefox.  IE Tab allows you to simply click an icon on the status bar to switch to using the IE rendering engine for that tab.  You get to stay in the comfort of Firefox while using IE behind the scenes.

Those are the highlights of my favorite extensions.   You can easily download and install all of these extensions using the Firefox Add-Ons page.  Installation couldn’t be much simpler, and it’s really easy to try out new extensions.

But, wait – there’s more:  So far, my favorite theme is Chromifox Basic.  As its name implies, it’s hardly the flashiest of themes.  But, I really like its simple look and customizations.

There’s certainly no lack of web pages and blog entries that highlight “must-have Firefox.  (There are so many, in fact, that I’m not going to bother to link to any of them.)  Now, I can add myself to that list.

For me, one of the most frustrating aspects of searching the Web is the difficulty of searching for relative information by date.  For example, if I’m searching for information on Windows 7 or something relatively new, I generally don’t want to see information that’s over a year old.  Often, the results can get confusing.  Sometimes, you’ll want to search for a .NET command or T-SQL syntax, and you’ll find outdated results.  Sure, you can perform an Advanced Search to filter by date ranges, but it’s a cumbersome way to find the information you need.

The Timeline still appears to be in a fairly early state, and the search results aren’t quite up to par.  However, the idea is a good one, and I hope it’s significantly improved in the near future.

The company’s  resident IT professional extraordinaire has just returned from a much-deserved vacation but, in a temporary spell of relaxed judgment, has jeopardized their reputation with a poorly placed email and forwarded personal holiday snaps to the entire staff. Now they have to excavate through the email chain to find the offending photos – all while keeping the office online.

In Server Quest II, the sequel to last year’s pixellated adventure, players must hone their technical prowess in order to prove once and for all why the tech pros take the cake.  From software support to sidequests, players will get behind the curtain and live the life of a server genius fighting for respect.”

The game includes several simple mini-adventures that can easily be played online.  The pixilated art style will do little to show off features of Silverlight (such as the powerful zoom capabilities), but players will be rewarded with eight-bit analog sounds and an easy to play game.  And the sense of nostalgia is unbeatable (especially for those of us old enough to remember such vintage machines at the Commodore 64).