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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Free virtualization e-learning collection

Take Microsoft E-Learning Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies for free! Collection 6333 includes the following:

• Clinic 5935: Introducing Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
• Clinic 6334: Exploring Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• Clinic 6335: Exploring Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Clinic 6336: Exploring Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008

Click on the links for the entire Collection, or for individual courses to add them to your e-Learning Library.  You’ll need to login with a Windows Live ID to activate the content.

Personally, I’ve used dozens of e-Learning courses (mostly free ones, I’ll admit) to learn the technical details that aren’t always readily available on the product marketing web sites.  Most courses are fairly in-depth (including code samples where appropriate), but there are usually some rough edges that seem to be remnants from beta versions of the courses.  Overall, though, I think they’re an excellent resources.  And, all of the courses listed above are available for the convenient and affordable price of free.

• Evaluating Virtualization Tools and Technologies
• Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V: Inside and Out
• SQL Server Data Protection and High Availability

For more details, see my earlier post, DevTeach Conference Sessions.  You can find some compelling reasons to attend (along with a complete list of presentations) at the DevTeach web site.

Fortunately, Microsoft has recently published a comprehensive guide that lists all of the changes introduced by SP1.  You can download Notable changes in Windows Vista SP1 in PDF or XPS format.  The guide is long, but it provides a concise, descriptive and (presumably) complete list of what you can expect.  Certainly, there’s a lot of ambiguity based on "certain types of devices" and similar marketing-friendly terms.  (Sometimes I wish Microsoft would just identify the hardware manufacturers that don’t follow the rules for driver development.)  Overall, it’s a handy reference that I recommend.  The document also includes a whopping 35-page index of all of the hotfixes and security updates that are included with the SP1 update.

Unfortunately, even with the latest updates, I still can’t get Sleep mode to work on two of my desktop computers (one of which shipped with Windows Vista and the other which is based on a clean installation).  So far, it looks like Windows Vista SP1 will be "too little, too late" for me.  I just hope something happens to prove me wrong.

The Windows Server 2008 Webcast Express Demo Videos highlights the many different improvements and new features in Windows Server 2008 through some concise videos (most are around 10 minutes long).  It focuses on screencasts rather than PowerPoint slides so you can see various features in action.  I recently checked out the High Performance and Scalable Networking webcast to learn about QoS options and IPv6 updates.  Overall, this is my preferred way of getting information.  I rarely like to set aside 90 minutes or so to attend a webcast, but it’s easy to find 10 – 15 minutes to learn about something new just about every day.

Fortunately, there are several third-party software products (some free) which help make the process easier.  I have evaluated a couple of them and thought I’d mention my findings:

• UltraMon is a commercial product that provides features for managing multiple monitors.  It allows you to span wallpapers across multiple disparate displays.  Most importantly (for me), it allows me to create simple keyboard shortcuts for moving and resizing windows between monitors.  It’s a bit pricey for the functionality, but it really does help.  Unfortunately, I started having some display driver issues with my Nvidia GeForce 8300 GS drivers after I installed the latest beta.  Hopefully a final release version will address that.
• DisplayFusion: DisplayFusion looks like it was originally designed for managing wallpaper settings for multiple monitors.  However, it offers a simplified configuration UI that allows you to create hotkey shortcuts for moving and resizing windows.  Currently, this is my favorite as it hasn’t broken Windows Vista and you can’t beat the price (it’s free, but donations are accepted).  This one gets my recommendation, at least for now.
• GoScreen: GoScreen is designed for use on Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as tablet computers or portables that have touchscreens.  It provides features for more easily managing windows.  I haven’t yet tested the product, but it does seem to have a large number of useful features

Overall, these utilities effectively fill some gaps in Windows Vista and make me far more productive (I also couldn’t turn down the shot at alliteration in this post’s title). 

The overall idea is that organizations have a wide array of choices in deciding how to isolate and consolidate their workloads.  The challenges is picking the right tool for the job.

In keeping with the same goal, a new beta version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator is available for download from Microsoft Connect.  The description from the download site:

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator is an integrated platform with tools and guidance that make it easier for you to assess your current IT infrastructure and determine the right Microsoft technologies for your IT needs. It offers easy inventory, powerful assessment and actionable recommendations for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Terminal Services, SoftGrid, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Vista, and 2007 Microsoft Office. The popular Windows Vista Hardware Assessment readiness tool will be integrated into this platform.
…

Target Audience

• Customers: IT Architects, Infrastructure Specialists and Desktop/Application Administrators.
• Partners: System Integrators, Value-Added Partners and IT Consultants in the Enterprise and Midmarket

Key Benefits

• Quick Assessment of Your Existing infrastructure and assets
• Adaptive Guidance and Actionable Proposals that provide specific recommendations that will help simplify your planning and deployment of Microsoft technologies
• One-Stop Shop for All Your Planning (or Pre-Sales) Needs

The good news is that this is a completely agent-less method of automatically analyzing your entire environment.  The product generates detailed reports that would be tedious and error-prone to create manually.

Overall, the idea is to help organizations determine how best to deploy Microsoft’s virtualization technologies.  If you’re currently considering an expanded virtualization deployment, this tool can help you make better decisions about your infrastructure needs.  Give it a shot, and send feedback to the development team to improve the final version!

However, a somewhat common requirement in some situations is to actually log on to the "console" session.  This type of connection allows you to connect to the system remotely utilizing a session that runs in "Ring 0".  It’s necessary to troubleshoot potential issues with installing applications, and some particularly picky applications that don’t behave as expected.  Effectively, this is the same thing as logging on to the computer at the physical console.  The bottom line is that it’s like "being there".  In "current" versions of the RDC application, you can use the /console switch to connect to the the console session using RDP.

This behavior is actually deprecated (i.e., retired from future use) in Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.  The Terminal Services Team Blog describes the changes (and the reasons for them) in an in-depth posting titled Changes to Remote Administration in Windows Server 2008.  Without getting too deep into the details, the following portion of the article describes the new /admin switch:

Behavior of the /admin switch

You can start the RDC 6.1 client (mstsc.exe) with the /admin switch to remotely administer a Windows Server 2008-based server (with or without Terminal Server installed). However, if you are connecting to remotely administer a Windows Server 2008-based server that does not have the Terminal Server role service installed, you do not have to specify the /admin switch. (In this case, the same connection behavior occurs with or without the /admin switch.) At any point in time, there can be two active remote administration sessions. To start a remote administration session, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the server to which you are connecting.

Overall, for most routine administration, this won’t make a huge difference.  But, eliminating (or at least reducing) the need to connect to the console session is a big step forward.

I have created this blog to share with readers my thoughts on specific technology and related topics.  That’s overly-broad on purpose, as I hope to post about topics ranging from IT-related issues to gaming.  Of course, audience participation is encouraged.

I’m an independent IT consultant based in Austin, TX.  I do a wide variety of different things, ranging from IT architecture consulting to database and applications development.  I’m also a writer of books and online articles.  My technical focus is fairly broad, but it includes virtualization, Microsoft .NET, SQL Server, and the Windows Server platform.  For more information about me and for technical information, see my web site at http://AnilDesai.net.  And, you can e-mail me at Anil@AnilDesail.net.