Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 19:00

Session MGT327 - System Centre and the Desktop

This session revolved around desktop management using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. There wasn't much new information here - new for me, but most of it is information Mat already got from 1E

There were a few interesting tid-bits to watch out for, though. They cited a survey that said users generally only report 10% of application or workstation crashes to the helpdesk, of which only half of those (if that) ever get escalated past first level.

One of the features they're promoting is having the Dr Watson / Windows Error reporting subsystem upload crash reports to a Windows Sahre, where Operations Manager can analyse and report on them. This allows better visibility as to where there may be faulty hardware or a buggy device driver, which can be prioritised for repair or escalated to the vendor.

They spoke a great deal about the system installers and software distribution too, and driver management has been given a lot of attention, both in system upgrades and slipstreaming them into new installs.

Application distribution now supports multicasting, which may make NMC happier. You can also schedule a maintenance period (on a user/group or site level), to better manage application distribution and patching. Wake on LAN is also supported, so updates can be downloaded to desktop machines overnight.

There's also a bit of work done with Intel's vPro chipset, which can allow SCOM to do remote hardware inventory while a machine is powered down. Even to the point of changing BIOS settings or even re-flashing the BIOS.

Other conference notes:
1) There are discounts on Microsoft Press books - 30% off, with an additional 5% if you buy 3 or more. So, if there's anything you want me to get, let me know.

2) I've noticed a reasonable number of people using netbooks here, predominantly the Asus EeePCs but a few others. I suppose it makes a lot of sense, given that they're light weight and have good battery life.

Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 17:30

Attended session UNC205 - Exchange Online Administration and Management, which was basically an overview of the user management for Exchange online.

Interesting stuff, though how scalable the website is to a large company is not clear. One thing that did come across yet again is that everything is Active Directory centric, and to use any of MS's cloud offerings requires allowing them to store an AD replica on their systems.

On the plus side, they do have a single sign-on tool that works with (an auto-configures) Outlook, Live Messenger and Sharepoint.

Oh, and I had a chocloate donut during the break. Is that too much detail? Karoona said that communication is really important....

Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 15:30 - Keynote speech by Brad Anderson

The keynote focussed on a number of areas, but the major ones were virtualisation, Operations Manager and cloud services.

They made quite a big deal about the HyperV and Live Migration - mentions of VMware were noticeably absent from that part of the speech! Basically, there's not much in that space that we don't have already.

Upcoming, however was application virtualisation which did raise one or two interesting ideas. EUT (well, Mike) is already looking a little at virtualised applications for deployment purposes, but one of the ideas mentioned for forthcoming technology is to run virtualised server applications. The idea is that you can hot-migrate an running application from Windows server to Windows server, between physical and virtual. Key point there is that you could migrate the application off, patch and/or reboot the server operating system, then migrate back, which might have interesting implications for server uptimes and SLAs.

Operations Manager Virtual Machine Manager was the next major topic - VMware did rate a mention here, mainly because it can manage both VMware and MS environments, and can manage physical and virtual hosts, something that VirtualCenter can't do. It can also drill down to applications and services (primarily web services), and report availability across multiple servers too. Given the renewed push for Service catalog and application SLAs, this could be a useful reporting tool. But, naturally, you need to put in the runt work to model the applications and dependencies first!

Cloud Services was the final major thing - going forward, MS is developing all their services such that they can be run locally or in the cloud (Microsoft's Cloud!), and migrated between. One of the demos they did showed moving 5 user mailboxes from Exchange running locally to Exchange Online - including content - with no end user reconfiguration or intervention. Naturally, they didn't talk about security or firewall ports required, but I'm sure the info is available somewhere.

Microsoft TechEd 2008, Day 1, 11:00

So far, so good.

Conference registration went smoothly and, yes, I did get a T-Shirt.

If you're reading this then the conference WiFi network is working. Blogging from my mobile today as there aren't many sessions and I wasn't sure what laptop charging facilities there were. (Not many, and most in use. Note to self - get extended run battery pack before next conference!)

Conference coffee is tolerable, but not great.

The keynote session is at 14:00 from Brad Anderson of MS' services division. I'll write more after that.