Prior to TechEd Europe this coming week, a number of third party vendors have made announcements. One of these is F5, who on November 3 announced its new F5 Management Pack Solution for OpsMgr 2007, allowing customers using F5 and Microsoft to dynamically manage application delivery in virtual environments, particularly when using Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
F5 has added Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) capabilities to its F5 management pack, previously introduced in April 2009. Read more
I haven't disappeared, I've had several family medical related "incidents" to deal with. These are not over, but I will resume blogging as time permits. I appreciate your patience!
Last Tuesday, September 1, Google's web-based email went offline. This follows another outage in May. The September outage was caused by engineers taking some servers offline and inadvertently overloading other servers as a result. May's outage was caused by a traffic routing error. There were previous outages earlier in May, one in mid-April, and another in March.
What does this mean? Read more
Did you know it’s illegal to download copyrighted songs without paying for it? If you’re familiar with the horror stories about the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) going after someone’s grandmother for allegedly doing just that, you already know its probably not a good thing to do. Or that it’s illegal to make copies of music from someone else’s CD or player? The same holds true of copyrighted software and books. Read more
An article Wednesday in Network World online (http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/081909-madmen.html), provides a look at how information technology could have saved Sterling-Cooper countless headaches. If you haven't been following AMC's "Mad Men" series, it portrays a Madison Avenue advertising firm, Sterling-Cooper, during the early 1960s. Read more
In response to the EU's concerns about Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft has offered to provide a "browser ballot" with the newest version of its operating system software. Read more
Regardless of how you felt about the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) actions against Microsoft ten years ago, the Bush administration's more relaxed view towards antitrust made a significant difference in the ultimate outcome of that case.
The US DOJ did not bring a single antitrust case against a dominant company during the 8 years of George W. Bush's administration. Instead, the DOJ tried to build a "safe harbor of conduct" for those dominant firms to protect them from antitrust consideration. Read more
On July 29, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a 10-year technology and sales sharing agreement.
Microsoft will have a 10-year license to Yahoo's core search technology, with the ability to integrate those technologies into its existing web search platforms. Yahoo is stopping R&D on their search engine and ad selling software. Microsoft will provide the search and sales technology. Yahoo will own the sale of advertising to major corporations. Microsoft will own information on the user experience. Read more
Yesterday July 22, Microsoft announced the RTM of both Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7. I believe the last time Microsoft announced RTM of Windows client and server software at the same time was for Windows 2000 – that’s been a long time. Read more
So you’ve most probably heard last week of Google’s announcement for an operating system: Google Chrome. Of course, Microsoft has also “declared war” on Google Search, per its evolution of Windows Live to Bing. Read more
Today System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed was shipped to the printer. Final page length is 1224 pages. Availability on Amazon is anticipated for early August.
And I'm very happy to announce that two of the contributors to this book - Jason Sandys and Jannes Alink - received the MVP award for Configuration Manager today. Way to go - Jason and Jannes! You definitely earned it!
DCM is one of the new features of Configuration Manager 2007. Using DCM enables you to monitor, report on, and take action regarding the configuration of your managed systems. This enables you to monitor regulatory compliance, change verification, configuration drift, and time to resolution. Configuration baselines are used to group configuration items, which are assigned using rules. Read more
Last Thursday, during Continental flight 61 from Brussels to Newark, NJ, the pilot had a heart attack and died. The co-pilot and a backup pilot who was part of the crew landed the plane uneventfully in Newark.
Although flight attendants asked if a doctor was on board, the passengers were not informed of the pilot's death since there was a concern they might panic.
However, it was definitely information known elsewhere and on the Internet. Read more
The European Commission has sent around a questionnaire to PC makers and Microsoft software rivals concerning its preferred remedy to restore fair competition in the browser market. This questionnaire has nine questions - most of which seek feedback on the remedy - which is a proposed "ballot screen" with a list of browsers users would see the first time a new PC is connected to the Internet. The deadlines for replies to the questionnaire is June 12.
Microsoft's seemingly never ending trials and tribulations with the European Union's antitrust case may have a new twist. Earlier this year, the EU's antitrust agency charged Microsoft with shielding Internet Explorer (IE) from competition by bundling its browser with Windows. This was based on a 2007 complaint by Opera Software. Mozilla and Google have also joined the complaint.
Read more
Audit Collection Services (ACS) is a component of OpsMgr that enables you to collect records generated by an audit policy and store them in a centralized database. These records are normally written to the local Security log; ACS enables taking that information and storing it in a centralized SQL Server repository. You can then filter and analyze information using the data analysis and reporting tools provided by SQL Server. ACS also comes with a number of reports out of the box.
Read more
An article published April 16 in PC World, http://www.pcworld.com/article/163277/doj_asks_for_extension_of_microsoft_antitrust_judgment.html?tk=rss_news, states that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked to extend the antitrust agreement against Microsoft by at least 18 months (May 2011), to give the company enough time to fix problems in technical documentation required in a communications protocols licensing program.
Read more
Like 2008, at the Venetian in Las Vegas.
Unlike 2008, rooms were not quite as cold (or maybe I just dressed warmer). And the announcements weren't quite as momentous - but after all - how do you compete with last year's flying pigs? (although the cross-plat folks did bring along a supply for giveaways)
Seriously ... This year instead of being at MMS on a press pass, I was a presenter. As such, since I presented on Wednesday, Monday and Tuesday were pretty much spent with last minute details in preparation for that.
Read more
Monday, April 27, SystemCenterCentral.com was officially announced in Las Vegas at MMS 2009. The site aims to be the place to visit for "Everything System Center."
SystemCenterCentral.com was founded by Pete Zerger, Rory McCaw, and Maarten Goet, all System Center MVPs, and is dedicated to being a community site focusing exclusively on the technologies included in the System Center Suite of products.
Go to www.SystemCenterCentral.com to check it out and become a member of the community!
I didn't anticipate my earlier article on H1-B visas to create the hornet's nest it did; but since then I've seen several interesting articles on the topic: Read more
Kerrie Meyler, MVP, MCSE, MCTS, CNA, MA, BA, is an independent consultant and trainer with over fifteen years of experience in IT. While at Microsoft in Field Technical Sales for four years she focused on infrastructure and mangement, presenting at numerous product launches. Kerrie has presented Operations Manager 2007 at TechEd 2007 and MMS 2009 and at internal Microsoft conferences, receiving company recognition and awards including a SPAR MGS award. Kerrie worked with Microsoft Learning to develop functional specifications for the original Operations Manager Microsoft courseware, 2550: Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 and did the beta teach for that course.She also participated in the alpha walkthrough for the 70-400: Configuring Microsoft System Center Operations Manager certification exam.
She is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed. Kerrie is currently developing an eBook on Operations Manager 2007 R2.
Check out an excerpt from System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.
Kerrie's latest book, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed by Kerrie Meyler, Byron Holt, and Greg Ramsey has been selected as the August, 2009, Microsoft Subnet book giveaway (a $59.99 value). Check out an excerpt from System Center Configuration (SCCM) Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside ConfigMgr.
Visit the Microsoft Subnet home page for giveaway details and entry forms.
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