Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Internet Explorer Administration Kit 10 (IEAK 10) now supports building custom Internet Explorer 10 packages for Windows 7 and Windows 8. IEAK 10 simplifies the creation, deployment, and management of customized Internet Explorer 10 packages.

• DOWNLOAD: Internet Explorer Administration Kit 10
  http://ieak.microsoft.com

On March 12, Microsoft Learning hosted Certified Career Day—a live interactive online event for IT Pros on the growing need for a cloud-skilled workforce.

More than 3,200 attendees tuned in to the industry discussion panel on the future of IT jobs in an increasingly cloud-centric business world; and got questions answered during product sessions for SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012, hosted by senior product managers and tech evangelists.

Videos of all the day’s events are now available on-demand.

• LINK: Certified Career Day
  http://www.certifiedcareerday.com/

Starting with Windows Server 2008, we have published a server tuning guide each release designed to help system administrators and IT professionals get the best performance out of their server deployments.  For Windows Server 2012 we published the Windows Server 2012 Tuning Guide, but this time there is a twist.  This time we harnessed our performance knowledge from the tuning guide and embodied some of it as part of a newly redesigned Server Performance Advisor (SPA) tool.

Microsoft Server Performance Advisor (SPA) 3.0 helps IT administrators collect metrics to identify, compare, and diagnose potential performance issues in a Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2008 deployment. SPA generates comprehensive diagnostic reports and charts and provides recommendations to help you quickly analyze issues and develop corrective actions. This page provides a brief introduction to SPA 3.0 and links to download the SPA 3.0 software and the accompanying user’s manual and development guide.

Read more about it at the announcement post on the Windows Server Blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2013/03/11/server-performance-advisor-spa-3-0.aspx

• DOWNLOAD: Server Performance Advisor 3.0
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh367834.aspx

Net net: A 90 patch, 19.8MB (32-bit) or a 31.3MB (64-bit) rollup hotfix patch for Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 is available for download that has all sorts of performance fixes in it.

Hey y’all, Mark here with some great news. A massive Slow Boot Slow Login (SBSL) hotfix rollup for enterprises that includes 90 post Windows 7/2008 R2  hotfixes is available for download. The hotfixes focus on performance (Hooray!) and stability (Hooray again!). There are improvements to the DFSN client, Folder Redirection, Offline Files and Folders, WMI, and SMB client to name a few. There also improvements to Group Policy which gets blamed for pretty much everything when I’m doing a WDRAP. You can read the full list of improvements here.

…

(read more at the original blog post)

ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT BLOG POST:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/03/12/slow-boot-slow-login-sbsl-hotfix-rollup-for-windows-7-and-server-2008-r2-available-today.aspx

DOWNLOAD: Slow Boot Slow Login (SBSL) Hotfix Rollup
http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=KB2775511

DOCUMENTATION: Slow Boot Slow Login (SBSL) Hotfix Rollup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2775511/en-us

Hadoop for Windows Server.  Directly from Hortonworks.

During the recent Strata 2013 conference, Hortonworks released the beta of the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) for Windows, an enterprise-ready and 100% Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server. This release is the result of a deep engineering partnership between Hortonworks and Microsoft that aims to accelerate enterprise adoption of Hadoop by extending its reach across platforms. Now customers have more options to manage data of any type or size on-premises or in the cloud.

For more details on this release, please see the SQL Server blog or the Hortonworks website.

[taken from the MSOpenness web site]

Interested in connecting Big Data & Hadoop to Excel 2013?

The Microsoft Data Explorer Preview for Excel 2013 addresses this challenge by providing an intuitive user interface for data discovery and refinement. With the Data Explorer add-in, users can now quickly and easily import data from a variety of sources, including relational, structured, and semi-structured data sets. Sources like Facebook, OData feeds, Windows Azure Marketplace, and big data solutions like Hadoop are now within the reach of any user.

• DOWNLOAD:  Data Explorer Preview for Excel 2013
  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/download-data-explorer-for-excel-FX104018616.aspx
• INFO: Blog Post Introduction to Data Explorer (Openness)
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/openness/archive/2013/03/15/data-explorer-connects-big-data-hadoop-to-excel-2013.aspx
• INFO:  Blog Post Announcement to Data Explorer (Office)
  http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-excel/archive/2013/02/28/data-explorer-brings-big-data-connectivity-to-excel-2013.aspx

If you’re a desktop IT administrator, you NEED to start watching this series of blog posts & videos that are being done by Office experts, Jeremy Chapman & Yoni Kirsh, reviewing the new direction that Office is headed in with Office 365 & Office 2013.

• The new Office: What are your options, what’s changed and what’s new?
  Go through the differences between the Click-to-Run and MSI-based Office versions, the new IT Pro capabilities, and the premise of the new Office.
• The new Office Garage Series: Who Moved My MSI?
  Go through the differences between Windows Installer Package (MSI) and Click-to-Run package types, how to download Click-to-Run builds for use with software distribution tools.
• The new Office Garage Series: Client Configuration Management 101
  Tackle the frequently asked question, "Do I get more control if I use the traditional Office installation?" They look at automation support and install-time controls, configuration
• The new Office Garage Series: Identity, Activation and Data Access with a User-Based Office
  Review the new user-based Office service, how identity and services are provisioned, where data and passwords are stored and what the user experiences look like.

This is a regular series.  Add a reminder to your calendar to tune in each Wednesday 9am PST. Also mark April 3rd, 9am PST on your calendars when we come to you with the Garage Series Live! We’ll have Paul Thurrott, early adopters and Office engineers to discuss lessons learned, deployment secrets and much more.

• ADD SERIES TO CALENDAR:
  http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-60-37/4278.Watch-Now–New-Garage-Series-for-IT-Pros.ics

There’s been a great deal of documentation published for Windows Azure over the past 6 months.  Take a look at some of these references if you’re working on an application for the cloud on the Windows Azure platform.

• Autoscaling Application Block and Transient Fault Handling Application Block Reference
• Building Elastic and Resilient Cloud Applications – Developer’s Guide to the Enterprise Library 5.0 Integration Pack for Windows Azure
• Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure
• Create Your First Application – Node.js and Windows Azure
• Drupal on Windows Azure
• Migrating Data-Centric Applications to Windows Azure
• Moving Applications to the Cloud, 2nd Edition
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services to Cloud-Enable your iOS Apps
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services to Cloud-Enable Your Windows Phone 8 Apps
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services to Cloud-Enable your Windows Store Apps in C#
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services to Cloud-Enable Your Windows Store Apps in JavaScript
• Windows Azure and SQL Database Tutorials
• Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance
• Windows Azure Service Bus Reference

In case you’re interested in any of the following topics, this is a list of pointers to eBook references made available for free from Microsoft as of March 2013.

Learn how to install and configure the new Office in your organization. This book provides deployment instructions for Office 2013. The audiences for this book includeapplication specialists, line-of-business application specialists, and IT administrators who are ready to deploy Office 2013.

Topics include volume activation, Group Policy, and customization with this 281 page eBook/whitepaper.

Download “Deployment guide for Office 2013” in the appropriate format below:

• PDF: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/B/48B0E72E-11C0-4E6E-AA23-6B777FADCF7A/Deployment-guide-for-Office-2013.pdf
• MOBI: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/B/48B0E72E-11C0-4E6E-AA23-6B777FADCF7A/Deployment-guide-for-Office-2013.mobi
• EPUB: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/B/48B0E72E-11C0-4E6E-AA23-6B777FADCF7A/Deployment-guide-for-Office-2013.epub