Kurt Shintaku's Blog

We’re excited to announce a new Sysinternals tool, Disk2vhd, that simplifies the migration of physical systems into virtual machines (p2v).

Just run Disk2vhd on the system you want to migrate and specify the volumes for which you want data included, and Disk2vhd creates a consistent point-in-time volume snapshot followed by an export of the selected volumes into one or more VHDs that you can add to a new or existing Hyper-V or Virtual PC virtual machine.

DOWNLOAD:  Disk2VHD v1.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Nuff said?
http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20091007/a-windows-to-help-you-forget/

Some quotes:

• “Windows 7 introduces real advances in organizing your programs and files, arranging your taskbar and desktop, and quickly viewing and launching the page or document you want, when you want it. It also has cool built-in touch-screen features.”
• “It removes a lot of clutter. And it mostly banishes Vista’s main flaws—sluggishness; incompatibility with third-party software and hardware; heavy hardware requirements; and constant, annoying security warnings.”
• “In recent years, I, like many other reviewers, have argued that Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is much better than Windows. That’s no longer true.”
• “Windows 7 beats the Mac OS in some areas, such as better previews and navigation right from the taskbar, easier organization of open windows on the desktop and touch-screen capabilities. So Apple will have to scramble now that the gift of a flawed Vista has been replaced with a reliable, elegant version of Windows.”
• “Windows 7 is a very good, versatile operating system that should help Microsoft bury the memory of Vista and make PC users happy.”

Customers using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 that have Standard client access licenses (CALs) on Software Assurance may now connect their Office Communicator users with AOL Messenger users over the Internet at no charge.

This means that Office Communicator users using Office Communicator Server 2007 R2 that have Std CALs w/ SA may now connect with the following at no additional cost:

• Communicator to Communicator
• Communicator to Web Communicator
• Communicator to MSN or Windows Live Messenger
• Communicator to AOL Instant Messenger
• Communicator to GoogleTalk
• Communicator to Cisco’s Jabber

(Connectivity to Yahoo Messenger continues to be possible through an annual subscription, per Yahoo)

This continues to demonstrate that Office Communications Server allows companies to empower their users to connect and do business with the richest set of real time communications systems over the Internet while still ensuring communications traffic is MANAGEABLE, LOGGED, and REPORTABLE for security, audit & compliance needs.

For more information on this announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/oct09/10-01ucinterop.mspx

The Service Manager team is very pleased to announce that Beta-2 for Service Manager 2010 is now available for download from connect. Details and links are below.

Download
To download, simply go to the Service Manager site on Connect www.connect.microsoft.com. Once you have successfully signed in, click the Downloads link, click Service Manager Beta-2 and then select all of the following files on the download details page:

• SMCDImage_amd64.exe
• SMCDImage_x86.exe (32 bit console)
• InstallOMMPs.exe
• AuthoringTool.exe (authoring console)
• SM_B2_Public.zip

Click download to begin the download process. Once the files have successfully downloaded, please be sure to read the release notes before installing the product as they contain some important information about the release

You can also use the public forums for feedback and support, link below
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=2066&SiteID=17

Please read the “Preparing for Service Manager Deployment” section of the Installation and Configuration Guide for step-by-step guidance on how to install and configure the product.

What’s new in Beta 2?

• Problem management
• End user self-service portal
• IT analyst portal
• Inbound email to incident workflow
• New reports
• Full extensible data warehouse
• Authoring console for customizing forms and creating custom workflows (without writing code!)
• Operations Manager integration – alert to incident scenario and service/service component inventory sync
• Self-service software provisioning
• significant improvements in performance and scalability

[taken from the System Center Service Manager blog & from SCSM forum]

The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) enables IM and presence communication between Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and select XMPP-based IM and presence providers, including  Google Talk and Jabber. Once the gateway is deployed in an Office Communications Server environment, users hosted on Office Communications Server can do the following:

• Add or delete users on an XMPP environment as contacts
• Communicate with users on XMPP environment through one-on-one IM conversations.

This enables corporate deployments of OCS2007R2 to extend their communications reach beyond the boundaries of even MSN, Yahoo, or AOL which already exists today, while also logging IM communications between individuals (for either security or regulatory/audit purposes) and maintaining centralized control over who has what communications access to the Internet.

This continues Office Communications Server’s & Office Communicator’s tradition of being the most interoperable real-time corporate communications infrastructure for enterprises.

• DOWNLOAD: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway & Documentation
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=aa560bfe-9960-473a-bfb8-53bff678cec4

This is a neat tool that seems to have to be rebuilt every 3 years since we never seem to build it directly into the Control Panel.

IT’S FREE?!?
Julien Mancini wrote a nice little free tool that will enable you to change the background graphic of the initial login screen as well as the locked-workstation screen of your Windows 7 installation.

SIMILAR TO STARDOCK
It basically does the same thing as Stardock’s LogonStudio Vista, (which incidentally still works under Windows 7)except it’s simpler since it doesn’t involve the whole concept of themes and such.  It just allows you to point at a graphic, and apply it to the login screen – that’s it.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about with regard to LogonStudio & themes, just skip this paragraph – it’s not important)

Here’s some interesting details:

• Works on both 32-bit & 64-bit Windows 7
• Written in Windows Presentation Foundation!  For the uneducated, this equates to really cool animations, 3D motion, and transitions.
• Makes no modifications to any system files whatsoever.

DOWNLOAD:  Windows 7 Logon Background Changer
http://www.julien-manici.com/windows_7_logon_background_changer/

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 (FIM), formerly known as Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" delivers an integrated identity management solution with powerful self-service capabilities for Office end-users, rich administrative tools and enhanced automation for IT professionals and .NET and WS-* based extensibility for developers. 

FIM 2010 provides organizations with unique workflow driven solutions to manage user accounts, passwords, groups and distribution lists as well as certificate-based credentials such as smart cards, using identity-based policies that can span across Windows and heterogeneous environments. And when you download the latest beta software, you’re automatically registered to access valuable resources assembled in one convenient location.

There are 3 areas of focus with FIM 2010:

Empowering People:

• With FIM 2010 end-users can easily perform self-service tasks such as group and distribution list management with self-help tools integrated into a SharePoint-based console as well as directly in Microsoft Office Outlook.
• FIM 2010 provides IT professionals with the tools they need to manage identities through a SharePoint-based policy and workflow management console.
• Developers have access to extensibility features through extensive public APIs.

Delivering agility and efficiency:

• FIM 2010 integrates enterprises’ heterogeneous infrastructure, including directories, databases, and line of business applications.
• FIM 2010 enables management of heterogeneous strong authentication systems, such as third-party certificate authorities.

Increasing security and compliance:

• FIM 2010 provides management features that enable system auditing and compliance. By integrating the tools IT uses to manage identities, credentials, and resources, FIM 2010 helps organizations integrate policies across the organization and secure the enterprise.
• Integrated management tools allow organizations to better enjoy the security benefits of strong authentication.

——————

• DOWNLOAD:  Forefront Identity Manager 2010
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc872861.aspx
• PRODUCT SITE:  Forefront Identity Manager 2010
  http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/identitymanager/en/us/default.aspx
• DATASHEET: Forefront™ Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 Datasheet
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=47&p=3&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=4bb3f16b-27f8-4c1d-922f-2c7b522d9ad6&u=details.aspx%3ffamilyid%3d1C4214CB-07AB-4FD0-B29E-F226F41244B3%26displaylang%3den
• WHITEPAPER:  Understanding Forefront Identity Manager 2010
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/2/A/32A7B77A-7D3A-4D24-ACE7-5AA3A908B95E/Understanding%20FIM%202010.docx
• TECHCENTER:  "Identity Lifecycle Manager v2”
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ilm/default.aspx

Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) is a secure application gateway, to manage, control, and optimize remote access for managed and non-managed endpoints, to corporate applications and resources. Forefront UAG RC0 provides a number of new features, including support for migration from Forefront UAG Beta 2.

Forefront UAG provides the following:

• Remote access: Using Forefront UAG you can allow and control access to internal resources and applications from a range of managed and unmanaged client endpoints.
• Application support: Forefront UAG provides broad application support for a wide range of Microsoft and third-party applications. Application optimizers, consisting of predefined settings and values, provide optimum settings for accessing a specific application via Forefront UAG.
• Access control: Forefront UAG provides granular access control, to ensure that only client endpoints complying with corporate health guidelines can access internal applications and resources.
• Authentication: Forefront UAG provides frontend and backend authentication mechanisms. Frontend authentication allows you to pre-authenticate users using a wide range of authentication mechanisms, ensuring that only authenticated traffic reaches published application servers. In addition, Forefront UAG provides a single sign-on experience for authentication to backend applications.

Links:

• DOWNLOAD:  Forefront Unified Access Gateway Release Candidate 0 (1203.6 MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a3f5729a-3989-4f60-980f-1b87dd198988
• PRODUCT SITE:  Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 Beta
  http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/edgesecurity/iag/en/us/uag-beta.aspx
• DOCUMENTATION: Forefront Unified Access Gateway Beta
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd861463.aspx
• BLOG:   Edge Access (Forefront UAG)
  http://blogs.technet.com/edgeaccessblog/
• DISCUSSION:  Forefront UAG Release Candidate
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=156513

On September 29, 2009, Microsoft released the beta version of the third generation of System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), previously called “DPM v3” or “Zinger”.

DPM 2010 Beta builds on the success of DPM 2007 as the Microsoft backup and recovery solution for Windows customers in four significant areas:

• Continuous data protection of Windows application and file servers to seamlessly integrated disk, tape, and cloud—with support for a growing list of Microsoft technologies, such as:
• Windows Server from 2003 through 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2000 through 2008
• Exchange Server 2003 through 2010
• SharePoint Server 2003 through 2010
• Dynamics AX 2009
• Essential Business Server 2008 and Small Business Server 2008
• SAP™ running on SQL Server
  Along with new workloads and support of the latest generation of Microsoft application servers, these platforms are gaining several new protection and recovery capabilities. Some enhancement examples include:
• SQL Server database administrators will see up to 2000 databases protected by a single DPM server and will get a self-service restore capability so that authorized DBAs can restore data themselves. Also, you will be able to protect entire instances of SQL Server, where all new databases will be automatically protected.

• SharePoint administrators will also see new content databases be automatically protected and will no longer need a recovery farm for Office “14” servers to do individual item recovery from DPM 2010.

• Robust and flexible protection and recovery for the following Microsoft virtualization environments:
• Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
• Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V
• Hyper-V Server 2008 and 2008 R2
• Protection of Live Migration-enabled servers running on CSV in Hyper-V R2
• Flexibility to protect virtual machines from Windows guests or from the hypervisor host
• Host-based backups will now enable single-item restores from within the VHD
• Ability to restore virtual machines to an alternative host
• Industry-leading Windows client protection:
• Protection of Windows XP through Windows 7
• Centralized policy management from DPM 2010, but backups occur while laptops are online or offline by managing policies within the local VSS client/backup tools
• Restores can also be done while online or offline—from the local repository or the DPM media
• Intelligent and customizable filtering to ensure the right data gets backed up
• 4. Scalability, reliability, and manageability:
• Up to 100 servers, 1000 laptops, or 2000 databases protected by a single DPM server
• Significant auto-protection, auto-healing, and reduced alerting for a more “fire and forget” experience
• Enhanced disaster recovery options for long-distance data protection and business continuity initiatives

This list is a partial representation of the full feature set planned for DPM 2010. Test out it yourself by downloading DPM 2010 Beta.

DOWNLOAD:  Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta (1503.53 MB)
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9686964

NEWSGROUP:  Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta discussion
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?query="Data Protection Manager" or "DPM"&dg=&cat=en_US_d02fc761-3f6b-402c-82f6-ba1a8875c1a7&lang=en&cr=&pt=&catlist=&dglist=&ptlist=&exp=&sloc=en-us

VIDEO:  Technet Webcast:  Announcing Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032426727 

BETA PRODUCT SITE: Data Protection Manager 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/2010beta-overview.aspx

Wow.  Talk about stealth releases.  I had no idea we’d revved Mappoint.  And even better… it’s now available to MSDN Subscribers!

MapPoint 2010 gives you more power to visualize business data, communicate insights with instant impact, and integrate maps into the work you do in Microsoft Office. New features include map settings to choose display details, expanded pushpins, and the ability to send routes to your GPS device.

(from the OMG-it’s-about-frickin’-time file…)

Customized Map Settings – Choose whether cities, highways, local roads and parks show on your map.  Create maps using custom Map Settings to display your data with selected details. Easily hide roads, geographic boundaries and labels for clear routes and directions. You can now control the look and feel of the native map data. You can turn on and off either the labels and/or the symbols for each of 4 categories with several sub-categories:

• Populated Places – Major City (1,000,000+ people), City (500,000 – 999,999), Minor City (100,000 – 499,999) and Town/Other Place (0-99,999)
• Boundaries – Country, State or Province, County, Postal Code and 3-digit Postal Code
• Transportation – Highways, Local Roads, Toll Roads and Railroads
• Miscellaneous – Water Features, Parks and Reserves, Points of Interest and All Other

You can do this for each of the 6 map styles (Road, Road and Data, Data, Terrain, Political and Night). You can also chance the fonts on the map to better support your needs for reading the map data…and to help those farsighted folks.

• More Pushpins – Get all of the pushpin images from previous MapPoint versions—over 300 included.
• Refreshed Data – Use updated geographic data in MapPoint to display trends and illustrate key points on maps.
• Navigation and Sharing – Create routes, share with others and send them to your navigation device. This requires a subscription to MSN Direct to send over the FM airwaves.
• The Road Warrior’s Copilot – Plan your trip on your PC and then print, or send your route to your GPS device. This requires a subscription to MSN Direct to send over the FM airwaves.
• Easy to Reroute – Drag-and-drop your route to go around a road or area.
• Show in Bing™ Maps – Quickly find listings when online and add them to a route. Use descriptive words such as “coffee” and “restaurant” to find points near your location. Bing!
• Manage Pushpins – Hide a group of pushpins without deleting. Also, show all pushpin clouds (info boxes) or hide them all at once. Finally!

• Export to GPX – Bundle trip route, pushpin and other information into a single file (.GPX) for easy exporting and sharing. Import data into MapPoint using a .gpx file.

A couple things to note:

• The new MapPoint Add-in for SQL Server 2008 works with MapPoint 2010, so download that if you want your geometry and geography types in SQL Server 2008 to render in MapPoint 2010.
• The OLAP and Spatial Data Import COM Add-Ins work with MapPoint 2010, so download those if you need them.
• There are multiple versions of MapPoint – Microsoft MapPoint North America 2010, Microsoft MapPoint North America with GPS Locator, Microsoft MapPoint Europe, MapPoint Fleet Edition – so make sure you get the right version.
• Streets & Trips 2010 is also now available, so check out the web site for more details. S&T 2010 also has a free trial, so you can play before you pay.
• If you don’t trust my clearly skewed Microsoft view of MapPoint 2010 read the following article from MP2KMag.com: http://www.mp2kmag.com/a158–mapfeatures.mappoint.html

[taken from the Bing Maps Blog]