Kurt Shintaku's Blog

In this online collection of six courses, developers will learn how to create customized solutions with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Topics covered include Enterprise Content Management, Creating Business Intelligence Solutions, Business Data Integration, plus three more courses to help you prepare for the MOSS 2007 exam.

This offer includes the following:
E-Learning

• Course 6072: Managing Enterprise Content by using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Course 6073:Creating Business Intelligence Solutions by using Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Course 6074: Integrating Business Data by using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Course 6075: Accessing Application Platform Services by Using Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Course 6076: Searching Data by Using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Course 6077: Personalizing a Portal by Using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

The total cost for all 6 courses is $191.99.

Interested in .NET futures?  We have 3 events coming to Southern California:

• 12/11/07 Irvine, CA
• 12/12/07 – Los Angeles, CA
• 12/13/07 – San Diego, CA

Attendees will learn about current and future .NET technologies. The focus of this 1 day seminar will be around Microsoft’s next generation application development platform. Attendees will also be provided with an overview of each role and the session will wrap up with a review of Visual Studio 2008 (codenamed Orcas).  This event will focus on Microsoft’s next-generation application development platform.

Audience: Developers, Architects

Registration URL:

• 12/11/07: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032353682&Culture=en-US
• 12/12/07: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032353683&Culture=en-US
• 12/13/07: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032353684&Culture=en-US

Event ID:

• 12/11/07: 1032353682
• 12/12/07: 1032353683
• 12/13/07: 1032353684

Coming 2/5/08 – 2/6/08, the Visio Conference will bring the global Visio community together to network, share best practices, provide guidance for solution development and discuss plans for Visio’s growth. Leaders from the Visio Team and the greater partner community will discuss the market opportunities for data visualization and how companies can use Visio to communicate complex information and increase productivity. 

Date:  2/5/2008-2/6/2008

Audience: IT Pros, IT Managers

Registration URL: http://www.msvisioconference.com/

Technet EDGE is a new community for IT Pros and a sister site to Channels 8, 9, 10 and Mix Online.. We’re still in the process of taking this site live and won’t be open officially for business until Monday morning but the site is still viewable so check it out.

LINK:  http://edge.technet.com/Default.aspx

This is a two-day workshop which will provide in-depth, technical training in a small classroom setting where participants learn through lecture and hands-on demonstrations.

This workshop will be led by a Microsoft Management Technical Specialist and Microsoft Management Partners. This course offers a significant amount of hands-on training that will assist your organization in becoming proficient in the skills that are needed to work with Microsoft Operations Manager.

Key topics include:

• Overview of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007
• Operations Manager architecture for complex environments
• Operations Manager Tools: Getting the most out of the Resource Kit and the SDK
• Operations Manager Reporting: Architecture and Best Practices

With this new release, Operations Manager will:

• Proactively manage business critical IT services, including distributed applications, the supporting infrastructure and hardware, and end-user service delivery.
• Reduce the complexities of managing your IT environment by providing a monitoring solution that is designed with ease of use in mind.
• Provide a highly reliable infrastructure by leveraging Windows Server and SQL 2005 clustering for high availability and through agents that automatically failover to a secondary management server if connectivity to the primary server is lost.
• Include management packs with prescriptive knowledge developed by the application and OS development teams at Microsoft and verified in production deployments to improve monitoring, troubleshooting, and problem resolution for more than 50 Microsoft applications and Windows Server components.

Audience:
The workshop is designed for your IT staff. This technical hands-on workshop is limited to 50 attendees.

Time: 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Registration begins at 8:30 AM (Breakfast, lunch and parking included)

Registration:
This workshop is being given for the exclusive attendance of invited customers.  If you are one of my customers and did not receive an invitation, please let me know and I will forward the registration information to you.  No one will be permitted to participate without proper registration.

December 11-12, 2007
Microsoft Los Angeles
333 South Grand Ave. Suite 3300
Los Angeles, CA 90071

December 18-19, 2007
Microsoft Irvine
3 Park Plaza Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614

March 4-5, 2008
Microsoft Irvine
3 Park Plaza Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614

March 11-12, 2008
Microsoft Los Angeles
333 South Grand Ave. Suite 3300
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Q:  "How does one go about forcing a Blue Screen of Death on a Windows system?"  A customer of mine asked me this question and it required some digging.  Apparently, the only way to test a cluster configuration that they were setting up and ensure that it was properly failing over was to initiate a bugcheck (or what people affectionately refer to as a "Blue Screen") on one of the cluster nodes.

The answer lies in an obscure tool from the MSPRESS book, "Windows Internals".
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/windowsinternals.mspx

Toward the bottom of this web page, there is a section called "Book Tools" with an entry for a tool called "Notmyfault".

Notmyfault: Use this executable and driver to crash your system in several different ways. Chapter 7 uses Notmyfault to demonstrate pool leak troubleshooting and Chapter 14 uses it for crash analysis examples. The download includes x86 (in the exerelease directory) and x64 versions (in the exerelamd directory) as well as full source.

What makes this tool interesting is that it’s available in both x86 and x64 forms:  Something that you don’t think about that much because traditionally it’s been a 32-bit world but with the escalation of x64’s importance, having x64-based versions of tools like these are becoming increasingly important.

So leverage this tool for your cluster nodes and otherwise "Blue Screen" away!

FCS now has visibility into Windows Firewall as part of the Security State Assessment feature.  Windows XP and Vista provide Windows Firewall as part of the base offering. Customers can choose to activate the Windows Firewall and use Active Directory Group Policy to manage the Windows Firewall. Now Forefront Client Security customer will also be able to get visibility into the status of Windows Firewall in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

This is part of FCS’s Security State Assessment (SSA) feature which allows security administrators  to not only detect common vulnerabilities in their environment, but also configuration issues that increase their exposure. 

With the new SSA check – customer can get a end-to-end Windows Firewall exposure. They can use  Active Directory Group Policy to deploy configurable policies to Windows Firewall and use Forefront Client Security management console to get visibility into the state of Firewall . 

FCS will scan the Windows firewall to provide the following visibility  

• Status (on/off)
• If disabled on any network interface, report “high”
• If configured by Group Policy, scores as “informational”
• Exceptions (port, application, service)
• Enumerates each port and application exception
• Any exception not configured via GP, scores as “medium”
• If configured by Group Policy, scores as “informational”
• Captures applicability to each network interface

Upon seeing the report, customer can then take corrective action (i.e. enabling host firewall) through Active Directory Group Policy.This will be released as part of the SSA check update on Oct 23rd 2007. Administrators using WSUS will automatically download this check along with the virus signatures and clients will download it from the WSUS server.

We’re excited to announce that we’re publicly unveiling Microsoft Search Server 2008 this morning at the Enterprise Search Summit in San Jose, CA.    

We’re also announcing a FREE version of this product – Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express – which customers can download immediately as a release candidate. 

Search is quickly becoming the preferred way for people to find and act on information in their business.  These products will allow us to fill out Microsoft’s enterprise search product lineup, which also includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. 

Both Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express offer an enterprise-ready search solution that empowers people to find the information they need to get work done quickly and easily.  Key investments across both products include:

• Streamlined installation and administration
• Federation with any business system or online service using the OpenSearch standard
• No pre-set document limits
• Numerous performance and indexing enhancements

Search Server Express provides all the functionality of Search Server, but is limited to a single-server installation.  Search Server’s multi-server capabilities offer the high availability, load balancing, and failover larger corporate IT policies typically require.  Both products will be released in the first half of 2008, and this functionality will also be made available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

ENTERPRISE SEARCH WEB SITE:
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/
TEAM BLOG: 
http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/
DOWNLOAD: 
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/download.aspx

It was a big day today.  We launched Windows Live and all it’s free software + services.  Here’s a listing of some of the software & services we announced:

1. LIVE.COM Email – Mail software & email service
   Sign up for your own personal Live.com email address here and use the new, cleanly designed, Windows Live Mail software to quickly and easily access your new mail account.
   SOFTWARE:  http://get.live.com/wl/config_all?CID=Wave2_Overview-Text
   SERVICE: http://www.windowslive.com/freshstart.html
2. Windows Live Photo Gallery – Photo publishing software & online photo service
   Windows Live now has an easy to use tool for publishing photos online to both Windows Live Spaces for you to share with others as well as Flickr for people that have libraries already stored there.
   SOFTWARE:  http://get.live.com/wl/config_all?CID=Wave2_Overview-Text
   SERVICE:  http://spaces.live.com
3. Windows Live Writer – Blog publishing software & online blog service
   Additionally bloggers will find that the new Windows Live Writer 2008 provides a fantastic interface for publishing content to their blogs on either Windows Live Spaces or other existing blogging services out there like Blogger.
   SOFTWARE:  http://get.live.com/wl/config_all?CID=Wave2_Overview-Text
   SERVICE:  http://spaces.live.com
4. Windows Live Family Safety – Browsing protection software & updating service
   For people that want to prevent their kids from viewing inappropriate web sites, disapprove email & messenger contacts, block inappropriate search results, and remotely manage the home PC, Windows Live Family Safety provides a free, extensible tool & service for protecting the family PC experience.
   SOFTWARE:  http://get.live.com/wl/config_all?CID=Wave2_Protect-Button

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 will allow corporate IT organizations to enhance security by enforcing company and departmental policies across a wide variety of Windows Mobile phones.

Features will include:

• The ability to restrict the use of Bluetooth, SMS/MMS, WLAN, Infrared, POP/IMAP e-mail, as well as camera functionality
• The ability to restrict which applications will run on your devices
• Encryption of files
• Remote wipe of lost or stolen phones
• Software and firmware deployment, based on WSUS 3.0
• Device Inventory and reporting

…not to mention behind-the-firewall access to documents through a mobile VPN feature.

MORE INFO: 
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobiledevicemanager/default.mspx