Posted by Mark Wilson on April 11, 2011 under Events, Windows Server | 
Thanks to everyone who attended the rescheduled Live Meeting last month on Connecting on-premise applications with the Windows Azure platform (with Allan Naim and Phil Winstanley).
Unfortunately the gremlins didn’t subside – after rescheduling the event I was unable to get a microphone working – which is a bit of an issue for a facilitator (thanks to Phil for stepping up to the mark) and the Live Meeting recording has not worked completely either.
Nevertheless, resources from the event (slide deck, audio recording, demonstration video, and readme file) are now available.
I hope you enjoyed the event (or at least the recording) and for information on future Windows Server User Group events, check back here on the WSUG blog or follow @windowsserverug on Twitter
[Updated 18 April: Live Meeting video recordings are now also available]
Posted by Mark Wilson on March 23, 2011 under Events, Notices, Windows Server |
Last week, I wrote about a Live Meeting looking at using Windows Azure Connect to connect on-premise server infrastructure with Microsoft’s public cloud offering.
If you tried to attend that meeting, I’m sorry, but due to some logistical difficulties that were outside our control, the meeting was unable to go ahead at the advertised time and, although we e-mailed everyone who had registered, I’m sorry if you didn’t get the message until it was too late.
I’m pleased to say that this event has now been rescheduled for the same time (19:00 – although by then we’ll be on BST not GMT) next Monday (28 March 2011).
Please accept my apologies for the short notice we gave last night, and please do register for the rescheduled meeting.
Posted by Mark Wilson on March 15, 2011 under Events, Notices, Windows Server |
With the all the interest in Microsoft Windows Azure, it’s natural to ask “what does that mean for IT Pros?”. There’s loads of information to help developers write applications for the cloud, but what about those of us who do infrastructure: servers, networks, and other such things?
One important element is integrating on and off-premise systems and, to do this, Microsoft has created Windows Azure Connect – a new Windows Azure service that enables customers to setup secure, IP-level network connectivity between their Windows Azure compute services and existing, on-premise resources. This allows Windows Azure applications to leverage and integrate with existing infrastructure investments in order to ease adoption of Azure in the enterprise..
It’s taken a long while to set up but we’re finally running a Live Meeting on this topic (thanks to a lot of help from Phil Winstanley, ex-MVP and now native at Microsoft).
Our speaker will be Allan Naim, an Azure Architect Evangelist at Microsoft. Allan has more than 15 years of experience designing and building distributed middleware applications including both custom and off the shelf Enterprise Application Integration architectures and, on the evening of 22 March 2011 (starting at 19:00 GMT), he’ll spend an hour taking us through Windows Azure Connect.
Combined with the event that Mark Parris has organised for 6 April 2011 where one of the topics is Active Directory Federation Services (AD-FS), these two WSUG sessions should give Windows Server administrators a great opportunity to learn about integrating Windows Server and Windows Azure.
Register for the Azure Connect Live Meeting now. Why not register for the AD RMS and AD FS in-person event too?
Posted by markparris on February 24, 2011 under Events, Notices, Windows Server |
The Windows Server User Group after a small hiatus is back.
We are please to announce that on the evening of the 6th April 2011 at Microsoft’s London Offices (Cardinal Place)
We will host two sessions around:
Active Directory – Rights Management Services (AD-RMS) and how it can integrate with the cloud.
AD-RMS can help in the battle to prevent data leakage and corporate disclosure, Wikileaks has highlighted the growing need for data loss prevention; this session will provide a showcase and an insight in to the technology. Presented by Microsoft’s Bill Orme.
and
Active Directory – Federation Services (AD-FS)
AD-FS utilises standards based protocols to allow your business to federate to the cloud and with other entities. This is a must know technology for today and the future.
Presented by: “Simon Veale of The Oxford Computer Group”
Please note Eventbrite does not support BST, this meeting is British Summer Time. (GMT +1)
There will be a social event in the Ha-Ha bar afterwards.
Register at http://wsug042011.eventbrite.com
Posted by Mark Wilson on September 3, 2010 under Events |
We’re having difficulties scheduling WSUG events right now. Without going into all the gory details, Microsoft’s funding for rooms, etc. is not available in the way that it has been in the past, so we need to find another way to do things…
Now that the summer holidays are over, I’d like to organise a “virtual” user group meeting, over Live Meeting – and have had some conversations with Microsoft about a session on “Azure for IT Pros” (how can we integrate our on-premise infrastructure with Windows Azure, etc.). Please leave a comment if you think this will be of interest.
In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a Microsoft-hosted event that may be of interest, although it may also be a bit “developery” for some Windows Server admins.
In any case, Steve Ballmer will be the guest speaker at a special UK TechDays “Future of Cloud Development” event in London’s Docklands on 5 October.
The site has not gone live yet but you can registration on the event page or at 0870 166 6670, quoting event reference 9886 - you’ll also need the invitation code: 6D4723.
More details of the session content can be found below:
- A lap around Windows Phone 7 (Mike Ormond) – In this session Microsoft will take a look at Windows Phone 7 and the developer ecosystem, from the capabilities and unique features of the platform to the development frameworks and tools you have at your disposal. Along the way they’ll build a simple application or two and explore how people can purchase your finished masterpiece.
- A lap around the Windows Azure Platform (Eric Nelson) – Hear how the Windows Azure Platform provides a scalable compute and storage environment with Windows Azure, secure connectivity with Service Bus and Access Control Service, and a relational database with SQL Azure. Learn about these new services and see demos that show how to build applications that run in and take advantage of Microsoft’s new cloud platform.
- We’re Not on XP Any More – A Windows 7 Application in 60 Minutes. (Mike Taulty) – In this code-only session Microsoft will use Visual Studio 2010 and any .NET assembly that we can beg, borrow, steal or even build in order to put together a simple, modern Windows 7 application from scratch using the journey to provide pointers on how your applications can shine by using features that Windows XP only dreamt about ( when it wasn’t dreaming of electric sheep in its world limited by 2 processor cores, 4GB of RAM and GDI based graphics).
- Keynote: New opportunities and compelling experiences – Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer, Steve Ballmer, will talk about new opportunities to deliver seamless experiences across many screens and a cloud, and why now is such an exciting time for developers
- IE9 The Best Browser for Windows (Martin Beeby) – In this session Microsoft will use IE9 and a sprinkling of JavaScript and HTML5 to show you how to create an integrated and immersive experience maximizing the full power of your visitors Windows 7 PC.
Posted by Mark Wilson on April 20, 2010 under Events, Windows Server |
Thanks to everyone who attended the WSUG events last week with our guests Joey Snow and Dan Pearson (we hope you manage to get home soon).
For those who were interested in the slide decks, you can find links to them below:
Posted by markparris on March 9, 2010 under Events, Social |
The [WSUG] Windows Server User Group has the pleasure of hosting Dan Pearson, from David Solomon’s Expert Seminars, http://www.solsem.com/ Dan is in London teaching the week of TechDays UK and has kindly agreed to present on the evening of Tuesday 13th April (18:30-21:00 at Microsoft, Cardinal Place, London) to the community. There will be a social gathering afterwards.
Registration: Chick Here (NOTE even though the event says GMT it is BST).
Windows Crash Dump Analysis
While Windows crashes are rarer these days, when they do occur, you need to know how to isolate their root cause. This session explains why Windows crashes to protect the system, the types of crash dumps you can configure, and how to analyze them with the Microsoft Debugging Tools. Also covered are how to deal with hung systems and systems that crash without taking a dump. Several real-life case studies are presented.
Windows Performance Troubleshooting and Analysis
Performance is a fundamental metric representing system responsiveness and productivity and can be directly tied to customer satisfaction. This session details the use of several built-in performance monitoring tools, as well as those from Sysinternals and the Windows Performance Toolkit, to aid with the troubleshooting and diagnosis of performance-related issues. Also covered is the analysis and interpretation of the data collected by each of the tools and the presentation of several useful techniques that can be applied to troubleshooting. Several real-life case studies are presented
About Daniel Pearson
Formerly a Senior Escalation Lead at Microsoft, Daniel worked in the Windows Base OS team supporting Microsoft customers. He performed crash dump analysis and system level debugging, spending the majority of his time either in a debugger or reading through Windows source code. Daniel also worked in the Mobile Internet sustained engineering team that released hot fixes and service packs for Microsoft’s Mobile Information Server product. He has presented sessions on Windows internals at Microsoft sponsored conferences and user groups.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Daniel worked at Digital Equipment Corporation on both Intel and Alpha systems running Windows NT doing system software support for enterprise customers.
Dan Pearson is speaking in March at Microsoft’s Tech Days in Finland and Belgium.
Posted by markparris on March 3, 2010 under Events, Windows Server |
We are pleased to announce that the Windows Server User Group has the honour
of hosting Redmond based Joey Snow, Joey is a technical evangelist for the worldwide Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft focusing on Windows Server, IIS and SQL Server.
Joey will be providing a talk on:
BranchCache (Deep Dive)
BranchCache is a new Feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that helps reduces the bandwidth consumed and improves end user experience while accessing intranet-based HTTP and SMB content. This session introduces challenges in network performance often faced by remote branch offices which accessing content stored in servers located in datacenters across trans-continental Wide Area Networks, and how BranchCache helps in addressing these challenges.
You will learn in depth how BranchCache works and see a demonstration of this new feature in Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7, as well as learn how to configure BranchCache.
Windows Server Migration (Deep Dive)
Presentations and live demonstrations on how the new Windows Server 2008 R2 migration tools can simplify the migration of Windows Server roles.
Joey will provide a detailed insight to the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Migration Tools; The session will include migrating file services, DNS and DHCP to Windows Server 2008 R2.
Posted by markparris on February 9, 2010 under Reference |
Standalone version of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Help.
Posted by markparris on under Reference |
Your Comprehensive Resource for Licensing Windows Server 2008 R2
Download