Ladewig.com

On day three, I attended the following sessions:

• CLI418 Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007: Advanced Zero Touch Installation with Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 (whew, that’s a long title!)
• MGT234 Deploying Microsoft Windows Update Services 3.0
• CLI305 Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) and Asset Inventory Services (AIS) (title corrected from what was listed in the program)
• UNC307 Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: Tips and Tricks

UNC307 was a disappointment. the session was very short, only 30-45 minutes, and the content was more like a 200-level session than 300-level. Most of the tips were fairly standard and in some cases not really tips. Knowing that you can use /fp instead of /forestprep isn’t much a tip or track in my opinion. Plus the speaker never engaged the audience. Delivery was very plodding and in a monotone. Reading the slide deck for this presentation is a perfectly adequate substitute for having been there in person. Saving grace was I left right afterwards to head back to the hotel and get some rest, so finishing early wasn’t so bad. There were no sessions at 5:30 that interested me, so I had a couple hours to nap.

The DaRT session was OK. We have been using the Administrator Toolkit from Winternals for some time, so there wasn’t much there that was new. The other two components look to be useful, but nothing earth-shattering.

The other sessions were excellent, especially the BDD 2007 session. This was a follow-on to the session the day before that introduced BDD 2007 LTI and ZTI. I definitely plan to make use of this when I get back to the office to use as our reference build as well as possibly using for deployment in conjunction with SMS 2003 OSD and WDS.

For the evening, I wasn’t able to get an invite to the Influencer Party, so I was on my own for dinner. Turned out to be quite an odyssey. First, the weather hear turned in the afternoon, with thunderstorms moving into the area resulting in loud thunder and pouring rain. Looked like a monsoon at times. One especially loud thunderclap came at a perfect time in the demo, such that you’d almost think the gods were weighing in on what they thought about the Desktop Optimization Pack.

I expected the rain to move through as it usually does in Orlando, but it kept raining and raining and raining. I took the bus to the convention center, then hopped on the I-drive trolley to head up to a Mexican restaurant hat had ranked highly in area polls. Unfortunately the traffic was horrible and we crawled the whole way there. When I finally arrived at the stop for the restaurant, it was nowhere to be found. I guess it either didn’t last or it was well-hidden. So I walked back, not wanting to site in traffic to another restaurant on my list. The rain was light at this point, but still enough to need the umbrella. Turned out the wait was 45 minutes at the next restaurant so I kept walking and finally wound up at Don Pablo’s, a chain restaurant, but good enough to satisfy my taste for Mexican food. The rain had really picked up, so by the time I sat down I was soaked. Must have looked like a drowned rat. The food was good, though, and I dried off a little while I ate. By the time I left, the rain had tapered off, and I managed to catch the trolley within a couple minutes. So my luck finally turned; better late than never.

Swag tally for day 3:

• Microsoft System Center Slinky
• Source Fource character: Windows Vista Sensei
• Redmond Magazine cover photo courtesy of ScriptLogic and Redmond Magazine

Quick note on the Source Fource characters. First, the spelling is correct. The name is Source Fource, not Source Force as I had been using previously. They added three new characters this year, ISV Super Gal, Windows Vista Sensei, and Master Office. they gave out Windows Vista Sensei today and Master Office will be tomorrow. ISV Super Gal was supposed to be distributed on Friday, but someone had staff walk around and hand them out during the reception at the Partner Expo on Monday Night. Oops! Luckily I managed to snag one that evening. Would have been ticked to have missed completing the collection to go with last year’s characters.

Day two was a long day. Sessions all day and a fairly late and long dinner. Have to get to sleep earlier tonight, especially with the night at Islands of Adventure tomorrow.

Yesterday’s focus was mostly Systems Management Server v4…. I mean System Center Configuration Manager 2007. If there was a sure thing at any SCCM session, it was that everyone keeps calling it SMS v4. I understand the idea behind the System Center family brand, but it will be a long time before people get used to calling SMS by its new name.

Tuesday’s sessions were:

• MGT305 Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007: What’s New in Software Distribution
• MBL11-TLC Top 10 features in Microsoft Windows Mobile 6
• MGT3130 Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007: Deployment
• MGT307 Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007: Deploying Software Updates
• CLI334 Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007: Microsoft Windows Vista Deployment Walkthrough

All of the SCCM sessions were good, all thorough in-depth looks at getting SCCM installed, deployed to clients, and installing software. The addition of Wake On LAN (WOL) functionality alone will be worth the upgrade. The integration of WSUS into SCCM for deploying patches and updates is a welcome move as well. It should make for a more consistent approach to patching and make it easier to manage. We’re still on WSUS v2 in our environment, but plan on moving to v3 when I get back.

Another new feature we plan to make extensive use of is the ability of SCCM to manage Internet clients. We have manay systems that rarely connect to our network, both home systems provided by the school as well as laptops that never come back to the office. Most people don’t have need to use the VPN on a daily basis, so the opportunity to communicate with these systems that would be available with the VPN rarely happens. Unfortunately to manage Internet clients, SCCM has to run in native mode, and to use native mode, I found out today, you need PKI. I’ve avoided setting up a PKI solution internally, but looks like I have to now. Wish Microsoft had provided some other option to get around deploying PKI. Add that to the to-do list.

The Windows Mobile 6 session was a bit of a disappointment. It started late, ended early, and they didn’t go over that many features. Unfortunately, I skipped a session about developing a universal image for loading systems that everyone raved about to attend the WM6 session. They are going to offer it again on Friday morning, so I’ll be able to catch it then.

Had a bit of a scare after lunch. I walked into one of the bathrooms on the main floor and after taking a couple steps into the room, I slipped on a water-covered floor and wound flat on my back. Ouch! That tile is hard, and I’m still a bit sore. Nothing permanently damaged though that I can tell. I’m thankful I didn’t smack my head on the floor because if I had, I’d have been on my way to the hospital for sure. Afterwards I noticed the big blue signs at the entrance of the bathrooms that warns the floors are slippery. I’d rather they took the money they spent for the signs and used it to keep the floors dry or use a different floor surface that isn’t like ice when it gets wet.

Yesterday I ran into a couple guys from the medical school at the University, so I joined them for dinner last night. We ate at Charley’s Steak House which was a great meal, althoguh a bit pricey. I need to check the travel guidelines, but I think we exceeded the limits by just a tad. If you’re looking for a good steak in Orlando, give this place a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Swag levels are falling, simply because I’ve grabbed most of what I’m going to get this trip. Here’s the list for the day:

• Source Force figure: Virtual Labs
• Dr. Scripto’s Fun Book and Crayons
• Two autographed books for a co-worker: Writing Secure Code for Windows Vista and The Security Development Lifecycle
• TechNet Magazine t-shirt
• Microsoft Online Communities t-shirt

Sigh… Always click save periodically when you’re writing really long posts. I just spent half an hour writing today’s wrap-up when IE crashed on me and I lost everything. Makes me want to scream. Let’s try this again…

The morning keynote was so-so. The intro was funny with Christopher Lloyd appearing as Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies. The demos were also effective. The middle was weak, however, as someone from Gartner went on and on at a level way higher than was appropriate for an audience of IT Pros and Developers (in my opinion). If I wanted to hear someone from Gartner-speak, I’d go to their conferences. The keynote ran long so I wound up leaving before the end so that I could make it over to the south concourse for the morning sessions. Keynotes always run long, and this one was no exception. Tighten things up next year Microsoft.

The instructor-led labs were all full, so I went to the hands on lab area and worked on a couple of Vista deployment labs. The new dual-monitor setup was a big improvement over last year; no more binders of lab manuals! Plus you can email the lab manual to your email back home right form the lab. You can also save your lab and resume later.

Lunch was pretty good today: chicken and pot roast. The entrance area is a bit of a bottleneck though as people stop at closer buffet lines, leaving the lines at the end wanting for people. Keep moving people! The food is the same no matter where you go.

After lunch, I made a few passes through the Partner Expo, then headed to my first session, SEC306 A Technical Overview of Microsoft Forefront Client Security. This session was a good overview of FCS and how it works. We’re planning to switch our systems from Symantec AntiVirus over to FCS. SAV has been a good product, but the management side hasn’t improved in several years. FCS puts it to shame. Plus our pricing under Campus Agreement makes it a no-brainer compared to what we would have to pay this year for SAV.

Next was CLI332 Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization. Whew, that’s a mouthful. Best session so far. Chad Jones (I think that was his name) had the dual advantage of being able to give a good presentation and having a great product to discuss. The room was packed and people seemed pretty jazzed about SoftGrid. I hadn’t really planned on doing much with it even though we get it as part of the Desktop Optimization Pack, but as I’ve learned more including at today’s session, I’m pretty psyched about how this can really help us in our environment. Definitely moved to the top of my “want to do” list for when I get back home.

The last session of the day was SEC324 Setup and Deployment of Microsoft Forefront Client Security. Some overlap with the earlier session, but more focused on deployment (of course). We only have 550 or so computers, so we should be able to get by with a single server setup or as they call it, a “tiny” installation.

At 6 PM, the learning area closed and everyone headed over to the Partner Expo for the reception. Free food and beer and swap is a deadly combination. The food was OK. Finger food and not the healthiest, but chicken tenders, crab cakes, and various other items were enough to be dinner. they even had small hamburgers labeled as “White Castles” but these definitely weren’t authentic sliders. Fo one thing the patties weren’t square, didn’t have holes, and didn’t taste like White Castles. But I give them points for trying.

Picked up a fair amount of swag, so here’s the swag tally for the day along with a photo to close things out for the day:

• Namescape polo shirt (not std swag, we’re a customer)
• HP t-shirt
• VMware t-shirt
• Microsoft Office Communications Server t-shirt
• Automated QA t-shirt
• NetApp Magic 8-Ball
• Xiotech Compass
• Xiotech Mini Toolkit
• HP USB SD Media Reader (very handy!)
• Ironport playing cards
• Blackberry Book Light
• Source Force figures: MSDN Webcasts (from last year) and Innovation Lab (new this year)
• Microsoft System Center Post It Note holder
• Windows Vista Infrastructure Optimization boomerang
• Idera rubber duck
• TechEd 2007 15th Anniversary personal fan
• Dell retractable badge clip
• Business Objects flashlight
• Avocent cozy
• Northern deer antlers
• Several pens

Keynote intro has Back to the Future theme complete with Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown and the Delorean. Nice tie-in to Universal. Probably the funniest keynote theme yet.

They just started a video highlighting a customer success story with Energizer, a St. Louis company. Just showed the Arch onscreen.

I’m sitting in the keynote hall waiting for it to start. They seated us way over on the right side and close to the front. Can barely see the podium from this angle. Oh well, everything to see is up on the big screens anyway.

They have us over at the west concourse for this session then back on the bus back to the south building afterwards. As an incentive for people to go to the keynote, breakfast was here as well. Wonder if that was the reason for using west or whether it just worked out that way.

Tried downloading the Julian conference tool to my phone but the download links don’t work. Grrr.

While marking up my pocket guide for my schedule, I wound up deciding not to attend any of the three sessions I had marked and instead will try for one of a couple instructor led labs. Too much content to choose from!