Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tech Ed 2009 Keynote Notables
First things first, Bill Veghte sounds like Owen Wilson. He doesn’t look like him but he sounds like him and while that doesn’t tarnish his credibility any, you do keep waiting for him to say something like “IT Executive well I don’t really like to be painted with that brush, but I dabble”.
Many things were mentioned I’ll point out some select notables:
This tech ed is about asking yourself “is this for the data center or for the cloud?” and Microsoft wants to make this decision seamless, ok.
SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released in CTP (Community Technical Preview) in H2 2009.
Office 2010 will be released as a technical preview in July 2009 and Tech Ed attendees will be given first dibs on that release.
Other major releases include: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.
There have already been 10 million device installs of Windows 7, and they’ve already begun logo testing.
Tech Ed 2010 will be in New Orleans.
Windows 7 features Direct Access (when paired with Win Svr 2008 R2) which is a seamless way to remote desktop without vpn through firewalls, etc.
Demonstrated jump lists in Windows 7, these “get rich overtime”. Good term, it means apps you use most often will fill in these lists.
Demonstrated snapping windows into docked positions on screen, then shaking a window above other windows to force them to minimize, minor golf clapping followed this.
Bill then turned over the microphone to Mark Russinovich of sysinternals fame who explained he was more than super-excited, he was hyper-excited about the new BitLocker features in Win7 which use policies to force data encryption on usb keys. Maybe golf-clapping occurred on this, can’t recall.
AppLocker improves on policies. Policy locked down executables so that newer versions of the same product could not be installed since they featured a different checksum-like identifier. AppLocker locks down by publisher or file version.
Best demo of the keynote yet was when Mark demonstrated the Problem Step Recorder, use this tool when a bug can be reproduced. Turn the recorder on, step through the bug. When you are done, the recorder generates a .zip file containing an html document which contains screenshots and verbiage of what was done step-by-step to produce the problem. Very slick.
Next Mark moved onto the improvements contained in Powershell Version 2 which features a new editor and debugger.
Next up was the XP Mode which comes in Win7. This looks exactly like the Sun VirtualBox transparent mode that I’m running on Ubuntu. You can configure an application to run in XP and it will show up in your start menu. It’s window looks exactly like an XP window b/c it’s running inside a virtual xp within Win7.
This is called MEDV Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization and it can be used for applications and websites. You can configure a website to launch within a different browser than IE8, not sure if you can change the default browser to Chrome then launch IE for specified sites. It wasn’t clear if this was a Windows setting or a feature within IE8.
The other V acronym being thrown around was APPV which extends roaming profiles to very quickly move a laptop’s settings to a new device, in the case of a lost laptop. Using this tool you can very quickly reload a new laptop exactly the way the other was configured (apps, data, bookmarks, desktop settings, wallpaper, etc).
Virtual Hard Drive management is greatly improved in Windows 7, Windows can now boot from VHDs. Mark uses this to test nightly builds of WinSvr2008, attach the VHD, boot from it, test.
Two elephants in the room, application compatibility and when will Windows 7 ship. Bill pointed developers to the application compatibility toolkit to test their apps then he revealed that Windows 7 … based on their telemetry (gotta remember that one) … wait for it … will probably have … wait for it … wait for it … holiday availability. I’m not sure if that was meant to drum up some sort of nostalgia there, EOY2009 could have worked, but they went with “holiday availability”. For me that invokes images of when I was a kid and my dad gave me that DOS 5.25 floppy. Good times, yeah wow thanks.
Next up was Iain McDonald who went into a lot of feature demos for Win Svr 2008 R2.
Some notable features
• file classification infrastructure which allows admins to tag files
• searches now use OCR to locate text within a graphic
• automated deletion or archiving of files meeting admin defined conditions
Exchange 2010 will feature automatic IRM for e-mail, for example e-mails sent to executives from R&D can automatically be assigned the corporate “DO NOT FORWARD” template.
OWA (Outlook Web Access) now features search which will go through attached documents, seems handy.
Tech Ed 2009 is also about being green, as a result, DVDs of presentations will no longer be created and mailed to attendees. Now you can watch them online via a Silverlight website.
Many things were mentioned I’ll point out some select notables:
This tech ed is about asking yourself “is this for the data center or for the cloud?” and Microsoft wants to make this decision seamless, ok.
SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released in CTP (Community Technical Preview) in H2 2009.
Office 2010 will be released as a technical preview in July 2009 and Tech Ed attendees will be given first dibs on that release.
Other major releases include: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.
There have already been 10 million device installs of Windows 7, and they’ve already begun logo testing.
Tech Ed 2010 will be in New Orleans.
Windows 7 features Direct Access (when paired with Win Svr 2008 R2) which is a seamless way to remote desktop without vpn through firewalls, etc.
Demonstrated jump lists in Windows 7, these “get rich overtime”. Good term, it means apps you use most often will fill in these lists.
Demonstrated snapping windows into docked positions on screen, then shaking a window above other windows to force them to minimize, minor golf clapping followed this.
Bill then turned over the microphone to Mark Russinovich of sysinternals fame who explained he was more than super-excited, he was hyper-excited about the new BitLocker features in Win7 which use policies to force data encryption on usb keys. Maybe golf-clapping occurred on this, can’t recall.
AppLocker improves on policies. Policy locked down executables so that newer versions of the same product could not be installed since they featured a different checksum-like identifier. AppLocker locks down by publisher or file version.
Best demo of the keynote yet was when Mark demonstrated the Problem Step Recorder, use this tool when a bug can be reproduced. Turn the recorder on, step through the bug. When you are done, the recorder generates a .zip file containing an html document which contains screenshots and verbiage of what was done step-by-step to produce the problem. Very slick.
Next Mark moved onto the improvements contained in Powershell Version 2 which features a new editor and debugger.
Next up was the XP Mode which comes in Win7. This looks exactly like the Sun VirtualBox transparent mode that I’m running on Ubuntu. You can configure an application to run in XP and it will show up in your start menu. It’s window looks exactly like an XP window b/c it’s running inside a virtual xp within Win7.
This is called MEDV Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization and it can be used for applications and websites. You can configure a website to launch within a different browser than IE8, not sure if you can change the default browser to Chrome then launch IE for specified sites. It wasn’t clear if this was a Windows setting or a feature within IE8.
The other V acronym being thrown around was APPV which extends roaming profiles to very quickly move a laptop’s settings to a new device, in the case of a lost laptop. Using this tool you can very quickly reload a new laptop exactly the way the other was configured (apps, data, bookmarks, desktop settings, wallpaper, etc).
Virtual Hard Drive management is greatly improved in Windows 7, Windows can now boot from VHDs. Mark uses this to test nightly builds of WinSvr2008, attach the VHD, boot from it, test.
Two elephants in the room, application compatibility and when will Windows 7 ship. Bill pointed developers to the application compatibility toolkit to test their apps then he revealed that Windows 7 … based on their telemetry (gotta remember that one) … wait for it … will probably have … wait for it … wait for it … holiday availability. I’m not sure if that was meant to drum up some sort of nostalgia there, EOY2009 could have worked, but they went with “holiday availability”. For me that invokes images of when I was a kid and my dad gave me that DOS 5.25 floppy. Good times, yeah wow thanks.
Next up was Iain McDonald who went into a lot of feature demos for Win Svr 2008 R2.
Some notable features
• file classification infrastructure which allows admins to tag files
• searches now use OCR to locate text within a graphic
• automated deletion or archiving of files meeting admin defined conditions
Exchange 2010 will feature automatic IRM for e-mail, for example e-mails sent to executives from R&D can automatically be assigned the corporate “DO NOT FORWARD” template.
OWA (Outlook Web Access) now features search which will go through attached documents, seems handy.
Tech Ed 2009 is also about being green, as a result, DVDs of presentations will no longer be created and mailed to attendees. Now you can watch them online via a Silverlight website.
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