Found a Bunch of Smart People in a Room? You must be at MVP Summit!

This week I had the honor of attending the MVP Summit in Bellevue, Washington. This was my 5th Summit, though my first as a Microsoft blue-badge. I was very excited to be able to spent the week with so many smart people in the tech industry, but sad to know that I can’t be an MVP and an Microsoft employee at the same time. Over the last 4 years, I’ve made some great connections through the program and Summit is one of my favorites ways to catch up with colleagues that I only see on-line or via social media.

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, the MVP Program is a reward program for tech-minded people who also spend time contributing to the community. Participating in forums, writing blogs or authoring books, and running user groups that are involved with Microsoft products are some of the ways MVP Awardees make their mark.

Below you'll find a list of the people I've crossed paths with at Summit this year. I've listed them primary by Twitter handle because they span the globe and are worthy of you following them if you also use Twitter.  If you aren’t a Twitter user, check out their profiles anyway, you’ll often find links to their blogs and other resources!

First, those who need little introduction:

• @edbott (Ed Bott) - the tech journalist powerhouse and his lovely wife, @judybott (Judy Bott). 
• @mminasi (Mark Minasi) - the man behind MR&D, dozens of books on Microsoft server products and an endless number of keynote speeches.

For the 2nd year in a row, Ed Bott combined forces with three other MVP Eds, because we know four Ed’s are always better than one! So don’t forget to check out the workings of:

• @ehorley (Ed Horley) - Networking geek, IPv6 expert and soon to be author. Pre-order his book, Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators.
• @Pluralsight_Ed (Ed Lieberman) - Technology trainer at Pluralsight and it turns out I’ve only known him for 10 months, though it seems like 10 years.
• @itpromct (Ed Gallagher) - Whom I met at my very first MVP Summit in a session on Exchange Server, but only learned this year that in addition to technology, he also hand-makes the most FABULOUS jewelry.

It’s hard to pin these guys down for long, but I was lucky to get at least quick moments with:

• @jeremymoskowitz (Jeremy Moskowitz) - The man behind GPAnswers.com, he’s usually so busy he never comes to Summit so I was pleasantly surprised to spend a moment with him!
• @grouppolicyguy (Darren Mar-Elia) - Known for his GPO prowess, Darren also speaks regularly about PowerShell, Desired State Configuration and Cloud.
• @JPBruzzese (J. Peter Bruzzese) - The only Exchange MVP on my list, Peter and I often orbit each other at conferences never crossing paths for more than a few minutes at time. MVP Summit was no exception. If you can pin him down, ask him about Exchange or his book, The Conversational Geek.

My friends from the “North” aka Canada:

• @darcy_lussier (Darcy Lussier) - My first conversation with Darcy was oddly about his hair, which is good because he’s an ASP.net MVP and I can’t talk about that at all.
• @jason_miller (Jason Miller) - Jason specializing in the SMB market and is active in the UG communities in Winnepeg.
• @ToddLamo (Todd Lamothe) - I met Todd two Summits ago when I was crazy sick and he kept me going by sharing his stash of cold medication.  Turns out he can deploy Windows pretty well too.

My California Cohorts and PacITPros Members:

• @UberGeekGirl (Jessica DeVita) - Do you live in SoCal? Do you need help with your computer? Call Jessica and consider it solved. Seriously.
• @jldeen (Jessica Deen) - The Bay Area is lucky to have someone who can walk between the Apple and Windows support worlds so easily!
• @scevans (Steve Evans) - Everything I might happen to understand about IIS I probably learned for Steve. Also, I think he understood DevOps long before it was a buzz word.
• @dougspindler (Doug Spindler) - The long time leader of PacITPros.org, college instructor and MCT, Doug lives to make sure IT Pros keep learning.
• @the_yeti (Jeremy Anderson) - Do you have an question about small business server or Server Essentials? This is your guy. I know people who swear by him, I’m not kidding.
• @alexlewis (Alex Lewis) - I swear I think I’ll followed him on Twitter long before I met him in person, Alex specializes in Unified Communications and Lync and is active in several user groups in the Bay Area.
• @richardhicks (Richard Hicks) - Another Enterprise Security MVP who’s be a repeat speaker at PacITPro.org events and other popular conferences.

Worlds apart, but they answer to the same name:

• @ftp_Alun (Alun Jones) - First introduced to me by Ed Horley, Alun always seems to be one of the first people I run into at Summit.  He’s a Washington local who specializes in Enterprise Security.
• @alanburchill (Alan Burchill) - I met Alan on the shuttle bus at my first Summit and for a while I ONLY ran into him on the shuttle bus. One of the few Group Policy MVPs, Alan makes the trip from Australia and does way more than just ride buses around campus! Remember, when it's midnight in the US and you are stuck in group policy bind, it's like 4pm where he is.

Where Tech is “Concentrated”:

• @concentratdgreg (Greg Shields) - Looking for Greg? Look no further than the popular conference, TechMentor Events. Not only does he act as Chair for that event, you shouldn’t miss a chance to hear him talk about Remote Desktop Services.
• @theJasonHelmick (Jason Helmick) - The first time I met Jason about two years ago, he taught me some PowerShell. Let him teach you some PowerShell and you won’t regret it.

Since I can’t program my way out of a box, it pays to know some developers:

• @RobinDotNet (Robin Shahan) - My list wouldn’t be complete with out an Azure MVP. Robin runs the Bay Area Azure Developers group and one of these days I swear, I’m going to make one of her meetings.
• @scottcate (Scott Cate) - Another ASP.NET MVP, Scott is also the founder of EventDay.com, an event management tool.
• @m_rosenberg (Mark Rosenberg) - Long time developer and certified trainer, I almost didn’t recognize Mark this year sporting his “Texas” beard!

And finally, these guys could easily stand alone, but what fun would that be?:

• @joe_elway (Aidan Finn) - I met Aidan for the first time when he came to present at a PacITPros event in San Francisco and it might be safe to say he knows more about virtual machines than you do.
• @SFoskett (Stephen Foskett) - Every time I talk to him I understand Storage more and more. Plus he’s a pretty awesome speaker.

Phew... no wonder I needed a weekend to recover from Summit. It's truly special to be able to spend nearly a week with people who not only understand technology, but also get that a thriving community is the only way technology grows.  If I missed you at Summit or accidentally omitted you in my list here... so sorry!  I didn't even include all the folks from Microsoft that I spent time with this year, for fear that you'd stop reading in exhaustion.

If you've gotten this far, I think I might owe you a coffee or something.

Sold Out! Microsoft Virtualization Camps (So Get it Online!)

If you’ve had the chance to attend one of the Virtualization IT Camps I presented in Silicon Valley, San Diego or San Francisco, I hope it was a day well spent.  If you are scheduled to attend the event in Los Angeles on December 5th, I’m looking forward to a packed house, as registration is full and has been closed.

Now, if you are bummed to be missing the event, don’t despair – On December 11th, Matt Hester and Tommy Patterson will be doing an ONLINE version of the event from 9am to 12pm.  They will be covering the same content and showing demos of the hands-on components.

Yeah, I know, it's not quite the same as in person, but the condensed format will be awesome for those of you who might not be able to commit to a whole day event!

Go to http://aka.ms/virtitcamponline to register!

Windows Server 2012 R2 Brings Improvements to DNS and DHCP Management

DNS and DHCP - they are like two sides to same coin.  At the core, DNS maps human friendly names to IP addresses so we can find resources on the Internet easily, the other hands out IP addresses and other configuration information to computers so they can be accessible on the network.
Both have been around since what seems like the beginning of time, but both have some new improvements with Windows Server 2012 R2.

First, there have been some improvements for DNSSEC support. In Server 2012, the Key Master role only existed for AD-integrated zone, but now that has been extended to support file-backed multi-master zones as well.

Also, the key management service (key generation, storage, retirement) has been isolated to only the key master of a zone.  All other primary DNS servers for zone can continue signing a zone by accessing the keys managed by the master.

Next, let's bring on the PowerShell improvements.  While DNS on Windows Server 2012 already has a substantial list of statistics available using the Get-DnsServerStatistics, new Zone related statistics have been added for zone query stats, zone transfer stats and zone update stats.

There are also some brand new cmdlets for controlling DNSSEC, to support some of the improvements, like managing Trust Anchors. You can find the complete list of the cmdlets on TechNet, at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn305898.aspx

For the DHCP Server, new PowerShell cmdlets have been added for managing superscopes and multicast scopes, as well as improvements in some of the existing commands for changing failover relationships and interacting with DNS. There are over a dozen new additions, but some of the cmdlets include:

• Add-DhcpServerv4MulticastScope
• Add-DhcpServerSecurityGroup
• Get-DhcpServerv4MulticastScopeStatistics
• Get-DhcpServerv4SuperscopeStatistics

But it’s not all about PowerShell improvements. There are two DHCP improvements that enhance client DNS registrations. 

The first one extends DHCP polices to configure conditions based on the FQDN of the clients. Or clients can be registered using a different DNS suffix than the one configured on the client.
The second enhancement enables you to configure the DHCP server to register only A records for clients with the DNS server.  This can avoid failed attempts to register PTR records when a reverse lookup zone isn’t configured. PTR record registration can be disabled for all clients of a DHCP server, or by specific subnet or attribute.

Overall these new features can give you better granular control of devices on the network, including workgroup and guest devices. 

Looking for more information about what's new with Windows Server 2012 R2?  Check out the full list of blog posts in this series, Why Windows Server 2012 R2?.  Also, don't forget to take a moment to download the Server 2012 R2 bits so you can try it all out for yourself.

Close, But Not Too Close! Azure Affinity Groups and Availability Sets

Microsoft has several regional datacenters for hosting Azure IaaS. There are two on the west coast, two on the east coast and two each in Europe and Asia. When you create a VM you are required to select a region, at minimum, where your VM will be located.  If you just go with a regional selection, you leave it up to the Azure fabric to control where your machine is placed.

For more granular control, you have two other components you need to take advantage of – Affinity Groups and Availability Sets.

By creating an affinity group, you are giving the Azure fabric some additional logic to keep your VMs physically closer together within the datacenter. This might be important if you are hosting an application or service that has multiple server components and you want them to closer together to reduce any potential latency across the internal network.

To create an affinity group, you provide a name and create a network that is associated with it.  Then all the VMs added to that affinity group also will be given addressing from the associated virtual network. Affinity groups are created in your Azure settings area.

Having your servers close together in the physical fabric is good, but being TOO close could be bad.  For high availability, you’ll also want to make sure that your servers aren’t all on the same rack or within the same fault domain in the datacenter.  If a whole rack goes down due to a hardware issue, you wouldn’t want an entire cloud service to go with it.

That’s where “Availability Sets” come in.  An “availability set” allows you to define a group of servers that perform the same role and Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available. 

You can set up availability sets in two places: within the autoscale properties for a cloud services (as they are required for autoscale to function), or from the configuration settings of an individual server.

Used with Affinity Groups, you can then get all your servers close together for performance, but separate enough to ensure that your environment can survive fabric maintenance windows or fault events. 

Close, but not too close. Perfect!

Help Shape the Future Microsoft Virtualization, Cloud, and Datacenter Management Products

Got some great ideas about what Microsoft should do with virtualization, the cloud and the datacenter?  Do you actively virtualize systems or want to get more in-depth with the future of virtualization?

Microsoft Windows Server and Systems Center Customer Research team is looking for ITPros to participate on an IT Pro panel.

As a member of the panel, you will have the opportunity to provide vision and feedback to the Cloud and Data Center Management Product team through surveys, focus groups, usability sessions, early design concept reviews, and customer interviews.

The research team is looking for very specific expertise profiles. Use of Microsoft products IS NOT required. To help identify if you qualify, start by completing a short survey.

Please note, this is only for customers located in the US but there is work toward extending to an international audience soon. Once again, you do not have to use Microsoft products to participate.
Interested? Want to learn more? Click to access the survey.

Northern California Powershell Users Group in SF!

Tonight, I had the honor of hosting the Northern California Powershell Users Group in San Francisco.  The topic was using Azure with Powershell.

For those of you who were there, a lot of conversation revolved around provisioning and managing Azure and I wanted to mention that Microsoft (via Technet Events) just finished up a round of IT Camps for Azure IaaS.

At those events, attendees build out a dev/test environment in Azure and while most of the lab guide detailed everything out with using the GUI, there was a bonus challenge at the end that included doing everything with Powershell.

If you are looking to start using Azure with Powershell and want a good place to start experimenting, I suggest getting a free Azure Trial and then downloading the lab manual to give it a shot yourself.  You can find a copy of the lab manual at http://aka.ms/SlidesPlus under the “Azure Camp – Fall 2013” folder.

You’ll find the “Challenge Exercise” and instructions on where to find the necessary Powershell, towards the end of the manual.

Enjoy!

Build a Hyper-V Lab for a Chance to Win a Surface Pro!

This is for US residents only, but here's a chance to get in on the "IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge" and will some nice prizes while learning about Hyper-V Server. The content runs through the month of November and you can find all the details below!
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Build your very own Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for FREE and Enter for a chance to win* one of the following fantastic prizes:

• Three Grand Prizes: One of three Microsoft Surface Pro 64GB devices with Type Cover keyboard cover ($828.99 USD Retail Value)
   
• Twenty-Five First Prizes: One of twenty-five Microsoft Certification Exam Vouchers ($150.00 USD Retail Value)

You could win a Microsoft Surface Pro or Certification Exam Voucher!

But Wait! There’s More! In addition to a chance to win one of the prizes above, EVERY ENTRANT will receive our Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 enterprise-grade bare-metal hypervisor software completely free.  This is a fully functional virtualization hypervisor that supports scalability up to 320 logical processors, 4TB physical RAM, live migration and highly-available clustering. Hyper-V serves as the virtualization foundation for Private Clouds leveraging Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

You can enter the IT Pro“Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes by completing all of the THREE EASY TASKS below to download and build your Private Cloud foundation with Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.  Be sure to complete the last task to submit your proof-of-completion for entry into this sweepstakes.

• Entries must be received between November 1, 2013 and November 30, 2013 to be eligible. One entry per individual.
• This Sweepstakes is open to all IT Professionals Age 18 and over that are legal residents of the United States.
• Estimated Completion Time: 20 minutes

TASK 1 – Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Download the Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 installation bits using the link below.

DO IT: Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 2 – Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 in your lab environment using the installation steps linked below.

DO IT: Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 3 – Submit Proof-of-Completion

Complete the steps in this task to submit your proof-of-completion entry into the IT Pro “Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of the exciting prizes listed above.

1. At the console command prompt of your new Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 server, run the following command to collect your server's configuration:
   
   systeminfo >CloudOSConfig.txt
    
2. Copy the CloudOSConfig.txt file created in Step 1 above to a USB storage device or other location that is accessible for sending an email.
    
3. Send a new email message to CloudChallenge@microsoft.com
    
4. IMPORTANT: In the body of the email, include this exact text:
   “I’ve completed the Microsoft IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.”
    
5. IMORTANT: Attach the file created in Step 1 into the body of the new email message created above.
    
6. Click the Send button in your email client to submit the email message as your proof-of-completion and sweepstakes entry.

Upon submitting your entry, you will receive a confirmation email within 24-hours.

COMPLETED! But … Want more?
Now that you’ve installed Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, continue your learning and evaluation with these additional resources.

• Want to learn more about Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Private Cloud?
  • COMPLETE this Step-by-Step Guide for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • MANAGE Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 with local console tools.
  • CLUSTER Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for highly available virtual machines.
  • MIGRATE Virtual Machine workloads to Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • BUILD Your Private Cloud with System Center 2012 R2.

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*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to IT Professionals who are legal residents of the 50 U.S. states or D.C., 18+. Sweepstakes ends November 30, 2013.  For Official Rules, see http://aka.ms/CloudChallenge201311Rules.