I've been awaiting my Microsoft Surface RT since preorders opened for Australia. It's been interesting ... it's certainly fair to say that Microsoft's online store has some way to go in terms of logistics. I've seen people cancel their preorders because of it ... not to mention the unfortunates whose orders were mistakenly cancelled!

But that's another story. I received mine yesterday afternoon, and have had a fun time playing with it so far. I wanted to drop a quick post about a small change that can be made to improve the overall responsiveness and performance - and probably battery life - of the Surface. I've seen some reviews around indicating the poor performance of the Surface. There aren't any hard and fast tests so far, but I found that while there was certainly some noticeable slowdown in various apps and games, it seemed to even out after a relatively short time.

Being the curious IT guy that I am, I did some poking around. At its heart, the Surface is still a Windows ma ...

Hi,

Now that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are out, any company that uses KMS keys needs to add the new ones from Microsoft's Volume Licensing Service Center https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/Downloads/DownloadsAndKeys.aspx

First, there's a hotfix for your existing KMS server available here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2691586/EN-US

Once you request the hotfix, get the email and download it, and install. The install will require a reboot, so if you've got this on a critical server you're going to have to schedule a reboot.

A few change request forms and approval signatures later, you'll be finally ready to add your shiny new keys in.

Now, here's the installation instructions from the link above:

Installation instructions

If you have a KMS host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Windows 7 SP1, follow these steps to perform an upgrade: Install this update (KB2691586). Restart the computer when you are prompted. ...

Update: Unfortunately due to unprecedented demand, Microsoft have reached the capacity for User Group discounts and we are unable to accept any new requests. Early-bird registration is open until July 26 (5PM AEST), and regular registration is open until September 7th. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

It's July again! Which, amongst other things, means it's getting cold. In unrelated news, TechEd Australia is just two very short months away.

As usual, we at AuTechHeads are super excited about this conference and the opportunities it provides for geeks such as us.

We are pleased to be able to offer a substantially discounted ticket to our members on behalf of Microsoft Australia. If you're a member of AuTechHeads, simply register your details in the form (closes August 2) and we will pass your details on to the generous folk at Microsoft.

Once Microsoft receive the minimum number of user group registrations (just thirty - so we're quietly confident) the offe ...

(crosspost from my personal blog http://adamfowlerit.blogspot.com.au)

Hello,

It's been some time since I revisited the need for Windows 2008 R2 SP1 hotfixes. The last list I published was in August 2011 - and it's held up pretty well overall! The original purpose of the list was to provide the essential hotfixes for a System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 or 2010 install on Windows 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1. I've allowed other fixes to appear there - either because I felt they were important to stability or performance, or because they fixed an issue I'd observed. I went into some detail on this in the last post, but I do like to have a bunch of fixes in my kit for both general and more specific purposes.

 This list provides a number of new hotfixes that have appeared since. These additions are constrained almost entirely to issues that can affect DPM and other backups. It's by no means comprehensive, just a useful list of important fixes. As with the previous article, I've coloured the hotfixes most relevant to DPM in red. A number of these hot ...

Let me start this post by saying that, as with all fad.. err, trends, I'm not totally against BYOD. I've just been in IT for long enough not to jump on the bandwagon of every damn "trend" that comes along, because they come along often.

 What is BYOD? Bring Your Own Device, or in other words, staff bringing their own smartphone, tablet, notebook, or similar devices to work. It's an idea that's gained quite some traction with marketers, journalists, and C-level execs. It's not so far different from the classic problem of a high-level exec buying a new shiny device - outside of the Standard Operating Environment - and insisting that IT make it work. It's just spreading that out to a much broader degree, following the innumerable "trends" of times past.

Server-based computing and thin clients never really set the world on fire. Server virtualisation didn't reduce complexity or server sprawl - in the sense that it's now all too easy to run up a new virtual server, and you now have a whole ...

By now, you may have heard that System Center 2012 has reached GA (General Availability) stage. It's been available for download for a little while, but Microsoft naturally wanted to align the announcement with the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) that's happening this week.

 System Center is, of course, Microsoft's integrated management platform for IT, and one of its fastest growing product lines in business terms. That's no accident, either - management is the single most consistent challenge across IT shops, regardless of size, technologies, and headcount. We've come a long way from the days where Systems Management Server (SMS) was the only Microsoft offering in this regard -  and even since the introduction of Microsoft Operations Manager. These products were clunky and limited in contrast to their modern counterparts, System Center Configuration Manager and Operations Manager.

Times have moved on; now the System Center portfolio also covers backup, virtualisation, service ...

In line with the System Center 2012 release, Microsoft recently rolled the various MVP areas for System Center up to just two - System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management, and System Center Client Management and Security. Client Management and Security covers Configuration Manager and Endpoint Protection, while Cloud and Datacenter Management covers the rest of the System Center suite. My own MVP award for Data Protection Manager was therefore rolled up into the Cloud and Datacenter Management area, and until now I was the only one in Australia and New Zealand.

I don't have a full bio for him, but Rob specialises in S ...

13th April

I had to rush off to the airport and crashed out, back home in Adelaide now. It was a very interesting event, and was great to get the opportunity to talk to some key HP staff. I'll summarise the whole event in a few days once I've absorbed it all.

3:30pm
Bit of a gap as this section was particularly technical around layers, zones, repositorys, pools, catalogues - you get the idea :)

3:00pm
Architecture Deep Dive for HP Cloud:
IT becomes the service broker, and also needs to choose where to put what. It should also be designed to be able to be moved from one environment to the next.

2:25pm
If someone uses your hosted severs for an attack, who is at fault? The provid ...

This is a crosspost from my blog at flamingkeys.com.

One of the people I was lucky enough to meet at Tech·Ed Australia 2011 was Mr Paul Cunningham, who runs the popular website Exchange Server Pro. Paul is one of the most respected names going around when it comes to Exchange, and he has the real world experience to back it up. As a favour to the community (and our profession) Paul has decided to produce a free (as in free beer) boot camp for those wanting to learn Exchange 2010. The boot camp consists of four modules  containing physical challenges, early morning runs, rope climbs*, text, screen shots and videos to help you learn the basics of Exchange Server 2010. Having worked through this boot camp myself, I can say that this is an invaluable resource for those getting started with Exchange Server, and also those who may have managed an Exchange environment but not installed one before.

Please make sure you check the boot camp out, and also be sure to stick Paul’s blog ...

I was recently privileged to be the guest of HP in Singapore for their Cloud Innovation in APJ event, where they announced a number of new Converged Systems products and services. HP is making a big push toward the cloud in the Asia Pacific region, with some major investments in Cloud Centers of Excellence, and product suites to match.

One of my long standing thoughts on cloud services is that they often don’t consider the existing infrastructure, from the client site(s) all the way through to the cloud’s edge. I’ve always disliked the assumption that ‘everything’ can go to the cloud, and that the WAN or Internet providers in-between the cloud and its customers can deliver 100% availability. Neither of these can be proven true with any level of certainty – especially third party network uptime. You could argue that, in Australia for example, matters have improved significantly and will probably improve even further with the advent of the National Broadband Networ ...

After reading about the improved battery life in the 4S, I had a great first day with the phone. After actually getting it and turning it on from about 8:30am, playing with it for the morning, and then doing a full restore from my old phone. Apart from the charge while the restore was going on, I didn't charge it for the rest of the day. Played lots with it in the afternoon and had about 10% charge left by 11pm that ...

This is my first real foray into blog posting. This was originally written for someone that had recently implemented Microsoft DFS Replication and was having a bit of trouble. Having dealt with some evil DFS replication issues in my past, I thought it would only be proper to lend a helping hand. I have decided to share these tidbits with the world so that hopefully it helps someone else out in the future.

So here goes:

File Quotas are a pain -  File quotas in DFS replication can burn you – hard. The DFS health report will come up with an error about being out of disk space, but will not reference anything to do with file quotas. Essentially, DFS will try to replicate a file that has ownership to a user. The user will have filled up it’s quota at one side of the replication. When this occurs, DFS will error out. If you decide to setup user folders with quotas and DFS, make sure that you use FSRM and set up the quotas to email the users when they are rea ...

If you've been living under a rock, you would probably know that Apple released the iPhone 4S on the 14th of October, to much noise and hullabaloo. I was one of those who trekked out early to pick one up on the day of release. Now the noise has gone away, and I've had it for just over a look, let's take a look at it and see how it goes.

As a point of reference, I had an iPhone 3GS for over 2 years, didn't upgrade when the 4 came out, and have been struggling with iOS 4 on the slower processor for some time. So naturally, an upgrade to a 4S would be a sizeable one, regardless of the features of the new phone.

Image (c) Apple, 2011

The Apple iPhone 4S is the latest smartphone from Apple. In many ways an upgrade from the iPhone 4, the new device sees Apple enter the dual-core mobile processor era, with the 1GHz A5 dual core chip with 512MB RAM. Apple claim the A5 processor improves graphics performance by up to 7 times, and while it's hard to ga ...

G'day All (and anyone else listening in),

Just a heads up to let you know that SMBiT Professionals Brisbane is running a Spotlight Session this coming Sunday (2011-10-23) at the Chalk Hotel in Woolloongabba where we're delving into Group Policy with Alan Burchill and Remote Desktop Server with Bryce Telfer as related (in particular) to an SBS 2011 environment.

The event will be streamed live for financial SMBiT Professionals members in our SharePoint site, under the Brisbane sub-site.

For everyone else, the event will be streamed free (of cost, password, however not advertisements) at:

http://www.justin.tv/hiltont

http://www.Ustream.tv/channel/SMBiTPro-Brisbane

So, feel free to get your geek on with us this weekend - the show starts around 10:00 AM and will be over just in time for us to watch the Rugby Union final!  :)

Please click here and check out our website, PowerShell Down Under for more info!

I am LIKING Windows 8 - everything I love about using Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, except all bright, shiny and new-like.

I'm also liking that the skillz are instantly transferrable, even with the pre-beta.  So, I've been tooling around with a couple of IT Pro-related tasks, specifically deployment and virtualisation, and here are my shameless cross-posts to what I've found so far:

Sysprep/OOBE experience in Windows 8 Server

Deploy Windows 8 with SCCM 2012

As ever, there's more to come :-)

Hello,

Lying in bed last night, I had a revelation about where I can see us heading in the next few years. This is mostly reliant on better broadband though (hello NBN!) but regardless I believe my idea is where we are heading.

Firstly, if you use more than 1 PC/device then you'll know the frustration of having to either do multiple installs of applications you use, or re-do settings. A good example of this is your browser's favorites/bookmarks list. Sure you can type in the websites, but it's nice to have a full list to just choose from. To fill this void, services like Delicious http://www.delicious.com/ popped up - your bookmarks in the cloud! Now it doesn't matter where you are, you can access that same list.

Email went the same way - Outlook is nice to use, but it doesn't help you when you're at work and want to check your personal emails. Again, the solution was to have your emails in the cloud and sync all your devices/PC's to that single point, or even just use a web interfa ...