You've probably heard of the DigiNotar certificate authority compromise, which has led to the removal of their CA trust from most browsers (apparently Apple is lagging behind on this), and affecting their customers who rely on them for providing SSL to their websites and other services. Prior to that, it was Comodo, and now we hear of a possible GlobalSign breach. It seems that these may be all from the same person (or people) in all cases.

 It's easy to observe a common principle in action with any given security breach. One breach occurs, and the floodgates tend to open. Another good example was the Sony Playstation Network breach. A classic example that still holds to this day is Windows, and even Mac OS X is starting to feel it as their uptake continues to increase.

A successful breach flags a company as a potentially easy target. You'll get a mix of followups - from the original attackers, the security researchers, other "interested" parties, and of course what we always called th ...

It always strikes me as to how many awesome people I meet at Tech.Ed - whether for the first time, or finally putting a face to a name.

This year was no different. Between the Microsoft people who live and breathe the event for months in advance, the delegates who are excited to be there, and the random people on the Gold Coast who stop and chat - it's one of the best things about the conference and one of the major reasons I really enjoy going. Networking is a big part of any IT conference, and Microsoft are pretty good at it.

The Fun Factory party at the close of Day 2 was great, and I really enjoyed it a lot more in contrast to last year, but I already touched on that. I used Day 3 to catch up with people and content - enjoyed catching @orinthomas in his Interactive Theatre session for DPM client backups - being an area I've not yet played with to the extent he has, I enjoyed it, and it was a great way to pick up even more tips for future presentations.

I also caught up with a bu ...

I was lucky enough to attend TechEd again this year and had a fantastic week. Like most people I’m heading back to work with tons of new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm in the technology I work with every day. If you missed it this year, this is my wrap up.

Highlight:
The most amazing part of this week for me personally was winning runner up in the Microsoft Women in IT Community Contributor Award. I was genuinely shocked when I was called up and I’m still really touched that people thought of me. For those of you that nominated me, a massive thank you. I meant a lot to me and has really inspired me to keep at it.

Of course the biggest thank you goes to Catherine Eibner (@ceibner) who does lots of hard work to help promote the WIT cause. I think she does a stellar job and deserves to be recognised for her hard work. 

Speaker/ Sessions Highlights:
My favourite sessions were delivered by Rhonda Layfeild (@deploym ...

There is no Tagly badge for "I presented 4 sessions and nobody died".

Another day, another blur. Once again, I remember delivering my sessions, and I most certainly remember the "Fun Factory" party!

As I've progressed with presenting the sessions, I've settled in and built confidence, and they've felt much better overall. I really enjoyed presenting the Exchange and "Making DPM Hum" sessions, and also enjoyed fielding DPM questions from people throughout the day. I'm glad to have had the opportunity, and I really appreciate the DPE team's support for it! I have a lot to take away and use from the experience, and it was a great challenge to take on!

Fastforwarding through the day to the party, it was great! I enjoyed it more than last year, and had a good time playing Star Wars Kinect (what, no George Lucas to kill?), posing with the 501st (with added Hodge), looking around and talking to people. I ddin't actually manage to get everywhere, but I did enjoy what I saw of the trivia!

Last night we partied, and today we got down to serious conference time. I was oblivious to a lot of it, since I was more focused on preparing for my own two sessions - first time speaking at Tech.Ed and all! It's not my first time speaking, but it's easy to feel the pressure of presenting to peers on a product you're passionate about - I'll take all the feedback I can get to improve and grow!

The day really went by in somewhat of a blur, but I certainly remember delivering my sessions. The first was "Data Protection Manager - 30 Reasons in 30 Minutes", and I was seriously nervous! In some ways, it perhaps was the hardest to kick off with since it needed to be a hugely broad overview of features and capabilities, while having a bit of fun and getting into the swing of it. You don't get opportunity to rehearse or practice Interactive Theatre sessions at the event, so it was always going to be a tricky one for the first session.

I was thrilled to see a decent turnout - people were telling me ...

Over the time I've worked in the IT industry, I've met and worked with a number of amazing women. It's no surprise then, that I am a big supporter of Women in IT - amongst their many qualities, they bring a keen intelligence, analytical skills, intuitive problem solving capabilities, and an ability to absorb and retain information quickly and easily.

It's a shame that there are comparatively fewer women in IT than men, but this is something I believe to be changing and picking up steam. Most, if not all, of us know smart and intelligent women in the IT industry - I can think of plenty that I'm proud to call call friends, follow on Twitter, or connect with on Linked In and Facebook. In this industry where brains are the primary prerequisite, it should be completely unsurprising that these women shine at their roles.

The Annual Women in IT Community Contributor of the Year award will again be awarded this year at the Women in IT luncheon at Tech.Ed Australia. This is a fabulous opportunity to ...

Dear VMware,

 Hi there! It's me again. I thought it was a good time to write again.

After my last letter, I was concerned that you might not love me anymore. To be honest, I don't truly know that you loved me before, but you certainly did love the money for our licensing. But I now feel that we're still friends at the very least.

Now, we can't pretend you haven't taken a significant hit from the overall vSphere community. You really did make a monumentally bad move that made a lot of customers cranky. Even with all the noise made by customers who were affected, you made all manner of absurd efforts to rationalise it, to essentially prove customers wrong - and all for naught. The simple fact of the matter was that you made a really dumb move, and you took a big PR hit for it.

My last letter suggested that you could still fix it - and it looks like you've made some genuine effort, to your credit.. And by no means do I take credit for changing your mind! I think there were ...

As a backup product, Microsoft’s System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) does a wonderful job of protecting Microsoft workloads – from file system to SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint, Hyper-V, Active Directory, Sharepoint, and beyond. To accomplish this, though, DPM makes heavy use of a Windows feature called the Volume Snapshot Service (VSS). Introduced in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, this was very much the Microsoft answer to a range of open file backup agents for the various backup products on the market, amongst other considerations.

These agents, normally an extra cost on top of the standard backup agent, typically introduced a file system filter driver to handle file locking that often prevented successful backups. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, these 3rd party file system filters tended to introduce their own problems – from performance issues to incompatibility with antivirus, file corruption, and system instability. I’ve hit some particularly ugly examp ...

Dear VMware,

 How are you? I'm fine. Sorry I haven't written before, but it's high time I did.

VMware, I know you like money. I know you've made a lot of it over the years. I'm sure your parent company, EMC, is thrilled at your financial performance and market capitalisation. I know if I owned your company, I'd be pretty happy. Virtualisation is a hot topic, and seems set to continue that way.

To be honest, I don't mind giving you money, generally. I've got a lot of value out of you over the years - especially with vSphere 4.x and hot features like vDS (and the ability to use the Cisco Nexus 1000v, which we love), not to mention the old standbys of vMotion, HA, and DRS. There's a good reason we pay maintenance, and an even better reason we upgraded to Enterprise Plus. And hey, you even gave us a great discount to upgrade to it! We've had a lot of value out of our maintenance.

I understand that you feel entitled to that money as a result. Hey, I can even handle getting e ...

I had an unexpected, but very welcome surprise early yesterday morning - an email in my inbox with the subject "Congratulations 2011 Microsoft MVP!" Perhaps I'd not given enough thought when I was asked by my MVP lead @nickellery, for an address to send me something .. but I'd had a lot on my mind, and sometimes Microsoft people do send me things given our Enterprise Agreement and my knowing a number of great MS people.

It's hard to describe just how much an award like this means. Obviously I'm thrilled to be recognised for my contributions to the community, but helping people is its own reward in so many ways. I'm extremely honoured by the award, and the opportunities it presents. I'm incredibly grateful to amazing people like @nickellery and @jbuff for their support, but of course to the broader community as well. I'm more grateful still for the opportunities I've had to help people out so far with DPM and other issues - especially via Twitter - and to the DPM team themselves, who've been fantast ...

This is a cross post from www.mickhuxley.com

The other week I managed to scam myself an iPad 2 from work for a few days for a test run.  I have always wondered weather I would use an iPad much, but before going out and dropping close to $1000AUD on one I figured a trail run for a few days would help me make up my mind.

To start I love the magnetic covers on the iPad 2.  These covers are functional and stylish.  The cover has groves which allow it to be bent to act as a stand propping the iPad at about a 30 degree angle.  It is also used to put the device to sleep when folded over the screen.  A really good idea in both senses.  Lets get down to the device itself and really it’s just a big iPhone 4 in my book.

The apps….

The apps in the Apple iStore are what sets it apart in the mobile landscape from Windows Phone, Android and Blackberry.  Although these stores are catching up, the range of apps in the iStore is a ...