1) it doesnt' appear to be possible to migrate and upgrade an existing TFS 2008 instance into an already configured TFS 2010 instance. Not sure why that isn't possible, but there you go. Simply don't configure TFS 2010 until you're ready to upgrade the databases.

2) documentation from the P&P team on CodePlex is not quite up to par - too many references to external blog entries instead of actual information in the Team Foundation Upgrade Guide (http://vs2010upgradeguide.codeplex.com/). Two problems with that a) if blog entries are moved/removed you're lacking information b) it's not possible to follow it all for an offline install (eg. you don't have internet access) for some of the scenarios.

If you get the following error:

TF255275: The following Web service for SQL Server Reporting

One of the projects I'm working on has a need to switch to an service bus / message queue system.

We're after something that's fairly light-weight. Ideally something we can package into our existing distribution and manage the configuration as part of our existing application's configuration.
We also need some level of reliability - we're not expecting clients to go yanking servers out of the rack, but if we send a message, we want to know that it's going to be delivered.

A few people have suggested Cloud based queue systems as a potential solution. Amazon SQS, Azure AppFabric, and Linxter have all been mentioned a few times.

Unfortunately, no cloud solution is going to pass even a preliminary inspection.

When you use a cloud based architecture, you get to offload some of the responsiblity of ensuring the solution is up and running. But at the same time you take a big dependency on the security and stability of not just that cloud provider's infrastructure - but ...

I have been busy training, passed my Cisco Sales Expert Exam, am working on my symantec quals, my citrix quals, my RSA quals. I have noticed a lot of info on here about products I confess, I have never heard of, or products that have only just released that have gone to Service pack 1 - in my eyes, overnight...

What is a SNOM? when the hell did Microsoft decide that Exchange 2010 needed SP1? Why do i get the feeling that more training will be needed?

My brain is full right now. come back in a week when I can re-adjust to any changes and new products.

Don't get me started on the stuff I have to learn about involving Bluecoat, Autodesk, CA, Novell, or any of the other products I supply my resellers with. Just as i feel comfortable with the products I know, everything changes.

I love IT, I am passionate about technology, and the synergies between the products I sell. I could build a complete solution with most of them, and it would be a sweet combi ...

One of the things rarely discussed in guides on how to get a job in IT is enthusiasm for technology. I am of the opinion that first and foremost, you need to be a technology geek if you want to work in IT.

Don't confuse being a technology geek with being the stereotypical pimply-faced, pale skinned, greasy haired dweeb. I talk simply of people who have an innate understanding of some area of IT. The kind of person that hears about some new thing and gets a little (or lot) excited.

Personally, I can't understand why would anyone choose a job in IT if they didn't like tech.
It would be like me choosing a career in marketing or interior design. Areas in which I really have zero interest.

Yet when interviewing candidates for software development positions, I find far too many of these people. They tend to express no particular interest in any part of software development in particular, or technology in general.
My only conclusion is that they are ...

We're now more than halfway through our PABX replacement, involving the rollout of OCS 2007 R2 Enterprise Voice, with Snom 370 handsets for all. Over 160 staff are now live on our new system!

Office Communicator is very familiar to our staff, having been used broadly for instant messaging since LCS 2005 SP1 days. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has made it even more awesome, and even increased its usage within the organisation. That among other things means that it's been easy to talk to people about the many benefits of Enterprise Voice for them, including:

As someone who's worked for most of their career in highly demanding system integrator roles, requiring a wide variety of skills and disciplines, and generally working by themselves, I've learnt to become very self-sufficient and to do everything for myself. Sure, there's been plenty of occasions working with a team, either customers, colleagues, or as a project manager. But it's always been about the technical work.

Nowadays finding myself as an IT Manager, I'm learning a new skill; delegation. Literally, limiting myself in the technical work, and getting others to do it instead. I still maintain an architecture design and project management role, and I still like to get my hands dirty - particularly with infrastructure build - but more and more I'm finding the need to do the design and planning, and handing it over to my team for execution.

There is both good and bad to this. The good is in seeing my team grow and expand their skills and horizons. In seeing projec ...

Thanks to this, and other posts on the Internet (http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=35273) I've gone one step further and you can now sort your IP address in just one column:

If column A has your IP address range, then column B needs to have this info

I asusme row 1 will have headers, so start your IP range at cell A2 and work downwards.

A2: IP Address
B2: =LEFT(A2,(FIND(".",A2))-1)*256^3+RIGHT(LEFT(A2,(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))-1),(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))-(FIND(".",A2))-1)*256^2+RIGHT(LEFT(A2,(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))+1))-1),(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))+1))-(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))-1)*256+RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2,(FIND(".",A2))+1))+1)))

Now sort by column B and presto!!  See attachment is that's all too hard...

IP-Address-Sorter.xls

I prefer to keep things separate but I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of announcements and features that I discovered today.  Firstly SQL Server 2008 R2 hit RTM but more importantly SQL Express 2008 R2, you know the free one, has grown from a 2GB to a 10GB database. Smiles all around on that .. and thanks to Catherine Eibner (@ceibner) for the heads up.

Secondly with Exchange 2010 SP1, Administrators will be able to set rules around the naming of user created DL’s.   For those who missed Exchange 2010 details, users can now create and manage their own DL’s (if you allow) and with SP1 you can configure rules.  So if a user creates a list called yellowteam the list can be formed using pre-defined rules and queries from AD and may end up looking more like DL-AU-Sydney-Accounting-yellowteam.  I’ll blog more about this soon but the Exchange product team have a good p ...

I've previously opined that System Center, along with Forefront, is one of Microsoft's best growth areas and a highly likely source of sustainable revenue.

We already make use of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr), Data Protection Manager 2010 (DPM), Operations Manager 2007 R2 (OpsMgr). You could call them the flagship products, and it's well deserved. ConfigMgr and DPM are particularly loved within my team right now.

We also have Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) which could be said to be an honorary System Center product. App-V - part of MDOP and also available for Terminal Services / Remote Desktop Services- is going to be a foundation of our next Citrix rollout and our Windows 7 desktop rollout. The two killers there are the potential to have a single app sequence for both Citrix and Windows 7, and the ConfigMgr integration!

At the same time, we're massive fans of Forefront since adopting it for both client and server security, and we'd ...

Cloud computing, to me, was epitomized by a small team of researchers, who had a problem. The problem was a bit big. You see, they were divided physically by a wall, barbed wire and a no mans land area that would involve being shot if they tried to cross it. On one side of the team were the Palestinians. On the other side, the Israelies. They wanted a tool that could help them collaborate between each other without getting shot at.

They checked out some hosting sites, and settled on an Amazon solution. Now, they had a foundation for collaboration, but it wasn't easy to use, and there wasn't any chance that anyone would buy it off them. It was, to put a finer point on it, nasty.

So they started looking at a way to jazz it up a bit. When i first saw it, i told everyone I knew about it. There were others spreading the word about the site, and I wasn't surprised to see execs from companies talking about this new environment. They created an environment that had its own OS, created out of open s ...

What i am after is a "show of hands" as to whether we can get a vendor to set up on here, and allow you to ask questions, provide feedback, and generally find out about the new technologies - whether from a "I am using it and am sure it can do more" or "are you kidding? what would I use that for" perspective.

You see, my experience with Symantec is pretty good. new training sessions come out, I get trained. Don't understand something? I get to ask the Vendor about it. This is pretty much available to most of you. But not many people know that it is.

My interest comes from learning about all sorts of virus scanning technology. I have been around long enough to remember when Norman Virus Control came to town, when Sophos was the best thing since sliced bread, when Arcserve ruled the backup world, and when Centennial had the best network identification scanner.

There is now a product from symantec that matches these products. That doesn't mean that they are the best, it just means tha ...

[This is primarily taken from my notes from a presentation I did at a Sustainable ICT forum in October 2009.]

 My workplace is not what you might call a large enterprise, but it has plenty of challenges and opportunities to keep my team fully occupied. Our organisation has quite a substantial focus and commitment to sustainability. When the project I'm discussing kicked off, there was very little talk about "Green IT" around the industry, such as it is. We've probably been ahead of the curve in that regard.
 
Some of our challenges that were relevant to Green IT and resulted in our project include :

I was excited  today to read that Microsoft's DPM 2010 has been released to manufacture (http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/04/19/sc-data-protection-manager-2010-is-released-to-manufacturing.aspx). We started running DPM 2007 back in 2008, and have loved the product ever since. 

One of the key things to understand with DPM is that it's not the same as a "normal" backup product, and nor is it a "continuous protection" product (but it does come close). It's a complex beast which relies on the Volume Snapshot Service (VSS, or shadow copy) to work its magic.

It is a very Microsoft product oriented backup - which is fine for us, because we have a predominantly Microsoft-based infrastructure. it also means that we dispense with any "unsupported" backup methods, using only those which Microsoft certify - eg. VSS. This actually works out rather well, and I'd say we've had by far the most reliable backup sinc ...

The thing that is coming has been coming to this point for a very long time. We have social media, we talk across the country all the time. we also talk across the globe, with a little delay, but nothing like the old international calls where you felt like you had to say "over" during the pause.

Imagine a global network that allows a sysadmin to turn off all the printers, the AC, the computers, the monitors, and the lights, arm the security system, all from his workstation. Then, set up an algorithm to detect the sysadmin's swipe card as they exit the building and do the same for the building they vacated. The network could be a couple of offices, blocks away, or it could be an office in sydney, and one in LA. The power to do these things has always been there, we have had wake on Lan for some time, but this is bigger, thinking global.

The Borderless Network is coming. It is a bit of a shameless plug for a brand for me, but as this is pretty cool technology, I think that it should stand up ...

At my work place, we implemented our DR site with VMWare ESX 2.0 back in 2006. It was a great way to do DR with less physical resources, and further served as a pilot for a possible adoption in our production environment. We were suitably impressed, enough to go forward with a production rollout in 2007, using ESX 3.0.

Since then, we’ve upgraded to ESX 3.5 and recently, to vSphere 4.0. Both our production and DR environments benefit from the capabilities of VMware, and some SAN, server hardware, and VM OS upgrades have made the environment great – in some ways, faster than dedicated physical machines. Particularly now that we have i7 cores in our production environment!

We primarily run Windows VM’s, being a very heavily Microsoft-based environment. x64 VM’s perform extremely well, and especially now that we’ve upgraded from Windows 2003 R2 to Windows 2008 R2. vSphere even made the pilot process for R2 easy, with provisioning and installation done in a matter o ...

Those who follow me on Twitter would know I’m not the biggest fan of the iphone (or ipwn as I am fond of calling it). I’m also not a fan of the Windows Mobile phones, and I’ve been pretty negative to date about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 (which I’ve dubbed Mongophone*).

To put it in perspective, I persevered with Windows Mobile from around 2003 through to 2009. I went through a massive number of phones – many of HTC make, which I now view as a plague on the success of any phone – and although some came close to being usable, I ultimately realised that I was evaluating each phone on a basis of “Oh thank good, it doesn’t do X like the old one did”. That’s a terrible way to judge how your phone works!

As a recent convert to Blackberry, I freely admit my surprise as to the functionality and usability of the Bold and Bold 9700 models. I *hated* previous models, but these are surprisingly good – even though they& ...

With logging turned right up on The Exchange Server, it was like looking for a needle in a hay stack for the relevant entries in the Event Logs. The summary information all looked the same, and in an organisation with over 3000 employees, there were a  lot of calls being logged. 

Enter PowerShell. 

First of all, I identified the phone number of the user who was having a problem and searched for all calls where that number was written in the Event Log Message:

Get-EventLog -logname "Application" | select TimeWritten,EventID,Message | where-object{$_.Message  -like "*55636*"} | fl 

This returned results for all calls that had gone to that UM account, but also enabled me to capture the "Caller ID".

TimeWritten : 4/14/2010 2:05:56 PM
EventID     : 1170
Message     : Call data: C,[email protected],CASSERVER,f18
921d8-7363-4 ...

It's been just over a year since I first joined Twitter, wondering, like a lot of people do, what it was all about. I already had a Facebook account, and couldn't see the point of yet another site to maintain, but it was either the keynote or locknote address of AU TechEd 2008 that taught me in the value of embracing these new trends and fads and that I, as a "geek [ed: just learnt there IS a difference between a nerd and a geek]  had a responsibility to myself to stay abreast of these new technologies to see what benefit they could bring to my life. 

I set up a link between my Twitter accound and my Facebook account, so that all postings to Twitter were also reflected in my Facebook feed. Whilst not a FB junkie, I certainly used it more than Twitter, and this helped me develop my relationship with all things that tweet. 

But it was Teched 2009, that I truly understood the power of Twitter. With the use of the hashtag #auteched, I quickly discovered how it ...

Hello People,

For those people wrestling with the new Windows deployment tools such as MDT and the WAIK, I have created a Poster which pulls together the relationship between the tools so you don't feel like you have just downloaded a big box of Lego blocks with no idea how they are to fit together.

Check it out on my Site: www.PokeyStuff.com

Direct Link: http://www.pokeystuff.com/viewpoke.php?ContentID=29

Let me know what you think.. or even suggestions.

Dean

I feel very privileged to have launched AuTechHeads at Sydney Windows User Group (SWUG), and thanks very much to Nicholas Rayner for allowing us to present.

AuTechHeads is more than a user group or a website. It's not about a technology or a specific discipline. It's a community that encompasses Australian - and regional - geeks.

That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Technology changes. Disciplines and jobs change. But being a geek tends to be a lifetime endeavour!

Our goal in AuTechHeads is to be a superset of traditional user groups and professional societies. To have a low bar for entry that makes it a truly community driven endeavour, and gives members the opportunity to get involved and contribute. If we can have AuTechHeads meetups and get-togethers at major events like Tech.Ed Australia and others, then the group will achieve at least one of its goals - to give Aussie geeks the sense of community and co-operation that we commonly look for and often fail ...