Brian W. McCann

Mike Neil (GM, Virtualization Strategy) of Microsoft has a wonderful post on the Windows Server Division's blog. It's refreshing to see someone at his level blog about what his team's goals are and how passionate they are about helping customers.

Virtualization is a big part of my job and trying to figure out how my group can utilize it to help reduce our datacenter footprint while still delighting our internal customers. I'm not as far along with our strategy but Mike's post helps keep me motivated about where to go next.

Now that Windows Vista is out in the wild I'm sure some of you have played with the new and improved Backup. It is quite a bit different then the old NT Backup but I think it is better. Take a look at this FAQ on some common questions to the Backup utility.

Another day another release from Microsoft. Yesterday Microsoft released SQL 2005 SP2 and today it appears they have released the much anticipated Virtual PC 2007. I found this out from my good friends from the north. The reason I say much anticipated is because this finally has support for running it on Windows Vista and both Intel and AMD's hardware virtualization technology. Try it out as you should already it is 100% FREE.

If you're using SQL 2005 you may want to start investigating and testing out SQL 2005 Service Pack 2. Microsoft just released this SP today and it is intended to help take advantage of enhancements within Windows Vista and Office 2007. Take a look here to see what is new in SQL 2005 SP2. I'll be testing it out on AdminPrep soon and I'll be sure to let you know if I notice any issues.

Make sure to mark your calendar for this Tuesday to see learn more about all the new documentation on Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn". Microsoft is hosting a public chat at 11:30 A.M. PST which will sure to be a great learning experience for all. Here is the excerpt for a bit more info on this chat:

Come and discuss the exciting new changes we've made in the documentation supporting the Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" operating systems. Highlighted by new, advanced troubleshooting information, we will discuss the many enhancements we've made to our product documentation. We'll show you where you can find the full set of online Windows Vista docs and test drive the new troubleshooting content and early Windows Server "Longhorn" documentation. We'll of course welcome comments and suggestions regarding our documentation as well.

Back in early January I mentioned Microsoft officially announced Windows Home Server. Well if you have been visiting the links that I have on the left side of the page (which you really should) you should have known by now that the beta is open for it and you can find all the details here on it. I highly suggest you apply for this beta as I'm sure it will fill up soon. I just got in and can't wait to start playing around with this. Finally I don't have to run a server in my house that was designed for a business.

If you want to see what is expected to be in it take a look here…just remember it is beta so things can and more than likely will change.

It appears Microsoft has released another Windows Vista Ultimate extra. This one is known as DreamScene and was by far the most asked about feature of Vista at the Phoenix launch in the "Ask the Experts" area. DreamScene allows you to play .mpeg and .wmv videos as your desktop background! The only one that comes with this download is for the Windows Aurora background which makes it appear as sunlight is coming from the top of the screen.

You may be thinking that this will be another piece of software that will drain the CPU…well it may but that really depends on your GPU. DreamScene is designed to tax your video card's GPU and not your system's CPU. My system has a Geforce 6800 and it still pegged my CPU at 90% so I'm hoping future ones won't be so taxing…that or perhaps it's time to get a new video card.

I really can't wait to see some of the scenes that come out of this and would love to have one that was a fish tank. If you have Vista Ultimate you better check the Microsoft Update to get yours now!

I've been trying to work more and more with scripts and today I'm sharing a simple but useful one. How to display the groups a user account is a member of. To display a user's groups via the command prompt you need to use the dsget command with the -memberof and -expand switches. The -expand command will list all of the groups that you belong to that are nested in other groups.

Below is an example of how this would look:

dsget user "CN=Brian W. McCann,OU=Users,OU=Sales,DC=Adminprep,DC=com" -memberof -expand

The output would look similar to this:
"CN=GG Sales,OU=Groups,OU=Sales,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=Domain Admins,CN=Users,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=Domain Users,CN=Users,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=GG Inside Sales,OU=Groups,OU=Sales,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=GG Outside Sales,OU=Groups,OU=Sales,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=Administrators,CN=Builtin,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"
"CN=Users,CN=Builtin,DC=Adminprep,DC=com"

Quick little update on the happenings of the room.

Matt came over today and helped install the fan and mount the TV to the wall. I can't stand installing fans and this one finally went up after dropping each of the screws at least twice off the top of the ladder. It took us awhile to try to figure out how to put the mount up and also how to mount the TV to the mount. However the most time consuming part was trying to figure out how to take the stand of my Westinghouse LVM-47-1. Apparently you have to remove the four screws on the bottom middle of the TV that are on the outside of the center part that sticks out. I admit we had to call tech support for that but it was Matt that gave in and mentioned that idea. J

Here is a status update of the project:

Finally here is a picture of the TV up. Not much is there and it looks kind of bare without everything else.

You know it's about time I write about a concern I have with Google and some of the services they provide. Today's rant is on Gmail.

Google first introduced Gmail back in March of 2004 to 1,000 people and was available by invitation only. Gmail touted some pretty impressive features which included a total of 1 GB of storage used for email (currently they offer almost 2.8 GB) and promised to make searching through your email easier. All of this was and still is absolutely free. Back then other popular email providers were allowing for anywhere from 10 MB to 100 MBs. Sure you could get more space but you would have to shell out some cash for it. Other email providers eventually raised their limit to compete with Gmail and the world is a better place for it…well except now I have way too much email saved up.

My issue with Gmail is that this service (along with many others) is still to this date in BETA!!! It has almost been 3 years and this product has not been lifted to Production status. The core functions have been working flawlessly for sometime so it troubles me that it is still in beta. Is Google afraid of something or are there issues behind the scenes that Google is hiding behind the interface? If there is one thing that bugs me it is products that never move from beta.

Google seems to be trying to tie their products together into an online application suite that will deliver a fatal blow to Microsoft. For what it's worth I think they are doing a good job providing these services online but they will never be taken seriously in the enterprise if they can't mature a product through some type of lifecycle. This is why Microsoft is winning and will continue to win in the enterprise.

As of today Google finally opened Gmail up to the public so the masses could enjoy the benefits of it. I wonder how other companies would be looked at if they had a product stuck in beta for 35 months and allowed anyone to use it but provide limited support. For all the products Google has their support options are limited. Good luck ever talking to anyone that supports a product at Google. You're lucky to find a product that provides more than an online FAQ page.

I'm not a Gmail hater, in fact I use Gmail as my primary personal email. I have to give credit where credit is due and Google's Gmail did raise the bar when it came to storage space and searching capability. I also love the conversation based view. I just wish Google and all it might, could pull this product out of Beta.

I welcome your comments.

I just noticed that the Microsoft Cluster Configuration Validation Wizard was released yesterday. Don't bother about the long name, everyone just calls it ClusPrep. This is a great little tool that will evaluate potential nodes that are to be clustered. You can also run it on existing clusters for inventory purposes of you cluster. It currently is not supported on Vista so you will have to install it on Server 2003 or XP to do your testing.

On January 29^th Microsoft lit up the streets of NY with a big thank you sign on Times Square. Microsoft gave a personal thank you to Intel that was 8 stories high. The sign measure in at 120 feet by 90 feet and made up of 8,000 panels displaying 16 million colors.