a Flo + a Blog = a Flog my ブログ

i|o tour 06

I am now attending the infrastructure optimization tour 06 in Toronto at the convention center.

Waiting for the presentation to begin, I have to say that MSFT is not really big on goodies:a notepad and a pen, this is lame.

Well I hope this tour will be more interesting than a those ridiculous accessories... Today we have Rick and Rodney both from IT pro advisor. Blue MS Tech shirt and white pants.

We start off with a spoof of 24h...ITU a funny show of a IT unit with a lousy boss and stupids interns in the server room.

Then a kind of boring presentation about Tech resource and other technet links.

Windows Server 2003 R2 is the big update in this presentation has it really is focused on central management for multiple sites offices. Especially when they promote the Branch Office Infrastructure Solution paper, describing a lot of solutions topologies and examples, centralized or distributed management seems easy, I have not checked this document yet, but I will not fail to do so.

During the past hours, I have been learning a lot about DFS and RDS. It seems to be really the improvement point for R2, as they have mainly improved those points.

I was expecting to see about MOM, but nothing so far. But meanwhile, handing in the survey had mysefl giving some beta stuff- office 2007, W2k3 R2 eval, Vista RC1 preview and a full copy of Virtual server 2005 (even tho R2 includes 4 virtual server licenses)

By the end we had an overview of what I wanted to see: MOM. Well it is not that impressive. It looks like a boosted mmc with better filtering and a new task panel associated to object you click on. Apparently features for an apps (DFS, RFS, Exchange) must be purchased separately. they have not been through the licensing but i guess this is a rip off. The only nice since is that with the help of a good KB, you can set different behavior to solve an error or warning event. It looks like an automation for event viewer.

Well it was good to seen those products live. DPM sounds very good with continuous backup on files, it is too bad the you cannot for now backup the backed up files. DFS looks even better now than the mmc as been improved but only for W2K3 R2. Also ISA 2006 adds a lot of centralized management capabilities, but I have not used ISA for a long time now as SBS is not in my sight anymore because of different scale I deal with.

While I test everything and imagine what can be used out of this, you can go on their blog here: http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/
and here http://www.microsoft.com/canada/technet/iotour06/thanks/