System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 published!

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Yesterday Microsoft published System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 CTP2. I was using the CTP1, and was missing some of the features, but now they seem fixed (however, it’s to early to tell, ‘cause the download is still running Smile).

One thing that I was missing just yesterday, during my training about Microsoft cloud solutions, was the support for Azure VM in App Controller – it’s on the list; can’t wait to try it out!

Other notable improvements and updates are:

  • Virtual Machine Manager
    • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
    • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
    • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
    • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image
  • Configuration Manager
    • Support for Windows 8
    • Support for Mac OS clients
    • Support for Linux and Unix servers
  • Data Protection Manager
    • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
    • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
    • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
    • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
  • App Controller
    • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
    • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
  • Operations Manager
    • Support for IIS 8
    • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
    • Azure SDK support
  • Orchestrator
    • Additional support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
    • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
    • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
    • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
  • Service Manager
    • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
    • Create chargeback reports
    • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
  • Server App-V
    • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
    • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server

I’ll install them in my lab during the weekend and then we’ll see…

Have a nice weekend!

WinDays 12 – afterword…

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

So… another year, another WinDays conference is over… In short, it was fun (as always).

This year (like the year before), I was in charge of preparing the lab environment for almost all of the workshops happening at Centar Znanja – this was intense but also fun…

This year, at Wednesday, I had a session about Windows 8 deployment, called “A što je s klijentima?”. Session was early in the morning, but from my perspective, attendance was great, session was also OK (those who attended can say more about it Smile)!

I was using Windows Server “8” Beta as the basis for my lab, was deploying Windows “8” Consumer Preview with Windows ADK, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 and System Center Configuration Manager 2012. My lab wouldn’t be possible without the support of my “sponsor” – Kodeks, who provided me with the new, 12th generation Dell PowerEdge R720 server (thank you guys for this one!). I can say that this is indeed a fine piece of machinery, wish to have couple of these for all of my demos & workshops (Smile)…

I also had a workshop called “Build your private cloud in 3 hours” at Thursday (with my colleague Marin) which was fun – early morning, half of the room full, lots of work to be done… it was a success!

Photos (thanks to Romeo & Bojana):

Again, thanks to everyone who attended my session and workshop (or was planning to attend but was recovering from “yesterday” Smile); hope to hear from you & see you next year at WinDays 13!

SCOM hits RC…

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Today is a great day for all of the System Center Operations Manager fans – SCOM has reached the Release Candidate (RC) stage and is now available at Microsoft Download Center!

Operations Manager 2012 provides infrastructure monitoring that’s flexible and cost-effective, helps ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications, and offers comprehensive monitoring for your datacenter and cloud, both private and public. Operations Manager helps you better manage your datacenters by:

  • Delivering flexible and cost effective enterprise-class monitoring and diagnostics while reducing the total cost of ownership by leveraging commodity hardware, configurations, and heterogeneous environments.
  • Helping to ensure the availability of business-critical applications and services through market-leading .NET application performance monitoring and diagnostics and JEE application health monitoring.
  • Providing a comprehensive view of datacenters, and private and public clouds.

More info is available at the Server and Cloud Platform blog.

Next steps – download, install, explore & enjoy it! Smile

MCT!

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 3 Comments

MCT_logoToday I received yet another recognition of my skills – as of today, I’m also a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) (another acronym becomes part of my collection Smile). I’m so happy to be part of this elite community of experts.

”Microsoft Certified Trainer Program is elite, international community that spans more than 150 countries and regions and includes classroom and e-learning instructors, learning consultants, authors, conference presenters, and user group leaders. Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) are the premier technical and instructional experts on Microsoft technologies, and are the only individuals authorized to deliver training for Microsoft Certification.”

Big thanks to all that helped/mentored/supported me! (and anyone else who helped in any other way Smile)

Microsoft MVP for another year…

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 6 Comments

mvp_logoOn October, 1st 2010, I was introduced to the worldwide Microsoft MVP community as MVP for Management Infrastructure. That was a great driver in the past year. Today I received another e-mail stating that my MVP title is renewed… I’m proud for being the part of this community, and will put together all my efforts to justify this.

Big thanks to all the people included in this decision, and thanks to all that support me every day!

4th SQL Server UG meeting at MIC Varazdin

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

4th_sql_ugToday we had the honor to host the 4th meeting of SQL Server User Group. The main theme of this meeting was “SQL Server 2008 Disaster Recovery and High Availability 101“. Dean Vitner (MVP) was the main presenter, and I was there to fill the gap with some demos until the so called P’n’P part of the meeting… 🙂

It was nice to see so many people at the meeting again (to all of them – thanks for coming!); it seems that SQL & High Availability are the popular themes… For those that didn’t make it to Varazdin, we arranged virtual meeting (with Live Meeting). All the info (and hopefully the video), will be available at Microsoft Community Croatia portal soon.

I think the meeting went well, hope the attendees are happy (we need more slots for these topics, definitely), and hope to host another user group meeting at Microsoft Innovation Center Varazdin soon…

 

Reminder – Free certification for students!

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 2 Comments

Just a quick reminder – for all students who want to get certified on Microsoft technology, there is still a chance to get one free voucher they can use for this purpose. Microsoft is offering this vouchers through DreamSpark program, and if you have access, you can easily generate one voucher for yourself (or even pass it on to a friend).

You can get your voucher (all all other necessary info) on this site.
If you already got the voucher, you can use it on Prometric – just pick a test site, exam & time, and get your certificate…

For those willing to try this out and become certified, good luck (hope to see you in the MCP club after this one)!

P.S. This offer is valid while supplies last, so hurry up!

dreamspark_free_vouchers

Mensa – testiranje u Varazdinu!

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Hrvatska Mensa i ove godine organizira testiranje u MIC Varaždin. Ukoliko želite saznati svoj IQ, prijavite se za testiranje…

Iz teksta službene objave:
“Hrvatska Mensa, udruga visoko inteligentnih osoba, u suradnji s MIC Varaždin, za sve zainteresirane organizira testiranja inteligencije u Varaždinu u subotu, 26. ožujka 2011. godine u Microsoft Innovation Centru Varaždin, Zagrebačka 94. Prijave će se primati od 10:45 do 12:45 sati na mjestu testiranja, a testiranja će se odvijati u grupama, svakih sat vremena. Za testiranje se moguće prijaviti i on-line na web-stranicama Hrvatske Mense na www.mensa.hr.

Testiranje se obavlja pod nadzorom ovlaštenog psihologa, neverbalnog je tipa i za pristup nije potrebno nikakovo predznanje niti je važna obrazovna, kulturna, socijalna ili spolna pripadnost. Sve upute za rješavanje testa daje psiholog prije početka testiranja. Rezultat testiranja je tajan i stiže poštom na kućnu adresu, a ima međunarodno priznatu vrijednost.

Na testiranje mogu doći svi stariji od 14 godina, osim onih koji su u prošloj ili ovoj godini pristupili testiranju te onih koji su već ostvarili uvjet za učlanjenje u Mensu. Prilikom prijave plaća se 150 kuna za troškove testiranja. Prijavom na web-stranicama Hrvatske Mense ostvaruje se pravo na popust, te je tada cijena testiranja 135,00 kuna, a za učenike, studente i zaposlenike MIC Varaždin 100,00 Kn. Na web-stranicama Hrvatske Mense moguće je plaćanje kreditnim karticama.“

Internet Explorer 9 RC – available

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

According to the article on liveside.net, Internet Explorer’s (long awaited) “public beta refresh” is available for download…

If you’re  still using the “old version” (of IE 9), go and grab this better looking version which is named Internet Explorer 9 RC(version number is 9.0.8080.16413 – this is somewhat newer then the version that “leaked” few days ago (that one was 9.0.8073.6003, in case that someone was wondering)).

The new version can be downloaded here, and more (official) information is available at this site. If you want to see what IE9 can do, the good start would definitely be at beautyoftheweb.com.

UPDATE: ZDNet’s Ed Bott gave a pretty wrap-up of what is new in IE9 RC, and you can find his article here.

TFS 2010 – item locked…

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

First of all, just a little disclaimer – I’m NOT a TFS specialist (neither a developer); I’m only a user that wants to help you save the time troubleshooting some errors that I encountered along the way (I’m also not responsible if the following deletes your data, crashes your computer or worse). 🙂

Today I had some troubles with my TFS 2010 installation. For some reason, it was giving me error saying “The item [full_path] is locked for check-out by [user_name] in workspace [workspace_name].“. Error looks something like this:

tfs_error_1

Ok, so my file is locked by some other user – first approach would be to ask that other user to “unlock” it for me. In my case, this method was not successful. This other user said to me that he’s also having the same problem just with another user’s locked file…

If you have the same problem, and want to resolve this as quickly as possible (Is this the best method? Probably not; I don’t know, but this helped me (see the disclaimer on top of the post)), maybe this workaround will help you as well:

W: If you know your way around command prompt, you can use the tf.exe utility (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z51z7zy0(v=VS.100).aspx) that is available if you installed Visual Studio. As the documentation says, you can find this utility in the following location “<drive>:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 10.0Common7IDE”. The full command that I used is: tf workspace /delete [user_workspace];[domain][user_name] /s:http://[tfs_server_name]:8080 (i.e. tf workspace /delete TOMICA-PC;HOMEtomica /s:http://localhost:8080/tfs).

I hope that someone finds this information useful, and I’m looking forward to get some comments from people that are more experienced in this matter…