When Software Attacks!

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V)

OK, MED-V is cool! Sadly, cool though it is, it’s not something we’ll use3 at BM, but in my previous lives doing large organisation IT, MED-V would have been a killer. In a nutshell, it is this: create a Virtual PC image with your legacy OS and legacy App. Deploy that VPC to your users desktop so they can run your legacy app but let them run the app without needing to start the VPC and use two desktops.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Server 2008 R2

We were in early today, looking forward to a session on SharePoint with Bill Engolish. Sadly, that was cancelled so Andy and I sat in on the Server 2008 R2 overview session presented by Iain McDonald. That was very interesing, and we learned a bit more about BranchCache. It doesn’t look like it will replace WAN accelerators like Riverbved, because it doesn’t appear to function at their low level. However, it does a similar thing at the file level.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Threat Management Gateway

Andy and I are now in a TMG preview demo. This looks really interesting - we spoke to the guys at ATE last night and saw a few items that I hope to see now in more detail. TMG is ISA Server vnext - codenamed ‘Nitrogen’ and part of the ‘Stirling’ next wave of Forefront. Stirling family members exchange information to allow ‘dynamic response’ - trigger actions from different forefront elements (client sec etc) based on alerts from other elements (eg mail scanner).

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Windows 7 Feature Preview

So, the first session of the day was an extremely well-attended overview of Windows 7 features. When they talk about evolution rather than revolution with regard to Windows 7, I think that’s accurate. It was very much about developing and extending the foundations of Vista. A few things stuck out, however. An almost throwaway comment about DirectConnect requiring IPSEC and IPv6 means that I must dig deeper, and that the technology, whilst cool, is almost totally useless to me, stuck behind two layers of NAT in a managed building.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT 2008: Day 1 - Keynote

So, the keynote was interesting. Much of the content I had seen before, but there were some demos that were interesting and a few snippets that made me take note. For example, I had not understood that the acquisition of Kidaro will enable interaction between applications running within a virtual machine and the host desktop in ways that are not currently achievable. That the technology will ship as part of a new Desktop Optimisation Pack was news.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 1

It’s 7:25 AM. Andy and I are hoping to make a whistle-stop trip to the Cathedral before making it to the conference early enough to get good seats for the keynote. I thought I’d take a picture of the conference pack, especially since I’ve heard grumblings about the PDC bag. The TechEd pack looks pretty much identical to the pack the devs brought home last year, to me. However, when I opened the curtains I was greeted by a fantastic sunrise:

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 0 - Greetings from Barcelona

Ola! Andy and I are now in sunny Espana. Only it’s not sunny. Oh well… However, true to form we started our trip, having registered at the conference centre, by eating hot dogs in a german fast food joint in a Spanish shopping centre! If you’re passing, Kurz & Gut does pretty good food. I’m also extremely impressed with the Metro system here in Barcelona. It’s my first time in the city, and the transport is pretty efficient, with a wonderful simple trip-based charging mechanism.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, November 2, 2008

Mix Remixed

I don’t visit the Mix community site often – historically, the content has been of little interest and infrequently updated. Imagine my surprise, then, to find a relaunched Mix Online with a new Microformats project – Oomph. In short, it’s cool – a microformats extension for IE plus other goodies to help implement them, including a live writer plugin for creating hcards. Go check it out, and I’ll try to post more later…

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, October 26, 2008

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Installing applications on an SD card

I’m still trying new things with the Mini 9. I now have an image file that I can restore to the Mini which has my base install after running sysprep. The problem I have is storage space – the SSD isn’t quite big enough. So, Richard wandered in this morning and handed me a 4Gb SD card to experiment with. The question: Can we use the SD card and install app onto it?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, October 17, 2008

Getting Vista on the Dell Mini 9

Our second Mini 9 arrived in the office today. This one is for Andy and myself to use whilst out of the office. Richard has successfully upgraded his to XP Professional, so we had to try to push the bar out a little further – we’re running Vista Business. I have not spent any time tweaking or prodding yet. I used install media with SP1 included and obliterated the partition on the SSD, then installed the drivers from Dell where necessary, and a driver for the battery hardware that Vista itself suggested rather than the Dell solution.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 14, 2008