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System Center 2012 Exams

By
Helmer
– January 18, 2012

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Earlier today I received an invite for the System Center Configuration Manager 2012 beta exam (71-243). Too bad that mail is not yet made public, but within a few days you all can register for the beta exam which can be attended from February 1st till February 23rd.

While I was searching the web today for some new information about the new System Center suite I ran into something nice. With the new System Center 2012 suite also a new certification will become available. The exact name has to be determined at the moment, but it will probably be something like this : MCITP Private Cloud.

The receive this certification you have to pass the following exams:

If you already achieved the MCITP Server Administrator or MCITP Enterprise Administrator, then you already passed these exams. To achieve the Private Cloud Certification you only have to pass the next two exams:

I’ve you are able to attend the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2012 in Las Vegas, you probably can attend the System Center 2012 Beta Exams which will be available at the Summit in April 2012. Let’s hope the beta exams will also be available to everybody, who isn’t able to attend the event, via the ‘normal’ channels!

As soon any news will be available, I’ll update my blogpost!

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What about the quotes when publishing shortcuts with GPP

By
Helmer
– November 15, 2011

For a customer I’m building a custom Start Menu in Windows 7 which will be populated through Group Policy Preferences.

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I know, some of you probably prefer RES Workspace Manager to manage the settings on the desktop, but Group Policy Preferences is a great alternative if the customer doesn’t want to spend a lot of money Smile. When I was doing some tests with the Start Menu, some of the created shortcuts didn’t appear in the Start Menu.

 

Why use quotes?
I had to copy-paste the target path for some of the applications, because they weren’t installed on the machine where I created the GPP’s and therefore I couldn’t browse for the path. When using a path of created shortcut, the path is often started and ended with a quote.

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And in the old days, you would have to use quotes when using a path with spaces in it or the entire path won’t be recognized. But when I used quotes in the target path with the GPP shortcut, the shortcut wouldn’t appear on the client….how strange is that!?

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Only the shortcuts without the quoted target were published to the client, and the shortcut with quotes is skipped.

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Skip the quotes!
At first I didn’t even thought of the fact that loosing the quotes would solve this issue, in the end I even thought that there was something wrong with the GPO’s itself…but thanks go to Wilbrand, who was doing a cup of tea and mentioned…that the only difference were the quotes. He was right, so when I did loose the quotes and did a gpupdate on the client, the shortcut was appearing on the client! Problem solved!

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Conclusion
So when you are populating your Start Menu by using Group Policy Preferences, loose the quotes on the target path when using a already existing shortcut for an example. There is also another need to know when it comes to item level targeting when using the Security Group item, but more about that issue in the next blog post!

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Video : MS Office Labs ‘Productivity’ Future Vision (2011)

By
Helmer
– October 28, 2011

This morning I ran into a nice Microsoft video about the possible future…really cool stuff!

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DVBLogic is releasing DVBLink 4.0

By
Helmer
– October 3, 2011

As you probably know I’m using the DVBLogic software in my home network to watch TV. For a couple of weeks I’m running the beta and later the Release Candidate versions of the new DVLink 4.0 software. Last week DVBLogic already tweeted about the fact that they almost had finished version 4!

This morning when I wanted to show their website to a colleague, the website was not available and was showing only : ‘New Exciting stuff is coming. Check back later’.

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I did some research and discovered that their new website is already up and running (at least part of it!). So, probably within a few hours (I hope) they will officially announce the new version of their DVBlink Software! I hardly can’t wait to install the iPad / iPhone / Windows Phone 7 apps. to watch TV on-the-go! Let’s hope version 4.1 will follow soon, that update will enable the Record functionality from the apps!

 

Support for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile
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Buy version 4 of the DVBlink Software
The new software is already for sale on their website, and you can also download the RTM versions!

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If you want to check out their new website, just follow this link…and see for yourself!

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Windows 8 : And the super fast file copy…

By
Helmer
– September 22, 2011

Since about a week I’m running the Windows 8 Developer Preview on my business (production) laptop, because I can :-) . Today I had to copy a large file from one share to another share on my Windows Home Server 2011 machine. Usually I open a RDP connection to the box, because (at least in Windows 7) copying via your laptop isn’t the fastest way.

Last week (when I was still running Windows 7) the average speed was about 6 Mbyte/sec., so I was totally flabbergasted when I watched the copy speeds reach 40Mbyte/sec. today. Let me explain what I did…

The infrastructure
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The above pictures shows a part of my infrastructure at home. My laptop is connected to a 802.11n WiFi network and most of the time the connection is around 144Mbit.

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Copying really fast….with Windows 8
I copied a large file from one share (on WHS2011) to another share (on the same WHS2011). I initiate the copy-process from my laptop’s Windows Explorer. So technically the file goes from WHS2011-Share01 –> Laptop –> WHS2011-Share02. In Windows 7 the maximum copy-speed would have a max. speed of 150Mbit.  Under normal circumstances the average speed will be around 6 MByte/sec.

But, when did the copy action on my Windows 8 D.P. laptop, the average speed was around 60 MByte/sec. If you take in consideration that this is theoretical not possible to copy a file with 60 Mbyte/sec. over a 144 MBit WiFi connection.

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It seems that (at least in Windows 8 and with a filecopy from one share to another on the same server) the file isn’t really pulled through the WiFi connection, but being copied instantly at the background (locally on the server).

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Slow copying from….Windows 7
I couldn’t really remember that this was also possible with Windows 7, so I copied the same file the same way, but this time from a Windows 7 laptop.

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Copying at WHS2011 vs. Windows Server 8
In the previous test I copied a file which was located on my Windows Home Server 2011 machine. Just because we can, let’s execute the same type of copy action. This time we copy a binary-test-file located on my Windows Server 8 machine.

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The lower speed has probably something to do with the fact that the WHS2011 machine is a physical machine and the Windows Server 8 machine is virtual….but still the 43MByte/sec is really fast through a 144Mbit WiFi connection :-) . So if you use a Client which ‘understands’ the SMB 2.2 protocol, you can copy files really fast.

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Conclusion
I really like the ‘upgraded’ version of the SMB (2.2) protocol. If you compare it to Windows 7 (SMB 2.0 if I’m correct) the new SMB 2.2 protocol already has a huge advantage if you primarily look at the speeds I achieved in my ‘simple’ copy test. At this time the fast copy speeds are only achieved if you copy files from one share to another share on the same server, at least that’s what I tested. If I copied the same file from my WHS2011 machine to the Windows Server 8 machine (using the same copy-method) the maximum speeds didn’t exceed the 3-6 MByte/sec. Don’t forget that this is just the Windows 8 Developer Preview! I’m curious if there will be any new copy-features in the BETA/RC/RTM versions!

Microsoft has a nice document where you can read some more about SMB 2.2 File Sharing Performance.

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