How To Guide – SharePoint 2010 Migration or Upgrade from SharePoint 2007

http://www.techticles.com/how-to-guide-sharepoint-2010-migration-or-upgrade-from-sharepoint-2007.page

EDAG’s Light Car EV is open source, doused in OLEDs

Cool Concept Car or what?!!!?!!!

 

EDAG’s Light Car EV is open source, doused in OLEDs

Microsoft to merge Office Live and Windows Live Services

Think this is pretty exciting in that it shows Microsoft is beginning to rationalise it’s future cloud-based services together…

http://windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/article/articleid/101340/its-official-microsoft-to-merge-office-live-windows-live.html

So, how about merging Skydrive and Mesh? And how about integrating the whole lot into Azure??? We want a single, unified experience!

50GB of FREE Online Storage at www.adrive.com

This has got to be my freebie find of the week!

http://www.adrive.com

Hyper-V 2.0 Feature overview

 

Windows Server 2008 R2 will include Hyper-V 2.0, it promises to deliver the final pieces for enterprise level OS virtualization (together with SCVMM2008) and to really compete with VMware at that level.

Live Migration

The most anticipated is of course Live Migration: moving running VM’s from one host to another without interruption of services running inside the VM’s

To accomplisch this technique a new shared filesytem is needed and so will also be introduced in Hyper-V 2.0: Clustered Shared Volumes.

The Live migration works best together with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, it can provide additional Live Migration management and orchestration scenarios such as Live Migration via policy.

Cool thing is you only need to update to Hyper-V 2.0, none of the rest of the infractructere needs updating.

Logical Processor Support

• Support for 32 logical processors on host computer
• Twice the initial supported number of logical processors of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Hot add remove storage

• Add and remove VHD and pass-through disks to a running VM without requiring a reboot.
• Hot-add/remove disk only applies to VHDs and pass-through disks attached to the SCSI controller (not the IDE controller)
• Hot-add remove of storage controllers is not supported

Benefits

• Enables storage growth in VMs without downtime
• Enables additional datacenter backup scenarios

SLAT

Second Level Translation (SLAT)

Overview

• Leverage new processor features to improve performance and reduce load on Windows Hypervisor
• AMD: Enhanced Page Tables
• Intel: Nested Page Tables
• Benefits
• Improved memory management performance
• Memory usage of Windows Hypervisor will decrease from approximately 5% to 1% of total physical memory.
• More memory will be available for child partitions enabling higher consolidation ratios

Dynamic Memory

Overview

• Pool of memory is dynamically distributed across VMs
• Memory is dynamically allocated/removed based VM usage with no service interruption

Benefits

• Enables much higher consolidation ratios per host by addressing the greatest limiting factor to consolidation: Memory

How

• VM memory configuration includes:
• Initial (what VM will boot with)
• Minimum (what VM is guaranteed)
• Maximum (what VM can grow to)
• Memory is added via Hot-Add MEM functionality
• Memory is removed via Balloon driver (supported OSs)

!!NOTE:The Dynamic Memory feature, will not be available as a part of the Beta for WS08 R2.  Microsoft is still evaluating options to make this feature available as a part of RC/RTM of WS08 R2. So let’s hope this won’t be killed before release.

Boot from VHD

Allows any VHD to work on physical hardware, this is very interesting! Boot an OS VHD on your physical hardware.

Input from Hyper-v.nu:

New functionality can be expected on the network layer. Improved support for stateless and statefull offload technologies will improve the speed of iSCSI storage communication. We also expect support for multiple network channels (NIC teaming support), analogous to already existing support in Windows Server 2008 for MPIO (MultiPath I/O) for SAN path redundancy.

Finally the time is there to introduce Virtualized I/O, a technology allowing multiple operating systems in different virtual machines, to share a single PCI Express device. An application could be the introduction of virtual hostbus adapters (HBA) within virtual machines so a direct mapping can be made to a physical HBA in the host. This allows for better SAN support and similar management of LUN’s and zoning as is required in the physical storage world. An analogy with virtual NIC’s can be made as implemented in Hyper-V.

You can find more information at the WinHEC session descriptions: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/sessions.aspx

More in Windows Server 2008 R2 at Bink.nu: http://bink.nu/news/windows-server-2008-r2-overview-feature-overview.aspx

Hyper-V.nu article in Dutch: http://hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/archive/2008/10/26/live-migration-in-hyper-v-r2-zal-gebruik-maken-van-microsoft-cluster-shared-volumes-csv.aspx

Hyper-V 2.0 Feature overview

Microsoft XBOX 360 NXE Update

I have just installed the new NXE Update for my XBOX 360 and, like a lot of people as it turns out, I now have no sound at all.

I have my XBOX hooked up to an HD Monitor via HDMI cables… and there’s no sound!!! Not impressed. Not remotely impressed.

I searched around on the Forums and there were various recommendations about switching on and off, removing hard-disk etc and rebooting… non of these have worked… really not that impressed.

Have read some rumours about Microsoft releasing a patch for this in the next few days…

Have gone ahead and raised a support e-mail with Microsoft to try to get the issue raised.

This update has, for the meantime, ruined my gaming experience. Did I mention I’m not impressed? I await to hear from Microsoft on a fix for this in anticipation.

After all the hype around this update… I expected more anyway… there just doesn’t seem to be much in the way of decent new functionality.

I was especially amazed that Microsoft haven’t put a Web browser onto the XBOX 360 yet. The Wii has a web browser. The PS3 has a web browser. With the NXE Update, Microsoft is trying to reposition the XBOX 360 as a more family-oriented gaming and multimedia experience… a web browser would have been a smart thing to put into this update.

It seems like the update has fallen very short of expectations and hopes for many…

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/21/nxe-creating-hdmi-headaches-for-uk-xbox-360-owners/

http://www.trustedreviews.com/gaming/news/2008/11/20/Xbox-NXE-Update-Causing-Problems/p1

http://www.avforums.com/forums/xbox-360/867084-nxe-installed-now-no-sound.html

Christmas CD – Recording, Mastering and Producing

Managed to get some use out of my investment in sound record toys this week. I spent one evening recording our Church Choir’s Christmas CD.

Was quite a small choir so was just using DigiDesign Pro Tools LE 7.4, my MBOX and two condenser mics. All went reasonably well during the recording. Is great fun just setting up all the equipment, sound-checking and then recording. I think we did OK, but if I was going to do it again I would separate the choir out into their different sections, and mic them and the organ up separately to try to get more control over the whole balance.

Tracks Included:

• Track 01 – Once in Royal David’s City
• Track 02 – O Little Town of Bethlehem
• Track 03 – O Come All Ye Faithful
• Track 04 – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
• Track 05 – God Rest Ye Merry! Gentlemen
• Track 06 – Silent Night
• Track 07 – In The Bleak Mid-Winter
• Track 08 – Ding Dong! Merrily On High
• Track 09 – Away in a Manger
• Track 10 – I Heard a Maiden Softly Sing
• Track 11 – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
• Track 12 – The Angel Gabriel

Spent last night and most of today editing and doing the first mastering cut of the recordings. There were quite a few parts of different songs re-recorded because the choir hadn’t been happy with some sections of their songs – so have spent the day doing some clever precision cutting, pasting and matching to bring complete songs together.

So far, layout on all tracks is complete, gating and EQ is also complete where necessary. Haven’t been anywhere near the reverb yet but I will.

Am delivering the first draft tomorrow to the choir master with a view to probably going back this week to re-record the tracks they aren’t happy with.

After that, will do the final master.

Have to do my cover art for the CD too and then get my production line organised.

So far so good… just a bit of fun – enjoying getting to do this kind of thing!

Will keep you updated with progress on this little project.

Aaaargh… The Hidden Cost of Google Chrome

Yesterday, I did an initial review of Google’s new web browser “Chrome”… (which by the way I’m using right now to write this blog entry)

OK, so this is an early Beta of the product… so it’s not perfect… and it does have a few features I like (especially rendering speed which is out of this world!)

One of my initial gripes about Google releasing yet another browser is the fact that it increases the amount of addition cross-browser testing web developers and designers will have to do… in an already flooded browser market… this is not a welcome addition and the hidden cost to business will be unbelievable.

So, anyway, this evening my initial fears have been proved well-founded… I have been developing a web application since July in my spare time which is reasonably advanced, but uses mainstream web development technologies including: Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008, ASP.NET, C#, well-formed XHTML, CSS, and the latest version of ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Is all reasonably close to good development standards – although there are a few areas of improvement I could make.

I have made heavy use of the AJAX Control Toolkit in this application… more use than I care to re-develop at this stage in the game… I am hoping to get a Beta of this application into deployment this side of Christmas…

I have been testing using Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox… and all is working seamlessly and identically across both browsers.

So I loaded my web-app into Google Chrome this evening and wasn’t too impressed to find that some of my AJAX controls aren’t working. Most of them were OK – but some aren’t fully working and I just find it dissappointing that I’m potentially going to have to start finding work arounds for this kind of thing if Google doesn’t kick their newbie browser into shape!

Google Chrome Web Browser – First Impressions

I got an e-mail in work first thing about Google’s new web browser…Google Chrome and my first thought was… “Why Why Why???” Why bother… We have Firefox, and we have Internet Explorer… and we have Safari all perfectly good, mature, major-usage web browsers that meet pretty much everybody’s needs already – and we haven’t even begun to mention the plethora (sheer plethora of other browsers out there) – least to say the browser market is already pretty crowded.

As a web developer who knows the difficulties of developing and supporting across multiple browsers with all their different features and nuances… I did not welcome this announcement at all – just another web browser to slow down development and create more expensive system support – thanks Google!

My second thought on this was… this is just Google being completely self-centred… this development is purely to give them much tighter control over the future direction of Google Gears… and from that angle… fair play to them!

Anyway… went to download this on my Suse Linux box… followed the link from Google’s home page and then got sent around in circles across infomation pages with no Download link…. why?… because Google Chrome Beta isn’t available for Linux… but their web site doesn’t tell you that! Logged onto one of my Windows Vista machines and have downloaded and installed there.

So first impressions…

• Speed – page rendering speed is unbelievable… leaves Microsoft Internet Explorer and even the new speedy Firefox 3 sitting on the starting lines… only comment here is that rendering engine is obviously different enough in places to necessitate substantial additional web developer testing. I logged into my Windows Live / Hotmail account and there were icons displayed on the wrong part of the screen and problems with javascript… all of which currently works OK in both IE and Firefox… not good!
• Very simple looking interface. Nice! The look and feel is, by and far, the cleanest looking browser I’ve ever seen. Looks really cool with Windows Vista transparency behind the tabs at the top… again…. just nice!
• Tabbed web pages… nothing particularly new there… although apparently behind the scenes this is much improved over Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefix – especially around multi-threading and error handling… haven’t been able to test this yet.
• Dynamic Tabs – nothing blindingly innovative here… this is a clear rip-off of Safari functionality. It would seem that Google are taking a leaf out of Microsoft’s rule of thumb on copying cool features from other products instead of coming up with ideas of your own.
• Crash Control – idea being that if one application in one tab crashes, then the whole browser doesn’t mess up – all other applications in other tabs keep working OK. Wasn’t able to get anything to crash on an individual tab page so can’t really comment on this one at the minute. Sounds like a cool feature though. Did manage to get the whole browser to crash and shut down completely though… the address bar is really, really screwy!
• Incognito Mode – essentially private browsing – for times when you want to browse in “stealth mode”. Again a much touted feature of the up-and-coming Internet Explorer 8 this feature has been dubbed “porn mode” for the new generation of browsers.
• Safe Browsing – Google Chrome warns you if you’re about to visit a suspected unsafe web site. Nothing new or innovative there either – all features that are present in all major browsers.
• Instant Bookmarks – Where you just click on the star in the Firefox address bar to add a favourite… er I mean Google Chrome Address bar… I’d be very, very surprised if Firefox doesn’t sue over this blatant copyright infringement… again
• Google Apps – All work blindingly, blindingly fast – with each application opening in a separate tab.
• Google Gears Support – I tested this with my Google Apps -> Google Docs… works amazingly fast! Amazingly fast! Also was able to get my Application shortcuts added OK to desktop, start menu, quicklaunch bar etc no problems. Very, Very impressed.
• Extensions Support like those available for Firefox… seemingly non-existent – although I haven’t investigated fully.
• Comparison to Internet Explorer 8 Beta – think they are going to need to come up with something better. We are really starting to see the Google strategy come together for tight integration between the browser and web-based applications… Microsoft needs to get much much better on its Windows Live Services being integrated together and with their browser moving forward… it would seem that it’s really game on now moving forward with everything to play for – The OS, The Browser, The Applications are all up for grabs…
• Stability – not bad at all. Noticed a few glitchy little delays as I was typing into the address bar… but nothing I’m going to runaway screaming from.

Was a bit dissappointed with the lack of Linux support so far on this Beta… would have thought Google would have had that in there as a minimum in their ever escalating war against Microsoft.

If Google released a free operating system to go alongside and integrate really tightly with their free browser, and their free applications, and their free Android phone, then Microsoft would have a real problem on their hands.

All in all… still a beta… still a bit glitchy – I wouldn’t be rushing to put my credit card details through it just yet! Not hugely innovative in regards to new features that you can see with the naked eye end-user experience – they’ve really ripped off good features of other browsers which, when brought together like this, make it quite compelling. Is clearly oriented towards the usage of Google’s own applications.

The potential of this browser taking a huge chunk of browser market share from Microsoft… given Google’s notoriety, and extensive deployment channels…absolutely huge!

SQL Server 2008

Was fortunate enough to get my hands on SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition yesterday. Installed this last night on my DELL Vostro 1510 alongside Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

First impressions are quite good. The installation was really smooth. Noticed that they now provide an option to configure Reporting Services alongside SharePoint. In SQL 2005 this took a little bit of extra configuration work to get it working correctly so this was the first welcome change I noticed.

Once up and running I was able to get a quick look around, immediately noticing the new inclusion of Spatial / Geography Datatypes and Hierarchical ID Datatypes – again all welcome changes. They’ve also updated the Query editor to include IntelliSense – Hooray!!!

Will hopefully post some more on the subject moving forward. Have got my hands on a new SQL Server 2008 book: Beginning SQL Server 2008 for Developers: from Novice to Professional, published by APRESS. I’m not a huge fan of their books, but is the only one I could readily get my hands on at the minute. Will take a read through anyway.

So much to learn and so little time. Am also studying away at IIS7, W2k8, C# 2008, LINQ, and ASP.NET 3.5 amongst a bunch of other stuff. As well as that I’ve been working away on a personal ASP.NET web app I’m hoping to productise by Christmas this year – which, by the way, I transferred my database into SQL 2008 last night also… using the flawless SQL Server Copy Wizard.