It took 11 months, but I finally had my XBOX Red Ring of Death.

Luckily i'm close to the repair center, and got the replacement XBOX back in 4 days. Woo Hoo!

Here is a poor man's MOM/SCOM solution for seeing what is happening over time in DFSR (2003 R2 or 2008).

First schedule health reports to run periodically (during sourcing exercises I recommend every 15 minutes, but during production I would run this 2 or 3 a day).

1) Import 1 XML report to generate the XML based schema file

2) Verify the XML Map Properties (Schema settings); including the “Append new data” option.

3) Using the Developer import option, select all XML files desired (I have tested around 2,000 DFS Report XML’s). (the developer ribbon is enabled in the excel options dialog from the “main menu”)

4)

5) Review the import status (I found that it’s ok to get some Schema errors, as long as the Import Status states Complete)

6)

7) Data should now be imported (each DFSR health report takes about 10 rows in Excel)

8)

9) Adding a separate sheet with a pivot table will allow manipulation of the DFSR Health Reports:

10)

11) And tables/charts and all kinds of other cool things:

12)

Well it's finally out, Microsoft Certified Masters is opening to the world.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/default.mspx

So what is Microsoft Certified Masters? It's one of the new certifications being released by Microsoft Learning, and will be pushing the proof of skills and technical understanding to the limits. In the past there has been a huge gap between the level MCSE/MCITP tested at, and what the field felt was true testing of a senior engineer competencies. Microsoft Certified Masters will be one of the ways to tackle this by providing a top tier certification that tests book knowledge with real world applied skill set. Aligned with MCA (Microsoft Certified Architect), this will allow a true mapping of someone's skills, experience, and competencies to a field recognized certification, be it as an Architect (MCA) or an Engineer/Consultant (MCM).

MCM for Active Directory will be most likely opening the doors for the first public rotation in November, and content is targeted at heavy 300+ design/troubleshooting skill sets. With 3 weeks of some very intense training, written tests, and a pretty advanced lab certification, this will not be for the weak of heart.

Skills to be tested will range for AD Internals, such as AD Backup and DR, Kerberos/Auth, Client Logon/Interactions, AD Replication, Sites & Services design, deployments and troubleshooting, FRS, DFSR, Group Policy, DNS, RODC, Server Core, and of course the whole line up of AD products like Federated Services, Rights Management Services, Certificate Services, ADAM/LDS, and to finish it off, throw in some MOF/ITIL content, and that will make for a heck of long and hard 3 weeks.

The Masters training programs will be running $18,500, and will be based in Redmond for the first year. Worldwide training is expected the next year.

During the internal warm up sessions i was lucky enough to help gather and generate content for the training and certification labs, and it's actually quite a hard thing to find and build rock solid level 300-350 training content that is both challenging, and yet relevant. The program manager for MCM Directory, Walter Boyd, many others, and I are working hard to make the content killer, with the amount of content we have, and the talent we are coordinating, this should be a great program, we are pulling in some of the most talented trainers and engineers in the industry.

Hope to see you there in November...

Chris Ransom / MCM:Windows Directory 2008

Well it's close to official (I'm not really counting it until I'm on the plane), as I'm going to Beijing in August to represent Microsoft and to help support the Olympics.

http://en.beijing2008.cn/bocog/

Looks like I'll be heading over at the end of July, and not returning until Late August. I'll be part of a 6 person crew of senior exports supporting Windows/Active Directory, and SQL.

Pretty excited to see China for the first time, and to witness the Olympics first hand.

I'll update more as my trip starts...

-Chris Ransom / MCM: Windows 2008 Directory

REDMOND, Wash. – June 26, 2008 – Following the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualization is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.

https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/jun08/06-26hyperv.mspx

The download will be available on the website around noon today PST, and will be delivered via Windows Update on July 8th.