Every so often I get asked by people for help improving their skills, making them more marketable as well as ways to get access to training and resources.
And more often than not, I lead them in directions with the huge cost of $0.00 associated with it. Whether you’re looking for Certification, access to Labs, E-Books, or Training information.
Thanks to our friends at Microsoft, here is another resource available to you!
By visiting this lovely site, it will display all of the available courses being offered by Microsoft Learning for Free!
What relevant topics are available on there at the moment:
SQL 2008
Application Virtualization
Terminal Services in Server 2008
Virtual Machine Manager for 2008
Hyper-V
ASP.NET
.NET Framework
Windows Security
Microsoft Security Guidance I-IV
…And more!
Seriously, there is a motherload of information here, so much training to wrap your teeth into!
If you saw my previous post about the voucher to get the Hyper-V training for free, this training is very complimentary to that and more! (Especially since that voucher seems to be faulty at the moment)
So get out there, get yourself something Free for this season. It’s your education, do something about it!
No, I’m actually not talking about the crazy SNL skit and follow-up with Mark Walhberg!
No, I’m talking about Exchange and its IO going through the roof when you use Entourage for the Mac in a typical Exchange environment.
Microsoft has a KB329067 Article which relates to this issue with some ‘guidance’ on how to correct it, but exactly how far you take it is another matter.
Enter the results of this calculation in the Value data field. In this example, you would enter 524288000 (Decimal) or1F400000 (Hexadecimal). Remember that the configurable range for this registry key is 1 MB to 1 gigabyte (GB). Better results occur if customers set it to a value of 500 MB or a higher value, such as 800 MB. NoteWe recommend that you set the value back to the default value or to a lower value after the content conversion issue subsides in your organization. The default value of this registry key is 128 MB. We also recommend that you set correct messages limits and mailbox size limits on your Exchange server to prevent performance issues.
4. Exit Registry Editor.
I can only read this particular KB article so much before I say “Hmm, but what actually works?”
Here is a solution which is tried, true, and used and tends to work most of the time.
What this does is set it to 800MB, as opposed to the ‘referenced’ 500MB example.
In a majority of all circumstances this will take considerable strain off of both your Exchange server as well as your underlying storage. The end result is, Marky Mark and the Entourage Bunch won’t cause Exchange to Spike and cause severe latency issues for your users.
It’s one thing to have supported SnapManager products on the latest Apps:
Windows Server 2008
SQL Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007
But to also be able to support them instanced within Hyper-V, I have to add ‘coolerific’ to the equation. What this means is that even I in my lab/sandbox/testbed/Laptop ;) will be able to actually simulate any of these environments as well!
My testbed happens to be a Lenovo T61P, 4gb of ram, running Server 2008 (Enterprise), Hyper-V enabled, Also running the NetApp Data ONTAP Simulator for local-side simulated (yet real) storage!
I’ll be able to run rig with all scenarios of apps, dependencies and then replicated it back to my actual real filers, along with the older apps (while not mentioned, but not less important) such as MOSS, Exchange 2003, SQL 2005, and beyond!
Yea, I think it’s pretty damn cool that the support is there, and gives me something even *I* can take advantage of, let alone large scale enterprises!
That’s right! New Mastery in the form of a “Master” Cert.
It is rumoured to be above the current MCITP, and equally above the old-school MCSE, yet below (and a pre-requisite) of the MCA (Architect).
However, outside of these high-level ideas of it, and its very narrow focus on a set of core technologies (Hey, where is my MOSS Mastery?!)
It appears to be just another Certification to join the pile – definitely a precursor to the MCA with these requirements:
To achieve Master certification, candidates must fulfill the following training requirements:
Attendance of required sessions
Successful completion of all in-class (written and lab) exams
Successful completion of qualification lab exam
And if history has shown us anything, when you have ‘class attendance requirements’ that usually translates into “This is going to cost you some serious $$$” Not only from ‘attendance’ but also from your inability to be producing revenue or working as you’re going to classes.
Perhaps this is trying to go the way of the “Masters” programs available within the ‘Educational’ community, but today you can phone that in, and the technology and extreme depth this is looking to promote is not something earned in the classroom – It’s earned in the trenches.
Who knows how this will be implemented, we’ll certainly find out as time moves on – Adoption is key though – Look at the CCIE Program for Cisco…
