Category Windows Server

Two more beta exams! (71-654) Windows Essentials EBS, (71-660) Windows Internals

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Certification, Christopher Kusek, Informational, Microsoft, Windows Server

I love Trika! She’s such a wealth of knowledge, information, lolcatz and a number of other sillie things!

In this episode, we cover two (more) beta exams.

71-654 – TS: Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Configuring
The promo code is “EBS08”
The beta is initially scheduled from 7/22 to 8/12.

About EBS: “Windows Essential Business Server 2008 combines software for management, messaging, and security features into one integrated server solution that will help customers increase the manageability and reliability of their IT systems, and boost businesses productivity and growth.”

This credential is designed for information technology (IT) professionals working in or consulting with medium sized businesses that use Windows Essentials Server 2008. A candidate for this exam should have at least one year of experience deploying, configuring, and managing network solutions in an environment with the following characteristics:

* 75+ company network connections
* Company networks with Internet connectivity
* Individual users or user groups that connect to the company network from remote locations
* Messaging (Internet, and Exchange)
* Anti-spam

And the second (and cooooolest one)

71-660: TS: Windows® Internals
The promo code is “WINT”
Beta exam period runs: July 21, 2008– August 5, 2008

About this Exam

This exam validates deep technical skills in the area of Windows Internals. Including troubleshooting operating systems that are not performing as expected or applications that are not working correctly, identifying code defects, and developing and debugging applications that run unmanaged code or that are tightly integrated with the operating system, such as Microsoft SQL Server, third party applications, antivirus software, and device drivers.

Audience Profile

Candidates for this exam are engineers, developers, or IT staff who work with Windows at a level that requires Windows Internals knowledge. Candidates for this exam are typically in the upper echelon of the technical staff at their companies. These individuals typically hold such positions as escalation engineer, technical lead, and software design engineer. Their level of knowledge spans products both inside and outside the Microsoft Corporation. These individuals are involved in resolving problems that require deep understanding of Windows Internals rather than problems about planning and infrastructure development or how to use or configure a product that runs on Windows.

When security best practices collide (Crippling iSCSI in Windows)

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Christopher Kusek, Informational, Microsoft, NetApp, SQL, Storage, Windows Server

As a security guy, I can tell you – There are a lot of really good security best practices to be applied across all systems, applications, servers and a world over. But when implemented unchecked – Problems will arise.

What I am talking about specifically is this little doozy – EnablePMTUDiscovery

Value name: EnablePMTUDiscovery
Key: Tcpip\Parameters
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Valid Range: 0, 1 (False, True)
Default: 1 (True)

The following list describes the parameters that you can use with this registry value:

  • 1: When you set EnablePMTUDiscovery to 1, TCP attempts to discover either the maximum transmission unit (MTU) or then largest packet size over the path to a remote host. TCP can eliminate fragmentation at routers along the path that connect networks with different MTUs by discovering the path MTU and limiting TCP segments to this size. Fragmentation adversely affects TCP throughput.
  • 0: It is recommended that you set EnablePMTUDiscovery to 0. When you do so, an MTU of 576 bytes is used for all connections that are not hosts on the local subnet. If you do not set this value to 0, an attacker could force the MTU value to a very small value and overwork the stack.

    Important Setting EnablePMTUDiscovery to 0 negatively affects TCP/IP performance and throughput. Even though Microsoft recommends this setting, it should not be used unless you are fully aware of this performance loss.

    That little excerpt taken from:
    How to harden the TCP/IP stack against denial of service attacks in Windows 2000

    This KB article is still used and is applicable to the Windows 2003 space, but what does this do exactly?

    This will drop all transmissions over TCP/IP down to 576 byte packets. Oh and this is a global setting.
    So, you go to connect up to an iSCSI LUN, and it connects up just fine.
    Your host is working, your storage is working everything is all doozy.

    When you start to try to actually -use- that connection for storage though, you’ll begin to experience exponential latency. This latency will translate into IOPS problems and access to the disk, masking this making it appear to be a disk issue. This effectively cripples your application, yet is hidden so well from the system as a problem without sniffing or using something like mturoute you’d never know it is happening.

  • MTURoute is your friend and will help you determine your current MTU

    With that said, on any systems with iSCSI connectivity, I strongly encourage you to NOT disable this setting, ensuring that EnablePMTUDiscovery is always set to 1

    Thanks for your time!

    • NetApp supports Server 2008 and Hyper-V instances!

    by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Exchange, Hyper-V, Microsoft, SQL, Storage, Windows Server

     

    So, as seen here NetApp Expands Storage and Data Management Solutions Supporting Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Physical and Virtual Environments this can mean a lot for environments which want high resiliency, modern systems (Server 2008, Hyper-V) and helping to further consolidate Server sprawl as well as Storage sprawl.

    But what does this mean for you or I?

    Oh, this is where the fun gets started!

    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!

    MCTS: Hyper-V (70-652) [71-652] Study Guide

    by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Certification, Hyper-V, Informational, Microsoft, Windows Server

    *Update – Be sure to check out the free Training Courses for 70-652! *

    5 Free Virtualization Training Courses for the Holidays! (HyperV)

    and

    How much does Free Microsoft Learning Cost? (Hint: Free!)

    Now continue to this old post :)

    You’re signed up, you’re in the beta! with 12 days left to take the test!
    You get out there, study study study… wait, what am I supposed to study?

    Well, first of all you decide to check out that Microsoft E-Learning I mentioned before here:
    https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=92459

    And let me tell you, this E-learning is very useful, if you’ve never touched ESX, XenServer, or Hyper-V.
    If you’ve played with Hyper-V at all, and read the help file you will find it isn’t ALL that useful.
    I’m not saying don’t give it a whirl, give it a try… But do NOT expect that to be your keys to the kingdom. You’ll be lucky if it can be used as a dowsing rod to find the moat!
    (Wait, do castles even have keys?!)

    Okay, so what do I do now?

    Here is the first and most important thing you should do.
    Read this: Test Information and Support

    If ever there was a time in your life to read something like this, read it, look at it, read it again.
    Go line by line, if there is something you do not understand (WTF? winrm?!) Learn about it, read about it, study it. Because that little bit of guidance there is one of the first things you ought to do, as you’ll be on a tough road without it.

    Now it is pertinent that you get face time, hardcore time spent playing with the following:

  • Hyper-V: Load it up, the console up and running, virtualize some machines.
  • Hyper-v on Core: Atleast know how to do it!
  • SCVMM: If you’ve never touched this, looked at it, give up now. Seriously, give up now!
  • SCOM: This isn’t as important, but atleast be familiar with how SCOM plays with Virtualization
  • MAPS: No, not that song from Rockband, The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solutions
  • 2008 Clusters: Seriously, Seriously Francine, these Clusters, Seriously. Yes, know the clusters!
  • Networking: Know the difference between the different networking types and when they apply.
  • Disks: Know inside and out all of the details of the different type of disk options.
  • Snapshots: Snapshots are your friend, and your enemy if you think you know them and don’t!
  • CPU Requirements: This cannot be stressed enough. This ISN’T VMware – It’s more like Xen.

    Check out Blogs and other things ofcourse.
    Definitely DO check out the SCVMM Videos (Thanks to Jeff Webb for mentioning the link)

    If by trial, jury and virtue – You wholly understand each of these concepts, ideas and have a grasp of Virtualization, you should be fine. Just by installing Hyper-V, you’ll be set for 25% of the questions. The same can be said of the installation of SCVMM as well.

    I’m not at liberty to share explicit details of the exam, which is why I reference back to the ‘study notes’, as these were more or less on the ball – Read each line if you don’t understand it, plan to do poorly on that question(s)!

    Good Luck!

    • Do you have what it takes to be a Master?

    by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Exchange, Informational, Microsoft, SQL, Windows Server

    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).

    It will be offered in 3 varieties.

  • Exchange Server 2007
  • SQL Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2008

    • It is covered at an EXTREMELY high-level here at Microsoft Certified Master Program
    And also is briefly mentioned here on Trika’s Blog

    There is a little bit of depth to be found here:
    http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/products/default.mspx

    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…