Archives 2009

Microsoft helps you Thrive in a down market

Welcome to Thrive from Microsoft!

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If you recall past posts about Microsoft and Social Responsibility, this is just another measure of ensuring that our technical future is secure, or if you’re looking for a career change that the resources are available to ensure you have a future in technology.

They have this broken up into several core areas

I'm Thriving

Why yes.. I did go through the entire site, reviewed a lot of the material and even INCLUDED ALMOST ALL OF IT HERE! Yea, I know sometimes people will look at the post, but never visit the site – So here are the goods, visit the site if you’d like, but this is exactly what you’ll see (at this point in time :))  Good luck on there – whether you’re job hunting or retaining your job!

Where’s my upgrade path for Win7 betas? Oh, there it is

Our good friends over at Engineering Windows 7 have released this little gem!

Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

  1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
  2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
  3. Browse to the sources directory.
  4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
  5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
  6. Save the file in place with the same name.
  7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

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These same steps will be required as we transition from the RC milestone to the RTM milestone.

Wait, what the hell is going on here?!

Are you seriously telling me that by going and modifying a file, I can upgrade from the Beta version, RC and eventually to the RTM release of Windows 7?    Wowza! Now all I need to do is boot from VHD, and I have myself an upgrade path which is viable for real hardened testing :)

Microsoft has most certified trainers in the world!

You’ve heard it here first! I’m not entirely sure just how founded that fact I’m proposing is, but take this into account:

Number of active MCTs: 15,251
Number of exams taken (ever) by those MCTs: 513,749
Average number of exams per MCT: 34
MCTs with 50+ exams: 2,682 (18%)
MCTs with 100+ exams: 82
Most exams taken by an MCT: 185 (OMFG!)

If you think about almost any other profession, you may find that you have a few people who are ‘interested’, but a majority of them fulfill the bare minimum in order to be successful in their field.   However in the world of Microsoft? We’re not only “interested” we’re downright passionate perhaps to the point of being almost overly obsessive ;)

Seriously! the bare requirements to be an MCT require you to have at least one MCP (So for any other profession, we’ll call that one certification or degree).  However, these masters of industry on average have 34 certifications under their belt, or in the case of one master –185!-

That’s just a major wow.  I’m not so sure we see this same kind of care taken in the Cisco space or any other industry (Imagine if Educators were this passionate, it would really convey to their students!)

I’d like to thank the Born to Learn blog for sharing this information!

So, you have to ask yourself: If I am not certified, why not?  There is no better time than the present, and no more viable reason if not to join the community of amazing MCT’s!

More information on how to become an MCT is located here.  The MCT is a accomplishment like no other!

New NetApp Software Releases on NOW!

Wow! Today was quite a massive release of softwares!   So much so, here is a breakdown of what I saw announced for download today! (Hopefully this is all public downloads and I’m not saying something wrong… grin)

SnapDrive for Windows 6.1
Rapid Cloning Utility 2.0 (VMware)See a Demo of it here on YouTube
SnapManager for Oracle Unix 3.0.1
SnapManager for Oracle Windows 3.0.1
SnapManager for SAP Unix 3.0.1
SnapManager for SAP Windows 3.0.1

These are all FCS releases, but if you’ve been waiting for some of them (like me – SD6.1, RCU) it is a wait well awaited :)

NetApp Certification online tests at Prometric? (Free?!)

Wait, what’s this? I thought these tests were only available at the Prometric Testing Center!

Apparently I am wrong! and just by visiting this site, I’m able to take online tests at Prometric!

Infact, there’s even a whole list of other companies for online testing here as well :)

Serial # Test Name Pass

NS0-050

NetApp Accredited Installation Professional

70%

NS0-101

NetApp Accredited Sales Professional

70%

NS0-101

NetApp Accredited Sales Professional (J)

70%

NS0-102

NetApp Accredited Storage Architect Professional

65%

NS0-102

NetApp Accredited Storage Architect Professional(J)

65%

NS0-060

NetApp Accredited Support Engineer Level 1

70%
  Server Virtualization Accredited Professional  

NS0-201

SVAP: Core Virtualization Technology

61%

NS0-202

SVAP for VMware

61%

NS0-203

SVAP for Citrix XenServer

77%

NS0-204

SVAP for Hyper-V

77%

These exams (as far as I can tell) are Free so long as you pass it the first time! If you fail, it sits at $50.00 for the retake, so I suggest not failing :)