My clients are always asking me where to get the evaluation copies of various Microsoft products. Thanks to Zubair Alexander, I found this handy list of some of the latest software evaluation downloads. In case any of the links below break, check out Zubair’s original post, as he has committed to keeping the list up to date.

1. Exchange Server 2010 (120-Day Trial)
2. Forefront Server Security Management Console
3. Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
4. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (180-Day Trial)
5. Office Professional Plus 2010 (60-day Trial)
6. Project Professional 2010 (60-day trial)
7. SharePoint Server 2010 (180-day Trail) – Enterprise cd key VK7BD-VBKWR-6FHD9-Q3HM9-6PKMX
8. Small Business Server 2008 (60-day trial)
9. SQL Server 2008 (180-day Trial)
10. System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 (180-day Trial)
11. System Center Essentials 2010 Beta
12. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
13. Visio Premium 2010 (60-day trial)
14. Windows 7 Enterprise (90-day Trial)
15. Windows Home Server (30-day Trial)
16. Windows HPC Server 2008
17. Windows Server 2008 R2 Trial Software

The title says it all. I can’t believe it took me so long to find this site, but today I was doing a little Internet search on some creative smiley faces I could use in a text message. While the standard is by far the most popular I was looking for a little more creativity. In my quest for new emoticons I found this fabulous site with the tag line Musings on all things life, gaming, movies, and being a nerd. While I have taken great pleasure in being a geek, and expressly denounced my nerd factor, sometimes you just have to accept things as they truly are and embrace your inner nerd (yes I know for some of you the inner nerd is more outer nerd). I hope you find some enjoyment from the community.

For my own personal reference:

Every year Microsoft conducts a survey among thousands of field techies. A quick overview of the article is that salaries have generally remained flat, but there are a few categories that have increased. A sign that the economy may be turning around? I’m not exactly sure I would put my confidence in the economy in Microsoft’s salary survey, but hey at least a few people are making a few extra bucks.

There has been a lot of chatter these days about social media and its place in an corporate intranet. Some organizations are concerned about having twitter slow down their band width, while other organizations are concerned about employee productivity. I found a terrific article today about how social media is actually improving employee productivity and participation in data information flow. Read full article.

From mundane to social: intranets are rapidly evolving into social media systems that greatly distance themselves from their former, glorified brochureware sites.

 To be clear, for those still learning about a concept that has really only emerged in recent months, and was only formally defined this year (see The Social Intranet white paper), a social intranet incorporates multiple social media tools that are available to most if not all employees (with at least some minimal integration into the intranet or portal home page).

One of my favorite features of SharePoint is the survey list. While there are lots of technologies as 3rd party add-ons you can use to do surveys, the built in capability of SharePoint is terrific.

Today I had my ISP request I fill out a survey rating my satisfaction with their service. Bad idea! This particular ISP is awful. My problem is I host over 50 sites with them, so moving seems impossible. But their survey had a component that I thought was hysterical. The last question on the survey was how technical you rate yourself and how technical others rate you. I’m guessing this is in an effort to place a higher or lower value on your responses based on your technical classification.

 Give us a general idea how technical you consider yourself.

     1 = Low / Zero / Zip / Never / No Way / Not At All 

     5 = High / Always / Totally / Yo / Abso-Posi-Lutely

In the past 20 years I think we can all agree that being in an IT profession has been a good choice, but one that comes with many changes. One of the many changes I have noticed is that having people skills has become more of a requirement than ever before. But there are also other skills  as well. The top 10 skills found in a recent article lists the following:

1. Troubleshooting
2. Scripting
3. Networking
4. Virtualization
5. Wireless
6. Disaster Recovery
7. Security
8. Database Administration
9. Desktop Imaging
10. Help Desk (People Skills)

1. Troubleshooting

Is this a skill, an art, or both? If you ask any seasoned IT professionals, they will tell you that troubleshooting skills are important, very important – and not something that can be readily taught. The difficult part is that troubleshooting is a specific skill set that many corporations simply do not have the time or money to invest. Troubleshooting skills could make or break your career. Not having the required troubleshooting skills could become a RGE (resuming generating event), or it could become a career enhancer when you are able to fix a mission-critical server. All of this being said, one would think that there would be more emphasis on teaching and sharing troubleshooting skills; unfortunately, this is not the case. This is one skill that must be learned only after mastering a particular platform or program.

2. PowerShell and Scripting

No, you don’t have to be a programmer to be a successful network engineer (or vice-versa for that matter), but you do have to know PowerShell. More platforms from Microsoft (Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 have some features that can ONLY be implemented with PowerShell) are managed through PowerShell – including the recently released SharePoint 2010. Being able to script many day-to-day tasks will make more time available for proactive tasks.

3. Networking and Interoperability

Interoperability is the key to networking. We live in a highly connected world, a world of disparate platforms. Networking is understanding how to make these platforms communicate. As an IT Pro (and this includes programmers to a certain extent), you must understand the communications protocols, OSI Model layers, and connectivity required for systems to communicate. This also includes understanding connecting and securing wireless networks. This is one skill that is common to almost all IT Pros, whether they are programmers, security personnel, auditors or the help desk personnel.

4. Virtualization

It doesn’t matter which Virtualization technology you use (Microsoft’s Hyper-V, VMware, or even Sun’s VirtualBox), it is the use that is important. Virtualization is being adopted by companies of all sizes as a means to reduce costs through consolidation of servers and lower cooling requirements. Application Virtualization has become very popular with businesses. Having the skill set to deploy applications that connect securely through a browser is critical for companies that have numerous offices.

Virtualization can aid in near real-time response to network conditions by providing for more disaster recovery capabilities. Another interesting area of virtualization is through the use of desktop virtualization. This involved configuring and maintaining the virtual environment whereby users can connect to their own virtual desktop remotely or through the web. Another use for virtualization is for improved instruction for IT education and elsewhere, since there is no longer a need to have large numbers of computers for classrooms.

5. Wireless

As part of our highly connected world, we expect to able to connect wirelessly from almost anywhere at any time. Those IT Pros who can install, configure, and maintain secure wireless networks have a skill that is in high demand. The key word here is secure wireless network. IT Pros with this skill set are in high demand as we expect to be able to securely connect to wireless networks in almost all locations at any time. Implementing a secure wireless environment also means being able to plan and troubleshoot interferences as well. Anyone managing wireless environments must be able to handle the calls that come in from remote users who are having problems with their wireless equipment, and different operating systems capabilities and limitations.

6. Disaster Recovery

This is as much a methodology as a skill set. IT Pros must be able plan, test, and implement a disaster recovery (DR) plan. This is critical for the survivability of a data center or network. One of the hardest tasks is being able to test disaster recovery plans. There is hardly enough time available to perform the critical tasks that need to get done while adding a yearly or semi-yearly test of the DR plan. An integral part of the disaster recovery process is implementing fault-tolerant systems and providing for redundancy in your network.

7. Security

All IT Pros must have a good understanding of both physical and electronic security. One of the most difficult tasks with IT security is educating users. Company information can be gleaned through social engineering that most companies would rather not have divulged. Training users (and IT staff) to be cognizant of and prevent social engineering is extremely difficult. IT Pros must always be aware of security issues and understand the vulnerabilities within their networks (from operating systems, servers to the lowly cable closet). This does not mean that every IT Pro must be able to perform a penetration test against his or her own network, but they must understand and prevent attacks against their network.

8. Database Administration

Corporations retain more information than ever before and are quite dependent on their databases. Regulatory compliance has had a huge impact on database management and data retention. Corporations are required to retain information for a number of years and, in some cases, emails as well. Storage space and solutions have become much cheaper, so there is more emphasis on data retention. Having the ability to create and extract information from one of these databases is critical. Many IT Projects use a SQL backend, Archiving information from Microsoft’s Office Communication Server requires a SQL backend. If you are going to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), this will require a SQL backend. IT Pros these days do not need to be DBAs, but they must be able to administer and maintain these servers. There are several database systems commonly used: SQL, Oracle, and MySQL.

9. Desktop Imaging

Imaging of desktop systems is a critical skill as companies are shifting to standardized desktops and deployments. Part of this is done to deploy a consistent and secure platform as well as to provide ease of management. There are many imaging programs available, as well as Microsoft’s Windows Deployment Services and imaging utilities.

10. Helpdesk (People Skills)

One of the most critical skills that IT Pros need to learn is how to interact with non-technical people. The Help Desk is the first interaction most users have with the IT department, and it should be a positive experience. IT Pros are very good at their jobs, but sometimes lack the ability to relate to their non-tech colleagues. Users just want their computers fixed or their data recovered; they are not concerned with the processes behind our actions. IT Pros should have some experience working at the Help Desk.

The full article can be found here.

It is not very often that I am compelled to pass on information that is not of a technical nature. As most of you are aware, techie-stuff is just more fun from my perspective. But on occasion there is an article that comes across my email that I not only enjoy and learn from, but have the desire to share with the masses. It is my small contribution that perhaps we can all learn something and better ourselves in some way. People skills, just like computer skills, get better with practice.

I’ve provided a link to the article with the synopsis here. Just the title of this article alone was enough to grab my attention, “You Were Right, but it Didn’t Matter: 12 Ideas for Arguing your point effectively“. Enjoy.

1. Realize that a dialogue should not be about you, the opponent, the turf, or the superiority but about making the right decision. Accept the fact that you just might be wrong and treat the opposition with respect.
2. There are two parts to every argument: A position and a bunch of points that support it. Always separate them and be clear on them both. “I support solution A. The reasons for my recommendation are as follows.” On the flip side, learn to identify and separate these two parts in your opponent’s argument. If you can’t do so reliably, ask for clarification.
3. Never accept an argument that you don’t understand. Ask for clarification.

Read the full article here.

After many months of recording, living through weeks of laryngitis, squeezing in 20 minutes at a time, we’ve finally published the SharePoint Administration training video series.

SharePoint is a very large technology that is really broken down into two separate administrators, the Server Administrator and the Site Collection Administrator. This video series covers the planning, installation, and configuration of SharePoint. Sharee will walk you through the installation choices and provide best practices on how to install SharePoint in various environments. She will show you how configure your farm for basic needs and dive into the Central Administration application in full detail. Finally she will wrap up with configuration of the Shared Services Provider. You will be able to get a “sandbox” SharePoint server environment up and running after completing this video series. Note: this series does not cover the installation of the SharePoint prerequisites such as SQL Server or the .NET environment.

You can check it out at LearningSpot.com.

Once a year there are updates posted on various Web sites regarding what we should be getting paid for what we are doing. I love to see that the efforts I have put into my career are still in high demand, and for more money. This week Global Knowledge came out with their study on What’s Your Certification Worth? According to their study PMP, ITIL, and Microsoft certifications salaries increased in the past year, where Cisco decreased, and VM Ware made the list for the first time.

My SharePoint server had displayed error messages in the Event Log for months. I just figured that as long as it was still working I wouldn’t need to worry about the errors. Well, on Monday it stopped working. So that has a way of working its way up the priority list. I finally had to give in and and attempted to fix the issues. I was receiving the LoadPerf error Event ID:3012 and Perflib error Event ID: 1008.

 

What I discovered was that when you use the System Monitor tool, some counters may be missing or do not contain counter data. The base set of performance counter libraries may become corrupted and may need to be rebuilt. You may also need to rebuild any custom (.NET Framework application created) counters or any extensible counters.

This behavior happens if certain extensible counters corrupt the registry, or if some Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)-based programs modify the registry.

If you use the lodctr /r command from the command prompt, you can overwrite all Performance counter registry settings and Explain text, replacing them with the configuration defined in the file specified. For more information on event log monitoring or system auditing visit this Microsoft site.

The performance strings in the Performance registry value is corrupted when process Performance extension counter provided.