Category Archives: Community

First we take Redmond, then we take Berlin & Ede: Summits & Conferences

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The traveling & speaking MVP

MVPs are a busy lot. They work, learn, travel & talk a lot. Why to share knowledge & experiences for the benefit of all. So in order to keep that reputation going I’ll be heading to SEATAC to attend the Global MVP Summit 2014 in Bellevue/Redmond. After that tech fest I return to Belgium where I’ll immediately head towards Berlin to present at the Microsoft Technical Summit 2014. After a weekend of rest I head north to The Netherlands to present at Experts Live.

No rest for the wicked. There is a a tremendous amount of things happening in IT right now. It takes a little bit of effort to keep up an asses the benefits and value butt once you’re doing that as part of your normal day to day operations it becomes a lot easier to map out  why it’s useful to you and what to use where, when and how.

All this is happening at a time that the information on “Treshold” or Windows vNext is becoming available if we can believe the rumors and the buzz on the internet. Don’t forget that TechEd Europe 2014 is on in the last week of October in Barcelona right before the MVP Summit in Redmond. Like Aidan Finn said, we could go on a 3 month presenting, training & consulting tour right now as the need for insights & skills is growing with the growth in Hyper-V adoption and with that all related technologies from networking, storage to Azure.

Now I can’t invite you to the MVP Summit but I can do that for both the Microsoft Technical Summit 2014 and Experts Live. There will be a lot of international expertise at both events who have hands on expertise with the technology in real life production environments. I always pick up knowledge form them myself.

The Global MVP Summit 2014

Every MVP on this planet tries to make it to the MVP Summit. The face time with and access to so many intelligent people at MSFT is invaluable. Combine that with the opportunity to network experts form all over the globe and you realize why we spend the time effort and money to attend.

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So once more we hop on that great Boeing 747 and let BA fly us to SEA-TAC airport from where we’ll head to Bellevue/Redmond as the summit is spread between both locations.

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The MVP is NDA. So there will be tweets about the fun stuff with fellow MVPs but other than that we’ll be going dark. We have never and will never breach NDA. We’ll also make some time to meet up with old acquaintances, friends and fellow Belgians living & working around Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond.

Microsoft Technical Summit 2014

The moment I get back home I grab a change of clothes & a flight to Berlin.

The Microsoft Technical Summit 2014 is on in Berlin and together with a great number of fellow MVPs I have the distinct pleasure of presenting What’s new in Failover Clustering (Windows 2012 R2).

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It’s amazing to see how many of our community experts are actually from Germany, Austria & Switzerland (DACH) and I’ll be happy so see so many familiar faces I just saw on the other side of the big pond just a week before Smile

Experts Live 2014

On November 18th I’ll be in The Netherlands at Experts Live 2014 in Ede. This is a great event and if you know the brain power of the organizers & presenters this is no surprise. I’ll be presenting “The Capable & Scalable Cloud OS “ and showing some of the scalable capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2 when combined with great hardware. image

So that’s the travelling & scheduling agenda for now. Perhaps I’ll see you at one of those events & if you’re a reader of this blog ping us if you’ll be there for a meet and great. Live is good Smile.

SQL Server Days 2014–Belgium

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The Belgian SQL Server User Group (SQLUG) has been organizing the SQL Server Days for a while now and they have quickly established themselves as a very good event with both quality speakers and content. SQL Server Days 2014 is the 7th edition of this event

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Learn form the best, from and with your peers. There will be deep drive training with international speakers & hard core technical sessions on database administration, development and business intelligence.

If you’re in traveling range of Belgium and a SQL Server professional this is an event that you should seriously consider attending! I have done it in the past and I try to get my own DBA’s to go as well. Why. It’s great quality but more than that it’s all about lifelong learning, getting out of the house to prevent tunnel vision and learning what challenges your peers are facing and how they deal with those.

In a time of cut backs, austerity, tax increases, economic doom and gloom there is still a lot to learn, opportunities to seize and a better, prosperous future to build. The community is there to help those that want to help themselves improve professionally and personally without breaking the bank.  So get registered and prepare to learn and network.

More info:

SQL Server Days 2014
September 30 – October 1
Day 1 = precon / Day 2 = conference
Where: San Marco, Schelle

NTFS Permissions On A File Server From Hell Saved By SetACL.exe & SetACL Studio

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Most IT people don’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling when NTFS permissions & “ACLing” are being discussed. While you can do great & very functional things with it, in reality when dealing with file servers over time “stuff” happens. Some of it technical, most of it is what I’ll call “real life”. When it comes to file servers, real life, especially in a business environment, has very little respect, let alone consideration for NFTS/ACL best practices. So we all end up dealing with the fall out of this phenomena. If you haven’t I could state you’re not a real sys admin but in reality I’m just envious of your avoidance skills Smile.

You don’t want to fight NTFS/ACLs, but if it can’t be avoided you need the best possible knowledge about how it works and the best possible tools to get the job done (in that order).

If you have not heard of SetACL or DelProf2, you might also not have heard of uberAgent for Splunk, let alone of their creator, community rock star Helge Klein. If you new to the business I’ll forgive you but if you been around for a while you have to get to know these tools. His admin tools, both the free or the paying ones, are rock solid and come in extremely handy in day to day work. When the shit hits the fans they are priceless.

Helge is an extremely knowledgeable, experienced, talented and creative IT Professional and developer. I’ve met him a couple of times (E2EVC, where he’s an appreciated speaker) and all I can say is that on top of all that, he’s a great guy, with heart for the community.

Having the free SetACL.exe available for scripting of NTFS permissions is a luxury I cannot do without anymore. On top of that for a very low price you can buy SetACL Studio. This must be the most efficient GUI tool for managing NFTS permissions / ACLs I have ever come across.

Not long ago I was faced with a MBR to GPT LUN migration on a very large file server. It’s the proverbial file server from hell. We’ve all been there too many times and even after 15 years plus we still cannot get people to listen and follow some best practices and above all the KISS principle. So you end up having to deal with the fall out of every political, organizational, process and technical mistake you can imagine when it comes to ACLs & NTFS permissions. So what did I reach for? SetACL.exe and SetACL Studio, these are my go to tools for this.

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Check out the web page to read up on what this tool can do for you. It very easy to use, intuitive and fast. It can do ACL on file systems, registry, services, printers and even WMI. It helps you deal with granting ownership and rights without messing up the existing NTFS permissions in an easy way. It works on both local and remote systems. Last but not least it has an undo function, how cool is that?!  Yup and admin tool that let you change your mind. Quite unique.

As an MVP I can get a license for free form Helge Klein but I recommend any IT Pro or consultant to buy this tool as it makes a wonderful addition to anyone’s toolkit, saving countless of hours, perhaps even days. It pays itself back within the 15 minutes you use it.

Other useful tools in your toolkit are http://www.editpadlite.com/ as it can handle the large (550-800 MB) log files RoboCopy can produce and some PowerShell scripting skills to parse these files.

The Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 4: TechEd North America 2014

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In episode 4 the original Hyper-V amigos (also 4) get together for a chat. Yes, learn about the history of the name and about the what happened at TechEd North America 2014. How Aidan won speaker idol. How I got to be on stage.

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Hans is a bit tired but extremely happy due to a certain soccer game outcome Smile. The orange shirt is not by accident. We discuss the keynote, the content, Azure announcements … we jump into one of our favorite topics storage and storage spaces and speculate a bit about vNext timing.

Enjoy!