Technically Speaking

Credit to MotSaG

Came across a project from Microsoft Gold Partner MS Team called MobileNoter. This appears to be OneNote like application for the iPhone that uses a desktop sync piece to allow it to sync your OneNote sections to the app on the iPhone OTA. Interesting. The say it will go to beta soon and you can sign up for notifications at the site. As a lover of both OneNote and the iPhone I will keep an eye on this. I had been using Evernote to recently fill the gap as it works on all devices and platforms.

Microsoft announced at 1:40pm PST yesterday that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have officially been “Released to Manufacturing” which is to say all the bits have been finalized and signed off on. You can read announcements here, here and here. And, of course, all over the twittersphere.

Bits hit TechNet +, volume licensing download sites and MSDN on August the 6th.

I can now rebuild my laptop for the last time (until that Windows 8 beta is released).

Congratulations Microsoft. Some critics in Cupertino will say this should be called Windows Vista sp2 but personally, I don't care what you call it. It is a major revision in usability, speed and performance that I am happy to see come out of Redmond.

I wanted to write a blog post to document how I do some day-to-day things. It helps me to keep track of my work habits, refine them and perhaps help some others who are looking for some solutions.

My current rig is a Apple MacBook Pro 13” unibody. It has the 250Gb drive with 4Gb memory. I am running the latest version of OS X Leopard. I am really enjoying the 13” form factor. It is a little smaller and lighter than the previous 15” unibody which, to me, just felt heavy. I also don't notice the lost two inches in the screen the way I thought I might. Plus, you have much more power than with the MacBook Air. This model may be a favorite with an executive looking to run on a Mac. But it doesn't say executive status the way an Air does, I know! I have also noticed that in the two weeks I have been using it, not once has the battery been hot as it constantly was with the 15”. I have no idea if this is due to the new built-in battery or something they changed on the airflow or internals. However, my lap is very happy.

I have three browsers loaded: the latest Safari v4.0.1, FireFox 3.5 and Google Chrome developer build. I do the bulk of my browsing in Safari but once in a while a page will act funny and I will switch over to FireFox. However, the SSL VPN that my employer uses only works with Safari. On the downside, Safari has been hanging quite a lot when using the SSL VPN. Lots of non-responsive force quits. And, Safari wont automatically recover my lost tabs for me the way FireFox will.

For Tweets I rely on TweetDeck. Although I am not a fan of the memory leaks associated with Adobe Air apps, its suits my work habits the best. I like being able to span the columns across a large external monitor and view many searches at once.

My personal email is handled through GMail in the browser where it works brilliantly. I have no need to download it to another client on my Mac or Windows clients. By the same token I also use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. It leaves no data on my client and when I switch computers, to say, my home computer or rebuild my laptop (as I often do) I can pick up right where I left off. Easy peasy.

I run a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac in VMWare Fusion. I have heard some good things about Sun’s Virtual Box and may try that soon. I run a Windows virtual machine for a couple of reasons:

1. My employer’s applications and tools are still largely Windows-centric. There are more Macs in the business now and gaining but they still aren't first-class citizens when it comes to apps and tools. We are getting there though. The VPN issue is a big one. Visio is another. I still haven't found a Mac app that replaces Visio or can read\modify Visio files. Ditto for Outlook and Microsoft Exchange. As many Mac people know, Entourage is a pitiful replacement for Outlook. It gets better with the Web Services beta but you need Exchange 2007 – which is also a requirement for the coming Snow Leopard enhancements and I am sad to say we are still running Exchange 2003.
2. Did I mention no MS Visio or Outlook native Mac versions?
3. We also use MS SharePoint heavily and while Safari does a good job with the sites, there are some things that don’t quite translate and I need to bop over to IE for.
4. There still isn't, IMO, a blogging tool as good (or as $free) as Windows Live Writer for the Mac. I am keeping my eye out though. And certainly none I have tried that can automatically blog to a SharePoint site as Windows Live Writer can.

 

I don't game on my computer other than the odd hand of Texas Hold ‘em Poker so no worries there.

I use MS Office for the Mac 2008 (sans Entourage) for my office needs. I also utilize Google Docs on a small scale for some personal stuff. I try to store as much of my data that isn't sensitive in the cloud. I live Windows Live SkyDrive at the moment as it provides a bigger quota (25 Gb) over Windows Live Mesh (a measly 5Gb). However, SkyDrive is a manual process and to make matters worse, you cannot drag and drop folders, only files. Which is a real PITA for copying over folders of docs and a music library is almost impossible. I lost a lot of data with MS Live Mesh before I understood some of the subtleties. For instance, when you hit your quota, data added continues to sync between computers, but does not load to the cloud. Flatten the computers and lose the data that is overage. Ouch for those not in the know.

I use iTunes for my music management as I also use a company provided iPhone. I am very fortunate that I get to test out a goodly number of mobile devices and portable computers. IMO iTunes works as well as any other media management app. I am a generalist in my music and media usage and as such my needs are pretty basic.

For remote connectivity I use a Sprint Novatel USB Broadband dongle. The software is Mac and Windows compatible and runs well. On the Mac, it places an icon in the menu bar that I can initiate a connection from. In Windows 7 it is simply recognized by the OS and is an option on the connect menu under wireless once you install the drivers. No 3rd party software required.

For note taking I had always loved what I consider to be the best in the field: Microsoft OneNote. On a Mac however, not so much, as there isn't a version available. I sometimes think (believe strongly) that Microsoft decided to take their three most popular productivity apps (Outlook, Visio and OneNote) and omit them from Office for the Mac just out of spite. Since I needed an app that works across Mac, Windows and iPhone if possible I have been using EverNote. EverNote is wonderful and almost as well done as OneNote. There is also a Windows Mobile and Blackberry version.

I have had the good fortune to test both the Palm Pre and Apple iPhone 3Gs. In my day job I am an architect with responsibilities over messaging and mobility – hence I get to try a lot of new devices in order to evaluate their applicability for our enterprise users. One thing I have come to regard as a universal truth is that ranking mobile devices is almost a waste of time. They are so subjective depending on the personal habits and preferences of the person using them.

There are some things that a certain group of users will find in common - “good email experience”, “works well as a phone” or “good signal coverage and strength.” But even in these general areas there is a wide variety of experiences and preferences. With this in mind I followed all of the hype, tweets and reviews leading up to the release of these two devices. Twitter global searches are a great way to get a feel for how a device is being experienced by the Twittering public. Flaws or cool features quickly bubble to the surface via re-tweets or a preponderance of similar topics across tweets.

I have used both devices for about a week each and here are some of my completely un-scientific observations:

• The Palm Pre implementation for Exchange ActiveSync mail is completely unsuited for enterprise companies. There is no support for remote wipe, enforcing password policies,etc. In fact, if you currently force the acceptance of these policies, you will not be able to download mail to your Pre without an exception.
• You can remote wipe the device yourself from the Pre website you register at upon starting the phone for the first time. You can also set a screen lock PIN on the device. However, these require the user to enforce them, generally not an accepted company compliance policy.
• Exchange email is also very basic in what it offers – which is even less than what the iPhone v1 offered. You can read, send, reply, forward. You can cut and paste.
• Outside of the email experience, the Pre operates very nicely. It is mostly responsive and crisp, only slowing when there were more than 5 or 6 apps open at the same time.
• I had no issue with the buttons on the keyboard and was able to adjust to using them with my sausage-like fingers in minutes. I also had no issue with the edges of the slide-out keyboard. I did not find it overly sharp or cut myself on it. Perhaps I have thick skin!
• The phone is very comfortable in the hand. Much more so than the iPhone.
• The iPhone 3Gs is noticeably faster than previous versions. Much faster. Very responsive and crisp when launching windows and switching apps.
• The video camera is very nice and I find myself using it often. The resulting QuickTime files look sharp on the phone or computer. You can also trim\edit the files on the phone before uploading them to YouTube. I think we need an app here to merge files and do more advanced editing.
• The new camera specs and macro settings are also a nice improvement. I often find myself taking pictures close up of things and this addition really helps.
• From an email standpoint there are some nice improvements that have been asked for. They still aren't as far along as Windows Mobile with Exchange support and fidelity but they are getting there.
• You can now create calendar appointments and invite others from the corp directory. You can also forward appointments and meeting requests.
• You can now type emails in the landscape rotation.
• You can now search with Spotlight across your mailbox. It is fast.
• From a security perspective, you can now use enterprise client certificates on the iPhone. You can encrypt the user’s profile. You can enforce all settings on the device with profile policies. The iPhone now supports ActiveSync 1.2 policies.

Two things I request of the iPhone team please!

• Add unread email counters to the home screen. Almost every other Smartphone on the market has this. I hate having to unlock my phone to see if I have any mail waiting!
• Add enterprise strength management capabilities to the iPhone. The cool factor has the iPhone making some in-roads in the enterprise, but this wont last for much longer if Apple doesn't back it up with things like OTA delivery of enforcement policies and a real-time AD-integrated management console or way to tie in to other vendor’s management infrastructures.

Winner: iPhone by a mile!

Well, the annual feeding frenzy known as the WWDC keynote is now over. There was a lot of good information presented on both Snow Leopard and the iPhone. It was pretty demo-heavy as well – better if you see it in person than if you are at home waiting for the next great tidbit of information. One thing I found interesting were the OS X active users statistics shown at the opening of the keynote. Now, perhaps I missed it – feel free to correct me if I did – but they make it come off like they sold a ton of MacBooks from 2007 – 2009. And while I am sure they did, they real jump comes from the inclusion of iPhone sales since the iPhone also runs OS X.

Photo swiped from gdgt.com which had phenomenal live streaming coverage. The only thing they didn't do was tape a monkey to their heads holding a video camera. I expect this next year guys!

The new iPhone had a lot of the specs that had been leaked in the coming days, although I was personally surprised by the voice commands and the full drive encryption. I had not heard of either of those and the latter is one my company has been anxiously awaiting. Overall, it shapes up to be a fine release. I have to wonder though when the cycle will peak. Can they continue to innovate at the rate of justifying a new handset every year? As an IT worker they (and Palm and Blackberry and HTC) are sure making it hard to enforce standards for corporate devices. Makes me consider pushing this back on to the user to own and as long as it can accept and enforce my policy they can buy whatever they want.

The phone will be released on June 19th and the OS X for iPhone v3 will be released on June 17th. There is a GM release available now for developer members but I will be damned if I can get to it. That server, as they say, is getting hammered.

I will be interested to watch the Sprint\PalmPre vs. AT&T\iPhone battle over the coming months. I just called my local Sprint store and they are sold out of the Pre after getting shipments in Saturday and today. The waiting list has two people on it. However, I hardly live in a metropolis.

Oh, and Snow Leopard will be released in September 2009 and they came out with some new MacBook models. All versions now have a built-in non-removable ‘iPod’ battery.

They had to get their slam in on Vista again and took a swipe at Windows 7 saying it is ‘fundamentally the same as Vista.’ Having been running on Windows 7 since the public beta I can tell you that is not the case. Windows 7 is a dream. So much so I left my MacBook Pro and went back to a Dell e4300 just so I could run it.

Ah, I love it! All of the tension of the Palm Pre vs. the Apple iPhone on one page. I wonder if this was intentional or just sheer coincidence? I will be following it live like many others. I will also be getting a Palm pre in the coming days to play with and of course, a review to follow. I will be curious to see if Apple outright calls out the Palm Pre in the keynote. Do they do a straight-up comparison a la OS X vs. Vista?

Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile has been released in alpha on CodePlex. I am going to fire it up later on today and see how it runs. If it is even has as nice as the desktop version I am going to be psyched.

Microsoft is accepting submissions for the waitlist for the Office 2010 Technical Preview. This is an especially great opportunity if you are already running Exchange 2010 in the lab and want to see how using Outlook 2010 will enhance the experience with things like mail tips, conversation view and universal inbox. The preview is slated to kick off in July. If you attended TechEd 2009 this year, you get priority seeding in to the preview. Sign up in one click at the TechEd event site with your login.

I am sitting in the auditorium waiting for the keynote to start. I am curious to see if there are any surprise announcements or if it is just a re-hash of all the recent public announcements. Rumor has it they may announce VS2010 beta 1. I am sure they will highlight Office 2010 and Exchange 2010 – but to what degree I am not sure.

My hotel was a big disappointment – but I picked it and was tricked by the flashy website so I have no one to blame but myself. I feel like I am staying at a Moroccan hostel. Only one free power outlet to charge all my stuff and no desk so I am working from the bed. :)

I was talking to a Microsoftie in line at the Starbucks in the convention center and she mentioned the attendance is around eight thousand. About what they expected given the economy. No cancellations that they are aware of due to the H1N1\Swine virus.

So far, so good. Got some great Exchange sessions coming up and will post more including notes from the keynote later.

I am going to be blogging the sessions I attend at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles right here on my humble blog. They will be almost exclusively messaging and mobility related - ‘cause that’s how I roll!

I will also tweet as much as I can (I only have two arms) under @ntpro. You can also follow general TechEd 2009 tweets by searching hash tags #teched and #tela09.

Great blog post from the team the runs the hands on labs (HOL) at TechEd.

Three days away – it is almost time.

The only bad thing I have noticed as a result of running the RC1 (7100) build of Windows 7 is some strangeness in the Aero UI. This is on a Dell e4300. About 3 times over the last 48 hours, my window frames go to hell. I can press where the minimize, maximize and close icons should be and they behave correctly, however the corner is a blurred mess as is the rest of the window frame. I am using the video driver which Win7 installed so I may have to try the Dell version. When I went to install it, it complained that I was installing over a newer version of the driver so I let it be. But this isn't going to fly …

As I contemplate the design that was going to be an organizational upgrade to Exchange 2007 – I am now shifting gears towards skipping to an upgrade of Exchange 2010. Some things that are influencing my decision:

• The ability to use lower tier storage without compromising performance on the mailbox server. Thanks to all of the database optimizations like sequential writes, db schema re-design and table optimization, cache changes, etc. The database is now truly a portable and replicable object.
• Now that the target for replication is the database and not the server, my high availability options are greater and my need for engineers with specialized clustering experience is removed. I can spread my database replicas over all of my data centers as long as I have 250ms round trip latency or less.
• I can move user’s mailboxes and not affect their uptime or my SLA’s. Since mailboxes are now moved asynchronously in the background loads can be adjusted as needed without downtime.
• My database is now self-healing – enough said.
• My users can do more self-administration through the Exchange Control Panel (ECP).
• My transport servers now have resiliency as well through the shadow queue. If a server with the transport role goes down, the other transport servers have a “shadow” of the queue and can re-send the messages.
• The Outlook client (or any other client for that matter) no longer communicated directly with the server holding the mailbox role. All connections are now proxied (in a much more efficient manner) through the Client Access Server role.
• I don’t have to wait for Exchange Server 2010 sp1 before I deploy. Microsoft is already running close to 6M mailboxes on Exchange 2010. That’s beta testing that you cannot sneeze at!
• Now that I have 4-5 copies of every database (and the data contained therein) in all of my different data centers, there is no more need for me to take daily backups to tape (or disk for that matter) of my databases. I can use replication and replication lag\truncation to protect me from physical and logical database corruption.
• My Mac and Linux users now have a rich web client for accessing email now that the premium Outlook Web Access experience is supported on Firefox and Safari.

So I now have about six months in which to test all my scenarios in the lab, confirm everything will work the way I dream it will and then get in some load and performance testing. The lab will be virtual as will the deployment so things will work out nicely in that regards. I am curious to see if I can support the new CAS role requirements on a virtual guest.

There is also the option of doing a hybrid approach with Exchange Hosted Services (EHS). EHS is the ‘cloud’ offering from Microsoft. This is a shared services environment that has hosted mailboxes, mail hygiene edge services, hosted archiving among other things. I have been working on a model where we move all of our commodity mailboxes (customer service, administrative assistants, task workers and service desk) to the cloud and keep the 40% high-risk\value mailboxes (executives, research, sales and legal) on-premises where they are under our control for legal hold, quota management, etc. The beauty of hosted mail hygiene in the cloud is that the traffic never sees your LAN – it is all discarded ahead of time. You also then have a great deal of flexibility in the case of a disaster or virus outbreak. EHS can queue your mail up for X number of hours\days while you sort out recovery issues or decide on a strategy for tackling an outbreak.

So I am trying to sketch out some mailbox server scenarios for my Exchange 2010 design. I think I am leaning towards iSCSI or perhaps direct-attached SAS drives, but since I am doing virtualized Exchange servers, I don’t think I can load all the storage I need in to the ESX chassis. That leaves me with iSCSI. I am looking at three models to ‘standardize’ on for the business:

Config 1:

1Gb mailboxes x 1000 mailboxes max = 1Tb database

Config 2:

1Gb mailboxes x 500 mailboxes max = 500Gb database
3Gb mailboxes x 100 mailboxes max = 300Gb database
5Gb mailboxes x 40 mailboxes max = 200Gb database
Total = 1 Tb databases

Config 3:

1Gb mailboxes x 500 mailboxes max = 500Gb database
5Gb mailboxes x 100 mailboxes max = 500Gb database
Total = 1Tb databases

If you were to then populate each server configuration in to a Database Availability Group (DAG) spanning three different data centers, you would require a total of 3Tb for each server – not counting OS and log file space requirements. Remember that the rule of thumb is 240ms roundtrip networking latency between any server in a DAG to another server in the same DAG. Also remember, that while servers in a DAG can span Active Directory sites, they cannot span Active Directory domains.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the e14 Ignite training in Dallas on the latest version of Exchange server (Exchange 2010) about to get released to beta. As I rushed from the airport to the training, I was stopped to sign the NDA which prevented me from blogging about all the great things I was sure to learn. As expected the training was phenomenal and with the official release of the beta I can now blog about the public details of the enhancements.

Here are some of the ones that I am particularly excited about:

1. No more storage groups! There are now only databases and databases are not tied to a specific mailbox server now with the new database mobility features. Once you can move databases amongst any mailbox server in a Database Availability Groups (DAG) you immediately improve your HA profile and resiliency.
2. Clustering-specific expertise no longer required. The DAG now abstracts the clustering specifics from the engineers setting up the system. Beyond making sure the OS required pre-requisites are on the server and the Exchange mailbox role installation, the other parts of installation and configuration are not handled by the engineer. The system automatically keeps tabs on the health of the ‘cluster’ and its related subsystems.
3. No more use of SCC, CCR, LCR or SCR replication technologies. There are not specific options to utilize these replication technologies individually anymore.
4. No more single instance storage. Now that there are no more storage groups and only individual databases, there is no more single instance storage.
5. Databases and log streams are now 1:1. For each database there is an associated log stream.
6. No more backup to tape. There is no longer a need to backup to tape. With multiple replicas (up to 16 per DAG) that can span datacenters, backing up to tape for site recovery is no longer needed. Also, with the larger supported mailbox sizes, streaming backups to tape will take days to complete even on the fastest current tape technology.
7. OWA. OWA now supports the ‘premium’ experience on Safari and Firefox as well as IE. No longer are users who prefer other browsers stuck with the ‘basic’ or ‘lite’ experience.
8. Database page patching. The database is automatically monitored for corruption or corrupted pages in the database. When this is encountered, the service will automatically retrieve the same page from one of the database replicas and replace the bad page.
9. You can now  have up to 100 databases per server and supported mailbox sizes approaching 10Gb.
10. No user interruption on mailbox moves. The mailbox is copied asynchronously in the background while use continues. Once the copy is completed, the last few emails are copied over and the users mailbox location is updated in AD and then redirected by the CAS server.
11. Client communication. The bulk of all client communication is between the client(s) and the CAS, not the mailbox server. Clients do not talk with store.exe on the mailbox server. The CAS now handles all that communication on the client’s behalf and optimizes this communication in a pooled fashion. Going forward the CAS server will need to have increased resources as a minimum over the mailbox server role in E2K7.

Exchange 2010 beta resources:

Exchange 2010 beta TechNet Website

Beta Download

Exchange 2010 Forums

TechNet Exchange 2010 Library