Ran over to lunch after watching Speaker Idol. I found the short cut tunnel which was a boon and really trimmed down the amount of time it took me to get over to the dining hall. However, as fortune would have it, the side I came out on was closing down. It was only 12:50pm and lunch closed at 1:30pm, however, they were literally trying to take the food out from under my spoon as I put it on my plate. And they didn’t seem the least bit concerned I was trying to eat. They had already pulled out all the dressings, bread and butter so I just settled for some quick beef brisket which was good. I could have walked all the way down to the other end of the hall, but at that point I had about 20 minutes to eat and then get to B206 for what turned out to be a killer session: “EXL307 Load Balancing with MS Exchange Server 2010.”
Andrew gave a great talk on all the ins and outs of load balancing the different Exchange 2010 protocols via the CAS role like OWA, ECP, EWS, RCP client and ActiveSync. He also showed off newly released virtualized NLB appliances from F5, Citrix and others so that you can leverage it in a lab or as a production virtualized appliance. Available for both Hyper-V and VMware. Personally this will rock for me as it is always hard to get use of the prod F5 appliances in the labs at work. If I can now load a virtualized appliance, I can, for the most part do all of the work myself and not have to wait for the networking team to get around to assisting me. After all, they are busy too.
Then it was time to crush some calories with the afternoon ice cream break – this time with the awesome addition of Moon Pies and chocolate double decker Moon Pies!
I tried to attend the BOF talk on High Availability in Exchange 2010. It was SRO and very popular – it was a good topic and there was no EXL Exchange talk at that time slot. However, as it went on, it got way hot in that packed tiny little room. I have had my spa treatment for the day. Then a few laps around the Expo and then off to the UC Roundtable that Exchange MVP Jeff Guillet (@expta) organizes each year for Exchange and Lync IT Pros to meet at and discuss our favorite topic!
Then I am sure #TheKrewe will be somewhere burning the midnight oil … more later.
Geeks With Blogs has been given the opportunity to host a blogger’s lounge at MS TechEd 2011 this year. I highly encourage anyone who loves to blog about technology, Developer or IT Pro, to head on over and introduce yourself. I have been blogging off and on (as life and time permit) with this group for a long time now and you couldn’t find a better bunch of guys that are passionate about both community and technology and their site really supports this. Be sure to say hi to Jeff and John. They are located in the Expo Hall over by the TechNet Edge big stage. Speaking of the TechNet Edge big stage, Speaker Idol is going on right now and this is another wonderful program that Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin run giving aspiring speakers a chance to strut their stuff and earn a trip to TechEd 2012 as a speaker all expenses-paid. As someone who has tried to break in to conference speaking I can really appreciate the opportunity they are providing to those that love to speak.
I know – where the heck is the Day One post? I will have to post that legacy post later. I am moving on with the current day. Day one was packed with activities to say the least, capped off with a wonderful dinner sponsored by @BetsyWeber of @TechSmith fame.
Day two began with the death march out to the dining hall in the remote wild of Hall C. Luckily, apart from meals, I haven't had any reason to venture all the way back out to Hall C. Being an Exchange-focused geek I have been able to spend all of my time in the same room. Every session has been in B206 or thereabouts. The day has begun with Rand Morimoto’s excellent “EXL305 – Best Practices for Successfully Transitioning to MS Exchange 2010.” Now being 50% of the way through my own Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 migration I knew a lot of the information but I was still able to walk away with 4 or 5 new nuggets which is all I ask for. Rand was very in-depth, helpful and at the end pointed us to a number of resources for further learning.
Rand was then able to assist me in the Exchange TLC booths with some DAG quorum scenarios I have been looking at.
I then hit the Expo Hall to collect my free 15 minute massage from the Exchange team. Show them that you follow @MSFTExchange and you can pick one up too. I plan on getting de-stressed right before the Expo Hall closes at 5pm today.
I had to miss the 10am sessions due to some conference call obligations with my job damn you! But hey, they are footing the bill for me to be here. I plan on catching the web replays as soon as they are available. Now it is off to lunch (grab a water for the walk) and then to the 1:30 sessions. I plan on hitting: “EXL307 Load Balancing with Exchange Server 2010.”