Summary of 2nd Dutch PowerShell User Group – DuPSUG meeting with additional resources

Future events

Before starting with my summary of 2nd DuPSUG meeting, I want to inform you about some future events first:

• Dutch PowerShell User Group Meetings
  • To keep track of news, use the links  to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the RSS feed on the DUPSUG website.
  • In the future, the plan is to meet every June and November.
  • The next meeting will probably be at November 7th at VX Company.
  • The idea is that community members will also present their own experiences, use cases, scripts, tools, methods. If you want to do so, please contact the DUPSUG group.
    • Remko Weijnen | Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn might be one of the people presenting at a future DUPSUG meeting.
  • Jeff Wouters might be able to arrange one or more copies of the PowerShell Deep Dives book from Manning since he’s contributing to it. The book isn’t complete and released yet, but Manning has an Early Access Program which means that you will get access to the completed chapters now and will get the full version when it’s done. Until June 13 there’s even a promotion to get a 40%-50% discount and it also applies to other great PowerShell books.
• Inter Access Microsoft Summer Summit (Hilversum, July 2nd 2013 17:30-22:00 CET)
  • For more info and registration go to: 
    http://interaccesssummersummit-es2.eventbrite.nl
    

This event

Last Thursday I attended the second Dutch Powershell User Group meeting in Hilversum hosted at Inter Access and sponsored by Sapien Technologies Inc.

Just like I mentioned in the summary of the first meeting there were manu interesting sessions that provided me with more insight and inspired me for practical uses. It was also great to discuss current developments with other knowledgeable and passionate people. The main differences with the previous meeting was that:

• This meeting was completely in Dutch, while the previous one was completely in English. As such, the workshop descriptions were also in Dutch and you needed to bring your own laptop.
• The format of this meeting was more of a workshop, while the previous one was mainly presentations.

Thanks go out to all attendees, especially those presenting, organizing and sponsoring the event. Special thanks to Daniel Bot for helping me fix a (stupid mistake in a) script I was working on

Goodies and giveaways

• Every attendee got a 7-day free pass for Interface Video Training.
• At random a person could win:
  • Sapien Windows PowerShell video training
  • Sapien PowerShell Studio 2012
  • Active Directory e-book

Workshops / presentations

And now on with the really interesting stuff, the sessions/workshops. Below are the sessions with some info about the speakers and their sessions. I also added notes I took and other information I looked up afterwards. If you come across any errors or have comments, please leave a reply so I can fix it.

 

Microsoft – Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V 3.0 best practices checklist

Roger Osborne has posted a great article with a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V best practices checklist.

I especially like the fact that it’s not just a checklist, but it also explains what it does and why it is considered a best practice to do it this way (in specific situations).

Additionally you might also want to take a look at “Top 20 Hyper-V Performance Metrics You Should Care About” and System Center Advisor.

 

Home LAB – How to use Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and VMware Workstation on the same machine

In yesterday’s post I described that for my purposes it was still necessary to run VMware Workstation sometimes despite having Client Hyper-V installed on my Windows 8 machine.

What you have to keep in mind though, is that you’re already running a hypervisor when you have Client Hyper-V installed in Windows 8. Installing and running VMware Workstation might cause problems. So unfortunately you cannot run them at the same time. This is also true for other virtualization products like by example virtualbox.

As a workaround you can either uninstall or (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. When you want to switch between Hyper-V and VMware Workstation it is ofcourse best to just temporarily disable Hyper-V.

In this forum post, a couple of methods are described to (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. It includes creating a seperate boot menu entry to boot with Hyper-V disabled and modifying the setting either through registry or a command. All methods do require a reboot however.

PS:

• This kind of configuration is ofcourse not supported and should only be used for testing purposes in non production environments.
• Depending on both your hardware and what your planning to do, you might also want to consider:
  • Running VMware ESXi from a USB stick
  • Running Windows 8 from a USB stick with Windows To Go (WTG).
• It should also work on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and up, but I haven’t tested it.

 

Home LAB – Virtualization and how to enable nested ESXi and other hypervisors in VMware vSphere 5.1

As a passionate ICT person, I work with multiple virtualization products including Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

At home I’m running Server 2012 with Hyper-V in my home lab and even though it works perfectly, I miss the option to be able to run multiple other hypervisors beneath it like by example multiple Hyper-V, VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer instances.

With VMware products like VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation you can enable this with only a couple of minor adjustments as described in these great articles:

• How to Run Hyper-V in vSphere 5.1
• How to enable nested ESXi and other hypervisors in vSphere 5.1

For me personally, I’ll stay with my Hyper-V based home server and my Windows 8 Client with Client Hyper-V installed. For testing purposes however, I’ll have to use VMware Workstation 9 on my Windows 8 machine.  (even though I have Client Hyper-V installed). This way I can still run other hypervisors when needed.

I still hope though that Microsoft will add a similar feature to Hyper-V in the future.

 

Summary of 1st Dutch PowerShell User Group (DuPSUG) meeting

General

Last Friday I attended the first Dutch Powershell User Group meeting in Eindhoven at Master IT Training and it was great. There were a lot of knowledgeable and passionate people and the interactive sessions were great as well. Thanks go out to all attendees, but especially to the ones presenting and organizing the event.

The fact that we were asked to leave the building (because it was getting pretty late and they wanted to lock up), also stresses the passion of all attendees because. If this wasn’t the case we probably would’ve stayed a lot longer.

Be sure to check out the Dutch PowerShell User Group (DuPSUG) website and Twitter on a regular basis for articles and future events. Ed Wilson also wrote a post of the meeting on the “Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog”.

Photos

Original photo on flickr

Sessions

Below are the sessions with some info about the speakers and their sessions. I also added notes I took and other information I looked up afterwards. If you come across any errors or have comments, please leave a reply so I can fix it.

 

70-417 exam preparation materials – Upgrading to MCSA Server 2012

For those looking to upgrade their existing certification to MCSA Server 2012 by passing the exam “70-417 Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2012″, be sure to check out these resources:

• Windows Server 2012 Upgrade Jump Start video recordings (70-417)
• Windows Server 2012 Upgrade Jump Start Q&A Chat Transcript day 1 (70-417)
• Windows Server 2012 Upgrade Jump Start Q&A Chat Transcript day 2 (70-417)
• 
  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/13763.windows-server-2012-early-experts-70-417-resources-for-preparation.aspx
  
• 
  http://www.enduria.eu/preparation-resources-for-the-exam-70-417/
  
• Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge

Also consider using the Prometric discount offer for those who intend to upgrade to MCSE.

For those looking for articles with more detailed information on (specific) Server 2012 features, take a look at one of my previous posts.

 

Review of yesterday’s free “IT Camp Windows Server 2012″ event

Today I attended the free ”IT Camps Windows Server 2012″ event in Eindhoven at Master-it in Eindhoven and I really liked it. It was a real hands-on IT Camp in which they tell you some interesting things about Server 2012, while you are also able to immediately use the technologies you learn about. Ofcourse it’s also a great work to get to know new interesting people.

They also used feedback from previous IT Camps very well. This was very noticeable because now everyone was able to join the hands-on labs. Because of better preparations there was also still plenty of time to explore all assignments and go into more details.

Many thanks to Tony Krijnen and Daniel van Soest from Microsoft for this great event.

There are still IT Camp events planned, but I don’t know if you can still register for them. Check the link below for more information about the event contents, dates and locations:

http://www.microsoft.com/netherlands/evenementen/event.aspx?eventid=675&date=20121016&eventtype=TechNet#locations

 

Free Jump Start for “70-417 Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server Windows Server 2012″

Microsoft is hosting a free jump start for those looking to upgrade their current Windows 2008 certification by taking exam “70-417 Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server Windows Server 2012″.

I’ve attended some jump starts in the pasts and I really like them, so don’t miss out. Even though I’m already certified, I will be attending it as well. You will always learn new stuff AND you get the chance to get answers to any questions you still have.

 

 

I passed exam “70-687 Configuring Windows 8″

Besides getting “MCSA: Windows Server 2012″ certified , I also passed my Windows 8 exam “70-687 Configuring Windows 8“.

I’m still waiting for the results of 4 beta exams and hope I can pass them and get these certifications:

• Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Server Infrastructure
• MCSE: Desktop Infrastructure

To be continued ……

PS: For more information about Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, be welcome to check my “Microsoft Information Flood” post. I’m a bit behind on updates, but it should still prove to be a valuable resource.

 

I am “MCSA: Windows Server 2012″ certified

After desperately checking if my results were in for the beta exams I took, I finally got the great news that I passed the first three beta exams for Windows Server 2012. This means I’m now officially “MCSA: Windows Server 2012″ certified.

I’m still waiting for the results of the other 5 beta exams *fingers crossed*, but I couldn’t have wished for a better start

PS: For more information about Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, be welcome to check my “Microsoft Information Flood” post. I’m a bit behind on updates, but it should still prove to be a valuable resource.