Anyone going to the MS Launch Event tomorrow?

[thedave1164]

If you are, PM me and maybe we could meet up. :)

[Gman]

I'm registered but just too busy to go. I imagine it's going to be heavy on the marketing, too. I've downloaded the bits for Server 2008 but haven't had the time to play with it. I pray to God it's not the POS that Vista is.

I've got desktop platforms going EOL that I'm having to benchmark and test potential replacements for and a pre-release Barcelona server on the way. With server platform launches in Feb-Mar, desktops in May-June, and notebooks in Sept-Oct, things get busy. Add in a move to Exchange 2007, OCS 2007, Sharepoint 2007, SCCM 2007, evaluating the requirements for an Office 2007 upgrade and the other goodies rolling out tomorrow and I've got no free time. Oh, wait, my free time is between 1am and 6am.

[Delphi]

What exactly are they launching?

[thedave1164]

What exactly are they launching?

Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008 and Visual Studio 2008

[BadShot]

G-man, I'm hitting the Microsoft Management Summit at the end of April.. all about SCCM.. I'll get you the low down from that.

Server 08 should be a nice set of improvements, the expansions in the LDAP infrastructure is interesting, role based servers without extraneous default applications/services (yes I know you can do this in Linux/Unix platforms for 25 years now). I do have concerns about the over reaction to initial security configurations being over zealous, but that should be fairly easily mitigated with scripted installs and custom configurations. Read only Domain Controllers has some serious potential as well, even though the SAM db is still on the RODC at least it can't be modified and replicated. On that front they've fallen back to the NT4 hub and spoke model for DC replication and architecture. Should be interesting at least.

SQL08 on the other hand.. I haven't read much but I honestly don't see value yet, especially given that so many are still barely into SQL05.

SharePoint and the associated apps systems is MS's answer to Lotus Domino. It's a PITA to setup and manage but it's well ahead of the previous versions for security and scalability. We're using it in a distributed enterprise at a small scale now and it's got a ton of benefit. Just have to re-engineer my current deployment to be more scalable and user friendly.

Exchange 07, seriously mixed feelings on that. But, for a large enterprise, in conjunction with MOSS07 (SharePoint) it has a interesting potential. Finally MS caught on to why Domino based enterprises haven't been willing to switch.

Open source is a nice idea, but lacks wide private sector acceptance for wide scale and true Enterprise scaled use. Wrap that up with the reality behind having to re-train the user population for any type of open source desktop, retrain IT staff to implement and support the solutions and you see where the battle is lost. Sure there are niche' solutions provided via open source, but the segment remains small. Open source faces the same fundamental failures that Apple and their solutions do.. lack of home use customer base due to a broad lack of understanding and in the case of Apple, costs exceeding the Win-Tel platform.


So who ever gets out to the MS Dog and Pony show, make sure and let us know how it went.

[Ridge]

See, I really DID think this was multiple sclerosis :)

[thedave1164]

Well, I attended the IT Professional session today, and it was mostly on Server 2008.

Went over the increased security, (read, the inital install with zero config), also covered published apps with the new terminal server. Server core is interesting, pretty much a MS version of unix/linux.

Didn't see any info on the Visual Studio or SQL 2008.

They did cover the HyperV, Server 2008 Virtualization.


All the stuff looks great, but I have a feeling that the license costs are going to be a big issue for most of their customer base.

The easiest way to get the CAL's for all the new stuff is to get the E-CAL or Enterprise CAL, I looked into it and it would almost DOUBLE our EA cost.


Anyway, I got a nice insulated lunch bag, Windows Vista Ultimate NFR, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise NFR, Visual Studio Standard 2008 NFR and a coupon for SQL 2008 NFR. Plus a paid day off and a nice lunch at Popeyes :D

[Ridge]

Well, I attended the IT Professional session today, and it was mostly on Server 2008.

Went over the increased security, (read, the inital install with zero config), also covered published apps with the new terminal server. Server core is interesting, pretty much a MS version of unix/linux.

Didn't see any info on the Visual Studio or SQL 2008.

They did cover the HyperV, Server 2008 Virtualization.


All the stuff looks great, but I have a feeling that the license costs are going to be a big issue for most of their customer base.

The easiest way to get the CAL's for all the new stuff is to get the E-CAL or Enterprise CAL, I looked into it and it would almost DOUBLE our EA cost.


Anyway, I got a nice insulated lunch bag, Windows Vista Ultimate NFR, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise NFR, Visual Studio Standard 2008 NFR and a coupon for SQL 2008 NFR. Plus a paid day off and a nice lunch at Popeyes :D

I'll buy those NFR products from ya![ROFL3]

[Marlin]

I hooked Up a Receptical Today. And, two Duct detectors.








[ROFL1]

[Gman]

Ooh. Popeye's red beans and rice. I haven't had that in a while since they closed the Popeye's on this side of town.

Totally agree on SQL 2008. We're just now trying to migrate our DBs to SQL 2005. We're trying to leverage 64-bit 2005 for some heavy apps and are running into all kind of problems with DB connector compatibility.

Also torn on Exchange 2007. New MMC 3.0 interface for the Admin Console really blows in my opinion. From what I hear it's also unstable as all get out. Whoever decided that some functions had to be performed via PowerShell should be slowly tortured. All functions should be available via the Admin Console with PowerShell available for scripting if it's so desired.

SCCM 2007 is not much different from SMS 2003 R2 with all of the feature packs. The OS deployment components are really targeted for WIM images (Vista). We're probably going to skip Vista entirely and go to Windows 7 in 2009/2010. I'll probably wait for SCCM 2007 R2 which is currently in beta.

Hyper-V can't hold a candle to VMware ESX VI3.

The free software is what I really wanted.
...lunch at Popeye's would be a bonus.[Dinner]

Open source? Too funny. We have a ton of software, much of it not suited to a Linux client or server. We have a few RedHat servers that do basic things like log aggregation. Heavy lifting with open source is a PITA. MySQL just doesn't compare to Oracle.

I have 64-bit Ultimate running on this desktop in another partition in order to take full advantage of the memory. I have a 32-bit newsreader app that locks the system up hard (have to give it the finger). So much for application isolation. 64-bit also doesn't want to play nicely with the Xbox 360 as a media extender. If you think your new Vista system is fast, you'll be surprised how much faster it is with XP. When I'm on XP, I find I'm not watching the spinning blue ******* or watching applications fade to white when they become unresponsive or crash. Did I mention that Vista blows?

...but I also spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out why my 15" Macbook Pro (Leopard 10.5.2) would connect to an 802.11g network fine with WEP, but would connect to WPA but not pull a DHCP address. Apparently all of the upgrades and patches goobered up the keychain on the system. I deleted the multiple entries for the WPA SSID, recreated the WPA connection which created a new single key, and voila, WPA connection with a valid DHCP address. So much for Apple being the answer to whatever was the question. Apple systems are expensive, they fail much more often than our standard HP desktops and notebooks, and we require 1 person to support 80 Macs. Mac users seem to need a lot more hand-holding. We have 2 people supporting 20,000 PCs.
This stuff is hard.[Faint]

Nice talkin' shop with you guys. At least I'm not opinionated about anything...

[Gman]

I'll buy those NFR products from ya![ROFL3]
You'll need a tax stamp for that.