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TAM Newsletter February 2010

Microsoft news and product information from microsoft.com and product team blogs

Security:
Security Monitoring and Investigations on the Microsoft Corporate Network The Microsoft Enterprise Network
is one of the world's largest and most prominent networks. Learn how Microsoft IT monitors the security of its
network and responds to malware and suspected intrusions or policy violations.
How Microsoft does IT
Windows 7 Enhances Intellimirror, Microsoft's End User Backup Solution Learn how Windows Server 2008
R2 and Windows 7 features enhance the user experience of the Intellimirror service. In addition understand
the technologies and benefits of the Intellimirror service as Microsoft IT End User Data Backup &
Centralization Solution that users' files are always available and secured in centralized MSIT network.
Additionally, while fulfilling the business needs above, the solution is operated within a limited budget.
How Microsoft IT Uses System Center Virtual Machine Manager to Manage the Private Cloud Real world
scenarios on how Microsoft IT is utilizing System Center Virtual Machine Manager as a key component of its
management strategy in support of the virtualized data center
Windows Desktop and Server 7 / 2008 / Vista / 2003 / XP
Heads Up: End of Life support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 This is just a quick reminder that
Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 are nearing end-of-support. This applies to Windows 2000
Server and Windows 2000 Professional, as well as all editions of Windows XP with SP2. On July 13th, 2010,
these products will no longer be eligible for regular support and free access to security updates. April 13th,
2010 is end-of-support for Windows Vista RTM version.
o Details about Microsoft Support Lifecycle can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
o Windows 2000 End-of-Support Solution Center can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/win2000
An Introduction to the Windows System State Analyzer The basic functionality of the System State Analyzer
tool is to allow you to compare two snapshots taken at different points in time. This allows you to compare the
state of a machine both before and after an application install for instance. Today I will give you a run-through
of what the tool looks like while doing a compare of a system both before and after installing a software
package, in this case Virtual PC 2007.
Marks Blog: The Case of the Slow Logons The case begins when a systems administrator at a large
company got multiple end-user complaints that logon was taking over three minutes. The users didnt
encounter any problems once logged on, but the delays were understandably frustrating. Many other users
running with the same software configuration werent experiencing issues, however.
VMMap - A Peek Inside Virtual Memory This tool gives us a neat summary of a process virtual and physical
memory usage. It shows a graphical summary as well as a detailed report of a given process memory usage
pattern.
Virtually Painless - Using Disk2VHD to reduce time to solution The Disk2VHD tool from Sysinternals may
come in handy. Simply create a virtual image of your physical server using Disk2VHD, then load the VHD
under Microsoft Virtual PC or a Windows 2008 Hyper-V server. With undo disks or snapshots enabled, you
can reproduce the issue as many times as needed until root cause is determined. At the same time, your
production server can remain active while you troubleshoot its twin in a virtual environment.
Windows 7: What Does it Mean to be Compatible with Windows 7? There are a number of terms thrown
around in the world of app compat that are vaguely defined at best. Now, Im not one to suggest that tedium is
a good practice in general, but in some cases understanding the true technical definition of a term can lead to
significant time savings when that definition is applied to a project.
Directory Services: The importance of following ALL the authoritative restore steps Recently a customer
contacted Microsoft Product Support to determine why the Connect to Domain Controller option in Active
Directory Users and Computers (aka: ADUC or dsa.msc) was generating an incomplete list of Domain
Controllers (DCs) for one domain. Even though the list of available DCs was truncated we found we could
manually enter the name of any DC not in the list and Active Directory Users and Computers would
connect to the DC without issue.


Clustered Certification Authority maintenance tasks I thought I would share with you how to do some common
tasks with a Windows Server 2008 clustered Certification Authority (CA).
Cluster: New Cluster Docs for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) & Migration We have recently added some
Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering content on the web.
R2 Print Cluster? Get this Hotfix! KB 976571 Many of you use Failover Clustering to provide high-availability
to your print servers to ensure that the print spooler resource stays up and running. We have recently
released a Rollup Hotfix specific to print clustering which contains several fixes to improve the stability of the
overall print system and fix issues with migration of print servers using PrintBRM. Microsoft recommends that
you install this Hotfix on all of your 2008 R2 print cluster nodes
Cluster Migration Wizard, is this the only way to migrate shares on a Cluster? As everyone should know by
now, the way to get your Windows 2003 Cluster Server to Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 Failover Clustering is
by doing a migration to the new cluster. So lets say we have a Windows 2003 Cluster running as a File
Server and we are going to be using new hardware (machines, SAN, etc). In order to migrate the shares, you
can use the Cluster Migration Wizard in Failover Cluster Management.
Be Sure to Plan Carefully When Virtualizing Your Infrastructure There is a lot of excitement around Microsoft
virtualization technologies these days and rightfully so. One of the hottest areas right now appears to be
making virtual machines highly available using Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters so end users can
take maximum advantage of Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). This configuration not only
saves a lot of money but also provides business continuity in the event of an unforeseen failure in the
environment. So, what happens when a customer decides they love Microsoft virtualization and high
availability technologies so much, they want to virtualize their entire infrastructure?
Deleting a Cluster resource? Do it the supported way
Remote Desktop Services: VIDEO: How to Install MS VDI on as Single Server using Windows 7 Guests
People have asked us how easy it is to install a complete MS VDI solution and how many servers does it
take. Ive created a video to showcase that you can setup a complete solution including backend, broker, and
web publishing to provide virtualized clients on a single physical Windows Server 2008 R2 box. This sample
uses Windows 7 for the guest. The complete 16 minute video is here.
How to detect RDS-specific application compatibility issues by using the RDS Application Compatibility
Analyzer The tool provides a summary of incompatible behavior between the RD Session Host server and an
application, and provides recommendations for deploying the application on an RD Session Host server.
PowerShell: Whats new in Windows PowerShell 2.0 We are going to take a brief look at some of the new
features in Windows PowerShell 2.0. As you may or may not know, PowerShell 2.0 is now included in
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As of October 2009, PowerShell 2.0 is available to download for
Windows XP SP3, Windows 2003 SP2, Windows Vista-SP1, and Windows Server 2008 RTM.
Perform asynchronous asset management using Windows PowerShell cmdlets for WMI With Windows 7 wmi
cmdlets now have support to perform tasks asynchronously.
The PowerScripting Centennial 99 podcasts of Pure Power. Thats what the PowerScripting Podcast has
been churning out for almost three years! Well, this week is extra special, as you might imagine from the title
of this post. On Thursday, they record episode one hundred: a huge milestone by any means. A testament to
dedication and passion.
How objects are sent to and from remote sessions Instead of piping unstructured text, Windows PowerShell
pipes objects between commands in a pipeline. As a consequence PowerShell remoting also deals with
objects when passing data to and from remote sessions. This post explains how remote objects are
serialized and which types of objects can be sent with full fidelity.
PowerShell for Failover Clustering: Creating Highly Available Workloads One of the things weve provided in
Failover Clustering PowerShell is a set of CMDlets to easily create highly available workloads in a cluster.
Virtualization Technologies
Hyper-V: Hyper-V virtual machines do not start after using Startup Repair Over the weekend, I attempted to
reconfigure some of the drives in my Hyper-V server at home. Note that I said attempted. I ran into
hardware issues and ended up having to revert back to my old configuration - but somehow in all of this I
broke my system disk. This did not faze me because I knew that the excellent startup repair tool in Windows
would soon have me up and running which it did.
Guest post: "Setting the Record Straight - 9 Reasons Why Hyper-V is a Great Choice for Enterprises"
Recently, I came across an InformationWeek Analytics Weblog that asserted a bunch of half truths and
misinformation about Microsofts Hyper-V virtualization solution. Usually, I can just let it go (everyones


entitled to their own opinion, right?), but in this case, the article was so skewed and so misleading that I felt
that I needed to respond.
App-V: App-V 4.6 and applications sequenced using earlier versions With the release of Microsoft Application
Virtualization 4.6 looming on the horizon, a question that seems to pop up over and over again is "Can I run
all my apps that I sequenced using App-V 4.5 or 4.2 with the new App-V 4.6 client?" Another one is "Can I
run my old 32-bit packages using the new App-V 64-bit client?" The short answer to both is Yes but I have a
couple bullet points below that should help clear up some of the confusion.
New Free App-V Self Support Tool (and how to make friends at the helpdesk) Peter Nap, from Login
Consultants, has developed a light-weight, super user friendly tool which does not require MMC access.
MED-V: Moving the MED-V Reporting Database from one SQL Server to another The MEDV Reporting
database is very basic as it is only used by the server for logging events, errors, and status messages. This
makes the portability of the database all the more easy and the process to move a MEDV database from SQL
server to another can be done in a few easy steps.
Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) Administration Video Series now available for download
This series is designed to help IT professionals wishing to learn more about the administrative and
management tasks in MED-V. The series provides step-by-step guidance around common tasks that would
be performed by IT professionals to deploy MED-V. Intended to be consumed sequentially, these videos will
help you get up to speed with key MED-V administrator tasks and accelerate the deployment of MED-V in
your organization.
WSUS: New Antigen category in WSUS A new product family called Antigen will be added to your WSUS
server in the next few days. The Antigen product category will include updates, including service packs,
optional updates, and critical or security updates, for the Microsoft Antigen 9 for Exchange and Microsoft
Antigen 9 for SMTP.
SQL Server
How to have a Select All Multi-Value Cascading Parameter Ive seen several cases that involved Multi-Value
Cascading Parameters and how the behavior of those work. Let me start with the default (Out of the box)
behavior. The example report Ill be using will make use of the AdventureWorksDW sample database. I will
also be using SQL 2008 R2 November Release, but the same will apply to SQL 2008 Reporting Services as
well.
Free Download: Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant Microsoft recently announced the first CTP of a
SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL v1.0, which automates aspects of the migration process
to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 & 2008 including SQL Azure Database.
PowerPivot: Are you a PowerPivot Alpha Geek? Ready to put your Excel and PowerPivot skills to the test?
Take the Excelerators Quiz to see what kind of Excel user you are. Then check out the Alpha Geek Challenge
with Donald Farmer for a chance to win a $250 shopping spree or an all-expense paid trip to the BI
Conference in New Orleans!!!
Exchange Server
Released: Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 In addition to bug fixes reported by
customers we have added new rules to the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer to check the health of your
system.
Interception and Redirection of Messages Using Transport Rules or Journaling When looking for Exchange
controls to copy messages for regulatory compliance needs, you may have come across both Transport
Rules and Journaling and wondered, "Which one best serves the needs of my organization?"
Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator Updated to Version 3.5
Making sense of Exchange Logs using ExLogAnalyzer
System Center
CM: Announcement: Configuration Manager Documentation Library Update for January 2010 This month's
updates contain an updated support statement that in-band provisioning for AMT-based computers is now
supported on client computers running Windows 7. We have also updated topics to incorporate customer
feedback.
How It Works: Automatic Client Approval in Configuration Manager 2007 This post is intended to explain how
client approval works when a Mixed Mode Configuration Manager 2007 site is configured to automatically
approve clients in trusted domains and to offer insight into how to troubleshoot scenarios where this is not
working as expected.


Application Compatibility Toolkit Connector Update To help our customers accelerate their testing and
deployment of Windows 7, we are really pleased to announce an update to the ACT Connector for
Configuration Manager. The Application Compatibility Toolkit Connector (ACT Connector) assists
administrators with collecting the necessary computer and application compatibility information to help plan
for a Windows deployment.
Insider's Guide to Troubleshooting Client Content Download in Configuration Manager 2007 This blog post
offers a troubleshooting guide for customers to diagnose some of the frequently encountered issues relating
to client content download problems. It outlines the scenario, then takes you through how to track the various
processes involved from when the client downloads policy to when the client installs the software.
OM: Operations Management Pack for Windows 2008 R2 Direct Access Server Now Available
Office SharePoint Technologies
Create list relationships by using lookup and unique columns (SharePoint 2010) You can now create
relationships with cascade and restrict delete operations, define unique-valued columns with indexes, and
display multiple values from two or more lists in one list via the Lookup column.
December 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services
3.0 December 2009 Cumulative Updates are available for download for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Cumulative Updates will now always be available at the Update
Center
Microsoft Office System
Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products The Office Sustaining Engineering
team is happy to announce a new website that allows you to track all updates released by Office in a single
place.
Office 2010 System Requirements First off, Id like to explain what level of performance you can expect from
minimum-requirement hardware.
Office 2010: Accessibility Investments & Document Accessibility Upon starting our research for the 2010
release, we knew it was important to continue our accessibility focus (see Microsoft Accessibility for more
info) and ensure that Office 2010 is the most accessible version of Office ever.
Office 2010 Technology in Action at the Winter Games in Vancouver Microsoft, along with many of you has
caught the Vancouver 2010 fever and we figured what better place to try out some of the new features of
Office 2010. Two bloggers, Amber Johnson Borowski and Dylan Derryberry will use the Office 2010 beta
technology to blog live from the Games come February as the winners of our Office Winter Games contest.
Accessing Office Documents Using Your Phone In this post we will talk in more details how you can access
your documents on-the-go.
Access: Access 2010: How to write expressions for Web queries, forms, and reports Access has traditionally
supported a wide variety of expressions in different areas of the application. Tables and fields, queries, form
and report properties, controls, and macros can all use expressions to evaluate data or logic to drive the
behavior of an application. In the past, each of these contexts in which an expression is used have shared a
single, common expression evaluation engine. This means that no matter where you use an expression, the
functions and operators available to you will likely be the same. Things will change when you start to build
web databases with Access 2010.
Power Tip: Making forms easier to use and maintain In todays post I would like to share with you some tips
about form design that Im using consistently in all applications I develop. Maybe you can get some benefit
from my approach to form design.
Access 2010: Design more maintainable apps with calculated columns When I talk to developers about why
they love Access, the most frequent response is always about fast they can build applications that track data.
This saves time and money. Calculated columns are a new feature in Access 2010 that is designed to help
end users and developers build applications faster, and are easier to maintain.
OCS: Free Instructor-Led Training for end-users: Introduction to Office Communicator This live course is held
in a virtual classroom via Office Live Meeting. It will allow hands-on experience to build knowledge, skills, and
confidence to use Office Communicator more effectively.
Additional Windows Live Messenger PIC/Federation IP Address In an effort to provide enhanced capacity and
service reliance, Windows Live Messenger will soon be adding an additional IP address used for
PIC/Federation traffic.
Excel: Excel Web App 2010 Overview Way back in November 2009, the author wrote a short blog post
announcing the two browser-based solutions the Excel team is delivering as part of the Office 2010 wave of


products. That article was mainly focused on Excel Services new features and functionality. This article is
really part 2 focusing on the Excel Web App 2010. See also: Editing in Excel Web App Part I, Editing in
Excel Web App Part II, and Collaborative Editing Using Excel Web App.
Updated Excel Services Web Services API in SharePoint 2010 The Excel Web Services API that initially
shipped with Excel Services 2007 has been updated and expanded for Excel Services in SharePoint 2010. I
will address the additions and changes for the Excel Web Services API for SharePoint 2010 in this post.
Additional information about the Web Services API covering the 2007 implementation can be found in the
earlier posts Excel Services part 6: Building applications with Excel Web Services and Excel Services part 7:
Sample application with Excel Web Services.
Table Improvements in Excel 2010 In this article the author will outline three features in Office 2010 that
improve table interaction in Excel. These feature additions build on the work started Excel 2007, addressing
areas with significant customer feedback and further improving the feature area.
Outlook: Issue with message sizes in Outlook 2010 Beta We have heard from some of you that you are
running into an issue with large e-mail message sizes in the Outlook 2010 Beta. We want to update you on
the status of this issue.
PowerPoint: What Can Multimedia Do for You? Whether youve snapped a few videos with your digital
camera that youd like to share with your family or youve got important video clips displaying a product in
action for your sales pitch, you can now show them all in the best possible light using PowerPoint 2010.
Download the beta today and try for yourself!
PowerPoint 2010: Hardware Acceleration In Office 2007, we significantly improved the rendering quality of
static content. Users could quickly and easily enhance shapes, pictures, and other content with effects such
as bevels, soft edges, and reflections. For Office 2010, we switched our focus to enhancing dynamic content -
animations, transitions and video. To accomplish this, we rebuilt the core rendering engine using DirectX 9.0.
As a result, youll notice that PowerPoint 2010 is improved in four major ways detailed in this article.
Project: Task Statusing and the new Grid A few weeks back Patrick Conlan posted an overview of some of
the Time Tracking investment areas for Project Server 2010. Today we are going to drill in on one such
investment area, namely the Statusing feature area.
Project 2010: Copy and Paste In Project 2010, weve gone back to basics in an effort to bring you the output
you want with minimum effort on your part. Weve improved the copy/paste experience when going from
Project into the Office apps, and also going from the Office apps into Project.
Tips and Tricks: Changing Constraints Back to Normal So how do you clean up a project with messy
constraints and switch them back to Projects preferred ASAP constraint? You could hunt for them one task at
a time. But thats too much work. Or you could add a Constraint Type column to a view, and search for them
that way, but a bunch of work still remains. A better solution: search for the problem dates or constraints, and
then have Project replace them automatically.
Project 2010: Business Intelligence Overview This post will provide an overview of the Business Intelligence
(BI) investments that were made in Microsoft Project Server 2010.
Visio: SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010 (Part 2) Workflow design often takes a lot of
communication and collaboration. Business stakeholders may send IT professionals business flowcharts to
further automate as workflows. On the flip-side, once the IT professional has implemented the workflow,
he/she may want to store the workflow as a Visio diagram so that all stakeholders are clear on what is being
implemented. Such diagrams can also serve as copies that can be archived for auditing purposes.
Word: The Why Behind Our Styles and Lists Designs There a number of decisions that were made by those
of us involved in those efforts that folks are still talking about (including in recent comments on this and other
blogs). This post gives you some of my personal insights as to why we went in the directions we did.
Word Automation Services: How it Works In my first two posts in the series on Word Automation Services, I
talked about what it is and what it does in this post, I wanted to drill in on how the service works from an
architectural standpoint, and what that means for solutions built on top of it.
Microsoft Dynamics
Bandwidth testing using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance Toolkit CRM Performance toolkit (available
for download in http://crmperftoolkit.codeplex.com/) provides an easy and comprehensive way to test various
performance aspects of your CRM implementation. Here, I will brief on how you can use CRM Performance
toolkit along with NetMon and VRTA to measure the bandwidth utilization during a test run of your
performance scenarios.



Other Information
Microsoft Research: Whos Hogging The Bandwidth?: The Consequences Of Revealing The Invisible In The
Home As more technologies enter the home, householders are burdened with the task of digital
housekeeping - managing and sharing digital resources like bandwidth. In response to this, we created a
domestic tool for bandwidth management called Home Watcher. Our field trial of Home Watcher showed that
when resource contention amongst different household members is made visible, people's understanding of
bandwidth changes and household politics are revealed. In this paper, we describe the consequences of
showing real time resource usage in a home, and how this varies depending on the social make up of the
household.
Microsoft Developer Information
How to open a parachute during free-fall: Introducing Quick Security References (QSRs) We are releasing the
first of a new type of security guidance paper. We are calling them Quick Security References (QSRs).
I Can Feel You Using the Windows 7 Sensor Platform Before we dive into the API, I should explain the
rational that went into the thinking process of the product team while building the Windows 7 Sensor and
Location Platform. (Ill talk about location in future posts.)
Try Windows Azure at No Charge Now available are three easy, no charge* offers to enable you to start using
Windows Azure to develop and test cloud applications before deploying them into production.
Integrating ASP.NET Output Caching with WCF WebHttp Services This is part seven of a twelve part series
that introduces the features of WCF WebHttp Services in .NET 4.
Programmability Improvements in Excel 2010 With Office 2010 right around the corner, we thought it would
be useful to mention the various ways weve improved Excels extensibility this time around.
Preventing auto_open and Workbook_Open events from running As a fulltime developer I often times open
files containing VBA and want to be able to run code. At the same time I sometimes want to prevent
Workbook_Open event code or an Auto_Open macro from running. This little article shows you how to
achieve that.
SuperPreview and Firefox 3.6 release SuperPreview users probably want to know if the newly released
Firefox is compatible with our application. Currently, SuperPreview does not support Firefox 3.6 due to
changes in Firefox that require engineering work on our end. However, we made specific updates in our
Expression Web 3 Service Pack 1 in preparation for precisely this circumstance. In Service Pack 1 we added
the ability to do incremental updates to our browser support outside our normal release cycle. These
changes mean we can release browser support updates in a matter of weeks rather than months.
VSTFS: Rangers Publish TFS Upgrade Guide The TFS Rangers team has just published a guide to help you
get ready to upgrade from TFS 2008 to 2010.

Monthly Reminders of Good Information Sources:

Security Page Links to Key Information
Malware Protection Center The Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) provides world class antimalware
research and response capabilities that support Microsofts range of security products and services. With
laboratories in multiple locations around the globe the MMPC is able to respond quickly and effectively to new
malicious and potentially unwanted software threats wherever and whenever they arise.
HotFix & Security Bulletin Search See also the Contact Us: Hotfix Request Web Submission Form
Microsoft Solution Accelerators are free, authoritative resources to help IT professionals proactively plan,
integrate, and operate IT systems.
Microsofts Support Lifecycle policy provides consistent and predictable guidelines for product support availability
at the time of product release.


Microsoft Premier Online https://premier.microsoft.com The Microsoft Premier Online (MPO) site is a secure Web site
for the exclusive use of Premier Support customers. Note some of the links below may only be available to Premier
Support customers. If you currently have Premier Support and dont have access to MPO, please let your TAM know.
Your TAM can get you access to the site.

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maximize your productive use and the availability of Microsoft technologies within your IT environment. Many services can
be delivered within existing Premier support agreements. Premier support includes access to proactive services that can


help you maximize your productive use and the availability of Microsoft technologies within your IT environment. Many
services can be delivered within existing Premier support agreements.


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