Session Abstracts
The 2008 Launch Day and TechDays 2008 offer a wealth of information for Developers, IT Professionals and IT Architects.Listed below are the abstracts of all sessions delivered over the three days.
Mission Critical Features in SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Dandy Weyn
Attend this session to learn how new enhancements in SQL Server 2008 provides you with the highest levels of availability, protects your business critical data and scales across growing data volumes and mixed workloads. This session provides an overview of the new security, scalability, performance and availability features in SQL Server 2008.
Simplify Management with SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Steffen Krause
Attend this session to learn about the new manageability improvements in SQL Server 2008 that enables you to administer, monitor and maintain your data platform infrastructure while reducing the time and cost of management. This session provides an overview of the new manageability improvements that enables you to manage the infrastructure with policies, monitor and optimize your platform with insights and relevant information and scale your management across multiple servers.
Virtualizing your IT Infrastructure with Windows Server 2008
Speaker: David De Backer
The new Windows Server Virtualization technology, Hyper-V, and updated presentation virtualization technology, Terminal Services, are core features in Windows Server 2008. This session will provide you an overview of the virtualization technologies in Windows Server 2008, the scenarios, features, benefits and how they deliver real value. Management of your virtual infrastructure is critical for improving the overall efficiency of your IT environment, this session will also cover how our management technologies enhance the core Hyper-V and Terminal Services scenarios to make your datacenter a dynamic and flexible IT platform.
Windows Server 2008 Overview
Speaker: Arlindo Alves
Windows Server 2008, in addition to incorporating new capabilities and enhancements to existing features, includes a number of improvements in the core OS that enhance the Operating System’s capabilities in this area. Features aimed at increasing the ability of Windows Server 2008 to support highly critical workloads by improving operational reliability, reducing system failures, and easing management. We will also discuss improvements in other related elements in the platform that help Windows based systems and services help move an organization's IT Department forward.
Windows Server 2008 Security and Compliance Technologies
Speaker: Erik de Bondt
Windows Server 2008 offers rich capabilities for securing your IT Infrastructure and proving tools to ease with compliance mandates. This session will discuss the Windows security and compliance features such as Network Access Protection, Right Management Services, and Active Directory Federation Service. subsystem, why auditing is important and how to configure an audit policy e updated Windows Server 2008 event subsystem
Active Directory Attacks and How to protect against them
Speaker: Jan De Clercq
This session provides examples of attacks against Active Directory and shows how you can protect your enterprise directory against them. The attacks addressed in this presentation include password cracking-, elevation of privilege-, and denial-of-service-based attacks. The session will help you understand some of the inner details of the AD authentication and authorization systems – such as LM hashing and Kerberos pre-authentication, cached credentials, SIDHistory, and token bloat… – and how these can create attack opportunities. Most importantly, this session illustrates the need for organizations to have a rock-solid AD administrative delegation and auditing model and a proven AD disaster recovery plan.
Deploying Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Kurt Roggen
Learn about the deployment options & features in Windows Server 2008 including Windows Deployment Services (WDS) and multicasting, Windows Imaging, Microsoft Deployment.
Microsoft Deployment Solution Accelerator is the next version of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 and provides deployment automation and task sequencing for Windows Server 2008 to support deployment of both server and desktop infrastructure. We will have a look at deploying both Windows Server 2008 full installations and Server Core installations, including Server Roles, Role Services and Features.
Managing Windows Server 2008 with Server Manager and WinRM
Speaker: Daniel Van Soest
Windows Server 2008 makes significant improvements in server manageability with a one-stop administrative solution called Server Manager. This streamlined management tool allows IT administrators to complete setup of Windows Server using the Initial Configuration Tasks page, and configure and manage server roles and features with prescriptive wizards and a unified management console. WinRM is the new and improved WMI protocol for Windows Remote Management. This session will present and demonstrate the capabilities of Server Manager and how to extend this with the WinRM functionality and tools.
Microsoft Forefront
Speaker: Michael Anderberg
Many have asked over the years - why isn't Microsoft in the anti-malware business themselves, why do they leave this business to partners? Well with the introduction of Forefront and its various member products, we do. Come to this session and get an understanding of how Microsoft Forefront’s products easily integrate with each other, with your organization’s IT infrastructure, and they can be supplemented through interoperable third-party solutions, enabling end-to-end, defense-in-depth security solutions. The result for you? Simplified management, reporting, analysis, and deployment enable you to more efficiently protect your organization’s information resources and secure access to applications and servers
Network Access Protection (NAP) Architecture and Design
Speaker: Kevin Rhodes
This session will review the functionality and architecture of Network Access Protection (NAP), look at the pro’s and con’s of enforcement mechanisms and then discuss deployment design and execution. It will talk about the experiences from the Microsoft deployment of NAP and how those lessons learned can be applied in deployment planning.
New Enterprise Search Technologies: Microsoft Search Server 2008, Federated Search and Faceted Search
Speaker: Patrick Tisseghem
The Microsoft search space has been extended with a number of important products and technologies. The goals of this session is to give you an overview of the latest features. Following topics will be covered: search administration with the Microsoft Search Server 2008, Federated Location Definition files and how to use them to create new federated search locations, customization of the Microsoft Search 2008 Search Center, customizations in the XSL that is used to transform the search results into the HTML representation displayed in the browser, faceted search, refinement of the search results and the delivery of options to have users execute a search within the search. This session is also an opportunity for Patrick Tisseghem to highlight the topics that are covered in his latest MS Press book “Inside the Index and Search Engine” out in the shops around April 2008.
Providing Remote Managed Services with Microsoft System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007
Speaker: Rory McCaw
This session will cover the new managed services solution Microsoft is building to enable partners to create a services-based business by delivering remote IT managed services to small and midsized businesses. Supported by System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Operations Manager 2007) and System Center Essentials 2007 (Essentials 2007) technology, this combined solution creates a powerful platform with which you can provide remote software update management, monitoring and troubleshooting of customer environments over a secure internet connection. In addition, you will be able to extend the service to show your customers the value of the services you provide.
Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODC) - A deep technical breakdown
Speaker: Jorge de Almeida Pinto
Companies with branch offices sometimes face a dilemma..."Are they going to place a writable DC in a non-secure location or no DC at all?!" Placing a writable DC in a non-secure location creates the high risk of compromising the complete forest if the writable DC for example is stolen or compromised. Placing no DC at all, means that authentication must go over the wire and that makes another dependency for authentication which can have the undesirable effect on authentication when the WAN is not available. Besides this, other issues exist like non-Domain Admins having the need to administer the local DC in a branch office that has others roles (e.g. file and print services) or LOB applications installed.
With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft implements a new type of DC that aids in mitigating the risks of placing a DC in a non-secure location and assigning permissions to non-Domain Admins on DCs. This session explains how this new type of DC works and will also cover other interesting information to know about.
Recovery Scenarios, High Availability and Site Resilience with Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Speaker: Scott Schnoll
This session covers the spectrum of recovery, availability and resiliency. It opens with an over of the recovery features in Exchange 2007 SP1, and how to use them to recover from small, medium and large scale failures. Then, we dive deep into high availability strategies and features, including load balancing, redundancy, failover clusters and continuous replication. The rest of the session covers datacenter resilience, including backup site preparation and activation, and resiliency strategies.
Sharepoint for Administrators
Speaker: Steffen Krause
SharePoint is installed – now what? This session gives an overview on the three stage SharePoint administration architecture. We explain the different administrative roles, from IT administrator to content administrator. In addition we talk about some of the most important administrative tasks – backup, permissions and security.
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services – New Architecture, Visualisation and Tablix
Speaker: Steffen Krause
Reporting Services 2008 has much to offer. See the new architecture, which no longer needs Internet Information Server (IIS) and provides new features like better memory management and enhanced rendering. Learn about the new, completely flexible Tablix layout which enables you to combine fixed and dynamic columns and multiple parallel groupings in one report. And finally, take a look at the new chart and gauge controls and how you can create great looking visual reports.
SQL Server Intergration Services (SSIS): Zero to Hero
Speaker: Dandy Weyn
"Have you dealt with different sources of data that you want to consolidate into a central database?
Whether you need to collect data for Business Intelligence purposes, or as an administrator you want to deal with the log files that certain applications spawn out, starting from zero you will become your company’s SQL Server Integration Services SuperHero.
You will learn how to create basic data transformation packages, as well as provide complex tasks such as lookups and work with variables and expressions.
This session will provide you with the necessary skills to use SQL Server Integration Services, and focus on e of the new features in SQL Server 2008 Integration Services, as well as the SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Engine."
Troubleshooting Web Sites on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7
Speaker: Fabio Yeon
Ever want to know what's really happening inside your Web server? Like what requests are executing or what AppDomains are loaded in processes? Have you wanted to trace a request but only when it's failing? Come to this session to see how Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 is expanding its monitoring & diagnostics capability through features like Runtime Status and Control data that allows you to see not just which worker processes are serving which pools, but also what requests are executing in them and their current state (including what module they're in and how long they've been there!). We'll also be showing you a new feature called Failed Request Tracing that will allow you to configure IIS to trace requests for a specific URL and only flush those trace logs to disk if the request meets a failure condition that YOU define. Want to find out why your clients are hitting 401's? Or why a request for a static file is taking WAY too long? Use Failed Request Tracing to view this data. Also covered is how you can instrument new managed modules and capture that tracing in IIS trace logs (like Failed Request Tracing), as well as how to route ASP.NET Page Trace events into IIS trace logs. Come to this session to see how IIS 7 is enabling you to finally get under the hood and see what's really happening.
What’s new in Windows PowerShell 2.0 for IT Pros?
Speaker: Bart De Smet
With PowerShell 1.0 being a huge success, we’re streaming forward for an even more impressive 2.0 release. We’ll focus on the various forms of remoting, improvements to the PowerShell language, the Universal Code Execution Model, restricted runspaces, script cmdlets, script internationalization, script debugging support, eventing, the graphical PowerShell, and much more. This is your chance to come and see Windows PowerShell 2.0 in action and to learn how it will help you being more productive in managing your IT infrastructure.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1
Speaker: Tony Krijnen
Microsoft Windows Vista has monitoring tools on board that look at the reliability of the operating system, drivers and applications. Windows Vista SP1 leverages that data and besides new updates it will improve reliability, Besides the improvements we also take a look at the deployment of Windows Vista SP1. What are the common problems you need to be aware of? What are the different ways to install Windows Vista SP1? performance, application compatibility, and device compatibility. In this breakout we will talk about the areas improved upon in Service Pack 1. What was changed for File copy, resume from hibernation and standby? What are the new tools for performance?
“Under the Hood” of System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Speaker: Edwin Yuen
Learn about the architecture and deeper technical details of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and how to use that knowledge to better manage your virtual machines. Topics to be covered are technical review of the physical to virtual migration process, using Powershell with SCVMM, advanced deployment topologies, SAN integration.
Configuring, Managing and Remotely Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core
Speaker: Daniel Van Soest
Windows Server 2008 introduces a brand new installation option called Server Core. Server Core is Windows without Windows! With Server Core you can minimize the complexity and attack surface but faced with a command prompt how are you going to configure and manage the server and its core services? In this session through the use of comprehensive demos we will show you how to optimally manage the server and its roles from the command prompt. The session also covers how to administer Server Core remotely using the familiar MMC snap-ins and how to properly configure Server Core to allow the MMC snap-ins to connect.
Deep-Dive and Advanced Functions of DPM2007
Speaker: Jason Buffington
In this session, we will go into real specifics of how data protection is achieved for each of the core workloads, including SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and Virtualization - including advanced application topologies, recovery scenarios, etc. We will also briefly cover command-line control of DPM 2007 through PowerShell, deployment and monitoring through System Center, and discuss bare metal recovery of production servers using the DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT).
http://blogs.technet.com/JBUFF
Exchange2007: How about Autodiscover, DPM, Database Portability, and EMS
Speaker: Ilse Van Criekinge
In this session you will be given an in-depth overview of the configuration requirements of the Autodiscover service in Exchange 2007, including its importance for the Office Communicator Phone Edition (code-named Tanjay), Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, and Windows Mobile 6.1. You will also be able to decide why Data Protection Manager should be deployed in your Exchange organization. And then, you will dive into this great feature included with Exchange 2007 Mailbox server: Database Portability. To conclude, Ilse will show you five great Exchange Management Shell cmdlets that you will keep in mind when managing your Exchange environment
Group Policy Infrastructure in Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Kurt Roggen
Learn about the new Group Policy features in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, including the new format and functionality of Administrative Template (ADMX) files and interoperability with legacy ADM files, the ADMX central store, improved awareness of changing network conditions, using multiple local Group Policy Objects (MLGPOs), Group Policy templates, Group Policy Filtering and the new Group Policy Preferences (GPP).
Group Policy Preferences Extensions significantly extend the scope of Group Policy to include areas such as drive mapping, folder creation, shortcuts, scheduled tasks and many more. Additionally, new features such as setting-level targeting and the elimination of “tattooing” provide greater control over where and how policy settings are applied.
We will provide an introduction to the products acquired from DesktopStandard and discuss their future availability and roadmap.
Hidden Windows Server 2008 Security Gems
Speaker: Jan De Clercq
This session stresses the importance of a proactive and defense-in-depth-based approach for securing a Windows-rooted I.T. infrastructure and it shows why Windows Server 2008 is a better choice for proactively protecting your I.T. assets against malware. It provides a technical deep dive on the following Windows Server 2008 security gems: Windows Integrity Control (WIC), and Owner Access Restrictions (OAR), and new system-level security features such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Protection (DEP) and Windows Service Hardening (WSH). The session explains what security services these features can provide, how you can leverage them and how you should preferably configure them in a Windows Server 2008 infrastructure.
How to Transition from sms 2003 to Sccm 2007 – Notes from the field
Speaker: Kim Oppalfens
Come and learn more about the different methods to transition from a SMS 2003 environment to System Center 2007. During this session we will discuss the pros and cons of the Wipe and Load, In-place Upgrade, Side-by-Side Migration and the speakers’ personal favorite the Side-by-Side upgrade. Furthermore we will show how you can use scripts to assist you in the automation process of certain tasks within the migration process.
Implementing the new Microsoft Fundamental Computer Investigation Guide for Windows
Speaker: Kai Axford
Human Resources tells you "We think Bob may be storing some illegal files on his machine. We need you to find them." What do you do now? Join us for a unique and interactive presentation as Kai and a special forensics guest star demonstrate and discuss computer investigations. We will demonstrate the tools that are discussed in the new manual, and see examples of the more popular forensics tools for Windows. This session is a must-see if you're being asked to run your own internal investigations.
Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5: More than a name change!
Speaker: David De Backer
Microsoft Application Virtualization (previously known as SoftGrid) is driving new levels of efficiency in the desktop management. With version 4.2 now released, the natural question that comes to our minds is: “What’s next?”. This session will review the Microsoft Application Virtualization and will include demonstrations of some exciting new capabilities that will be coming in the next release.
Next Generation Networking in Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Rafal Lukawiecki
Below the new look and feel of Windows Server 2008 lies an entirely re-written, updated, and expanded core of networking technologies: NG TCP/IP. You do not have to be a geek to get excited by networking and Windows Server 2008 has plenty to offer. To start with, the Next Generation TCP/IP protocol stack offers a myriad of performance, security, and administration improvements. Next in line is built-in first-class support for the IPv6 protocol, which is progressively expanding and may eventually replace the present standard of IPv4. Add to that features such as Network Access Protection and you have the cutting-edge yet secure and reliable foundation of any IT infrastructure. This session will aim to look at all of those changes and improvements. We will even present you with the (probably) fastest-ever crash-course on IPv6. Naturally, we will spend some time looking at all of the new features and performance goodies that NG TCP/IP has for you. If you are responsible for networking we would be grateful if you would consider attending this rapid-paced session.
Operations Manager 2007 Tuning and Best Practices from the Field
Speaker: Rory McCaw
This session will provide you with the ammunition to take your Operations Manager 2007 installation to the next level. If you have installed Operations Manager and are receiving unwanted alerts and feel a little overwhelmed and unsure of what to do, this session is for you. This session will provide you with the knowledge of how to perform post installation configurations, reduce noise, create custom rules and following best practices.
SQL Server 2008 – Enhancements for the Relational Data Warehouse
Speaker: Steffen Krause
As a part of the “Pervasive Insight” theme, a lot of work was done to make SQL Server 2008 an even better platform for relational Data Warehouses (DWs), from small to multi-Terabyte. New T-SQL commands like MERGE are introduced to make updating a DW a better experience. Change Data Capture enables you to do high performance tracking of changes in production tables. Star Join enhancements make typical DW queries faster and more efficient. Data and Backup compression reduces both on-disk size and I/O bandwidth requirements on large DWs. Partitioned Table parallelism enhance multithreaded queries against partitioned tables. Native support for new Date/Time data types enable hassle-free import of temporal data from other platforms. Come to this session to see how all of these features work and how they make SQL Server 2008 a great Data Warehousing platform.
Tips and Tricks for Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Speaker: Scott Schnoll
This session provides 30 tips and tricks for installing, configuring, tweaking and maintaining Exchange servers. There are tips covering Windows Server 2008, clustered mailbox servers, database health checks, Windows PowerShell, the Exchange Management Shell and Exchange Management Console, exporting data, using certificates, hardening Exchange servers, and more!
Transitioning from Exchange public folders and file servers to SharePoint
Speaker: Geert Baeke
SharePoint offers exciting new possibilities for document storage and collaboration. Learn how to transition from Exchange public folders to SharePoint document libraries and the best practices for migration. See how you can access SharePoint documents using Exchange Server 2007 OWA and mobile devices. You will also learn how to migrate from standard file servers to SharePoint for both shared and personal user data. Learn how to implement SharePoint My Site and the best practices for users to access this data.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Overview
Speaker: Edwin Yuen
Want to learn more about the upcoming Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2008?
This session will provide an overview of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
Topics will include an architectural overview of Hyper-V, specific usage scenarios with Hyper-V, a comparison with Virtual Server, and a demonstration of the Hyper-V technology.
This is a must-see session for those who will work with Virtualization in Windows Server 2008.
Windows Server 2008 Licensing, we can’t make it fun, but we can make it easy.
Speaker: Patrick Viaene
Speaker: Erik de Bondt
How do I know if I already have a license for it? What does a license allow me to install? Does virtualization change the licensing-rules?
From a license perspective, WS2008 is just another MS product that requires the correct license for usage. But what are the possible acquisition-paths? If I had WS2003 with Software Assurance, can I really install it ‘for free’? Do I need more licenses if I have mutliple VHD-files with WS2008 as host OS? Can I rent WS2008? Like it or not, at some point, smart IT Pro’s must ask the right questions for correct but economical usage of WS2008. Discover the PUR – Product Use Rights – a document that holds all answers to a too simple question: ‘If I have a license for MS product, what am I allowed to do with it?’ A large part of the session will focus on ‘Licensing in a Virtual Word’. Together with Technical & Solution Advisor Erik De Bondt, we will address all virtualisation offerings and their correct license usage.
Windows Vista Myth Busters
Speaker: Michael Anderberg
To many the much awaited Windows Vista was somewhat of an anti-climax... or so it would seem. In this session we will systematically address and disspell some of the myths that have appeared around Vista,during the first year of its life. What is User Account Control (UAC) and why should I NOT disable it the first thing that I do. What about drivers, are there any? Moste definetly so! My applications won't run, they say, why is or isn't that and what can you do about it. Attend this session and get the most of your own questions answered.
