Hi!

Well, since Colm signed off from TechNet with his final contribution to the TechNet Flash a fortnight ago, I've been making great strides with meeting the community at events and user group meetings and hearing your feedback on the programme. It's been an active couple of weeks (and weekend for that matter - pity about Waterford getting taught a lesson in hurling on Croke Park on Sunday!).

The biggest news in TechNet world for the past few weeks was Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal's visit last week. It was cool to have two of the finest SQL speakers and trainers on this planet visiting Ireland - Kimberly is often referred to as SQL Goddess and Paul, a SQL Server product group expert who worked on versions 2000 to 2008, has a depth of SQL knowledge which few mortals could match!

Kimberly and Paul presented on Index Internals and Fragmentation to a strong turnout from the SQL Server User Group on Thursday evening in Sandyford. The crowd wasn't too over-awed with Kimberly and Paul not to ask questions and give feedback on their Indexing and Fragmentation personal experiences. It was a very open and interactive session, and Kimberly and Paul certainly had all the answers! The SQL Server User Group generally meets every second month and consists of DBAs and Devs coming from a variety of different backgrounds and locations. Niall Flanagan (SQL Server MVP) does a top job running the group and TechNet does its part to support the group by providing expert technical speakers, meeting venues and more. Please don't hesitate to sign up to the group and avail yourself of this terrific resource.

Once Kimberly and Paul were finished delivering training, Bob Duffy (SQL Ranger and friend of TechNet), got a chance to pose some probing questions to Kimberly and Paul on how they felt about their experience in rainy Ireland and get their opinions on the best bits of SQL Server 2008. Here are some short video interviews you can click into by topic.

Another active user group I connected with last week was the Windows Server 2008 User Group. On Tuesday evening I attended their meeting on the topics of Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager 2008, which was on in Buswells Hotel in Dublin's city centre. Dave Northey (my TechNet colleague) discussed Hyper-V and clustering with Hyper-V, while Aidan Finn (C Infinity) handled some of the more detailed design and troubleshooting details you'd need to know when deploying Hyper-V. Mark Gibson (Microsoft Ireland) talked about Microsoft's management solution for Hyper-V, including Virtual Machine Manager 2008. See Dave Northey's blog for a link to the slides and some of his demos from the night, along with several other virtualisation posts including helpful tips and resources. This is another great group to get involved in and there are still some places available for the big W2008 Terminal Services event they are running on 3 October. It's being held in the Guinness Storehouse and is sponsored by Alex Yushchenko.

I also wanted to mention the Corp Virtualisation launch event, which took place in Redmond last week. This event celebrated the coming together of a number of technologies, including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Application Virtualisation and System Center Virtual Machine Manager among others. At this event there were a number of big announcements, including the upcoming availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 and the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 which will be available as a no-cost download. There were also demos of the live migration capabilities which will be available on Windows Server 2008 R2. Learn more on virtualisation.

For any of you currently working in an organisation considering deploying either Windows Vista or the 2007 Office system - or both, this event is worth catching. It's an interactive training session, specially designed for Technical Decision Makers, IT Implementers and Infrastructure Architects, to show how straight-forward deploying these technologies can be. Presenters will include Microsoft deployment experts, as well as consultants from both Microsoft and deployment specialist partner Novosco. This Deploying Windows Vista and Office 2007 event takes place in Microsoft's office in Leopardstown Dublin on 24 September. Register for the Deploying Windows Vista and Office 2007 event.

Here's an overview of the agenda:
Session 1: Business, management and technical benefits of Windows Vista and Office 2007
Session 2: Microsoft Deployment Experience Demonstration
Session 3: Microsoft Deployment - 'How To' - Windows Vista
Session 4: Partner shares experience of customer deployments in the Irish market
Session 5: Microsoft Deployment - 'How To' - Office 2007
Session 6: Ask the Experts

Under the Hood: Windows Vista Performance... Need Answers? On Wednesday 24 September, Mark Russinovich will host a virtual roundtable for IT professionals worldwide to explore top of mind performance issues, common misconfigurations, and tips on how to fix them. From boot times and applets to disk performance and battery life, this is chance for IT professionals to find out how to optimise Windows Vista and what they can do to improve overall system performance.

As part of the 'virtual' experience, IT professionals will be able to submit their questions about performance and optimisation to the panel live during the event - or submit questions in advance. If this topic is relevant to you, save the date and join Mark on 24 September.

Before I wrap up, I wanted to share a few interesting Windows Vista sound bytes with you, some of which came as news to me!

A handy link, given to me by one of the Microsoft Consultancy team: get all the key technical information you need in one place. In my coming editions, I'll be including technical articles written by Microsoft Consultants, starting with the topic of virtualisation. Please email me at endaf@microsoft.com if you have any questions or feedback on this newsletter or the TechNet programme in general.

Once again, I wanted to tell you about feedback to Microsoft Ireland across all areas. In our continuing efforts to improve your experience with Microsoft Ireland, we'd like your input and feedback on our products, services and staff. You'll soon receive an invitation to the upcoming Microsoft Customer and Partner Satisfaction Survey. I'd really appreciate it if you could please take the time to complete it.

You'll be contacted by IPSOS, our certified research vendor, to complete a customer satisfaction survey. If you use a spam filter, please adjust the settings to allow email from domain feedback.en@satisfaction.ipsos.com.

By the way, have any of you checked out the new Windows ad? Gates buying shoes with the help of Seinfeld - what do you make of it?

Thanks for reading!

Enda Flynn
TechNet Manager
Microsoft Ireland