I have (finally) started blogging again!

I now post on the Building Clouds blog on TechNet.

And my first post there is the beginning of a series on how to evaluate Windows Server and System Centre on a bunch of laptops..

This was (probably) my last post as the Irish IT Professional

Going by last year the keynotes from Build will cover the product, architecture and roadmap for Windows, Windows Phone, Azure, Windows Server, Visual Studio and other products. The keynote are over two days but we will be hosting the first day’s keynote. All the sessions can be watched on demand afterwards at https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013

Venues

• Dublin - Hilton Charlmont
• Belfast - Hilton
• Cork - Clarion
• Galway - Meyrick

Big screen, refreshments and possibly some prizes to give away.

Watching parties will run from 17:00 – 19:00 (and will continue in the bar)..

Register here: https://aka.ms/BuildIreland

My friends at Prodata have some great SQL Server content coming your way:

Kevin Kline presents “Productivity & Leadership skills for the IT Professional”, June 21^st, Microsoft Building 2, Dublin

Skilled technologists often peak in their career unless they have a variety of non-technical skills.  Attendees will learn how to build credibility and trust, motivate & influence others to achieve maximum effectiveness and productivity. This one day seminar will teach you the fundamental management skills needed to lead a team of technologists.

Cost – 199€

Time - 09.00 – 17.00

Matt Masson presents “A Day of Enterprise Information Management – SSIS, MDS & DQS”, June 21^st, Microsoft Building 2, Dublin

Enterprise information management (EIM) is an industry term for technologies to manage your data for integration, quality and governance.  This full day training session will show you how integration services (SSIS), Data Quality Services (DQS) and Master Data Services (MDS) work together to provide a comprehensive EIM solution in SQL Server 2012.

Cost – 199€

Time - 09.00 – 17.00

Chris Webb presents “Self Service BI and Office 2013”, June 21^st, Microsoft Building 2, Dublin

Microsoft has a new focus for its BI solutions: Office.  After years of concentrating on its corporate BI tools, Microsoft is now investing in self-service BI and with Office 2013 is creating a suite of tools that will empower Information Workers to build reports and dashboards, and to analyse data, themselves.

Cost – 199€

Time – 09.00 – 17.00

SQL Saturday Dublin – June 22^nd, Hilton Hotel, Charlemont, Dublin 2

28 Sessions dedicated to SQL Server, delivered by recognised international experts and local rising stars over 4 tracks.

Cost – FREE

Time – 09.00 – 8.00 (BBQ, Keith Farnan and other entertainment will close out this exciting day)

Advanced Performance Tuning Workshop – Klaus Aschenbrenner, September 30^th – October 3^rd 2013, Microsoft Building 3

In this 4-Day workshop Klaus will:

· Delve into the most prominent performance bottlenecks inside SQL Server

· Show you the different tools at your disposal to enable effective SQL Server performance troubleshooting.

· Teach you how to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks quickly

Cost: 1,799€ (Early bird 1,500€ valid to July 15^th)

Data Mining 3-day workshop with Rafal Lukawiecki, details to be announced, contact events@prodata.ie to be kept informed

Enjoy,

Guest post by Rory Monaghan

An Introduction to App-V 5.0

This video is a good introduction to App-V 5.0 for somebody who has never used App-V before. It covers the topics of what it is, why you should use it, where you can get it and leads into how to set it up and how it works. I also cover some of the new features that did not exist in previous versions.

Setup the App-V Management Server

This is a video demonstration showing how to setup the App-V 5.0 Management Server for application streaming.

And this is part two (setting up the Management Server:

Setting up the Sequencer

This is a video demonstration showing how to setup the App-V 5.0 Sequencer which you use for creating virtual applications.

Setting up the App-V Client

This is a video demonstration showing how to setup the App-V 5.0 Client which is installed on end user devices to allow users to receive and use virtual applications.

Sequencing an application

This is a video demonstration showing how to use the App-V Sequencer to create a virtual application.

Streaming a virtual application

This is a video demonstration showing how to import your virtual application into the App-V Management Server and then stream it to the client machine.

Thank you Rory

This one day deep dive class will get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Windows Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned.

Awesome. How much does it cost?

This event is FREE to the attendees. Gratis! Gratuite! Libero!

What do I need to bring?

You will need an Azure account. You can Sign Up for a free 90 day account here. 
You will need to provide a credit card to sign up, but both the Trial and new MSDN benefit Azure Subscription have a default spending cap of $0.00, so unless you remove the cap you will not be charged. You’ll use this subscription while working on the hands on labs.

Also, if you feeling more adventurous and really want to get more hands on, we will be looking at to do more hands on labs in the afternoon.

Is this for beginners?

Yes, Vikas Sahni will start from the concepts, so even those with no previous knowledge of Cloud Computing will be able to follow the morning session

Is this for advanced users?

Yes and no.  With Windows Azure evolving rapidly, there is plenty that will be new for you in the overview session and you may just learn a few new things in the other sessions.  Plus you can help others during the lab sessions!

Registration is at 9:30 and the event will start in full at 10am.

See you there?

How would you like to win a free place at Kevin Kline’s “From Good to Great: Productivity and Influence Skills for the IT Professional” at the SQL Saturday Dublin (#229) pre-conference?

The SQL Saturday Dublin committee has completed the session schedule for SQL Saturday 229 (https://www.sqlsaturday.com/229/).  In addition, we have extended the early bird on the pre-conferences until the end of May.

So what more could we do?  We decided to hold a competition to win a free place at the SQL Saturday 229 pre-conference – Kevin Kline’s “From Good to Great: Productivity and Influence Skills for the IT Professional”.

Kevin has been an awesome ambassador to Ireland in the SQL community and we wanted to celebrate that fact.

So the question is “How many times has Kevin Kline visited Ireland as a SQL speaker prior to this?”

All you have to do is email ssiug@live.ie with “Competition” in the subject and let us know the answer.

We will complete the draw on the last day of May.

These details can also be found at https://ndflanagan.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/irelands-kevin-kline/

If you wish to attend this or any other pre-conference, the details for these can be found at:

• Kevin Kline’s “From Good to Great: Productivity and Influence Skills for the IT Professional” https://www.prodata.ie/Events/SqlSat229/Precon1.aspx
• Chris Webb’s “Self-Service BI and Office 2013” https://www.prodata.ie/Events/SqlSat229/Precon2.aspx
• Matt Masson’s “A Day of Enterprise Information Management - SSIS, MDS and DQS” https://www.prodata.ie/Events/SqlSat229/Precon3.aspx

Good luck.

The Surface Pro goes on sale on May 30th in Ireland and will sell for €879 for the 64GB device, and €979 for the 128GB version.  No UK prices (yet).

I will tidy this up (one day), but just to get the content out there, here it is:

Day 1

(1) Dave Northey - Introduction and Fundamentals - 25 mins

(2) Dave Northey – Manage and Maintain Availability - 25 mins

(3) Dave Northey - Deploy and Manage Your Applications - 3 mins

(4) Dave Northey - Build and Scale Your Infrastructure -10 mins

(5) Dave Northey - Deliver Services to Devices -18 mins

(6) Aidan Finn – Storage (Introduction & VHDX) - 28 mins

(7) Aidan Finn - Storage (Storage Spaces) - 19 mins

(8) Aidan Finn – Storage (iSCSI Target) – 14 mins

(9) Aidan Finn – Storage (Deduplication) – 20 mins

(10) Aidan Finn – Storage (SMB 3.0) - 12 mins

(11) Aidan Finn – Storage (Scale-Out File Server) - 14 mins

(12) John McCabe – Networking (Introduction & SMB 3.0) - 17 mins

(13) John McCabe - Networking (DHCP) - 19 mins

(14) John McCabe – Networking (IPAM) - 20 mins

(15) John McCabe – Networking (Direct Access) - 26mins

(16) Andrew Lomakin – Active Directory (Introduction & Administration) - 19 mins

(17) Andrew Lomakin – Active Directory (Virtual Domain Controllers) - 6 mins

(18) Andrew Lomakin – Active Directory (Group Managed Service Accounts) - 10mins

(19) Andrew Lomakin – Active Directory (Dynamic Access Control -1) - 13mins

(20) Andrew Lomakin – Active Directory (Dynamic Access Control -2) - 25 mins

Day 2

(21) Aidan Finn – Hyper-V (Introduction & Converged Fabrics) - 26 mins...

(22) Aidan Finn – Hyper-V (VM Settings & Features) - 12 mins...

(23) Aidan Finn – Hyper-V (Hyper-V Replica) - 25 mins....

(24) Aidan Finn – Hyper-V (Live Migration) – 37 mins...

(24) John McCabe – Virtual Networks (Introduction) – 6 mins

(25) John McCabe – Virtual Networks (Software Defined Networking) – 17 mins

(26) John McCabe – Virtual Networks (Network Virtualisation) - 52 mins

(27) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Introduction) – 5 mins

(28) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Keynote Highlights) – 14 mins

(29) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Enabling Modern Apps) – 11 mins

(30) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Reveals) – 9 mins

(31) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions - Provisioning) – 6 mins

(32) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions – Network Monitoring) – 6 mins

(33) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions - DevOps) – 4 mins

(34) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions – SCOM Reporting) – 4 mins

(35) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions – Capacity Planning) – 3 mins

(36) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions - Orchestrator) – 4 mins

(37) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions – IaaS for Service Providers) – 4 mins

(38) Kevin Greene - Mini-MMS 2013 (Most Popular Sessions – Lionbridge Case Study) – 4 mins

(39) John McCabe - Mini-MMS 2013 (Introduction & Private Cloud Strategy) – 29 mins

(40) John McCabe - Mini-MMS 2013 (Unified Device Management) – 14 mins

(41) John McCabe - Mini-MMS 2013 (Automation & Integration) – 9 mins

(42) John McCabe - Mini-MMS 2013 (Orchestration) – 9 mins

Enjoy..

The Surface Pro is a 64-bit tablet PC that combines beauty, power and mobility.

Available with up to 128 GB of storage and powered by an Intel Core i5 processor, Surface Pro is a powerful machine.

Weighing under 2 lbs and only 13.5 mm thin, it’s the perfect way to do more.

I have no idea how much they are going to cost us I’m afraid – they come in just under $999 – so not cheap..

I can’t wait

We are running a two-day deep dive training session next Monday 22nd & Tuesday 23rd in Microsoft’s offices in Dublin.

We have some great speakers with some great content.

Registration is still open – but there really is only a few spaces available.

See you on Monday?

And if you can’t attend in person, I’m getting the whole event recorded and edited down into bite-sized chunks, which I’ll post here on a later date.

Dave