Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 3 Recap

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Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Welcome to day 3 of this great event! A special day because tonight features the Country Drinks. But first, let’s start by having a look at the information from within the sessions, some star wars humor and devil sticks!

 

Sessions

Today started with a session in the Auditorium by Iain McDonald. If you don’t know the guy, I guess describing him as an Australian rock star does most justice. He’s also the guy to go to when you have questions on Microsofts strategy with Windows Server.

I asked Iain one question: Do you have plans to make it possible to inplace upgrade a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 to a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2? His answer was a short and positive one: Yes.

After the session I walked on over and chatted a little bit with him. I expressed my disappointment on the naming convention for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows 7. Of course these names are great, but I still feel they missed out on a great possibility: They could’ve named these products Windows XP D2 and Windows Vista D2 respectively. That way you can actually have R2D2 on your networks in combination with Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Alas.

Another session I attended was Joachim Nässlanders lunch session on building a failover cluster with Windows Server 2008 Core. This session started out with a clear message on using Server Core, delivered through devil sticks. I remember it as:

It looks hard, but after practicing a month you’ll be doing it without thinking.

Joachim had fully automated scripts that configured two Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 into a file server failover cluster. A couple of graphical tools were shown, but not used: Joachim did everything on the command line, including the “presentation”. Good fun! After the session Joachim and I chatted for a while. It’s good to meet someone who’s into Server Core and passionate about it. If you haven’t done so already go check out his tool Core Configuration Console.

After Joachims session I attended a session by Edwin Yuen on System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM 2008). Edwin is a good presenter and the information on managing VMWare ESX  through Virtual Center is really useful.

The last session was on the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), the database behind a lot of Microsoft products and technologies. It’s used in Exchange Server, Active Directory, DHCP, WINS and Windows Mail. The session was a very technical deepdive into B+ trees and the way changes to the ESE database are made in Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1.

 

Country drinks

Wednesday evening also featured the Country Drinks. This event provides the ability to network with your fellow attendees from your country and order drinks without having to pay for them (at least till midnight) The Dutch Country Drinks event was located in the Lotus Theater and started at 9pm.

Tony Krijnen and Daniel van Soest had a small little intro and the place was packed with Dutch Tech∙Ed attendees. All the usual suspects were there. I had nice chats with Marc van Orsouw and Helmer Zandbergen. I hugged Koen Wijnstok, who I hadn’t seen for what feels like ages and also had a chat with Robert Bakker and Bas Agbeko, both Microsoft Netherlands guys.

After midnight all drinks had to be paid for, so a lot of my fellow countrymen left the scene. A couple of die hard clubbers remained and we had some good fun on the dance floor.

 

Concluding

Eventually we took a cab ride to the hotel at 4am. A trend starts to emerge…

Tech-Ed IT Pro 2008 : The Fun Part(ies) Dutch
[DOC] TechEd EMEA 2008 Country Drinks Request Form
One down, one to go
TechEd – dag 3 Dutch
TechEd IT Professional 2008 – Day 3 Interview with Ilse Van Criekinge and Andy Malone

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