Hans VB's WebLog - For FREE!!! : TechDays

Gerd Debruycker blogs about Virtual Conferences and football marketing

Hans VB — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:36:00 GMT

Gerd Debruycker is an event veteran at Microsoft. He has been driving many events succesfully amongst which Tech Ed and many others.

Finally Gerd started to blog. http://gerdde.wordpress.com/

He blogs about Virtual Conferences and about football marketing. He playes football with the best at the time.

Enjoy!

Hans

Hyper-veeks are not afraid of VM creep or… Get familiar with Application Virtualization

Hans VB — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:25:49 GMT

Virtualization seems like an easy enough concept at a very high level.

But as you start thinking about the four (5 if you add profile) types of virtualization (server, application presentation, desktop and profile virtualization) you quickly realize you need to make an effort to fully understand threats and opportunities.

Fortunately there is help. This ebook (400 pages) is available for free downloading: http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urmvs17u33

Hyper-V is the technology you use for server virtualization. I see already a lot of ISV’s deploying their server applications in VM’s and this technology comes into play there.

But how do I bring my application to the desktops in a way that keeps things manageable?

Certainly ClickOnce deployment is a step in the right direction but if you need more tools to manage this or need to integrate the applications perfectly into your System Center environment then App-V seems like a better approach.

Another option would be to not deploy your application to the user’s work machine at all but to run the application on the server and just send the presentation over the wire. This can be don with Terminal Services. Personally I believe that this is for many applications the least appealing one since you are really using the desktop as a dumb terminal with all the limitations as a consequence.

At our TechDays event there will be a lot of sessions which will also help you get a 360 view on Microsoft’s virtualization solution. You won’t often see me making publicity for IT Pro sessions but these are really interesting :-) See you there!

David de Backer
Application Compatibility Blues : which one is the right pill to take?
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Ever had application compatibility blues, application that you just couldn’t run on your OS, either because there was a conflict with another installed application or because the application itself was totally incompatible with your (maybe) new OS? Come to this session and learn how to make those problems a thing of the past. You will learn which solution is right for you on a case by case compatibility issue.

Jeff Wetlaufer
Application Virtualization and Configuration Manager 2007
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With the release of Configuration Manager R2, the traditional Software Distribution feature has been extended to seamlessly integrate virtual application support. As part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, customers who have access to the Application Virtualization (App-V) capability, can now also use Configuration Manager to centrally manage their virtual application services. This session will demonstrate how the latest version of Microsoft Application Virtualization integrates tightly with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 to provide a powerful solution to deploy and manage virtual applications across an organization's many distributed desktops. This session promises to be technical and full of lots of demonstrations.

Ronald Beekelaar
Hyper-V: Notes from the field
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In this session, we will look at some common best practices for running Hyper-V in all kinds of scenarios, including test, development and training. Topics include: Copying virtual machines (VMs) to other computers, best practices for using snapshots, automating Hyper-V operations by using scripting, configure networking, converting VMs to Hyper-V, and setting up Hyper-V permissions for delegation of control and remote connections to Hyper-V.

Nigel Cain
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008: Technical Overview and futures
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This session will provide an overview of SC VMM 2008 and highlight some of the improvements and new features that will be available in Systems Center VMM 2008 R2

Steve Riley
Virtualization and security: what does it mean for me?
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Virtualization is the Next Big Thing™, and certainly you’ve at least examined it, and probably are using several virtualized servers already. How are you handling the security of your images? How are you securing the guest and host operating systems, and the applications you’re running? Virtualization raises certain unique security requirements, and provides some interesting security capabilities, too. Join Steve Riley as he explores the interesting aspects of virtualization and security.

Live Mesh applications - How to get started

Hans VB — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:36:12 GMT

What a great video by Brian Gorbett!

It really explains in an easy to understand way what Mesh Applications are, how you can build and deploy them.

Luckily we have some local Mesh champs too. Here’s a great article by Peter Himschoot, Lieven Iliano and Wim Uyttersport from U2u:

http://www.u2u.be/Res/Article.aspx?ART=LiveMeshAndLiveFrameworkArticle

Peter Himschoot will actually be delivering a session on this topic at our TechDays which will be a great opportunity to find out even more!

TechDays Agenda is online (and impressive)

Hans VB — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:34:40 GMT

Two days ago I had the pleasure to drive a across our snowy country to meet an ISV near Brugge. We discussed their solution and their development process and tools.

It became clear that we have a great agenda for developers at our TechDays. We really have sessions that talk to all aspects of developing a solution. The agenda mapped perfectly to the needs of the developers at that ISV.

Our preconference is great for our developers building solutions on Sharepoint. I said it before and I will say it again, there are not enough Sharepoint developers in the market! http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/developers_preconf.aspx

The general days offers something for every developer: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/developers_conf.aspx

These are some of my favorites sessions on SCRUM, VSTS, Unit Testing, Authentication done right, Visual Basic SQL Server. See the full list at the other end of the link above!

Stephen Forte & Joel Semeniuk
The Daily Scrum

Peli de Halleux
Pex – Automated White Box Testing for .NET

Laurent Bugnion
.NET continuum: ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight and WPF

Laurent Bugnion
Live coding Silverlight and WPF

Kurt Claeys
Building Workflow Services in .NET 3.5

Lisa Feigenbaum
Future Directions for Visual Basic

Andrew Pardoe
Silverlight 2 CoreCLR: Bringing the power of .NET to the net

Vittorio Bertocci
Putting authentication in its place: claim-based identity, services and "Geneva"

Joel Semeniuk
Lean Principles, Agile Techniques, and Team System

Scott Galloway
ASP.NET MVC for Smart People

Lynn Langitt
SQL 2008 For Developers

Bart De Smet
LINQ in breadth - Querying everything everywhere

Ingo Rammer
Azure - A Lap around cloud-hosted services