Microsoft Technology Center - Irvine

Announcing PowerPivot for Excel 2010 (fka Project Gemini)

Introducing PowerPivot for Excel 2010

PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds.

Using SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 (delivered thru SQL Server 2008 R2 in SharePoint 2010), end users can effortlessly and securely share their finding with others and work seamlessly in the browser with the same performance and features as the Excel client. PowerPivot for SharePoint even helps IT departments improve their operational efficiencies through SharePoint-based management tool called PowerPivot Management Dashboard. IT administrators can track usage patterns over time, drill down to obtain more details, discover mission-critical solutions, and ensure performance by making sure users have the appropriate resources.

Learn more about PowerPiviot for Excel 2010 by clicking here

Read the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 datasheet

Sign Up for PowerPivot Release Notification

If you are a IT Pro or Administrator of BI learn more by clicking here

Operating System Deployment in the Irvine MTC in 26.5 minutes using ZTI

With the number of requests for Windows7 and Server2008R2 going through the roof by the end of July, I had to make sure we could automate the deployment of both ASAP when I returned from vacation. The System Center Configuration Manager SP2 Beta and now RC was very welcomed as well as the latest version of the Microsoft Deployment toolkit 2010.

Apart from the minor issue with Hash Values that I’ve been getting with deployments when the SCCM server and the Distribution Point get out of sync, I can now reimage in both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows7 in roughly 26.5 minutes :-)

New Office Communicator, OCS Server, and LiveMeeting Patches

Hi,

I was experiencing a couple issues in our OCS R2 environment.  These issues were:

• When one OCS Enterprise Eoice (EV) user called another OCS user and that user re-directed the call to Voice Mail, the call got re-directed back to the caller.  This action only happened when I re-directed using Office Communicator.  When I re-directed the call on my Tanjay to voicemail, the call went correctly to the recipient voicemail.  We also tested calling another user's voicemail directly from Communicator and that option worked.  So, it appeared that when a user re-directs an incoming call using Office Communicator, then OC was re-directing the call back to the sender's SIP address.
• The second issue that I experience occured when I selected Change Greeting from Office Communicator, an error message was thrown.  I could call my voice mail fine from Office Communicator.
• My environment is running OCS R2 and Office Communicator V3.5.6907.0

 I noticed that a new Office Communicator patch was released in July 2009.  It can be found at:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=515D6DBA-4C6A-48BB-A06A-D99C5742676D&displaylang=en.

After downloading and installing the patch, both of the above issues were resolved!!

Along with this patch, patches for Live Meeting and the OCS server were also released:

• Live Meeting Patch:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969696/
• OCS Server Patch:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969821/

So, if you're encountering some weird Office Communicator behavior and it looks like your configuration looks good, download the patches to see if they resolve the issue.

Great New TPC-H Results with SQL Server 2008

Our partners at Dell and HP have published 2 new TPC-H results with SQL Server 2008 using Fusion-io’s ioDrive solid-state technology.  These are the first TPC results using solid-state technology and they illustrate the high performance along with total cost-of-ownership savings you can achieve.  These results dramatically improved the price/performance for systems using industry standard components.  These results prove that solid-state technologies can be used to reduce costs without giving up high levels of performance.

HP also published a 300GB result on their ProLiant DL785 platform with SQL Server 2008.  This publication illustrates the high performance and solid price/performance using industry standard components from HP and Microsoft.   

Please follow the links for all the details on each benchmark result.

SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP Availability

Lesson Learned: How To Manually Update the Firmware On Roundtable

Yesterday, we had a Roundtable that was experiencing some challenges with dropping voice calls.  After investigating it, we discovered that it was running an old version of the firmware (Firmware: 1.0.3620.0).  After some research, we discovered that this version of the firmware doesn't support automatic firmware update via the network and was a pre-RTM build (RTM = 3760). 

Thus, we had to manually update the firmware.  To do this, we performed the following steps:

• Downloaded the latest firmware (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EF74CD39-0FEC-4C70-95C8-B01930B2B502&displaylang=en.  Note, there maybe a newer update so search for it.
• Download and install the RTmanage tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A3089FA8-72FC-4F11-B81D-87F0D09A3A9A&displaylang=en) which is the tool to manage and perform the firmware ugprade.
• Download the Roundtable deployment guide (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2EDC88BC-4C79-41A6-832A-B02A0CB2F82E&displaylang=en) which has instructions on how to use the RTmanage tool.
• Connect the Roundtable to your computer via the USB connection.
• Execute the following commands:

Rtmanage.exe -m:img -i:EBOOT -f:CPUEBOOT.bin -s:CPUEBOOT.cat
Rtmanage.exe -m:img -i:nk -f:nk.bin -s:nk.cat
Rtmanage.exe -m:cfg -r

Note: 

• The previous commands assume that you extracted the firmware in the same directory as the rtmanage tool.
• The second step took about 5-10minutes but the tool gives a progress indication of updating the firmware
• The last command reboots the Roundtable.

 Thanks,

Dean

Lessons learned connecting a Netapp 3170 SAN to an Exchange 2007 / Windows 2008 SP2 Cluster

I have been working on a proof of concept testing an Active/Active/Passive Exchange 2007 cluster running on Windows 2008 SP2.  We have been working to connect a Netapp 3170 SAN to the cluster.  We encountered some challenges connecting the SAN to the servers.  I have summarized the lessons learned below:

• Challenge #1:  Had problem getting the MPIO stack recognized by the Netapp SnapDrive software.  We had loaded the Netapp DSM and Snapdrive software but wasn't able to connect to the Microsoft MPIO stack.  After hours of troubleshooting, we determined that there is a 3rd Netapp software component that is required:  Host Utilities.  The order of install should be:  Host Utilities, DSM, and Snapdrive.
• Challenge #2:  To build the Exchange 2007 cluster, we loaded the Windows 2008 clustering components.  Our next step was to configure and present the LUNs to the servers, Netapp does this work from the Exchange server using their Snapdrive software [Note:  This is different from other SAN vendors where the storage is carved and presented to the server from the back-end].  When we attempted to run the Snapdrive software to do this carving, we got some RPC errors (RPC server is not responding).  The Netapp software would work fine when we disabled the Windows clustering services, but encountered errors when we enabled the clustering services.  Unfortunately, if you disable the Windows clustering services and run the Netapp software, Netapp configures the drives in dedicated mode (versus a shared mode needed for clustering) so we couldn't configure the LUNs with the clustering service stopped.  After some troubleshooting, we determined that the Windows 2008 firewall was preventing the Netapp software from communicating with the storage.  We enabled the Windows clustering services and disabled the Windows 2008 firewall (must be done in the 3 locations: domain profile, private prfoile, and public profile).  After doing these steps, we were able to connect and configure the LUNs.

Getting Error Replacing Self-Signed Certificate in Exchange 2007

Hi,

I was installing Exchange 2007 today for a customer Proof of Concept (POC) and the customer wanted to replace the self-signed certificate used by OWA with a certificate issed by the Certificate Authority in the lab network.  This would prevent any certificate errors for any of the customer participants in the POC.  I requested the new certificate (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310781.aspx).  But when I tried to submit the request to the W2003 Cert Authority using the MMC, I kept getting the error: 

Certificate Request Processor 

The request contains no certificate template information. 0x80094801 (-2146875391)
Denied by Policy Module 0x80094801, The request does not contain a certificate template extension or the Certificate Template request attribute.

I found this article (http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/mobility-client-access/securing-exchange-2007-client-access-server-3rd-party-san-certificate.html) that recommended use the certreq command line utility instead of using the MMC to request the certificate.  This worked! 

Mac Office 2008 Updates for SharePoint and Open XML

The Mac Office team released TWO great updates today. 

 The first is the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update (Service Pack 2) .  Along with the standard security and stability additions included the Document Connection Pack (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/dcc.mspx). Many have been waiting for this enhancement that ..

• Enables SharePoint 2007 Integration
• Integrated (offline/local) access to SharePoint Websites
• Document upload
• Document check-out/in
• SharePoint Workspace and Doc Library access & browsing
• An independent application with File Menu integration
• Enables Office Live Integration 
• Integrated (offline/local) access to Office Live Workspaces 
• Document upload
• Document check-out/in
• Office Live Workspace document access & browsing
• An independent application with File Menu integration
• Improves Safari Support

 SP2 also includes:

• 10x speed increase specific on Word features
• 24% increase on Excel calculations

http://www.officeformac.com/blog/Announcing-Office-2008-for-Mac-Service-Pack-2 

The second update is the Open XML File Format Converter 1.1 available here...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973585 

Some great updates for large and small teams with installed Mac Office!

OCS R2 Mediation Server Not Seen By OCS R2 Front-End Server

Hi,

I was testing a configuration integrating the OCS R2 with the Nortel CS1K PBX.  During testing, I noticed from the OCS Front-end server, when I try to get information of the OCS R2 mediation server in the OCS Console, I am an error, "Retrieving Data Failed".  When I log directly onto the OCS R2 mediation server, the server is running and certificate information shows.  I found this post:  http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/communicationsserversetup/thread/69db6dd3-a6da-4aae-9cf5-19c63a7fe472 that recommends disabling the Windows Firewall.  So, I disabled the Windows Firewall service (as per the article) and now it appears to be working fine. 

This didn't seem to be the most secure way to run OCS so I did some investigating and found out:  "This occurs when OCS is installed while Windows firewall is off during the installation process. If you turn on the firewall after installtion, the error is expected. If you plan to use Windows Firewall, we strongly recommend that you enable and configure it before you install and activate Office Communications Server 2007 R2. If Windows Firewall is running when Office Communications Server is installed, the activation process, if run locally, automatically adds the exceptions needed for Office Communications Server. Windows Firewall must be running before you start the Office Communications Server services during the deployment process because that is when Office Communications Server opens the required ports in the firewall. If Windows Firewall is not running when you start the Office Communications Server services, the required ports are not opened."

Lesson Learned:  Ensure that Windows Firewall is running before you begin the OCS R2 installation!

Windows Azure Business Model Annoucement

Today is an important day in the evolution of the Windows Azure platform. During the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009,

we announced the business and partner model for the Windows Azure platform, including service level agreements and support programs.

Check out the announcement at http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/07/14/confirming-commercial-availability-and-announcing-business-model.aspx

Information is flowing from speakers, blogs, distribution lists, etc. You can even get some info bits at http://twiiter.com/windowsazure

Commercial availability is expected to be announced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009, which is November 17 - 19, 2009

Testing Tandberg Videoconferencing to provide external customer access to the MTC

Oracle Forms to .NET Migration with ATX Technologies & SSMA for Oracle

Today I held a Live Meeting with ATX Technologies who offers migration software, that integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio, to move customers off Oracle Forms, Microsoft Access and Cobol to Microsoft .NET. 
This is the first step to move off the Oracle platform. 

The second step is to move the Oracle database itself.  To assist with this effort Microsoft offers SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for free to customers.  We have a flavor of it for Oracle, Sybase & PowerBuilder, and Access.  We also have guidance to migrate off mySQL.

Here is the recordings of the ATX presentation today: Overview of ATXSoftware Forms2Net - Oracle Forms Migration & Accesss2Net
Recording ID = Forms2Net  07/8/09 8:37 AM Duration: 1:09 Kirk Nason

Other resources:
Download SSMA Oracle for SQL Server 2008
Oracle migration using SSMA (Whitepaper)
Watch this presentation to learn about SQL Server Migration Assistant
Read SQL Server Migration Assistant Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Welcome!

As Director of the Irvine MTC, I hope our team can leverage this blog to share the great knowledge and experience we have to help make others great! The mission of the Irvine MTC is:

To be the technical sales center of excellence in the West Region.

•Providing the people, process, place and technology to accelerate and expand sales opportunities and to reduce risk for Microsoft and it's partners.
•Reducing the risk for Microsoft customers when making a technology investment.
•Striving to provide all relevant guidance to customers for solutions that exactly meet their needs.

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