On June 10, Microsoft Press published the new “Windows 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit” by Robert Larson and Janique Carbone.

For the past year, Shane Burton a fellow Microsoft Product Specialist here at Compellent, and myself have been working with Robert and Janique on this project and providing content, particularly “Notes from the Field” for the book, while our Compellent Marketing Alliance partner, John Porterfield kept us in line.

Compellent is a project sponsor at the Microsoft Partner Solution Center and provided Robert and Janique access to a Compellent Storage Center for testing storage-related scenarios that are included in the book. Compellent users will recognize a lot of the screenshots which were taken directly from the Storage Center Manager.

Shane and I are proud to be contributing authors on this project. We hope the Windows 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit will prove to be an invaluable reference for administrators and IT pros who are responsible for the architecture, design, implementation and ongoing maintenance of a Hyper-V environment.

The book is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Last week I had to opportunity to setup Exchange 2010, which is currently in beta.  Microsoft had a great story about the improvements with Exchange 2007, particularly around storage and IO.  Although I was not a big fan of role-based implementations, this type of setup has allowed for great scalability and also has made some components of Exchange viable candidates for virtualization.

Exchange 2010 uses some cool new technologies like PowerShell v2 and Windows Remote Management v2, both of which are still CTP.

Microsoft has improved the performance of Exchange again in Exchange 2010.  When Exchange 2007 was released, Microsoft boasted a 70% decrease in IO.  For example, an Exchange 2003 heavy mailbox profile used 1 IOPS/mailbox, while a Exchange 2007 heavy mailbox profile only uses .32 IOPS/mailbox.

In Exchange 2010, you can expect up to a 50% reduction in disk IO from Exchange 2007 levels.  This means that more disks meet the minimum performance required to run Exchange, driving down storage costs.  In addition, IO patterns have been optimized and are not “bursty” like they have been in previous versions.

With the ability to replicate up to 16 copies of each mailbox database, automatic page patching takes advantage of these replicated copies by using them as the source for repairs in the event page corruption or other minor database glitches occur.  Sounds pretty cool!

The schema has been revamped and message/header content is now stored in a single table.  In addition, Single Instance Storage is out, but automatic attachment compression is in. 

One of the bigger changes in Exchange 2007 was the page in the database page size from 4K to 8K.  In Exchange 2010, this changes again to 32K, allowing for larger block IO.  This charge is particularly helpful in keeping chunks of data together like attachments instead of having them scatter all about.

Exchange 2010 is expected to be released in late 2009, but the beta is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/try-it.aspx.

Elouise Katherine arrived Monday, May 4, 2009 at 6:04 PM.  Here are a few pics of the new addition!

Back in December I wrote a posting on “Discovering Stale Computer Accounts with PowerShell”.  Today I received an email from one of my readers (Thanks Matt for writing!) trying to adjust the script to query for stale user accounts.  The script that I created in the previous entry is a good starting point, but requires some modifications to work properly for user accounts.

The biggest change in the script is that the DirectorySearcher filter has to be modified to look for user accounts.  Simply changing  the filter to “user” from “computer” doesn’t quite work as for some reason ADSI will retrieve both the user accounts as well as the computer accounts.  We can further limit the search by adding the ObjectCategory in addition to the ObjectClass.

This particular example will query on the last password change date.

function Get-StaleUserAccounts

{   

    # Use Directory Services object to attach to the domain

    $searcher = new-object DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher([ADSI]"")

    # Filter down to user accounts

    #when you query for objectClass=User, you will not only get user accounts but also computer accounts. 

    #To limit the search to true user accounts, you would have to also include the objectCategory

    $searcher.filter = "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=User))"

    # Cache the results

    $searcher.CacheResults = $true

    $searcher.SearchScope = “Subtree”

    $searcher.PageSize = 1000

    # Find anything you can that matches the definition of being a user object

    $accounts = $searcher.FindAll()

    # Check to make sure we found some accounts

    if($accounts.Count -gt 0)

    {             

        foreach($account in $accounts)

        {

            $LastPassChange = [datetime]::FromFileTimeUTC($account.Properties["pwdlastset"][0]);    

            # Determine the timespan between the two dates

            $datediff = new-TimeSpan $LastPassChange $(Get-Date);

            # Create an output object for table formatting

            $obj = new-Object PSObject;

            # Add member properties with their name and value pair

            $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty AccountName($account.Properties["name"][0]);

            $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty LastPasswordChange($LastPassChange);

            $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty DaysSinceChange($datediff.Days);

            # Write the output to the screen

            Write-Output $obj;

        }

    }

}

# Get user accounts where a password change hasn't occurred in 60 days or more

# If nothing outputted, then there are no accounts that meet that criteria

Get-StaleUserAccounts |Where-Object {$_.DaysSinceChange -gt 60}

Acer 10.1" Netbook

Picked this up last weekend.  Netbooks are all the rage right now.  A simple, compact laptop that provides enough power and performance to do email, offer Internet access, and use Office apps.  Battery life is between 4-8 hours depending upon what you do.  The Acer that I purchased is suppose to get about 7-8 hours of power.  The first batch apparently is shipping with the larger (longer lasting) battery, while later productions will ship with a smaller battery capable of 4-5 hours; which is still great.

I loaded mine with Windows 7, Office 2007, and a few other apps that I use regularly.  This is the perfect device for travelers who regularly have to present (VGA output), like to take notes in a meeting or lecture, or just need quick access to email.  It weighs under 3 lbs., so you can’t ask for much more.  It ships with 1GB RAM, but for $20 you can swap out the 1GB chip for 2GB.

So far, I’m very impressed with it.  I did my research on these, which was a very frustrating process.  It is really hard to find full specs on a lot of these units, specifically information about upgradability of RAM and hard drive.  Needless to say, I saw a few people out in Redmond running with the Acer (both 8″ and 10″ screens), and were very happy with them.  The Acer is available through Amazon, CostCo, and MicroCenter.