Gordon McKenna - System Center Operations Manager MVP - Inframon Ltd

I have had a brief week back in the UK after my Keynote presentation with Alison Watson at the  Worldwide Partner Conference and now I fly out to Redmond for my second visit of the year (this is getting a bit of a regular thing), this time to take part in one of Microsoft's biggest internal events TechReady.

For those who don’t know, TechReady is a semi-annual, 5-day internal technical conference for Microsoft employees from all over the globe who attend presentations by the various product groups about all the upcoming releases for the year. They also receive training on all of the currently released Microsoft products. The senior executives will also often present at TechReady, outlining their visions for the future, and taking questions from employees.

I actually have the very great honor of being the first OpsMgr MVP ever to present at this event (this is usually just internal speakers), and I will be repeating the two sessions that I did at MMS:

Data Center Management with System Center: Real World Scenarios

Running and Maintaining the Microsoft System Center Suite on Hyper-V

I am extremely excited about both visiting the mother ship once more, spending some more extremely useful time with the PG and in presenting to an internal Microsoft audience, which I am sure will be quite different to the normal WMUG or TechEd\MMS audiences.

Check out the new extended MPs from Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft IT and OpsMgr Product team here: (not officially supported by MS):

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2009/07/newly-released-mps-by-opsmanjam.html

Here’s a summary of what’s been added to each that I extracted from the included docs:

Extended Server 2003 IIS
Microsoft Extended Windows Server Internet Information Services 2003 Management Pack.

The Microsoft Extended Windows Server Internet Information Services 2003 Management Pack includes additional rules and knowledge for monitoring IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 operating system.

 The rules in the Management Packs for IIS 2003 provide enable Operations Manager 2007 to monitor the following IIS object types:

·      IIS Server Role

·      IIS Web Sites

Extended Windows Server OS
Extended Windows Server Operating System Management Pack.

What's New

The following features are new in this release of the Extended Windows Server Operating System Management Pack:

·         Monitors for the demotion of a domain controller to a Windows member server and executes a cleanup script to remove the replication monitor objects in the directory service

·         Includes two Tasks to remotely shutdown and reboot of a domain controller from within the Operations Console

·         Includes three new alerts to notify when a Windows Server reboots from a bugcheck, performs a clean reboot, or a dirty shutdown was detected.

Extended ADMP
Extended Windows Server Operating System Management Pack.

What’s New in Version 6.0.6278.2

The following new features are new in this release of the Extended Active Directory Management Pack:

• Monitor the Active Directory Management Pack helper object (OOMADS) to verify it is installed and working correctly. 
• Monitor the FSMO role transfer between domain controllers.

What's New in Version 6.0.6278.1

The following features are new in this release of the Extended Active Directory Management Pack:

·      Monitor the Windows Time Service (W32Time) for time synchronization issues with authoritative time source

·      Monitor for clients not authenticating against a local domain controller, indicating site boundaries are not properly defined or scoped.

·      Monitor for expensive or inefficient LDAP queries performed against a DC

·      Monitor for FRS related events that affect the health and availability of the SYSVOL shared directory and its replication on a domain controller

·         Monitor for specific performance characteristics of a domain controller with respect to Free System Page Table Entries and Database Name Cache hit rate

·         Includes two Tasks to remotely shutdown and reboot a domain controller from within the Operations Console

SCCM OSD for OpsMgr 2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 OS Deployment Management Pack.

Well, I am currently in New Orleans at the Worldwide Partner Conference.

It is the first time I have attended this event as a partner, although this is one of the biggest events that Microsoft hold and I believe is the biggest partner conference in the world with an estaimated 6,000 partners in attendance.

The main and most exciting reason that I am here though is that I am actually taking part in the main Keynote this morning with Alison Watson, the Corporate VP of Worldwide Partners.

I have been selected along with three other partners around the world to represent not only the UK but Microsoft System Center from a service partner perspective which I have to say I feel very honoured and humbled by.

I will be talking about not only some of my customer enagements, but also some of the partner to partner stuff that I do for Microsoft around System Center.

Anyway, you can catch me here live, broadcast in stunning HD in about two hours time (dont worry if you miss it it will be hosted up ther for a while)

http://www.digitalwpc.com/

There is going to be some pretty major announcements too around my presentation so it will be well worth tuning in to find out whats in store.

So I am off to do some last minute nail biting before I get on stage, so I am going to tell myself to break a leg.....