Ending Snow Days? Sorry kids, but it SHOULD happen soon.

February 20, 2012 2 Comments

This month I had lunch with Sharon Bennett, a veteran of the IT industry and blogger.  We discussed a number of topics relating to both technology and community… I asked her a ton of questions, and the one that got me the most intriguing answer was: ‘What would you like to see technology do in the future?’  It is a question I ask all the time, when I feel that people have the experience and insight to provide an interesting answer.  Because of the nature and vagueness of the question I always receive something different, but Sharon’s answer intrigued me.

‘End snow days.’

For those of you who live in warmer climes this may require some explanation.  Up here in the Great White North we get a lot of snow – depending on the region some more than others.  Although this current school year seems to be the exception, every year we seem to have two or three (or more) days every year when either the schools close, or the school busses do not operate because of a snow storm.  Below is a picture I took of my house the day after a snow storm a couple of years ago… and our area is nowhere near as bad as where Sharon lives.IMG_0001

When I was a child I had a simple morning ritual during the winter.  I would get out of bed and look outside.  If it was snowing I would make sure my parents had the radio on, because the announcer was sure to name our school among the list of those closed due to weather.  I never liked school, and any opportunity to not go was welcome and anticipated and sought after.  There would never be two snow days in a row of course… in Montreal the road clearing teams were far too efficient for that.

We keep hearing statistics that Canada (and the USA) are lagging behind other countries in education, and it is largely agreed that without a proper education our kids are going to have trouble succeeding in the world of tomorrow.  So why is it that we are not using every technology available to minimize the number of days off our kids take in a year? 

I am not saying that we should change our calendar.  True, the school year is based on an agrarian civilization in which kids could not study during the summer because they were too busy tending crops.  In today’s world where we are not even supposed to let our children work until they are sixteen our calendar is obviously obsolete, but I do not expect to see it change any time soon.  However our education systems are mandate to deliver a minimum number of school days per year, and we should do everything in our power to reach (or exceed) that target.

Snow days may be an unexpected bonus for the students (and, one would suspect, for their teachers as well).  For working parents of children not old enough to stay home alone it is a hardship.  For those who have an office at least one parent will have to take the day off of work (unpaid).  Those who work from home can look forward to an unproductive day of interruptions.

Sharon blogged today that she can envision an end to snow days, using technologies such as Skype.  Read her article called Why DO We Still Have Snow Days? for her insightful technical solution to the problem.

Of course, there is a happy medium between the teacher teaching a full day’s curriculum on these snowed-in days; teachers can assign homework using an Intranet portal (such as Microsoft Office 365, a comparable solution to which is offered free to educational institutions) or even simply e-mailing assignments to kids early in the morning, and giving them work or even reading assignments to keep them busy as well as on schedule for their minimum school days.  This solution does not address the working parent having to take the day off, but it will keep the student occupied so that the parents who work from home can be somewhat productive.

Unfortunately there is another obstacle to this, one that is less technical and far more difficult: Getting the teachers (and more importantly the teachers unions) to agree to this.  My son goes to a private day school in Mississauga, Ontario.  Two years ago, after I discovered that in order to e-mail his teachers I had to get their personal e-mail addresses, I used Microsoft’s .edu program to set up a mail server infrastructure for them where they would each have a professional e-mail address at their school’s domain.  I spent three hours teaching all of them how to use it, including benefits such as shared calendars and contacts.  Three months later I discovered that not a single teacher ever used it, and I had wasted my time. 

That was at an independent private school.  How much worse would it be in a public school where teachers were unionized and the teachers would not only have to learn a new technology, they would lose those bonus days off?

I do not know if the system is going to change; I do not know who is going to stand up and champion this change.  What I do know is that Sharon Bennett is on to something… Weather-related days off, in this day and age where there is an Internet-connected computer in nearly every household, should be a thing of the past.  Despite what our children might think, it would be good for them!

Filed under Article, Schools, snow, Snow Days

Oakville.com

February 7, 2012 3 Comments

Today is the day… My first article went live at Oakville.com, and that is very exciting for me.  It is great to be able to give back to the community where I live… that I have called home for the past five years.

It is amazing… the first time I spoke with my wife (Theresa) – we met on-line – she said that she lived in Oakville, and I said ‘Where’s that?’ I had moved to the Greater Toronto Area (more specifically Mississauga) two months earlier, and although I had heard of Oakville had no idea that it was ten minutes away down the 403 (or QEW… or Burnhamthorpe… or Dundas).  Now, nearly five years later, I consider it home, and do not want to live anywhere else.

So for my introductory article I wrote (as promised) about password security.  I hope you read it and like it! –M

http://www.oakville.com/articles/expert-advice-to-keep-your-passwords-safe/

Filed under Article, IT Security, Oakville, Password

Coming Home… A New Venture!

February 3, 2012 Leave a comment

I am a Road Warrior.  I have been one for several years, since before I moved to the Halton Region.  In fact since I moved to Oakville in 2007 I have spent more time away than at home, in over one hundred cities in more than a dozen countries.  I have spoken to audiences of IT Professionals across Canada and the US, as well as Europe, Asia, and most recently South America. 

Throughout my travels I have espoused the importance of giving back to your community, both at large (through charitable endeavours) and the IT Pro community (through user groups and on-line forums).  That is why I was so thrilled when I was approached in January to ask if I would be interested in writing a monthly technology column for three local community sites – Mississauga.com, Burlington.com, and of course Oakville.com.

I accepted gladly, and beginning this month each site will be publishing my technology article.  The topics will be broad-ranging, aimed at consumers but always of import to IT Pros as well.  I will make sure the topics are interesting, and I will listen to feedback as well as entertain suggestions for future columns.

As someone who spends so much time on the road but calls Oakville home, it is great to be able to write a column that my local community will read, understand, and hopefully benefit from.

My first column, to be published next week, is on password security.  If you think you know, remember that it is so often the case in our industry that the shoemaker’s children go barefoot.  Look for the article to appear at www.oakville.com in their Tech Tuesdays column.  I know I’m excited!

Have a great week-end!

Filed under Article, Oakville, technology

This Is A Scam!

January 18, 2012 6 Comments

I knew something was fishy when the phone rang and the Call Display showed a call-back number of 666-035-3612 because, as we all know, 666 is the area code of the beast.  I waited the five seconds for the auto-dialer system to connect me to a real operator. 

‘Hello, my name is Gary from the Windows Technical Department.  I am phoning you because we have been receiving a series of errors from your computer this week indicating several vulnerabilities, and I am calling to help you to fix them.  Do you have a few minutes?  It is very important.’

Try as I might, I couldn’t help myself from bursting out laughing, but after a few seconds I answered ‘Ok, how are you going to help me to fix them?’ 

Gary was put off by my laughing and asked why, emphasizing that this was a very serious matter, and that I could be facing serious financial and legal repercussions if I took it lightly.  ‘Computer Security is very important and if you do not take it seriously by following my instructions it will cost you.  So why are you laughing?’

I couldn’t help myself.  Now, remember… the following statement is not true, but I assumed that for the sake of this conversation my MVP Lead and Managers will forgive me for saying ‘Because I work for Microsoft with the Windows Product Team.’  I did not feel it would have helped at all to explain about the Springboard Technical Experts Panel, and how I write courseware and give presentations and that I am not actually an employee, even though I have a title.  However I do not think he would have been so interested in the answer due to his obviously well-thought response of: ‘Well then &^$# you then.’ and he hung up.

Of course I knew in advance that this was a scam, because one of my sisters-in-law was caught unawares by this, and it ended up costing her hundreds of dollars and no end of headaches.  Remember folks, Microsoft will help you in all sorts of ways, but always passively… YOU have to come to THEM.  They will NEVER initiate a conversation, either by phone or e-mail or pop-up, saying you are compromised now we can help you. 

Lesson over… I’m going to Tae Kwon Do!

Filed under Article, Scams

Day 4: Wednesday Morning, 3AM

January 18, 2012 Leave a comment

I have not been sleeping very well during the cruise.  I don’t know if that is because I am relaxing so much during the day, or what else it might be.  I certainly have not been lying awake worrying about… well, anything.  The cruise has been a nearly stress-free time, and I have always been able to sleep at sea before.  Weird.

Wednesday Morning we went ashore in Grand Cayman, and the sea around the island is truly magnificent.  I actually found myself taking pictures of water… see?

DSCN2426

What you are seeing in the blue is actually coral reefs that are thirty feet underwater.  Yes, the water is that clear.  Theresa signed us up for a shore excursion called a Sea Walk.  It was absolutely incredible – they picked us up from the dock at Hammerhead’s Bar & Grill, and took us out to the dive boat.  There we climbed into the water where they put a helmet on us that weighs seventy pounds (32kg) which above water is HEAVY on your shoulders, but underwater is quite manageable.  The helmet is attached by a hose to an air compressor that made sure that we were always able to breathe.  The weight of the helmet kept us on the sea floor, and we were able to walk about the coral reefs and play with the gorgeous tropical fish (primarily Sergeant-Major Fish, so named I am told because of their stripes).  It was amazing to be able to walk around on the sea floor, examine the coral reefs and the fish, and although we could only communicate with hand-signals, we even threw a ball around for a little while!

The picture below is of people far more attractive than our group (excepting my wife, who looks better than any of them in her bikini!) doing this activity, but as my camera is not waterproof (let alone at 30’) I had to take a stock photo from their website, and apologize for the theft… hopefully the huge thumbs-up I give them will appease them, and if you are in the Grand Cayman area check them out at http://www.seatrekcayman.com/.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Theresa and I had lunch at Hammerheads, but then headed back to the ship and enjoyed the hot tub on the Lido deck.  We may have had a bit too much to drink, so Theresa went back to the cabin to rest.  I stayed in (or around) the hot tub until it was time for dinner, and had a great night… just talking to people, smoking a cigar or two, and decompressing.  I really think that is the keyword for the week… I have been so wound up with work and all that I needed to decompress, and while I generally only smoke a cigar every month, this week is a huge exception.  With every puff of smoke I exhale I can feel the stress leaving my body.

I should mention that we met some great people in the hot tub yesterday, but that is a bit untrue.  We had met them on an on-line forum before getting onto the ship, and spent two days playing telephone/message tag with them.  What are the odds that we would then get into the hot tub and POOF – they are there.  Jenna and Nick seem like the kind of people we can be friends with beyond the six days at sea.  The last time we cruised we did meet a nice couple who were much older than we were, but we spent a lot of time with them, under no delusion that we would become friends on shore.  Jenna is younger than we are, Nick is our age, and they are just the sweetest people you will ever meet.  They are engaged, living in Pittsburgh, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our friendship outlasted this voyage.  On vera.

It is strange what kinds of propositions you get at sea.  This afternoon I was in the hot tub with a group of kids – maybe 20-24 years old – and we were all joking around, when one of them asked me ‘So do you know Mary Jane?’  Now, while I am familiar with the codes I am absolutely against any form of illegal drugs (as so deemed by North American laws).  I thought it shocking that a teenager would see if I could ‘score some weed’ for her.  I asked her about it, and said that it was probably a bad idea to ask men twice her age if they could get drugs, to which she responded ‘What do you mean?  I am NOT fifteen years old!’  While I give her zero points for brains, I was quite flattered that she thought I was only thirty… of course, it is possible she was just REALLY bad at math.

It’s time to sleep but tomorrow we are waking up docked in sunny Jamaica where I will climb Dunn’s River Falls (and Theresa and her bad knees will not).  After that we’ll head to Paradise Beach, where I am told we will never want to leave!  Jenna and Nick are going to do some shopping and hit the beach, but we’ll see them back at Table 324 for dinner… I wonder who will have the most fun in Ocho Rios? :)

Filed under Article, Cruise, Vacation Tagged with , , , , , ,

Day 3: Strategy

January 16, 2012 Leave a comment

There are two types of people who play backgammon.  People who play the game casually and, when playing with another person of the same caliber, will probably win more or less as many as he loses.  Then there are the people who have studied the game, the strategies, the odds.  I remember as a teenager trying to teach myself the game… I would play hundreds of games every night, sometimes playing with others but more often playing against myself and against computers.  I studied the dice, the points, the advantages.  When I lived in the Middle East I shocked a lot of people who did not expect a North American to be able to defeat them.  I wouldn’t say that I won a lot of money playing backgammon when I was in the army… but I did win some.

The third day at sea was just that… a day at sea.  After breakfast Theresa and I went up to the Lido deck to sit by the pool, and there was an older gentleman sitting with a backgammon set and a sign inviting others to play.  Harry was forty years my senior, a retired auto worker who had moved from Detroit to Arizona.  We did not have a lot of common ground to talk about… but we were very well matched adversaries.  I might have had a slight advantage over him – I won four Best-of-Nine matches out of six – but it was only slight.  Theresa could not understand why at a certain point in the game we would just set up the next game.  I explained that when you have the respect for your opponent you did not have to beat a dead horse once the numbers were clear.

Of course there are aspects of Backgammon that do not rely on skill.  When you rely on the numbers on the dice sometimes the best player will lose and sometimes the worst will win.  That is why odds and strategy are so important, and why experience and feeling is so important.  I used to have a friend who swore that if you needed to roll a ‘one’ that you increased your odds by rolling against the middle partition – something not possible on some boards.  Short of loading the dice there is truly nothing that you can do to ensure any dice.

While I cannot fix dice, I do believe there are a few very critical strategic spots on the board that by doubling-up on them you can really cause your opponent issues.  Want to know what they are?  Play me sometime and you’ll find out.  As I told Harry I only give pointers and advice when I am winning Winking smile

I do believe strongly in building a wall.  A wall means that you have six spots in a row that are protected, which means that your opponent cannot pass them.  If he (or she) has a stone in your house your wall is your assurance that they cannot win… at least, until you break your own wall (an eventual necessity).  Simply put, no stone can move more than six points because that is the highest number that can be rolled on a single die.  That wall can give a player a real strategic advantage.  Want to learn more?  Play me sometime!

I spent the day at the pool, most of it in the hot tub speaking with other people.  We met some really nice folks, and finally connected with a couple that we have been trying to meet since we came on board.  Jenna and Nick are from Pittsburg, and we connected on the on-line forums before we came on board.  We left each other messages for two days, but never connected.  During the afternoon today there was another couple in the hot tub who said they were from Pittsburg, and when I asked if they were Jenna and Nick, their eyes went wide!  We’ll have dinner with them and see how compatible we are… looks good!

Filed under Article, Cruise, Vacation Tagged with , ,

Caribbean Cruise: Day of Departure

January 16, 2012 Leave a comment

As we left Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida I felt my hands shaking a bit. It had nothing to do with the rumbling of the engines of the Carnival Freedom, but rather the beginning of a long process of decompression and relaxation that I hope will be completed before we return to the same port six days from today.

2011 was an incredible year for me, both personally and professionally. Among the milestones that the year-end tally tolled were my first pair of eye glasses and my first grey hairs. It is easy to chalk these both up to the passing of my thirty-ninth birthday in July, but my wife (who has teased me about both) would likely tell you that it is as easy to attribute both to the amount of time I put into my work. She calls me a workaholic but I don’t see it that way; she is probably right and I am likely in denial.

Whichever one of us is right, the numbers do not lie. I traveled to sixty-seven different cities in 2011, which does not include multiple visits to numerous cities. I traveled just over 115,000 miles during the year, and was away from home just over two hundred days. I renewed my Air Canada Elite status in the summer, and for the first time achieved Platinum status with Marriott. I couldn’t tell you how many times I crossed the US-Canadian border, but do know that I traveled to South America twice… both times in November.

It would be easy to calculate the number of days off, sick days, and vacation days that I took in the past year… fewer than twenty-five. However if we were going to be honest and counted the days that I truly did not work – disconnected myself from the phone, Internet, and computer completely – that number would be under five, and would consist mostly of Jewish holidays.

They say that you have to make hey when the sun is shining, and that is true… if you are a farmer. If you are an IT consultant and trainer, sometimes you have to put your thresher (or whatever the IT equivalent of whatever farm implement you use to make hey with) away for a few days, even when it is sunny. I am thrilled to be as in demand as I am (and hope that it continues into 2012). However going ‘all-out’ as I did this past year was not healthy, and I recognize that. You have to take time to smell the roses otherwise you end up feeling and looking as I have for the past few weeks. It has not been fair to my family, and although I do not think it ever showed professionally, I am reasonably sure that had Theresa not forced me to take this vacation it would eventually, and soon.

I am not going to stop working as hard as I do… I don’t think I know how, and wouldn’t want to find out. I love what I do. However I have had several discussions with Theresa about this, and understand that going forward we will be taking a vacation twice a year… whether I like it or not. That means a cruise or similar excursion where there are no cell phones and no Internet, and no meetings or colleagues. We are going to start smelling the roses before my nose falls of from disuse.

There are a number of people who see me as a mentor… look to me for advice and guidance, both personally and professionally. I am honoured to have their trust like that. Yesterday afternoon I sat in the swimming pool with one of the people that I look to for that guidance, and when Theresa described my year he called me a name that I will not repeat here. ‘I worked as hard as you did for most of my professional life, but every year I took two or even three trips to break it up and relax… Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Florida, or wherever. Otherwise you end up being of no value to anyone, much less yourself.’ It sounds like the sort of advice that I would have given to someone. Sometimes the obvious stares us in the face and we don’t see it. Sometimes we think that weakness is for other people, and that we are superheroes. Sometimes we think we are still the twenty-two year old soldier we once were, invincible and able to go all out forever. It is easy to forget that when we were soldiers we had downtime mandated, and even then some of our friends crashed out.

The sun has gone down, and the lights of Miami are behind us. The ship is sailing south toward the Caribbean, and my plans for the next six days consist of eating, drinking, relaxing by the pool, playing some cards at the casino, seeing some shows, and going ashore in our three ports of call. I do not intend to wear a watch for any of it, nor do I plan to turn my cell phone on. Okay, when we are ashore in Key West I might take it, but I haven’t decided yet. I do know that I have set my Out of Office Reply on both my personal and professional e-mail accounts, and have changed my voice mail to explain the delay in my returning e-mails and phone messages. Today I sat in an outdoor hot tub, an activity I plan to repeat several times this week. I have had a couple of drinks, but am not going to go overdo it. I did have a cigar, and plan to have at least one every day this week – an anomaly for someone who rarely smokes ten in a year – because with every puff of smoke I feel more of my stress leaving me.

I will be writing every day, but these articles will not be posted until I am back in Toronto. I will be exercising – it is time for me to start thinking about my Second Degree Black Belt, and if I want to strive for it then this vacation from physical activity has to stop. Today Theresa and I walked over 10,000 steps, and will do at least that every day, in addition to stretching and pattern practice. I will meditate, and I will stare out at the sea from our cabin’s balcony as well as from the deck. What I will not do is think about work… at least, not much. Expect the next few articles to be of a slightly different variety than you have read in these pages these last few months… they will be a sort of travelogue as well as some insight into my mind.

Thank for your continued readership.

Filed under Article, Cruise, Vacation

Why we need a backup…

December 13, 2011 4 Comments

This is a story about IT Security.

It is hard to believe that within three weeks we have had our Kia Rondo.  However it is easy enough to gauge… we brought it home (used) on New Years Eve, December, 2009… When I drove Theresa to the hospital to deliver Gilad it was still on its first tank of gas.

Now, the fact that it has taken us this long to learn our lesson is testimony to our diligence, but nonetheless the lesson would eventually be learned.  New cars, as you know, come with two sets of keys.  Used cars, unfortunately, do not.  More often than not they come with only one, as is the case with the Rondo.  Theresa and I switch off driving the two cars every so often (usually when one needs gasoline or other maintenance I get it).  As such, we are usually pretty good about leaving the keys on the secretary by the door.

This past week-end was a disaster for me.  I got home from two weeks in South America & Mexico on Thursday, jetlagged and exhausted from the travel.  So much so that Saturday and Sunday I essentially slept all day, although I did venture out in the evening… on Saturday I took Theresa to Niagara Falls for dinner, and on Sunday after they came home from Buffalo I took her to a movie.  When I came home Theresa had warned me that both cars needed gas, so we drove the Toyota on Saturday (and I filled the tank) and the Kia on Sunday (and I filled the tank).  As we arrived home after the movie, there was a confluence of many irregularities – a dog jumping at the door, a phone ringing, and a need for the restroom. 

The keys to the Kia ended up in my pocket…

…and the following morning they came to the airport with me…

…and then they came to Halifax with me.

I checked into the Maple Leaf Lounge at the airport in Halifax when I called my beautiful, loving, absolutely understanding wife whom I love dearly and who is always the first person I call when I land anywhere.  I heard Gilad crying in the background, which was strange for the time of the morning when he was usually at daycare.  ‘No, nothing is wrong with him… but he is rather upset that you took my car keys and stranded us here.’

Oh, crap.

To cut a long story short, after losing most of a day, a very understanding friend drove my very loving and wonderful and understanding wife to the airport parking lot and picked up my car from the long-term parking lot.  It was a huge hassle, but all was well.

At this point – if not several paragraphs ago – you have probably started wondering why I prefaced this tale of an absent-minded husband as a story of IT Security.  Keep reading and all will be made clear!

Many small and mid-sized businesses rely on one person to be the ‘Keeper of the Keys’ for their network – one user’s account is the Domain Administrator, or Root account.  Of course it is best practice to not share passwords, so that person is the only person who knows the credentials.  In some cases, that ‘person’ is not even an employee, but an IT Service Provider, who maintains their computer for them.  While the skies are clear this poses no problem.  Too often I have heard horror stories of things going very bad very fast.

Over the course of my career I have received no fewer than a dozen calls from companies who needed for me to reclaim their networks following a falling-out with their former IT Manager.  In most of these cases the company had decided to lay them off because they were going to outsource their IT services, although on a couple of occasions there was a fight between the owner and the IT guy who stormed off in a huff.  In one unfortunate case the IT guy died suddenly in a car accident.

On the other side of the same coin, I have on a number of occasions been told by IT service providers that their clients were late paying their bills, so they were going to deny them service and would not provide any credentials until all of the accounts were adequately settled.  I advised these IT pros that while I understood their frustrations, they were likely breaking the law and opening themselves up to legal action that would far outweigh any disputed monies.  I can only hope that they followed my advice and reversed their stances… As they did not name the client, there was no way for me to follow up on that.

While the IT guy who refuses to share the credentials is breaking the law (except for the guy who died, who was pretty action-proof) it is the company that suffers until the issue is resolved.  Resolving the issue – either technologically or legally – can be time consuming and costly.  It is also a situation that is very easy to avoid.

I do not think the solution is giving anyone in the company Admin/Root credentials… nobody should ever have higher credentials than they need to do their job.  What I would recommend, however, is that a second Admin/Root account be created with a long and super-complex password.  Those credentials should be stored separately and securely in sealed envelopes that hopefully will never need to be used.  However just like having a spare set of keys, it is a safety net against the sudden souring of the relationship between the SMB and the IT provider, whether that provider be an employee or contractor.

This plan is unfortunately not bullet proof.  It would be simple for the provider to either disable this account or change those credentials.  Legally speaking this would be an overt criminal act, but the jaded tech may not be concerned about that.  That is why it is crucial that companies manage their HR – specifically their layoffs – carefully.  If they are planning to lay off their administrator it is a good practice to use the following steps:

  1. Plan the timing carefully.
  2. Before you call your administrator into your office for that uncomfortable conversation, ensure that those credentials work, and access the Active Directory Users and Computers console using that account.
  3. When you know that he is waiting to come into your office, disable his account.

It is unfortunate, but a jaded former employee can cause a lot of damage.  I have heard horror stories of companies laying off their IT manager, but not disabling their account.  That laid off employee then goes back to their desk and starts wreaking havoc on the network.  The IT administrator is, unfortunately, not a position that you can lay off and give them two weeks notice, expecting they will faithfully continue to perform their duties.  If you are getting rid of the IT admin, you have to pay their settlement out but terminate their employment – along with their credentials – immediately.

If you think you may be protected by loyalty, remember that you are about to demonstrate a termination of that two0way loyalty street.  In cases I have been involved in neither long-time friendships nor family relations have protected the company. 

I am not saying that this will happen in every case, but you cannot gamble that it will not happen to you.  Don’t take the chance, and you will never have to write an article about how loving and understanding your wife is because you flew to Halifax with her keys Winking smile

Filed under Article, Credentials, IT Security, Password

Virtualization Infrastructure: Which platform is right for you?

November 7, 2011 3 Comments

Over the past year as a Virtual Partner Technology Advisor for Microsoft Canada I have heard a lot of people say a lot of things about Hyper-V, and not all of it has been from people who work for (or are otherwise strongly invested in) VMware.  Some of those arguments are reasoned, others emotional, but there are still a lot of people who argue that  because Hyper-V is free, it cannot be as good a product as vSphere.

While I understand the thinking, I feel it is a misconception to state that Hyper-V is completely free.  For most instances it is a role that comes with Microsoft Windows Server.  Just like you do not pay for DNS Server or Internet Information Systems (IIS), Hyper-V is included with the product that you use to install it.

Of course, there is also the free hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server.  It is a free download from Microsoft, which can be installed directly onto the hardware.  However once you install that, you are still going to install operating systems that you have paid for (or will pay for) into the virtual partitions.  Statistically a vast majority of those will be Microsoft Windows operating systems… either modern or legacy versions.

What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly.  Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. –Thomas Paine

A Layer 1 Hypervisor (virtualization host platform) is, by definition, an operating system.  It is installed directly on the hardware (Ring –1).  However without another operating system – usually Windows – it does not do anything else.  So why should you pay for both the host operating system and the guest operating systems?  Microsoft does not believe you should have to, and so they give the hypervisor away for free.  In fact VMware does the same thing – ESXi is a free product as well.

In both the case of Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware’s ESXi the hypervisor is free, and it is only the management tools that you would pay for, and even that is not an entirely true statement.  You can download the vSphere client for free from vmware.com, just as you can download the Hyper-V Manager as part of the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) from microsoft.com, and both of these can be installed on any Windows-based server or client operating system.  So really it is only the infrastructure tools – the tools that manage features such as Failover Clustering (Microsoft) and High Availability (VMware), intelligent placement, load balancing, and others that cost, and it is true that these are going to cost less with Microsoft Virtualization than with VMware’s vSphere.

Does this argument make one better than the other?  Maybe… but exactly which is better may depend on who you ask.  There are many IT Pros who have been using VMware for years and swear by it, and even at a higher cost than Microsoft it is worth the money.  There are others who feel that in this day and age of trimming budgets and cutting costs the so-called ‘free’ Hyper-V is a better solution.  However a lot of the answer of ‘which is better’ will come down to the Universal Consultants’ Answer (UCA)… It depends.

When comparing the technologies side by side there are a number of factors we have to compare to determine the technological superiority of one over the other.

1. Performance

The first factor we have to consider is performance.  If Hyper-V does not work as well as ESXi then the comparison is irrelevant, just like it would be folly to compare a Porsche to a Fiat solely based on price.  The question will come down to this: on similar hardware will the platforms perform similarly?  In my tests (performed on both HP ProLiant and Dell PowerEdge server hardware) the performance of a virtual workload is similar – one or the other may perform up to 3-5% better depending on the actual workload type.  This is my experience, and unfortunately VMware’s End User License Agreement prohibits me from publishing comparative benchmarks.

2. Management Tools

If we can assume parity on training and competence on each platform (I hold both the VMware Certified Professional 4 and the Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Virtualization Administrator 2008 R2 certifications) then manageability will be divided into two compartments: 1) Do both platforms do everything that I need, and 2) How comfortable am I with the management tools available.

In my case, there is clear parity on features.  All of the components that I need and would use are in Hyper-V (taking into account that I have in all of my environments either System Center Virtual Machine Manager and System Center Operations Manager installed as management and monitoring components, or in the case of smaller networks the equivalent System Center Essentials (in the case of SWMI Consulting Group it is actually the HP Insight with Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 offering).  With that being said, there are two components of VMware that I could see some organizations needing or, as is more often the case, wanting.  Those are Storage vMotion and Virtual Network Switches.

While I understand the theoretical desire for Storage vMotion, I am still always hesitant to use it in a production environment during busy times.  I admit I may be suffering from the same type of legacy mindset that I so often accuse others of falling into, but I just cannot see it as a good idea to move a .vmdk file from one SAN device to another while the virtual machine that is attached to that .vmdk file is operational.  I understand that the capability will be delivered with the next version of Hyper-V, and while I look forward to seeing it, I still do not think it is something I will do very often.

Of course Hyper-V has virtual networking as well, but there is no comparison between the two – VMware’s offering is much more robust than Microsoft’s.  With that being said, most companies don’t have a need for that robustness in their virtual networking – they have already invested in it in their physical networking, and have the CCNEs on staff to manage it.  While there are some companies that do have the need for features such as distributed virtual network switches (which I am told will be included in the next version of Hyper-V), I still suspect that most companies do not have such complex requirements.

As for the management console itself (vSphere Client versus Hyper-V Manager or System Center VMM) the jury is out… and irrelevant.  I may prefer chocolate ice cream, but that does not mean that someone else does not prefer vanilla nor that they would be wrong to.  I spend so much time in the System Center and MMC consoles that I was actually surprised to hear one of my students tell me recently that ‘I can’t get used to Microsoft’s management tools… vSphere is so much simpler!’  Just like that I was reminded that personal preference is so closely tied to our experience… someone who knows vSphere will absolutely prefer it, while someone looking at it for the first time might consider it difficult to navigate.

3. Support

VMware wants your vSphere environment to be managed by a VMware Certified Professional (VCP).  Likewise, Microsoft would prefer that your Hyper-V environment be managed by someone who at least holds a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization (MCTS).  Of course, if your IT guy is more of a generalist then nearly every Windows Server certification will cover the basics of Hyper-V, so most of the MCTS certs will do, or at least act as a foundation for Hyper-V.  That does not mean that VCPs are not extremely qualified.  Frankly, I believe that the VCP process was harder than the MCTS process, and suspect that most of the VCPs out there have a collection of other certifications including the odd MCSE and MCTS.

All of this to say that it is easier to learn Microsoft virtualization as a subset of other skills you already need in your environment than it is to invest in training on new (to them) technology for an IT Pro.  <shameless plug> The certification process can be as easy as spending a few hours with the e-learning course Collection 10215- Implementing and Managing Microsoft Server Virtualization (see Hyper-V Training–10215AE is now available in E-Learning! on The World According to Mitch) which will prepare you for the exam 70-659, and then scheduling (and sitting) the exam. </shameless plug> There is no requirement to sit the class before being allowed to take it.

4. Cost

So with all of these factors being equal, the decision for many will come down to cost… and this is one factor where Microsoft wins hands down.  According to price lists provided by Hewlett-Packard, VMware’s pricing for an 8-node cluster built on vSphere 5 Enterprise on servers with two CPUs (before we encounter the vMemory vTax) is USD$45,363.  Building the same environment on Microsoft technologies with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 would cost $6,960 – less than one sixth the cost.  Expanding it out to the same configuration but four CPUs the VMware solution doubles in cost while the Microsoft solution remains the same.  In other words, as your environment grows arithmetically your costs on VMware grow exponentially.

Conclusion

As the technologies get closer in functionality it becomes more and more important to find a way to stay ahead, whether that be with innovation or with pricing.  Which is right for you?  That is for you to decide.  Which is right for me?  Check out the blog posts on the infrastructure at SWMI Consulting Group for your answer.

Filed under Article, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, VMware

vPTA: What NOT to take away from my 1-day virtualization training!

October 31, 2011 5 Comments

As a Virtual Partner Technology Advisor I have a really cool job… I go to Microsoft Partners across Canada and demonstrate not simply the virtualization component of Hyper-V, but the entire environment that the partner could leverage to architect a virtualization solution for their customers. 

When we developed the program last year we had several discussions around what hardware we should use to deliver the sessions.  Theoretically we wanted server-grade hardware but we couldn’t get anyone to donate it… and frankly the idea of carrying a 2U server around did not appeal to me.  We briefly discussed the possibility of building it in a remote datacentre (i.e.: at SWMI Consulting Group) but decided against it because of potential Internet connectivity issues.

We ended up building the environment on laptops, and I have a suitcase that I refer to as my Mobile Datacentre.  It is not an ideal solution, but it allows us to do everything we wanted to do on the client’s site; I can get onto an airplane with it as carry-on, and it takes less than 30 minutes to set up completely.  In a future article I will outline what my ‘kit’ consists of, but essentially it has a couple of laptops that run Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

After the first few deliveries I started to get calls from the partners that I had not expected… asks for support on the most ridiculous scenarios, to which I would respond ‘Why would you ever want to do that in a production environment?’  The answer kept coming back ‘Well, isn’t that how you told us to do it?’ Of course it wasn’t, but as I thought about it I understand where some of the miscommunications came from.  Based on that, I have compiled a list of lessons you should never take away from my vPTA sessions.

1. Your laptop is NOT a server!

2. Your desktop is NOT a server!

I have met people over the years – especially in the SMB space – who feel that because a computer is based on x86 hardware and the specs are similar they can run their production servers on any hardware.  This is WRONG! Just as there is a difference between corporate-grade and consumer-grade hardware, servers should only be run on server-grade hardware – whether you prefer HP, Dell, or Intel OEM machines.

3. You should have multiple domain controllers!

4. If you have only ONE domain controller, and it is virtualized, there are risks in joining the virtualization host to that domain.  I am not saying that it will not work – it will – as long as you are careful about it.  Remember, do it carelessly at your peril!

5. When using a Storage Area Network (SAN), which is highly recommended for virtualization environments, use a proper physical SAN device.  Trying to do things ‘on the cheap’ with software SAN solutions may work… but use them as a last resort.  Remember, they will not have the flexibility or power of a physical SAN, nor the management tools.

6. If you do decide to use a Software SAN (such as Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3), DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BUILD IT IN A VIRTUAL MACHINE.

What software SANs do in order to ensure that the volume is not shared is it creates a fixed-size VHD. If you create a 100GB LUN (Logical Unit Number) then a 100GB VHD is created on the volume. Creating a VHD within a VHD not only slows things down, it also has the potential to… well, make things go bad.

7. Don’t (on a daily basis… or EVER!) turn your Hyper-V hosts off, disconnect them and all of your networking components, put them into a roller-board suitcase, and travel with them.  Your servers should only move if your company sells your building and moves to a new one.  Otherwise they should stay put and always stay on!  In fact, there should be careful planning for UPS requirements and generators in the event of power outages.  Remember… when I am finished at your site at the end of the day… I ‘destroy’ the demo environment and rebuild it before going to my next session!

8. YOU NEED MORE THAN ONE NETWORK CARD RUNNING ON A CHEAP D-LINK SWITCH TO MAKE YOUR VIRTUALIZATION ENVIRONMENT WORK!!!  This is not a commentary on D-Link hardware… for home and SMBs they probably work pretty well (I use them for some things).  When planning the network architecture of your virtualization environment you should do some serious planning around networking requirements, including how many NICs for production, how many for iSCSI, how many for Clustering, will your Production vNetwork be shared with your Management vNetwork?  The answer to all of these questions depends on your requirements… but it is ALWAYS more than one.  Remember: More NICs=More Better!

9. Your iSCSI (Storage) network should not be on the same wire as your Production network, and if it is out of necessity then you should at the very least implement vLAN tags to segregate the traffic.  Remember, the only encryption you can put on an iSCSI network (and few people seem to…) is CHAP – not very good. 

10. YOUR LAPTOP AND DESKTOP ARE NOT SERVERS! Of course this is the same as Points 1 & 2, but important enough a message that it warrants repeating.

11. VM Snapshots are great for labs and testing, but are not recommended for your production environment, and are NEVER a long-term solution.  In fact this is STRONGLY discouraged by both Microsoft, VMware, AND SWMI Consulting Group  They should be used in production sparingly and carefully, and only with very careful planning and monitoring.  Remember, when you delete a snapshot… NOTHING HAPPENS.  The VHD and AVHD files only merge when you shut down the virtual machine, and can take a lot of time!

12. Breaking any of these rules in a production environment is not just a bad idea, it would likely result in an RGE (Resume Generating Event).  In other words, some of these can be serious enough for you to lose your job, lose customers, and possibly even get you sued.  Follow the best practices though and you should be fine!

Filed under Article, Hyper-V, Virtualization

A Brief History of how Microsoft (and others) Changed the World… Part 2

August 30, 2011 2 Comments

On July 7, 2011 I posted the first instalment of what started out as a short article for BackBone Magazine, and soon developed (and continues to morph) into something else completely.  You can read the first part here: http://garvis.ca/2011/07/07/a-brief-history-of-how-microsoft-and-others-changed-the-world-part-1/

This is the second part of the article, and it starts to get interesting if you are interested in the history of the most significant industry of the last quarter-century.  If you have not read the first section I recommend you do before proceeding, but there will not be a test at the end, only context throughout.I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, and look forward to your comments and feedback! –M

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In November, 1985 Microsoft revealed its new platform – Windows. It would take another ten years until they revealed what most people consider the first truly user-friendly version; in August 1995 Bill Gates launched Windows 95, and with all of its beauty, bells, and whistles, it remains an industry joke that his demo machines crashed (and that you needed to press Start to turn it off). Of course Windows 95 was still considered a home version, and although it was for the first time included in the same box, required an underlying version of MS-DOS to load before it did.

Shortly thereafter Windows NT was launched. NT was a pure business operating system that would allow IT administrators to control much of it centrally. It was their goal, however, to bring these two platforms together into one single environment. In late 2001 that would become a reality with Windows XP, which although it did have a Home Edition and a Professional Edition, sat on the same kernel.

Windows XP was the first operating system that most people would use, and by that we mean that shortly after its release the world of ‘personal computers’ hit a tipping point, and during the ten years that followed its release all of the pieces of the history of an industry would come together – computers, the Internet, interconnected applications – to a point where nearly everyone in the developed world has and uses a computer, and people who short years before would have handed tasks such as e-mailing and writing documents to secretaries are now doing it all themselves. Grandmothers who just a few years before were afraid of computers are using Facebook and Skype to stay in touch not only their immediate families but also with friends and family far and wide. The (developed) world is on-line, and while so many of the tools we use to make our lives easier are not from Microsoft, without Microsoft Windows – a single platform so pervasive so as to run on over ninety percent of desktop computers (as well as some seventy-five percent of servers) it would be difficult to see how all of these changes – indeed how the tipping point that allowed them all to happen – could have happened without Microsoft.

With that being said, the single most popular commercial software package (or software family, as there are different editions) that gets installed on Windows-based computers is Microsoft Office. The Office Suite at its core consists of a word processor (Microsoft Word), spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel), and presentation package (Microsoft PowerPoint). There are competitive packages to each of these, as well as to the plethora of applications that are included in various other editions of the package. Some of these, such as Open Office, are even free. Yet corporations continue to buy licenses for the Microsoft offering. It is certainly not because corporations are fiscally irresponsible, it is simply that the products are designed to work together from the ground up, and while Open Office on Windows was brought over from the open-source world, Office was built specifically for Windows, by the company that makes Windows. As the industry continues to evolve ‘into the cloud’ Microsoft has invested heavily in web-integration of the suite, including the ability to store and work on documents on-line, as well as both private- and public-cloud versions of the most popular applications of the Office suite. They were not the first to release on-line, subscription-based (or free) applications… but no other company offers the level of on-line and local integration that allows the end-user to work how he wants, where he wants.

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It has been twenty years since the deal with IBM, and the vast majority of computers sold today are still sold with a license for a Microsoft OS. Whether you spent three hundred dollars on a netbook with Windows Home Basic or several thousand dollars on a high-performance workstation with Windows Ultimate, a few dollars of your purchase price goes directly to Microsoft. Those bundled licenses, called original equipment manufacturer (OEM) licenses, are the least expensive way to purchase the product; with that being said, Microsoft may be the only company in the world that sells products for a cost of ‘It Depends…’. Is the OEM version of the product any different than the retail (FPP, for Full Package Product) one? Not in any way that most users would notice – but legally it makes all the difference in the world. The OEM ‘SKU’ (pronounced skew) of Windows, or any other Microsoft software available in OEM, has no upgrade rights (it cannot be used to upgrade a previous version of the OS), and is tied to the hardware (specifically to the motherboard and CPU). If those components are replaced – whether due to a hardware failure or the desire to upgrade or whatever other reason – the OS is no longer legal for use. While the writer is not sure how large computer resellers handle this issue for warranty replacements, he has heard of too many smaller Partners and resellers who shirk this issue, whether inadvertently due to ignorance, or blatantly with full knowledge of the legality.

If it is true that over the years, dating back to the original IBM PCs, a significant percentage of Microsoft software has been pirated, it is easy to surmise that as the largest software company in the world they have lost billions of dollars to illegal software sales. In fact, it is entirely possible (although difficult if not impossible to quantify) that the Microsoft Corporation has been the single most stolen from entity in the modern world (we will leave the pillaging of villages and civilizations from the Israelites through the Aztecs & Mayans pride of place… for now). In all likelihood dating back to the original MS-DOS there have been Billions of dollars in pirated or otherwise unlicensed Microsoft software installed.

Imagine someone stealing a Billion Dollars in cars from Toyota… or a Billion Dollars in diamonds from deBoers… or a Billion Dollars in televisions from Sony. These companies would actually suffer a two-fold loss – not only have they lost that amount in saleable merchandise, but they have also lost the same amount because the consumers of those stolen products don’t actually have to purchase them from the manufacturer. It would be, in a word, devastating.

While Microsoft is severely anti-piracy, and while that crime does affect them, the cost is nowhere near what it would be to almost any other industry. The reasoning is twofold:

1) While Microsoft manufactures and delivers a product, it is not the box that costs money, but rather the software – easily and very cheaply reproducible –within that box that is the product. So if a car manufacturer loses half the value of the sale cost for a stolen car, Microsoft – any software company, really – loses the cost of the box.

2) A large percentage of people who use pirated software who would not pay for the product if they had to.

Still, Microsoft (and other software vendors) go to great lengths to prevent illegal usage of their products, and they are right to do so. At the same time, they give away huge amounts of software, both to their partners but also to developing nations It has been twenty years since the deal with IBM, and the vast majority of computers sold today are still sold with a license for a Microsoft OS. , and give bigger discounts on them,

One of the reasons that Microsoft has been so successful seems counter-intuitive to a company selling products. They simply make it difficult (and in some cases impossible) to buy product or receive support directly from them.

From very early on Microsoft has relied on others to sell their product. They are by no means the first to do business that way, but they have spent years developing a partner ecostructure that promotes, evangelizes, sells, and supports their products. You can still buy Microsoft products – at least, many of them – from retail outlets. However the vast majority of Microsoft products solutions are sold by Partners.  The ‘channel’ has grown up with a love-hate relationship with Microsoft, and there are people who would say that Microsoft does not treat their Partners fairly – certainly they admit (or I have heard a corporate vice-president admit at a Partner event) that Microsoft does not treat all of its partners equally.  However this seemingly unhealthy relationship may be, it is hard to overlook the fact that there are thousands of companies that have made a very good living reselling Microsoft solutions.

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To be continued… stay tuned!

Filed under Article, How Microsoft Changed the World, Industry, IT Pro, Microsoft, Personal Computers

End of Days for Windows XP.

August 12, 2011 Leave a comment

Quite a number of people have asked me why I continue to tweet the number of days until Microsoft ends support for one of it’s most successful operating systems ever, Windows XP.  Especially knowing that we seem to be a long way off – today is Friday August 12, 2011 and we are 969 days away from that day, nearly three years as someone recently pointed out.

The truth is that if you have one or two or even ten computers under your responsibility then planning and implementing the deployment plan of a new operating system is not that difficult or time consuming.  However if you have hundreds or thousands of them – numbers not uncommon even among small business IT consultants who service several clients, let alone IT Pros managing desktops for MORGs, LORGs, and Enterprises – then it is something that takes a great degree of forethought and planning.  Issues such as application compatibility, hardware lifecycles, and licenses must be determined, managed, and accounted for. 

How many companies are out there who don’t actually know what they have?  I often ask at my seminars what reasons people have for not having moved to Windows 7 yet, and among the most common (along with cost and application compatibility) is that it is daunting.  The thought of what people need to consider for such a project can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you have, because frankly how can you know where to start?

I used to work for a man named Jacob Haimovici who always said that if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.  It is absolutely true, especially in the world of IT where so often you cannot touch your assets, and the assets you can touch may contain any number of disparate components (hardware). 

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit is a free tool from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is your first step to having an easier life as an IT Pro.  It is an agentless inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations—including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and even virtualization with Hyper-V.  It inventories your environment including hardware and software, and lets you know what you have.  It creates spreadsheets for you of all of your assets, and lets you know what components are ready for Windows 7, which need mitigations, and which will need upgrading or replacing. 

I ran the MAP tool on the network at Meadowgreen Academy in Mississauga, Ontario before I embarked upon my migration plan, and determined quickly that none of their video cards supported Aero Glass; also a number of the machines did not have enough memory.  These were easily mitigated with a purchase order, and the school administrator was pleased that I discovered all of this up front, and did not wait until it was too late and they had to decide with a proverbial gun to their heads.

The MAP toolkit will also prepare the proposal documents with graphs and charts that speak the language of CxOs, which so many IT Pros cannot do.  Even those who do to a man hate preparing reports and proposals, so the MAP toolkit can be a real godsend.

I was golfing with a client in California a year ago and he told me he had to do a network inventory that afternoon for a new client.  When I asked him what tools he used he told me ‘a pen and paper.’  After I told him about MAP, he told me that before he took me to see the client he needed to run it by the boss.  The boss wanted to see it in action, so I pulled out my netbook (that’s all it takes – fully contained on a 1 GB netbook!), plugged it into their network.  Once they supplied me with the credentials the tool took a few minutes to run and generate the reports.  They were astounded to see the cost savings they could realize by virtualizing their servers!  When we looked at the count of client computers they told me I was off by five… until we determined that the sales team were at an off-site… with their laptops.

Of course, you may need more, and if you do, there are plenty of courses available to help you with your skills, including the highly popular ‘Updating Skills for Windows 7’ by Raymond Comvalius and myself, published by MVP Press.  There are certifications for Windows 7 as well as for Windows deployment, and if you look up the exam 70-681 you will see what the prerequisites are to become an MCTS: Windows 7 Deployment.  If courses aren’t right for you, check out books like Mastering Windows 7 Deployment by Aidan Finn, Darril Gibson and Kenneth van Surksum, which covers everything you will need, and more!

If you are the type to just hack away and figure it out, Microsoft has a whole plethora of free and simple tools that will help you with your deployment plan, including MDT, WDS, WAIK, SCCM, App-V, ACT, and more.  As we say, you can’t spell Deployment without them!  Believe me, once you take the first step, deployment is not as daunting as it might seem now.

Filed under Article, CanITPro, Deployment, EndOfDaysXP, MDT, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows

Your Certification Journey Starts with a Single Step!

July 22, 2011 1 Comment

Sunday morning I woke up to find a foot of snow in my driveway; time to break out the shovel! I dressed up warm (the thermometer read -9C / 19F), grabbed my shovel, and opened the garage door… and was flummoxed. Where should I start? There was a wall of snow all along both sides of the garage that was equally deep right to the foot of the driveway, some thirty-five feet away. I stood there for a minute and weighed my options, and then I put the shovel to the snow and scooped up my first shovelful.

Thirty minutes later I had cleared off the top third of one side of the driveway… I honestly never thought I would get that far! Although the end was not quite near, I could certainly see how far I had come.

I drew a parallel between that progress and my IT certifications; I thought back to the first time I really looked into it, and realized that it was not as simple as saying I would take a few courses and pass a few tests, I had to plan out a course of action, and the starting point was often times as complicated as the material I had to learn; which course should I take first? What study materials and methods should I use? When would I be ready to pass my first exams? It was so nerve-wracking I occasionally thought about giving up… and it was nearly eighteen months before I would pass my first exam.

Sure, certifications are complex… it would likely be simpler if it was a linear path from start to finish, but that is simply not the way it works. You have to really know what you are doing before you set out, and frankly that can be a daunting challenge, one that I am sure has prevented many people from setting out.

What should you do first? You have to decide what it is you want your certifications for; if you want to be a developer or an IT Pro… and a dozen other decisions. My advice? put your shovel to the snow and scoop up your first shovelful; If you are not simply thinking of changing careers but have been working in IT for a while then chances are you know what you are comfortable with; look to see what certifications are available. You might be comfortable with the desktop operating system, so a logical ‘first shovel’ may be one of the desktop OS exams – TS: Configuring Windows Vista (70-620), or even the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST) exams (70-271 & 70-272). They may or may not have much to do with what you want to eventually do, but they are a good way of learning what certifications are about.

The public newsgroups are replete with certification advice, and you can have your questions answered by passionate people who are either where you are or were once. If you want to invest in classroom learning then most training centres will have sales consultants who can answer a lot of your questions as well. If you are leaning towards e-learning then many of the IT vendors (Microsoft, Cisco, Novell, etc…) will offer some sort of e-learning options that are worth exploring.

The point is that after a while you will discover what is right for you, what works and what doesn’t, and when you wake up one day you will realize that you may not yet be a Microsoft Certified Master, but you do have a couple of exams under your belt!

My driveway is clean today, but it is going to snow again this week and I am going to have to pick up my shovel again; just like that, certifications is something that is ongoing rather than a journey to an end. The first certifications I achieved are now obsolete, but that doesn’t matter because I have replaced them with more relevant ones now. However if I had not started when I did… when would I have?

When will you?

Filed under Article, CertGuard, Certification Exams, Certifications, Chris Childerhose, driveway, Genesis of an IT Pro, snow

MCITP: Server Boot Camp, Virginia Beach

July 20, 2011 Leave a comment

It was REALLY last minute… on Friday I got a mass e-mail from a training provider scrambling to replace a trainer who had cancelled at the last minute.  By some miracle of scheduling I was available; after a few hours of back and forth e-mails I booked my flight for Sunday to be at the training facility Monday morning.

All boot camps are hectic.  The pace is often ridiculous… it is frantic to rush through 15 days of classes in 10 days, but with a group of students as good as these, who have met the prerequisites and have the drive and the discipline, then it can be done.  We completed the first course (6421: Configuring and Troubleshooting a Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure) in four days instead of five, and the students all wrote the exam Thursday evening and Friday morning.  All passed (one needed to use his Second Shot Free, but that’s what it’s there for!) the first exam (70-642) and earned their first certification (MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration) and were psyched and energized to tackle two more courses over a six day period.

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It cannot be easy for them.  The pace that the curriculum dictates I maintain is frenetic.  They are all drinking from the fire hose, and many have been learning concepts that they will never have the opportunity to implement or work with in their day to day jobs.  However the morning of Day One they all answered the questions I ask of every class, starting with ‘Why are you here?’ They all have their reasons, and since their employers all sent them most of them revolve around ‘I need the certifications and/or training to keep my job.’  I respect that.

During the two week class two of the seven students have celebrated birthdays.  These were marked by the class going to lunch together, happy birthday wishes, and (very small) token presents.  Neither birthday boy/girl missed class because they were out partying or celebrating too late.  Several times over the fortnight smartphones have vibrated with messages of the world coming to an end back at the office… yet nobody took time off of class because they understand the importance of learning.  When labs break they work out how to fix them, or ask for help (first of their fellow students, then of me).  When concepts are unclear the fellow students help clarify.  It is wonderful to watch.

None of them have complained about the pace, none has shied away from homework and I have not once heard a complaint about the extended work days and early morning.  As Master Lee (see my previous post about Master Lee’s Joonbi Taekwondo) taught his new student last night, our ability to succeed hinges on our willingness to work hard to achieve our goals.  As Grand Master Kim makes us recite before and after class, Everything is up to my mind, Sir!

These students know all of that, and have the work ethic, and now the certification, to prove it!

Way to go class!

Filed under Article, Blog, Boot Camp, Bootcamp, Certification Exams, Certifications, Certs, Classroom, Exams, Genesis of an IT Pro, Industry, IT Pro, MCITP, MCITP: Server Administrator, MCP, MCT, MCTS, Microsoft Learning, Microsoft Windows, SWMI Consulting Group, Trainer, Virginia Beach, Windows Server 2008 R2

Master Lee’s Joonbi Taekwondo: Humble and Insightful Lessons

July 20, 2011 5 Comments

Master Lee's Dojang 2I have been teaching a class in Virginia Beach for the past two weeks, and not surprisingly one of my students has a son in Tae Kwon Do.  He had a class last Friday, and although with my injured foot I would not be able to participate, I asked if I could visit to watch.  During the same conversation another student, Mr. Jones, told us that he was looking for a good Martial Arts school to enroll his daughter in.  We all decided to meet at Master Lee’s Tae Kwon Do that evening.

I was truly honoured by the treatment I got when I arrived.  As I walked into Master Lee’s Joonbi Tae Kwon Do I did as I would do at my ‘home’ dojang; I walked in, faced the Grand Master, and bowed deeply with respect.  When I stood up, he came and introduced himself to me.  When I told him who I was, he invited me in, and asked his entire class to shake my hand and introduce themselves to me.

I watched the end of the first class and all of the next.  I was extremely impressed by how Master Lee conducted his class; how he guided his students on the right path, and included the parents in the lessons.  Of course he did not ask them to come join the class, but when there was a ‘life lesson’ he addressed everyone. Joonbi Taekwondo 1 When the Junior Belts class was done, he lined the entire class up in front of me and had them ask me questions.  With a little bit of prompting from the Master, they asked me a lot of great questions; where I‘m from, what style of Tae Kwon Do I study and what my studies entail.  They asked me about the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and the Kookiwon.  They asked me what I needed to do to earn my Black Belt, and how long it took.  All of this because, as I would learn from my visits, Master Lee does not only teach Tae Kwon Do… he teaches his students the importance of thinking, and of asking good questions.

At the end of the Senior Belts class Master Lee spoke to my students and I, and reinforced my initial impression that he was truly worthy of the title ‘Grand Master.’ He invited me to come back and visit anytime.

As it happens, that anytime would happen sooner than I’d expected.  Tuesday Mr. Jones told us he would be bringing his daughter to audit the class that evening.  I have the greatest respect for Mr. Jones not only from the feeling I get from him, but from the stories of his life that he has told us.  I respect all of my students, but there is just something about Mr. Jones that impressed me on a different level.  I was glad to support him and his daughter… and was looking forward to meeting her.

One of the things that occasionally happens with small Martial Arts schools is that you throw a class and (almost) nobody comes.  This was the case for the seven o’clock Adult Class Tuesday evening.  Master Lee took the opportunity to speak to the parents about helping our children to learn, to think, and to grow.  It was a very interesting discourse!  After a few minutes he excused the previous class, and told Ms. Jones that she would have her own personal introductory class.  I asked if I could suit up and join in, and Master Lee welcomed me in.

Ms. Jones only came to watch, but got a full hour of Master Lee’s attention.  She did not learn poomsaes, she did not learn sparring.  For an hour Master Lee, Ms. Jones, and I sat on the mat and she got an introduction to Tae Kwon Do lessons… not with physicality, but with the mind.  The first lesson that Master Lee instills in his students (I had seen this in both previous classes that I had watched) is that you honour the Master by answering questions promptly and accurately.  You answer with respect, and you answer clearly.  As I listened to the conversation between the Master and his new student, I couldn’t help but think how the lessons he was offering were not lessons in Taekwondo… they were lessons in life.  After Master Kim explained that it is important to answer him quickly and with respect, he explained that it was equally important to answer her parents in the same way.  Mr. Jones was only too happy to help test the reaction.

The main lesson that I heard being instilled by the Master is that Tae Kwon Do is life, and life is Tae Kwon Do.  It is not simply a sport, rather it is a way of life.  The lessons we learn in the Dojang are not forgotten when we leave class; most schools have mantras or oaths that we recite at the beginning or end of class.  At Master Kim’s Oriental Martial Arts College, my home Dojang, we recite the following mantra at the end of every class:

School Oath:

  • I shall be Faithful
  • I shall be Persistent
  • I shall be Cooperative
  • I shall be Appreciative
  • I shall be Insightful

Additionally, there are the Children’s Five Commandments, which are about respecting parents, siblings, completing homework, and always finishing what we started.  All of these oaths are hugely important.  It means that we teach the importance of taking the tenets of our art and applying them in our daily lives.

Master Lee’s Joonbi Tae Kwon Do has two oaths on the wall, in big bold lessons under the words SPIRIT OF TAEKWONDO AMERICA.  The first is recited at the beginning of every class, and the second at the end of every class:

Sir:

I will practice Taekwondo with DISCIPLINE, RESPECT and COURTESY for others, LOYALTY to my Instructor and ENTHUSIASM to show my spirit, Sir!

Sir:

I will have the COURAGE to be RESPONSIBLE for my actions and be an EXAMPLE for all.  I will PERSEVERE to be the BEST I CAN BE with HONOR and DIGNITY, Sir!

The words are different from school to school… but the concept is the same.  These words are instilled in us because they are what Tae Kwon Do is supposed to be about.

Master Lee & Mitch 2 croppedOne of the first questions that Master Lee asked his new student was what she wanted to do, and she said that she wanted to become a Black Belt.  I thought it was a great answer (so did Master Lee), and reminded me of Grand Master (Hyung Chul) Kim, my own Grand Master.  He and his staff of instructors continually remind the students that we strive to pursue and achieve Black Belt Excellence.  Absolutely!

Now, when Master Lee asked her when she hoped to earn that Black Belt she was extremely off on her estimates… she hoped within a month, but it is a journey that will take years.  However there will never be a more important journey because it is not simply that of a sport, and it is not a journey that ends when the goal is achieved; Tae Kwon Do is a path that will continue to guide us and inspire us throughout our lives.

I look forward to returning to OMAC when I am back home next week… even with my bad foot, I am jonesing to continue my training.  However when I am out of town it is always great to visit other schools, especially when I meet a Master as inspiring as Master Lee.

Joonbi!

Filed under Article, Dojang, Honor, Honour, Master Lee's Joonbi Taekwondo, Master Lee's Taekwondo, OMAC Tae Kwon Do, Respect, Tae Kwon Do, Taekwondo, Virginia Beach

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