First Post!
This is my first post at my SA:IT blog! I just got back from Orlando, FL where I attended Microsoft TechEd 2012. While it was a great experience and I learned a lot, it was also really exhausting!
There was so much to do and see I was honestly very overwhelmed. I arrived late Saturday afternoon and crashed in my hotel room basically on arrival. I stayed at the Rosen Centre, right across the street from the Orange County Convention Center, which actually was really nice (both the hotel and the location). I never had to wait for a hotel shuttle, I could just walk on over.
The following day, Sunday, was my pre-conference seminar: Real World Windows Deployment Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 hosted by Michael Niehaus and Mikael Nystrom. Both of the speakers were great, and I learned a lot despite the wicked jet-lag. It really sunk in for me that the Light Touch Deployment we have been hammering out in our office is definitely where we need to be. Once we’ve got System Center Configuration up and running we can reconsider a Zero-touch deployment. There is much more to say on this topic, but I think MDT will be deserving of it’s own post in the future.
Monday through Thursday were a blur of breakfasts, information sessions, lunches, vendors, and my favorite of all: the hands-on labs. I’m all for visual and auditory learning, but for me, the best way to learn is to dig in and get my hands dirty.
The hands-on labs area was huge. Hundreds of computers, broken into four basic sections so that you could sit in your area of interest and ask questions of the Microsoft staff who specialize in that interest. Each workstation had a list of labs to choose from, broken down by general category. Once you selected a lab, a Virtual Machine would boot up, with a step-by-step PDF to walk you through the process. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our own documentation in our office is at least on par with Microsoft’s (better, I would say, in some ways. Microsoft’s was verbose to the point of distraction at times, and other times repeated unnecessary information).
There was also a certification testing and learning center nearby. I got to take a practice exam for the 70-680 certification I am working on this summer. What was really great about the practice test was that as you answered questions, you could see if you got them right or wrong as you went. It would not only tell you what the right answer was, but had an explanation on why it was the right answer. Once you were finished it also broke down how well you did in a number of categories, allowing me to focus on my weak points. Really great stuff. I picked up the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-680): Configuring Windows® 7 book from the Microsoft store. Expect some blog posts on this topic as well.
The vendors area was fun as well, with all the stress-balls and t-shirts they were giving away. I was able to meet up with a few of the vendors we already use: Secunia, ProofPoint, etc. I wasn’t really there for the swag, so I didn’t spend too much time there. The best swag I got, imho, were the free books.
There was also a game center area to unwind at, which I thought was pretty neat. They had some great classic arcade games (Ms. PacMan, Mario Bros., etc) all free-to-play. There was also billiards and skee-ball as well.
Overall, there was a lot of talk of the cloud, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012. While we are moving towards a private cloud (of sorts) here in our office, I still wonder how much the public cloud will be adopted IRL. I understand a little more about it to see that it’s more than just a marketing buzzword, but I think I still need to wrap my head around the three basics of what makes a cloud a cloud (according to my “Introducing Windows Server 2012” book, those three are: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This too, I think will need it’s own post). Windows Server 2012 looks neat though, I’ve got the Release Preview installed on a lab machine although I haven’t done much with it yet.
Windows 8, however, is a different story. I got a chance to play with it on a tablet, laptop and touch-enabled desktop and I have to say, I came away not impressed. I don’t see a big return on investment for our office here. I’m not a big fan of the Metro UI, even when touch is involved. Unless there are some radical changes before release or I become aware of some killer feature, I think we will skip it as much as possible. The newly announced Windows Surface may be the only place I’m willing to concede. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of IT shops leap-frogged over 8 in the same way we leap-frogged over Vista.