All the studying paid off and I finally got my 2012 MCSA. I want to pursue further certification but i’m not sure where to start without going to a bootcamp first. I think I could get an SE on server, potentially, and trying for that might be the route I pursue. On to the topic at hand though, trying out Windows Azure.  I think this is an amazing product at a very reasonable price. The only downside to building servers in Azure
is that you can not virtualize within them exactly like if you where running a Hyper-V machine on local hardware. That aside my local licenses is expired and I cant test installing DHCP (this would not be a good idea in a real environment maybe a SQL instance would be a safer more practical thing to test the waters with in a real environment) on my Azure server and creating a federated trust between my server installed on my desktop and my azure instance to get the hang of actually using it. My only question becomes why run azure at all. I don’t see much use for it aside from individuals and small software firms. Basically people that want an instance of server and cant afford to pay thousands of dollars for it and maybe don’t need it for an extended period of time. Obviously I googled this and came up with an article (click the link and share thoughts in comments if so inclined). I suppose this fits in with the trend of SaaS business models and could be tremendously helpful to certain groups of people. With the growing trend of a return to terminal computing its possible that would could have terminal servers in the future which could potentially improve SLAs at a cost savings to companies but I’m sure that they wouldn’t come without a side of temprementalness due in no part to the reliability of WAN links.

On to my experience with Azure. I create my free account, available on the Azure website and this was the screen I was shown upon logging in

Where I assumed I was supposed to deploy a server

There are also tutorials but its a really simple process to create a server in this environment. Once you choose what type of machine you want to deploy your given a series of options to configure your box for deployment and it gives you pricing options for various hard drive and ram sizes. I chose the base package of Server 16 Datacenter (datacenters virtualization features are useless as previously mentioned)

To create a machine just click the green plus in your portal (or what ever they are calling it) and then you are given options for what type of build you would like to create. They give Linux as an option which is really a way that I could see this going as a target for people that want to do their own web hosting but don’t necessarily want their own hardware.

Once you complete the build you are taken to like a server manager type view and given the option to basically remote desktop into the server. This is where I ran into trouble not realizing that that user name field was case sensitive. One thing I was surprised by though is upon tweeting about it I received a reply from an official msft account and they went back and forth with me until we figured out what I was doing wrong. Really awesome customer care experience.

This is actually prompting for your admin account you set up when starting up the server. Kind of confusing at first but not really.

Once logged in, your on a server!

You cant install the hyper-v role which is kind of bummer for me. I understand the logic behind it but I don’t understand offering datacenter without virtualization benefits. I see lots of uses for this product and am very excited about it. I personally don’t really have a need for it outside of studying and most of my studies would require an extensive server group which the cost of that without being able to virtualize inside one host would add up fairly quickly but not as quickly as buy a server license.

Update. Today I got an email from Microsoft pitching the backup and disaster angle of Azure, which honestly is the biggest factor for purchasing an offsite sever other than potential cost savings, that I was happy to see. I’m still not 100% sure about the practical implementation of this solution in enterprise environments though. Excited to see who develops this as a solution. 

Here’s to hoping I pass the first time. Hoping to test next Thursday or Friday but I have until march 1st to take it.

Possibly the best book I’ve read about server. It’s obviously specifically hyper V but it goes into a lot more depth in areas that other books don’t cover. 

Hyper-V installation and Configuration Guide

This is a decent intro to VMM but it’s not showing certain things like the actual creation of virtual switches he’s selecting in a drop down box and leaves a little bit to be desired in terms of throughly teaching to the product instead of doing almost a product demo. Still fairly good though. Really hoping to get my own YouTube channel going in the next year depending on available funds. VMM overview

So i’ve passed the 70-410, a task i thought was possibly impossible for a long while, by a good margin. so i’m moving on to the 70-409 and may get back to the 411 lab manual at some point as I have every intention of taking that test after the 409. While studying for this one ive found that the material is covering some things that I don’t know much about so it’s back to blogging for a while. The first thing that seems really obvious that’s kind of a repeated theme is System Center Virtual Machine Manager. I have no idea what VMM is so maybe that’s a good place to start. Im assuming that I should probably buy some books too. I ordered this guy in hopes that it might be a good place to start. I was told that this test was pretty easy and I decided to go this rout before the 411 becuase this one provides an additional hyper-v cert that im pretty excited about. Actually i’m just kind of excited about learning and figuring out how to use these technologies.

So let’s get into understanding a few things before the book gets here. Im just going to do like a question and answer type of thing. Microsoft really created quite an extensive click hole when discussing concepts surrounding SCVMM and its fairly extensive and mostly recently updated material, like update in may. Which is extremely recent IMO. Not sure how long the material has been available but VMM apparently came out fairly recently so hopefully the lack of resources wont be detrimental to me passing the test. Also sorry my HTML editor decided to change all of my ol tags to the number 1 I suppose I should attempt to fix that but im not good enough at coding to know how and besides you get the idea plus if anyone actually ever reads this I will be shocked.

VMM topics
1. What is VMM?

I guess this one is kind of easy to just start with a general definition found here

1. Whats the difference between gen 1 and 2 vms?

A complete list of differences can be found here
however I think the most important difference is that gen 2 vms can be pxe booted using a standard network adapter and are not compatible with legacy nics. It also supports UEFI booting but I have yet to figure out how that will change booting on virtualized systems as UEFI is normally a hardware type of thing. This page referenced on the previous
link is also helpful. It kind of seems like we should be using Gen 2 machines as they have many benefits but personally i’ve only studied Gen 1.

1. What is automatic virtual machine activation?

Activating VMs is a topic I haven’t really had to personally deal with but it is an interesting question as they do still require product keys or hosting them on version of sever that support hosting a number or any number of them. TechNet has a few things to say about it. Sounds somewhat complicated. It does note that the AVMA tool does not work with “other virtualization” technologies. That should seem obvious that it would conflict with VMware products but without knowing how either product really works in production its hard to say how obvious that is.

1. Resource metering vs monitoring hyper V in VMM?

Most of the topics surrounding this on TechNet turn into a click hole but im assuming this
to be a good place to start with browsing the other embeded links. However it becomes obvious that you have to connect it with another tool im not yet familiar with called operations manager (noted later on). Good to at least get an overview before the book gets here which will hopefully provide enough of an overview with available study resources to pass the test. It seems to be so im not overly stressed about this one.

1. hyper-v clustering methods, deploy through hyper-v failover cluster manager?

This is probably a complicated topic worthy of its own blog posts. I spend a ton of time trying to understand a quorum configuration and it was not tested but im still glad i kind of understand it. Just googling it provides real world results with needing to host a highly available SQL instance on VMM and the TechNet article is equally as confusing or complicated.  Going to have to get back to this one.

1. What does the term Fabric mean?

Basically the virtualized network infrastructure that your VMs are sitting on. The TechNet
article is pretty good in this case and for sure click hole worthy but it probably really is the only way to organize the information logically.  I really can see the struggle that they face with displaying that much info in a logical format without being overly preachy or something to that effect.

1. What is a VM creation template?

Just like you can create GP templates you can create VM templates based on existing VMs or a newly created VM for more info check this out how to create a VM template.

1. What are orchestrated updates of hyper-v clusters?

A good comprehensive article is available here that is not a click hole, suprisingly.

1. What are the options for physical to virtual migration?

This is a new topic to me (as are most of these) but I kind of find this interesting as I still ponder the full benefits of virtualization other than the obvious being availability. The benefits to me have to come down to cost to benefit though. So in the case of having very demanding SLAs its a huge benefit. However the actual process to create a virtual machine by essentially cloning a live physical server appears to be relitively easy and instructions for it can be found here.

1. Operations manager hyper-v?

As mentioned earlier I had no idea what it was but began to click around TechNet
and found some usefull information. Still not exactly sure of what all it does but hopefully Ill find more info.

1. hyper-v replica vs cluster

These are really different failover solutions but the basic premise is to have two of the same machines or to create a cluster. Which really when considering it at first is a very confusing set of things because it doesn’t sound like the same thing till you start thinking about it then they seem really similar until you realize that failover clustering is probably a more robust solution for various reasons. This is a helpful thread on the subject with lots of links.

1. How to create networks in VMM?

This done through the fabric console in the main screen of VMM. This really is best served as understanding deploying “fabric” which is starting to make sense as it kind of rolls storage and networking under one heading. basic network topology deployment can be found here and a general overview on how to deploy all things related to fabric can be found here here.

 

Second set for the day, these chapters are relitively short but these questions are kind of a gold mind. Also got a new book today so I have two lab books to go through and two other books that are supposed to cover a test and the measure up tests. The measure up tests are probably the most helpful and I should probably get back to those asap so they don’t expire but I’m really enjoying this lab book as the format is slightly different.

Mindset Question: Traditional log files give an administrator insight on what a system or program is doing or any errors that might have occurred. What does windows use to store Windows logs and how do the logs differ from the traditional logs?

Answer:This is confusing are they talking about event viewer, im assuming as thats in context with the book? Windows uses event logs and event viewer? Is this what they are looking for? Maybe this is helpful.

Question 1.: How many events appear in the system log?

Answer: this isn’t really a helpful question as it’s doing an action then asking the question, same with the next 12.

Question 13.: What are the primary systems that you can monitor with task manager?

Answer: processes, apps, services, pretty much any code that’s executing on the machine.

Question 14.: What system is missing in Task Manager that will greatly affect system performance?

Answer: Honestly have no clue what they are talking about here.

Question 15.: Not really applicable.

Mindset question: What are the four primary systems that affect overall system performance and how does one of these systems cause a bottleneck?

Answer: processor, ram, disk I/O and networking. graphics if your a gamer.

Question 16.: What are the primary systems that you can monitor with resource monitor?

Answer: CPU, disk, memory and network

Question 17.: What process is using the disk the most?

Answer: currently chrome on the machine im using

Question 18.: What ports is chrome using (edited for context)?

Question 19.: its actually using several ports spotify is only using one though, maybe thats a better example at 50704

Mindset Question Both perf mon and task manager can help you view the systems current performance. What are the advantages of task manager and what are the advantages or performance monitoring when looking at
performance?

Answer: well the obvious thing being that you can end tasks in task man but perf mon gives better real time info in a nice dashboard.

Lab Review Questions

• A busy server over a significant period of time will have hundreds, or even thousands of events in EV logs. What do you need to do when
  scanning through the EV looking for certain relevant events?
• What can you use to have one server catch errors from multiple servers that are displayed in the Event Viewer?
• What program allows you to see a history of recent changes?
• What is a powerful tool that allows you to monitor current running programs and processes and allows you to stop those programs and processes?
• What program allows you to monitor the four primary systems that affect the overall system performance?

Answers:

1. use the create custom view, check this out around 5 minitues in

2. The video listed above also talks about the forwarded events from other servers and setting up event forwarders.

3. Im not really sure what they mean by this. Is this changes to the system or like change log of what was installed, that’s under event viewer.

4. task manager?

5. resource monitor

 

Felt a spot sluggish today (my best english accent while typing) so im getting started on chapter two a later than I wanted to today. Any way
guess I could get to typing.

Mindset question: What factors must you consider when deciding which server to place the WSUS on?

Answer: This is going to vary based on the size of your infrastructure but it probably shouldn’t be the same as your DHCP or DNS servers. A storage server
could be a possibility depending upon how often its utilized and the times that you are doing updates, which will most likely be late at night and
in that case a storage server should be ok. That said im honestly not experienced enough as an admin to be able to say the most practical solution.

Question 1.: What does the %windir% folder represent?

Answer: Honestly no clue, going to have to google this which is exactly why im doing this. Apparently its a black metal band from norway? that
wont help me when talking to a computer…ok so apparent this is what is, (not going to link it use google) variable for the windows path so its just a
‘shortcut’ to C:\windows or wherever you installed windows.

Question 2.: What option would you pick to store the database on a dedicated SQL server?

Answer: so this is talking about WSUS and there is clearly an option labeled database.

Mindset question: After the WSUS server has been installed, in needs to be configured so that it knows where to get the updates from and what
to download. If you where getting updates from the Windows update, what would you need to configure, similarly as you configure internet explorer to access
the microsoft update website?

Answer: After watching a few youtube videos im only slightly confused by this. The only place that you can select are msft and another server
within your network. The only thing that could possibly require configuring is your firefwall to concact msft servers for a list of sites that
a WSUS needs to concact check here. For more
information on an exact configuration I found this video to be helpful.

Question 3.: After syncchroizing from another WSUS server, what default port is used?

Answer: This kind of tricky question but I did find this:

Configure the firewall to allow communication for the HTTP and HTTPS ports used by the WSUS server. By default, a
WSUS server that is configured for the default Web site uses port 80 for HTTP and port 443 for HTTPS. By default, the WSUS server
uses port 8530 for HTTP and port 8531 for HTTPS if it is using the WSUS custom Web site.

Mindset Question: You have hundreds of clients that need to get windows updates. Rather than configure each computer one-by-one,
what would be the easiest way to configure all of the computers so that the computers will get the windows updates that you specify?

Answer: Create a gp, see the video

Question 4.: If you don’t use group polices to configure client to use WSUS how would you configure the system?

Answer: Manually configure the clients individually to point to your wsus server as the windows update server. For info on how to do this
click here.

Mindset question: The WSUS server has been configured and the clients have been configured to get updates from the WSUS server. before you approve updates
what should you do first?

Answer: test them on a few clients to make sure they dont mess up proprietary software or any thing that’s critical to user job functions.

The last thing in this chapter asks to describe at a high level the steps needed to run WSUS reports. I think we should be able to find this on
youtube or technet becuase I honestly have no idea how to do this. oh wow, this is an hour and a half. I hope its interesting.

This appears to be the same thing only shorter, TechNet.

that doesnt exactly paraphrase does it? It looks like your going to need SQL, and report viewer and then your going to need to configure the
re|ports. The guy in the video goes into some serious depth. Hopefully I will watch it at some point today.

Any way there are also the lab review questions:

lab review questions
1. What are the two types of databases that WSUS supports?
2. Where two sources can a WSUS server get updates from?
3. In WSUS, how do you specify which computers get updates?
4. What is the easiest way to configure the clients to use a WSUS server?
5. By default what is the HTTP and the HTTPS url for WSUS?

1. SQL and WID

2. another WSUS server or msft

3. this is done via GP, you can specify which applications get updates in WSUS and enable client side targeting, maybe this is helpful
client side targeting.

4. GP

5. port 8530 for HTTP and 8531 for HTTPS

 

Working on a book today, got a few new ones and i’m feeling inspired by them and also realizing there are a whole bunch of procedural things in lab manuals that I don’t know. I bought the 411 one and started realizing that it was useful and that I was kind of foolish not to get the one for the 410 and at least work through what I can in this format because its probably just as helpful as actually clicking through things on a server build. I realize for continuity’s sake I should probably keep going with the the 411 measureup questions but im kind of digging reading these books at the moment so Ill get back to those eventually but for now im going to work through two books while I await the arrival of another one then probably order the 410 lab manual to work through as well. I think this should get me my last 50 points for the 410 and then I can say im certified on server. Im not sure if I will go back and do a client cert after that to be more marketable in the sense of saying I have a current client and server cert or if I will try for the 411. I guess it depends on what my finances are looking like and what sort of chaos is going on my existance.

So this lab book has what they call “mindest questions” and lab questions so im just going to label both as such and type them out and find answers for the the best I can.

Mindset question: If you have a network infrastructure in place including a domain controller a DNS server and a DHCP server, what are the general steps that you need to perform more before you deploy windows using WDS (Note: why are they not talking about SCCM)?

Answer: First of all your probably going to be installing SCCM to use as a deployment tool so lets find a video about that. WDS still needs to be installed and configured but its still an important note. This TechNet article could also be useful in answering this question but the video is amazing. Glad I found this in the book and discovered this little gem.

Question 1.: What is the default path for the remote installation folder [for WDS]

Answer: I think if you were working through this on a server it would be obvious what the path was however Im not and I have to do some research which isnt always a bad thing So here it appears that we have to configure it but in some older info it looks like it comes preconfigured as C:\RemoteInstall. Without actually walking through this process im not sure but the paired technet resource is very helpful.

Question 2.: Why is the default location not recommended.

Answer: I have no clue this isn’t really listed anywhere and I cant find answers in this book. I would think that using a root directory in most cases would be less than ideal though.

Question 3.: What drive letter was the ISO file mounted to?

Answer: again doing my best with limited resources here but I have no way to find out this info unless there is a youtube tutorial with this lab

This video has nothing to do with the question at hand but it is something ive been looking for none the less, capturing a deployable image

Question 4.: What is the boot image based on?

Answer: The instructions say to browse to the sources folder instead of using a custom WIM file so I can only assume its just a standard install file. Is that what they are asking. It would be nice if there were answers but you know Im kind of into mysterious things and im usually ok at finding answers.

Mindset question: [this is moving into creating an answer file which ive come to question the current necessity of due to vary reasons] So far, you have installed and configured WDS However, right now, the WDS server will only allow you to install Windows remotely just as if you booted from the Windows Server 2012 installation disk What do you need to do to automate the installation?

Answer:I mean I think the answer is create an answer file however when watching vidoes of installs on Hyper-V using this tech it seems fairly automated as is.
Creating an answer file is still confusing to me becuase do I have to deploy it to each machine to a specific location and is there a tool that can do this automatically and how often does it actually work? It seems like a neat trick but im not sure of its viability.  This is helpful when walking through the next few questions.

Question: What are the two ways to create or modify an unattended XML file?

Answer: Check the previously linked TechNet article and it says Windows System Image Manager and this is using the Windows assessment and deployment
kit so im assuming those are the two ways to create an answer file? Again not 100% certain as this book has no answer key.

Mindset: You need to update a Windows Image with a critical patch. What are the general steps to add the patch to the Windows image?

Answer:The answer is outlined in steps but injecting drivers might be an important note here so let’s see if we can find both on youtube.

this one has just basic files and folders but its a helpful point of reference.

This is injecting drivers, hopefully its accurate.

this one is patching using DISM, this is actually really good.

Lab review questions

1. What program did you use to install WDS?
2. What two images did you have to add to the WDS server to handle the Windows installation?
3. What program did you use to create the unattend file?
4. What program should you use to verify a unattend file?
5. How was the Windows System image Manager installed?
6. What two places did you have to define an unattend file?
7. What program did you use to modify a Windows image?

So the answers to these kind of go beyond the book which is good becuase every thing is testable.

Lab review questions

1. Server manager?
2. It looks like its only using the serverstandard wim from a sources folder and it mentions a windows 8 file but im not sure its a bootable image.
3. There are two that you can use Windows ADK is what they are using and as previously mentioned Windows System Image Manager.
4. System image manager is what you use to validate the answer file.
5. Its part of winPE
6. In WDS (not sure how this applies to SCCM) is the only place that I can find
7. DISM

Thats it for chapter 1 hopefully tomorrow I can do chapter 2.

 

Some of these today are actually very complicated confident reminders that people that pass this exam are expected to be experts on all sorts of technology they may not even be fully aware of. Im kind of excited by this notion but im reminded that that my capacity for studying some of these technologies is limited by my access to resources (being a copy of server or a live environment) which is kind of cool cause I feel like rocky in that one movie where he’s training to fight the russian dude.

This question is a bit confusing and it feels like there could be a better process for this and im not entirely certain I understand the idea. How does a user create a certificate that follows him that has nothing to do with AD? It just feels sketchy for some reason and like someone justfigured out that it randomly worked.

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This is confusing because it seems like the question is giving a definition while expecting an identification of the definition or its just too complicated. A PSO is my first guess becuase it seems logical however in order to understand the question you have to know the answer of each one.  There’s not much that I could possibly discover about this from books, google or youtube because its fairly obscure info.

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This is getting complicated. I’m honestly confused by radius stuff and i’m really hoping that books can clear up some of this for me. I don’t for see it being on the 70-410 but still understanding the fundamental principles could help me understand other things. Any way, I found this video to be somewhat helpful.

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This is a freindly reminder of how deep the rabbit hole can go when considering testing.

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This one isnt too complicated, just basic configuration stuff. Perhaps a knowledge of this direct access tech but the description in the answer should be enough.

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This is one is hard to understand the idea you they are trying to convey but once I understood that the machine was offline and the network was not connected to the outside internet you start to understand this subnet is setup to utilize the old fashioned sneaker network which requires exporting and importing.

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This is that good stuff that I do like. Thank you for posting this.

 

Kind of excited this morning. Going to find out how often I can get free measureup tests and possibly order books for the 70-411 based on the answer. When I was younger I really wanted to get heavily involved in call center ops and that actually worked out however my life kind of fell apart as things started to get going. Maybe if I with a little luck I can eventually get an systems admin job and that I feel like would be a long term sustainable job that would really be an amazing adventure. For now the only thing to do is to keep plugging away at studying. Im realizing that after going through the 70-410 so extensively a whole lot of these questions are basically the same material and not much more complicated so I dont have as much to really go in depth on. Im really learning my stuff about server and its quite exiting. I really do love this stuff so much so that I have 3 new books on the way that are all about the 70-411 but should have some questions in them that I can use for blogging. I have a feeling that that the text will be mostly redundant
reading at this point.

The first question is about using encrypted file system and DFS. The obvious answer to this that that EFS does not work with DFS. IT clearly states in the answer that encrypted files are not replicated.

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I actually found this some what confusing. I actually said use from the full back-up as opposed to the system state backup because a system state backup to me seems like a lot of unneeded process info that could take longer but as I have never done either one in practice I have no idea of the length of time that either would take. So any way they want you to say do a system state backup, non-authoritative seems obvious as new records could have been created.

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This is one of those weird one off type questions that unless your a really experienced admin you will possibly miss it but once you know the answer its really easy to remember to click the second tab for this type of specific info when configuring a NAP pol.

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I had no trouble with this at all. Configuring a GPO is literally the only option for client side config of a NAP.

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This one I got wrong because it seems complex enough to demand the use of PS (it doesn’t) and is a great example of where I think this product could be improved with videos.  Im coming away from this question with having no idea of how to actually do this and youtube cant help with this obscure of a question but if I had a copy of server and a machine that could run it I could create a video for this.

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Im actually not exactly sure what a RAIDUS server does so I guess I should start there before I start trying to fill in the blanks. Apparently its a type of VPN access to networks, which is kind of what I was thinking however I was thinking the answer was an authorization pol which is incorrect as the con request pol allows you to get a little more detailed.

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I found this to be a little odd but I understood what they were trying to communicate and came up with the right answer. You don’t want actual NLB but you want a little bit of equal distro going on.

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