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Kevin Remde's IT Pro WebLog

IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin – Why is Office 2010 going to be the the Productivity Platform?Yesterday

“Yeah, Kevin.. what’s so cool about Office 2010?”

Lots of things.  I sure don’t want to have to write them all up here; though I’m sure I will eventually.  But today, if you’re an IT Manager, and if you have time, you should definitely attend our IT Manager Community Talk , because I’ll be speaking with Adam Carter about that very topic. 

CLICK HERE to register for and attend the live discussion, or to listen to the recording afterwards.  (We’ll have it up on TechNet Edge later, too.)

WAG – It’s like Bacon Flavored Dog Treats for the IT ProfessionalMarch 15

WAG = Windows Administrator Groups

Last week I decided to try something new, and it’s catching on in a big way.  I wanted to create a new set of user groups for IT Administrators who primarily work with MIcrosoft Windows-based infrastructures.  So I came up with the acronym WAG. 

I’m also a recent big fan of LinkedIn.  And based on the example/success of people like my friend John Weston and others, I decided to use the LInkedIn groups capability to create the Windows Administrator Groups group, and to create sub-groups for various geographies.  The idea is that people can join the parent group and any subgroups they want to be a part of, and the subgroups will lead to the formation of regularly meeting WAG user groups. 

“So, if I’m in Omaha, I should

Want my business card?March 12

http://gettag.mobi/

I’m having so much fun playing with Microsoft Tag.  Try it out on your smartphone.  (go to http://gettag.mobi) The software drives your phone’s camera to take a quick scan of the tag, and then does something with it, like open a web page, or download a vCard.  For example, the colorful tag above, when scanned, will let you save my contact information to your phone. 

Next time I print business cards, I’m going to put this on them.  I’d love to have it on a T-Shirt, as well.

“Kevin.. this isn’t new.”

I know.  It was introduced over a year ago. But I’m just getting around to investigating some cool social-networking uses for it. 

(As of this writing, this same tag is my profile photo on Twitter.)

UPDATE: I’ve customized it.  Now it has my ph

Breaking News: Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 (FIM) is releasedMarch 4

“FIM 2010?  Is that a new product?”

In name, yes.  But “FIM has evolved from Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) 2007, which was previously Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003, which originated from Microsoft Metadirectory Services (MMS).” 

“Wait.. Who are you quoting there?”

I’m quoting Alan Le Marquand and his very informative blog post about the release. 

“So, FIM 2010 is an identity manager?”

As the name implies.. yep.  Some organizations (you know who you are) have more than one directory of user accounts to manage.  That’s tricky.. creating them for new employees, keeping them in sync, making sure they’re all disabled or deleted in a timely manner if the employee leaves, etc.  And add to that the prospect of managing certificates, or even just the upkeep o

Questions (and answers) from our Omaha TechNet EventMarch 4

We had a great time in Omaha!  Thanks to all of you that came to our TechNet Event last Thursday. 

As usual, I had a few questions that I wanted to find the answer to so that I could put them here in my blog.  Here they are:

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“In Windows Azure you say that the fabric controller watches for what servers are running, and can recover a role instance if it sees that the server is down.   But what assurance do we have that the fabric controller won’t go down?”

I am told that you can check the XML file and look for the setting:  <disk_merge_pending type="bool">False</disk_merge_pending>

Beyond that I wasn’t given any details.  I hope that helps.

“I had a virtual machine with a hard disk on a running server t