Create Your Own E-Learning

Microsoft has publicly released a tool for creating e-learning courses. This is the same tool we use when we create the official Microsoft E-learning courses. It is called the Learning Content Development System (LCDS).

Version 2.3 has just been released which includes a spell checker. In general it is a good tool for its defined task. You create a variety of Web pages including quizes and adventure activities through the included templates.

There are templates for providing demonstrations and animations. However, those must be created outside of LCDS using third-party tools such as Camtasia (from Techsmith).

Check out LCDS here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx

Free Remote Desktop through Firewall

I've been a fool for too long. There is a FREE (yes, FREEEEEEEEE!) tool for performing remote desktop through firewalls. LogMeIn.com has a free version of their tool for remote desktop access through firewalls.

This tool is excellent for users that want to remote control and office or home PC when they are in different locations. It is not as well suited for IT professionals that want to control PCs within the internal environment for repairs.

The biggest benefit of this software is that no firewall configuration is required. After the agent is installed on the PC, it initiates the connection out through the firewall on port 80. If your computer has web access without authentication, then game on.

If you need other tools like the ability to transfer files or print, then you can upgrade to another version with a monthly fee. The other main alternative product with a monthly fee is GoToMyPC.

Exchange 2007 Backup on Win2008 - Finally!

This may be not overly relevant to many environments, but Microsoft is finally releasing a solution for backing up Exchange 2007 when running on Windows Server 2008. When you install Exchange 2007 SP2 the functionality is added.

If you have SBS2008, this functionality is already there. If you are a large organization, you likely have third party backup software that performs Exchange 2007 backups. However, for mid-sized organizations trying to save a few $ on backup software, this is a life saver. I know of one client that will start using this immediately.

For more information see:

• http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/13/451311.aspx

Testing Exchange 2007 connectivity

When you configure Outlook Anywhere or RPC over HTTP, the error messages from the client side are basically useless. However, there is a new Web site that simplifies the troubleshooting process.

• https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

When I used it to test RPC over HTTP connectivity to our Exchange 2003 server, it came up with an error on our GoDaddy certificate. However, the certificate is legitimate and works fine for both Web stuff and RPC over HTTP. So, perhaps there's a reason it's still in beta.

For a more detailed description of the tool see this article from the MSExchangeTeam:

• http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/03/25/450908.aspx

Windows 7 Backup

I was playing with Windows 7 today and I noticed that the backup utility is much improved over Vista. Two big things:

• You can backup just specific files and folders. In Vista, it was done on a per volume (drive letter) basis.
• The disk you back up to does not need to be dedicated to backup. So, you can just keep a folder for backups. Vista took a whole partition and then hid it from you so that you couldn't put other data on it.

Windows 2008 Failover Clustering

I just taught the Windows 2008 clustering course last week and figure I better get some notes related to it before I forget. It seems that every course I teach no matter how much I think I know, I have new info highlighted by students concerns or just plain old figure out something new. This course was no exception:

• Clustering in Windows 2008 is much easier than previous versions of Windows. The wizardized process is very easy. You barely need to understand what clustering is to get this up and running.
• Printer clusters now store their drivers as part of the printing cluster on shared disk. You no longer need to worry about synchronizing drivers on different cluster nodes.
• File share clusters are accessible only by name and not IP address. It seems like they are using a technology similar to host headers on an IIS Web site.
• iSCSI shared storage can be access two different ways. Both nodes in the cluster can share the same target (the way I've always done in the past) or two targets can be created that point to the same LUN on the SAN, one target for each cluster node. Both function fine. However, having two targets on two separate HBAs in the SAN can provide some redundacy and opportunity for higher performance.

Exchange 2007 Resource Mailboxes

One of the new features in Exchange 2007 is built-in support for managing resource mailboxes. The help docs for this, to me, seemed a bit difficult to understand. I've been meaning to go through an write a decent guide on how to use them, but never got around to it. Turns our the MS Exchange Team beat me to it. However, since this is way past release, none of us were particularly speedy on this. However, here's the link:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/02/26/450776.aspx