September 2007 - Posts
Finally, RC0 is available, and it contains a preview of what virtualisation in Microsoft may look like. Been waiting for the new virtualisation mainly because I wanted to try Exchange 2007, and see what it can do. And Exchange 2007 can only run on 64-bit environment, but virtual server 2005 R2 doesn't support 64-bit environment. Sure, VMWare does a better job in this area, I agree... But I was bitten by memory leak in VMWare before, and I had to reboot each time I switch off a virtual machine to release it (which may not be a bad thing, as Vista is also leaking memory on me), but I just wanted to give Microsoft one last time to catch up (which they have a very good history, and also I don't want to convert my library of virtual machines to VMWare and not able to convert back because of work reasons... (May be ill-informed in this area)
Anyway, my desktop "server" at home has 3 harddisk, 2 x 300gb, 1 x 500gb, and I'm running out of space already. Courtesy of Chewy Chong, he T-loan me a 80GB sata harddisk, and because of that, I have LongHorn RC0 running now! Thanks Chewy!
However, after installation, there are only 17 server roles. Virtualisation is not listed as one of the role. Quick IM with Chewy points me to this post. Installing the two KB hotfix (Though I don't think this is the right name), and a reboot give me the virtualization role! Yeh!
Firing up the virtualisation manager (I think it is what that's called, I'm not at my server now) gives me a very unfamiliar interface. Creating new virtual machines is easy, but adding existing virtual machines is almost impossible (Almost because I may be ill informed). But I can create a new virtual machine and use the existing harddisk though. There are a lot more things to configure, like number of CPU, VLAN and other stuff. I'll leave the details to a later post when I get to play with it more. But one thing to note, when virtualisation uses a network card, it disables all the IP protocol, and hence you need to have another network card on the machine to access it remotely. So have to make another trip to Sim Lim.
Performance also feels sluggish, which is understandable, since it is preview. But I'm looking forward to see more...
Very creative indeed... But I wonder if you would buy triple core after knowing this...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6334
Microsoft recently released Everyday Productivity Education here, but it is in static website format.
I converted it to a wiki site, but realised that wiki template doesn't allow you to save the entire site with content as a template. So I tried saving each individual library as a template, but the presentation files are just too huge to save. I can't even upload it as zip file into this community server. Oh well, you have to download the presentation file from Microsoft. But I've made the wiki page library and image library available for download if you like to have a wiki-based Everyday Productivity Education instead.
Steps to install / set it up are
1. Download the two template, EPE Image, which contains all the image file, and EPE Wiki Pages, which contains all the wiki pages.
2. Upload them to the galleries in SharePoint.
3. Create a wiki site.
4. Delete the "wiki pages" library
5. Create a "EPE WIki Pages" Library, name it as Wiki Pages.
6. Create a "EPE Image" Library, name it as Image.
7. Create a "Document" Library, name it as Presentation.
8. Upload the presentation files you download from Microsoft
9. Update the links in the wiki page. (The links point to my internal dev site, which will be broken links for your case. If I have time, I'll write a utility to update those links automatically)
10. You should be set to go!
I've been involved / seen countless SharePoint projects, since SPS 2003 days, and most of the revolved around Portal, Content Management, Collaboration, Search. None actually revolved around building an complete application on SharePoint. When MOSS 2007 RTMed, I've been pushing for SharePoint to be an application platform, and finally had a chance to do so.
The nature of this project is collaborative in nature. It is about asking a certain community in the organisation to provide suggestions / feedback, and to brainstorm for ideas how to improve certain situation. The client was using an hosted service for a trial run, which runs on Domino. They liked the idea, but find the cost too prohibitive in the long run, hence they approached one of the business unit for help. In my organisation, many do not know SharePoint in-depth enough, hence they went for bespoke solution. The cost of the project, close to a million, with more than 10 people involved at peak, for almost a year.
After a few months, the client approached the business unit again, and this time the business unit approached the architect group for help. I was assigned, and though it started out as a .Net evaluation, I really saw SharePoint as a good fit. My estimate, 5 times cheaper, with 1/3 people involved at peak, for less than 1/3 the time (no project delay). Though the functionality is not 100% the same, but about 75% are met. And mind you, the team is new to SharePoint, and they delivered the project on time after I've given them some training.
Yes, there are still some bits of the application platform story that needs to be ironed out by Microsoft, but the above project does show that it can be an application platform... BTW, this is built on top of WSS, hence no licensing cost involved...
Customer also commented that UI is much better than expected...
Just in case it isn't obvious enough, do not do the above, unless you can live with killing your explorer process once in a while. Anyway, this happens only after I've installed the beta... After a certain time, explorer will act up and not respond properly... Task manager reports explorer sucking memory like mad... There is one instance where explorer suck up 1.7gb of ram!
To solve this problem, if you experience this, just start up the task manager, kill explorer, then restart explorer by selecting "File" -> "New Task" from the task manager, then type "explorer"
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. Time flies. Today, I just new about photo gallery beta, hence I installed and started publishing some of my wedding photos that I selected for my Vista Gadgets. Not bad, very convenient to publish the photos to msn spaces. Though Google can already do this with Picasa, I didn't really went to install and play with it. Anyway, here is my wedding photos taken by a studio...
Maybe I will publish my honeymoon ones as well... since my server is also on vista... :)
After my 6th ICT, quite sad to say that my commanders don't seem to understand this.. From the top, they hold us so tight, it is worse than being in a active unit. In this ICT, there is a change in commanding officer, which I noticed a change in the way the unit is run. More welfare, with explaination given why certain things (like booking in at 1900 hrs which was then postponed to 2000 hrs after complains from the ground) to lessen the pain why certain decision is made. But it will get some time to filter down (cross fingers) to the respective officer who seems to only care about themselves under the leadership of the previous CO (at least in HQ, but also not every officer. Not fair to put a blanket statement)
Just ranting here also because it happens in real life as well. In the army, we can't quit in response to this kind of ***, but can only slow things down, or stop working intelligent as a sign of protest. But in real life (and I have witness it happen before), we can quit and move on. So this post is just a reminder that hopefully will surface again from my subconcious mind that if, and a big if, I become a manager, I need to take care of my guys...