Year: 2011

But wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple, effective way to get the skills and training you needed to take advantage of this opportunity – and get the recognition and rewards you deserve?

That’s where Microsoft can help give your career a boost.
Take your career to the next level

The Microsoft Virtual Academy offers no-cost, easy-access training for IT professionals who want to get ahead in cloud computing.

Developed by leading experts in this field, these modules ensure that you acquire essential skills and gain credibility as the cloud computing specialist in your organization.

MVA guides you through real-life deployment scenarios and the latest cloud computing technologies and tools. By selecting the training modules that match your needs, you can use valuable new skills that help take your career to the next level.

MVA courses include:

Introduction to SCVMM, Architecture & setup

Creating VMs, Template & Resources in VMM

Managing Windows Azure

SQL Azure Security

Identity & Access

Data security and cryptography

…and more at Microsoft Virtual Academy

To learn more go here

Here  is some information on a new threat for you. Many of the customers I have talked to, particularly in the finance industry, have been very concerned about a threat called Zbot (a.k.a. Zeus). Win32/Zbot can be used for a variety of illicit purposes including sending spam email messages, executing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and distributing malware. However, its primary purpose, and the one for which it was specifically developed, is to steal financial information from infected computers. The Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) has released a special edition of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) called Battling the Zbot Threat to bring you up to speed on this threat and the work that the MMPC has been doing to fight it.

(copy from Microsoft Security Newsletter but crossed posted due to relevancy)

Get the report here

Here are some new files  about High Performance Computing (HPC)that have been added to the Microsoft site.

First a simple example on how to build a small HPC cluster including a Video

• The guide can be found here
• A video of the process can be found here

Some new or additional documentation added;

• Final batch of V3 APIs published to HPC Class Library can be found here
• Configuring the Azure management certificate can be found here 
• Steps to Perform Before and After Restoring the HPC Databases from a Backup can be found here
• More MPI resources added to MPI Application Development for Windows HPC Server can be found here

Docs re-published on Download Center

• Deploying Windows Azure Worker Nodes in Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 Step-by-Step Guide can be found here 
• Deploying iSCSI Boot Nodes in Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Step-by-Step Guide can be found here

 

On April 19^th GITCA and Microsoft are running an event called “24 Hours in the Cloud”. There will be 24 one hour sessions around the world covering a wide range of Cloud Computing topics. The presenters will be live on Twitter to answer your questions. There is something for everybody, developer, IT pro and SQL enthusiast. There is no question that Cloud Computing is here to stay and this is a unique opportunity to be educated and gain an insight as to where Cloud Computing is going. Stay tuned for more details, such as how to join the “Cloud 24 hour party”, as the event date approaches.

Click here for more info

 

Here are a bunch of links that you can use to learn more about Microsoft HPC server.

What is HPC Server 2008 R2 ? –

A set of Windows machines working as an HPC system to give users massive computing power.

 

Some of the nodes can be on-premise, like computer node or using Windows 7 computers as workstation nodes and yes you can use Azure as well.

Link to resources and whitepapers:

Microsoft Windows HPC

What’s new in HPC Server 2008 R2

Technical documentation, IT resources:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/hpc/default.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc514029.aspx

http://resourcekit.windowshpc.net/

Blogs and forums:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowshpc/

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/windowshpc

https://blog.mir.net

HPCS PowerShell, e-book:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=184183

http://powershell.com/Mastering-PowerShell.pdf

General DOS and PowerShell scripting:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc498722.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff943787.aspx

HPC-specific scripting:

HPC

HPCS API

Server 28 R2

Whitepapers:

Design and Deployment Guide for Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

HPC Server 2008 R2: Step-by-Step

Security in HPC Server 2008 R2

FAQ on HPC Pack editions & licensing

Design and Deployment Guide for Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

Networking and firewall configuration

Guide to Diagnostics Extensibility in HPC Server 2008 R2

Guide to Reporting Extensibility in HPC Server 2008 R2

Submission / activation filters:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff919469.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346636.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346637.aspx

 

Do you have an Excel spreadsheet that takes hours or day to complete?

Do you have that really fast computer with the note on it that says "Do not touch" while the computer working doing complex calculations complex..

Have you played the game of buying faster and faster computer to get you excel spreadsheet processing done faster

Yes you could go to Excel 2010 version 64 bit to address more memory, but if I am using custom XLL UDF there may not be a version of the custom UDF for 64 bit so what one to do ? And does that make my spreadsheet much faster? Excel allows you to create custom functions, called "User Defined Functions" (UDF’s) that can be used the same way you would use SUM() or some other built-in Excel function or I can user Automation add-ins are suitable if your UDF deals a lot with the Excel object model; XLL add-ins are faster in financial and mathematical calculations. Note however that native code XLL add-ins work faster than managed UDFs.

I have clients who have these problems and have just resolved themself to it is just going to take day to get the data out; for example;

Insurance company

• Insurance company who need to do reserve requirements calculation which answer the question do the company have the minimum reserves require buy regulators’ this is based on Hundreds of thousands of policies and can take 4 weeks to calculate each monthly.

• A controller at big company who doing, what if scenarios on budgets and forecasting the same formulas over and over again and the process takes 1 week s each time

• Assist with Monte Carlo simulation for risk analytics and other suitable scenarios in Financial Services and Energy trading in Oil & Gas industry verticals.

If you look at your company you probably find this is an issues for someone who user the big, complex, spreadsheet I have a solution for you!

HPC Services for Excel 2010

Here is a way to have MUTIPLE Computers share the workload

*** What new is now you can use Excel 2010 PLUS edition and have multiple computers share the workloads ***

HPC Services for Excel 2010 – HPC is part of Microsoft Technical Computing solution

HPC stand for High Performance Computing

HPC is a group of computers or a cluster of computer consists of several servers networked together where each server in the cluster performs one or more specific tasks. Cluster components include Head Nodes, and Compute Nodes, Job Scheduler and sometimes Broker Nodes (for SOA enabled clusters.)

(Graphic from Microsoft HPC site)

Head Node – is point of management and job scheduling for the cluster. It provides failover and controls and mediates access to the cluster resources.

Compute Node(s) -Carries out the computational tasks assigned to it by the job scheduler.

There are many ways that you can run a cluster, here are the methods.

Method 1: use 7 computer that at night or during the week end can be used as computer nodes

Method 2: use Widows Azure as a cloud solution

Method 3: Build a Windows HPC cluster in house

To learn more about HPC and to use HPC with Excel go here

I will be creating more Blogs detailing this solution.

Overview
I will be presenting  a webinar for a cyber disaster makes recovering from one much easier. Still, as important as disaster planning is, it’s often overlooked or put off until it is too late. In this webinar, I will discuss planning for the unexpected, and he’ll teach simple tricks to reduce your company’s downtime before, during, and after a disaster.

Using a fictional company as an example, I will walk you through the disaster planning process a security professional should use.

Outline

• What a disaster is
• How to plan
• Techniques to reduce the impact of a disaster
• What BCP is
• Five rules for creating a good disaster plan
• Testing your disaster plan
• Funding the plan
• How and where to get help with your disaster planning process

Date: April 27, 2011
Time: Noon – 1 PM ET
To Registration Here

I get ask all the time for tools or tricks that a administrator can use here a great one. AD Unlocker Pro.

You and administrator of a Active Directory Domain you don your due diligence and set a group policy that say after x tries lock user account , Now how do you audit and see what accounts are locked?

Here a very small utility that you can run that will show you what accounts are locked and Unlocking them with only one click.

This application also  can use alternate login (useful if your Active Directory Administrator account is not your default user account).

 

See the accounts

Choose what account to unlock

and you can ever have application running to show when account is locked

For those of you who read my blog daily here a great deal

TODAY 2/24/2011 you can download and get a free copy

by clicking Here (follow the directions)

Microsoft today announced a free planning guide to help with Malware.The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Malware Response empowers readers to take action quickly in the event of a malware incident by matching the technology solution to the business need and aligning business and IT from the beginning. This guide discusses three primary recovery methods: cleaning the system, recovering system state, and rebuilding the system. Each method presents different risks and benefits to the organization. The guide also describes approaches to investigating outbreaks and cleaning infected systems. Read this guide to make an informed decision about how to return the systems to operation while limiting the likelihood of the malware infecting additional systems.

The guide empowers readers in the following ways:

• Shortens the time required to recover from a malware outbreak by describing the decisions to be made.
• Provides a cost-effective and straightforward solution by matching the most suitable technologies to the business needs.
• Prompts decisions to be made in choosing one of three courses of action: clean, restore, or rebuild a system.

To learn more about Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Malware Response click  here. To download the guidance, click here.

 

The first webinar, "Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography," is scheduled for 12 pm EST Wednesday, February 9, and will focus on password protocols, user verification, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and using cryptography to protect data.

In the second cyber security webinar, " Securing Communications," scheduled for 12 pm EST Wednesday, February 23, attendees will learn how to put into practice the cyber security concepts covered in the first webinar. They will learn about using cryptography to secure services and wireless networks and about using rights management for protecting data.

"In this cyber security webinar series, we’ll discuss using cryptography, authentication, and encryption from theory to practice," said Ferron. "Grasping these concepts will help you understand the basics of keeping your data secure."

Webinar: Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography
Live Presentation: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 12:00-1:00 pm EST

Webinar: Securing Communications
Live Presentation: Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 12:00-1:00 pm EST

Register for "Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography" and " Securing Communications" on the Global Knowledge web site. Recorded versions of these cyber security webinars will be available approximately one week after the live sessions.