TechDays: Belgian MVP sessions in IT Pro Track

During the TechDays 2010 we will have at least 2 Belgian MVP’s that will share their experiences with you.

Let’s see which sessions are planned so far:

WMI for the SCCM Admin:
Since its first debut System Center Configuration manager and its predecessors have been relying heavily on the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) architecture. WMI is omni-present is System Center Configuration Manager, from queries over dynamic collections, through hardware inventory and storing client and Management Point settings and policies, under the hood you will find WMI just about anywhere. Given this omni-presence it should come as no surprise that the stability of WMI at your Site Systems and clients is crucial to a stable System Center Configuration Manager implementation. Knowing WMI, by consequence, is a great asset to any System Center Configuration Administrator. In this session you will learn the ins-and-outs of the WMI architecture in general and how it applies to System Center Configuration Manager. You’ll learn about the available namespaces and classes and the extended WMI Query language (WQL) that is specific to System Center Configuration Manager. This session will cover the tools available to have a peak at WMI yourself as well as to the WMI-related tool called policy spy that comes with the System Center Configuration Manager toolkit. By the end of this session you’ll know what the WMI architecture looks like, how System Center Configuration Manager uses it, and how you can use that knowledge to your advantage, be it to be able to better troubleshoot System Center Configuration Manager issues, better understand the product, or to automate tasks through scripting or programming. In the end this session will make you a better System Center Configuration Manager administrator.

Speaker: Kim Oppalfens – MVP SCCM

Deep dive into Forefront Threat Management Gateway’s Network Inspection System (NIS)
NIS is a new technology created by Microsoft Research to help protect corporate networks from the ever growing threat of 0-day vulnerabilities. The technology gives you as an administrator the power to protect your valuable infrastructure from malicious attacks much sooner than Microsoft can releases patches in the normal patch life cycle without the need to deploying anything to your backend server infrastructure.
During this session we will look at how to configure, monitor and troubleshoot NIS in TMG 2010.

Speaker: Tom Decaluwe – MVP Forefront

Next to these two Belgian MVP’s we will also have different sessions from MVP’s from the US and the Netherlands.

Monitoring and capacity planning for SQL Server and IIS
How do I properly plan for capacity for SQL and IIS? How do I monitor SQL and IIS? In this session OpsMgr MVP Maarten Goet and cross-platform expert Michael Gutrie will show you how to use Operations Manager 2007 R2 to provide monitoring and capacity planning (trending and forecasting) for  SQL server and  IIS.  Maarten  will also show how to use Sharepoint to provide the necessary information for the management persona.

Speaker: Maarten Goet – MVP

Manage your Images with the Rock Star of the deployment tools: Deployment Image Servicing and Managment (DISM)
Managing your images is easier than ever with DISM! Whether your images are stored in the .wim or .vhd format DISM is the tool you’ll want to use when it comes time to make changes to your images. DISM allows you to add, remove and enumerate packages and drivers, enable or disable Windows features, configure international settings, upgrade a Windows image to a different edition, provide better logging capabilities, service all platforms 32-bit, and 64-bit. If you have ever struggled with Package Manager (pkgmgr), Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) command-line tool PEimg or the International Configuration tools (Intlcfg) – DISM replaces them all. Plus DISM is great for helping to document exactly what is in an image so you won’t have to!

Windows Deployment Made Easier: Meet WAIK 2.0 and Volume Activation 2.0
Still paying for your Windows image deployment tools?  Microsoft’s free deployment tools are better than ever with the new Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) 2.0. WAIK 2.0 makes scripting Windows installs vastly simpler through its Windows System Image Manager (WSIM), a GUI tool that writes detailed answer files that enables unattended installations.  WAIK also includes the Windows Pre-Installation Environment (WinPE) 3.0, a simplified version of Windows 7 that provides the foundation of many deployment scenarios (and is also a great platform for Windows troubleshooting).  ImageX creates and deploys Ghost-like system images ready for deployment, and WAIK 3.0 allows you to support and update those images with the all-new Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) utility, replacing both the old peimg, pkgmgr and International Configuration tools.  If you are planning on deploying 5 or 50,000 Windows 7 or Server 2008 machines this session is a the quickest way to learn what has changed from WAIK 1.1 to 2.0. Once you have new Windows machines built you will need to activate them and it’s a snap with Microsoft’s volume activation Key Management Service (KMS) – join Microsoft Setup and Deployment MVP and Desktop Deployment Product Specialist Rhonda Layfield in an informative, entertaining, in-depth look at what’s new in Windows deployment! 

Speaker: Rhonda Layfield – MVP Deployment