I just got back from the Live Microsoft Skills Week event in Irving, TX.  As expected, the event was geared at selling training, and introducing people to the new certification designations Microsoft has come up with.

I didn’t really learn anything new, although I did get some more information about the Microsoft Certified Masters program.  This is something I may be interested in the future, that is, if I can find $18-$20 THOUSAND DOLLARS lying around to pay for it. 

I guess my main motivation for attending was to try and win some free swag!  I knew they were going to be giving away a free class, and that is what I was most interested in.  I’ve been wanting to get my VCP (VMWare Certified Professional) certification.  Honestly, I don’t need the training from an educational stand point.  I need the training because VMWare has said that in order to become a VCP, you not only have to pass the test, you HAVE to have taken their official curriculum as well.  Essentially making the cost of the certification around $3,175.  Words can’t describe how much that annoys me.

Certification, Microsoft, training, vmware

So today the topic came up about how many website you can run on a single NIC card with out using host headers. My thought was “as many as you want!”. But it was implied that there was a limit as to the number of addresses that could be assigned to a single NIC. So, when I got home, I decided to test it out. Now, I have a little spoiler here that is revealed towards the end of the video. The conversation we were having at the time was related to NT4, and my test below was done on Windows 2003, IIS6.

But, that’s ok. It gave me something to focus in on for awhile and I had fun doing it. I was just getting ready to blow this box away since I had already used it for some other testing and the Eval license is like 7 days from requiring activation.

I got an email asking about the validity of certain hosts.
Namely whether or not 10.10.1.255 and 10.10.2.0 where valid IP addresses. When dealing with a Class C range, you won’t see hosts with the last octet of .0 or .255, because those are the network and broadcast addresses. However, when dealing with class B or class A addresses, these addresses become completely valid.

You only drop the 1st and last host of any network range. In the above example, the Network is 10.10.0.0 and the broadcast address is 10.10.255.255, so all IP addresses in between are completely valid to use. It feels very odd typing in an address of 10.10.2.0, but I assure you, it’s a valid address, as is 10.10.1.255.
Hope that clears things up.

IIS, Video, Websites

Ponder this.

Windows Home Server is currently not offered to MSDN Subscribers, but Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is? Just because MS is currently offering a 40% discount on exams, and home networks and automation is kind of a pet project of mine, I was considering taking the MCTS: Connected Home Integrator exam. But unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Windows Home Server to ensure that I have the skills necessary to meet the exam objectives.

What a jip!

*UPDATE*

Someone heard my call and it is now available here.

MCTS, MSDN

A new version of my resume is now online.  I just got back from passing exam 70-501 Microsoft Certrified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2003 Hosted Environments, Configuring, and Managing.  I really enjoyed the test.  The questions covered a wide variety of topics from not only IIS, but also to include Database servers.  Since the two really go hand in hand, it makes a lot of sense.  Other topics include Network Load Balancing, and both Database and Content Server failover.  Again, completly makes sense.  The only questions I found to be out of scope (in my opinion, it’s listed right on the exam objectives as valid topics) were the questions about automated server deployment services, and SharePoint.

IIS, MCTS, Microsoft, resume

Well, the new RAM is posting errors.   Haven’t had a chance to fully diagnose the problem.  It’s possible that it’s one of the slots on the motherboard.   I’m going to pull out the RAM that I know is good, and only insert the new RAM and re-run Memtest to see what the results are.

For the record, please never buy OCZ RAM, no matter how good of a deal it seems.   When you look at the reviews on the right hand side, at first glance it appears to be favorable.   But if you dig down into the reviews, you will find a ton of unhappy customers.  :(

Memtest, RAM

I have been using an Intel Smithfield 2.66 Dual-Core machine for just over 2 years to run most of my home lab tests. It’s actually been a very good box, and I’ve built it up and blown it away on many occasions using it for everything from a Domain Controller to a Mediacenter box. But during the last big storm the power went out, and the power surge must have fried the motherboard.

Now it would have been pretty easy to diagnose the problem, and maybe it would be something simple and easy to fix, but this really presented itself as the perfect opportunity (excuse) to build a new system! I had just recently been through a Microsoft Hyper-V class, which only gave me a small taste, and I was dying to play with it some more!  Well, one of the requirements for running Hyper-V, is a processor that supports hardware virtualization assistance. Something my old processor didn’t support.

So I ordered the following system:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45 — motherboard
• Intel Kentsfield Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz — processor
• 8 gigs of SDRAM

The whole thing was pieced together for under $500, so not bad at all. However, I had problems from day one getting the operating system to install. Constant blue screens no matter what I tried. I was pretty frustrated by the end of the evening, but eventually I tracked the problem down to a single bad stick of memory. The memory I ordered came in 2 packages, each with 2 sticks of RAM, so while I only needed to return 1 stick, I was forced to RMA 2.  

The ’server’ has been running great the past month with only 4 gigs of RAM. However, as you can imagine, you can only run so many Virtual Machines with 4 gigs of RAM.  Especially considering Microsoft’s Hyper visor requires a full blown parent operating system to run parallel to the multiple guest operating systems. I could basically get 4 guest operating systems up simultaneously, which really wasn’t too bad. Just not good enough to be able to run a NLB IIS cluster along side of a SQL fail over cluster, which requires a minimum of 5 boxes when you add in the domain controller. Which brings me to my point…. The new RAM arrived! Going to go install it now, cross my finger, and run Memtest and hope for the best.

Cluster, Hardware, Hyper-V, IIS, Intel, Memtest, Microsoft, NLB, RAM

Well, I think I got the basics worked out. My resume is now uploaded, and as you can see, there are download links provided in the most popular formats.

In addition, I provided a web version as well.  I think I spent the majority of my time today trying to get Microsoft Word to gracefully export from the .docx format to at least presentable HTML.   It’s certainly not as neat as I’d like it to look, but for the time being, it’s quick.  Sure, I could take about 20 to 30 minutes and clean up the HTML manually and make it look exactly like I want it to.  But I probably make at least 2 -3 changes to my resume each week.  Sometimes it’s just minor tweaks, but other times it’s adding a new certfication to my credentials.  And if I’m going to be making regular revisions, I need a quick and easy way to export my resume into several formats, including HTML.  So I guess that will be my 1st project!

In addition to providing recruiters and hiring managers an easy place to find my latest resume, I will also be using this website as a technical Blog.   I guess you could say that I’m one of those people that takes his work home with him.  I love to tinker in technology, and I have quite an impressive setup that I use at home to evaluate software, or simply train myself on new technologies.  My current pet project is setting up an iSCSI SAN using Openfiler.  I have a mid-sized dual core system with 6 hard drives currently setup.  The NIC is connected to an private router which then feeds into a private virtual port on my Hyper-V server.   The iSCSI targets are then being presented to multiple hosts to setup fail over scenario’s in Windows 2008.  I would like to evaluate the high availability of Exchange 2007, File Services, and SQL 2008.   After that I add the SQL cluster, I’ll add a seperate IIS NLB cluster sperated by an ISA 2006 server.

So if that didn’t bore you to death, you can subcribe to my RSS feed and check back for updates as I finish getting everything setup.

blog, Cluster, Exchange, HTML, Hyper-V, IIS, ISA, iSCSI, Microsoft, NLB, resume, SAN, SQL Server, Websites, Word

For added nostalgia I’m going to make my first post the traditional “Hello World“.

Hello World