The results of my ITIL Masters - Service Delivery examination that I took in April came out last Thursday and I have passed!  Hurrah!  I now have my Masters Certificate in ITIL Service Management. 

The journey started with my ITIL Foundations in 2005.  Right from the time I started to get to know about ITIL I was wanting to specialize in that.  To do the ITIL Masters, the training was mandatory and it was expensive to pay from my pocket!.  Drawing more inspiration from the ITIL Guru's at Swisscom in Bern, I was determined to undergo the training and get my certification too.  I attended the training program with QAI India @ Bangalore in June / July 2007 (Thanks to my client, was able spent two full months in India and work remotely!!)  When the results of the July examination came out in September, it was a bit of disappointment as I cleared just Service Support and failed in Service delivery by 2 marks!!

As I couldn't find a training provider in Switzerland who could let me do the examination, I wasn't able to re-do the Service delivery in Oct & Jan. Finally, I got the chance to sit for the Apr 2008 exam as my client UNICC's training was conducting the exams through their vendor!  I took this as a divine opportunity to do my Service Delivery and worked hard towards it!

The result, is of course quite rewarding!

Today I installed Beta 2 of Windows Longhorn Server.  It is running in my laptop on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 with 1GB ram allocated to it.  Before I plunge myself deep into the sea exploring the new features of Longhorn, the first thing that impressed me was a very simple installation.  Looking back from the days of my server installation from Windows NT thru 2003, I can say that Longhorn server installation is a cake walk.  The only screen where I had to choose something was the language of installation & country initially, and entered the Product key.  The installation was silently running in the background as I was busy with other tasks.  When I switched back to the remote control view, thinking that the server installation would be waiting for the screen where I have to choose the regional options, give computer name, set administrator password etc etc, I was pleasently surprised to note that the server installation was completely over, it had logged in automatically into the Administrator.  There is a screen as you see below with initial configuration tasks where we set the administrator password, change computer name, login to domain, add server roles, etc!

I will be updating this blog regularly on my experience with Longhorn.

Swisscom Mobile announced the first public beta of Media Bridge.  This enables remote connectivity to PC from any mobile that supports GPRS. I love the organizer that connects to my Outlook Inbox.  This enables me to be in touch with important emails even when I'm away from my desk, without having to upgrade my phone to a Windows Mobile device for Smart Office! The other interesting features of Media bridge is connectivity to the desktop and support a wide range of applications that we can customize, including Windows Desktop Search.

The Hindu is available as a e-newspaper from yesterday.  This is a real boon to regular readers of The Hindu like me.  All these days in Switzerland, I was reading the paper daily through my RSS reader and now I am having the feeling of reading the paper like in back home, thumbing through the pages of the print edition. 

The sections like My News, My Clips & My photos tap the advantage of electronic media.

Last saturday was an unforgettable day in my life when I with my wife and kids went on a trip to Jungfrau, the Top of Europe.  It was a beautiful 3 1/2 hours journey by train amidst the scenic routes of moutains and valleys. 

We were on top of the Europe for our 4th wedding anniversary!

I read about Windows Live Writer from my mentor TNC Venkatarangan's blog. As a Microsoft enthusiast since childhood, I always get drawn towards the tools from Microsoft rather than the III party tools available on the internet. I've not tried using any software for blogging so far and now I am very happy to start with the Microsoft's blog writer.

Thanks to Venkat for blogging about this new tool!

1. Certificate
2. 128 USB Pen Drive
3. Microsoft T Shirt
4. Microsoft Technology Adapter Challenge Jerkin
5. MS Press book on "Windows Server 2003 Administrators Companion"

My interest to upgrade my skills in Microsoft Infrastructure technology lead me to one of the unexplored domain of mine... Microsoft's solution to Enterprise security..............

MICROSOFT INTERNET SECURITY & ACCELERATION SERVER 2004

The first hand feedback I got on this product is that it caps all Security solutions from Microsoft.  Highly sophisticated monitoring tools with an user friendly interface to view realtime performance & easily customize the product is said to be its speciality.

I am curious to explore this product in depth.  The trial version for download is only 45MB. 

For beginners on this product like me, there is a very highly interactive online tutorial through which we can navigate around the MMC & configure basic activities.  This will give us a first hand knowledge on how we can proceed in exploring the product in detail in a test environment.

Please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/ 

Much to the delight of the candidates preparing for Microsoft Certification Exams, Microsoft has today a Exam re-take offer. The "Second-Shot Offer" allows anyone taking and failing an MCP exam from March 1 until May 31 to retake that exam free of cost. According to the offer posted on the MCP site, candidates can retake an exam only once, but the retake can be applied to as many exams as a candidate can take until the offer ends.

Microsoft has announced a Special Discount Offer on their Certification Exams.

Period Discount applicable Promo Code till 28th February 2005 30% INQ330 1st March 2005 till 30th April 2005 25% INQ325 1st May 2005 till 31st May 2005 20% INQ320

1. Assess your Microsoft Technology skills at www.microsoft.com/assessment 2. Skill yourself at Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions or through self-paced training kits from Microsoft Press (www.microsoft.com/mspress/india) 3. Read the exam preparation guide (www.microsoft.com/learning/mcpexams/prepare/findexam.asp) 4. Take Practice Tests at www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcpexams/prepare/practicetests.asp 5. Find a Testing Center at www.pearsonvue.com or www.prometric.com

Whenever it happens that you have to type long text in any textbox, make sure you copy the message before submitting.  I missed doing this age old tip during my last post on the AD Session.  After posting, the connection failed.  Pressing the back button does not retrieve the message typed inside the textbox.  Resulting which, I had to re-type the whole thing.

Remember, CTRL + C & CTRL + V the most handy keyboard shortcuts!!!

I would like to start writing about my CNUG-IT Session last Saturday, 19th February in the Microsoft Regional Office, Chennai.  It is the second session I am presenting to the CNUG-IT (Chennai .NET User Group - Infrastructure Division)  & the topic was "Advanced Active Directory" This was in continuitionto my earlier session on Active Directory done in the month of November. Advanced AD is a very broad topic to talk about.  I feel AD is an ocean and I am trying to catch a few pearls in that. After a lot of thinking on what to cover, the following titles were picked:

1. Review of Functionality of Active Directory.
2. Enhancements in AD in Win 2003 Server.
3. Simplifiying Active directory administration using scripts.
4. Active Directory Diagnostics using windows support tools.
5. Backup and Recovery of Active directory.

The experience of this session is unforgettable.  Everything was like not so very good in the beginning turning out to be very positive as it progressed.  Starting from my bad health till a couple of days before the session to the need for a Laptop, memory stick to transfer the ppt etc.  We had booked a laptop on hire to be delivered to us on Friday. In the n'th moment, the vendor turned his hands down.  Ravi (President of CNUG) then promised to get his laptop for me to build my demos on.  Unfortunately he was able to bring it only to the venue directly just on time for the meeting.  Luckily he had installed Virtual PC on it that morning. The memory stick in which I brought the presentation to the meeting failed in the last moment.  I was like standing in front of the audience, with neither any presentation to show nor the OS installed ready for demos.  God Bless, I had a hard copy of the deck in my bag for my reference.  We quickly arranged for the complete set to be photocopied for all audience. We used the interim filler time very productively.  Deviating away from the schedule planned, we did our configuration of VPC & Win2003 installation on that itself as our first demo.  With the help of M Rajesh who is an MVP & part of the CNUG-IT Committee member, we did a demo on Virtual PC configuration, Installed Windows 2003, configured DNS & AD.  By the time we got the photocopies so did the core session during the time the installation was happening, switched back for demonstrating key progress. Overall it was very successful and the live demos worked excepting one!

I got completely re-affirmed in my belief "All that happens is for GOOD"  With a lot of drama and both physical (I was working on friday night till 5 am sat morning) & mental strain it was a very successful event.  Seeing the feedback from the participants today is really morale boosting.

I would fail if I dont mention about the Tips on Making an effective presentation.  Thanks to Mr TNC Venkatarangan who had compiled it in his blog.  It was very useful & the feedback of this session is a testimony for the same.

This is my first entry into this world of blogging.  I am very excited with new space in msn.com  I would like to specially thank Mr Venkatarangan who is my source of inspiration in all aspects(Visit his blog at www.venkatarangan.com) Also thanks to E Ravi & M Rajesh who introduced me to spaces.msn.com

I was thinking for quite some time that I should start my blog & was not able to decide as which one to choose.  Having come to know that MSN has one, I immediately registered and created my space today.

I hope I should be able to contribute back to the community effectively.

Cheers to all!

KR