TechEd Europe 2010 - Day 4

There have been so many good sessions throughout the TechEd Europe 2010 conference I didn’t think it could get much better.  Wrong.  The sessions I attended on the fourth day were very good.  Really really technical sessions.  The kind of sessions that make your brain hurt.

First up this morning was the session with Mark Russinovich and the “Mysteries of Windows Management” session.  As with all of Mark’s sessions, it was fast paced and deep.  Probably too deep although very informative.  He covered some of the history of Windows architecture then proceeded to show some of the tools you can use to see how and application is using memory, and the type(s) of memory the app is reserving or has committed. 

This is certainly one of those sessions you’ll want to watch and listen to via the TechNet On Demand site.  See for the sessions that are currently available and check back in a few days if you don’t see what you are looking for.

The next session I tried to get into was the “Understanding How Microsoft Virtualization Compares to VMWare” but the theatre area where they were holding the session was rather small and there were a LOT of people trying to get into the room.  I figured I’d do the right thing and not take a customer seat on that one.  Edwin Yuen was supposed to deliver the session but he did not make the trip.  I see about getting the slides or locating the on demand version.

Kenon Owens and Michael Michael delivered a “Managing Your Virtual Environments” session next.  Michael Michael is one of the leading authorities on System Center Virtual Machine Manager so customers got a unique and rare opportunity to talk with him and Kenon about the current version of SCVMM 2008 R2, it’s design and the thinking behind how it works.

A brief discussion about VMM Self Service Portal 2.0 was also part of the audience question and answer session.

Kenon is on the left and Michael is on the right in the picture at left.  Both gentlemen discussed a wide variety of topics on the current shipping version of SCVMM as well as some information on what's coming next.

Next up was the godfather of PowerShell and Distinguished Systems Engineer, Jeffrey Snover. He and Refaat Issa deliver the session with the longest title called “Windows Server 2008 R2: Tips on Automating and Managing the Breath of Your IT Environment”.  Whew,  what a mouthful.

As you might suspect, this session started with some core concepts around PowerShell because the room had a considerable number of beginners in the room.  Jeffrey polled the audience to check this and did a short level set on what PowerShell is and isn’t.  He basically instructed everyone to stop thinking of PowerShell as a command line environment, and to keep in mind it’s really an engine that happens to also have a command line interface.

He started off discussing WMI and the sessin got progressively deeper into the various objects and commandlets available in the Power shell and the IDE environment that can be used for debugging scripts.

After that, the talk of course discussed a variety of other administrative chores you can accomplish with automation.  Like the memory management session Mark delivered in the morning, the Powershell topic is probably best learned from a book.  There’s simply too much to go over in sixty minutes to do the subject justice.  Jeffrey is a good presenter so the session should be easy listening when the on demand version is ready.

After these sessions I headed to the Hands on Lab area to check out some of the sessions.  There were sessions on a wide variety of topics including setup and use of Lync, SCVMM, SQL Server, etc.  As you can see in the picture, the HOL area was busy and it stayed busy the entire conference.  This is a great learning area.  I wish I had a download of all of the HOL sessions and guides.

That’s it for TechEd Europe 2010 for me.  Time to go do some shopping for my honey, get a bite to eat, and prepare for the long flights home.  Chow!