When I first saw the announcement of Planet PowerShell I loved the concept of having blog posts aggregated in a single place to thought it was a great idea to aggregate PowerShell related blog posts.
I wanted to have my blog added to it as well. But at the time when I saw the requirements, I saw that I needed to do some stuff with GitHub and that was beyond my comfort zone back then.
Last week however I started learning and using GitHub in combination with Visual Studio Code. Then in my Twitter feed I saw the post “A Graphical Example of the Value of Planet PowerShell” by Josh King and I realized that this was something I still wanted to do.
I hope that they will add me so that it will also reach a bigger audience and other people can benefit from my blog posts. I also hope that I can benefit from more people in the community giving me pointers and advice to improve. I look forward to seeing the results 🙂
Thanks a lot to all people that make Planet PowerShell possible and also those who contribute to it with their blog posts. Without you I wouldn’t have been where I am now.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags: blog, Community, Github, Planet PowerShell, PlanetPowerShell, Powershell
Exam dumps
Unfortunately I’ve received numerous requests for an exam dump of 74-409 which really upsets me.
For those that are not aware of it, you are not allowed to share or use exam dumps. “If Microsoft learns that a candidate used a “brain dump” site to prepare for an exam, this candidate will be permanently banned or prohibited from taking any future Microsoft Certification exams and may be decertified from the Microsoft Certification Program. In addition, test scores and certifications, if applicable, may be revoked. These actions may be taken even if the candidate did not intend to defraud the Microsoft Certification Program.”
For more information, see:
http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/btl/b/weblog/archive/2013/01/02/why-brain-dumps-are-bad.aspx
Preparing to take the exam
This is generally what I do for preparing to take the exam:
- Determine the skills that are measured in the exam 74-409
- View the online course Server Virtualization with Windows Hyper-V and System Center at Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)
- Reflect how confident you are that the online course has provided you with sufficient skills to take the exam.
- Optionally enhance your knowledge using:
- If you (know someone who) attended the course for this exam (20409A-ENU), then be sure to take a look at the book. It contains a lot of details that are missing from the jump start videos.
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage Poster and Mini-Posters
- Community/user created content for taking the exam
–Study resources 74-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center
–Born To Learn wiki
–Veeam Study guide
–Free MCP Training study guide (in progress)
- Blogs by people that already took the exam, to see how they prepared.
- Recordings and slides of the Virtualization IT Camp
- Additional Hyper-V and Server 2012 R2 related courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)
- Real life or virtual meetings, presentations and user groups. Microsoft has started a Microsoft User Group Portal wiki, but unfortunately it’s not widely being used yet. Therefore I suggest searching the internet or taking a look at the Microsoft Events website.
- Your own lab to work with the products. You can use the existing Microsoft Test Lab Guides (TLG) or if you don’t have the hardware for your lab, just browse the document.
- Technet library documentation about Hyper-V. This can also be downloaded here for offline use.
- Technet TechCenter
- Training videos. By example on YouTube, or from commercial companies like CBT Nuggets and PluralSight. Nowadays you can get monthly subscriptions or just get trials for a couple of days to help you get a good start.
- Great TechNet Blogs.
- Guided labs / guided experiences like by example the Microsoft Private Cloud Guided Labs. Note: these might not be updated to 2012 R2 yet, but they should provide you with a better understanding.
- Virtual labs (search for hyper or virtual machine manager)
- Twitter by following people with interesting information on Hyper-V, by searching for tweets containing hyperv or hyper-v or by connecting with the community.
- Forums to discuss and share information. Since I’m from the Netherlands I use Tweakers.net a lot and can be found discussing Microsoft Certification related stuff in the topic “[Microsoft Certified] Ervaringen en discussies”.
- Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Best Practices (In Easy Checklist Form)
- Free e-books:
–Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2
–Microsoft System Center Microsoft System Center
–Windows Server 2012 R2 Overview White Paper
–Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Virtualization White Paper
- Printed books, but as far as I know there are no specific books yet for 74-409 and most books covering Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V or System Center 2012 have not yet been updated to the R2 release.
- Channel 9 to search for relevant content.
- Technet Video to search for relevant content.
- Server Posterpedia Windows store app or component architecture posters.
- Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides
- Survival guides
Specific topics and resources I used while studying:
Read the rest of this entry »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags: 074-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center, 70-409, 74-409, blog, Born To Learn, brain dump, brain dumps, braindump, braindumps, CBT, CBT Nuggets, certification, certified, certify, Channel 9, channel9, cheat, component architecture poster, component architecture posters, dump, dumps, Exam, exam dump, exam dumps, Free, guided experience, guided experiences, guided lab, guided labs, Hyper-V, hyperv, Infrastructure Planning Design, Infrastructure planning design guide, infrastructure planning design guides, IPD, meeting, Microsoft, Microsoft Events, Microsoft Virtual Academy, MVA, PluralSight, presentation, Server 2012 R2 Virtual Labs, Server 2012 Virtual Labs, survival guide, survival guides, Technet, Technet Blogs, Technet Library, Technet Library Documentation, Technet TechCenter, Technet Video, Test Lab Guide, Test Lab Guides, TestLab Guide, Testlab Guides, TLG, Tweakers, Tweakers.net, Twitter, User Group, usergroup, Veeam, virtual lab, virtual labs, virtualization IT camp, Youtube
My blog reached 50.000+ views. Thanks everybody, this really exceeded my expectation and motivates me even more to keep going. Special thanks go out to my fellow bloggers in my blogroll and to those who shared my posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.
Even though my blog exists since January 2012, I really started to blog actively around August and ever since I’ve tried to keep posting on a regular basis. At the start of 2013 I even intended to blog every day. I was able to keep it up for a short while, but it was just too time consuming. Now I try to blog something at least once every 5 days. The blog post count is now at 170.
Personally I think Microsoft is on the right track. I’m really looking forward to all new Microsoft product (preview) releases including Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 and you can expect some blog posts about this in the near future.
Popular posts
From the stats, it turned out these are the blog posts that are being viewed most, if you’ve missed any of them you might want to take a look at them:
Stats
For those interested in the view stats, here they are:
Comments and suggestions
If you have suggestions about what I can do to improve, please let me know. Also if you’d like to see some things covered more or in more detail, just leave a comment.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags: Apple, blog, blog post, blogpost, Microsoft, milestone, Mountain Lion, Office 365, OS X, POST, Server 2012, Sharepoint online, views, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, wordpress
Tags: 070-410, 070-411, 070-412, 070-413, 070-414, 070-417, 70-410, 70-411, 70-412, 70-413, 70-414, 70-417, blog, blog post, Born To Learn, certification, Exam, forum, learn, Learning, Microsoft, microsoft learning, Microsoft Virtual Academy, MVA, preparation, preparation resources, resources, Server 2012 Virtual Labs, Tweakers, Tweakers.net, Virtual Academy, virtual lab, virtual labs, wiki, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012
In the 2nd half of this year I started blogging more actively and even though the last couple of weeks didn’t feature many posts, I still have lots of things I want to blog about in 2013.
For now however, you can check out the statistics of 2012 which the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared: Click here to see the complete report.
Thanks everyone for visiting my blog and contributing. Also if you have ideas/suggestions what I should improve or blog about, please let me know.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags: 2012, annual, blog, stats
Since I’m currently working with System Center Operations Manager 2012 (also often referred to as SCOM 2012 or OpsMgr 2012), I needed a testing environment.
Because time is precious, I want to minimize the time and effort needed to set it up. This is what I did:
- Install and configure Hyper-V on my Windows 8 laptop.
- Deploy a VM with Server 2012 Datacenter edition.
Configure a static IP address.
Configure AD DS / domain controller role.
Configure DHCP server role.
Configure DNS server role (if desirable, include DNS forwarder for internet DNS queries).
- Download and extract the pre-configured SCOM 2012 SP1 beta VHD (running Server 2012 Datacenter edition). System Center 2012 SP1 adds Windows Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 Support.
- Create a new VM for SCOM and configure it to use the downloaded pre-configured VHD.
Configure it with sufficient virtual CPUs and memory for the DB and the SCOM components.
- Start the SCOM VM, and follow the onscreen instructions. NOTE: First time configuration took about 1-2 hours, but this might be related to my hardware. Still it might be smart to plan the installation.
- Convert the Server 2012 Datacenter edition from ServerDatacenterEval to ServerDatacenter by running an elevated CMD as administrator and issuing the following command:
DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerDatacenter> ProductKey:<productkey> /AcceptEula
Reboot.
- Replace the SCOM 2012 evaluation license with your own license using Operations Manager Shell:
Set-SCOMLicense -ProductId “yourlicensekey“
Reboot
Check the license using the Operations Manager Shell:
Get-SCOMManagementGroup | ft skuforlicense, version, timeofexpiration –a
- Shut down your SCOM 2012 VM.
- Shut down your AD DS / domain controller VM.
- Create a snapshot and/or export of both VM’s so you can more easily revert to a good starting point.
Also be sure to read Stefan Stranger’s blog post that goes into more detail with regards to the domain controller and automating the task for setting it up. It also includes screenshots to give you a better idea of the process.
PS: I love how Microsoft provides these pre-configured VHD’s. This has been great in the past, but now with client Hyper-V 3.0 in Windows 8 it saves me even more time because I don’t have to boot to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012 for Hyper-V.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags: Beta, blog, Hyper-V, Hyper-V 3.0, ICT, lab, Microsoft, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012, operations management, operations manager, Operations Manager 2012, OpsMgr, OpsMgr 2012, OpsMgr2012, SCOM, SCOM 2012, SCOM 2012 SP1, SCOM 2012 SP1 Beta, SCOM2012, Server 2012, service pack 1, SP1, System Center, System Center Operations Manager, System Center Operations Manager 2012, test, testing environment, virtual lab
blog.bjornhouben.com 