So who is going to TEC? Excited yet? You should be, it will be fun. Personally, I can’t wait to hear Dmitri, Brett, and yes, even Dean, speak. Those guys are incredibly bright and just plain know a lot of stuff. The weather in Vegas is slated to be in the low 70’s and sunny. We missed the 80’s by a week unfortunately.
If you are sitting in the sessions and wondering what kind of questions you should be asking…
In the sessions on PowerShell and ADAC (or ADMUX if you prefer) ask why the PowerShell cmdlets aren’t using LDAP[1] which is already present on every single domain controller… But instead a brand new “Web” Service that runs on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller. See
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378937.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd391908.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd303965(PROT.10).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd304395(PROT.10).aspx
No, this doesn’t mean you need to load IIS on the DCs. It is another binary. And in fact it really doesn’t have any HTTP involvement and doesn’t run over port 80, it is just XML. Just to get that easy question out of the way… But maybe questions along the amount of network traffic may be good ones to ask about since XML is such a ‘sparse’ protocol compared to LDAP. Maybe if we are lucky we could get a demo of (including network traffic comparison) of say dumping the email addresses for all users in a 50k user forest to a text file as done via LDAP and done through PowerShell using the AD Cmdlets. That is actually a test I have been wanting to do but haven’t had the opportunity to set up a 2008R2 DC to do the tests. If I could only just install the PowerShell AD cmdlets to test… 😉 Another interesting test of something that I just had to do at work yesterday in fact would be to dump the replication metadata value for the legacyExchangeDN attribute for all person objects in a 75k user forest[3]. I needed to see if the LEDN had gone through some mass change at some point so was interested in version numbers and originating write dates. I can’t say for sure what the network impact delta would be between these two types of requests but I could hazard a guess.
Don’t worry, one of the presenters of this info is my good friend Dean Wells formerly the Dean of the Dean and joe Show before he joined the dark side (<insert heavy breathing>I’m your father Lucas</heavy breathing>) and he actually enjoys audience participation versus just everyone sitting there dead silent. If you weren’t planning on attending that session… “What are you INSANE!”. You know Dean, he is easily, hands down, the best presenter I have ever seen. It may not be the most informative presentation of the whole conference (though it very well likely could be – I would say it would be but it isn’t the Dean and joe Show where we could pick any topics we wanted, the topic is constrained) but it will certainly be the most entertaining and energetic and fun presentation at the whole conference as Dean could present the phone book and have everyone trying to get him to do a second session[4]. If you can make him stutter or be unable to respond to a question, kudos to you because I just haven’t seen it happen. No fair asking him questions like “Do you still beat your maid that you snuck into the country illegally from Romania?” as that just isn’t nice and really, how do you answer that question without stuttering? No, err yes err… Err Romania?? Where’s that? Oh Maid?? I don’t have a maid! ;o)
Note that I am aware that Active Directory 4th Edition is now out on the book shelves and at Amazon. While I won’t be bringing any copies I think Brian may be bringing copies for purchase. I don’t believe he will have any to give out for free because unlike when AD3E came out, O’Reilly didn’t seem interested in giving copies out at DEC err darnit TEC[5]. I don’t mind signing the books however you probably really want Brian’s signature as he is the author for this version. He took what I did and extended it and chopped out a bunch of stuff that I wanted to chop out but wasn’t allowed to chop out.
So if you are going to TEC/DEC/Whatever… Have a safe flight/drive/train trip/whatever. If you aren’t going… I’m sorry that sucks. I know the company I work for wasn’t interested in paying my way and I didn’t want to speak to have NetPro/Quest pay to get me out there so I took it as a vacation time and am paying for it. On reflection, it probably is silly of me not to speak but in all honesty, I don’t much like to do it unless I have something specific I need to say and I never have anything I need to say at DEC. I just go to meet the people and talk to folks about the issues they encounter to give me ideas on ways I can try to help. If you folks who attend DEC/TEC/Whatever think that had value, tell every NetPro/Quest person you run into that and maybe they will bring me out there just to chat with people like I usually do. Especially do that if you have in the past told the NetPro/Quest people that you wanted to meet me or came because of me or my blog.
I think though if next year I am taking my vacation at this time and I am paying for it, I should take it in the an island paradise and if someone happens to be there that is into Active Directory stuff then I can chat with them there. 🙂
joe
[1] Don’t worry, the Quest cmdlets for AD still use it though. So they will work against the various versions of AD without the need of a K8R2 DC with the Web Service loaded.
[2] That may or may not be a sarcastic comment. 😉
[3] adfind -gcb -f “&(objectcategory=person)(legacyexchangedn=*)” msDS-ReplAttributeMetaData;binary -mvfilter msDS-ReplAttributeMetaData=legacyexchangedn -csv
[4] Serously, my opinion of Dean’s speaking ability is that high. Trust me on this, I had to try and speak after him in the same presentation and generally I consider myself to be a humourous interesting person to chat with, just not after Dean has been up there prancing around in his glory. ;o)
[5] Had NetPro/Quest/Whatever not changed the name of the conference, who knows, O’Reilly might have gave out some free copies… Now instead they hear, free books for TEC? Why? Now DEC, that we would give out free books at… (Man I am on a roll today!)
I really regret that I had to cancel my TEC attendance and sessions and I had to go to Seattle instead … but this happens.
Have a good fun there :).
BTW … ask Dean but this web service might be present not only for W2008R2 🙂
I just started reading about the web service after I heard Brandon on the powerscripting stream last night. Lots of stuff looks really cool in 2008 R2. To be honest I can’t see any forest I work at here in the DC area to be at 2008 R2 for 4-5 years.
Right now lots of projects are on hold and I can’t blame the guys that control the purse strings for the govt. Hopefully we will be out of this economic rut in a few years.
I hope to make one of these events in the coming years. Would really like to meet you, Brian, and others in person.
Have a safe trip and have a great time joe!!
Nice to have met you, Joe. Even if it happened as you were just about to stuff your face with a croissant! 😉
I found most of the conference lackluster with the exception of Dean’s, BretSh’s, and Dmitri’s presentations. Dean’s on PoSh was all right, I guess. I mean, it’s kind of difficult to get excited about PoSh in general and certainly not when that module is not available yet.
I’ll keep using adfind.
BrettSh and Dmitri G. Golly, I wish I were half as enlightened about what they know, I’d be half a genius. While I didn’t really enjoy TEC 2009, it did give me an impetus to dive deep into the sea of AD and Exchange knowledge as I now see how truly shallow I’ve been swimming these past years.
D’oh.
By the way, I still owe you that beer.
Brett and Dmitri are great guys and incredibly bright. Dmitri is one of the most helpful people I have dealt with at MSFT. I have one story where I found a bug in LDP and had a buddy build with it fixed inside of 30 minutes of reporting the bug to him. I don’t know if he actually sleeps as he gets so much done.