And some days, I just am dumb...

I have been working with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (before that I had been working with Hyper-V Beta, and RC-0) and trying to configure the SCVMM and System Center Operations Manager connection.  It would help if I were fluent with the SCOM (or OpsMgr if you prefer) environment and how it all works...

Anyway, I have been posting in the TechNet Forums for a few days now and I think someone may have figured out how to educate me... The Virtual Machine Manager team has posted the instructions on their Blog.

Thanks to Brian Ehlert for alerting me to the post.

I have been working on configuring my laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad T61) with all the tools and gadgets and STUFF that I like to have on my laptop.  Of course the Office products installed just fine, but when I went to install some of the other little things I use, like Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Messenger I got what anyone else will get if you just go to the Live site and try to install them:

Luckily, I managed to find a post where someone else was having the same sort of problem and that led me to a link to the actual installer instead of the WLinstaller.  The WLinstaller doesn't do anything on 2008 except tell you it doesn't like any Server OS.  Here is a link to a nice person who has the installer for just Windows Live Writer.  Go to the bottom of the page for the one that works.

For Windows Messenger, so far I have only been able to get 8.1 to install.  If anyone finds how to get the latest version installed, let me know...  I am guessing you should be able to do it if you can figure a way around that stupid installer...

I have come across a few articles that talk about how Server 2008 is what Vista hoped to be.  Here is an article that a Microsoft person wrote about it:

The Way I See It : Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS

Also, this article talks about some performance testing:

Windows "Workstation" 2008 - Vista Done Right?

And if you want to run Hyper-V on your laptop, you may want to see this article about how to get the Wireless to be available to the VMs:

Using Hyper-V with a Wireless Network Adapter 

or

Using Wireless with Hyper-V

To change the time zone on a computer running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, run control timedate.cpl.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/47a23a74-e13c-46de-8d30-ad0afb1eaffc1033.mspx?mfr=true

In the past, I have used mstsc /console to get to "session 0" on remote machines.  With Vista and Windows Server 2008 that isn't the correct command though.  Instead it has been changed to mstsc /admin.

I am doing some research into our data center cooling requirements.  I came across this article and thought this bit was interesting:

So how much does it cost to power 100TB (raw) of storage, and how much CO₂ emissions are generated per year? That, of course, depends on the type of storage, the number and size of the disk drives, the cost per kWh of power, cooling costs and the average number of lbs of CO₂ produced per kWh.

One example is a single storage system using 750GB SATA disk drives yielding 144TB of raw storage in a single cabinet footprint, which would require less than 52,560 kWh and cost about $10,512 per year with an emissions footprint of about 39.42 CO₂ tons. To account for cooling costs, simply double the above numbers for a worst-case scenario. By comparison, a 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe generates about 7 to 10 tons of CO₂ per year, while a Lexus RX333, depending on miles driven, generates about 5-6 tons of CO₂ per year, and a 24 cubic foot refrigerator yields about 1.22 tons of CO₂ per year.

Storage Power and Cooling Issues Heat Up

 I was working with a colleague to figure out something related to connection speeds and data transfer.  I happened to find this interesting little snippet and thought it was worth reading:

Historical context^*
Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 2¹⁰ was very nearly equal to 1000 and started using the SI prefix "kilo" to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But, almost overnight a much more numerous "everybody" bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams.

Then data storage for gigabytes, and even terabytes, became practical, and the storage devices were not constructed on binary trees, which meant that, for many practical purposes, binary arithmetic was less convenient than decimal arithmetic. The result is that today "everybody" does not "know" what a megabyte is. When discussing computer memory, most manufacturers use megabyte to mean 2²⁰ = 1 048 576 bytes, but the manufacturers of computer storage devices usually use the term to mean 1 000 000 bytes. Some designers of local area networks have used megabit per second to mean 1 048 576 bit/s, but all telecommunications engineers use it to mean 10⁶ bit/s. And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), "1.44 MB" diskette. The confusion is real, as is the potential for incompatibility in standards and in implemented systems.

Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes. Mega will mean 1 000 000, except that the base-two definition may be used (if such usage is explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis) until such time that prefixes for binary multiples are adopted by an appropriate standards body. 

Return to SI prefixes

*Historical context adapted from: Bruce Barrow, "A Lesson in Megabytes," IEEE Standards Bearer, January 1997, page 5. Portions copyright © 1997 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Definitions of the SI units: The binary prefixes

If you are trying to free up space on your system drive you may run across a very large  log file in the system32\wbem\logs folder:

SYMPTOMS

When you use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and you configure it to log all events on your Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer or Microsoft Windows XP-based computer for quick analysis and troubleshooting of problems, the file size of both the Framework.log and the Framework.lo_ files may be greater than what you configured for them.

The Framework.log file grows larger than 64 KB when you use WMI on a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP computer