I have been getting a lot of request asking for the slide decks and videos of various sessions in TechMela. The latest update I have is that my folks are in the process of collecting all the content and very soon it will be up on the TechMela web site. Thanks for your patience!

Using System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE 2007) one can discover Windows computers in a domain. But the discovery tool may fail to detect XP/Vista based computers. One of the reasons could be the firewall being turned on. In that case few exceptions should be allowed through Windows firewall for SCE 2007 to successfully discover the computer and install the agent. The next question would be how to enable those exceptions in the firewall? Obviously not by visiting each computer and doing it one by one. The SCE 2007 management console has many wizards built into it. One of them called "Configure product features" which can be found under "Actions" in the details pane on right hand side would help one configure firewall exceptions in all XP/Vista machines. Basically this is done by creating necessary group policies at the domain level. Therefore to get immediate results out of your discovery process you may need to either force refresh the client side group policies or restart them after this policy creation J

The following are the major limitations of SCE 2007

• All components of SCE 2007 including the managed computers should be part of the same Active Directory forest (multiple domains within the same forest is supported)
• SCE 2007 does not support computers with IA64 processors
• No cluster support for any of the SCE 2007 components
• No support for SQL Server 2005 database mirroring
• No more than 10 computers can run SEC 2007 management console at any point of time
• Maximum number of managed devices are restricted to 30 Windows based servers, 500 Windows client computers and 50 network devices

By the way all the SCE 2007 server components can be installed on a domain controller.

The following are the system requirements for a computer running both server and management components. The figures in brackets are the recommended values

Hardware: 1.8 (2.8) GHz processor, 1(2) GB RAM, 12 (20) GB hard drive space of which 1GB is in the system partition

Software: Windows Server Standard or Enterprise edition with SP1 or later (both x86 and x64 editions are supported), Small Business Server 2003 Standard or Premium edition with SP1 or later

IIS 6.0 and BITS 2.0

.Net framework 2.0 and 3.0

MSXML 6.0 Parser

SQL Server 2005 Express/Workgroup/Standard/Enterprise edition with SP1 or later

SCE 2007 server must be part of an Active Directory environment

Just the management console can be installed on a computer running Windows XP SP2/2003 SP1/Vista

Computers running Windows 2000 SP4/XP SP2/2003 SP1/Vista operating systems can be managed using SCE 2007.

Both the server and client computers can be running in a virtualized environment using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

I have listed out the basic system requirements for setting up a SCE 2007 environment. In my next blog post I will continue with more details on supported configurations and topologies

This is one of the cutest products I have seen so far. I am saying it as cutest because of the superb combination of components it has. Let me try to define what this product is. SCE 2007 is a management solution for a medium sized business organization (up to 30 servers and 500 clients). SCE 2007 can do H/W & S/W inventory management, monitor computers and applications, patch update, software installation plus reporting of all these actions.

Another way of looking at SCE 2007 is as a combination of three other distinct products in the Microsoft System Center 2007 family viz. Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007 and Service Manager. I am sure that this is going to be a real value addition for all medium sized organizations looking for a compact infrastructure management solution.

I am going to drill down in to the product in my next few blog posts

Since last year Microsoft has been publishing a very comprehensive report on software vulnerabilities and malware trends every six months. This is a must read for all "IT Professionals" focussing on security. To access the latest report click here

The virtual machines running in a Microsoft Virtual Server instance shows that the virtual NIC operates @ 100Mbps even when the physical adapter is 1Gbps. But this indication is not correct. The virtual NIC is actually operating at 1Gbps.

This is one of the sessions I am going to deliver in TechMela 2007. Last year also during TechEd I presented a session on mobile messaging. But the world of mobile messaging has changed a lot in the past one year. While WM 5 and Exchange 2003 were the products of interest last year, this year I am going to talk more about the new enhancements in Exchange server 2007 and Windows mobile 6.

New features are there in both Windows mobile as well as Exchange server. So to reap the complete benefit of the latest technologies, the ideal combination one should be using is Exchange Server 2007 on the server side and Windows Mobile 6 on the client end.

The architecture of Exchange has considerably changed in its latest version. Exchange Server 2007 has multiple server roles. It is the client access server (CAS) role that is most relevant to Windows mobile clients. The configuration of mobile devices and access to the Exchange Server system are done at the CAS. My session will have the details of the deployment architecture and security best practices around the same. In fact I am covering the security part very much in detail. In short the security features include

• Secure deployment
• Protecting the data while it is transmitted between the Exchange server and the Windows mobile device
• Protecting the data residing in the device
• Policy enforcement
• Information rights management (IRM)

I will be demoing the policy enforcement feature using the mini lab I have set up in my laptop J.While writing this blog I am still exploring the options to demo the IRM feature. Hope I will be able to manage that demo too.

After talking about security features, I will be spending few slides on the manageability part of the mobile messaging system. OWA self-support is the key demo I am going to include in this section.

And I will conclude the session with a couple slides as well as demos on Outlook Mobile features.

Another track which I am eagerly looking forward is the security track. This time the theme of the security track is around security products. Today Microsoft has a wide range of products in the security domain. These products include client side antivirus, antivirus for messaging and collaboration servers, application layer firewall, network hygiene technologies and identity management. These products are the results of heavy investments made by Microsoft in the security space in terms of research, development and acquisition. Security experts from different organizations within Microsoft are going to deliver sessions in this track. For detailed information on sessions and speakers click here The security track is on June 16^th.

Ok, now I don't have much time left to write about all the track details. In the next few blog posts I am going to discuss in detail the sessions I am going to deliver in this year's TechMela. I am a speaker in the Enterprise mobility track. This is on June 16^th .