UK PowerShell User Group Events in Jan and Feb 2010

The first two sessions of the UK PowerShell User Group for 2010 will be online sessions.

The first event will take place on Tuesday 26th Jan 2010 7.30pm GMT. We will be looking at the Windows 2008 R2 cmdlets and provider for Active Directory.

Sign up details are available on Richard Siddaway’s blog.

The second event will take place on Tuesday 9th Feb 2010 7.30pm GMT. We will be looking at WMI and WQL.

Details again on Richard Siddaway’s blog.

Slide Deck from Nov 2009 London VMUG

After my PowerCLI session at yesterday’s London VMUG a few people asked me for the content. I believe the content from all sessions will soon be posted to http://www.box.net/londonug, but in the meantime you can get my slides from the below link.

PowerCLI Workshop London VMUG.pptx

Thanks to all who chatted to me afterwards, its always nice to know that someone got something out of a session you put on.

UK User Group Events in May

So May looks like a great month for some of the user groups I regularly attend.

First up we have the VMware user group in London on Thursday May 14th. This is an excellent event for VMware administrators to attend and has a great mix of vendor and community contributions. In particular this time check out Alan Renouf’s pre-show PowerShell workshop. This is before the usual start time and should be great if you are new to PowerShell or already using the VI Toolkit.

Sign up details are here.

Next up is the PowerShell user group at Microsoft in Reading on Tuesday 19th May. This time we have a real treat in store, PowerShell MVP Dmitry Sotnikov from Quest will be stopping by on his whistle stop tour of the UK to tell us about PowerGUI and the AD cmdlets, in particular recent updates. This was a great event when he presented for us last year and is a real opportunity if you use either of these products to get your questions answered or put forward any suggestions for improvements. You also get to meet a really cool guy and see if he manages to blue screen his machine again during a PowerShell demo by stopping all the services, having forgot to use the ‘whatif’ paramter! (I told him I’d get him back for making fun of me when I interviewed him for the Get-Scripting podcast)

Sign up details are here. You need to contact Richard if you wish to attend in person.

Finally on Thursday 28th May the Windows Server and Vista Squad user groups join the Active Directory user group for a joint Windows 7 event. Full content is yet to be confirmed, but that’s the first Windows 7 event I’ve heard of in this country.

Full details here.

Hope to see you at one of these events.

Get-Scripting Guys Take Over the March UK Powershell User Group

Myself and Alan Renouf from the Get-Scripting Podcast will be presenting this month at the UK Powershell User Group on Thursday 26th March at Microsoft in Reading.

First up on the night will be Richard Siddaway talking to us about using Regular Expressions in Powershell. This was requested at a previous event and I know that Richard is really looking forward to talking about that subject

Then the Get-Scripting guys will take over:

I will be talking about some of the features that are part of Active Directory in Server 2008 R2 , currently in beta, in particular the native AD Powershell cmdlets which will ship as part of that product and what I have learned about them so far.

vExpert Alan Renouf will then tell us about the VI toolkit, which for those of you not in the know are the cmdlets shipped by VMware to enable you to manage their ESX product.

A good mixture I think of general scripting skills, third-party added value to your Powershell learning and future technologies.

If you can’t make the event in person then as usual it will be broadcast by LiveMeeting (details here). It wouldn’t be a UK Powershell event if the LiveMeeting part doesn’t go 100% to plan, but we will endeavour to ensure we avoid the usual trick of the microphone going on mute.

If you wish to attend the event in person you should contact Richard via his blog so that he can have a badge for you at the welcome desk. If the prospect of us presenting isn’t enough to attract you then as always there will be pizza at half-time

Today’s UK VMware User Group

Today’s UK VMware User Group was a great community content event. Of course there was a sponsor presentation (Veeam) without whom these type of events can’t be put on, but there were also a lot of contributions from people in the group.

We had:

1) Veeam talking about their reporting and backup products.

2) Mike Laverick from RTFM education talking about Site Recovery Manager and not the VMware view of it, rather real world struggles – warts and all as he put it. Its great to see this kind of content because you get to find out how these products really function in reality. He also gave away a few copies of his book on Site Recovery Manager which I’m sure is a must read for this topic.

3) Get-Scripting’s very own vExpert Alan Renouf gave us a debrief from VMworld Europe in Cannes. By the sounds of it a great event, but possibly could be extended to include an extra day and maybe needs a bigger venue given the issues some people had getting into sessions.

4) A presentation from another community member about technology futures, ‘the cloud’, advances in mobile devices, stuff like that, and how they may affect the corporate world. This is now the second event I have been to which has talked about employee owned IT, i.e. you turn up to a job with your own laptop and corporate IT supply you either with a VM to run corporate applications or all delivered through a browser. The demand coming from cool, young, hip people (like me ) who won’t stand for the constraints of a corporate environment.

“Why can’t I run facebook / second life / quake / twitter on my macbook / ipod/ pink netbook and just run your apps on the same machine too?”

5) Steve Bruck and Alan Renouf (again) with an update about the recently released VI toolkit V1.5 . Some good examples, also lots of interest in Alan’s getting started guide.

6) Finally finished off with more community content, this time about the upcoming vCenter Heartbeat product.

It was great to see slightly more audience participation than normal this time, which I think might have come from the slightly smaller room and more, but shorter sessions. I really enjoyed it anyway.

If you want to hear REAL people talking about how they really use VMware based products then this is the event for you.

Next one 14th May! More details can be found here.

UK Active Directory User Group – 6pm GMT Wednesday 11th March

This is the second meeting of the newly formed UK Active Directory User Group:

The second [ADUG] UK Active Directory User Group meeting will be on the evening of the 11th March at Microsoft’s London (Victoria) Offices. The meeting will co-hosted with the Windows Server User Group.

The draft agenda is:

• 18:00 for 18:25 Arrival and registration
• 18:25-18:30 Welcome and introductions
• 18:30-19:45 James O’Neill takes a quick tour through the new features in Windows Server 2008 R2 (just to whet your appetite).
• 19:45-20:00 Refreshments
• 20:00-21:15 Amish Lukka (also from Microsoft) will be presenting an insight into new Active Directory features in Windows Server 2008 R2.
• 21:15-21:30 Wrap-up.
• 21:20 Adjourn to a nearby public house where Mark Parris will be happy to share his experiences of the Microsoft Certified Masters: Windows Server 2008: Directory class that he attended last November.

If you are interested in attending – please send an email to registration@adug.co.uk with your name and see you there. The confirmed times will be in the confirmation email.

For those who can’t make it in person, we will set up a Live Meeting session (which will be recorded) and details will be made available closer to the event.

UK London VMware User Group Meeting, Tuesday 10th March 2009

These are great events if you are able to get to them (unfortunately no webcast for this one):

The Steering Committee are pleased to announce the next UK London VMware User
Group meeting, now kindly sponsored by Veeam Software, to be held
on Tuesday 10th March 2009. We hope to see you at the meeting, and
afterwards for a drink or two.

Our meeting will be held at the Thames Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444. The nearest
tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here.

PLEASE NOTE: As well as the date changing from the previously-published one, the day
has also changed to Tuesday, and we’re in a different part of the venue
from normal (out of the lift, turn right). Rest assured, the usual UG
staples of great content and me banging on about Powershell will be
present and correct.

Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm. Our agenda
for is not final at the moment, but looks something like this:

12:30 – 13:00 Arrive & Refreshments
13:00 – 13:15 Welcome & News
13:20 – 14:05 Sponsor Presentation – TBA
14:10 – 14:55 Presentation on real world Site Recovery Manager experience
15:00 – 15:20 Refreshments Break
15:25 – 16:00 Committee-moderated, user-generated content and discussion (some good stuff being lined up here)
16:05 – 16:45 VMworld Cannes debrief
16:45 – 17:00 Close
17:00 – Pub

Please feel free to contribute to the ‘UG content ideas’ forum thread running here. We won’t be able
to incorporate all of the ideas for this coming meeting, but will do our best
to include some of them.

To register your interest in attending, please reply with up to two named
attendees from your organisation to alaricdavies at yahoo dot com. If you do not receive a confirmation mail
from us, please don’t just turn up since we will not be able to admit you to
the meeting. Content from the meetings will continue to be uploaded to http://public.box.net/londonug,
NDA permitting.

Sincerely, and with regards,

The UKLVMUG Steering Committee

UK Powershell User Group Live Meeting – 7pm GMT on Thursday February 26th 2009

Don’t forget 7pm GMT on Thursday February 26th sees Rolf Masuch presenting a Live Meeting to the UK PowerShell User group. Rolf runs the German PowerShell User Group.

Session abstract:

• PowerShell as Active Directory Login Script
• Loginscript, why?
• The Script
• Draft in the form editor
• Start with PowerGUI Editor
• The script skeleton
• The script details
• Get in running
• Output of information
• Formatting of the information
• Putting the script on the server
• The path on the domain controller
• Setting the users login script
• Running .ps1-files as login scripts
• Running loginscripts visible
• Possible errors

Live Meeting Details:

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Join the meeting.
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Slides from MMMUG presentation

As promised to those who attended the MMMUG on Wednesday night my slides from that evening are available on my SkyDrive.

Enjoy.

Upcoming for the UK Powershell User Group

Coming up in February are two events for the UK Powershell User Group.

1) Following the Technet Event Managing Windows Servers with Powershell V2 on Feb 10th at Microsoft London there will be a Powershell UserGroup meeting.

My good friend Jonathan Noble will be travelling down all the way from the North of England to present for us about using Powershell to automate tasks in the large University environment he works in – well worth turning up for. Let Richard Siddaway know if you wish to attend.

Sometime between the afternoon Technet Event and the evening User Group I shall be interviewing Jonathan for the Get-Scripting Podcast.

2) February 26th Rolf Mausch, who runs the German Powershell User Group, will be presenting a live webcast for us about using Powershell in login scripts – an interesting topic since not a lot of people are doing that yet from what I have seen. Early details here.