Hi All, I’m a Learning Product Planner in MS Learning and I work on the Windows Server 2008 Portfolio of moc and eLearning titles. I was lucky enough to work on the 10159A: Updating Your Windows Server® 2008 Technology Skills to Windows Server® 2008 R2 title and just want to share with you some of my experiences on it and also to outline what our intentions and goals were with it and how we tried to achieve that in what I ultimately think is a really good course.
The 10159A is a WS08 R2 exclusive course. The three days of training are specifically targeted for people with existing Windows Server 2008 skills, so it is intended for students who are already highly skilled. Coupled with this, the R2 release adds some really ground breaking functionality to Windows Server 2008 and with 10159A we wanted to bring that to life for students and provide them with as much opportunity as possible to be hands on with the technology.
So the goal with this title was to create a course that takes account of the skilled audience, allow them to get as hands on a possible with the new technologies and features in WS08 R2 and in that context provide a framework in which MCTs can bring their unique experiences and knowledge to their audiences.
Overall, the labs, as is always the case with moc, are a key element, but especially more so in this case because of some unique requiements. There was a dilemma when designing the labs in that some of the requirements are non-standard in terms of lab setup and it needed to be decided how best to showcase those new technologies and allow people get hands on. Two prominent technologies which were key drivers in that conversation were Live Migration and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Ultimately it was decided that the use of the physical host would be needed and it would be required to be WS08 R2 Enterprise or higher. Not only this, but it would also require two host machines. Having this environment would allow the course to expose some core functionality in the labs for students.
So let’s pick a couple of the key technologies that the 10159A covers.
Module 3 covers changes that have taken place with PowerShell in Windows Server 2008 R2 and these changes have been quite significant. R2 ships with PowerShell V2.0, and comes with over 240 pre-built cmdlets (a large percentage of those being new) as well the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), there are new cmdlets for Active Directory, RMS, group Policy, Failover Clustering and lots of others. The course covers these new changes as well as some others and also tries to expand upon the limited exposure some students may have had with PowerShell previously, before going on to cover its implementation in the labs with AD, IIS and Roles and Features.
In Module 5 we cover Server Virtualization with Hyper-V. The main coverage here is in relation to Live Migration, one of the two technologies that drove the decision to require two host machines, as well as other key changes in R2 such as hot adding or removing of iSCSI storage devices, vhd improvements and others. We also touch on improvements and interoperability with System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. Also because Live Migration depends on Failover Clustering we touch on Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV) and Failover Clustering Validation. In the lab, students will configure the failover clustering piece and then move onto the Live Migration piece and to complete those two elements we use the physical host again. It can be a tricky enough lab but does allow students to get very hands on.
Module 6 covers Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Formerly called Terminal Services, RDS provides a lot of new functionality and changes, not only in the nomenclature. We show how users can access remote applications in RemoteApp and access to virtual machine based desktops and the interaction with Windows 7. As well as this we also cover RDS support for VDI, which loosely, is an alternative method for managing and provisioning desktops to users with more functionality and control over the process. Again, It is essential that students get hands on and get a good feel for how it works so the labs in this module try to achieve this by publishing remote applications, working with the remote desktop gateway and also configuring a virtual desktop pool. As with the Module 5 lab, use of the physical host is also required in this instance to provide the best possible lab experience.
I’ve only touched on a few of the modules and the technologies they contain but hopefully you get a feel for what the course covers, why it covers it and how that translated into actual content and labs in the released course. It’s a delicate balance between the content and labs, the audience attending and the experience and knowledge that MCTs bring to the classroom and I believe that the balance is right in this course and ultimately students will get the best possible experience.
The list of changes to Windows Server 2008 with R2 that are covered in this course really is huge. There is Direct Access, Live Migration, VPC reconnect, significant changes to IIS, Hyper –V and PowerShell, Changes to Active Directory such as the AD Administrative Centre, the Best Practice Analyser, Offline Domain join & the AD Re-cycle bin, changes to Group Policy around Applocker and Audit policies, BranchCache and DFS as well as the rollout of Remote Desktop Services and VDI. There are too many to name them all and I’ve only named a portion of the features here, so all of this and more makes for a great three day course for people with a lab environment tailored specifically for the technologies. For anyone who wants to get their existing Windows Server 2008 skills updated to Windows Server 2008 R2 this is the course for you!
Hi, in lab 5 you propose we do a Hyper-V cluster between a physical host and a virtual host. I didnt test it yet but to my knowledge You can't run a virtual machine as a hyper-v host to other virtual machines. Therefore the setup requires 2 physical machine per student with a crossover cable.... A bit of a stretch for a setup for just 3 days of training. But content seems great though just thought i'd mention it.