I hope to continue speaking at several more events during 2012, especially SharePoint Saturday, St Louis which is scheduled for June 2nd. Registration and a call for speakers are both open.

It’s a long standing practice for administrators to name new AD Domains with non routable suffixes (enterprise.local) or those that do not reflect their actual .com domain name bur rather the organizational hierarchy (company uses abcwidgets.com for their internet presence but abc.corp.net for their AD.)   The reasons for this vary, including simplicity and a misguided effort at increased security.  It’s also likely that when the AD infrastructure was originally built, 10+ years in some cases, the idea of connecting the AD to the internet was never considered.  This makes sense as Active Directory has been around since Windows 2000 server (1999) whereas ADFS came with WIndows Server 2003 R2 (2005.)

As we know ADFS (and Office 365 components that leverage it) must utilize a publicly routable domain name.  Thus our AD Domain for use with ADFS must not be something like .local and we must also ‘own’ the domain (not domain.corp.net as we do not own corp.net.)  For many potential adopters of Office 365 this is been too high a burden to bare and has hindered.  Fortunately we can use something called domain (UPN) suffixes to add our public .com to our internal AD .local and use all of the goodies ADFS and Office 365 offers us.  Microsoft has a TechNet Article on the subject but as usual it’s devoid of any screenshots or further information.  Fortunately it’s a very straight forward process which I’ll explain below:

In this example SP2010.local is our local AD domain and demo-domain.com is our public .com domain

1) Open up Active directory domains and trusts, right click on the forest and select properties

2) Add your public .com domain in the Alternative UPN suffixes box and click add

3) Open AD Users and Computers – double click each domain user, select the account tab and then select the public .com suffix

Failed to acquire the lock to object [SPWebApplication Name=http://url] after 120 retries

Now I’m not one to just hit enter and try the command again whenever I encounter an error, especially during an upgrade.  Usually I do some research before hand to make sure I understand the consequences of my actions.  Fortunately the one point of information I found on this error was at Chris Gideon’s Blog - which recommends doing exactly that, wait a few moments and try it again.  In my case I actually did an iisreset and then waited a few moments, but trying it again has worked like a charm.

Note that I’ve replicated this across multiple farms – all running SharePoint 2010 SP1 w/ June 2011 CU (14.0.6105.5000) and it is persistent - I’m unsure if this is an issue with our build process, the patch level or otherwise.  Note that none of the webapps on these farms are using claims – however claims is use by SharePoint by default, internally.

As you can see below once the owner has been modified it appears as a claims token.

And additionally once I’ve set the owner – going back to change or view the owner results in the following …

Get-SPTimerJob | Where {$_.Name -like "*Health*" -and $_.Name -like "*-all-*"} | Start-SPTimerJob

The following exams are affected by this increase:

• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
• Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP)
• Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
• Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST)
• Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)
• Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD)
• Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)
• Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA)

If you purchase the discounted “certification packs” which allow prepayment for anywhere from 2 to 5 exams and use one of the vouchers between now and June 30th your prices are locked in at the old rate and and you have until December 31, 2011 to use the rest of your vouchers.  If you are contemplating taking just two Microsoft exams during the second part of the year I would highly encourage you to consider purchasing one of the packs.  Considering the cost of a 5 exam pack WITH a free second shot at each exam is currently $500 where as taking the same exams after June 1st will cost $750 with no free second shot.

You can find Microsoft’s official notice at:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-pricing-FAQ.aspx

And the old price vs the new price (by country) at:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-pricing-tool.html

InformIT has a great podcast series called On Certification – which goes over exam preparation, including test taking skills on an exam by exam basis. Unfortunately it isn’t updated very frequently – but the video for 70-640: Windows Server Active Directory (here) albeit now two years old, still contains some great information for both that exam and Microsoft exams in general.

I’ve been helping to lead a study group of my co-workers as we prepare to take the 70-668 exam – being a PRO level exam – the first many of the participants have taken – there is a large amount of anxiety of the question format and types.  There is a practice test at Accelerated-Ideas and while the content of the questions is useful the format is anything but.  To help the group I’ve been taking some of the practice questions from that exam and ‘transforming’ them into typical PRO level questions.  Even going so far as to step through my logic and though patterns.  When reading any PRO level Microsoft exam question I usually read the two or three sentences directly above the answers, the one generally asking the question, followed the answers, then the whole thing from top to bottom.

There is a comment on the Born to Learn blog here which does address this and seems to confirm the cancellation but only gives technical issues as the reason behind the cancellation.   I’m not sure how re-registration will go on the 5th or if the beta period will be extended past it’s original date of January 20th.   There were similar issues like this regarding the SharePoint 2010 beta exams wherein the voucher was posted on the Born to Learn blog causing some of us who were legitimately invited to the beta through our MSL SME profiles to miss out on taking one ore more of the exams due to the influx of registrations from the blog.  Hopefully those of us who are supposed to get the opportunity to re-register on the 5th will be able to do so without much hassle.

This past Friday, after a bit of delay, I took and passed the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) 4 exam.  VCP certification has been a goal of mine for a while but until now hadn’t been possible.  VCP is one of the only ’common’ IT certifications that I’m aware of  that you’re required to attend a class for.  For any other IT certification it doesn’t matter how you study or prepare, as long as you can take the exam and pass it – you gain the certification.  With the VCP you’re welcome to sit for the VCP exam without attending one of the classes but you’re not awarded the actual certification until you complete the class.  VMware offers three classes that qualify towards the VCP, a 4 day troubleshooting class, a 4 day install/configure/manage (ICM) class, and a 5 day ‘fasttrack’ class.  As of September 2010 the 4 day ICM class has been extended to 5 days (appx 8 hours each day, VMware quotes ’38-40 hours of training during a 5 day classroom setting’) and the FastTrack remains the same (5 days, appx 10 hours each day for a more bootcamp like feel.)

About the class:

I took the 5 day FastTrack class in St Louis, MO back in August.  True to it’s bootcamp description we did 5 days, beginning at 8 AM and going until 6PM.  Two very short breaks were provided, one in the morning around 10 AM and one in the afternoon around 3PM.  Lunch was provided by VMware and we were generally given a few minutes to take a break and get food and then returned to our workstations for lab time.  I came in feeling prepared and was aware of the ‘bootcamp’ style atmosphere and that a large amount of information would be covered in the course.  I was not however aware of the 10 hour days (my class documentation from VMware only had a start time) and by the morning of day 5 I was pretty burnt out on VMware.  As I was spending the week 5 hours away from family and work I had planned on studying as much as possible for the VCP exam and possibly taking it very soon.  My thought process was that the class and any additional studying I could do after hours would be ample preparation for the exam.  However the goal of the class seems to be to cram as much information on as many topics relating to vShere as possible in 50 hours.  It was obvious to me by the end of day 2 that I would need some time to decompress and study some more before I was ready to take the exam.

The Exam:

Immediately following my FastTrack course I had some work and family obligations to take care of and got a bit off track by taking the OCS 2007 exam.  I was finally able to get engaged with the study materials again and schedule my test.  I won’t say that the exam was easy, it’s a very difficult exam and in some points the level of detail being asked for was pretty astounding.  But in comparison to Microsoft exams (which is what I am most immediately familiar with) I felt that preparing for the exam was actually very easy.

• My main source of reference (besides the blue print) and one that I haven’t seen linked many places is the study guide put out by Chris McCain and is available from his blog.  As I understand it, Chris is a VMware Instructor and created the guide to handout to his students.  I found someone making mention of the guide who said Chris was his instructor and I tracked it down on Chris’ blog.
• Secondary to that I made use of Matthijs van den Berg’s VCP study guide.  He’s taken the exam blue print and went through it providing information and links for each item.
• In no particular order I also found these helpful:
  • Berry Coombs vSphere 4 cue cards
  • Forbes Guthrie vSphere 4 notes (link to the actual notes is at the end of his post) – Forbes also makes a “vReference” card which I printed out several copies of and left around the house (bathroom *hint hint*), at my desk, in the car, etc
  • Simon Long VCP4 vSphere 4 Study Notes – Simon also has some great practice tests on his sites that are very highly reviewed, though I didn’t get a chance to use them

A quick note about the config minimums and maximums (officially available from VMware here).  Theres a lot of talk about which version of vSphere the test covers.  From my experience they were asking for 4.1 config minimum and maximum information and everything else was straight off of the exam blueprint which does not contain any references to 4.1, yet. The numbers do differ a bit from version to version and I actually found some discrepancies even in the study material I used (probably owing to the different compilation times of each item) and would refer back to the actual 4.1 document if needed.   My main source of study material for the config information was the vReference card from Forbes.  For the weeks leading up to my test I didn’t go anywhere without a copy of Chris McCain’s study guide or Forbes’ vReference card.

My personal study plan was mostly to review the blue print and locate the item in Chris’ study guide.  Depending on the level of detail needed I would find additional info and then annotate Chris’ guide and make my own notes.  I’ve got a pretty heavily highlighted and annotated version with my own notes of that I’ll eventually scan and provide to anyone wanting it.

All in all I’m very happy that I passed and I am finally a VCP.  I felt it was particularly important for me to do well as I finally had been given the opportunity to take the class, which was necessary for the certification and wanted to make the most of the situation. Next up I need to finish up 70-643 (Server 2008, Application Infrastructure) and 70-680 (Windows 7, Configuring) and since I’ve already taken everything else including the actual 70-647 exam itself I’ll then be MCITP: EA certified.  Following those, if theres time before the end of the year I’d like to take a look at the Security+ as CompTIA has announced that beginning Jan 1, 2011 all of their certifications will have an expiration date of 3 years after passing. My plans for early next year are to take the 70-668 (PRO SharePoint 2010 Administration) exam along with the 70-573 (TS: SharePoint 2010 Application Development) exam.  Having ZERO background in development I’m sure that last one will be fairly difficult.  After that .. who knows?  CISSP is on my radar though