Conrad Agramont's WebLog : MPS

HMC and MPS Developer Bootcamps

Conrad — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:49:00 GMT

For those of you looking to get a quick and deep introduction to the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging & Collaboration 2.5 or get indepth training on developing against the Microsoft Provisioning System, you should checkout our latest courses and dates: http://www.go-planet.com/community/blogs/coolness/archive/2006/07/31/438.aspx

Last month we did the first MPS Developer Bootcamp out of our office in Germantown, MD and it was a lot of fun. We used the new MPS SDK and broke out in teams to solve real world development scenarios (I hate courses that have you sit there and do labs all damn day).

Anyhow, be sure to check these out and register today. To get a seat, please send an email to training@go-planet.com

Windows Based Hosting 4.0 Released (Components & Documentation)

Conrad — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 08:17:00 GMT

As of tonight (yes I'm up late again), the documentation for WbH 4.0 and "for Apps" is now available.

The Components: Windows Based Hosting 4.0 Released (Part 1)
The Documentation: Windows Based Hosting 4.0 Released (Part 2)

Yes I'm pimping my site again, but I at least try to keep it up to date with various Microsoft Solution information and my side projects.

Moving to Agramont.net (Hosting, ASP.NET IIS, Hosted Exchange, Microsoft Provisioning System, and Community Server)

Conrad — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 07:08:00 GMT

Now that I have my site working pretty well, I'm now going to do all of my blog posts over there (http://agramont.net/). I tried the cross-posting thing using the built-in features of Community Server (CS2 with ASP.NET 2), but it felt weird having the same content on two sites. From time to time, I'll post on this site a summary of the new content on my new site.

For now, I'm focusing the blog post on Hosting, ASP.NET, IIS, Hosted Exchange, Microsoft Provisioning System, and, Community Server..

New Blog URL: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/default.aspx

RSS Feed: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/rss.aspx

Summary of New Content:

Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) SDK Beta 1 is now available

Conrad — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 21:36:00 GMT

The first Beta of the MPS SDK is available for download. Here is a link to the Microsoft Download:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/b/9/fb905eb4-d992-40e3-b0bc-cdb1996a1a10/Microsoft%20Provisioning%20System%20SDK-%20Beta%201.zip

I’m not sure what’s going on with the branding of this, but the following names all seem to point to the same thing:

Microsoft Solution for Windows-Based Hosting for Applications 1.0
Microsoft Provisioning System SDK

The rest of this post has been moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2006/06/02/8.aspx

Assigning Mailbox Quotas and Restrictions via Plans

Conrad — Wed, 24 May 2006 18:15:00 GMT

The “Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging & Collaboration 3.0” (HMC) provides a method for per user feature bundling via their “Plans System”. When provisioning new HMC users with mailboxes, Plans are used to determine what features and mailbox size a given user will be allocated. A default implementation of HMC and the Plans Database is the Quota values associated with a mailbox.

Post moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2006/05/24/Assigning_Mailbox_Quotas_and_Restrictions_via_Plans.aspx

HMC 3.5 Boot Camp & MPS Developer Training

Conrad — Fri, 19 May 2006 20:58:00 GMT

As of today, we (Planet Technologies) are now offering an HMC 3.5 Bootcamp and MPS Developer Training at our training facility in Maryland. We have all of the labs (built on Virtual Server) and equipment ready to go. All you need to do is register and come get your brain jammed with Hosted Exchange, MPS, Active Directory, and lots more. The training class is less of a PowerPoint and Step-by-Step collection of labs, but is very interactive with whiteboard discussions, scenario based lab time, and learnings from real world deploymets! Did I mention the quality Foosball Table?

The first set of these hosting related courses will be taught by yours truly (uh, that’s Conrad Agramont for those of you who didn’t know me)!

For more details, please visit our training page at: http://www.go-planet.com/training/

Be sure to sign up today as we only have a few seats left for our first course on June 13th!

I got published in PingZine: The History of Hosted Exchange

Conrad — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 03:16:00 GMT

It appears that my article on “The History of Hosted Exchange” made PingZine! It’s now available in their latest publication!

You can check out the cover here: http://www.pingzine.com/current.php
You can download the latest edition here (PDF): http://www.pingzine.com/pdf/ping_issue14.pdf

BTW, this is the same issue when they announce HMC 3.5. My article didn’t cover that as the solution features weren’t formally announced at the time.

Warning: HMC 3.5 install breaks with .NET 2.0

Conrad — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:07:00 GMT

We’ve found a semi-serious issue in the installation of MPS in the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 3.5 (http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessaging.mspx). This has been found at 2 customer sites thus far and I’m sure we’ll see this happen with more deployments.

This post moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2006/02/08/12.aspx

Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) Versions

Conrad — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 07:59:00 GMT

This post moved: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2005/12/28/Microsoft-Provisioning-System-_2800_MPS_2900_-Versions.aspx

Public Folders Provisioning via HMC 3.0

Conrad — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 05:23:00 GMT

Post moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2005/11/04/28.aspx

New HMC Whitepaper: Hosted Messaging & Collaboration 3.0 - User and Group Rights

Conrad — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:22:00 GMT

After many weeks of writing, reviewing, and updating, I finally finished a whitepaper the describes all of the user accounts, security groups, MPF permissions, and SQL roles utilized by the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 3.0. The goal of the paper is NOT to tell you how to set those properties, but it shows you what your Active Directory objects and permissions should look like after you've deployed a HMC 3.0 successfully.

Here is a link where you can dowload the whitepaper: http://www.go-planet.com/ser_tech.asp

Enjoy!

Conrad

BTW: If you have feedback on the document, please feel free to email me directly at conrada@go-planet.com. I'll make updates to the document as need.

Resolving the "No trusted group name..." issue

Conrad — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:21:00 GMT

Post moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2005/09/20/26.aspx

eQuest Job Posting: Software Development Engineer

Conrad — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:38:00 GMT

I guess I'll join the trend of puting job postings on a blog. We're growing our development team at eQuest and we're looking for that special person that loves to develop web applications, server side components, and a touch lots of different Microsoft products and technologies. If you're expereienced in MPS architecture, engineering, and/or development and want to work with a team of MPS experts, than this is youre future home!

If you're interested, please shoot me an email with your resume.

Conrad Agramont, Senior Architect, conrada@eqinc.com

Job Title: Software Development Engineer

SUMMARY:
eQuest, a division of Planet Technologies Inc., is looking for a Software Development Engineer that is passionate about developing challenging applications and a desire to work with a variety Microsoft based products and technologies. eQuest works with Service Providers and Telecommunications companies around the world to solve their business requires through the use of Microsoft products and technologies and custom integration with exciting software solutions.

An ideal candidate will be heavily experienced in provisioning and automating Microsoft products and technologies (Active Directory, Exchange, Internet Information Services, and SQL Server). Knowledge of Microsoft Solutions (Hosted Exchange & Windows based Hosting) and the Microsoft Provisioning System is a plus.

This position will also contribute to future product development for the eQuest Automation Framework (EAF). EAF is an ASP.NET-based user interface and a collection of class libraries (built on Visual Studio.NET 2003 and C#) which provides a web based user interface to manage customers, users, and services in a Microsoft Hosted Exchange and Microsoft Web Hosting environment.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
1. Develop component level specifications
2. Perform peer based reviews for code efficiency and security.
3. Participate in project related team meetings and reviews
4. Work with Project Managers, Developers, and Testers to ensure proper scheduling, integration, and validation of your coding deliverables.
5. Work directly with customers on feature design and requirements.

KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS

Understanding and experience in Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) development process
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Active Directory, Domain Name Service, & Internet Information
Services)
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
Microsoft Provisioning System
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (2005 is a plus)
Microsoft Visual Studio.NET & C#
Scripting: VBScript, JavaScript, Windows Scripting Host
Web Development: ASP.NET, HTML, JavaScript
XML (Schemas,

makeGalLinked.exe Fails when ran AFTER Exchange is already deployed

Conrad — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 05:18:00 GMT

During the Hosted Exchange (or HMC) installation process, you have to run the makeGalLinked.exe utility. Now this should be done before you actually install Exchange, at least per the docs. Now I made the mistake of installing Exchange first and then going through the rest of the solution documentation. My fault, but how do you get around this? Make sure you run this on the Active Directory server (which by the way should be a Windows 2003 Server). Below is the error (It will have a Red background when ran from the Command Line):

This post moved to: http://agramont.net/blogs/conrad/archive/2005/06/03/35.aspx

HostingCon Presentation: Rapid Deployment & Architecture of Microsoft Hosted Exchange

Conrad — Tue, 31 May 2005 04:49:00 GMT

As mentioned in an earlier post, I will be giving a session at HostingCon this year. The title is, "Rapid Deployment & Architecture of Microsoft Hosted Exchange". Here is a link to the abstract for the session: http://www.hostingcon.com/attend/session-detail.php?id=10.

I was doing much internal "soul searching" on how to cover so much of what's inside of Hosted Exchange. So, I finally came to the conclusion that I should give a high level overview and then drill-down into areas that seems to draw the most questions. Here are the major areas that I'll cover

Architectual Overview
Deployment Scenarios
Good, Bad, Ugly
Gotchas

At the end, attendees should understand what a Hosted Exchange deployment looks like, what they're getting into, and a "heads up" on issues they might run into and how to fix/workaround it.