Silicon Shecky

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The catch 22

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As I’ve been studying for the 70-410 Microsoft exam, I’ve come to the realization that I’m not ready, and I might not ever be.

Technology is a wondrous thing. It can take care of mundane, repetitive tasks, but only if you set it up and use it properly. It can also take over your world and control you, not quite Matrix style, but its getting there. Those of us that work in the IT field, be they developers, Network Admins, Penetration Testers, or any other number of fields, we do our best to keep up with the constant change of technology, not just for our own sake, but for societies. Someone has to know how to tame the technological beast. Certifications are a way of showing we understand the technologies out there, and have some degree of mastery over them.

Recently, there has been a challenge put forth called 90 Days to MCSA, through Microsoft learning. the goal is to get your MCSA be it in SQL, Server 2010, or Azure, in a 90 day period. I love learning (why else get into the IT field), and I love a good challenge, so I have embarked on the Server 2012 track. Over the last 10 days I have been studying for the Installation and Configuration exam (70-410) with a book from Microsoft press geared toward it. I also have a lab set up at my house for testing and doing the exercises. this should be simple you would think. Study the book, do the exercises, pass the exam. Theoretically, that is how it is supposed to go.

The problem with theories, is just that. They are theories, and real world can be indifferent to them. As I have almost finished the book (all 1600 pages of it) and done the exercises, I honestly do not feel much more ready to take the exam than I did before I started. Some of that could be because of the time frame from start to finish, which I will supplement with some other resources available to me. Some of it is that I don’t have access to any practice exams to gauge how I do on the various parts, and where my weaknesses are. Another portion is due to the face that while Server 2012 is new, and so are the exams, the books to study for it were released back in October, which means they were written while the software was still in Beta, and I have found issues with some of the exercises due to that fact (I won’t get into how many typos were in the book itself). This also leads me to a lack of confidence in taking the exam. When the official material is problematic, one has to wonder what they are actually in for.

The final issue I run into is that I like to know that I can pass the exam itself before I take it. I know others out there are like this also. We don’t want to go into that testing room and come out with a fail, especially with how much the exams cost. So we tend to push it off, time and time again, until there is new technology and new exams to take. In the mean time we get really good with the technology, but have no way of showing that little piece of paper to our employers, even though in the end it shouldn’t matter.

The question is though, when do you jump into the exam itself?

And the fun begins

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The nice thing about training in a test environment is you can blow things up and not have to worry about it. Its more fun when the training exercise you are doing blows up in your face and you have to go from just learning mode to troubleshooting mode just to complete the exercise.

I do love learning, and I do love a challenge. I decided to take the 90 Days to MCSA challenge on figuring it would be good motivation for me to upgrade my Microsoft Certifications. I also figured that going with books from Microsoft Press, that recently came out, I would be even better off, since they would have the proper information. With all of this in mind I started off going through chapter 1 and doing the migration exercise at the end of the chapter. Piece of cake, everything went exactly as it said it would in the book. Each step worked beautifully. Coming off this success I went into chapter 2 ready for what it had to throw at me.

After reading through everything I started the first exercise which consists of  installing Server 2012 Core and then Converting to the GUI. The Core install had no issue, no problems. I get to the steps to do the conversion, and the problems started. Following step by step I went to the powershell and typed:

Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra –Restart –Source c:\mountdir\windows\winsxs

To convert to a minimal GUI system, and wound up stalling out at 68% and then failing with the following information:

Install-WindowsFeature : The request to add or remove features on the specified server failed.

Installation of one or more roles, role services, or features failed.

The source files could not be downloaded.

Use the “source” option to specify the location of the files that are required to restore the feature. For more information on specifying a source location,

seehttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243077. Error: 0x800f0906

At line:1 char:1

+ Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra,Server-Gui-Shell -Source:wim:z:\ins …

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (@{Vhd=; Credent…Name=localhost}:PSObject) [Install-WindowsFeature], Exception

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DISMAPI_Error__Cbs_Download_Failure,Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.Commands.AddWindowsFeatureCommand

 

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result

——- ————– ———      ————–

False   No             Failed         {}

 

Being the IT guy that I am, I start Googling, and find not a lot of information, or at least solutions for this problem. I figure, OK it is something with the mount directory, so lets just try and get what we need from the online source. This time I get a Could not Download from source error on the fail, again at 68%. Now we are at a point that doesn’t make sense. I can understand that after some updates, there might be an issue doing the switch from the DVD (and yes I even used the DVD itself as the source directly with the same problems), but not able to do it from the online repositories, like ti should, this has me baffled. I decide to try and delete the mountdir directory I had created in case it was looking at that at all, and of course, a bunch of files cannot be deleted due to access issues. Yeah, I know that at this point I should just reinstall server core from the start and try again, but I now have a huge challenge on my hand, and can’t let it go so easily, even though it does push back my studying schedule.

I then decide to run another round of updates on the system to see if that is why the online repositories are not able to update the system as they should be able to. I also go against what the book says, and do all updates and not just the recommended ones. Well, that of course fails also, which brings me to the point of making the decision to wipe and start from scratch or continue finding an answer to the problem. I decide to try one more thing and from a recommended link in a post on the Microsoft forums I type in:

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:ServerCore-FullServer /featurename:Server-Gui-Shell /featurename:Server-Gui-Mgmt

This comes back with an error 0x800f0906 which says the source file cannot be downloaded. A quick Google search for that error comes up with it relating to the .NET framework 3.5.1. I figure, enough is enough for now and decide to reload Server Core from scratch and try to do the switching without doing any updates from Microsoft. That’s the lucky thing about it being a single test machine that I have nothing to worry about on. Start again from the beginning. I am sure Microsoft never intended for this process to take over 3 hours to get running properly, but again, that is the joy of new technology, you never know what can happen.

While starting form scratch, I did a bit more research to find that this is a known problem. After the reload, and before setting any server information or doing any updates, I was able to go through the steps for switching to the Minimal Gui without the error. The big question I have is why would Microsoft make it so difficult to do the switching the first time between Core and Gui when it is one of the great new features they have touted?

TechEd Wrapup

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After spending a week at TechEd there are thoughts and opinions. I had no idea what to expect, outside of the chance to learn and do some networking. What I found was that, more and less.

 

TechEd is supposed to be the premier Microsoft Tech conference. The idea is to cram information into 4 days, to show off upcoming technologies, and to allow direct access to the people who know the technologies the best. I was hoping to be able to say it was all that, but the reality is that TechEd does fall short of those ideas in a number of ways. Do not get me wrong, TechEd is worth going to, but be aware of expecting too much.

Companies always have an agenda, and Microsoft is no different. TechEd at times seemed like a huge propaganda machine, even in the sessions and seminars. The comments about Windows 8 and how speakers got special permission to use it in their seminars got old. The fact is that while they had a full keynote on Windows 8, the never showed integration into a corporate domain, how it works hand in hand with Server 2012, nor why it belongs in the corporate environment. Here you have the IT folks, the ones who can help push your product, if they like it, and you are not giving them what they need. It was nice to see some beta app from SAP but, that is not the way to present to the people who want to know how difficult will the migration process be.

Lets move to the crux of what TechEd is about, learning. The seminars/sessions overall were rather informative, if not a bit short. 75 minutes per session is not a lot of time to cover the topics in much detail. Things get skipped over, glanced at or just muddled. This was most evident in the Exam Cram sessions where there really wasn’t much information given out except for what would be the opening of any study guide for those exams. I felt bad for the MCTs who really were not given a chance to shine and really prepare the people at the seminar in any meaningful way.

The other sessions I went to gave information in a more condensed form most of the time, and were interesting overall. Still they felt a bit rushed by the end as the speakers wanted to talk and interact more, would find themselves doing that and have to squish things together at the end. Mind you these speakers (Paula, Mark and Mark) were amazing, knew their stuff and were really teaching and showing us how to do what they were talking about. The amount of information I got was amazing, but it gets so condensed that one barely has time to process it before the next item on the agenda gets hit. I’m lucky if I can remember 10% of what I was shown. Luckily most of the session I went to are up in video format on the TechEd website (which really only works on 32Bit IE) so I can go back to them.

The networking part of TechEd was the best. Between meeting people in sessions, to the after hours shindigs that were going on, you had plenty of chances and opportunities to make new connections and friends.

TechEd is a great idea, and is worth going to. Microsoft has to decide though what they really want it to be about. With the attendance being 30% Devs and 70% IT Pros, the TechExpo area (vendors) was geared more to the Devs. The hard push on cloud this and cloud that was deplorable. The amount of information one could find and learn was amazing, and super condensed. the fact that Microsoft could have handed out Win8 Tablets to all of us for note taking and recording sessions, yet didn’t, was a disappointment. You have the people that drive the IT decisions there. Throw us a bone.