Techdays Montreal 2011–Something New, Hands On Labs!

Yes – you can have this feeling of accomplishment these two guys are feeling when we took this picture. Do you want to have that feeling of fulfillment and spontaneous celebration like these two dudes?  You can get it after you take the leap of faith and attend one of our Hands On Labs at TechDays Montreal in order to know that you have maximized your time and experience at TechDays!

As we try to improve upon what we have done in the past in order to make a better experience – we added Hands On Labs to the schedule – denoted with an ILL in the session code. These sessions are delivered by the same experts who are delivering the technical sessions.  There is at least one Hands On Lab per content area – focusing on current or soon to be released technologies you can walk away with today.

You will have the opportunity to go through one of 9 labs while you are attending the conference. At the start of the session, the instructor / expert will review the different steps, concepts and tasks required to complete the lab.  You will then have your turn while they (along with the proctors) can assist you if you have issues. This gives you the most flexible time to complete each lab in the allocated time while understanding all the important concepts.

Oh yeah – this is a BRING YOUR OWN COMPUTER/LAPTOP event. There will be instructions on how to connect up to the network and launch each virtual hands on lab using your own computer. Minimal configuration is Windows Vista SP1, wireless network card, Internet Explorer 7 or higher and a resolution minimum of 1280 x 800.  We will supply the internet connection for the lab as well as a desk and power connections.  There WILL be a LIMITED NUMBER of computers that are setup in the room – first come first served – for those of you who do not have laptops – but their numbers are limited.

Note: manuals and instructors are English for the hands on lab.  There are bilingual proctors to assist as well as bilingual slides and simultaneous english/french translation services in the room.

Here are the different Hands On Labs available:

ARCILL201 Introduction to Test Planning with Microsoft Test Manager 2010
In this lab, you will learn how to create and configure a new Test Plan in Microsoft Test Manager 2010. This test plan can be used, for instance, to test the new release of your software. Next, you will learn how to add test suites and existing test cases to a test plan and finally, you will learn how to create a new requirement and add that requirement to your test plan. You will also learn how to create a new test case for the new requirement.

CLDILL200 Introduction to Windows Azure
In this hands-on lab, you will explore the basic elements of a Windows Azure service by creating a simple GuestBook application that demonstrates many features of the Windows Azure platform, including web and worker roles, blob storage, table storage, and queues.

DATILL301 Bare Metal Business Intelligence
In this Hands-On Lab you will configure the integration of SQL Server Reporting Services in Sharepoint 2010 by enabling Reporting Services and configuring a Report Library. Next you will configure SharePoint 2010 for PowerPivot and test the PowerPivot Client in Excel 2010. Finally you will configure PerformancePoint and enable a Business Intelligence Center.

DATILL402 Bare Metal Mission Critical
This lab discusses the various options available in SQL Server 2008 R2 database mirroring configurations and demonstrates how to configure and maintain a database mirroring solution. By the end of this lab, you will understand:

• The benefits of database mirroring.
• How to configure database mirroring in high-performance mode.
• How to configure database mirroring in high-availability mode.
• How to manage database mirroring configurations

DEVILL301 Building a LightSwitch Control Extension
In this Hands-on Lab you will be walked through the creation of a LightSwitch custom control. This control will be used to display an address in a Silverlight BingMapcontrol. Through this process you will learn the solution structure that is required to create LightSwitch extensions, the various interfaces that should be implemented to make the custom control similar to a native control, and how to package this extension as a VSIX installer.

MGTILL305 Getting Started with System Center Orchestrator
The objective of this lab is to provide a basic overview of the Orchestrator architecture and functionality, and an introduction to the process of creating and running runbooks.

By the end of this lab you will:

• Understand the basic Orchestrator architecture
• Be able to build, test, and monitor simple runbooks

VIRILL300 Getting Started with System Center Virtual Machine Manage 2012
In this lab, you will explore System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 Beta. This lab is designed to walk you through a configured VMM infrastructure to help you understand the new concepts, terms, UI elements, and configuration tasks. You will accomplish this by exploring the three key elements: Clouds and Services, Fabrics, and the Library. Clouds and Services are collections of virtual workloads which provide services on slices of infrastructure. The fabric is a collection of hardware based resources including virtualization hosts, storage, and network devices which provide the physical implementation of clouds and services. The library is a collection of predefined objects which are the building blocks for clouds and services

VIRILL301 iSCSI Software Target 3.3 - Enabling Hyper-V Storage on Windows Server 2008 R2
This lab will help you learn how Windows Server 2008 R2 provides economical, highly-available storage that can scale to meet any business requirements. The exercises in this lab include:

Exercise 1: Managing iSCSI LUNs. In this exercise you will learn how to manage iSCSI LUNs in the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target. You will learn how to manage iSCSI LUNs using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target console and Windows PowerShell™ cmdlets.

Exercise 2: Using iSCSI LUNs with Virtual Machines. In this exercise you will learn how to connect virtual machines to iSCSI LUNs using three different methods. You will use the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator to connect to the iSCSI LUNs you created in the previous exercise.

Exercise 3: Booting Virtual Machines from iSCSI LUNs. In this exercise you will learn how to boot diskless virtual machines directly from iSCSI LUNs. You will use a network boot program to connect to an iSCSI LUN and initiate the boot process for Windows Server 2008 R2 from the iSCSI LUN.

Exercise 4: Deploying a Highly-Available Microsoft iSCSI Software Target. In this exercise you will learn how to make the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target highly-available using Windows Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2. You will observe how an iSCSI LUN can be accessed continuously without interrupting a script running in the active cluster node.

WINILL201 Using SketchFlow for Windows Phone
In this lab you discover principles of good UX design. You also discover how to start and build your prototype using the SketchFlow Template for Windows Phone. Along the way, you find out how to add sample data, and customize the look and feel of your data. You also find out how to add interactivity with objects that you create right in Expression Blend, or that are imported from other sources, such as Adobe Illustrator.

I you don’t have the time to try or finish off one of these Hands On Labs – don’t worry.  They will ALL be available ONLINE from the Techdays.ca website once it switches over to our new “TechDays Online” site.  That being said – the HOL opportunity at Techdays is not one to be missed – you get the experts in the room and the dedicated time to focus on the tasks at hand.