For our test we connected both iPads to the same wireless point. First we began to try and see differences in graphic quality on the stock background images for the screen. We carefully looked at several of the images at different angles on both iPads to ensure a fair look at both. We also compared the video quality on YouTube.

In short we were not impressed. We couldn’t tell any HUGE quality difference on the new iPad’s display. We did see a few colors on the new iPad that looked a bit deeper than on the iPad 2, but that was about it.

I would like to emphasize, this was a very basic quick side by side comparison between the two, which is about all most people are going to do at the store (given the opportunity) before making a purchase decision.

So, which one should you buy? It depends on who you are.

If you’re a hard core gamer that is looking for the most in iPad performance, you might find the new iPad as the tablet for you. On the other hand you may not see the big deal. In my opinion the differences between the two “at a glance” will NOT blow you away. So, if you’re a non-techie person looking for an iPad I would save the money and buy and iPad 2 at $100 less than the base model of the new iPad. $100 could go a ways at the app store or some other store!

Lately I’ve been getting a better understanding of my organization’s IT infrastructure. One of the intermediate steps I am taking is to make drawings of our active directory, physical and virtual server layout, and replication links and IP subnets that are associated with that. This way I can look at each layer piece by piece at a glance. At the time of this writing I am using Visio 2010 Professional.

I came across a free tool from Microsoft called “Active Directory Topology Diagrammer” (ADTD) that uses the LDAP protocol to query you domain for all kinds of useful information, and outputs multiple editable Visio drawings. Here’s the link: ADTD Among the useful things, it picks up subnets that have access to Active Directory, and lays them out nicely with their associated sites and domain controllers.

Above is an example of what you could do with Visio if you needed to diagram your server rack layout. Visio has a lot of functionality to draw all sorts of business processes, floor plans and other stuff. For server racks, and other shapes in Visio the designer can associate “shape data” with each shape. For example I can link specific server information with the server’s shape (picture) like hard drive capacity, room location, installation/repair notes and other customize-able fields of information. Speaking of shapes, most manufacturers in information technology like Dell, VMware, Net Gear, HP etc., have shapes you can download from various places (use your preferred search engine) that are an actual picture of the model of server, switch, UPS unit, KVM or other appliance you have in your diagram. There are of course generic shapes built in to the program too.

Another interesting bit you can do with Visio 2010 Professional is linking “live data” to your drawing or linking the data to individual shapes within your drawing. I haven’t gone there yet in my diagrams partly because I plan to implement System Center 2012 when it reaches RTM. System Center 2012 will give me all the real time and monitoring information I could possibly need. Here’s a link that gives an “about connecting data” to Visio if you’re interested.

I have saved the Visio formatted drawings to .pdf for quick viewing by others on my team, and of course have the Visio versions as well for those who may need to see the shape data, embedded in each shape. I have hit the tip of the iceberg with this program and it is a big iceberg! It is proving itself useful!

What creative ways have you used Visio?

To begin the process, we set up the physical box in the same subnet as the new virtual host to get the most out of the data transfer rate. We also stopped all the daemons running on the mail server and blocked all incoming connections on the firewall to that server to prevent any unnecessary load. We monitored the conversion using the Vcenter console and the actual console of the newly created VM we are migrating the physical machine to.

There are several directories that need to be copied/converted during the process. The home directory took the longest to covert. For a short time we weren’t sure if the process was hung up or not, but patience paid off and we saw a huge jump in the progress after a long wait looking at the GUI of just over an hour. Once the process was completed for the remaining directories we installed VMware tools and rebooted.  The server would not boot up again.

At that point, we had to boot from a Linux rescue disc. The rescue disc found the installation. We edited /etc/modprobe.conf, remarked out all of the old entries, and inserted new entries at the top so it would load the modules necessary for the virtual hardware. Then we rebuilt the initrd file so the modules would be available at boot time. We then rebooted the server and it came up without issue.

We re-enabled the daemons and rebooted. Everything came up correctly. We then disabled the firewall block. Mail then started to come in and flow as normal. We checked all the services (pop3, web-mail, mailman, etc.) and all were working correctly.

We declared success after a conversion time of approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes. This was one of the toughest physical to virtual conversions I have participated in.

Have you had any physical to virtual conversion experiences?

I’m taking my time on this build so I can “do it right.” I’ll be posting more pictures and a bit of commentary as I go along. Thanks for reading!

Another viable option for checking out the functionality of of the entire system Center 2012 Suite is over at the TechNet Virtual Labs. There is no long drawn out installation…you just log in and use the software by walking through the step by step lab. You can use it in 90 minute blocks. if you prefer to get right to it, I recommend this option.

There is also a “hydration kit” out for the recently released RC2 of the System Center 2012 Suite.

Hydration means a fully automated build of  a complete Lab environment for Hyper-V or VMware. Here is a download for deploying a complete ConfigMgr 2012 RC2 infrastructure: One Domain Controller and one ConfigMgr 2012 RC2 member server – Including pre-requisites like .Net Framework, SQL 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and IIS – All fully automated.

Here is the link for that over at deployment research. I will attempt this soon. It involves some powershell commands, but all in all seems to be way less setup that what I went through on RC1.

I am on my way to being an Administrator of a game changing set of tools for managing an IT infrastructure. I think it’s pretty cool.