Since this is a very cool week for me, I’m going to do something very cool for you.

Here’s a study guide for the test tomorrow.

Enjoy!

If you have a Monday class with me, you didn’t have that class this Monday since it’s Columbus Day!!!  So take the day, grab some boats and lead a bunch of sailors in search of gold in India.  And then, find neither.

Come back next week (please!) and we’ll pick up right where we left off!

PS, is it just me, or does Chris look like he’s flashing some kind of Renaissance gang sign?  West-side indeed.

Just the final.

Homework:

• Enjoy the time off!!

Just the final exam today.  See you next quarter!

Homework:

• Enjoy the time off, you deserve it!

number 9 … number 9 … number 9 …  

In celebration of National Beatles Day (it isn’t) we took a Powerpoint final!  I can’t think of any other way that John, Paul, George and Ringo would have wanted it (that’s a lie)!

Homework:

• Go home and listen to your favorite Beatles album.  Mine is Abbey Road, followed by Sgt. Pepper’s.

Again, nothing but the final.

Homework:

• None!

Nothing today but the final.  Nice job this quarter, see most of you on September 30!!!

Homework:

• No homework, but you may want to start reading in your books for next quarter.

Today was the day we showed off our PowerPoint presentations!  You guys did a fantastic job, and I learned a lot today, thanks!

Afterwards, I let you know who needed to come in and take their finals.  I’ll be seeing you folks next week — everyone else, thanks for making this a fun quarter, and I will see you wandering the halls in the fall!

Homework:

• Study for the final, *if* you have to take it.  (Or, even if you don’t and are just bored.  Who am I to judge?)

Today we finished the last chapter of the book — this one was about setting up access to the network from areas where we might not physically be connected to it.

We talked about the delicate balance between security and unfettered access.  You know, it is 2009, and people expect to be able to access their work information in the same way they access their personal “online” information — seamlessly.  So, as IT, we are charged with the mission of setting that seamless access up, while at the same time keeping our corporate assets safe.

One way we have of doing this piggy-backs off of what we discussed last week: setting up secure VPNs to our networks so that our remote employees can use their Internet connections to interface with our networks.  Some tools we have in our Server 2003 arsenal include using IPSec to encrypt and authenticate our users’ sessions with our network.  To be ultra secure, we would want to secure the communication further by setting up L2TP.

Afterwards, I let you guys know who I would need to see next week for the final.

Homework:

• None, just study for the final, if you have to take it.

First off, welcome to September.

Secondly, welcome to week 10!  This week we finish up the book by knocking the last two chapters of the book out of the park.  Luckily, these two chapters are, well, stuff we’ve covered before.

As you know, I struggle with these topics repeating themselves the way that they do.  On the one hand, they’re extremely important and WILL be tested on the certification exam (trust me, they will).  On the other hand, how many times can you go over the intricacies of Performance Monitor and Backup.

So, in the light of this conflict, I decided that I would try to show you some things about the technologies we discussed today that maybe we haven’t seen before.  To do this, I had to completely reexamine how I teach Performance Monitor.

To start out, I talked about counter logs and trace logs.  Counter logs are designed to be captures of past “scans” and can be viewed inside the System Monitor portion of Performance Monitor.  This is great for pulling up in a presentation, etc.  Trace logs are logs that show us how an application is using certain system resources, like RAM.

In addition, I tried to spend a little time in customizing the charts in System Monitor, something I have traditionally skipped over, assuming everyone would know  how to do.  We discussed the benefits of giving your charts appropriate names and even giving your Y-axis appropriate scales.

Next, we looked at troubleshooting, but this time it was more from a TCP/IP perspective.  Basically, we went over the basic IPv4 addressing mechanism and went over problems that can arise.  As an added bonus, I through in some IPv6 coverage!  WOO!

Homework:

• Since this is the last week of class, none!
• That is, unless you have to take the final next week.
• If that’s the case — STUDY!