Okay, I was partly holding off on publishing this because at first I thought it expired REAL fast, but apparently, that’s changed! so here you go! It’s good until June 30th, 2010! woohoo!

If you guys remember my original post Certification and MeasureUp Discounts 20% off Certs! that story is still true – so the ‘approved’ countries will still be able to get 20% off which can make your exam costs as little as $100 USD! (Fill in the blank of your respective country :)) However, if you don’t want to get money off and instead want to take your chances at the exam at full price YET if you happen to fail (No one ever fails, right? Especially not ME?!? :)) This will give you a second chance at the exam for free then!

So, in USD terms, here’s a breakdown of the values!

So, by looking at that, wow! There is a definite value in taking advantage of this Second Shot Program! However, if you KNOW you’ll pass the first time and you live in an ‘approved’ country, then the 20% off voucher is definitely valuable.  Otherwise though, jump all over this Second Shot offer, as far as I know it’s available in EVERY country, which is great, and the fact it ALSO run’s until June 30th, 2010 – means you’re all winners all around!

So, just like before, feel free to email me, contact me on facebook, twitter @CXI, even linkedin (or you can comment here) – Whatever means is comfortable for you to get these vouchers.  I don’t have any limits, and I want you to pay as LITTLE as possible for your certification! (In the event you didn’t catch it, this is all free :))

So, I discussed this before in a few places, but just incase we forgot! Act now or forever lose your Microsoft Certification discount!, Getting Microsoft Certified in the United Arab Emirates! and Certification and MeasureUp Discounts 20% off Certs!

Well, in these past posts, I discussed that there were a finite number of countries whereby the 20% off discount would apply.  I did have a spreadsheet I generated and kept on hand.. but instead of sharing the entire spreadsheet I’m only going to include the countries which *today* offer the 20% off discount before they all fall into 10% only discounts.  The important lesson here is: If you live in one of these countries where 20% is available, let me know and I’ll be sure to get you the 20% off voucher before we all lose it forever!

That’s right! If you live, test and certify in one of these countries above, let me know and I’ll be sure to get you some vouchers! You must let me know before August 27th though, or else I’ll only be able generate 10% vouchers after that point!   And yes I will be generating SOME vouchers to keep on hand for these countries just incase, but it’s better to be safe than sorry and ensure you’re all taken care of!

Yay! It’s RTM Weekend! Alright, not for everyone, because as we all are patiently waiting for August 6th as RTM hits TechNet and MSDN, but I needed to get the jump on things because I think I’m busy next weekend!

So, what does RTM weekend entail for me?  Testing was the first ground.   Testing installations on my hardware, and getting a feel for how I’ll architect my deployment model for Win7 and 2008R2!

First things first – Create bootable VHD Images to run my OS out of.    Yes, I planned to deploy my systems via Boot from VHD, so I needed to create bootable images! And for this little decision, I opted to take advantage of WIM2VHD! So, what exactly is WIM2VHD?  Well, that’s pretty simple to explain!

The Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) command-line tool allows you to create sysprepped VHD images from any Windows 7 installation source. VHDs created by WIM2VHD will boot directly to the Out Of Box Experience, ready for your first-use customizations. You can also automate the OOBE by supplying your own unattend.xml file, making the possibilities limitless.
Fresh squeezed, organically grown, free-range VHDs – just like Mom used to make – that work with Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Windows 7′s new Native VHD-Boot functionality!

All you need in order to be successful with WIM2VHD is:

• A computer running one of the following Windows operating systems:
  • Windows 7 Beta or RC (or RTM)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta or RC (or RTM)
  • Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V RTM enabled (x64 only)
• The Windows 7 RC Automated Installation Kit (AIK) or Windows OEM Pre-Installation Kit (OPK) installed.
• A Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 installation source, or another Windows image captured to a .WIM file.

Then, simply execute a command like I did below and you’re moving along!

Create a bootable VHD of Windows 7 Ultimate
cscript WIM2VHD.WSF /wim:D:\sources\install.wim /sku:ultimate /VHD:C:\vhd\win7ult.vhd

Create a bootable VHD of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
cscript WIM2VHD.WSF /wim:D:\sources\install.wim /sku:serverenterprise /VHD:C:\vhd\R2Ent.vhd

This frankly takes care of most of the work on your  behalf! (Sure did for me!)

FYI: The image defaults to 40gb, so if you want to change that, use this flag /size:<vhdSizeInMb>

After this point all you need to do is bcdedit and make the system bootable and you’re set!

bcdedit /copy {current} /d “New VHD Description”
    bcdedit /copy {current} /d “Windows 7 Ultimate”
bcdedit /set <guid> device vhd=[driveletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
    bcdedit /set {GUID} device vhd=[c:]\vhd\win7ult.vhd
bcdedit /set <guid> osdevice vhd=[driverletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
    bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice vhd=[c:]\vhd\win7ult.vhd
bcdedit /set <guid> detecthal on
    bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal on

And you can perform those same exact steps again for your 2008 R2 VHD as well.   It’s not only pretty straight forward, but it’s so simple anyone can do it! After performing those steps I was up and running on a system which had no data, nothing, notta!

Now, to apply some context and depth to how I chose to use my deployment model.  I’m running on my personal Lenovo T61p, which I have a Kingston 128GB SSD disk inside of.   Because I wanted to have ‘some’ kind of Native OS in order to help work on anything should something go wrong, I opted for a 2008 Server R2 Enterprise (Core) installation.  That gives me a minimal foot print, yet an OS I can feel comfortable and confident in being able to work on and with!  

What this enables is my NOS which runs on the “C:” drive, and has a VHD directory where my images live.  However, when I’m booted into either of my BootFromVHD OS’s on here, the native SSD becomes the “D:” drive whereby I can share files between the two systems!   However, if you forget to copy something to the shared volume and need to access it, feel free to use the mount VHD feature in the Disk Management tool (or Storage in 2008)

I personally prefer to mount it read-only because… I don’t want to take any risks, especially when it comes to “Anti-Virus” or other things. (Unless that is my specific intention)

Now that you have a working and operational system you’re good to go! And if you stick with a NativeOS for Maintenance reasons, you can use it to take hard backups of your VHD’s for migration to other hardware or general recovery to other points in time! (note: You can backup the un-used OS from your active OS if you’d like as well :))

So, hope you have a good RTM weekend coming up, I look forward to being able to generate and use my license keys come August 6th!

Good news! Especially for those of you who have checked out these two posts:

Certification and MeasureUp Discounts 20% off Certs! 

Getting Microsoft Certified in the United Arab Emirates!

Unfortunately, there will be some change on the horizon! That 20% will soon become 10% for all vouchers generated after August 27th, 2009!  Fortunately, all vouchers generated BEFORE August 27th, 2009 will still be eligible for their original discount (Which is great for England, US and other 20% off countries! :))

I’ll generate a number of vouchers to have on hand as applicable, which I’ll definitely take care of for England and the US, and if you have any other countries you want vouchers for… let me know and I’ll be sure to keep them on hand! :)

I’m sure you’ve seen my ever so recently posted Microsoft Certification and MeasureUp Discounts 20% off Certs! which talks about how you can get 20% off on Microsoft Certification exams! Cool, right?

Well, there is one misfortune of Safari and it’s ability to actually recognize that I selected ‘u’ and scrolled down to United States – End result? I’ve generated a WHOLE bunch of vouchers for the United Arab Emirates! So if you’re in the United Arab Emirates and are looking for Microsoft Exam Certification discounts (The UAE discount is 10% off) but that’s better than full price!

Let me know and I’ll get you vouchers, and then we all win as you test and pay less!

So, Microsoft certifiers in the UAE! Come on down, let me know! email, comment, message on twitter, whichever! :)