Wow, two more totally rocking books! I even actually own the Server Core book!

Windows Server 2008 Core Administrator’s Pocket Consultant
By Mitch Tulloch with the Windows Server Core Team at Microsoft
ISBN: 9780735626263

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services Step by Step
By Paul Turley, Joe Kasprzak, Scott Cameron, Satoshi Iizuka, and Pablo Guzman
ISBN: 9780735624054

It’s a dark night, you’re in a cold murky alley.   There’s a random file found in the root of your drive (or mount point).   Suddenly, your cluster goes offline.   WTF!

If you’re thinking, “Damnit, what did my storage vendor do now!” You’d be mistaken.

There’s this little doozy out there:

“A physical disk resource may unexpectedly fail or go offline when the IsAlive function is executed on a Windows Server 2008 cluster node” to the tune of Q953652

Microsoft declares it to happen when you meet the following scenario:

• You have a Windows Server 2008 cluster node.
• The IsAlive function is executed on the cluster node while a file is being accessed in the root folder of the cluster disk.

In this scenario, a physical disk resource on the Windows Server 2008 cluster node may unexpectedly fail or go offline. This behavior occurs randomly.

Or otherwise read as: If you have a file in the root of Drive letter or Mount point, the drive may ‘disappear’ when you have this configured in a cluster (This does not apply to Server 2008 single servers)

Quite often this is blamed on the storage (regardless of vendor) so be sure to keep your clusters up to spec and make sure to apply this Hotfix from Microsoft, especially if you meet this criteria!

Good luck Clusters, and those cold dark alleys won’t be so bad.

Every so often I get asked by people for help improving their skills, making them more marketable as well as ways to get access to training and resources.

And more often than not, I lead them in directions with the huge cost of $0.00 associated with it.    Whether you’re looking for Certification, access to Labs, E-Books, or Training information.

I’m a BIG fan of Free!

So, can you afford freE-Learning?

Thanks to our friends at Microsoft, here is another resource available to you!

By visiting this lovely site, it will display all of the available courses being offered by Microsoft Learning for Free!

What relevant topics are available on there at the moment:

1. SQL 2008
2. Application Virtualization
3. Terminal Services in Server 2008
4. Virtual Machine Manager for 2008
5. Hyper-V
6. ASP.NET
7. .NET Framework
8. Windows Security
9. Microsoft Security Guidance I-IV

…And more!

Seriously, there is a motherload of information here, so much training to wrap your teeth into!

If you saw my previous post about the voucher to get the Hyper-V training for free, this training is very complimentary to that and more! (Especially since that voucher seems to be faulty at the moment)

So get out there, get yourself something Free for this season.  It’s your education, do something about it!

Raise your hands up and praise Joanne Lin of the MSLCommunity for bringing us these little gems! (Gem1 and Gem2 ! :)) [Time for some verbatim copying!...kind of!]

Help celebrate our 25^th anniversary with a free e-book offer.  The November offers is valid from November 19 to November 26, 2008, so download the e-books soon.  You can also sign up for Microsoft Press Connection newsletter to get monthly update.

For November:

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Fundamentals by Stanslav Pavlov and Pavel Belevsky:   This book examines the architecture, built-in programming tools, drivers, and build process, and shows how to take advantage of the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Software Development Kit (SDK).

Download this e-book!

Windows Server 2008 Networking and Network Access Protection (NAP) by Joseph Davies and Tony Northrup with the Microsoft Networking Team:   Get the official resource for deploying, administering, and troubleshooting Windows Server 2008 networking and Network Access Protection (NAP) technologies.

Download this e-book!

Going for a SQL Class? Get a copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition!

Microsoft Learning is teaming up with the SQL Server team to give away free copies of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition to people who attend select instructor-led classroom training at a Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions (CPLS). Here’s the deal: The Deal!

So, if you’re looking for an early gift for yourself, or your friends.. Get them the Ebook that keeps on giving! :)

Happy Holiday-Season-Time! And spend that good money in this economy of free!

To make it easier to find out what tests are currently available in general and in Beta’s, I’m creating this “link” more or less, which I’ll keep current as I can. – All dates update 04/15/09

71-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring. May 5, 2009– May 18, 2009 (WIN7J)

NS1-501: NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer:SAN - October 23, 2008 – December 31, 2008 (No Code needed)

70-113: TS: Windows® Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring (Pilot) – July 31, 2008– December 31, 2008 (Code H640) (Qualifies you for 3 free vouchers after exam release)

71-505: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Forms Application Development – November 25, 2008 – December 15, 2008 (Code: X356Y)

71-563: Pro: Design & Dev Windows Apps Using MS.NET Framework 3.5 – October 13, 2008 – December 11, 2008 (Code: DW897)

71-564: Pro: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 – November 6, 2008 – December 1, 2008 (Code: RSC43)

71-565: Pro: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 – November 10, 2008 – December 3, 2008 (Code: 999TR)

71-403: TS: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Configuring - September 30, 2008 – December 15, 2008 (Code: VMM08) (Code may be expired, keep trying it)

70-656 Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, Configuring – First 500 Free (Code: MDOP)

71-433: TS: Microsoft SQL 2008, Database Development - September 22, 2008 – October 10, 2008 (Code: F589G)

NS1-060: NetApp Accredited Support Engineer - September 12, 2008 – November 7, 2008 (No Code needed)

NS1-050: NetApp Installation Accredited Professional - August 1, 2008 – September 12 2008 (No Code needed) – Extended to September 12th!

71-450: PRO: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Designing, Optimizing, and Maintaining a Database Administrative Solution – August 18, 2008– September 16, 2008 (Code: 239F4)

71-451: PRO: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Designing and Optimizing Database Solutions - September 2, 2008 – September 30, 2008 (Code: 14F65)

71-653: Windows Small Business Server 2008, Configuring – August 22, 2008 – September 25, 2008 (Code: SBS8)

71-654 – TS: Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Configuring - July 22, 2008 – ??? Sep 25?  (Code EBS08)

71-452: Designing a Business Intelligence Infrastructure Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 -August 13, 2008– September 10, 2008 (Code: 3568C)

71-660: TS: Windows® Internals – July 21, 2008 – August 5, 2008 (Code WINT)

All older exams will not be referenced