After a great time in Los Angeles last week for PDC2008, I returned to Redmond this week to re-deliver my talk "Architecture Without Big-Design-Up-Front" for the patterns & practices Summit this morning.

I've been doing my demos for this talk using the new Visual Studio 2010 CTP and have it running on by under-the-desk machine (more power than my laptop). But since the Summit is in a different building than my demo machine, I wanted to reach into it from my laptop using the Hyper-V Management Console from Windows Vista.

After getting my machine up to SP1 (one of my prereqs had failed) I was able to install it. But for some reason, I couldn't get it to connect. I could connect with Remote Desktop, but I couldn't connect with the Hyper-V Console.

After a bit of digging, I found a WONDEFUL set of posts by John Howard, a PM from the Hyper-V team. In there he shows you all the security and firewall connections you should check if you have issues connecting to the Hyper-V server.

• Part 1 - The Server-side Stuff
• Part 2 - The Client-side Stuff
• Part 3 - Server-side with Server Core
• Part 4 - In a Domain-joined Environment
• Part 5 - Weirder Domain-joined Stuff

It turns out that all of my settings from Part 1 were correct, but one setting in Part 2 was wrong (WHY??). I didn't need Parts 3-5, but I'm including them here for completeness.

Thanks John! You saved my ass.

PS. Now that PDC is behind me, I'm planning a bunch of blog content to share all that great stuff with the rest of you. Stay tuned!