TechAgility

A few weeks back I was asked to setup a demo Server for the Citrix Synergy event here in Sydney that was to be XenApp 5.0 64bit (Delaware – Release Review) on a Server 2008 64bit installed on a DL680 Blade Server with 32Gb of RAM. Now it would have been nice to have had some time to really put this unit under pressure and see what sort of load it could handle but unfortunately I didn’t get the time for that.

However, seeing as some of you might be thinking of doing something similar I thought it worth sharing my experiences, as hopefully this might at least save you some time? 

Please be aware that these issues were discovered installing the “Release Preview” ONLY and they should be resolved when the RTM code of XenApp 5.0 (Delaware) is released.

• Sun Java Runtime 1.5.0_11 (Update 11) does not appear to be recognized if x64 is installed? Wizard installation routine appears to be only checking for x86 install ONLY?
• The Wizard installation routine can be somewhat annoying because it would appear to scan for prerequisites at initialization (and then keeps quiet about it) but if things are missing it only informs you when you hit the snag some way through? This then requires you to cancel setup entirely and restart installation to get past “check/error” message…….
• I did not read through all the prerequisites (show me an Admin who would? ;-)) and yet it would appear to only mention .NET 3.0 is a prerequisite when .NET 3.5 is also required?
• When the installation of the management consoles started I kept getting an error:

  

  Eventually I just canceled this piece and let everything continue from here – I was unable to find the prerequisite component, and didn’t need Password Manager anyway…  (NOTE: this component was not in the Support Folder)

• I have found what I believe is correct file at:
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DE37BFE4-7A5A-4767-BBE1-267418E0F1E7&displaylang=en but now that I review this I think this is not correct……
• Installing Licensing Server on the x64 appears to “break“ WI, so this was removed and placed on a std. Server 2003 – see error below

  

• Installed .NET 3.0 via Roles Console before rebooting and trying to install .NET 3.5
• Funnily enough the system insists on adding .NET 3.0 through the Roles and yet you can start 3.5 via the executable….
• I had to revisit IIS about 4 times to add additional functionality and then restart installation again…  very annoying, but ultimately my own fault for not reading the install guide? Here are some examples of what you’ll need to remember to install?
• 
• 
• And I did like the look of Server 2008’s IIS Manager – quite flash
• 

written by dcaddick

While the deployment we were assisting with today was maybe not that large even by local standards the issue was something that comes up on a some what regular basis.

A customer wants to have a number of Thin Clients imaged to their specifications and then drop-shipped to various locations ready to go. Part of this involves creating and applying Asset Tags to the devices – a small thing to be sure – but for the poor folks in charge of keeping track of the devices this was vital.

The issue was that part of the FBReseal (First Boot Reseal) process renames the devices based on a process that combines the MAC address and the serial number and then comes up with a random name, and of course that was not making things that easy for the “Asset Tagger’s”

So we were testing the imaging process at the Integrators site using Altiris as the deployment mechanism and trying to figure out how we might be able to achieve something that would leave everybody happy and we discovered “COMPNAME.EXE”

My hats off to Oli at Willowhayes.co.uk as this is a great tool that does exactly what we were after, but it clearly has some great functions that make it really well suited for RIS with references to UUID and the ability to create and reference fake UUID’s when needed.

It is so easy because you can easily see the info it can pull out via the summary switch (examples below) and then reference them via the template function – so in our specific case we simply called a job that ran “COMPNAME.EXE /c HP-?s” and this then appended the serial number after the HP- prefix.

Now it was possible for the customer to receive a spreadsheet of all the devices, including a listing of the specific Computer Names so that Asset Tags can be printed and applied ahead of delivery.

Summary switch provides the following info:
Mainboard manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : 30C8
          serial       :
Chassis   manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : Notebook
          serial       : 2CEXXXXH29
System    manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : HP Compaq 2710p (#ABG)
          serial       : 2CE8060H29
Ethernet address       : 00:1F:3B:09:XX:XX
IP address             : 192.168.0.4
NetBIOS name           : xxxxxxxxxxx
DNS Host name          : xxxxxxxxxxx
System UUID            : 21FFBB999ADCXXXX111XXX8410012529

Switch Examples are:
?u = System UUID                        ?U = Fake UUID (24 zeros plus MAC).
?G = If System UUID is FFFF… or 0000… or null it uses ?U, otherwise ?u.
?i, ?j, ?k, ?l            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (decimal).
?I, ?J, ?K, ?L            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (hex).
?d = Hostname found by reverse DNS lookup of IP address.
?m = First MAC address.                 ?e = Existing NetBIOS computer name.
?D = day    ?M = month    ?Y = year
?1, ?2, ?3, …, ?0       = 1, 2, 3, …, 10 random alphanumeric characters.

COMPNAME /c acme-?s   Changes computer name to "acme-ABCDEF" where ABCDEF is the system serial number.

written by dcaddick