TechAgility

So a little while back I had noticed that the Netgear DG834N that I had been using was getting quite hot at times with regards to the 240V Brick power supply – it even needed to be turned off at times to let it cool. So I hunted around and then decided to replace it with a fairly simple and effective Billion 5200N – nothing fancy – just a simple and cheap ADSL2+ capable Wireless Router/Modem combo.

So before removing the Netgear I had copied down all the specific settings information, powered up the Billion in isolation and applied all the settings OK, then tested and then finally swapped it out. And it ran very well – so well in fact that the lass who was working next door who was “borrowing” some Internet for her MacBook didn’t even realise there was a swap out.

So I thought I’d done pretty well with that – UNTIL – I came home to find a bill from Telstra (the incumbent Telco) for $73 for the month? WTF!!! We normally just pay the min. amount just to be connected to the copper and I have an account with PennyTel to redirect all phone comms on to the VoIP courtesy of a neat little Sipura SPA-3000 unit. Sipura has since been bought out by LinkSys and then Cisco – but that’s another story?

So I’m looking at this bill and then it occurs to me that I didn’t double-check the VoIP after the switch – DAMN!! So I check the Web Admin page, and sure enough I can see that it’s failing to register with the service… so I then started to try and configure a SIP service on the device for port 5060, and find that it’s not simple and not easy, and what the heck – why should it be so hard? So then I start looking around and consulting lot’s of forums, etc…  So I spent about 4 – 5 hours plus that night trying to get the bottom of it – no joy. Major bummer.

So when I came home the next day I was chatting to my brother and we go through all the obvious things…  then we decide that I really should try a SoftPhone from my PC, bloody hell, it works – so the Router *IS* passing VoIP and SIP anyway? I confirmed this with Wireshark – 5060 and SIP traffic is passing through no problems. So what is the cause of this problem? Why won’t my little box access and deliver VoIP traffic?

So I step through the settings from the top one more time – and then it hits me that I had set up the little SPA-3000 unit with a static IP – NOT DHCP!!!!
The older Netgear was set with 192.168.0.1 as the Gateway – the Billion came default with 192.168.1.254 – so I arbitrarily chose to make it 192.168.0.254 as the new gateway

AND – I had not updated the SPA-3000 to point to the .254 – it was still pointing the DNS and Gateway to the old .1 address
Problem solved, VoIP registration complete and Phone now working as it should.

written by dcaddick

Now I don’t always figure that the local Newspaper is going to be a good place to pick up this sort of info, but in this case I think Simon from the Sydney Morning Herald has done more than just a decent job – so for what it’s worth I’m reposting but add my 2 cents worth if and when I have something to add  

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010
SIMON SHARWOOD

December 15, 2009

Technology never stops moving, but what are the technologies that CIOs and IT managers really need to consider in 2010?

We sampled opinions among analysts, vendors, users, IT professionals, system integrators and pundits and came up with the following 10 to watch:

1. Cloud computing

Cloud computing now comes in at least three flavours: on-demand applications (software-as-a-service), clouds as a source of computing infrastructure (Amazon web services and its ilk), and as a paradigm for delivering services within an organisation (internal clouds). This means almost every CIO has one type of cloud computing to consider. All three are disruptive forces, with analyst firm Gartner ranking the cloud as the most strategic technology for 2010 because it “does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.”

This will run and run for a wee while yet – but we are still at the peak of the Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009?

2. Four big Microsoft upgrades

2010 will see the emergence of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Throw in the late 2009 debut of Exchange 2010 and IT managers on long-term licensing deals with Microsoft have three big upgrades to consider. Office 2010 looks like another incremental update but the new SharePoint and Exchange will only ship in 64-bit versions, putting a server upgrade on many users’ roadmaps. And let’s not forget Windows 7, which many CIOs must surely be considering as XP runs out of puff.

Is this starting to emerge as a possible “Perfect Storm” type scenario? XP is going EOL on Support, so we have to upgrade ASAP. Do we want to do Office 2010 while we are at it? We don’t have the budget – but if we leave till later then it adds additional cost – best do it together then! Oh wait, we’re still on Exchange 2003? Look there’s just no way we have budget for that – yes I know that we need to consider 2008 R2 – but there is just no….  what do you mean? Direct Access? it’s like a VPN but comes free with Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7….  really? OK, well let’s just look at this project list for next year and see what we can do?  WHAT!! Direct Access needs IPv6? Pass me the Panadol…      (I can see plenty of scope for future Dilbert episodes?)

3. Virtualisation

Virtualisation has hogged headlines in recent years but continues to evolve at an impressive pace. In 2010, Gartner says virtualisation will become a standard disaster recovery and availability technique, as the practice of moving virtual machines from one location to another matures. The idea of desktop virtualisation is also powering a new round of thinking about whether thin clients are a cheaper alternative to PCs.

Yes I see Server Virtualization becoming more entrenched, however with Desktop Virtualization – it’s getting there – but there are still some potential roadblocks? see Musings on VDI performance?

4. Biometric authentication

2009 saw National Australia Bank adopt voiceprints as its preferred method of authenticating its customers for phone banking and general customer service inquiries because it improves security and customer service. Many call centres have noted this experience and this technology is ready for wider deployment in 2010.

One can only hope it is a better experience for the Public than the Voice Automated response systems? “Agent”, Auto: I’m sorry I did not understand you, can you please repeat?

5. Next-generation firewalls

Most organisations tend to operate a fleet of security appliances, with firewalls, intrusion protection devices and unified threat management devices all helping to build a layered defence. Firewalls, however, have grown up and can now take over some of the functions of other security appliances. CIOs wishing to consolidate their security infrastructure may welcome this evolution.

Not my area at all

6. Employee-owned IT

Traditionally, IT departments decide what kind of computers and software employees use and they take responsibility for all maintenance chores. Younger workers, however, have grown up choosing their own computers and applications and want to keep their personalised computing styles. Enter employee-owned IT, which sees workers bringing their own computers to work so that IT can lock them down with virtualisation or multiple operating systems that deliver security. IT departments save as maintenance devolves to computer vendors, while employees swear they are more productive using a machine of their choice.

So this is effectively an extension of the Desktop Virtualization concept where it is possible already today to run a Type 1 Client Hypervisor on a Laptop or Desktop and host one or more VM’s running on it with very little performance overhead – this means that it will quite likely be possible (with sufficient HW resources) to run Windows 7, along with a dedicated VM acting as the FireWall keeping it all secure provided by IT, and XP for your Games. All of this will be managed by Policies driven by IT and the various components will be updated on the fly by being provided by Delta changes that are smart enough to recognize what bandwidth you have available and know if they can proceed or wait until you’re connected via LAN? Virtual Computer and Neocleus are doing this now, Citrix and VMware have products in development.     

7. Loyalty schemes

Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s Industry Director Andrew Milroy believes loyalty schemes will go mainstream in 2010. Citing their mainstream acceptance in retail and aviation, Milroy notes their absence from telecommunications and other industries and expects newly mature loyalty software will be something many CIOs are asked to consider in 2010.

I’m not too big a fan of these unless there are substantial benefits to the Customer – there is way too much detail out there on me already – I don’t want to add to another CRM database all my personal details…

8. Solid state disks

Storage may not be fashionable but it remains a colossal industry, and right now that industry is shifting towards solid state disks – a technology that sees storage assigned to flash memory instead of magnetic spinning disks. Solid state disks are smaller, faster, cooler and use less power than conventional disks, which means they can speed up applications without the need for new servers while keeping electricity costs low – an irresistible combination. While we are on storage, note the 2010 release of LTO-5, a new standard tape format packing 3.6 terbaytes of data onto each tape.

For an example of how SSD’s make a difference see these comments –
Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec. Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

9. Smart grids

Smart grids are an emergent technology that imagines sensors embedded in devices to monitor electricity consumption so that they can “decide” to operate when power is cheaper. This in turn allows power companies to predict demand more precisely, reducing waste. The idea is a favourite of green IT boosters and is also seen as a likely source of traffic for the National Broadband Network.

This may take 3 – 5 years to be common place, but it will be coming as soon as possible, this is one way we can all be green. What it also means is that we will be charged for our power consumption much more accurately, which in itself is no bad thing, and as a consequence over time we will develop better habits with regarding conserving power. The real kicker is that in the process we will be able to “get away” with not having to build that new powerstation for a further 5 – 7 years, etc.. which will be further savings to the environment.

I see this as very similar to the “User Pays” model in Car Insurance today – you can now pay for your Car Insurance based on a max number of Klick’s a year, the less mileage you do the less you pay. DO NOT be surprised if/when this also applies to Car Registration? Here in NSW we pay an extortionate amount of money in Tolls already – and DON’T even get me started on the NSW Govt?

10. Hybrid servers

The big IT transaction of 2009 was Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. The former has been experimenting with all-in-ones that pack a server, storage and other goodies needed to run business applications into a single box, and is said to be keen on extending Sun’s work in the same space. HP is going down the same path, working to make its storage arrays more similar to its servers to make them cheaper to manufacture. If this trend continues, data centre hardware will start to look similar.

So this is not normally my area of expertise – so I can only guess this might be referring to the LH Storage side of things? As far as I am aware there is already a 30 day trial LH Virtual SAN Appliance available for download at VMware Appliance web site – I’m sure we’ll see more of this in the future?

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010

written by dcaddick

So I got this message from my brother today via LinkedIn:

Martin Caddick has sent you a message.
Date: 2/12/2009
Subject: Victorian Bushfire appeal
Many of you know of my other passion of (http://www.everrest.info) which I’m waiting patiently to go and visit for longer periods of time. I spoke to Sunsail yesterday about a idea I had where if anyone was to provide a receipt from either Red Cross or the Salvation Army proving their donation to the fire appeal, then I / we would give them double that as a discount on any charter. Result that I’m after is that anyone who thought they might like to charter would see this as an opportunity to make a sizeable donation to the appeal and also have a cheaper charter holiday. ie. make a $500 donation and get $1000 off your charter.

Confirmed:
"As an additional encouragement for people to donate more than they might otherwise, the owners of EverRest in conjuction with Sunsail are pleased to be able to give people up to $1,000 off the price of their charter departing between now and 12 Aug 09. When you provide evidence of your donation to either the Red Cross or Salvation Army appeals you will receive a reciprocal amount off your charter fee."

"The fine print. This can’t be combined with any other offers, it can’t be used retrospectively with any bookings, it’s only applicable for EverRest not any other Sunsail boats and there is a maximum discount of $1,000."

Thanks for your time.

So if you’re interested? head over to his website at http://www.everrest.info and register your interest?

BTW – the Cat is based in Hamilton Island, in Queensland right in the Great Barrier Reef

written by dcaddick

So I don’t know if anyone has noticed something similar recently but shortly after my recent trip away I found that my Posts via “Windows Live Writer” were somehow being truncated or something similar and the Paragraph and Tagging syntax was getting muddled on my WordPress site.

At first I thought it might be Windows Live Writer as I had recently upgraded to a beta version 14.x… , so I downgraded (very bloody difficult that…), tried other blogging tools and found that this did not appear to be the root of the problem.

So as I was still on WordPress 2.2.3 I decided to upgrade the whole site and this time used funtastico to move from WordPress 2.2.3 to 2.6.5 – that was also not the cause of the problem.

Then tried taking a native post and cut and pasting in to wp-admin/write on the site and all worked well. So this would appear to indicate that the site was fine, but there appeared to be some issue with posting remotely, and that this wasn’t just related to “Windows Live Writer” exclusively.

So after a bit of research I’m seeing in these web links some details that this issue is caused by some variation of the lib files underpinning PHP? So I shot of an email to my Hosting company (OnyxServers) to see if they had any advice?

WordPress Bug Trac #7771 XMLRPC api stripping leading angle brackets
PHP Bug #45996 libxml2 2.7.1 causes breakage with character data in xml_parse()
http://www.geekyramblings.org/2008/09/20/wordpress-xml-rpc-error/

And it looks like this specific PHP libxml2 is linked to PHP 5.2.6 – or at least it is in the case of my hosting service?

So the answer I got was:

I did quite a bit of googling around and there are a few different suggestions as to what causes the problem and what might fix it. But most seem to point to libxml. It wasn’t clear to me which versions of libxml have the bug and whether the bug has fixed in the latest release. Either way, any change to libxml would require us to recompile PHP and Apache which is very risky.

However one suggestion I have is try running WordPress using PHP 4 instead of PHP 5 and see if the problem persists. This might be the easiest way to avoid the issue given your web site will work OK with PHP 4.

To try it out, create a .htaccess file in your public_html/ folder and enter the following in the file:
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php
Your PHP files will now run using PHP 4.4.9 and a different version of libxml.

Let me know if this works around the problem

And this has indeed worked for me. I can’t say it will work for everyone, as it will clearly depend on the particulars of how your hosting system is set up, but at least it’s one way that might be of some help?

And a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all ;-)

PS: Except the bs*%tards who broke in to my Brother-in-laws while we were all sleeping and took care of the ladies handbags, the wide screen TV and the car!!!!

Cheers,
Dave

written by dcaddick

Hi All,

Just a note regarding an issue I had to help resolve a little while back?

Issue:
We had a pre-sealed image of an XPe intended for a customer, who wanted to join it to the domain, come through and during testing at our location and on site for the customer it was found that it simply refused to get it’s time in sync 

Research:
What we able to narrow down to is that the Registry Entry for:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters was listed as Type = NoSync and what was really needed to be changed to NT5DS.

What we were also able to identify is that while we are quite certain that any *Local* user on an XPe device will always get “access denied” when trying to run NET TIME as they are not a valid domain user – what can be done though is run the w32tm /resync command (if the module/executable is available? AND ONLY if the time is within the default 5 minute max…) *OR* alternatively simply restart the Windows Time Service. Both of these commands can be run without issue using Local credentials.

Looking deeper in to why the W32Time Type was incorrect we managed to come up with this little gem from Microsoft:

Registry entries for the W32Time service and within this we found the following:

Type : REG_SZ
Used to control how a computer synchronizes.
Nt5DS = synchronize to domain hierarchy [default]
NTP = synchronize to manually configured source
NoSync = do not synchronize time
The Nt5DS setting may not use a manual configured source.
Note When you join a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer to a domain, the computer may not synchronize its time setting with the time setting of the domain controller if the Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server check box in the Date and Time Properties dialog box is not selected. The default option (NTP) for Windows Server 2003 workgroup computers is disabled if the Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server check box is not selected. When you join the computer to a domain that has this setting, the default synchronization type (Nt5DS) for computers that are joined to a domain is not set and the time service does not synchronize from the domain hierarchy.

I have highlighted the interesting section in red. After further testing we found that the default image had this check box unchecked, however, once this was checked before joining the domain then the NT5DS setting would be in place immediately after the reboot following the Joining to the Domain and as a consequence the device would time sync correctly as soon as it was booted.

From what we can see this is an issue that is not restricted to purely XPe but XP as well and hopefully thi info might be useful to others?

written by dcaddick

Download the Default image for the HP Mobile Thin Client – 2533t

Run the exe and when prompted – choose to create a bootable USB – select the correct drive corresponding to your USB Stick

When complete simply delete the *.ibr file in the root

Congratulations you now have a WinPE bootable USB Stick

Look under the IBRPE folder and there is a thinstate.cmd batch file that is called automatically by the Autoexec hidden in the boot.wim. At this point you can simply modify the thinstate.cmd to pause, and break out with a <CNTRL>+<C>, or you can start adding what you want.

So far I have added Process Explorer, a folder of imaging tools (RDeploy, Ghost and ImageX), a folder of Utilities, etc. I have also "plundered" my old PEBuilder folder for add ins that look useful – like PENETCFG?

Regedit, Notepad and Taskmgr work fine too…  but I’m sure you can find loads of other things to add to it?

written by dcaddick

Given that Hyper-V has now just been released as RTM it’s likely that more people are looking at the product and quite possibly for the first time so this sort of information might be very useful? 

10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

With the RTM release of Hyper-V just around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to re-visit some of the top things we have seen customers encounter when installing and configuring Hyper-V for the first time and give pointers to resources we have available to eliminate those when you start rolling this out in production for the first time. I have taken the liberty of linking many of these questions/issues to blogs written by our program managers on the virtualization team. We did a previous post on their sites but I thought this would serve as a quick reference and a pointer to them at the same time.

1. You don’t have mouse functionality in your VM. One of the most commonly asked questions during the beta, internally and externally had to do with lack of mouse support in a guest when its running. One of the main reasons we saw this happening was that people were remoted into the parent and then controlling the guest from there, that wont work in Hyper-V. More information about best practices can be found here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/23/controlling-vms-under-hyper-v-without-the-mouse.aspx

2. Hyper-V wont install. Another common question had to do with Hyper-V not installing at all. People would add the role and either would get errors post installation, prior to installation, etc. So, to revisit the core requirements for the Hyper-V role to be installed and functional on your machine, see the release notes once we RTM. Top issues here though were folks not enabling Virtualization and DEP in their system BIOS, not shutting down the parent completely at the end of installation but rebooting the parent instead, and not adding the proper entries to the BCD store on a Core installation (hint: rebooting twice takes care of this in Core).

3. Import isn’t working within Hyper-V for your Virtual Server VMs. Another common question is what the Import Virtual Machine button does within the Hyper-V console. Many people, myself included early on, thought that it was there to import a .vhd from a Virtual Server installation. It’s not. It’s there to import an exported Hyper-V virtual machine. The proper way to import a previously used Virtual Server .vhd file is to create a new virtual machine and use the existing hard drive function during setup.

4. Hyper-V clustering: Clustering Hyper-V installations is new and different in Windows 2008. Rather than re-inventing the wheel here I strongly encourage you all to use the excellent whitepaper thats out on the external Microsoft site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CD828712-8D1E-45D1-A290-7EDADF1E4E9C&displaylang=en

5. Snapshotting in Hyper-V. Snapshotting confuses a lot of people because they liken them to un-do disks in Virtual Server. They aren’t the same thing. Excellent references below to how snapshotting works in Hyper-V and how to get the undo functionality that you’re used to are linked below.

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/05/15/getting-undo-functionality-with-hyper-v-snapshots.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/04/26/virtual-machine-snapshots-with-hyper-v.aspx

6. Virtual Networks. Additionally virtual networking has been totally revamped in Hyper-V and many dont understand the purpose of the individual networking options within the console. Linkage to a great article on them is below:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/16/how-does-basic-networking-work-in-hyper-v.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/17/hyper-v-what-are-the-uses-for-different-types-of-virtual-networks.aspx

7. Using Hyper-V in Windows Server Core. Server Core is the new command line only installation option and its perfect for Hyper-V. For many people it can be hard to navigate and install new roles however. Below is a good link on installing Hyper-V in a Server Core environment.

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/30/how-to-add-the-hyper-v-role-to-a-windows-server-2008-server-core-machine.aspx

8. Remote Management. Managing Hyper-V installations, be they GUI or Server Core, is always a concern. An excellent two part article on this is located here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-1-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-2-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

9. Issues deploying virtual machines within a virtualized environment. I have seen this a lot internally, you have a RID/WDS server in a VM that you’ve used forever in Virtual Server. You decide to move that installation to Hyper-V and now you cant deploy new children VMs in Hyper-V. The problem here lies in the fact that you need to use the legacy network adapter rather than the synthetic device for the child VM you are trying to deploy to. We dont support PXE boot on the synthetic NIC in Hyper-V. You can add a Legacy NIC in the Add Hardware section of the Virtual Machine Settings.

10. One other virtualized hardware issue we have seen is SCSI boot. Or more specifically, the lack of it. We no longer support booting from the virtualized SCSI controller in Hyper-V. You can still use the SCSI controller for storage drives and you can utilize iSCSI or SAN storage as well, you just cant boot SCSI anymore.

Author: Joseph Conway
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support

Ask the Core Team : 10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

written by dcaddick

So this mornings news from Alessandro is the release of Hyper-V – Download a trial here.

I have also included at the bottom of this post a number of links that Justin Zarb helped collate regarding where to find all kinds of info relating to Hyper-V

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0

Thursday, June 26, 2008   |   0 Comments   |  

After over three years of development (the product was originally announced at WinHEC 2005 conference) Microsoft finally releases today its first bare-metal virtualization platform: Hyper-V.
During this very long process the product was delayed, changed name, and lost some planned key features.

Unlike Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Hyper-V is a type-1 virtual machine monitor (aka hypervisor) which features an architecture very similar to the one used by Xen and its commercial derivatives.
This allows a direct comparison with platforms like Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, the upcoming Sun xVM Server and obviously with VMware ESX.

Unlike the latter, Hyper-V adopts a microkernel developed from scratch (so it’s not the Windows kernel) which is less than 1MB in size and delegates most of the tasks to a so called Parent Partition.
Depending on the configuration you adopted, the parent partition automatically loads a full copy of Windows Server 2008 or the new Windows Server 2008 Core.

Being a first generation product, Hyper-V cannot really compete with the above in features, but it clearly offers a performance boost (up to +107% in case of disk I/O activity) and some much deserved improvements over Virtual Server 2005 R2:

• Support for 32bit and 64bit virtual machines
• Support for up to 4 virtual CPU per VM (the actual number depends on the guest OS)
• Support for up to 64GB RAM per VM
• Support for the Windows 2008/2003/2000, Windows XP/Vista and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux guest operating systems
• Quick Migration (the capability to suspend, migrate and resume a VM from one host to another)
• Automatic patching through Windows Update and WSUS

……

Microsoft Hyper-V is fully integrated with Windows Server 2008 64bit so any download of the OS includes it. Download a trial here.
For those customers already using the beta or the release candidate of Hyper-V, the product will be updated through the Windows Update service beginning July 8.

To demonstrate how much the company bets on this new product, Microsoft is internally adopting Hyper-V since a while and already migrated inside its virtual machines all the web front-ends that serve TechNet and MSDN websites.

Now the customers wait for the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, currently in beta, to centrally manage Hyper-V (along with Virtual Server and VMware ESX), and MAP 3.1, in beta as well, to perform accurate capacity planning.

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 | virtualization.info

Where should I look for Hyper-V Information?

So your looking for information on Hyper-V and struggling for where to look! So I wanted to get a nice bit of compiled information that Jeff did….

Websites

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page
Virtualization Case Studies
Virtualization Solution Accelerators
Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation:
Hyper-V FAQ
Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more):
Virtualization TechCenter:
How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper

Blogs:

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/
http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/
http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualworld/
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/
http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/

Webcasts:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032368894&CountryCode=US
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032372420&CountryCode=US

written by dcaddick

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