Month: September 2009

Hitting The Road

I’m lucky that I’ve just gotten a new fuel efficient car.  I’m joining the MS Ireland crew on the road to do the official public/community launch events for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  We head to Galway on Sunday to do the event on Monday afternoon.  We then roll down to Cork on Tuesday to set up the Wednesday event.  I’m back home again on Thursday morning to work.  We then head to Belfast on the 13th of October before returning for the final event in Dublin on the 15th.

These aren’t going to be the typical launch event wrapped up in endless PowerPoint decks and videos of gigantic American corporations that have no relevance to us.  This is a demo intensive session where we’re going to give real world demonstrations of some of the key features in action.  Dave Northey will be running the show and myself and Wilbour Craddock (both of the guys are from MS Ireland) are doing demos.  There will also be some content on Exchange 2010.  Attendees (you have to actually go, registration is not enough) will be picking up a free, fully functional, not-timebombed copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.  That’s worth several hundred Euros.

In the evening there is an IT @ Home session featuring Windows 7, Windows Home Server and the XBox 360.  That’ll be a good session too based on what I know about it so far.  Will will be running that one.

Be sure not to heckle and hopefully I’ll see/talk to some of you out there!

RTM: Web Platform Installer and Web Gallery

Microsoft announced the RTM of the Web Platform Installer (Web PI) and the Web Gallery.  The Web PI is a simple little tool that saves a lot of time.  Install it on a server that will be a web server.  Then browse through it to pick and choose the bits you want to download and install, e.g. PHP, FTP 7.5, WordPress … yeap, those were non-MS products listed in a MS solution.  The Web PI downloads the installers and installs the programs.  I’ve deployed the RC with customers with great success.  They liked it a lot because it made customisation easy for them.  Heck, it simplifies my job too.

WebsiteSpark

Microsoft today announced a new program for small web development companies (less than 10 employees) called WebsiteSpark.  Similar to BizSpark, it offers free software for 3 years for companies who develop websites for others.  This software includes:

  • 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
  • 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
  • DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)
  • 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
  • 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
  • 2 licenses of Expression Web 3

That’s a nice tidy some of money these company’s will save.  My employers registered as a WebsiteSpark hosting partner today – that means customers of ours who are web developers can get free production licensing (Web Server and SQL Web Edition) for their hosting needs.  They also get the DotNetPanel control panel – devs like to use a control panel because they’re often not familiar with the ways of Windows/IIS management for backend website management.

Note that it’s Windows Web Server 2008 R2?  These folks are getting the very latest web platform to run on.  This is a 64bit platform offering support for up to 32GB of RAM, 4 CPU sockets, IIS7.5, and PowerShell 2.0.

OpsMgr 2007 Support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Microsoft has released supported for running Operations Manager 2007 SP1 and Operations Manager 2007 R2 on Win7 and W2008 R2.  This also includes an operating system management pack for Windows Server 2008 R2.

There are a few workarounds to note on the page, e.g. for when servers are upgraded from Windows 2003 x64 or when push installations fail due to COM issues.

W2008 R2 Hyper-V Bluescreen on HP Servers

Claus Neilsen (PowerShell pro) posted an alert on the Minasi Forum this morning regarding an issue where Windows Server 2008 R2 can blue screen if the Hyper-V role is enabled on HP Servers.  Claus reports that “the fix he has found so far is disable Intel Core C3 State option in the BIOS”.

EDIT #1:

There is a hotfix that will probably fix this issue.  KB974598 refers to when "You receive a "Stop 0x0000007E" error on the first restart after you enable Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer".  It goes on to say "This problem occurs because the system uses a C-state that is supported by the processor. However, the C-stateis not supported by Hyper-V".  This problem is not specific to HP computers.

Want Your Staff To Learn About Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2?

I got an interesting email from a major software publisher the other day.  They develop, sell and support solutions that run on the Windows platform.  Their integration with Microsoft is pretty tight and it’s important for their support staff to know about Windows Server Active Directory. 

The Irish Windows User Group is running a session on Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory on September 25th at 09:30GMT.  The presenter is Microsoft Ireland’s Wilbour Craddock.  We’ll be running it as an in-person event but there will also be a live webcast. 

The leader of this company’s EMEA support team asked if it would be OK to set our LiveMeeting webcast on a projector and speakers.  He had a team of 30+ staff that he wanted to attend the session so they could start learning about the new functionality.  He also said he was thinking of getting other support teams in other regions to do the same thing.  What an absolutely brilliant idea!  He asked if this was OK?  Absolutely.  If one person on his site managed the keyboard to ask questions our moderator would read them out to the presenter so they could be answered.  Now this company’s support staff could virtually attend the session without a massive road trip and abandoning the office.

So if you want to do something similar:

  • Set up a PC with LiveMeeting installed on it in a meeting room and tune into the web cast.
  • Set up a projector and decent external speakers for the PC.
  • Assign one person to locally moderate questions and type them into the LiveMeeting client.

It’s a simple and cheap way to start the education process for your staff.

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) for SCVMM 2008 and 2008 R2

Microsoft announced the release of VMMCA 2008 R2 for analysing the configuration of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.  You can do this before your installation of any of the server components or afterwards to troubleshoot.  This will save you endless hours of troubleshooting and chatting with PSS.  You can download it now but make sure you install the x64 edition of the MBCA (Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer) first.  Check out the original announcement for more details and scenarios.

ACT 5.5 Tutorials

Microsoft has released a set of tutorials and videos to show you the ropes of using the Application Compatibility Toolkit.  When moving from a legacy OS like XP to Windows 7 then application compatibility is your big worry.  You’ve a few alternatives:

  • Get the vendor to upgrade the app: *ROTFLMAO* Yeah, like they’ll do that!
  • Side by side legacy machine: Yuk!
  • Legacy OS terminal servers: Double yuk!
  • XP Mode: Fine for small organisations.
  • XP Mode with MED-V management: The choice for larger organisations that can afford Software Assurance and the MDOP licensing
  • Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT)

ACT allows you to create “shims” to simulate your legacy OS.  This fools the application into working.  There’s a huge library of these for applications out there that you can reuse.  You can also create your own for apps not already in the library.

Two Thirds of Irish Tech Pro’s Say IT Budgets Have Been Cut

There’s a story on SiliconRepublic where I have been quoted.  Microsoft TechNet Ireland ran a survey and found that 2/3 of respondents said budgets were being cut.  At the same time, the business was looking to IT to find more cost effective ways for the business to operate.

Some simple solutions?  If you virtualise using Hyper-V then you can slash your server OS spend and your systems management costs.  An Enterprise license assigned to a host allows 4 free guest Windows Server operating systems.  A Datacenter license assigned to each physical CPU on the host allows unlimited Windows Server guest operating systems.  So a dual CPU machine (maybe 8 or 12 cores) could run unlimited Windows Server licenses for just €5000 or thereabouts! 

The same applies to Microsoft System Center.  You can assign and Enterprise (for 4 VM’s) or DataCenter (for unlimited VM’s) System Center CAL/SAL to manage your VM’s with Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.

What it you already have an Enterprise Agreement with MS for your existing physical servers?  Virtualise them and “true-down” on your report.  Let your managers know how much your saving and suggest a commensurate bonus 🙂  Then send me a cheque! 🙂

There’s much more to virtualisation of course.  There is a spend at the front end on hardware and storage.  Maybe on consulting too.  But over the long run you save big time on power (especially with Windows Server 2008 R2 Core Parking).  You also separate yourself from being tied to hardware so hardware replacement becomes a lot easier.  That’s more true with Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 quick storage migration where a hardware replacement for a VM (move a VM from one device to another) has maybe 2 minutes of downtime (this is different to Live Migration or VMotion).

39% of those surveyed said virtualisation was what they were doing.  Other solutions included business intelligence and unified communications.  Give it a read for yourself.

Some New VDI Documentation From Microsoft

Using Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services and Hyper-V you can run a VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) solution where users RDP into virtualised desktops running in the data centre.  Microsoft published two guides yesterday:

Uh, I think MS got the intro text mixed up.  There’s two ways to do VM’s in VDI.  The first is to deploy dedicated or personal desktops.  This stores customisations for the assigned user.  When a user logs in, they always get the same VM.  It gives the same functionality as 1 user sitting at 1 PC all of the time.  A pool of VDI desktops is like hot-desking.  The user never knows which machine they’ll log into.  So you need to cater for this, e.g. roaming profiles and/or folder redirection, lockdown/prevent storage, automated s/w deployment, etc.