My Demo Environment For Next Friday

Here’s the demonstration setup I’ll be using for the deployment session I’m presenting on Friday.  I’ll be talking about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment.  The technologies covered are WAIK, WDS and MDT 2010.

The demo machine is a Dell Latitude 6500.  It normally boots Windows 7 but I have attached an eSATA 7.2K 250GB hard drive.  That gives me decent speed on external storage; it’s also storage you can install Windows on to.  I boot the laptop up from that drive.  On there is Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V enabled.

On the parent partition is VMM 2008 R2 which I use to deploy new machines from templates stored in the library.  I’ve also installed Office 2007 so I can run PowerPoint and Office LiveMeeting 2007 so I can run the webcast.  I run LiveMeeting with the entire desktop shared and use a Polycom room microphone to pick up sound.  If I’m at a podium then I like to get up and walk a little bit.  I’ll also be using my laser pointer/clicker; it’s a decent sized thing – I don’t like little fiddly clickers.

There’s 5 demo VM’s configured.  I have a domain controller running W2008 R2 with AD, DNS and DHCP enabled and configured.  There is a deployment server running W2008 R2 with WDS enabled configured.  I’ve also installed WAIK and MDT 2010, both partially configured.  Some of the demos take too long for the session so I have some stuff pre-done.  There’s an XP SP3 VM, a blank VM and a Windows 7 VM.  The blank VM will be used to show the 3 types of deployment that I’ll be demonstrating, maybe even 4 given the time.  The Windows 7 VM is there in case I have time to demonstrate capturing an image.

All VM’s have a snapshot of their demo ready state.  I’ve defragged the disk to make the most of its speed.  When I run the session I’ll be sharing the entire desktop and expanding each VM to full screen (it appears like an RDP session).  This is because I’ll be plugged into a projector with a 1024*768 resolution and I need to be aware that viewers of the webcast will not be able to deal with huge resolutions.  I’m not RDP’ing into VM’s because a lot of the time I’m working with machines when there is no RDP available, e.g. BIOS, setup, etc.

And here’s a little something for Technorati: ZYRDJGJYCDG8

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