Ramblings from another nerd on the grid
What do you need to consider when making the move to Windows 7? If you are running Windows XP there are a number of items to worry about. How do you migrate applications, personal data, etc.?
We often focus our attention on the enterprise tools, but I thought it made sense for this article to focus on a single machine upgrade using a consumer point of view. There are some things you can and can’t do, so I thought I’d go on a little adventure to see what the road to Windows 7 was like.
Please note: I am not addressing most of the activation issues I see discussed on the internet. I did however research what we’ve publicly documented and published, and have provided several important references in this article.
Gathering the Resources
The first stop on my little adventure was the local OfficeMax. I stopped by the retail store to purchase Windows 7 Professional Upgrade. Yes, I actually spent real money and everything. I know this seems odd, but I like to run the same thing you do and I don’t have upgrade media and keys with my TechNet subscription (which I find odd).
I decided to setup Windows XP on a fairly state-of-the-art laptop. The victim in this case was a Lenovo ThinkPad. I could have used my oldest laptop or desktop, but it didn’t seem to make sense to deal with the slower speeds of those machines. Windows 7 is already installed on my Dell Latitude D820. I might as well use something newer and faster for testing.
I wanted to look at the issues associated with migrating to Windows 7 and using Windows Virtual PC XP Mode. So I constructed some scenarios in my mind and set out to test them. Some of my conclusions are probably wrong so I look forward to your feedback.
Moving to 64 Bit Computing
The version of Windows XP I installed was Professional but it was the 32 bit version. It’s been a pretty long time since I’ve run Windows XP and hit the usual first issue. I needed to grab the latest Intel SATA driver for my machines SATA AHCI mode and build a floppy disk for installation. Brings back old memories. Good old F6 at install time. Glad that feature is now history.
The rest of the Windows XP install was easy enough. I installed the integrated version of Windows XP and SP3 so updating it after that wasn’t too bad. After I had the OS all ship shape, I proceeded to install a wide variety of applications and data. I installed some old apps like Dreamweaver 8, and some new applications like Office 2010. I installed some printers and copied my personal data.
When it was all said and done, I had a nice little Windows XP machine with a smattering of applications, connected printers, and user data. The next step was of course to backup my work. You never know how many iterations of testing you might go through so taking “snapshots” of your work along the way is smart. In order to do that, I purchased Acronis True Image Home 2010. Man, I really like that product. Yes, I purchased it with my own money. I’ve used Ghost for years but I’m really liking the Acronis product now.
So the question is, “Can I upgrade from Windows XP Pro x86 to Windows 7 Pro x64?” The answer is of course yes and no. To the best of my knowledge, we have never supported a cross architecture in-place upgrade (x86 –> x64). And it can’t be done with Windows 7. We also don’t support upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 even on the same architecture. So what do you do?
Windows Easy Transfer (WET)
Before we get to the meat of the upgrade/install process, you should consider how you plan to move personal preferences, documents, music, pictures, favorites, etc. Be sure to check out some of the steps the Windows Client team documented. In my case, I skipped some of the upgrade checks and downloaded the latest and greatest transfer tool.
Head on over to http://windows.microsoft.com/windows-easy-transfer. There are 32 and 64 bit versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista. A word of warning here. The version for Windows XP only gathers and creates the .MIG file. In other words, you cannot use this tool to transfer this data into a Windows XP Mode virtual machine. It does however migrate data to Windows 7 VERY nicely. The user interface lets to pick and choose what to backup and restore at a very granular level.
If you plan to migrate data from Windows XP to a XP Mode virtual machine, you must use the Windows XP Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. The problem with using this tool is that it is an all or nothing proposition. You cannot pick and choose what is restored. I have a better recommendation below for XP Mode use.
Custom Installation
When I did my Windows 7 Pro x64 Upgrade media install, I was offered two different choices by the setup program. They aren’t overt choices but they are there. The first is to install on the same disk and partition as the current installation of Windows XP. If you do this, Windows XP, all of the apps, and all of the user data will be moved to a subdirectory called windows.old.
Keep in mind you are going to need a considerable amount of free disk space for all of this to occur. In my case I am using a 250GB laptop drive and the Windows XP install, apps and data are only consuming about 35GB. So I had plenty of available disk space. The end result is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, grabbing your personal data from windows.old is fast and easy. You can easily move your docs, pictures, music, etc. via cut and paste. Since it’s all on the same drive, the move is nearly instant. No waiting around for a wizard to pull the data out of a proprietary file format.
Second, when you delete windows.old you are left with nothing but Windows 7 and and personal data you decided to grab. This is effectively a clean install at that point and because you did this in the supported way we expect, you should not hit any issues with the upgrade key activation.
I highly recommend using the windows.old method of custom installation because this seems to be the safe and effective approach. You still have to install your desired applications into Windows 7, but look at the bright side. You are starting off with a nice clean system and you can carefully evaluate which applications you really need. We’ll talk about some application compatibility issues in a minute.
The other choice when using the Custom Installation option is to wipe the hard drive. This involves formatting the drive and is obviously a destructive process. You had better make sure you have working backups and copies of your data before going down this path. See this article for the proper procedure. See the Windows 7 Troubleshooting and Help area for other topics. And by all means contact our support organization if you managed to get painted into a corner and need help.
Application Compatibility and XP Mode
An amazing number of tools and articles have already been written about how to move applications from Windows XP to Windows Vista and now Windows 7. I am not going to go into all of that here because the topic is large and has already been covered in detail. I would however like to mention something new.
We added some new capabilities to Windows 7 via a free download called Windows Virtual PC. Windows Virtual PC lets you run a special Windows XP virtual machine that is tightly integrated with the Windows 7 desktop.
XP Mode will run a couple of ways. As you can see at right, you can run the virtual machine windowed on the Windows 7 desktop. You can also run applications that are executing in the vm but appear as if they are running native to the Windows 7 desktop.
When I first installed the XP Mode vm, I intended to use the Windows Easy Transfer wizard to migrate some settings from the original Windows XP environment of the physical machine to the virtual machine. I learned the hard way this is not possible. Thank heavens for taking backup snapshots along the way. I then tried to use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard but that wasn’t an ideal solution either. It wanted to dump everything into the virtual machine and that IS NOT the intention of the vm.
Windows Virtual PC and XP Mode are intended to provide that last resort capability for one or two applications that simply won’t run otherwise. It is not intended to be your production environment. Therefore you should not need to use WET or the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to migrate data to the XP Mode vm. Use it for the one or two apps you require, but use Windows 7 for everything else.
Dual Boot
You can of course dual boot Windows 7 with another operating system. This is also referred to as multiboot. There are a number of methods to doing this and just for fun I decided to create a multiboot environment where Windows XP is on the original disk partition with Windows 7.
As you might have guessed, I installed Windows 7 using a native-boot VHD thus creating a multiboot environment. That worked but keep in mind this is totally an unsupported configuration. Let me repeat that. As far as I can tell, we do not support a multiboot environment where Windows 7 is deployed like this. If you want to learn how to do this, see the references below.
Summary
Moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 can be very easy. I realize I only touched lightly on the application compatibility topic, but as I mentioned above, there are many articles on how to solve app compat issues. Many of those issues have already been solved by our partners and independent software developers.
As you can see above, there are a number of approaches to migrating or coexisting with Windows 7 and Windows XP. I only looked at a single machine over the course of a couple of days. For those of you supporting multiple machines, we do of course have a strong set of tools to help you assess your environment, automate the upgrades, and deploy Windows 7. I’ll be writing more about the enterprise tools, but I thought you might enjoy the consumer tasks and tools first.
Screencasts
I actually recorded several screencasts during the research for this blog post. In the end, I decided not to publish them. The primary reason is because I felt the tools and techniques are pretty easy to understand. That and my flabber was gasted when I learned the WET tool could not be used in the XP Mode virtual machine. At that point it became apparent I had the wrong approach to XP Mode and simplified the tasks you might consider. Feedback is welcome.
Other Information and References
This software is for evaluation and testing purposes. Evaluating any version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta software does not require product activation or entering a product key. Any edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta may be installed without activation and evaluated for an initial 30 days.
If you need more time to evaluate Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta, the initial 30 day evaluation can be extended to August 1st (at which time the OS will become inoperable) by entering the product key below for your selected edition.
Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Product Keys for Evaluation
Download the .ISO’s @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=85cfe4c9-34de-477c-b5ca-75edae3d57c5&DisplayLang=en.
A couple of my colleagues sent me email a few minutes ago complaining about my latest post and the screenshot. They said the picture was overlaying the text. Huh? So I investigated...
Hmmmm. It sure looks fine to me. Of course I'm running a 1920x1200 resolution on a 27" widescreen monitor. Hardly pervasive I'm sure. By the way, the monitor I use is on sale for $674. See http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-4335 for details.
I then bumped my resolution down to 1280x1024. The post still looked fine at that resolution. Keith scratches head... So I bumped my resolution down to 1024x768. Gag!!! Yep, the post is pretty much hosed at that one.
I actually made a semi conscience decision on this long before those complaints. When I was resizing the screenshot, you lose pixels and clarity as you downsize. At some point, you might as well not even include a screenshot if it's so blurry you can't read the button text.
So, I'll try an accommodate people running at 1024x768, but in this case, you'll need to be at 1280x1024 or higher.
Anyone have any stats on what the pervasive resolution is these days? I've asked my audiences that question a few times recently and the answer I received was 1280x1024 and higher. Majority rules. :)
Many users of desktop operating systems have been happy with 512MB, 1GB and 2GB memory configurations. As memory prices continued to drop it was typical to see someone bump their memory from 1GB to 2GB. Many laptops have been sold with 2GB RAM configurations. Considering the cost of a 2GB SoDIMM, this was a reasonable trade off.
Now that laptop memory has started to become even more affordable, loading up a laptop or desktop with it's memory capacity seems to be in vogue. For most desktop and laptop configurations, this means 4GB of memory. The thinking is that the added memory will improve performance and provide a better user experience. The problem is, that most people are in for a rude awakening when they do this.
Why?
A recently published support article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us does a great job of describing the issue. You'll also notice in the article, that various chipsets supporting 4GB and higher are documented. Here's the punch line from the article:
For Windows Vista to use all 4 GB of memory on a computer that has 4 GB of memory installed, the computer must meet the following requirements: The chipset must support at least 8 GB of address space. Chipsets that have this capability include the following: Intel 975X Intel P965 Intel 955X on Socket 775 Chipsets that support AMD processors that use socket F, socket 940, socket 939, or socket AM2. These chipsets include any AMD socket and CPU combination in which the memory controller resides in the CPU. The CPU must support the x64 instruction set. The AMD64 CPU and the Intel EM64T CPU support this instruction set. The BIOS must support the memory remapping feature. The memory remapping feature allows for the segment of system memory that was previously overwritten by the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) configuration space to be remapped above the 4 GB address line. This feature must be enabled in the BIOS configuration utility on the computer. View your computer product documentation for instructions that explain how to enable this feature. Many consumer-oriented computers may not support the memory remapping feature. No standard terminology is used in documentation or in BIOS configuration utilities for this feature. Therefore, you may have to read the descriptions of the various BIOS configuration settings that are available to determine whether any of the settings enable the memory remapping feature. An x64 (64-bit) version of Windows Vista must be used.
For Windows Vista to use all 4 GB of memory on a computer that has 4 GB of memory installed, the computer must meet the following requirements:
Like I mentioned in some previous articles, the desktop and laptop configurations coming in a few months will be specifically designed to support 8GB of memory. So should you upgrade your memory right now? If you have some available memory slots and are sitting at 512MB or 1GB of memory, then the answer is probably yes. This will certainly allow more head room for Windows XP and of course any upgrades to Windows Vista will be happier as well. I would not consider going above 3GB on a laptop or desktop until you've confirmed support for 4GB of memory. If on the other hand you don't have any available slots, then the decision gets even tougher. It would mean pulling existing working memory for newer higher capacity memory. I really hate to do that. You end up having a memory grave yard like I do.
For those of you unfamiliar with Windows Vista, we have a great feature reference called the Windows Vista Product Guide. My team has recorded over fifty demos of those features and we have every inclination to do the whole guide. That's about 200+ demos we'll deliver via screencasting. To kick this off, I thought I'd do something fun and kewl that is immediately noticeable when you install Windows Vista.
The Windows Sidebar is a pane or dock for applications known at Gadgets. This surface by default sits on the right hand side of your screen and is a container that developers can use for mini applications. The Windows Sidebar is a cousin to the Windows SideShow. For those of you using wide screen monitors, this is a nice location for those applications. In a multimon configuration, you could also set the location of the Sidebar to be on a particular monitor.
Gadgets are mini applications with a variety of possible uses. They can connect to web services to deliver business data, weather information, news updates, traffic maps, Internet radio streams, and even slide shows of online photo albums. Gadgets can also integrate with other programs to provide streamlined interaction. For example, a gadget can give you an at-a-glance view of all your online instant messaging contacts, the day view from your calendar, or an easy way to control your media player. Gadgets can also have any number of dedicated purposes. They can be calculators, games, sticky notes, and more.
Where do I get them?
Gadgets can be added by right mouse clicking the Sidebar and selecting the "Add Gadget" menu item. When you do, you'll see the mini gadget gallery depicted in the screenshot on the right. This is a small subset of the gadgets that have been developed. In fact, there are over 1100 at the time of this writing.
If you want to see all of the available gadgets, click the link in the bottom right hand corner of the gadget listings. This will take you to the online gallery at http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx?mkt=en-us. Keep in mind I'm in the US so your link will be sightly different depending on your locale. Once there, you can also click a button to "See all gadgets" which takes you to another gallery at http://gallery.live.com/.
What about security?
For those of you wondering about the security of these applications, I invite you to review the documentation at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965881.aspx since it discusses the security context applications execute as, UAC interaction, etc. For those of you responsible for managing Windows Vista corporate desktops, there are group policies available to control the following:
While gadgets would appear to be "cute" at first glance, don't underestimate their power. During my research, I stumbled across a very creative PowerShell gadget from Mindscape developed by Andrew Peters. This means you don’t have to fire up your command shell all the time. Instead, just type your command into the sidebar to execute it. If you need data displayed, the fly-out mode displays the output for the command. Scary huh?
I also just noticed Michael Murphy has a blog post about a wine gadget. Michael is the team wine connoisseur so it didn't surprise me to see him locate such a mission critical app. :)
The Screencast
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/inetpub/keithcombs/p52sidebargadgets.wmv
Next Up
Matt Hester will be posting the next screencast on a feature in the Windows Vista Product Guide. Matt will be writing and demonstrating the Shadow Copy technologies so stay tuned for that. I'll post a link when he has it online.
Enjoy!
I don't recall if I've ever posted a little batch file I use to populate Active Directory (AD) with some test data. Kevin asked me for it earlier this morning so I thought it might be of benefit to the rest of you for your test labs, VMs, etc. Here's the code from the batch file. Be sure to rename the extension to run it as a batch file. Duh. Grin.
Get it @ http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/downloads/Add_Users_and_OUs.txt
Anyone looked closely at the new RDP client software in the Windows 7 Beta? Well, there’s an interesting new checkbox on the Display tab just below the screen size slider bar. My laptop technically has two monitors at the moment. It is connected to a KVM switch with a large LCD screen, and of course there’s the laptop 15.4” LCD screen which is no slouch either.
If you have a similar configuration, span your desktop across both monitors using the key combination. You’ll notice this nifty new hotkey sequence lets you pick and choose what is displayed and on what devices. After you have selected to span the desktop, the checkbox will be enabled for the RDP tool.
Launch the RDP tool and go to the Display tab. This checkbox should now be available to your RDP sessions.
This should prove very helpful in a variety of situations. I can see where this will come in extremely handy for developers using virtual machine environments where the entire application and dev toolset is in the VM. I’m sure you can think of all sorts of other scenarios where this will be handy as well.
Credit for the tip goes to Michael J. Mahoney.
[UPDATE for 1/17/2009] The screenshot above is multimon RDP in action. I cropped the picture. Sorry it’s a little ugly and fuzzy since I was holding the camera and not using my tripod. The machine that established the RDP session is a quad core Dell XPS 420 running Windows 7 Beta 1. The other end of the connection is a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p running Windows 7 Beta 1. If you click the pic to see the picture super sized, you’ll notice I have IE8 on the 24” monitor to the left. I have the file explorer splitting both monitors. The 27” monitor on the right is my primary monitor so you see the taskbar for the RDP machine, the RDP session bar at the top, and the properties for the machine we are RDP’d into. Aero doesn’t work. I don’t know if it ever will in this configuration.
[UPDATE for 1/20/2009] It was pointed out to me by a couple of people that this feature is not new and has been around since Windows Vista RTM’d. I think I knew that, but like many of you probably forgot about it because there was no UI and I’ve never really had a big burning need for it. But David John pointed out that the two features are actually different. The /span command line arg behaves differently.
The checkbox is new so now it will get noticed. David also indicated that this feature only works Win7<->Win7 and Win7<->Win2008R2. There is some debate if Windows Vista works. Anyone have this working with Vista?
I recently received the new Hitachi Travelstar 500GB 7200rpm 2.5” hard drive. I moved my virtual machine data to it and fixed the BCD entries so I could boot from the Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual hard disk file. Unfortunately I always forget to add the parameter to the R2 entry so that the Hyper-V hypervisor will also start.
The fix is pretty simple. You need to add Hypervisorlaunchtype key and value to the entry for Windows Server 2008 R2. Here is the view of my BCD store (before and after) with the relevant change (bold red) below. Make sure to run the cmd console elevated before working with the BCD store. It’s also a good idea to backup the BCD store before making changes.
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit Windows Boot Manager -------------------- identifier {bootmgr} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2 description Windows Boot Manager locale en-us inherit {globalsettings} default {current} resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} displayorder {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {current} toolsdisplayorder {memdiag} timeout 15 Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows Server 2008 R2 locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptOut detecthal Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 WDT locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c4-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn detecthal Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {current} device partition=C: path \Windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 Production locale en-US inherit {bootloadersettings} recoveryenabled No osdevice partition=C: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {79ec30bc-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /set {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} hypervisorlaunchtype auto The operation completed successfully. C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit Windows Boot Manager -------------------- identifier {bootmgr} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2 description Windows Boot Manager locale en-us inherit {globalsettings} default {current} resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} displayorder {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {current} toolsdisplayorder {memdiag} timeout 15 Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows Server 2008 R2 locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptOut hypervisorlaunchtype Auto detecthal Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 WDT locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c4-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn detecthal Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {current} device partition=C: path \Windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 Production locale en-US inherit {bootloadersettings} recoveryenabled No osdevice partition=C: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {79ec30bc-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn C:\Windows\system32>
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit
Windows Boot Manager -------------------- identifier {bootmgr} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2 description Windows Boot Manager locale en-us inherit {globalsettings} default {current} resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} displayorder {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} {current} toolsdisplayorder {memdiag} timeout 15
Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows Server 2008 R2 locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptOut detecthal Yes
Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c5-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 WDT locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\wdt vm\wdt.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c4-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn detecthal Yes
Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {current} device partition=C: path \Windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 Production locale en-US inherit {bootloadersettings} recoveryenabled No osdevice partition=C: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {79ec30bc-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptIn
C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /set {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} hypervisorlaunchtype auto The operation completed successfully.
Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {79ec30c7-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} device vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd path \windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows Server 2008 R2 locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice vhd=[D:]\r2\WindowsR2.vhd systemroot \windows resumeobject {79ec30c6-8799-11de-becd-c6b9ceffc482} nx OptOut hypervisorlaunchtype Auto detecthal Yes
C:\Windows\system32>
Everyone thinks they’re kewl. You could be kewler riding around on one of these. The gang at Orange County Choppers is making Microsoft a custom chopper and it’s part of a contest from the SQL Server 2005 product group.
What’s the catch? Well, you need to migrate from Oracle to SQL Server and tell us your story. See the official rules for the details.
Now before you go getting all crazy, don’t forget what it’s like to ride a motorcycle on the street. What? You’ve never driven a motorcycle on the street?
I have 30 years of street and dirt experience. I can tell you, riding a motorcycle on the street in any major city is a dangerous proposition. Riding choppers is also a little tricky. Notice anything out of the ordinary about the chopper pictured here? How about those long fork tubes? Yea, that extended front end makes things interesting.
Riding on the street can also be a blast. It isn’t real fun right now with the heat and all. I’ll be back out on my machine when the temps go below 100. Sorry, I don’t get a big thrill in 103 degree heat. The way it’s looking, that won’t be until October. Yea, it’s hot in Texas.
Fyi, I own a couple of two wheelers. I have a 1998 Harley Low Rider. Here’s the 2006 Low Rider. My bike is very similar. My mean machine is black and has lace wheels like the picture. I added a front windshield and a rear sissy bar and luggage rack. I bought my Low Rider in 1998 and it’s still in immaculate condition. I might sell it. I’ve been wanting a Road King for several years. If I ever buy one, I might disappear… grin… My friend Dr. Michael McLoughlin has a BMW that is bad ass. I really love the BMW’s, too. They are so smooth and quiet.
What was your first motorcycle?
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical, distributed database that contains mappings between names and other information, such as IP addresses. DNS allows users to locate resources on the network by converting friendly, human- readable names like www.microsoft.com to IP addresses that computers can connect to.
DNS is a critical infrastructure service that supports the Internet and corporate networks. Users and applications rarely ever attempt to locate other computers directly by IP address; name resolution is performed first instead. Web, e-mail, and instant messaging, applications and technologies like Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) rely on DNS to perform their operations.
Because DNS does not offer any form of security, it is vulnerable to spoofing, man-in-the-middle and cache poisoning attacks. Attacks of this kind can compromise all future communications to the host. For this reason, it has become critical to develop a means for securing DNS.
Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is a suite of extensions that add security to the DNS protocol. The core DNSSEC extensions are specified in RFCs 4033, 4034, and 4035, with additional RFCs providing supporting information. Specifically, DNSSEC provides origin authority, data integrity, and authenticated denial of existence. In addition to several new concepts and operations for both the DNS server and the DNS client, DNSSEC introduces four new resource records (DNSKEY, RRSIG, NSEC and DS) to DNS. This guide provides an overview of DNSSEC and information about how to deploy DNSSEC on the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 operating systems.
Get the guide @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7a005a14-f740-4689-8c43-9952b5c3d36f&DisplayLang=en.
One of the questions that has come up from time to time about the ThinkPads is the speed of the SATA interface. Usually the question is about the Ultrabay hard drive adaptor. But more recently this question came up about the T400, W500 and W700 machines. This question is primarily from the Virtualization SME's trying to get every ounce of performance out of their laptops.
After reading an interesting story on the Lenovo Blog - Inside the Box about SSD drives, I decided it was time to run some tests on the W500 sitting in my home office. I have a new eval unit sitting there needing a beating so I decided to hook it up.
For the tests, I ran a bunch of copies to see if I could spot a material difference between the Lenovo ThinkPad T61p and the new W500. For my test harness I used an external SATA 300 eSATA enclosure with a SIIG eSATA ExpressCard. The laptop drive used in all cases was the Hitachi 2.5" 320GB 16MB model HTS723232L9A360. All tests were conducted using Windows Vista Enterprise x64 and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 using the SIIG Windows Update drivers.
Much to my surprise, there was no material difference in the time it took to copy 39GB of data using the ThinkPad T61p or ThinkPad W500. How would you interpret that? It seems like there are two possibilities. Either the primary drive bay on the T61p is SATA 300 and so is the W500, or the primary drive bay on the W500 is SATA 150.
I asked Matt about this in the comments of the Lenovo blogs SSD Drive article but have not seen an answer yet. In all fairness he might be on vacation and has not had a chance to check. You'll also notice in his article he believes the unit he is testing is also running in SATA 150 mode and there is either a BIOS or driver issue preventing the SSD drive from delivering the full speed. Sure sounds familiar.
So I don't think any definitive conclusion can be drawn from my tests other than both machines accomplished the chores in the same amount of time regardless of direction (internal->external or external->internal), regardless of OS, etc. I'm hoping a driver or BIOS update will change that before I have to turn the W500 eval unit back in.
One thing did floor me in the early tests I later corrected. Initially I was using a Hitachi TravelStar 100GB SATA 150 laptop drive. That drive spins at 7200rpm and has a 8MG memory cache buffer. The copy times improved dramatically when moving to the 320GB drive and assuming it was running in SATA 150 mode, the only difference between the two is the increased 16MB cache buffer. But the copies completed in half the time. That's a pretty big change between the drives. Moral of that story? If you are holding on to 2-3 year old 2.5" 100GB drives, do yourself a favor and move to the newer drives.
A few weeks ago I did a post on creating a “Dual Boot From VHD” environment. In the past couple of days I decided to explore and test a couple of other tools. Both tools are scripts but each took a different approach to automation.
The first script I looked at is the WIM2VHD script written by Mike Kolitz. This is a well written and documented script. The script prerequisites indicated the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) must be installed but you can actually run the script if only the IMAGEX.EXE and BCDBOOT.EXE programs are present. Therefore you could easily build a lightweight WinPE disk and use this via a floppy (remember those?), CD, DVD, or USB stick. Well, maybe not the floppy.
The next script I looked at is the InstallWindowsImage PowerShell script written by Peter Brundrett. This is an interesting script and uses the API functions in WIMGAPI.DLL. It also uses BCDBOOT.EXE.
I like both scripts but it’s a little disappointing when you find out neither is technically supported. Neither is the method I captured and blogged about (using WinPE and Setup). So out of the four methods I have discovered, only one is supported. The supported methodology is to use the tools and techniques in the WAIK.
I would have preferred to see us do the work in setup to allow for an unattended setup method. Maybe we’ll see that in a future release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Until then, you have lots to explore with the WAIK, the scripts above, Setup methods, MDT, SCCM, and WDS. Got all of that?
Testing on a ThinkPad T400
Oh, and I forgot to mention how my machine is setup now. I am considering using the Lenovo ThinkPad T400 as my road and demo machine.
The T400 is the little brother to the W500 but it’s no slouch from a performance point of view. The video chipset is slower than my T61p, but it has a faster dual core proc and 8GB of 1067MHz DDR3 memory. The T400 14.1” screen is super bright. I rarely use it in torch mode.
At the moment I’m using a 186GB 7200rpm hard drive but will likely move to a 300GB drive before too long. I’m trying to get a little more mileage out of my 200GB drives. Anyone ever get upset a 200GB drive is really 186?
Two Operating Systems in a Partition
I installed Windows 7 the old fashioned way. It’s installed in a single 186GB NTFS partition on the physical disk. I wasn’t sure at the time if I was going to use this disk with Windows 7 only.
Yesterday I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on the same partition. However, I used the WIM2VHD script above to install R2 inside a .VHD file. I used BCDBOOT to make the .VHD bootable which also fixes up the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) and prompts me for the desired OS at power up.
Here were the installation messages:
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64>cscript wim2vhd.wsf /wim:d:\sources\install.wim /sku:serverenterprise /vhd:c:\WindowsR2\windowsR2.vhd /disktype:dynamic Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Version 6.1.7100.2 Check for updates at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wim2vhd! MACHINE INFO: Build=7100 Platform=amd64fre OS=Windows 7 Ultimate ServicePack= Version=6.1 BuildLab=winmain_win7rc BuildDate=090421-1700 Language=en-US INFO: Looking for IMAGEX.EXE... INFO: Looking for BCDBOOT.EXE... INFO: Session key is D5157524-776B-47D9-8FC4-A1C08FFD6F69 INFO: Inspecting the WIM... INFO: Configuring and formatting the VHD... INFO: Applying the WIM... [ 100% ] Applying progress INFO: Making the VHD bootable with BCDBoot... INFO: Unmounting the VHD... Summary: Errors: 0, Warnings: 0, Successes: 1 INFO: Done. C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64>
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64>cscript wim2vhd.wsf /wim:d:\sources\install.wim /sku:serverenterprise /vhd:c:\WindowsR2\windowsR2.vhd /disktype:dynamic Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Version 6.1.7100.2
Check for updates at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wim2vhd!
MACHINE INFO: Build=7100 Platform=amd64fre OS=Windows 7 Ultimate ServicePack= Version=6.1 BuildLab=winmain_win7rc BuildDate=090421-1700 Language=en-US
INFO: Looking for IMAGEX.EXE... INFO: Looking for BCDBOOT.EXE... INFO: Session key is D5157524-776B-47D9-8FC4-A1C08FFD6F69 INFO: Inspecting the WIM... INFO: Configuring and formatting the VHD... INFO: Applying the WIM... [ 100% ] Applying progress INFO: Making the VHD bootable with BCDBoot... INFO: Unmounting the VHD... Summary: Errors: 0, Warnings: 0, Successes: 1 INFO: Done.
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64>
I’m not sure if I am going to run this way or not. It’s awfully convenient right now, but I need to test BitLocker more fully to see if I have some integration issues or not. Keeping both OSes on the same disk means I reduce the total number of disks I take on the road by two. Two 2.5” disks wouldn’t seem like much, but don’t forget maintaining backup and restored versions of those disks. Windows 7 and R2 launch events are coming so failure is not an option.
I tossed a laptop on the trash today. It was old, and the motherboard was toast. I stripped what I wanted and chunked it into the trash bin. This particular laptop is about five years old. I have another one that is still in working order that is about seven years old.
How long do your machines last you? Do you keep them forever or sell them on eBay?
I'm asking because I know the hardware offerings coming in the next few months are going to be really really fast and capable. That presents a paradox for home and business users. Do you keep what you have and continue to run the operating systems designed for it's era, or do invest in the future.
One of the interesting aspects of where we are at from a technology perspective is that many of the machines we have are more than capable Windows XP machines. In fact, Windows XP is really enjoying it's golden years right now. This is of course good and bad.
As you know, I work on the TechNet team for Microsoft. My peers have the job of attempting to stay ahead of the rest of the world in many ways. We talk to literally thousands of people every week, and learn a lot about your joy and pain. Most of the folks on my team have been in the business 10, 15 or 20 years. That's like a combined set of 175 years of experience. Now granted, that's a stretch, but you get the idea. Like many high tech teams, we aren't always in the reality of your world. Hence my hardware question...
If you read my blog occasionally, you know I did a reality check over the Christmas holiday. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on a Compaq EVO n620c. That machine is no where near state of the art. I wanted to see why I continue to see complaints about the resource requirements for Windows Vista. I also figured if I had a bad time with it, I'd have some fresh evidence for the Windows Vista team. As you can see in the blog post, quite the opposite happened.
So what are you using today? How long to do plan to use it?
One of the reasons I ask is because the hardware world as you know it is getting ready to change pretty radically. In May, the PC makers will start shipping Intel "Santa Rosa" based laptops. Those laptops will be capable of running x64 versions of Windows Vista and Windows "Longhorn" Server. In my case, I'm interested because I'll be able to address 8GB of memory, in a laptop. In addition to the ability to address more RAM, the laptops will start shipping with DirectX 10 capable video chipsets.
Why am I bringing any of this up?
When we shipped Windows XP in 2001, what was the hardware platform like? Back then the hot laptop chip was a Pentium III and most of them were below 1.0 GHz. Anyone remember how Windows XP ran on one of those in December of 2001? I think this is an interesting comparison because I see a lot of nay sayers complain about how resource hungry Windows Vista is. That's because Windows Vista is built for now and the future. Fast forward three years... what do you think it will be like then?
Fun my friend, very fun.
I know what you're thinking... Isn't UAC just a Windows Vista thing? Nope. Get all the details at Chris Henley's blog post on the subject. Chris is on a rampage and is cranking out a bunch of Windows Server 2008 screencasts. See this one at :
http://blogs.technet.com/chenley/archive/2007/08/30/windows-server-2008-user-account-controls-video.aspx
During the conference call my team had on Friday, we were discussing the upcoming content we are planning for the August-December timeframe. One of my team members who shall remain nameless stated that most of the customers he has talked to aren't upgrading existing Windows XP machines to Windows Vista. Instead, they are just buying new machines with Windows Vista as the old XP machines roll off the books and are re-purposed, or die.
Is that accurate? Is that what you are doing?
None of the security, network, search, etc. improvements warrant an upgrade of an existing machine, even with Aero glass turned off so that it performs on par or better than Windows XP?
[UPDATE for 5/18] For those of you that want to call me a confused idiot and other derogatory remarks, or want to spit venom at Microsoft in the form of comments here, don't bother because I am unlikely to publish your art. If you want to be polite, courteous and offer some insight into the decisions you or your customers are making, then that is welcome.
My wife thinks you are all crazy. The says Spider Solitaire alone is worth the upgrade to Windows Vista. Grin.
[UPDATE for 5/19] I watch referrals to my blog and noticed a few of you have picked up on what you think is a story here. First of all, you should know this article has no basis in fact. The person on my team that made the comment was offering an opinion but he has hardly spoken to every Microsoft customer and gathered any empirical data to support such a statement. Second, the small smattering of comments don’t indicate any particular fact or trend either. My questions were posed to initiate some dialog on the subject, nothing more.
I am always perplexed at why people go looking for dirt. I guess dirt sells. I’d rather have a conversation about what we are doing right and wrong. Offer an opinion on which way I think people should go. So here’s mine.
Buying a machine with Windows Vista is a smart move. If the OEM has done their job, then the out-of-box experience should be good. Your experience is going to vary depending on the OEM and of course they know if they do a sub par job, your return business is at stake.
As for the upgrade question, this is something you’ll have to decide but it should not be too terribly hard to test. We worked hard to provide you an array of hardware and software compatibility tools.
Windows Vista offers a lot of benefits, even for older machines. I’m running Windows Vista Enterprise on a Compaq Evo n620c and it runs very nicely. The machine is nearly five years old and only has one gig of RAM. Your experience will vary and I respect the decisions you make.
I just want to know why you make the decisions, and what we can do better down the road. That’s what blogs are for. Having that conversation.
This paper covers Network File System (NFS) account mapping and the deployment in Windows Server 2008 R2. NFS is a network file sharing protocol that allows remote access to files over a network. NFS implementations include an NFS server component, which enables the sharing of files for use by other networked computers, and an NFS client component, which enables computers to access files shared by NFS servers.
The Services for NFS role service in Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Storage Server 2008 provides the ability to function as an NFS server. Windows and UNIX operating systems use different account and security systems.
Windows operating systems represent users and groups with a unique security identifier (SID), while UNIX operating systems represent users with user identifiers (UIDs) and group identifiers (GIDs). Account mapping is the process of correlating the UNIX UIDs and GIDs to corresponding Windows user and group SIDs.
Get the paper @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=5f4c294c-8692-4235-8236-8ea809ae71f7.
If you don't have the resources to install and begin using Windows Server 2008 Beta 3, you have other training options. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be rolling out a bunch of screencasts to give you a great Technical Overview of the product. The number of "casts" in this series will be high because I'm breaking the capturing into smaller chunks.
For instance, this first screencast is a little over seven minutes in length. How did I install Windows Server 2008 Enterprise in seven minutes? Well, first of all I have a smoking fast Lenovo ThinkPad T60p. That certainly helps but the real magic comes via the capturing tool, Camtasia. Camtasia lets me pause the recording of the capture so a thirty minute progress bar can essentially be removed from your boredom. So let's dive into the details of the product and tools.
Setup
Setup for Windows Server 2008 (WS 2008) could not be easier. You won't find a ton of information on setup just yet but it's coming. Setup isn't nearly as sexy as the services and features in the product. If you spent some time learning the deployment tools with Windows Vista, that knowledge will come in handy.
Windows Server 2008 installation is based on some of the same toolset and imaging technologies used by Windows Vista. When you boot from the WS 2008 DVD, Windows PE executes and loads the installation Windows Imaging (WIM) file. Within the WIM, you'll find multiple images that are available for customization and unattended installation. The product key you enter tells Setup which image to load and install. In the case of Windows Server 2008, you still need to give setup some help because there are two images for each key. One for the GUI version of the product and another for the Core version. We'll get to the differences in other screencasts down the road.
For today's demo, we are going to go through the GUI based install of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Beta 3. In another demonstration, we'll go though the process of installing Enterprise Core.
The Setup screencast is a little over seven minutes and will stream directly off the microsoft.com cluster. Although the screencast resolution is set to 1024x768, setup processing flips the resolution a few times so it isn't as perfect as some of the demos you'll see in demos coming over the next couple of weeks. So here's the Windows Server 2008 Setup Demonstration:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/inetpub/keithcombs/ws2008/Setup.wmv
Additional Resources
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/evaluation/overview.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/2008/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/technet/traincert/virtuallab/longhorn.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/evaluation/overview.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/2008/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/traincert/virtuallab/longhorn.mspx
Here are the notes I took during my Windows Vista Ultimate x64 installation on my HP 6910p notebook. The notes below were written primarily for my team but I like to share.
In case you were wondering, the HP 6910p has performed remarkably well with Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 with Hyper-V. I don't dual boot. Instead I have several hard drives for the various operating systems I use and test.
I plan to upgrade this machine to Windows Vista SP1 when the update becomes available on the update.microsoft.com servers. I don't expect this to take place until mid-March per the information provided by Mike Nash.
Initial OS and Driver Install
Microsoft Security, VPN and Anti-Virus App Installs
Section removed for the blog post. Employees can email me for my notes.
Windows Vista Tweaks
Applications I Install
I install a number of applications I use on frequent basis. Most if not all of them are 32bit applications right now. They include Office 2007 Enterprise, Nero, Streets 2008, Ghost 12, Live Writer, Communicator 2007, LiveMeeting 2007, Acrobat Reader, Flash, Quicktime, Zune, Camtasia 5, Expression Suite, Virtual PS 2007, Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, RichCopy 3.5, ATT Comm Mgr, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Premiere Elements 4, Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, Visual Studio 2008, ISA Proxy client and others. Some of the applications are personal purchases. All of them work but Visual Studio is getting the least use at the moment.
I was surfing around and stumbled into Chris Henley's blog. In his post at http://blogs.technet.com/chenley/archive/2006/07/13/441642.aspx the question is posted asking how to disable ALL of the local admin accounts on the various machines throughout the network. Smartly, Chris points out a GPO setting that will do this although I must be getting old because I cannot read it. Chris also mentioned Jesper's blog talks about this. So I dug around on Jesper's blog and sure enough, http://blogs.technet.com/jesper_johansson/archive/... talks about disabling the local admin account.
However, I think the context was different and I'm going to add my two cents to this discussion. Jesper said to disable the local admin because he wants anyone that needs admin privilege, to have a unique admin id. This is good for identity purposes so that you can tell which admin is doing what. If multiple people use the same admin id, guess what happens to reasonable doubt in court? So Jesper's suggestion is a very good one.
In the context of the question posed to Chris, it sounds like they want to disable all local admin's but still manage the machines with domain admin's. Sounds good on the surface.
What happens when there is no network connectivity between the machine and the domain? No administration. What happens when the machine is a laptop and is far from the mother ship and something happens that requires admin privilege? Again, with no network connectivity, the admin's can't RDP to the machine, and someone sitting at it cannot login to the domain.
So think long and hard about the scenarios where you need those controls. In a campus setting with a dense population of users that don't travel, the domain model works well. In a mobile workforce where some self service might be appropriate, I'm not sure I'd lock those machines down that far.
What do you think? How do you handle super users?
He with the fastest device wins, right? Ok, maybe your device is getting smoked by your girl friend. If you want to check how that little speed demon is doing, goto http://text.dslreports.com/mspeed?jisok=1 from the browser on your SmartPhone or PocketPC device and run some tests.
If you are a Sprint PCS EVDO customer, you currently rule the roost according to the results at http://text.dslreports.com/mspeed?domains=1. Verizon is in second place although it appears they have twice as many samples which of course brings their average down. Some of the other US carriers aren’t showing too well. This is of course because they are still rolling out HSDPA, UMTS and other competing technologies.
UPDATE: I tested last night and was getting 300–350kbps here on my couch. During the day in my home office, I was getting 450–550kbps speeds. Just a moment ago, I ran a couple of tests again from the couch and got 700 and 735kbps respectively. I guess I’m not in such a dead zone after all. It was rainy and humid yesterday. Maybe the air was soo thick it was cutting my speed in half. Yea, that’s it.
For those of you watching the Ultrabook craze unfold, you might be considering the Samsung Series 9 machines. They come in a 13.3” and 15” model. I have tested both of them with the Sandy Bridge chipsets and found them to be quite compelling. The new Ivy Bridge based machines with the third generation Intel processors are even better. The Intel HD 4000 GPU impresses everyone that tries it.
I did want to caution you on a couple of items. First, Samsung didn’t change the port configuration on the latest Ivy Bridge models so there is still no mini DisplayPort video output. If you have a high resolution 27” or 30” LCD panel, you are going to be limited on the maximum resolution that can be displayed from mini HDMI or mini VGA. 1920x1080 doesn’t look very good on my Dell U2711 LCD panel.
Second, for some unknown reason Samsung is using Sandisk U100 mSATA drives in some of the 128GB configurations. I suppose mSATA drives are in high demand so they needed another source of parts. I don’t know about you, but I want the Samsung mSATA storage device in the machine if I buy one. When you are paying a premium price, you should expect premium components.
If Samsung reads this, please create a 13.3” SKU that has 8GB of memory. I don’t care much what you put in the mSATA slot because I can always change that, but 4GB of motherboard soldered RAM is too limiting for me. Me wants more.
If you are looking for these machines, amazon.com has all five models of the Ivy Bridge machines. The 15” has three configurations and the 13.3” has two (currently). The models with Windows 7 Professional also have a TPM chip.
Here are the amazon links:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP900X3C-A01US-Ultrabook-13-3-Inch/dp/B0082PZ17C
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP900X3C-A02US-13-3-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0082PZ1A4
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP900X4C-A01US-15-0-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0083S3NC8
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP900X4C-A02US-15-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0082PZ1DQ
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP900X4C-A03US-15-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0082PZ1JU
Costco is currently only selling the Sandy Bridge machines online. I suppose they’ll switch before too long. http://jr.com has the Sandy Bridge models in stock at this moment in time, and are taking pre-orders on the Ivy Bridge. http://store.microsoft.com hasn’t listed the Ivy Bridge models yet.
Happy Ultrabook shopping!
Now that System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 has released, I’m sure many of you are wanting to kick the tires. The good news is that we’ve made that relatively easy to accomplish on a laptop but there are some assumptions to make so let’s discuss a couple of them.
First and foremost you’ll need a machine capable of running the x64 version of Windows Server 2008. I’ll assume you are most interested in running Hyper-V. With that in mind, you’ll need a decent CPU, ample memory, and hard disk space.
File Systems and Boot Managers
In my case I like to separate church and state so I don’t dual or multi-boot operating systems. I purchase drives for Linux, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, etc. It’s getting to be a harder decision because you can get good 2.5” 320GB 7200rpm drives at or below $100. Higher capacity lower cost drives may change my workflow, but for now I’m still hard core about keeping things sandboxed. I don’t like to lose work nor worry about a file system or boot manager stepping on something, so I am much more comfortable swapping primary drives. Keep your production drive completely separate from your test partitions. You were warned.
Security Models
Next, you need to make some decisions about your security model. Once again I deviate from the well trodden path of using the production corporate forest. Let me repeat that. My test machines NEVER touch the company Active Directory (AD) forest. I typically build up AD from scratch (with some batch files). This is important because SCVMM expects an AD implementation to be present.
You have some choices on how to implement Active Directory. I am not going to get super deep on this topic because it will become more apparent on some design points to follow.
Virtualization Partitioning
In the world of computers there are physical and logical boundaries. Hyper-V is no exception so you need to take this into consideration when testing and modeling designs you might use for training or proof-of-concepts. In the case of Hyper-V, the partitioning nomenclature is commonly referred to as parent and child partitions. The Parent is created at Hyper-V installation, and child partitions are created later on the construction of “guest” virtual machines.
Communication between the partitions is controlled by you, and how you choose to implement the virtual networks. This absolutely comes into play when installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 and the management agent.
Parent or Child Partition? Can you say, “Perimeter?”
Now that SCVMM 2008 has released, you can pick and choose your partitioning and security model. Prior to the RTM of SCVMM 2008, I was running it and Hyper-V in the parent partition. I have switched to a different design and I really like the flexibility of the new implementation I built out over the course of the past few days.
For starters I no longer have Active Directory in my Hyper-V parent partition. In fact, the only role installed on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 for my laptop is the RTM version of Hyper-V. Everything else, including SCVMM 2008 is installed in various virtual machines.
How do I do that if SCVMM 2008 requires an Active Directory (AD) directory and security model? Well, when you start looking at the possible management scenarios for SCVMM, you’ll notice you can manage virtual servers on the “perimeter.” In my case, the Hyper-V server is a perimeter server or more accurately the vmmAgent is installed on a trusted server. This of course means you must have network communications between the VM running SCVMM 2008 and the Hyper-V parent partition. This is pretty easily accomplished through the virtual networking I alluded to earlier and provides a very flexible approach for building out a complete set of System Center management virtual machines.
Keep your parent partition clean. That’s the key takeaway of this article. By putting Active Directory (AD) at the lower levels and hiding that from the parent, you have a very flexible hypervisor environment in which to implement a wide variety of ideas. By using this approach, you can build a very complex yet flexible environment that is only constrained by disk space, available memory, and eventually CPU resources.
I plan to capture all of this in the form of screencasts around the first week of December, but in the meantime feel free to ask me any questions on my implementation and approach. Enjoy.
I must admit I didn't put 2+2 together when I was awarded the most prestigious of awards, the coveted "Fear the Pink Mist" award. It popped up and of course I said, "What the ..... ?" Scratches head. I tucked that away and figured I'd look it up later.
So I was checking out my friends progress at http://www.bungie.net/Stats/LiveFriends.aspx then decided to look back over my stuff. I noticed the glorious pink badge and the description. KEWL !!!
Now I'll be trying to earn more of those badges. I like the Used Car Salesman award as well. This is what makes the game, Halo 3, really great. Not only is the gameplay fun, but look at all of the other stuff surrounding the game. Screenshots, video playback, stats, multiplayer matches, etc.
Can you possibly imagine the sheer amount if data generated each and every day between now and about January 3rd when everyone goes back to school? It's a SQL Server dream or nightmare (depending on your responsibilities).
Deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with the newly released Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. MDT is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server deployment. MDT provides you with the following benefits:
Choosing the Right Version Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is offered in two versions to support Solution Accelerator component installation on x64 or x86 hosts. Select the version that corresponds with your host hardware type. Both versions of MDT 2010 support deployment of x86 and x64 Windows operating systems.
The What’s New in MDT 2010 guide and Release Notes are available as separate downloads on this page for those who want to quickly evaluate MDT 2010. The full package of guidance is available in .chm format as part of the toolkit. For those who want it in Word format, a separate download is available in the Files in this Download list.
Get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3bd8561f-77ac-4400-a0c1-fe871c461a89.
More Information
Michael Niehaus did a great series of blog posts on most of the new features of MDT 2010. You can review those posts here: http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus/search.aspx?q=MDT+2010+New+Feature&p=1. Not to mention he’s the man when it comes to MDT.
Like Virtual PC 2007 SP1, we have released an update to Virtual Server 2005 to support some of the latest operating systems. New support now includes the following:
Additonal Guest Operating System support: Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Server® 2008 Core Windows Server® 2008 Standard Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 Additional Host Operating System support: Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only) Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only) Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)(non-production use only) Windows Server® 2008 Core Windows Server® 2008 Standard Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (non-production use only)
Additonal Guest Operating System support: Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Server® 2008 Core Windows Server® 2008 Standard Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3
Additional Host Operating System support: Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only) Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only) Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)(non-production use only) Windows Server® 2008 Core Windows Server® 2008 Standard Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (non-production use only)
Get the download @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a79bcf9b-59f7-480b-a4b8-fb56f42e3348&displaylang=en.
I drained and refilled my pool. That’s 40,000 gallons of fresh water. Look at your water bill and rate, do the math, and post the result back here. It’ll be interesting to see what a gallon of fresh water goes for around the world.
Is water hardware or software?
The modules of the Administration Pack are a toolset to help you be more productive when using IIS Manager. Functionality varies from increased configuration editing capabilities to configuring FastCGI settings on your server.
Configuration Editor - The configuration editor module will help you manage your configuration files. This tool is available for server administrators only. It allows you to edit any section, attribute, element or collection in your configuration file. In addition to editing these values you are also able to lock and unlock them. The configuration editor also allows you to generate scripts based on the actions you take as well as search the file to see where values are being used.
UI Extensions - UI Extension modules allow you to manage existing features through IIS Manager.
x64 Admin Pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b74e3b35-b77c-4191-9ac4-8307423d09ec
x86 Admin Pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bc9b9f0f-830e-409c-a211-dcea1b4d9860
Microsoft Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003 is now part of Microsoft Windows Volume Activation 2.0. It allows enterprise users to host Key Management Service on Windows Server 2003 to enable activation of Windows Vista using Key Management Service (KMS) Key.
Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 is a set of technical and policy related solution provided by Microsoft’s Software Protection Platform (SPP) that gives Microsoft customers a more secure and easy to deploy solution to protect and manage their volume license keys. Microsoft Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003 is part of Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 allows enterprise customers manage the activation of their Windows machines using Key Management Service (KMS) Key.
Enterprise customers who license Windows Vista and Windows Server “Longhorn” server under volume license program get two keys namely a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) and a Key Management Service (KMS) Key.
KMS based activation allows enterprise customers to host a local service within their environment to enable activation of machines running Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise editions within their environment instead of any activation against Microsoft. Machines that have been activated through KMS will be required to reactivate by connecting to the KMS host at least once every 6 months.
Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003 enables deployment of Windows Vista using current and released server operating system. It uses the Windows Vista KMS key provided through Microsoft’s Volume Licensing System portals (MVLS, eOpen). The KMS host can be activated using either online or offline methods. It uses the same interfaces and tools as KMS on Windows Vista including:
The x86 download is at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=81D1CB89-13BD-4250-B624-2F8C57A1AE7B&mg_id=10108&displaylang=en.
The x64 download is at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=03FE69B2-6244-471C-80D2-B4171FB1D7A5&mg_id=10108&displaylang=en.
See more information on Windows Vista volume activation at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/plan/volact.mspx.
If you are like most people and start doing installs without Reading The Fabulous Manual (RTFM), then you’ll likely see the same issue nearly everyone I know has hit. You see, after installing the RTM bits of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 you’ll notice your Hyper-V server(s) have a status of “Needs Attention”. Don’t we all.
Fortunately this is documented in the release notes, right at the very beginning. VMM requires an important update from Hyper-V and a critical update from Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). Without these updates, VMM hosts display in the state of “Needs Attention” and the virtualization service version as “Upgrade available”.
Download and install the following updates on all of your Hyper-V SCVMM managed hosts:
I actually changed the link above to the x64 BITS update. The Release Notes are pointed at the x86 update which will not install on a Hyper-V server.
No, we aren't talking about the sleek Italian sports car, but we are talking about a kewl Acer Ferrari laptop. In fact, we are giving away several and you'll have a chance to win one by checking out the webcasts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/events/newballgame.mspx. As always, please check out the official rules at http://www.microsoft.com/events/officialrules_newballgame.mspx.
I don't know about you, but the Acer Ferrari laptops look pretty cool to me and I'd be happy to win even the "lowly" Acer Ferrari 1000. I'm teasing about the 1000 because it has decent specs. See http://us.acer.com for more details on their laptops. Too bad Microsoft employees and family are ineligible to win. Why is that anyway? If my son sits through a webcast and earns the right to be entered into the drawing, why can't he win? Appearances I guess... baa Humbug.
Here's an excerpt from the official rules:
How to Enter/Prizes: You will be automatically entered into each monthly sweepstakes drawing when you complete and submit an evaluation form following a live or on-demand TechNet 2007 Office webcast during the Entry Period (“Webcast Series”). See landing page for webcasts. The available webcasts are subject to change at the sole discretion of Microsoft. On or around the last day of each month during the entry period, three winners will be selected in a random drawing from all entries received during that month to win one of three prizes: • 1st prize: Acer Ferrari laptop (Estimated Retail Value $2000) • 2nd prize: Windows Mobile powered Smartphone (Estimated Retail Value $500) • 3rd prize: Creative MP3/video player or Microsoft Zune (Estimated Retail Value $250) In addition, winners will also receive one 2007 Microsoft Office Beta 2 CD. Once the final RTM version is released, past and future winners will receive a copy of 2007 Microsoft Office professional via mail or download. 2007 Microsoft Office will be preloaded on the Acer Ferrari laptop, and original media will be included with the prize.
How to Enter/Prizes: You will be automatically entered into each monthly sweepstakes drawing when you complete and submit an evaluation form following a live or on-demand TechNet 2007 Office webcast during the Entry Period (“Webcast Series”). See landing page for webcasts. The available webcasts are subject to change at the sole discretion of Microsoft.
On or around the last day of each month during the entry period, three winners will be selected in a random drawing from all entries received during that month to win one of three prizes:
• 1st prize: Acer Ferrari laptop (Estimated Retail Value $2000)
• 2nd prize: Windows Mobile powered Smartphone (Estimated Retail Value $500)
• 3rd prize: Creative MP3/video player or Microsoft Zune (Estimated Retail Value $250)
In addition, winners will also receive one 2007 Microsoft Office Beta 2 CD. Once the final RTM version is released, past and future winners will receive a copy of 2007 Microsoft Office professional via mail or download. 2007 Microsoft Office will be preloaded on the Acer Ferrari laptop, and original media will be included with the prize.
Finally! I installed Windows Phone 7.5 to my ATT HTC HD7S this morning and shortly after that success, I set out to replace the lame ringtone. Yes, you can now implement custom ringtones on your phone and although it isn’t as simple as finding a song in your music collection, it isn’t impossible either.
There are really several key aspects you must pay attention to. First, the Genre for the song must be Ringtone. Therefore you are going to need to edit the metadata for a song. Second, the song must be less than 40 seconds and smaller than 1MB in size. As you can see, you are going to need an audio file editor to create the ringtone you want. After creation you simply need to add it to your Zune collection on the phone so it will show up in the list of available tunes.
Want more precise instructions? See John Garland’s blog post on the subject @ http://wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jgarland/archive/2011/07/25/creating-custom-ringtones-in-windows-phone-mango.aspx. He covers all of the bases for you very nicely. Enjoy your sweet Mango!
The first ringtone I created is a 35 second clip from the beginning of “Down With the Sickness” by the rock group Disturbed. I’ve been using that track for presentation sound checks for years and it seemed only appropriate to pay homage. We’ll see what the folks in the grocery store think next time I’m there and receive a call. Evil grin.
Every time I go back and review the list of step-by-step guides for Windows Server 2008 I am surprised to see it get bigger and bigger. This evening is no exception. Get any of the following guides @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=518d870c-fa3e-4f6a-97f5-acaf31de6dce&DisplayLang=en#filelist.
Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides
Creating_and_Deploying_Active_Directory_Rights_Management_Services_Templates_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in a Multiple Forest Environment Step-by-Step Guide.doc Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in an Extranet Step-by-Step Guide.doc Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-By-Step Guide.doc Deploying an Active Directory Rights Management Services Licensing-only Cluster Step-by-Step Guide.doc Deploying SSTP Remote Access Step by Step Guide.doc Removing Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.doc Server Manager Scenarios Step-by-Step Guide.doc Server_Core_Installation_Option_of_Windows_Server_2008_Step-By-Step_Guide.doc Step_by_Step_Guide_to_Customizing_TS_Web_Access_by_Using_Windows_SharePoint_Services.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node Print Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide for File Server Resource Manager in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Storage Manager for SANs in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide to Deploying Policies for Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.doc Step-by-Step_Guide_for_Configuring_Network_Load_Balancing_with_Terminal_Services_in_Windows_Server_2008.doc Step-by-Step_Guide_for_Windows_Deployment_Services_in_Windows_Server_2008.doc Using Identity Federation with Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.doc Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Certificate Services Step-By-Step Guide.doc Windows Server 2008 Foundation Network Guide.doc Windows Server 2008 Network Policy Server (NPS) Operations Guide.doc Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guide for DNS in Small Networks.doc Windows Server 2008 TS Gateway Server Step-By-Step Setup Guide.doc Windows Server 2008 TS Licensing Step-By-Step Guide.doc Windows_ Server_Active_Directory_Rights_Management_Services_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc Windows_Server_2008_Terminal_Services_RemoteApp_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc Windows_Server_2008_TS_Session_Broker_Load_Balancing_Step-By-Step_Guide.doc
Creating_and_Deploying_Active_Directory_Rights_Management_Services_Templates_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc
Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in a Multiple Forest Environment Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in an Extranet Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-By-Step Guide.doc
Deploying an Active Directory Rights Management Services Licensing-only Cluster Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Deploying SSTP Remote Access Step by Step Guide.doc
Removing Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Server Manager Scenarios Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Server_Core_Installation_Option_of_Windows_Server_2008_Step-By-Step_Guide.doc
Step_by_Step_Guide_to_Customizing_TS_Web_Access_by_Using_Windows_SharePoint_Services.doc
Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc
Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node Print Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc
Step-by-Step Guide for File Server Resource Manager in Windows Server 2008.doc
Step-by-Step Guide for Storage Manager for SANs in Windows Server 2008.doc
Step-by-Step Guide to Deploying Policies for Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.doc
Step-by-Step_Guide_for_Configuring_Network_Load_Balancing_with_Terminal_Services_in_Windows_Server_2008.doc
Step-by-Step_Guide_for_Windows_Deployment_Services_in_Windows_Server_2008.doc
Using Identity Federation with Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.doc
Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Certificate Services Step-By-Step Guide.doc
Windows Server 2008 Foundation Network Guide.doc
Windows Server 2008 Network Policy Server (NPS) Operations Guide.doc
Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guide for DNS in Small Networks.doc
Windows Server 2008 TS Gateway Server Step-By-Step Setup Guide.doc
Windows Server 2008 TS Licensing Step-By-Step Guide.doc
Windows_ Server_Active_Directory_Rights_Management_Services_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc
Windows_Server_2008_Terminal_Services_RemoteApp_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc
Windows_Server_2008_TS_Session_Broker_Load_Balancing_Step-By-Step_Guide.doc
Setting up Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 is pretty easy but there are a couple of initial configuration tasks that you should pay attention to. Fortunately, like most of the recent product developments, we give you a nice checklist on what to do in a step-by-step manner.
Initial Configuration Task Screen
After you get through the install and setup of WS 2008, you'll notice that the administrative account is automatically logged into and you are presented with a screen with those steps. What do you think the first step is?
You guessed it! Create a complex password for the admin account. There are a number of simple steps in the first two sections of the task list. Most of the real work takes place in section three with the WS 2008 Server Manager which we'll defer to another screencast I'll post shortly.
This screencast will take five minutes to view and is very straightforward. Short is good. In fact, all of the screencasts I'm doing are intentionally being kept as short as possible. You'll see some subsequent demos take longer, but that's the nature of the beast as we go deeper and deeper into the topics. So here's the link to the Initial Configuration Tasks screencast:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/inetpub/keithcombs/ws2008/InitialConfigurationTaskScreen.wmv
I would imagine many of you are going to become intimate with Office 2007 and Windows Vista deployment over the next year. Get your knowledge jump started by looking at the templates for Office 2007.
See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=92d8519a-e143-4aee-8f7a-e4bbaeba13e7&displaylang=en for that all powerful download button.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been finalizing my demo environment for this quarter. Like many of you, disaster recovery is forefront on my mind when I hit the road, especially with a new laptop and desktop operating system. Windows Vista CompletePC to save the day!!!
I’ve been using Windows Vista CompletePC full drive imaging off an on for several months. All of the backups and restores were using big heavy external hard drives. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to travel with. This time around, I wanted to build a DVD set I could throw in with my usual DVD road crew. There are a few tricks you need to know about, otherwise your restore may fail needlessly.
Doing the backup is pretty straightforward. The laptop I have has a DVD+RW burner so that is what I used to create the DVD set. I figured if it can create it, it damn sure better be able to read it later on a restore. When you launch the CompletePC backup tool and tell it you want to do a backup, it will look at your attached hard drives and DVD burners and give you the option of choosing the target.
When you backup to DVD, CompletePC will write a bunch of information into some XML files on the first and last disk of the DVD set. It will also capture the physical state and data and write it to a virtual hard disk file. In my case, and in most of your cases as well, this .vhd file will be too large to fit on a single DVD so it will be split into chunks as you are prompted for blank media.
The process of writing the disks is rather slow. What else is new, right? One of the reasons for the time consumption is the formatting of the disk, writing to the disk, and verification of the data written to each disk. As long as it works, I don’t care about a little time up front. As it completes the write of each disk, it will tell you to label it and request the next blank disk. The format requested for the label is as follows:
machinename mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm am/pm disk number
As you can see, it’s a pretty straightforward set of information to label the disk with. However, the disk number is slightly misleading so let me explain why I say that. In my case, the hard drive I captured doesn’t have much installed. CompletePC only needed to write two DVDs to make the disk set. So I labeled them Disk 1 and Disk 2.
When it comes time to restore, you take the Windows Vista media you have and boot from it. This boots the Windows PE 2.0 environment from which you can do various things like install or recovery. We should probably change the text of the link to something like “Recovery and Diagnostics” because there’s some kewl tools in that area.
Running the restore on a laptop with a single DVD drive obviously means you’ll be swapping disks to do the restore. After you have the WinPE recovery environment running and can see the CompletePC link, you can remove the Windows Vista media disk and insert the backup data disk.
What disk would you put in the DVD drive at this point?
I think most of us would stick disk one on the drive at this point, but most of us would be wrong. The first disk that is needed is actually the last disk that was written. So, if you are paying attention, you would have removed the Windows Vista boot media, inserted the last DVD of your backup set, and clicked the CompletePC restore link. CompletePC will read the XML and prompt you for confirmations on the backup, partitioning and formatting of the drive. After you’ve confirmed everything, CompletePC will prompt you for Disk 1.
When you insert Disk 1, do not click the big highlighted OK button on the disk prompt dialogue box. The disk will be read and the dialogue will be dismissed automatically. If you click OK, most likely the XML for the disk will not have been read yet and you’ll get an error. I wonder how I know that. So resist the temptation and be patient.
Recovery will start and it will start laying down the bits. You’ll be prompted for the remaining disks. Again, resist the OK button and let those dialogue boxes disappear all by themselves.
If you’ve been living right, the restore will complete and the system will reboot to Windows Vista glory. The above testing was performed with this weeks daily builds and is subject to change. In fact, I hope it does. We need to clean the wording up and make it a little more intuitive. I provided that feedback directly to the feature program manager. You know, the guy that took the sledgehammer to the hard drive on stage at TechED 2006. Reminds me of the demo we wanted to do for the SQL Server 2005 launch. Sorry, that one is still a secret. We may try it for the Microsoft Internal Demo Competition.
As you’ll recall in February and March we launched a number of very visible changes to the de facto IT Pro portal, http://technet.microsoft.com. We also soft launched the Beta of the TechNet Wiki but I was under a gag order and not allowed to blog, tweet, or otherwise evangelize the project. The gag order is now off. Tweet tweet.
The Wiki is for real now and the link is right off the top navigation bar of the US TechNet homepage. That link goes to http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/.
There are a number of things I’d like you to consider about the Wiki. First, this is a Community platform service. It’s from us to you, and from you to everyone else if you choose to participate in that manner. So this new platform feature is VERY community oriented. Jump in!
Second, we are just getting started. We’ll keep the Beta label on the Wiki area for a little while in order to continue to shake down the software and features, as well as listen to feedback from the community. Your feedback drives the next round of changes.
Third, you don’t have to write an entire article or whitepaper to contribute. I fall into that category of fear. It’s unfounded. You can participate in small but powerful ways. The cool thing about the Wiki is that you can publish instantly and contribute a wide variety of media types. We’re trusting you’ll do the right thing.
Interview with some Wiki Ninjas
Here are some thoughts from a couple of guys who have been deeply involved in the TechNet Wiki project. Tony Soper is a Senior Technical writer and has been with Microsoft for ten years in a variety of interesting roles. Eric Battalio is a Senior Program Manager in our Cloud Services group and joined Microsoft five years ago.
I sat with them a couple of weeks ago and captured about ninety minutes of footage. Here’s Part 1 and is about 15 minutes in length. I actually started talking with Tony first, then Eric joined us earlier than expected. So part of the discussion with Tony got cut in favor of time. I also cut introductions and some other stuff. I’ll do better in the future on that.
Contribute boldly, edit gently
I guess “old” is relative to many of us, but considering the processor in my Dell Latitude D820 is the T2500 Core Duo, it is positively ancient. I complained about the performance of the machine in the past with Windows Vista. Performance got better with Vista SP1 and the perf tweaks I did to the machine. The performance with Windows 7 is really very good right now, but I am totally cheating to get it there. Take a look at the following screenshot and you’ll see how.
As you can see, the processor falls down as expected on the Windows Experience Index (WinEI). The memory is fine. The GPU is just ok. Probably just above the borderline. You’ll also notice this particular video chipset is using a WDDM 1.0 not 1.1 driver. The driver flowed off the update.microsoft.com website post Windows 7 installation.
The interesting score, for those of you keeping score is the disk score. 6.7 is pretty freaking fast. It should be. It’s using the Kingston SSDNow evaluation drive I have. I figured this would be a good place to run some tests to see if new technology could breathe some life into an older machine. Not surprisingly it does. You can really see the I/O advantage when launching applications. They zoom off that SSD drive.
Anyway, I thought you might be interested in the impact fast I/O can really have on the overall “feel” of the operating system, applications and environment. Now if we could just get 256GB drives for say… $100. At least we know what the future holds.
Now you might be wondering what Windows 7 will do for your machine. Good question. The current Beta seems to be performing really well on the machines I’ve tried it on. Unfortunately the Latitude D820 is now the oldest machine I have and it won’t be three years old until this summer. Any of you tried the beta on older machines? How does it compare to Windows XP and Windows Vista? Keep in mind this is just a beta so performance is very likely to get better as we finalize the product. Enjoy.
[UPDATE for 1/19] I backed up the environment and have restored it to a regular Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm drive. Hard drives are so noisy compared to SSD. Spotted a Win7 bug doing this. Time to send some feedback.
Interesting timing. See http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/19/engineering-the-windows-7-windows-experience-index.aspx.
I was all gung ho about the Motorola Q. I was so hopeful I finally had a phone in my sight that would fulfill my requirements. But it appears Verizon has released it without some key capabilities I want. I filled out the paperwork, scanned my employee badge and send all of the paperwork to my Verizon corporate rep last Thursday. Then I got the call of death from my Verizon Rep on Friday…
He told me that in the initial release of the Motorola Q by Verizon Wireless, there won’t be any ability to tether my laptop to the Q and use it as a gateway to the Verizon EVDO network. Not only that, the Q will not have a Bluetooth dialup networking (DUN) modem profile.
Cancelled my order on the spot.
Rumor is that they’ll release the tether option in a few months as they release the Microsoft Security and Messaging Feature Pack (MSFP). This probably means they’ll implement this support via VZAccess.
Verizon VZAccess doesn’t currently run on Windows Vista Beta 2. VZAccess will install but it just doesn’t run correctly for me. I have reported it and have not received a commitment for any support. Considering Windows Vista is still under development, it’s not unusual for other companies to take that position.
I have the Verizon PC 5740 pcmcia card for my laptop so I can use the Verizon EVDO BroadbandAccess network. Windows Vista Beta 2 includes “inbox” drivers for the Curitel PC 5740 chipset. As far as Windows Vista is concerned, it’s just a dialup modem. Thankfully this allows me to continue to use my EVDO BroadbandAccess subscription. See http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2006/04/30/426857.aspx for my instructions on how to get that setup and running.
If the Q would only do the same thing, I could get rid of my SMT 5600 Smartphone, PC 5740 and get to the holy grail of one device and one plan… presumably at a lower cost.
Maybe it’s time to think more about the Palm Treo 700w. I know you can tether it on the Verizon network. I wonder when Sprint will start selling the 700w. At the moment, they only have the Treo 700p. I must admit though, the Palm Treo 700p DUN page sure looks inviting… Would I dare run an OS not made by Microsoft?
Oh, and I sent a query over to the folks at June Fabrics about their PDAnet for Windows Mobile software. Hopefully they have something that works on Windows Vista Beta 2 with the Q. If they do, they are my new best friends. I’ll let you know what they say.
UPDATE: The price went low enough to get me off the fence. Still no MSFP or supported tether option, but I got mine at a great price. See http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2006/06/22/438321.aspx for more information. Also, if you ask the support folks at June Fabrics for a Windows Vista Beta 2 version of PDAnet, they might just supply a link to the goods.
It's always fun to watch reactions to acquisitions. We like to get into those spirited debates about Microsoft employees using competitive products, in public. Give me a break. If I need to use a competing product because it's better, most likely I will.
So what products do I use?
Camtasia Studio v 4.01 comes to mind immediately. If you look at the screen capturing market, it was the best tool for my needs the last time I evaluated tools. The Windows Media Encoding tools work, but when I did my testing they consumed too many CPU cycles. That's super important when you are trying to capture something like Windows Vista and the Media Center Shell playing a high definition recording of a TV episode. CPU cycles count.
Ghost. Anyone heard of Ghost? Of course you have. It's the industry leading imaging tool and has been for years. After Symantec bought the PQI DeployCenter line, they pretty much owned the market. We have world class competing technologies now in ImageX, WinPE, etc. In fact, the latest version of Symantec Backup Exec uses WinPE v2.0. I'm currently using Backup Exec because it does a great job of backing up and restoring my machines. Better than Windows Vista Complete PC. Complete PC is great, but it doesn't do as good a job of restoring hard drive signatures so it seems to trip out-of-tolerance activation more frequently.
In the area of portable media players, the use of the iPod by Microsoft employees has been under public scrutiny since the Zune shipped. Before the Zune there were products made by a wide range of partners. I have the Microsoft Zune, Apple 80gb iPod Video and the Creative Zen Vision W. The Vision W gets the most use because I like to watch video and with the 4.3" screen, the Vision gives me better vision.
Regarding high definition TV recording, look at the product I'm using called HDHomeRun. I have three or four blog posts on it. Is it competitive? You bet. I can buy a Windows Vista machine from an OEM that records high definition premium channels. I probably will. But right now, HDHomeRun gave me more time to let those machines come down in price.
When we talk about the server space, if the Exchange team had refused to produce a 32bit version of Exchange Server 2007, there would be no doubt I'd be using VMWare Virtual Server to run x64 virtual machines. I need to be able to test our x64 platform and demonstrate it. In fact, we are getting ready to refresh the machines my team uses for that very reason. The x64 wave has started and the wave is coming fast and furious. Fortunately, the Windows development team has a hypervisor in development called Windows Server virtualization (WSv). We'll start using it when we get closer to the public beta stages.
Let's see, what else? I've been testing and using Adobe Dreamweaver 8. Microsoft Expression is a great tool, but I just wanted to live in the Dreamweaver world for a while to see why so many people are using it. It's a great product although my wife is not happy with the way it handles image thumbnails. I'm guessing we'll be back on Expression before long.
Let's see, what else? I use Adobe Premiere Elements v3.02. I started with version 2 based on a recommendation from a fellow employee (Rory). I upgraded to v3 for the Windows Vista compatibility. I know, Movie Maker in Windows Vista rocks, but again, I wanted to use something outside the Microsoft world for a while. My next little project is to learn how to do green or blue screen capturing of myself to insert me into your screencast views. Don't worry, I have no plans to become the weatherman.
Let's see, what else? I've been using Roxio for CD and DVD burning for years. I stopped buying upgrades because v7.5 is still good enough for my needs. It still burns stuff. I don't need the DVD and video tools anymore although the sound editor is very nice.
And of course there's Linux. I started running Linux before many of you were born. Ok, that's a gross exaggeration but 1993 is a long time ago. I still tinker with the products on the market simply because I'd be foolish to jettison those skills and ignore our competition. I regularly look at the new versions of the leading distros and SUSE is still my favorite. It's clean and professional. I thought that long before we signed any agreements with Novell.
So I use competing products for two reasons. To discover what the non-Microsoft view looks like, and to use a superior tool when needed. The latter is getting pretty rare thankfully because it saves me money when I can buy a Microsoft product at a deep employee discount. The Xbox360 is an exception. I bought mine at Costco and I usually buy games before they are available at the company store.
So I wondered how hard core Google is. Do their employees use Windows, OS X or Linux? If Microsoft had acquired Feedburner, would Google employees move their feeds? I imagine a percentage of them would over time. Does the Google internal IT department ban Microsoft products? I doubt it.
Competition is good.