Keith Combs' Blahg : Screencasts

Exchange Online Overview - Domain and User Setup

Keith Combs — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 GMT

For the past couple of years I’ve been on our hosted Exchange services for my personal email. Because it was the dogfood service, it isn’t exactly the same service that you can buy at microsoft.com/online.

I decided to take the plunge and purchase a real production subscription to Exchange Online. I’m glad I did. It’s only been a few weeks, but so far it’s been a good ride. Best of all, my wife likes her new hosted mailbox. Priceless.

Why is this worthy for your consideration?

Cloud computing and services aren’t just a fad. Frankly some of the concepts have been around for several decades. Remember Ross Perot? He started a company called Electronic Data Systems (later EDS) and the whole goal of the company was to run applications and services in huge information processing centers for customers. They served many virtual markets like Healthcare, Banking, Manufacturing or Insurance. Big systems and big integration challenges. That hasn’t changed.

The Internet continues to morph and evolve. Networking to your business, home and smartphone is pervasive or soon will be. We all enjoy information discovery, sharing, email and social media. Five years ago you would not think twice about buying a server and running your email from it using Microsoft Exchange, Small Business Server, or a host of other products on the market. Publishing to the web from that server was pretty easy and allowed you to share information with partners, customers, family and friends.

But bad stuff happens. Where do you house the server? Who will support it when you are 35,000 above ground on a flight to an important business meeting? How quickly could you respond to a hardware problem if you are 1,600 miles from the server?

With cloud services, you can have someone else make sure the hardware and software is working properly and providing common or custom application services. Microsoft has packaged some of our industry leading products into online cloud based services. Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) and Exchange Online are two such offerings. Exchange Online is actually part of BPOS but can be purchased separately if you chose. So why build an expensive email server when there’s a low cost alternative in a state-of-the-art data center?

Getting Started

So how do you get started and how much does it cost? Getting started is really easy. There are three easy steps initially to create an account and link some services. First, head on over to the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) or Exchange Online product areas of microsoft.com. In each of those sections you’ll see some pricing information and the “Try It Out” button. Click the button to start a 30 day trial.

From there, it’s pretty straight forward. I actually have two accounts. I started by buying Exchange Online for my personal email. I figured $5 per person for a 25GB mailbox hosted in the data center with SPAM block and quarantine was a no brainer. The minimum number of mailboxes you can order is five and that’s exactly how many family members I knew I could put online immediately.

Like I said, this was a no brainer. Sure beats buying and running your own server. I did that when I first started using a Verizon FIOS Business plan and although it was a great learning experience, something would always go wrong with the server while I was traveling or unavailable. Besides, what does it cost you to buy and run a server? I can’t buy a server and run Exchange for $300 per year, can you?

Last week I decided it would be prudent to have a different domain for testing and demo purposes so I purchased a domain from my web hosting provider (1and1.com), then started setting up a BPOS demo environment. The BPOS product folks let me have the account at no charge for a limited period of time, so that is what we’ll use in the following screencast.

Because DNS propagation times are unpredictable, I provisioned the keithcombs.org domain prior to capturing the screencast. I could certainly have hit the pause button and waited, but that tends to stretch your day so I took the safe route. In my experience with 1and1.com and the verify steps, you can verify a domain within minutes. The sole exception I’ve seen so far was my wife’s personal domain, but that’s a long story.

So here’s the first screencast. It should give you an overview of the initial setup, some of the administrative pages, steps and tips. If you are watching via the embedded Silverlight player below, be sure to double click it for a full screen 1440x900 resolution view. The full screen button is also the far right button on the player controls.

Exchange Online Screencast Part 1 - Account Logon and Domain Setup (14:45)

Screencast File Download - if you would like to download the Windows Media Video file and watch with Media Player, by all means right mouse click Part1.wmv and save the file locally.

If you would like to start looking at the online documentation, see http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/Exchange-Online.htm for a great starting point. The screencast above demonstrates portions of the steps in the Add a Domain to Microsoft Online Services section. The complexity of adding and using a domain with Exchange Online will depend on your domain registrar or hosting provider.

Adding Domains and DNS

I am using 1and1.com as my web hosting provider. Adding, changing and deleting DNS records via their web based control panel is pretty easy. In fact, the Exchange Online team has written some specific instructions for a variety of popular registrars and hosting providers. See the instructions for 1and1.com Domain Verification as an example. You’ll see other instructions at http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/Exchange-Online.htm under the Setup | Domains area of the page. Click the More arrow to expand the section.

Keep in mind you don’t have to use one of your personal or business domains during the trial. When you created the account, the domain that was created is fully registered and ready. If you do a whois lookup on the domain, you’ll see it has the appropriate DNS and mail exchange (MX) records assigned. For instance, here’s the dump of the DNS records for cowboykeith.

I just decided to add another domain so that you can see it’s easy to use one or more domains in the BPOS and Exchange Online provisioning panels. I could have just used the domain above, created a mailbox, and started testing with it. It’s up to you. Speaking of which, lets see how to add a user and configure an email client to send and receive email. You won’t believe how easy we’ve made that.

Exchange Online Screencast Part 2 - Adding and Testing Users (16:33)

File Download - http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/screencasts/exchange_online/part2/Part2.wmv.

Adding Users and Importing Email

See? I told you it was easy to create a mailbox, Outlook profile, and start sending and receiving email. The Online Services Sign In application makes all of that easy on your users. Be sure to grab it from the download center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5c2ca866-4107-4ae5-98d5-76bf1b18ff87&displaylang=en or on the Home tab of the admin.microsoftonline.com portal.

If you need to add users in bulk, that import process is fully supported so be sure and checkout the documentation for steps on how to do that. See the file format specifications for details on the .CSV layout, examples and other steps in the online help.

After you have the initial Exchange Online user Outlook profile created and working, don’t forget it’s easy to add an existing .PST file for use in the client. If you have important email in the .PST file, I would recommend importing it into Exchange Online via the import wizards that are part of Outlook. Sure beats drag and drop unless you have a small amount of email.

Like I mentioned in the screencast, importing a bunch of data into Exchange Online is a time consuming process and your mileage will vary depending on the amount of data, and the speed of your network connection. Synchronization takes time so test and plan accordingly. And please, communicate this to your family members, customers, or business associates. The last thing you want them to do is kick off the import, then try to run catch a flight or some other urgent appointment.

In summary

This was an overview of how to get up and running fast with BPOS and Exchange Online. You don’t have to commit any of your production domains to this process for testing. You can jump into a 30 day trial for Exchange Online right now and don’t forget, the Exchange Online subscription is month-to-month so you can make a change at any time.

We obviously didn’t cover a lot of other topics like co-existence, directory synchronization, disaster recovery planning, or other mundane chores like creating contacts and distribution lists. That’s ok, we have plenty of topics to cover coming up. I hope you found this post informative.

Other Key Resources and Links

Microsoft Online Services Migration Toolkit - as usual we have some great documentation for project planning purposes. Trust me, migrating one or a hundred users, this is still a good read. See the link at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=b4d668f4-26b0-4b3c-8b13-5e0275948257&displaylang=en for the download.
Microsoft Online Services customer Portal - https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/default.aspx.
Your Online Services company portal - https://home.microsoftonline.com/
SPF and Autodiscover records - see http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/6a984970-1606-480f-92e2-585ff1ddae84.htm although autodiscover isn’t really used with Exchange Online. The Sign In application takes care of the profile create and updates for you. I couldn’t setup an autodiscover CNAME record even if I wanted to. The domain name AutoDiscoverRedirect-Red001.Mail.MicrosoftOnline.com is too long for the 1and1.com web form input field.
Team Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/b/msonline/
Community Forums and Help - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/microsoftonlineservices
Expression Encoder 4 Pro - http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/EncoderPro_Overview.aspx.

[NOTE] The screencasts above were captured, encoded, and wrapped with Silverlight using Expression Encoder 4 Pro. No other tool was used. I used the VC-1 codec settings for Screen Capture, then set the VBR range from 1MB for average bitrate, to 3MB at the peak.

TechNet On: launches with Cloud Security

Keith Combs — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:59:00 GMT

June 15, 2010 marks the beginning of a new content and publishing adventure. It’s called TechNet On: and we are bundling technical content into the topics that are top of mind for IT Professionals.

First up is Cloud Security. As with all topics, there are different layers or elements that must be considered. In this case we have combed content from a variety of credible sources like TechNet Magazine, TechNet Flash, Microsoft product group subject matter experts, and of course the Microsoft MVP community.

The Cloud Security package has a Background (Bg), Security (Sc) and a Strategies (St) focus I think you’ll find are very well done. Timely, technical and relevant.

You can expect to see a new TechNet On: package every couple of weeks. For the coming months you will see horizontal topics like Troubleshooting or Deployment as well as packages for SharePoint, Office, Windows and other technologies that are hot.

We launched TechNet On: in the US, UK, India, Australia, and Canada but we aren’t stopping there. Look for additional languages and locales as we push forward with our end-to-end content and publishing strategy.

Screencast

Here’s a short four minute screencast about TechNet On: and some of the content in this weeks package. Pay no attention to my lazy tongue when I say “egglectic”. Duh. For the full demo view, be sure to either double click the Silverlight “Black Glass” player for full screen, or hover on the bottom of the video to bring up the tool bar. The full screen button is on the far right of the tool bar. Enjoy.

Last Chance to Vote for “South By” 2010 Panels

Keith Combs — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:38:00 GMT

I submitted a panel proposal to this years South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference. The title is, “Screencasting Lessons Learned” and I’ll try to do the subject justice with the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past four or five years.

I am getting ready to record a number of Windows 7 screencasts using both Camtasia Studio and Expression Encoder 3. I’ll be putting some of them through the ringer with adaptive streaming and Silverlight 3 so the information will be fresh and new. I may try to get my hands on the new version of Camtasia for OS X and give it a whirl on my Apple MacBook Pro, too. No promises on the later, but it would be a great comparison if I have time.

Screencasting Lessons Learned (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3477)

Your vote: Yes No
Event: Interactive 2010
Level: Intermediate
Type: Solo
Category: Blogging, Online Video, Writing / Technical Writing
Organizer: Keith Combs, Microsoft - IT Pro and Developer Evangelism
Questions:

How long should a screencast be?
How do I publish my screencast using Silverlight?
What do I need to worry about for a good client experience?
Where do I store my video?
What is the difference between progressive download and streaming?
What format should I use for the source recording?
What type of machine do I need for editing and encoding?
Should I use a demo script or wing it?
How long does it take to create a technical screencast?
Should I worry about my accent?

Description: Learning to publish screencasts online can be a challenge. Come learn some tips and tricks that will help you use Camtasia or Expression Encoder more effectively with your blog. I am actively recruiting other Microsoft MVPs and speakers with the goal of turning this into a panel.

NOTE: In order to vote, you need to first create an ID at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register. It’s a quick and dirty registration app. Very little hassle. Please register and vote even if you aren’t going. Thanks !!!

And don’t forget all of the other panel nominations. See http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/4/company:Microsoft.

Brush your teeth and shave – LifeCam Cinema HD on the way?

Keith Combs — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:25:00 GMT

I have not seen an official announcement so I have no idea if it’s real or a mock-up. But if it’s real, I want it. Especially if it works with Camtasia, Expression Encoder 3 and Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition 9 and above. My screencasts will never be the same and it’s looking like it’s time to buy my green screen.

[UPDATE] It's official now. See http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=008.

Vote for my SXSW Panel – Screencasting Lessons Learned !!!

Keith Combs — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:20:05 GMT

Screencasting Lessons Learned (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3477)

How long should a screencast be?
How do I publish my screencast using Silverlight?
What do I need to worry about for a good client experience?
Where do I store my video?
What is the difference between progressive download and streaming?
What format should I use for the source recording?
What type of machine do I need for editing and encoding?
Should I use a demo script or wing it?
How long does it take to create a technical screencast?
Should I worry about my accent?

Expression Encoder Screen Capture 3 – HD screencast demonstration

Keith Combs — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:15:00 GMT

You’ve seen me do literally hundreds of Camtasia captured screencast demos. One of the screencasts I did on Windows Server 2008 was captured using the Windows Media Encoder x64 product. That product has now been depricated and the screencast below was captured with a new product called Expression Encoder Screen Capture 3. This product ships with and is designed to run with Expression Encoder 3.

This new screen capturing tool does a great job of capturing high quality work you might like to demonstrate via a blog or webpage. The screencast below was captured where the source machine was running a display resolution of 1920x1200. In the demo I also execute and run a Halo 3 720p HD video. That Halo 3 video is 30fps and the data rate for the video is right at 6MB. Try duplicating this capture with other products on the market or the internet. Let me know how successful you were. Grin.

The following demo requires the released version of Silverlight 3. Install from http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx. I haven’t quite figured out the code to force that check in the blog post. So for now, there’s a little manual human intervention required. You can handle it. Smiles.

The Demo

Download Location

If you want to download the Windows Media Video file that was produced by Expression Encoder 3, right mouse click the following link and SAVE TARGET AS to a location local to your machine.

http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/screencasts/ee3/CaptureDemo/EncoderCapture.wmv

Some Notes on the Source and Output

The captured file size ended up being slightly less than 800MB. After selecting the Expression Encoder 3 VC-1 Screen profile and making some slight adjustments, I encoded to the Silverlight VC-1 format with a resulting file size of 40.5MB. That’s some serious crunching and compression folks.

The most impressive aspect is the quality of output. To truly appreciate this, run this screencast on a 24” monitor that has a native res of 1920x1200 and go full screen with the Silverlight 3 player control. The full screen button shows up if you move your mouse into the lower portion of the player and the controls pop up. The button I am referring to is bottom right. When full screen on a 24” monitor, the clarity should be nearly perfect with very little blurriness, artifacting, or other noise.

If you are using a smaller LCD panel like I am at the moment (15.4” laptop LCD at 1680x1050), you will see some blurriness but it should not be too bad. I haven’t yet decided what ot use in the future for my recordings so feedback now would be VERY welcome.

Since the data rate for this screencast is 4MB, those of you with slower internet connection may see some issues with playback buffering before the file is progressively downloaded. I am not using the adaptive bitrate streaming for this example.

Software locations

Be sure to install the released version of Silverlight 3 at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx. After that, be sure to download the trial versions of the Expression Suite 3 products at http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/#PageTop when they come out (soon). Expression Blend 3 with Sketchflow is available now.

Other References

James Clarke has a killer blog post at http://blogs.msdn.com/expressionencoder/ on all of the new features in Expression Encoder 3.
The Forum – see http://social.expression.microsoft.com/forums/en-us/encoder/threads/. Interesting orange color there.
Marketing - http://www.microsoft.com/expression/Default.aspx. Lots of information on all of the new products. I am looking forward to move off Dreamweaver and switching to Expression Web 3. It’s also time for me to learn Blend 3.

Seen the light?

Keith Combs — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:56:10 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/seethelight/default.html

[UPDATE] Apparently they moved some stuff around after I posted some of the links. Thanks for the comments. Enjoy the new tools!!!

Dual Boot from VHD Using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Keith Combs — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:10:00 GMT

Executive Summary

Boot from VHD is a new technique for installing and maintaining operating system environments. Unlike virtual machines, the operating system that is running from a “boot from VHD” environment is using the actual hardware instead of emulated hardware. This means a developer could easily use WPF and the full GPU processing power of a high end graphics card. In another scenario, this technology makes it easy to setup and run Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role, thus supporting 64 bit virtualization workloads.

The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) is the container for the installed operating system. Because everything is inside a single file, there are a number of benefits that can be realized for data center server environments, as well as managed desktop environments. The following article dives into the technical details of implementing two operating systems. Both are installed in a VHD file and can easily be booted by selecting the preferred environment at power on. This could easily be scripted and automated.

The Installation Foundation – Windows PE

The Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) has been updated for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. One of those improvements is the ability to use a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file as the target for an installation of the operating system (OS).

This has some interesting implications. Booting from a .VHD file that contains an entire OS seems rather magical. I mean think about it. You go to look at a hard drive and there’s a single file but Windows Server 2008 R2 is installed inside it. This would certainly simplify the ability to boot your servers on a completely new environment with little effort. This is going to turn change management on its ear.

The same is true for the desktop OS, Windows 7. You can install Windows 7 inside a .VHD file. Again, the OS is installed inside a single file and thus makes it rather easy to move or change out and bring up a completely different version of the environment. This will make test environments for developers super easy to construct and test discrete sets of applications or components.

One thing that is not well known is how easy it is to create the initial .VHD file and install the operating system into it. The supported and documented ways are geared towards very well defined support scenarios. You can see the supported scenarios in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). Most people have been reluctant to take the time to learn this because it involves the use of imagex captures and applies.

What if you could install with just the DVD?

You can. All you need is a hard drive with disk space and the DVD for Windows 7 RC or Windows Server 2008 R2 RC. In fact, when I was investigating the tools for this article I used a brand spanking new Hitachi 2.5” 320GB 7200rpm hard drive and both DVDs to create a dual boot environment. Nothing more. And it’s much simpler than I thought. The key is WinPE and DISKPART. Here is the screencast demonstration of the tools in action.

The Screencast Video – 23 minutes – Win7 and R2 Dual Boot via VHD

The Command Sequence Used in the Video

Boot your machine with a blank hard drive using the Windows 7 DVD.
Click next on the language screen if English is appropriate.
SHIFT+F10 to launch a WinPE command console. Although the commands below are in upper case, the commands are not case sensitive. I am only using upper case for readability here.
Enter DISKPART to run the utility.
LIST DISK to see the available disks in your system. I am assuming a single raw disk.
SEL DISK 0
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK
LIST VOL
ASSIGN
LIST VOL
CREATE VDISK FILE=c:\windows7rc.vhd MAXIMUM=200000 TYPE=EXPANDABLE
SELECT VDISK FILE=c:\windows7rc.vhd
ATTACH VDISK
CRE PART PRI
FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK
ASSIGN LETTER=V:
LIST VOL
LIST VDISK
exit DISPART
exit WinPE command console
Install to the newly created 200GB (fuzzy math) virtual hard disk which looks just like a partition to Windows Setup
Repeat steps 11-18 for the Windows Server 2008 R2 VHD but with the obvious changes for the vdisk filename, size, etc.

Other References and Articles

Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RC – get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=60a07e71-0acb-453a-8035-d30ead27ef72. This is the bible for the supported methods of using “Boot from VHD”.

Windows Virtualization Blog – see their VHD boot post at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/14/native-vhd-support-in-windows-7.aspx. Particularly interesting is the performance area of the post.

Knom’s Developer Corner – another nice post at http://blogs.msdn.com/knom/archive/2009/04/07/windows-7-vhd-boot-setup-guideline.aspx.

So What’s Next ???

Tomorrow I am going to backup my existing Windows 7 production hard drive. Windows 7 is installed in the traditional fashion on a 200GB drive right now. I am going to restore the backup to a larger disk then install Windows Server 2008 R2 RC into a .VHD and test mixing them. That’s a bit of a hybrid and one I think a lot of developers might be interested in. It would certainly demonstrate you can have a traditional implementation of your production OS, but flip to any other Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 testbed very easily. I’ll follow-up here or another post when I get that implemented. Enjoy.

[UPDATE for 5/23/2009] As I indicated just above, I wanted to run an extension of the test I recorded. I backed up my 200GB Windows 7 RC environment then restored it to a 320GB drive. After that, I booted from the Windows Server 2008 R2 RC DVD and created a bootable VHD with R2 inside. The VHD is stored in a folder at the root of my 320GB disk. The R2 setup program fixed up the bcdstore area and I now have a dual boot hybrid. Windows 7 is installed in the traditional manner. R2 is booting from the VHD. Both are available on the selection menu at power up. Interesting stuff for sure.

[UPDATE for 5/25/2009] Since I received a couple of questions out of band on how I captured the demo, let me explain. The demo was captured using Camtasia v6.0.2. The demo was a Hyper-V virtual machine, not native hardware. I had mentioned that in some of the preliminary takes but I guess I didn't make that clear in the final take. Therefore, the booted OS in the screencast is actually using the emulated hardware of the virtual machine. Everything you see in the demo works on my native hardware, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p.

One other thing, the VHD that is being booted from will expand to the maximum size specified at creation. It will revert to the used size when you shut it down. Keep this in mind because that buffer must exist at boot time or else.

[UPDATE for 6/14/2009] Although this article was originally written using a blank hard drive, I have received a few suggestions for adds, so here they are.

Backup your machine first. Yep, this is a good idea as always if you are messing with a drive you care about.
Decrypt the drive if using BitLocker.

Windows Server 2008 Interop with Linux and OS X

Keith Combs — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:35:00 GMT

We’re a little over halfway done with the Interop Road Show I helped create. Last week Matt Hester did a simulcast of the live event from Chicago. Although he did a great job, I wanted to capture the demos with Camtasia v6.0.2 and provide some high quality audio and video of the demos, so here they are.

A Party of Protocols

There are a number of ways to invite Linux, UNIX, and OS X to the Windows Server Active Directory party. The operating systems we use today will interoperate in many ways because each includes some level of common protocol support. Support for HTTP is an obvious protocol they all share. SMB is also commonly used for access to Windows file system shares. In the UNIX world, NFS ruled the ether for years. Thankfully directory and security protocols like LDAP and Kerberos have also become common in the desktop and server operating systems.

There are pros and cons to any approach to integrating heterogeneous environments. Usually this means there will be tradeoffs on functionality. Thankfully, there is a robust market out there to lower the number of tradeoffs and attempt to provide near seamless coexistence and integration.

For those of you that get TechNet Magazine, you probably noticed the December 2008 issue devoted to this subject. You also probably noticed it isn’t necessarily trivial to do everything you might set out to accomplish. As Matt likes to say, get some sleep, get up early, and eat your Nerdflakes because you are going to need them.

I shopped the partner market. I wanted to see if there were some products you should consider that ease the pain. There are and you should by all means evaluate the products from Centrify, Quest, Likewise and others. You’ll notice I am using Centrify DirectControl.

The main reason for that is simple. Linux, OS X and UNIX and Windows include support for authentication, directories and file sharing. That capability is built into the OS. However, if you want to do desktop management, you really need help from an additional set of agents and code. You’ll see what I mean in demo number three below.

Adding SUSE Linux to Active Directory (AD)

In the video just below, we are going to add a SLED 10 SP2 virtual machine to the contoso.com domain. We’ll first check and verify the vm is able to find the domain controllers and that we have good connectivity. Then we’ll join the domain and reboot the vm. Check it out.

Security Security

Now that our workstation vm is a citizen of the contoso.com domain, we can start doing the stuff that would be a normal next step. For instance, we would want to verify user principals from AD can login on the Linux machine and use it. We would also want to check the security model and verify share and file permissions are working as expected. Checkout this next video on that subject.

Bow to Group Policy

Now that we can see networking, authentication and security is working properly, we can start to take advantage of the management infrastructure. For this demo, we are going to make a simple change to the SLED 10 SP2 GNOME settings to verify Group Policy Object (GPO) settings are flowing from Windows to Linux.

Summary

There is obviously a lot more to this subject, but as you can see, interoperability between Windows Server 2008 and a number of other server and desktop operating systems is quite good. You can do this the easy way, or you can do it the not so easy way. It’s really going to depend on your needs. If you have no need for desktop management via group policies, then you should investigate the native integration possibilities. If you have more advanced management needs to get the wild wild west tamed, then I would highly recommend looking at the partner tools.

Windows 7 Screencast on DirectAccess – the killer Enterprise feature

Keith Combs — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:11:54 GMT

Remember when you jumped from dial-up to DSL or a cable modem? You know what I mean. Those technology jumps that just make you smile really wide? Well, I have news for you. There’s another one coming that is going to rock your world. It’s called DirectAccess and although I am not particularly fond of the name, the name is accurate.

What is DirectAccess?

Simply put, it’s direct access to your corporate network across an automatically established tunnel. There’s a lot that has to happen in order for that to occur, but thankfully nearly everything is transparent to the user.

DirectAccess clients maintain constant connectivity with the intranet, and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) provides the end-to-end addressing necessary to accomplish this. Since many organizations do not yet have IPv6 deployed, DirectAccess includes IPv6 transition technologies to help ensure IPv6 connectivity.

IP-HTTPS is a new protocol for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that allows hosts behind a Web proxy server or firewall to establish connectivity by tunneling IPv6 packets inside an IPv4-based HTTPS session. HTTPS is used instead of HTTP so that Web proxy servers will not attempt to examine the data stream and terminate the connection.

The Screencast

Want to see this in action? Sure you do! And unlike a lot of the content you see us demo in virtual machines, this demo is the real thing. This is my production Windows 7 laptop. Our MSIT department is hardcore on security so I’ve already logged in using multi factor authentication via a Smartcard.

For More Information

There is a ton of information on the internet about DirectAccess already. I would highly recommend you start studying and learning about IPv6 if you haven’t already. I would also recommend you start learning about the IPv4 to IPv6 transitional technologies that will help you get there. Here are some good references.

TechNet DirectAccess Area - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/dd420463.aspx.
Early Adopter’s Guide - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2fdc531d-9138-454f-a820-78211755b52a&displaylang=en.
Windows 7 DirectAccess section - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/directaccess.aspx.
MSDN Protocol Info in IP-HTTPS - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd357723(PROT.10).aspx

Errata and other Stupidity

I am constantly amazed at the stupid stuff I say, but don’t pick up on it until after I’ve published something. For instance, I said “a business people’s lives” instead of “a business persons life”. Close to the end I say, “this is some technical networking” instead of “this is some complex or advanced networking”. Wow. Major idiot moments there. LOL.

And I need a chair that shocks the crap out of me when I say “got” too much. Sigh… I probably won’t re-record the darn thing because I am time boxed at the moment. Maybe I’ll record it again when the Windows 7 RC is available and do it from a VM so you can see the full login process and experience.