Cue AC/DC. I'm back! After three years I'm back with Microsoft. It kinda feels like coming home. Except now it's a pretty exciting time to be back! Didn't you see the news? Windows 10 baby! And finally, much to my Dad's pleasure the start menu is back! From phone to desktop to server. Windows 10 is hot!

Microsoft has a new CEO that "gets it" and is bringing excitement and a fresh new approach to the company. Its permeating to every part of the business.

When I was making the decision to come back I spent some time talking to my good friend Jeff Alexander about it. He told me about the radical changes occurring, both in terms of culture but also in terms of products. He wouldn't let me in on any of the internal stuff at the time, but that I'm back inside, I'm pretty excited about whats to come.

And better still the team I'm in gets to tell you all about it. See I'm looking after (part of) the team that communicates to IT Pros, Developers, Students and Startups. Our goal is to make sure that we get all the good information to you, hot off the press. To make you aware of what's happening, when and how.

So I'm really happy to be back. And really excited about the vision that Satya is bringing for the company.

“…Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start…” Nido Qubein.

Yes, this is one of those emails. I honestly never thought I’d ever leave but here it is…

After nearly 11 years at Microsoft I’m leaving for the leading user state virtualization company called AppSense where I’ll be taking a Director of Business Development role. It’s an exciting opportunity that’s in line with what Im been thinking for my career. I’ve been thinking about it carefully a lot! See its a really tough decision to leave Microsoft. Really tough. When you have spent more than some of your children’s lives at a place, it becomes a big decision to consider a move. But it was just time for something different, something new. AppSense is an exciting company with a bright future that I will enjoy being a part of.

As much as I hate the cheesiness, it truly is a mixed emotion as while this is a great opportunity for me, there’s so many things I will miss. I will miss the buzz of standing up and keynoting big events and giving presentations. I will miss being “in the know” of Microsoft’s foremost products. I will miss working for the name of Microsoft. There is a certain prestige in working for this company that after nearly 11 years I still like and I think the next wave of products will blow people away. Watch and see!

I’ve made many great friends at Microsoft, both internally and in the community. I want to do a big shout out and say big thanks to the Australian IT community. I really enjoyed serving you and talking to you about Microsoft technologies in my capacity there. My last day is Friday, 1^st July 2011.

I plan to continue the conversation on twitter @mkleef and Ive also created a new blog at http://michaelkleef.blogspot.com

I especially like this quote from Dr Seuss.  “…Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened…”

I’m smiling.

Aussie legend Cameron McBride and good friend Tony Sanchez from Citrix sent a heads up to me recently on some performance related hotfixes. They are specific to proc and SP1. Nevertheless they are definitely worth applying for the best performance.

Issue 1: Performance is not as awesome as it could be on Westmere or Sandybridge chipsets

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2517329

Symptoms:

• You have a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has a large amount of physical memory and that has Intel Westmere or Sandy Bridge processors.
  
  For example, you have a computer that has Intel Xeon 5600 series processors and that has 48 gigabytes (GB) physical memory.
• You install the Hyper-V role on the computer.

In this scenario, the performance of the computer may decrease.

For example, the following performance issues may be encountered:

• The CPU usage is high and the server responds slowly when you copy large files on the computer. For example, you copy a 10-GB file.
• The disk I/O performance of the virtual machines (VMs) is slow.
• Windows takes a long time to start.

Ive recently been building out some awesome Microsoft and Citrix demos for our internal field organization running the full stack of XenDesktop 5, XenApp6, Hyper-V, App-V 4.6 and AppSense. Ive been having these weird problems with App-V and the App-V management console that I couldnt work out. Mysteriously, after a period of time and without any changes by me I would get these odd remote protocol errors.

A remoting error occurred.
Make sure the Management Console is properly configured and it has the same version as the Management Service.
Error code: 0000C824

I searched and searched for answers. It got to the point where I had tried everything so I reinstalled the whole App-V instance. The problem went away for a period of time, but then jsut as mysteriously, it reappeared. Weird.

Luckily I have access to the App-V team and got the following troubleshooting steps. In my case, the first step fixed the issue. I post the following in the event that you too are having these issues. That said if you have any questions, dont direct them to me. Contact the App-V team! Internal kudos to Steve Thomas. Enjoy!

1st: Clear the MMC XML Cache:

-------------------------------------------------

1. Navigate to Start-Run and type in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\MMC

2. Delete the SFTMMC file.

3. Restart the MMC console and reattempt.

2nd: Restart the Management Web Service

----------------------------------------------------------------

1. On the App-V Server, reset IIS and ASP.NET by running the following command from an elevated command prompt:

iisreset

2. Restart the MMC console and reattempt.

3rd: Collect the SFTMMC Log file to get more specifics on the error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The log file is here:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center App Virt Management Server\App Virt Management Console\sftmmc.log

This will need to be enabled.

1.            Start Registry Editor.

2.            In the Navigation pane, locate and then right-click the following subkey:

                HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Management Console (or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Management Console if x64)

3.            Click the App-V Management Console.

4.            Review the values that are listed for the LogLevel entry.

                a.            If the LogLevel entry does not exist, go to step 5.

                b.            If LogLevel entry exists, go to step 7.

5.            Right-click the App-V Management Console, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

6.            For New Value #1 type LogLevel.

7.            Right-click LogLevel, and then click Modify.

8.            For Value data, type the appropriate Value from the table in the "Logging level values and description" section, and then click OK.

4th: Check for Duplicate SPNs

------------------------------------------------

1. Use the SETSPN tool to check for duplicate or missing SPNs:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731241(WS.10).aspx

You will need to ensure the HTTP and SOFTGRID SPNs are in place as well as the SQL server SPNs.

5th: Verify the App-V Server has been trusted for delegation:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please follow the procedures outlined in the following article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee675779.aspx

6th: Verify UDL file access:

------------------------------------------

1. Application Virtualization administrators must have Read and Execute permissions to the SftMgmt.UDL file in folder %systemdrive%\Program Files\Microsoft System Center App Virt Management Server\App Virt Management Service.

 7th: Verify FIPS settings

------------------------------------------

Check to see if you have enabled "System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption". That can screw it up too.

Right now Im preparing for Microsoft Management Summit next week in Las Vegas. Sure it will be a tough time being in Vegas again with lots of hard work (and play) and another keynote appearance :)

Anyhow, Im also preparing one of the booth demos. This one will be showing the Microsoft VDI stack, inclusive of Windows 7, App-V and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. This demo features Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX all working together with the RDS Connection Broker. Cool demo! Though I had one problem with it as I went to enable RemoteFX.

I built a shuttle server for the demo that has the AMD Phenom II X6 proc (which is pretty fast) 16GB of RAM and two ATI FirePro v5800 video cards in it. Yes two! When I configured it I figured that I should hook together the video cards, CrossFire style for best performance right? Wrong! As I started the Windows 7 SP1 VM it hung. I mean it just stopped. I checked over the drivers; CrossFire wasnt enabled so I enabled it. No difference.

I then opened up the case again and removed the CrossFire cable between the cards and hey presto! It worked. Turns out that RemoteFX doesnt gain any benefit and is not designed to use cards in aggregate like this. Its designed to use each card individually via the hypervisor.

So there you have it. If you have a multi card setup for RemoteFX, dont hook them together. It wont work if you do.

Hot off the press, Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 today released and is now live on the Microsoft download center for evaluation. This is an exciting new release that delivers some fantastic new features such as:

• Desktop Thumbnails –Through the Management Console, teachers can orchestrate activities across the classroom including sharing any specific desktop across all stations.
• Split Screen Capabilities – A single monitor can actually serve as 2 stations by splitting the screen. That means 2 students can share a single monitor. This can encourage collaboration between students. It also can be extremely helpful in places where budgets are tight and monitors aren’t easy to come by.
• Station Control –Teachers can lock any one or all stations if needed and can also open and close applications too. Teachers also have the ability to allow only certain websites in a “allowed list” through the Management Console.
• Network-connected Stations – Stations can be directly connected to host PC (directly or via USB with devices from partners such as HP) or through the network (wired or wireless!). This enables stations to be set up in a variety of configurations versus having to be clustered close to a host PC.
• Multiple Windows MultiPoint Servers – Administrators can connect multiple Windows MultiPoint Servers together into “pods” which can then be managed all together through the Management Console. They can make it super easy to manage Windows MultiPoint Servers in a single room or across a building.
• Domain-join – For places with an existing Windows Server infrastructure with Active Directory in place, Windows MultiPoint Server can be joined to a domain and managed through the same tools that are used to manage all the rest of the PCs on the network (and users).

For more information on deployment, please check out the Planning guide and the Deployment guides also recently released.

Further information at:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/02/21/windows-multipoint-server-2011-availability.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/multipointserver/archive/2011/02/21/wms2011rtm.aspx

I love Friday news. Its even better when I get to announce something that others havent done yet! Cisco has recently wrapped up testing with their UCS platform using Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Citrix XenDesktop 4 on top of NetApp SANs. I love how thorough these CVD guides are! And for those of you that dont know about UCS, check it out.

The memory management is especially cool and you can stick in a ridiculous amount of memory at a lower cost. NetApp SANs I especially like due to its ability to intelligently cache commonly used VHD blocks and feed them out of flash memory. That means you only go back to disk for what is different and unique, thus you maximize throughput.

I noticed though that they used W7 64bit guests. While they probably didnt notice it as they had sufficiently high statically configured RAM, we noticed in our testing that 64bit guests consume a lot more RAM than 32 bit guests. In practise, I would recommend you use 32bit especially with dynamic memory starting at 512MB RAM instead unless you have a pressing reason to use 64bit such as app support or high memory requirements.

Can you imagine what SP1 will do for this CVD? :)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns955/ns1099/cisco_usc_citrix_xd_ms_hyperV_netapp_storage.pdf

Happy reading

From the desk of Vishwa Kumbalimutt:

We’re pleased to announce RTW of SCVMM RDV plug-in that enables dynamic placement of VDI VMs for both personal and pooled VMs. The key benefit of using this plug-in is that it reduces the number of Hyper-V servers required since VMs are placed on demand rather than statically placed.  Dynamic placement is achieved by integrating SCVMM 2008 R2 with the RDS Connection Broker in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Dynamic Placement for Personal VM is available in Windows Server 2008 R2. Pooled VM requires Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

 Figure below shows the integration:

The bits and content are available at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=195952

 For those of you that dont understand how this works Ill write a little process workflow so you undertand.

1. The VDI client tries to connect to the last VM it was usign via the Connection Broker.

2. The Broker, knowing where it was in the cluster, in commuication with SCVMM, tries to wake the VM from a save state

3. Problem is that the server its trying to start the VM on is already at capacity and it cant start there

4. SCVMM gets involved as part of this and moves the VM to another node in the cluster based on its dynamic placement algorithm, via a SAN move

5. The Connection Broker is then told which host the VM is now on and running

6. The user connects to the VM

Nice huh?

Awesome news, hot off the press. We have just completed a new round of testing for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V and Dynamic Memory. What showed was that Hyper-V SP1 could scale a lot more with Windows 7 SP1 than we were actually supporting previously with 8 VMs/core. I should be clear here though. We dont really support VMs/core...we actually support VMs/logical proc. The new support limit is 12VMs/Logical Processor. Whats the difference?

VMs/core support implies only physical core support. Logical processors can be either physical or multi threaded cores. As an example, Intels newest Westmere processors support 6 cores, though they are Hyperthreaded, meaning that you actually have 12 logical processors. According to our new support statement this means that on just one of these Westmere processors, we can support up to 144 VMs! Of course this depends on the workload in use but it definitely lifts the game in support.

Watch out also for a whitepaper in process on Hyper-V coming soon, that will highlight some of the testing I referenced in my post on the Virtualization blog. In fact if you want to see me presenting on this, youre welcome to view the session I did at TechEd Europe on how we scaled 40% higher in density with Hyper-V SP1 and Windows 7

Anthony Borton isn’t going to like this review. You see a couple of weeks ago, while all us Microsofties were at our semi-annual conference, Anthony was working on the Hand on Labs. He even brought his wife over for the experience. So when Jeff Alexander and I caught up with him, he was lamenting to us about how his wife wanted to go to Mexico and he wanted to go up north somewhere. He brought her along to our after conference drinks where I proceeded to tell her all about this holiday I was going on with my wife…you guessed it….to Mexico!

Honestly this was probably the best holiday my wife and I have ever been on.

Imagine this. $2200 for two people to go to Playa del Carmen, just south of Cancun, staying at an all- inclusive hotel with flights included. What’s that you say? An all-inclusive hotel? Yes! That means nothing more to pay. You don’t pay for any meals, any drinks, any alcohol…nothing. There’s even four bottles of liquor in your room. ALL INCLUDED!

We stayed at the Riu Palace Riviera Maya. Riu actually has a bunch of hotels that do this concept across Mexico and the Bahamas too I believe.

Here’s what happens in simple baby steps:

1. You arrive.

2. You check-in with no credit card required (you’ve paid already remember)

3. You drop your stuff in your room.

4. You head to one of five restaurants for dinner.

5. You eat, you drink

6. You leave.

7. You swim and drink some more at the pool bar or by the beach

8. Repeat processes 4 to 7, several days in a row, only interrupted by the requirement to sleep

We spent 5 days sitting in the pool, by the beach and eating – even swimming in the warm ocean at 1:30am. It was probably the laziest and easiest stress free holiday I’ve ever been on. And for those of you thinking the food was crap, think again. It was great.

The 5 restaurants had a selection of Asian, Mexican, Brazilian, Steakhouse and generic buffet style choices. We tried them all and all were fantastic.

Why is this so cool? Let’s remember your last big holiday. You paid for the hotel and flights and then every time it came to eat and drink the costs were astronomical. You budgeted for $1000 in entertainment but suddenly the budget got blown.

You start to question the value and it wrecked your holiday:

Is the rip-off $40 breakfast worthwhile?

“Do we really need lunch honey?”

and the worst one…

“I think were done drinking for the night”

If you don’t want to be having those kinds of questions, or thinking about your holiday budget every 5 seconds, then this is the style of holiday for you. It certainly was for us.

They also offer a number of paid activities like Snorkel Diving for $35 p/p where they take you out to a coral reef and fish are in abundance (we did this one – awesome) or even a day long scuba diving package for $99 p/p. For those not into water sports there are the Mayan Ruins of Tulum and Chichen Itza (we went and saw Tulum – amazing!) and a bunch of adventure parks all at fairly reasonable prices. They even have all day long kid programs for those that want to bring their kids (which we didn’t J)

Check it out. It was well worthwhile!

A new whitepaper has released that discusses the pro's and cons of VDI vs Session Virtualization along with when to use what. Its something that reinforces the discussion points I raised in a previous post about session virtualization being cheaper for essentially the same value proposition as VDI. Brian Madden also talks about it as the Madden Paradox - the concept that thin client computing via VDI isnt new and that its fundamentally the same as Terminal Services.

The RD Virtualization Host Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2 (Link to paper on Download Center – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bd24503e-b8b7-4b5b-9a86-af03ac5332c8), is now live on the Download Center.  This white paper is intended as a guide for capacity planning of RD Virtualization Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment, methodologies to evaluate capacity for specific deployments, and a set of experimental results for different combinations of usage scenarios and hardware configurations.

Just a heads up that the issue around Event ID 17 being logged in the System log on a TS Licensing server has now been updated with a hotfix. Please refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983385/ for updated guidance though heres the synopsis from the article.

"...On a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2, the Terminal Services Licensing (TS Licensing) server or the Remote Desktop Licensing (RD Licensing) server becomes deactivated, and only temporary licenses can be issued.

Additionally, the following event resembles an event that is logged in the System log:

A friend of mine and I were talking today about TechED USA and all the questions we had around virtualization. He commented that he even had one person come up and talk to him about Disk Virtualization, which refers to “Boot from VHD”. Well that’s a new one for the large list to complement the current and obviously well understood virtualization terms such as Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, User State Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Session/Presentation Virtualization. We thought of a few more:

• Unified Communications and Exchange as “Interpersonal Virtualization”
• Boot from VHD is obviously now “Disk Virtualization”
• XBOX Live is now “Gamer Virtualization”

Any more to add to the list?

Oh my goodness! The same author, Martin McClean, that produced the Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Component poster  has done it again producing an awesome new poster that highlights the components of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. In his words:

“…I wanted to let you know that the new "Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture" poster is available for download by your customers on the Microsoft Download Center :http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5567b22a-8c47-4840-a88d-23146fd93151

So what’s the poster about? This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2. It focuses on architecture, snapshots, live migration, virtual networking, storage, and import/export. You can use this poster in conjunction with the previously published Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 component posters (see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=193499 and http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179116).

I hope this is useful to you, please let me know if you have any feedback from your customers so I can incorporate that into my future work...”

Well people? Any feedback?

In other news today, we just released to the download center an updated whitepaper that reflects the changes in App-V 4.6 to support Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 namely support for 64 bit!

Enjoy!

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/5/E/25EEFF4E-A81A-464F-9AB1-98FA1EF755AA/App-V Remote Desktop Services.docx

This came in my email yesterday and is very welcome news for people wanting to configure VDI and RDS in Windows Server 2008 R2:

“…The Remote Desktop Services Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2, is now live on the Download Center and on TechNet. This guide is intended for use by system administrators and system engineers who are responsible for deploying the Remote Desktop role services and features for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment. It provides detailed guidance for deploying a Remote Desktop Services design that is preselected by you, an infrastructure specialist, or a system architect in your organization.

Also the Terminal Services Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008 is now available as well:

The Terminal Services Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008, is now live on the Download Center and on TechNet.  This guide is intended for use by system administrators and system engineers who are responsible for deploying the Terminal Services role services and features. It provides detailed guidance for deploying a Terminal Services design that is preselected by you, an infrastructure specialist, or a system architect in your organization…”

Interesting new performance article released from Intel. Covers the choice around VHD and streaming OS deployment on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. When you think of streaming the OS on to Hyper-V, think how Citrix’s Provisioning Server does it.

It also again reinforces something we have said for awhile – Windows 7 runs better than Windows XP in a virtual environment!

See it here: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/en/us/partner-profile-intel.aspx#Resources

Right now we’re thinking about our plans for the next financial year, and where we need to focus our efforts to help you succeed.

We are thinking about how we deliver you the best solution content in terms of documentation, architectures and even webcasts.

To that end we need to understand, especially if you’re in the System Integrator space, when you talk to customers about the in box Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services solution and when you start to introduce partner solutions such as Citrix and Quest.

So I have a short survey for you, if you don’t mind. Its only 4 simple multi choice questions that helps us understand the typical market size for the typical content we should focus towards – and also how we should work with our partners better for those customer sizes.

The survey is totally anonymous and only accessible by me.

Click here to take the survey

Please??

For those of you interested in attending, details are here:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032447903&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Capacity Planning and Sizing for Session Virtualization and VDI with RDS (Level 300) 

Customers are increasingly looking at centralizing their users' desktops and applications as a way to lower their total cost of ownership (TCO) or to increase business agility. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session virtualization (formerly Terminal Services) are two scenarios supported by Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, and both have different pros and cons from an IT professional's perspective. From a scalability and user-density standpoint, session virtualization looks like the clear winner, but just how many virtual desktops—or sessions—can you host on any given hardware? Attend this webcast to learn about Microsoft tests and tools to measure capacity and performance of your RDS deployments, so you arrive at the right planning and sizing conclusions.

In a previous post I linked to a TechNet article that documented the custom settings for the RDP file. In a true case of “wait there’s more!” I have more to show that were not documented here, though will be soon. In the meantime though:

allow font smoothing:i:1

allow desktop composition:i:1

disable full window drag:i:0

disable menu anims:i:0

disable themes:i:0

disable cursor setting:i:0

I usually insert these 6 settings into my custom RDP settings as they are required to enable Aero Glass in both RDSH Servers (through the Gateway and Broker) and VDI implementations.

Often you'll want to change certain settings in your RDP files, or during configuration of RemoteApp, VDI or otherwise. I just noticed that finally the RDP Custom Settings reference has released at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff393699(WS.10).aspx 

Includes reference details for the following: