USV? What is that? Windows user state virtualization (USV) is a collection of Microsoft technologies that enables synchronization of user state information from individual computers to a central location. Centralized management and storage of user state is desirable because it provides users with mobility and flexibility while helping IT departments manage costs and compliance.
Some careful consideration and planning needs to go into any USV strategy. Factors like different operating system versions, different applications and platform architectures, security, backup, network and different user needs all have implications on USV working. As a result, guidance (like this) as well as controlled testing and rollouts need to be followed.
This Solution Accelerator guide describes a scenario assessment process that helps IT pros understand USV requirements, and how to map them to appropriate USV technologies. It also explains real-world caveats and considerations that might apply so IT pros can develop realistic strategies for their organizations.
This guide focuses on the following three Windows USV technologies:
Is USV a good idea?
It depends, but largely yes. By centralizing the storage of user state that typically resides on users’ computers, USV simplifies backup and management of business-critical data; when the central storage is backed up, the user state that was synchronized from user’s computers is also backed up. Centralized management of user state also yields the following benefits:
Some resources for you:
Jeff Wettlaufer Sr Technical Product Manager System Center, Management and Security Division
Hey there everyone, we wanted to make sure you knew about the new Configuration Manager ‘Configuration Pack’ for Service Manager, that is now available here. This Configuration Pack for DCM helps track configuration best practices for your Service Manager 2010 server roles, such as management servers, data warehouse management servers, and web portal servers.
Software installation errors and mis-configurations compromise performance and stability, resulting in escalated support costs. The System Center Service Manager 2010 Configuration Pack can help prevent errors, increasing your organizational uptime and helping you build a more secure and reliable Service Manager 2010 infrastructure.
Have a great weekend
Good morning everyone, we wanted to get you an update on the ConfigMgr 2007 R2 Virtual Machine Test Drive Program. The VM that has been available up until now has just expired. We have now gone through the process of re-arming the time limit for the VM, and this update is now available here.
This virtual machine is based in VPC or Virtual Server. Future releases will be based on the Hyper-V platform. It can be used in Hyper-V, but the VPC and Hyper-V Integration components need to be replaced for full mouse and keyboard support. The VM is a fully configured installation of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, with an AD and single site. This VM is ready to be used in testing and evaluation as a lab or pilot (POC) experience. It is not intended or supported in production.
We hope you find this refresh valuable. We will be refreshing this VM again once the ConfigMgr 2007 R3 release has passed RTM. Also stay tuned as we are in the final release process of shipping the ConfigMgr v.Next VM as well, that should be live relatively quickly. We will post a blog update for you when that is ready.
Kind regards
Hey everyone, we wanted you to be aware of the new Beta 2 of the IT GRC Process MP, now available here. The IT GRC Process Management Pack for System Center Service Manager provides end-to-end compliance management and automation for desktop and datacenter computers. Deeply integrated with Service Manager, the IT GRC Process Management pack translates complex regulations and standards into authoritative control objectives and control activities for the IT organization’s compliance program.
The IT Compliance Management Series bridges the knowledge gap by translating auditor expectations and IT GRC authority document requirements into real IT tasks through the use of control activities that are specific to a particular technology or platform. This Solution Accelerator takes advantage of the ability of Microsoft® System Center Service Manager to integrate with System Center Configuration Manager to automate the monitoring, validation, and reporting of the compliance state of Microsoft products. The supplied control activities link complex IT GRC requirements, stated as control objectives, to actual product configuration settings enabling System Center to act as an IT GRC management and over-sight solution for an organization. The series includes control activities and test automation for Windows Server® 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows® 7, as well as additional prescriptive guidance for System Center Service Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, and System Center Operations Manager.
Some links for you:
Happy Friday everyone, we wanted to make you aware of a new FAQ that has been released for the Service Pack Beta. It’s actually got a great list of questions on it, so you may want to give it a quick look. It’s too many to post here, so we have just placed the links for you.
Thanks for your time and have a great weekend.
Hey guys, you can now get an early look at the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta through the CARE program.
This is a combined Service Pack for both the Client and Server OS platforms. Inside the SP, there are some changes specific to Windows 7, some for Server and then some common updates that apply to both. Here is a summary of those (sorry it is a little long)
Changes Specific to Windows 7 Additional support for communication with third-party federation services Additional support has been added to allow Windows 7 clients to effectively communicate with third-party identity federation services (those supporting the WS-Federation passive profile protocol). This change enhances platform interoperability, and improves the ability to communicate identity and authentication information between organizations. Improved HDMI audio device performance A small percentage of users have reported issues in which the connection between computers running Windows 7 and HDMI audio devices can be lost after system reboots. Updates have been incorporated into SP1 to ensure that connections between Windows 7 computers and HDMI audio devices are consistently maintained. Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents Prior to the release of SP1, some customers have reported difficulty when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents (documents containing pages in both portrait and landscape orientation) using the XPS Viewer, resulting in all pages being printed entirely in either portrait or landscape mode. This issue has been addressed in SP1, allowing users to correctly print mixed-orientation documents using the XPS Viewer.
Changes specific to Windows Server 2008 R2 Dynamic Memory Constraints on the allocation of physical memory represents one of the greatest challenges organizations face as they adopt new virtualization technology and consolidate their infrastructure. With Dynamic Memory, an enhancement to Hyper-V™ introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, organizations can now make the most efficient use of available physical memory, allowing them to realize the greatest possible potential from their virtualization resources. Dynamic Memory allows for memory on a host machine to be pooled and dynamically distributed to virtual machines as necessary. Memory is dynamically added or removed based on current workloads, and is done so without service interruption. Virtual machines running a wide variety of operating systems can use Dynamic Memory; for a complete list, see the “Dynamic Memory Evaluation Guide” The guide also discusses Dynamic Memory settings and usage in detail. Microsoft RemoteFX Businesses are increasingly looking to leverage the efficiency and cost savings that can come from a virtualized desktop infrastructure. With the addition of Microsoft RemoteFX in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, a new set of remote user experience capabilities that enable a media-rich user environment for virtual desktops, session-based desktops and remote applications is introduced. Harnessing the power of virtualized graphics resources, RemoteFX can be deployed to a range of thick and thin client devices, enabling cost-effective, local-like access to graphics-intensive applications and a broad array of end user peripherals, improving productivity of remote users. RemoteFX can function independently from specific graphics stacks and supports any screen content, including today’s most advanced applications and rich content (including Silverlight and Adobe Flash), ensuring that end users maintain a rich, local-like desktop experience even in a virtualized thin-client environment. Enhancements to scalability and high availability when using DirectAccess DirectAccess is a new feature in the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that gives users the experience of being seamlessly connected to their corporate network any time they have Internet access. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, improvements have been made to enhance scalability and high availability when using DirectAccess, through the addition of support for 6to4 and ISATAP addresses when using DirectAccess in conjunction with Network Load Balancing (NLB). Support for Managed Service Accounts (MSAs) in secure branch office scenarios SP1 enables enhanced support for managed service accounts (MSAs) to be used on domain-member services located in perimeter networks (also known as DMZs or extranets). Enhancements to Failover Clustering with Storage SP1 enables enhanced support for how Failover Clustering works with storage that is not visible for all cluster nodes. In SP1, improvements have been made to the Cluster Validation and multiple Failover Cluster Manager wizards to allow workloads to use disks that are shared between a subset of cluster nodes.
Changes common to both client and server platforms Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality SP1 changes the behavior of the “Restore previous folders at logon” function available in the Folder Options Explorer dialog. Prior to SP1, previous folders would be restored in a cascaded position based on the location of the most recently active folder. That behavior changes in SP1 so that all folders are restored to their previous positions. Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec Support for additional identification types has been added to the Identification field in the IKEv2 authentication protocol. This allows for a variety of additional forms of identification (such as E-mail ID or Certificate Subject) to be used when performing authentication using the IKEv2 protocol. Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) There has always been a growing need for ever more computing power and as usage models change, processors instruction set architectures evolve to support these growing demands. Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256 bit instruction set extension for processors. AVX is designed to allow for improved performance for applications that are floating point intensive. Support for AVX is a part of SP1 to allow applications to fully utilize the new instruction set and register extensions.
Hey everyone, in case you didn’t see the announcement, the MAP Toolkit v5 is now available. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 is an ‘agentless’ tool designed to simplify and streamline the IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments.
This Solution Accelerator performs an inventory of heterogeneous server environments and provides you with usage information for servers in the Core CAL Suite and SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 discovery and assessment for consolidation, Windows 2000 Server migration assessment, and a readiness assessment for the most widely used Microsoft technologies—now including Office 2010.
What’s new with MAP Toolkit 5.0:
This week at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington D.C. the Release Candidate of SCVMM Self Service Portal has been announced.
VMMSSP (also referred to as the self-service portal) is a fully supported, partner-extensible solution built on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You can use it to pool, allocate, and manage resources to offer infrastructure as a service and to deliver the foundation for a private cloud platform inside your datacenter. VMMSSP includes a pre-built web-based user interface that has sections for both the datacenter managers and the business unit IT consumers, with role-based access control. VMMSSP also includes a dynamic provisioning engine. VMMSSP reduces the time needed to provision infrastructures and their components by offering business unit “on-boarding,” infrastructure request and change management. The VMMSSP package also includes detailed guidance on how to implement VMMSSP inside your environment. Important: VMMSSP is not an upgrade to the existing VMM 2008 R2 self-service portal. You can choose to deploy and use one or both self-service portals depending on your requirements.
The self-service portal provides the following features that are exposed through a web-based user interface:
Hey everyone, I wanted to make you aware of a recent post by Brandon LeBlanc on the trend of x64 architecture and Windows 7. To pull a quote from his blog:
“Are you running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7? There is a high likelihood you are. As of June 2010, we see that 46% of all PCs worldwide running Windows 7 are running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7. That is, nearly half of all PCs running Windows 7 are running 64-bit. Compared to Windows Vista at 3 and a half years after launch, only 11% of PCs running Windows Vista worldwide are running 64-bit. With Windows 7, running a 64-bit OS is becoming the norm.”
Source: Windows Update, June 2010, includes all PC’s attached and all SKU’s
There are a lot of reasons why 64 bit is a good thing. As HW purchases start to trend past 4Gb specs, those 32 bit OS’ aren't going to recognize the additional RAM, wasting investment. While 32bit maxes at 4Gb RAM, 64bit is actually able to go as high as 17.2 billion Gb. Windows 7 is designed to use up to 192Gb RAM (wow I’d love to see that on my desk :) ). For a full comparison of versions see this link.
According to Gartner*, by 2014 75% of all business PCs will be running a 64-bit edition of Windows. Intel recently migrated to 64-bit Windows 7 citing the following on their deployment:
“Our decision to move to 64-bit computing allows us to take advantage of new systems with higher memory capabilities while positioning Intel to take advantage of 64-bit applications as they become available. Moving to this computing model also provides additional security benefits, including Data Execution Prevention (DEP), which helps prevent malicious code exploits by disallowing applications from executing code from a non-executable memory region.”
Hey everyone, I wanted to make you aware of a new Architecture Guide now available for the Azure platform.
How do you build applications to be scalable and have high availability? Along with developing the applications, you must also have an infrastructure that can support them. You may need to add servers or increase the capacities of existing ones, have redundant hardware, add logic to the application to handle distributed computing, and add logic for failovers. You have to do this even if an application is in high demand for only short periods of time.
The cloud offers a solution to this dilemma. The cloud is made up of interconnected servers located in various data centers. However, you see what appears to be a centralized location that someone else hosts and manages. By shifting the responsibility of maintaining an infrastructure to someone else, you're free to concentrate on what matters most: the application, the service.
This guidance released by the Patterns and Practices team is the first volume in a planned series about the Windows® Azure™ platform. It demonstrates how you can adapt an existing, on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that are appropriate for the cloud.