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With Office 2010 out the door more and more people are adding it to their deployment plans. Sean Kearney, aka the Energized Tech, put together this post on how to customize a silent install of Office 2010. Check it out and bookmark the page for when you are tasked with this job :)
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I Learned a neat trick I’d like to share with you all. It’s called “How to do a basic silent install of Office 2010”
This works on Project 2010, Visio 2010 and Office Professional 2010. But the technique is not unique to them. Just the particular commands.
In truth, this is nothing new. You could ALWAYS automate the install of Microsoft Office. If you had a Volume license version, you could setup a copy of the Network (Administrative Install). Your other choice was the Office Customization Utility.
But again, those were targeted to the Volume licenses.
YOU can take advantage of those same techniques, if only to simply the install for your technicians and Customers. Make life simpler.
Shhhhhh… don’t tell. It’s actually quite easy.
First off, if you have the installer that is a Single file executable you’re going to need to produce the Install folder we all know and love. It’s an easy task to pull off.
I cheated.
I typed on the command prompt
en_office_professional_plus_2010_x86_515486.exe /?
and it produced this lovely bit of info!
So I created a little folder on C: called “Office” (Did I mention I’m not very creative with my folder names?) and ran
en_office_professional_plus_2010_x86_515486.exe /extract:C:\Office
Giving me after a few seconds of a progress bar my familiar old friend the install folder. Please note, if you have the DVD, you can just go ahead and copy the Files but presently we Technet/MSDN users have a giant executable
Next you need to create a file at the root of that folder called “Custom.XML”. Now you can get a SAMPLE of it online at Technet’s Config.XML Technical Reference . It’s right near the bottom. But if you look in the mail folder under the root ending .WW like this picture here
 
You’ll find there is copy sitting right inside there. Just to save you some time I found a few things about that file (and why It didn’t work for me the first time)
Lines beginning with “<! -–“ and ending with “ ––>” are comments. Everything in between is just eye Candy until you get rid of the comments.
Don’t just uncomment everything. Doesn’t work. You’ll have a silent install launching and caching data and doing nothing. Well nothing except eat up CPU cycles.
Simplicity is best. Start with some SMALL automating (like the Company Name / User Name) and work your way up. Makes troubleshooting the first time easier.
But here’s what I found, I only needed about 6 lines to make it all work. Best of all? It’s takes NOTHING (I mean NOTHING) to carry that Config.XML file to another Office Product and change it for that Product.
All you need are two pieces of info, The Product Name and the Product Key. One is easy to find, it’s stuck on the box or with the OEM pack. The other is found by looking into that magic .WW folder. Inside there is another .XML file called “SETUP.XML”. Open that with Notepad or your choice of editor for Text Based file and look for the line marked <Setup Id=”ProPlusr” Type (yadda yadda yadda doo dah)
That part between the quotes is your ProductID (Professional Plus Retail, Visio etc)
So with THIS simple XML file (Yes, I’m going to save you the nasty work)
------- Begin Custom.XML ------
<Configuration Product="VisioR">
<Display Level="Basic" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />
<USERNAME Value="MyUserName" />
<COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompanyName" />
<OptionState Id="ProductFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
<PIDKEY Value="AAAAABBBBBCCCCCDDDDDEEEEE" />
</Configuration>
-------- End Custom.XML -------
This is for Visio (as can be seen by the first line
“<Configuration Product=”VisioR”>
This is the line you need to edit for whichever Office Product you are installing
The line marked
<Display Level="Basic" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />
Controls just how much information gets thrown at the user. In this case it’s Basic (Status Bar), No completion Notice with the EULA Accepted and Errors hidden away
These Two fields are pretty self explanatory and no, you don’t need to have them in.
<USERNAME Value="MyUserName" />
<COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompanyName" />
This line marked “OptionState”
<OptionState Id="ProductFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
Will identify the options you’re going to install. You can find several examples of these “OptionID” inside SETUP.XML But I found this one (the Root) the most useful. In a nutshell I have selected “Install ALL of it”. I like to keep this simple.
Of course this is the most important line, the Product Key.
<PIDKEY Value="AAAAABBBBBCCCCCDDDDDEEEEE" />
Replace the part between the quotes with your 25 digit product key WITHOUT the “-“ (Hyphens)
If you choose to NOT have the Product key entered, I recommend changing the “Basic” to “Full” under <Display Level="Basic"
It won’t be a true “silent install” but it’s only Two clicks of a mouse which isn’t bad.
If you’re running an OEM or RETAIL key on the install and WANT a silent install you’ll have to delete the subkeys BELOW this registry key on each workstation to prompt the user for the Key upon startup
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Registration\
That should prompt for a new Key upon startup of Office
But honestly? Look into a Volume License copy of Office and Windows anyhow. There are some great advantages with it (Like the ability to just have ONE deploy point and image and the Office 2010 Customization tool. That Tool can take your Silent deploys to a whole Nudda level!)
But there you have it. Office 2010. East to deploy with just one file.
The Power is in YOU
Sean
The Energized Tech 
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I received the following post from Philip Elder of MPECS Inc, and Edmonton based SBS specialist. As hardware nears its end of life more and more people are starting to migrate their SBS installations to new hardware and in the process moving to SBS 2008 as well. Philip has done a number of migrations and has some thoughts to share. ------------------------------ Now that we have been into a number of different SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migrations, it is perhaps a good time to share some thoughts on those experiences. The first thought that comes to mind is that the Microsoft method for migrating is not an easy one. But, it goes without saying that any migration process is not easy. We are talking about taking a very complicated piece of software in Small Business Server 2003 that has since had third party applications installed on it, updates, patches, and service packs installed on it, and then any number of customizations to meet the client’s particular needs and moving the entire domain and the server’s contents over to a new box running Small Business Server 2008. There are two reasons why we dove into the Microsoft method: - An oncoming migration was well before Jeff’s new methodology was going to be ready.
- Constanza Zalba sent an invitation to present on migrations since we were running through trials to figure out the Microsoft method.
The greater the number of migrations that we have run through, the better prepared we have become for jumping into any migration request. The second thought that comes to mind is that there was a huge difference between migrating an existing client’s SBS network that we have been a part of since day one and a new client whose network we have never touched. In the former case, we are aware of everything that is running on the server and clients and how they all work together to provide our clients with the best possible user experience. In the latter, there can be any number of things that come together to cause a hiccup in the migration process that can be worked through. There are times though, where those things can bring about a complete melt down of the process. Even worse, when we are starting out at ground zero with a new client and did not get enough time to scope the source server completely we may get the, “Where is my Line of Business application?” question that may really throw us for a loop after the source server has been completely decommissioned and taken offline. At that point the, “But you did not tell me about that LoB when we were in discussions about the migration” excuse will not work. Having a good fallback plan and an excellent image based backup of the source server before being touched and at each stage of the migration process will pay off. A good System State before being touched is an excellent way to step back if things choke before the mailbox move step. And therein lies the two keys to having successful SBS Migrations: - Planning, a good backup, more planning, and a thorough questionnaire for the client.
- Experience.
The first gives us as much information in as short amount of time as possible. The second prepares us to deal with the messes left by other folks that did not really understand how Small Business Server was supposed to be set up, configured, and managed. Between the two we can be pretty confident about quoting out a set price on the migration and coming away with a fairly accurate or better margin on the deal. Always remember the Star Trek engineer’s rule of thumb: Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
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I was chatting with Brian Bourne from CMS Consulting in Toronto about some Hyper-V R2 work that they have done recently. In the conversation Brian shared a ton of learning's from the field on some of the Hyper-V R2 upgrades, deployments and V2V/P2V migrations. I asked him to write up a post and he did, so much so that I had to split it into two posts. You can find Part 1 here! ------------------------- The release of R2 has been a major step forward for Microsoft’s virtualization strategy. It has also meant a rise in customer interest and willingness to move their data center and production servers on to the platform. Here at CMS Consulting, we’ve been offering both training and consulting services to help customers through the process. Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way. Virtual to Virtual (V2V) Migrations In theory, this should be easy as pie right? The machine is already virtualized. How hard can a conversion be? Once again think about cloning to new hardware. For Virtual Server or VMWare to Hyper-V migrations, it truly appears as a completely new hardware platform to the operating system. This leads us to a few tips I’d like to add to the standard documentation. - Cleanly shutdown the virtual machine, merge snapshots if they exist. - After migration, logon to ensure the Hyper-V integration components are installed and working. VMM may think its ok, but it may not be. More tips on this below. - If you are migrating offline or inactive virtual machines, remember they do get started as part of the migration process. This means you better think about the consequences of having that machine come online and what network its virtually “plugged in to” when it does. Overall V2V migrations from Virtual Server and Hyper-V do go smoothly, but realize that the machine will be stopped and offline for the duration of the migration. Online migration is not a listed option. Data copy and fix-up time will determine the outage duration. Also, plan additional outage time so you can manually clean up and test the server. You may wish to have a strategy to block user access to services until you’re confident you want to introduce the server back into the environment. If you want to do a migration “online” you will need to treat the VM as if it was a physical machine and follow the steps for P2V online migration. In fact, my team has used this strategy a number of times for migrating difficult VMWare virtual machines. Success when migrating a VMWare source varies widely based on ESX version, complexity of “hardware” configuration under ESX and other environmental factors. Sometimes treating the source as a P2V really is the best option. Physical to Virtual What I find odd about the VMM wizard for physical machine migrations is that it assumes you want to do an online migration and actually hides the tab for offline options from plain sight. Sure, I trust VSS enough for backups – but if I’m going to take a production server and virtualize it, I’d like the data to be as stable and consistent as possible. So for my money, I do an offline P2V if at all feasible. There are a few scenarios where you might forego an offline migration. Here are some scenarios where I would do an online P2V: - You just want a copy of the server for testing or giggles, so data consistency doesn’t matter - You truly can’t afford the server outage while data copies - You have a source server with less than 512MB. (I recently had to migrate an old server with 448MB - online worked but offline won’t even start.) - Finding drivers for WinPE to boot on some old hardware appears to be more effort than it’s worth. I’d like to also suggest than when you’re looking at doing a P2V you also consider the “build fresh” strategy. This could be your opportunity to upgrade to Server 2008 R2 as the operating system and consolidated roles and services. There are two reasons to do this. First is to take advantage of the new features and increased performance of R2. Perhaps more importantly is to reduce the number of overall machines in your environment. I don’t mean physical machines here. I mean machines you have to license, patch, monitor and otherwise manage. If you can consolidate roles and services to a single VM then now is a good time to do it. Let’s not forget that fewer VM’s also means a reduction in hardware requirements and those ever-important spindle counts. I also want to talk about P2V of non-domain machines. If you read the documentation on Technet, it very clearly states that the source machine needs to be either a member of the domain or there must be a domain trust. I have found this to be categorically untrue. I’ve had no issue doing P2V with both workgroup and isolated domain machines (including the DC of an “isolated” domain). The trick was to make sure the source machine had connectivity with both the VMM server and the target Hyper-V host. Once that was sorted out, I simply entered the appropriate machine credentials in VMM and everything worked fine. In theory you could also use the SysInternals Disk2VHD utility. This tool is designed for online use only. Although I previously recommended against online migrations, I started thinking about using Disk2VHD while booted to an alternate OS. We did some basic testing and found it won’t run under WinPE. In theory you could cobble together a full Win7 boot from USB and make it work. If we ever get around to that, we’ll post the results. In all cases so far, it’s easier to move everything on to a temporary network switch, P2V and then move back to the appropriate networks. Before attempting a P2V, try to get the source machine “as clean as possible”. Ensure the source meets the requirements for free space and service pack levels, run a checkdisk and defrag on all partitions and remove unused programs and drivers. You will also want to remove hardware-vendor specific management tools. If you are doing a P2V migration against a virtual machine, be sure to remove VMWare tools, or the Microsoft Integration components. Stop all non essential services and applications. If you find that the P2V task is failing in the SCVMM scan, then start by looking at what security products you have installed. The P2V agent is installed at the time you click “scan system”. I have had it hang with no errors on either the SCVMM server or the source physical machine. In my case, the VMMInstallDetector service was hanging, and the culprit turned out to be the anti-virus product on the server. You can try to manually run the agent installation from “\\vmmservername\c$\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2\agents\p2v\” if you’d like a closer look at what’s happening. Here’s one last thought on P2V. I always choose the option to shutdown the physical machine after conversion. I don’t want the machine restarted. As soon as it restarts, I know my virtual machine and physical machine are no longer the same and who knows what might change, update or replicate when the physical machine starts. So I want to make sure it stays offline and the machine continues its new life as a virtual machine. There’s one catch. This strategy will result in the overall conversion job ending in a warning state with error 458. The warning essentially tells you that because the machine shutdown, the VMM agent didn’t get removed. If for some reason you decide to bring the machine back online – remember to manually remove it.
Some Hints for All Migration Scenarios. There are a few things that SCVMM “fix up” doesn’t consider that you will need to. - Windows will need activation again. Just like when you clone a machine and there’s a substantial hardware change – a VM migrate will trigger re-activation. - Personally, I’m fussy about my machines looking for hardware that doesn’t exist. It just slows down boot time and I believe, overall machine stability. If you follow the instructions in KB241257 you’ll be able to see all the phantom devices in device manager on all versions of Windows (not just 2000 as the KB suggests). Delete these non-present devices. - Near every physical machine I’ve ever converted starts with an ominous “Service Failed to Start” message. A quick look at the event viewer shows EventID 700 –The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error”… the quickest way to make this problem go away is to change HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Parport\Start from a value of 3 to a value of 4. - Various other products might complain, thinking they’ve been moved, so you should test everything. A perfect example is a terminal services licensing server will need activation again. If you don’t think to look at this, then 90 days from now you can expect user calls. - On the odd occasion, when migrating 2008 servers the HAL may not get switched when it is supposed to be. The symptom isn’t obvious. Integration components will appear to be fine. You’ll run and re-run integration services setup and it will install successful but simply not work. This means no mouse control in the virtual machine which will add to your frustration if you are using remote desktop to connect to the VMM server or Hyper-V Manager. Here’s the trick. On the VM open the system configuration utility (MSConfig.exe). Click the Boot tab, and then click Advanced options. Select the Detect HAL check box, click OK, and then restart the virtual machine. You’ll find that your integration services will now magically start working. - Time synchronization is a funny thing. It’s ok to have VM’s sync time with the host, if the host syncs with a domain controller (PDC emulator) but if you’ve gone and virtualized your PDC emulator you’ll be in for an entertaining circle of lost time. Don’t have your PDC emulator syncing time with the host. (See reference links below). Conclusion I’d suggest that if you were hoping to point a wizard at your server VLAN, cross your fingers and click “Next, Next, Finish” – then you’re probably going to be disappointed. The migration to Hyper-V needs to be approached with the same planning and consideration you would give to any server refresh or move. With a cautious approach and a maintenance window that will allow for testing and troubleshooting time, you will be ensured success.
Additional Resources: Deployment Considerations for Virtualized Domain Controllers Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments Microsoft Virtualization Solution Accelerators Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog The System Center Virtual Machine Manager Team Blog 
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I was chatting with Brian Bourne from CMS Consulting in Toronto about some Hyper-V R2 work that they have done recently. In the conversation Brian shared a ton of learning's from the field on some of the Hyper-V R2 upgrades, deployments and V2V/P2V migrations. I asked him to write up a post and he did, so much so that I had to split it into two posts. ------------------------- The release of R2 has been a major step forward for Microsoft’s virtualization strategy. It has also meant a rise in customer interest and willingness to move their data center and production servers on to the platform. Here at CMS Consulting, we’ve been offering both training and consulting services to help customers through the process. Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way.
General Planning When you plan to move to Hyper-V, the source machine is going to be one of the following: · Virtual machine running on VMWare · Virtual machine running on Virtual Server · Virtual machine running on Hyper-V 2008 (R1) · Physical machine on domain · Physical machine off domain If you are unsure where to start, then I strongly recommend you start by running the MAP tool and using the Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation. A key part of your migration success will be ensuring that the virtual machines perform as well or better than their physical source machines. This exercise in performance counter gathering and capacity planning is where the MAP tool can really assist you. This entire article assumes you will be using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to do your migration. Ideally you would own both SCVMM and System Center Operations Manager so that you can take advantage of advanced performance and resource optimization (PRO) and reporting. But here’s a tip. You can download a 180-day evaluation copy of SCVMM (the last one I downloaded showed 365 days left in the eval). The evaluation copy doesn’t appear to be crippled in any way and can be used for your migration. Here are a few high level tips on migrating to a Hyper-V based virtual environment. Actually, it all really boils down to one thought that you have to stick in the front of your brain. “I’m cloning to new hardware”. If you think about cloning to new hardware and the various challenges that brings, you’ll be able to predict most of the failures and gotchya’s. Upgrading from Hyper-V 2008 to 2008 R2 Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t already have Hyper-V. If you have an existing Hyper-V environment, then you’ll likely want to upgrade it in-place. Performance benefits alone should compel you. The in-place upgrade generally goes smoothly. During the compatibility check portion of the installation you’ll be warned to remove the Hyper-V role from the server and directed to KB957256. Here’s the deal. Just make sure all the VM’s are cleanly shut down and that no snapshots are left behind before you start the upgrade. If you do this, you can safely ignore the warning and proceed with an in-place upgrade. For the most part, the process is then fairly obvious with one exception. The network adapters often end up mucked up. This could mean IP addresses missing or assigned to the wrong adapter. Be sure to be physically present for the upgrade. In my experience, this seems to happen consistently when you have allowed the management operating system to share the adapter. Be careful when you “fix” this since it can be a little confusing as to which adapters are real and which ones are virtual on the host machine. The next blog post will cover the migration aspects and look at some best practices for virtual to virtual (V2V) and physical to virtual (P2V) migrations. Deployment Considerations for Virtualized Domain Controllers Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments Microsoft Virtualization Solution Accelerators Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog The System Center Virtual Machine Manager Team Blog 
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 Exchange 2010 has been released and available for a few weeks now and a lot of people are looking to deploy. I was chatting with Brian Bourne, President of CMS Consulting, and his team has compiled a list of gotchas, things to look out for, as well as resources for you to be aware of when planning and Exchange 2010 deployment and/or upgrade.
------------------------------ Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was released in early November of this year with a lot of positive reviews. One of the biggest deployment blockers for some customers has been RIM’s lack of a compatible and supported version of BES for Exchange 2010. Thankfully, RIM recently announced a new version of its popular BES software that has full support for Exchange 2010. While this is fantastic news from RIM, there are some other deployment “Gotchas” to consider. Client Support Outlook XP is no longer a supported version with Exchange 2010. Customers will need to factor in an Office refresh into their deployment plans. Another interesting twist is that Microsoft has deprecated the WEBDav API from Exchange 2010. While this may not seem that important at first glance, Microsoft’s client for the MAC, “Entourage”, has leveraged this API over MAPI for several years. Developers have been urged to rewrite WEBDav applications using Microsoft’s latest Exchange API - Exchange Web Services – for some time. And that is exactly what Microsoft has done for the Entourage client. Entourage 2008, Web Services Edition was released in August of this year. Another important note from the client perspective, is that Exchange 2010 requires RPC encryption to be enabled in Outlook. RPC encryption in Outlook 2007 is enabled by default. But what about Outlook 2003? As you guessed, it is disabled by default. If you migrate mailboxes to Exchange 2010 and RPC encryption is disabled in Outlook, Outlook simply will not be able to connect. Fortunately there are a couple of simple fixes. Firstly, you can disable the requirement for RPC encryption on the Exchange server, or simply deploy a GPO that enforces this setting in Outlook. My recommendation is to deploy a GPO and enjoy the benefits of secure messaging. Backup Support The streaming backup API in Exchange 2010 has been deprecated. The only backup API available for Exchange 2010 is VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service). What this means is that customers will need to upgrade to a VSS aware backup application. That is not the only requirement though. The backup application must also be Exchange 2010 aware and should have full support from your backup vendor. Microsoft DPM 2007 (Data Protection Manager) is a VSS based backup application, but DPM 2007 does not support Exchange 2010. DPM 2010 (currently in Beta) has support for Exchange 2010, but the question becomes, do you want to back up your critical messaging data with Beta software? There are backup vendors that have support for Exchange 2010 today. Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 is one notable example. Check with your current backup vendor to ensure support and compatibility. Fax Support Inbound FAX capability is available in Exchange 2007 if you have the Unified Messaging role deployed. If you are using this capability in Exchange 2007, you must look for a 3rd party solution for Exchange 2010. Inbound FAX has been deprecated from Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 will still detect a fax tone and will simply hand off the call to the 3rd party fax application. Other 3rd Party Applications 3rd party applications (or custom in-house applications) that integrate with Exchange should be tested for compatibility and have full support by the application vendor. Take an inventory of these applications and consult with the appropriate application vendors. There have been several APIs deprecated from Exchange 2010, so this step is critically important. Any application written to one of these APIs will simply break in Exchange 2010. The list of deprecated APIs includes a) ExOLEDB, b) WebDAV, c) CDOEx and d) Store Events Some 3rd party vendors are ahead of the curve and have support for Exchange 2010 today. Mimosa, a 3rd party archiving vendor, has support for Exchange 2010 with its NearPoint product. NetApp has updated its SnapManager for Exchange to support Exchange 2010. The list of products goes on, but check with your vendors to ensure there are no other deployment blockers. References Proper planning is vital to a successful Exchange 2010 deployment. Please reference the following links for helpful planning guidance. General Planning Guidance Exchange 2010 Backup RIM Announcement 
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Hello folks, In December I had written a little piece regarding Todd Lamothe, the system administrator for the County of Lennox and Addington, and his deployment of Windows 2008. Well, he’s been driving hard to bring more value and order in his environment. His latest project involves the migration of a lot of statistical information from a manual Excel based process to a SQL 2008 system that will allow him to save time and money all the while providing a lot more value than the system he is using now. All libraries in the County of Lennox and Addington provide their stats to the Information Services office in the form of a text file that is dumped from their terminals. Let me tell you that from what I understand from Todd, that’s not a fun process. He takes the info and re-enters it in an Excel spreadsheet for each library and links it to a “roll-up” master spreadsheet that get distributed to management. The goals of this project were to: - Create a single database server that will be used for collecting all statistics and eventually to provide BI tools and analysis.
- Simplify the reporting and allow for easier queries
- Eliminate the manual Data entry
- Enable historical analysis
- Provide a dashboard environment for management.
His current environment does not allow for historical data past 18 months, which becomes an issue when trying to establish trends year over year. When I asked him what were are the challenges faced by Todd? He replied that the stats are in is responsibility because of the “data entry” function and that the manual process did not leave him much time to address other issues. Also, the current system was not granular enough to provide detailed analysis. Furthermore, the old system did not produce the historical data he needs for his planning exercise. To remedy that situation he rolled out SQL 2008 with the following technologies: - Data transformation services, In order to convert and import the data from the text file generated by the library systems
- Dashboard & Reporting services, for management and real time stats
On top of the benefits he will gain by eliminating the manual processes he will also use the SQL server to host a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit database that will give him the options of automating the deployment of customized workstations throughout the environment based on roles and location. Talk about flexibility…. Here are some details of his implementation. - SQL is running in a Hyper-V environment.
- The SQL Server installation was very straight forward since he had nothing to start with.
- 3 things (.Net Framework, XML, Management tools) did not install properly the first times, but were easily fixed by re-installing those parts (unknown if this was an interface problem between the chair and the keyboard)
Now that the server is up, the DTS process is being tweaked, and he expect the whole solution to be running very soon. WOW! How about that? This is a prime example of the business needs dictating the IT innovations. If you have stories like this one, feel free to contact me and we can tell others, and hopefully, we can inspire other to do the things that brings them value and success. Cheers.  
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Hello folks, Todd Lamothe, the system administrator for the County of Lennox and Addington was in town a few weeks ago to present at TechDays and we started to talk about fun, and cool stuff he’s been doing. Well let me tell you, he’s been busy. He told me that he upgraded his entire forest to Windows 2008. He’s now running AD in 2008 native mode and is also taking advantage of a lot of the new features and capabilities. I asked him what was the underlying goal for upgrading to Windows 2008 the day it went RTM (he did all his testing and planning using Beta code. talk about bleeding edge) his reply was “I want to include the windows 2008 feature set in my environment. I’m a one man shop and I cover a very large area. so any tools, features or capabilities that can make my life easier is welcomed” Here is a map of the locations Todd is responsible for: (click on it for more details) 
The network supports and Exchange 2007, and about 100 workstations scattered throughout the libraries. But the problem is that other than the 30 staff members that work in those libraries that are over 12,000 users of this network. (library members) Todd’s challenges were mainly the maintenance of those desktops in libraries across the county. This was originally done by getting in a car and driving to all locations. not something he liked doing especially when you have to drive through blizzards like we have had lately. Here are some of the changes that Todd has now implemented: - Change Desktop icons on Kiosk machines and add local content by using GPO and Preferences.
- Eliminated the complex Logon script thus shortening the logon process
- Established different security policies per OU
- Implemented folder redirection to enable roaming users to access their files anywhere on the network.
- Implemented WDS – WDS and Multicast support allows him to deploy single MDT images to the library desktops and kiosk in a multicast scenario.
Todd also told me that because of the size of his environment the Migration from Windows 2003 AD to Windows 2008 was virtually painless. All he had to do after taking a good backup was to: - Extended the schema
- Perform an in-place upgrade of one of the 2003 DCs to Windows 2008
- After verification of the success of the upgrade he upgraded all the other DCs sequentially.
- When all the DC’s were converted to 2008 he switched the domain and forest functional levels to Native.
And now after 10 months of operations…. all is well. no issues. What is the environment like for the IT staff now? So I asked him, How has the change affected your IT staff? he replied: “I put on some weight because I don’t move as much anymore…. And my car does not need as much maintenance. but other than that, it’s been rock solid.” when I asked him what had been the impact on the users? “They have not noticed a thing. Other then that I’m not around as much anymore… 2008 makes the management of the environment a lot easier and there will be saving in time and money.... Witch translates into saving my own neck. “ he replied I know Todd is planning his next move….. I’ll be sure to let you know how it unfolds. Cheers 
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 | | Louis-Philippe Gauthier (Sherbrooke, Quebec) | We’ve all been there, boss calls you in at the last minute for your input on a project that has been brewing for months but all of a sudden needs to be implemented ASAP. Louis-Philippe from Centre d’élaboration des moyens d’enseignement du Québec (CEMEQ) had such an experience and used Hyper-V to save his weekend :) ------------------------- The following takes place between 3:30pm and 4:15pm… 3:30 PM I get back from a meeting have a note on my desk saying to go see accounting regarding something, no real details. So since this is a pay week no reason to delay going there and asking what's up. 3:32 PM Arrive at the Accounting office. I am told that they have a consultant showing up tomorrow to install licenses of the accounting software on the terminal server. No problem except we don't have a terminal server. Now here is a quote that every IT Pro really enjoys hearing "I think I should've told you a little earlier". Rewind a couple of months and it is true that I mentioned in a casual talk that a terminal server would be a pretty good solution that we should try out for the accounting software. Somewhere in between the decision was made and IT wasn’t notified :( 3:36 PM Arrive back in IT. Time to get cracking! I start by firing up Hyper-V Manager to create a VM and start to install Windows Server 2008 in the VM. While this goes on I have time to write this blog post and go over our Hyper-V setup. Hyper-V is just like any other role that you can install on Windows 2008 x64 editions. Install the OS, install all the Windows updates (one of which is Hyper-V RTM), reboot and we are ready to go! As an FYI Windows Server 2008 x64 SP2 will include the RTM version of Hyper-V. There are very few hardware requirements but they are important to know… - x64 version of Windows Server 2008
- x64 capable CPU with Hardware Assisted Virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V)
- BIOS that supports Hardware Assisted Virtualization and has it enabled (most BIOS it is disabled by default)
- BIOS that supports Data Execution Prevention and has it enabled
In my case I have an HP Proliant DL180G5 (Dual Socket Quad 2.83GHz Xeon with 12GB of RAM and 4TB of direct-attached drives in a RAID 0+1 setup) ready for the task. 3:45 PM With the OS install done and network connectivity configured I update the VM with the Integration Components, Windows updates and it’s ready to install roles. Since this is going to be a terminal server and I want to use the Remote Applications feature as well as TSWeb Applications I need to install the following roles… - IIS7
- Terminal Server
- TSWeb Access (this will automatically select and install the required IIS7 components)
- TS Licensing
4:00 PM The installation of the roles is complete and one last check on Windows Updates to ensure all is still up to date and we are golden! In 15 minutes (give or take) I had a working installation of Windows 2008. Another 15 minutes gave me a fully updated Windows with TS and IIS roles ready to go. Just in time for me to pack up my stuff and head home for the weekend! So the Accounting department was happy, I was happy and so was my boss. Nothing beats a happy boss! No additional hardware was required, no additional cooling was required and no additional power was required! If you have 2003 R2 or 2008 Enterprise you don’t even need additional licenses as it includes four virtual licenses (Datacenter includes unlimited licenses). Louis-Philippe ------------------------- Great example of the power of Hyper-V. I thought I’d add a few notes at the end with some additional information. Heroes Happen Here Lab Guide with Terminal Services Demos and Videos Windows Server Virtualization Licensing Calculators Hyper-V Getting Started Guide (Download Link) 
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If you read part 1 of this blog post you are aware that a SBS 2003 R2 Server was deployed and the next step was to deploy a terminal server to host the Jonas Construction Software. While Synergenics did design a very suitable server to run terminal services there was room for improvement. During initial conversations with Jeff he had mentioned that he might like to expand employee usage of Blackberry, he is currently the only user with a mobile device, as well as a few other ideas. I also suggested that even in an SBS environment a second DC is always a good idea and since they have SBS 2003 R2 Premium, once they upgrade to SBS 2008 Premium they will be licensed for another server as well.
With all this in mind I suggested that they upgrade the server designed to be the terminal server to a dual Quad-Core (from a single) and upgrade to 16GB of RAM (from 4GB) and install Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition rather than Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. This would still allow for a virtual 2003 terminal server, as well as support the other ideas floated by Jeff and myself. With Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, Allerion would be licensed for an additional 4 virtual machines running on the host. That is enough to provide the terminal server, the BES server, and a secondary domain controller while leaving one more virtual license for another use if required plus the additional SBS 2008 Premium license once they perform that upgrade.
They now had the resources both licensing wise as well as physical resources wide to implement all the suggestions over time without additional purchases. It also gave Synergenics the required resources to support the migration to SBS 2008. SBS 2008 is x64 only and because of this there is no in-place upgrade from SBS 2003. In a nutshell you need to a) install a new x64 server and use the migration tools to move to the new server or b) do a swing migration to a virtual SBS 2003 server and then repurpose the original physical server for SBS 2008 and use the migration tools to migrate from the virtual SBS 2003 server to the new SBS 2008 physical server. With the server spec’d as is it has the resources to do so.
So after Synergenics built the server and installed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition it was time to design the virtual infrastructure, install a virtual machine and take some of the staff at Synergenics on a Hyper-V crash course.
The specs of the Hyper-V server are as follows
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Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.4GHZ
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16GB ECC DDR2 RAM
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4 Western Digital 146GB 10K hard disks
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3Ware 9650SE PCI-X SATA Raid controller
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RAID 10 array (292GB)
The basic install of the server went very smoothly AFTER they found an issue with the 3Ware card. It was easy enough to resolve but it was a deployment blocker for the first try. There is a firmware update for the 9650SE if you are installing it in an x64 OS. You need to upgrade to firmware release 9.5.1 as well as use the latest driver for Windows Server 2008 x64 based systems. With that complete the initial configuration tasks are completed and the machine is joined to the domain the system setup can begin. Hyper-V RTM is provided via a hot fix that appears when you update the server for the first time. You will see an update for KB 950050 under optional updates and this is Hyper-V. After getting the system up to date I had the crew from Synergenics go through the Add Role wizard and install the Hyper-V role. One more reboot and they were ready to go!
There wasn’t a lot of configuration to do on the Hyper-V portion. Since all virtual machines will be on the Allerion internal network they created an External Network within Hyper-V and bound it to the physical machines NIC. All virtual machines will be connected to that network and get connectivity that way.
They redirected the location of the virtual hard disk directory and the virtual machine directory. The drive array was split into a 60GB partition for the OS and services and the rest was partitioned with the remaining drive space. Both the virtual hard disk and virtual machine directories were place on the data partition. This was done as an additional disaster recovery option. If something were to happen to the OS installed on the C: partition, that partition could be formatted and reinstalled without worry of affecting the data on the D: partition.
At that point they were able to install the first virtual machine but first another road block. Before we started setting up the first virtual machine I gave the two Synergenics IT pros a quick run through of Hyper-V. How to create a virtual machine, a virtual hard disk, how to inspect and edit the disks, manage virtual machine system settings, mount ISOs, CD drives etc… They have used Virtual Server 2005 in the past and were quite familiar with it and the terminology and got the hang of things quickly. During this process however we noticed some strangeness.
Virtual machines would start and then error out. We could create VMs, but they wouldn’t delete properly. Errors would appear when exporting a VM, and when we tried to apply changes to virtual machine settings sometimes it would work and sometimes it would error out or revert back to the original settings. All very odd and I was scratching my head. The culprit? Trend Micro Server Anti-virus. Now there is nothing wrong with the product and I have had plenty of success with it in my years before joining Microsoft (and even afterwards until I got a free copy of OneCare) but all these issues occurred after the automated group policy install. Then it dawned on me, exclusions.
Virtual machines consist of a number of files. VHD for the virtual hard disk, VSV for a running VMs state, XML configuration files etc… They are all files and when you open a file the AV’s real time scan kicks in. That is how AV applications work and the same would happen with any AV. The cure was to exclude the two directories we created to hold the VHD and VM config files. Once those exclusions were added, the weird behaviour was gone and we could continue with the deployment of the virtual terminal server.
After creating a virtual machine (dual core, 4GB with a 60GB dynamically expanding disk) we mounted the ISO and started the Windows Server 2003 install. At this point I left Allerion in the capable hands of Synergenics who are now managing their first Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V host. It has been a week so far and neither Jeff nor Synergenics has emailed or called. The deployment continues, Jeff is happy to see his needs being met and the crew at Synergenics is doing what they do, serving their customers needs while learning a little on the job.
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With all the announcements, release of new products and technologies and changing business needs it is hard to keep up. VMWare releases a free version of ESX, Hyper-V is released, Hyper-V Server is announced and will be available shortly, Small Business Server 2008 hits the RTM stage etc... How does one keep up? How does one decide? Deploy now or wait? How does one get the skills to deploy and manage? All tough questions that recently faced by Allerion Oilfield Services located in Guelph, Ontario. Allerion recently moved to a new building in Guelph and at the same time decided an infrastructure update was in order. No time like construction time to ensure all the required components were in place to support the planned infrastructure. If you have ever run CAT5 you know how much easier it is to do BEFORE the drywall goes up :) Jeff Heath, the owner of Allerion, realized the upside that a proper IT infrastructure could provide but Jeff is a business guy who has spent his career managing businesses and while he is a gadget guy when it comes to the systems required to run his business more efficiently he knows it is time to call in the professionals. Jeff knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted a secure, reliable infrastructure that would provide the services required to host his business critical applications that are used in the office, on the road and at a remote site in Sarnia. He also knew that he wanted to use Jonas Construction Software as his line of business tool. What he didn’t know was Small Business Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Terminal Services, Hyper-V or how that would equate to what he wanted. Enter the professionals, namely Synergenics. Synergenics is a Guelph based solution provider that faces the same challenges as any other. How to keep up to date on the latest technologies while still providing service to its clients. Sure they could send people to training course after training course to keep up, but as anyone who has worked, or is working for a solution provider you make your money out in the field, not the classroom. They keep up as best as they can, taking a training course when they can, updating certifications when necessary all while keeping their customers up and running. This situation looked like an ideal one for me to help. By combining our efforts; Jeff, Bob from Synergenics and myself were able to design a solution that met the needs of the business, that was ready to support future technologies and even included some of the latest and greatest technology available along with some on the job training to get a few of the guys at Synergenics familiar with Hyper-V. This is a quick graphic of what we designed. 
The core of the system is based around Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2. This is a tried and tested system that was a perfect choice for Allerion. It provided the SQL database for the Jonas software, as well as email services, centralized management and security. After speaking with Jeff and Bob we also decided to purchase Software Assurance with SBS 2003 R2 as SBS 2008 was around the corner. This gave them the option to upgrade to SBS 2008 when the time was right whether that is next month or next year. Bob and the staff at Allerion are well versed in SBS 2003 R2 and were quick to design, build and deploy the SBS sever into the new Allerion offices. The Jonas Construction Software is a construction management solution that utilizes a SQL back end. Users access the application via a remote terminal session. This naturally led to the implementation of a Windows Terminal Server. Given the requirement to access the application from with the office in Guelph, the remote office in Sarnia, a hotel in UAE or an oilfield in Northern Alberta this made sense and was a no brainer decision. Again Bob and the Synergenics staff was on top of things designing a server to run Terminal Services. But it didn’t end there. You probably noticed that one of the servers was running Hyper-V. We’ll go into that in part 2 of this blog post! 
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This is part two of a two part discussion of technology in use at a local school board here in the Ottawa region. As I mentioned in the previous post - I love discovering how technology is being used to help support the delivery of education. While I was at a virtualization conference put on by IDC a while back, I met James Proulx, Director of IT at the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (OCDSBEO). He suggested that I stop by to see what the CDSBEO is doing to simplify their environment and speed up the deployment of applications to their HighSchools and administrative staff. At our first meeting, I met with his team and we talked about what their plans were for the coming year and what they were doing to simplify application deployment and start exploring server consolidation. That was back in September 2007. I was in touch on an off throughout the year and finally made it back to see how their year had gone. I stopped by for a coffee to talk a couple of weeks ago and met with Ken Konick, James Vandine and Brian Whalen - three systems analysts with the board. This time - we focused in on their use of x64 Virtual Server 2005 R2 for consolidation, System Centre Virtual Machine Manager for management and Windows Server 2008 x64 (both full and core installs) as Hyper-V server virtualization solutions. PLEASE NOTE: as stated in the podcast - Hyper-V is still pre-release and is supported on a best effort basis until it is final LATER THIS SUMMER. Don't worry I told them that part.... At the time of recording - they were not aware that SC-VMM V2 was in Beta and that they could manage ALL their host systems with one console - let's just say they started downloading when I headed out back to Ottawa. :) Have a listen - you can download the short 15 minute podcast here. 
Team Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
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Jean-Philippe Breton is the Infrastructure and Desktop Deployment Team Leader for Alphamosaik, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He and his team recently lead a 10,000 seat deployment of Vista with SP1 for a major Canadian transportation company with offices around the globe. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jean-Philippe about how tools like the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit simplified the deployment and some things learned along the way.
Jean-Philippe on Vista deployment
Be sure to check out http://edge.technet.com for more videos like this as well as much more! 
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This is part one of a two part discussion of technology in use at a local school board here in the Ottawa region. Being a father with one of three children in the school system and two more about to join in, I am always curious as to how technology is used to help delivery quality education. While I was at a virtualization conference put on by IDC a while back, I met James Proulx, Director of IT at the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (OCDSBEO). He suggested that I stop by to see what the CDSBEO is doing to simplify their environment and speed up the deployment of applications to their HighSchools and administrative staff. At our first meeting, I met with his team and we talked about what their plans were for the coming year and what they were doing to simplify application deployment and start exploring server consolidation. That was back in September 2007. I was in touch on an off throughout the year and finally made it back to see how their year had gone. I stopped by for a coffee to talk a couple of weeks ago and met with Ken Konick, James Vandine and Brian Whalen - three systems analysts with the board. We talked about how they are using SoftGrid as one of their virtualization solutions. Some of their challenges include 45 different locations, constrained resources at the client (Windows XP clients with P3 / P4 processors, 512 MB of RAM) all running in their initial pilot of 125 PCs. Add on top of that - keeping configurations of the systems locked down as much as possible to keep prying eyes out of areas they shouldn't be. My ah-ha moment? They can now complete sequencing an application for a principal and deploy it in less than a day where before it would take months due to locked down and frozen images as well as workstation complexity. In part two we'll explore their use of consolidation vitrualization technologies, how they manage them today and their plans for managing them tomorrow. Have a listen - you can download the short 15 minute podcast here.
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Will Craddock is the president of the Regina IT Professionals group and is part of the IT team at SaskEnergy. SaskEnergy is Saskatchewan's natural gas distribution company, a provincial Crown corporation with roots of more than half a century in Saskatchewan. About 8 months ago Will mentioned the SharePoint 2007 deployment they we planning and I got him registered with the IT Pro Momentum program which is a program aimed at supporting early adopters. Recently I asked Will how the project was going and he said SharePoint had been deployed and agreed to share the experience. ------------------------------ How is SaskEnergy using MOSS 2007? We are using MOSS as a presentation layer for our internal communications with employees at this time. Our first utilization of the product was to build a proof of concept application to collect employee’s time, attendance, expense, and mileage information for a specific pay period and interact with our ERP (JD Edwards Enterprise One) in the collecting, displaying and posting of this information. This POC was done as part of the Momentum program for early adopters at Microsoft. After successfully building this POC, utilizing custom web services to interact with JDE, we moved on to investigating production solutions that fit the SharePoint development path. Our intranet is now being redesigned and will be deployed in small pieces over the next couple of years based on MOSS. This allows us to take advantage of the content management, document management and workflows native to MOSS 2007 to enhance the user experience. Our first production solution based on MOSS was deployed in December; it took student applications submitted from our external facing website via a form and through a SharePoint timer process, grabs them and moves them to SharePoint for internal review. Here is a brief view of what we accomplished: - Created an ASP.NET application to accept new student applications.
- Created a WCF JobApplication service using the Web Services Software Factory that:
- Accepts new job applications and stores them into a SQLServer 2005 database
- Returns all job applications that have been submitted as of a certain date/time. The reason for having an intermediate SQLServer is due to a one-way-trust relationship between the web domain and internal corporate domain
- Created a MOSS job applicant document library within a Human Resources portal complete with custom views so that staffing advisors can quickly discover eligible job applicants, and organize applications by experience level, interest, and diversity candidates.
- Created custom content type for the job application library.
- Created a MOSS timer job that requests job application data from the JobApplication service and stores the data in the document library.
- Created a WCF service proxy used by both the ASP.NET and MOSS timer job further providing reuse between tiers.
- Used Enterprise Services security and logging code blocks in the WCF service, ASP.NET, and MOSS applications.
- Created a MOSS solution package to easily deploy the portal, library and timer job to dev, test, and production. This was key, especially during testing when there were a lot of changes taking place.
- Use MSF4ASD and Visual Studio Team System 2005 and MS Project 2007 as the philosophy and toolsets for running the project.
This was the first time SaskEnergy deployed all of these technologies into production. Elapsed time took about 2 months. I'd guess that if we were to condense all of the development and testing time, we'd be able to say that a team of 3 guys took 3 weeks. Not bad considering we also had to come up with a bunch of our development process and toolsets. The XML data architecture, service layer, and MOSS pieces will be easily reused as HR expands their need from student job applications to general job applications. The driving approach to the design was trying to keep as much SOA thinking as possible. There's not a way we could have created this solution in that time frame with our 'old' toolsets - not even close. What was the driving force (technically) for deploying MOSS 2007? The driving force for us technically is the quickness to delivery SharePoint provides in developing and delivering solutions. In a common and repeatable interface we are able to deliver so many different functional features that allow portals to be delivered any number of initiatives. From a development perspective this is a very big thing for us as we have standardized around building .net applications and this just becomes another tool in the box for us. The great thing from a technical perspective is the ease of implementation. We have put in a farmed solution in separate environments (DEV, UAT, and PRD) all on a virtual platform (VMWare). What were some challenges you faced before deploying MOSS 2007 and how were they addressed? In the creation of the DEV environment, we experienced issues around the establishment of the farm. Specifically the issues were around Security, Kerberos, and the certificate server within the SharePoint environment. We worked through many of these issues with the aid of the SharePoint Administrators Guide written by Bill English as we refined out Architecture in an iterative fashion until we were satisfied it was working correctly. After implementing the certificates and the certificate server, we were not able to pass the tokens back and forth as some of the services would not start or stop. We engaged Microsoft through the Premier Support area to help us resolve this issue. We provided them all the information on the issue, documentation and etc and they provided various product experts as we rebuilt the environment with their input as this error had never been seen given the architecture was following the Microsoft best practices. During the installation and configuration of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform at SaskEnergy, a couple major problems arose. Because SharePoint 2007 is a very new product, there was little or no Microsoft documentation or tools available to troubleshoot the problems we were having. The Microsoft website had no solutions for the problems and a search of popular SharePoint blogs showed that other people in the world were running into the same issues. In order to learn more about SharePoint, Jereme Watts (SaskEnergy’s SharePoint Admin onsite through Solvera Solutions) attended a SharePoint conference in Las Vegas. While there, he learned that our SharePoint architecture at SaskEnergy was considered to be excellent and far more advanced in comparison to many other installations. Unfortunately, he was not able to determine the reasons for the problems being experienced with SaskEnergy’s multi-server SharePoint environment. After returning, Vance Petriew (SaskEnergy DEV Network Support and SQL Admin onsite through EDS Canada) and Jereme Watts spent many hours narrowing down the issues and documenting the test procedures. Progress was made but no solutions were found. In the mean time, SaskEnergy called upon Microsoft and utilized a Premier Support call to help speed up resolution to our problems. Upon being contacted by Microsoft within a day of placing the call, we were asked to provide our server documentation and troubleshooting steps used to arrive at our analysis of the problem. The Microsoft consultants were very impressed with our thorough documentation and methodical testing procedures. Because they could easily see that we had done our homework, they did not hesitate to bring in the real Microsoft Engineers who wrote SharePoint, Kerberos and Windows Server to help find us a solution. During the 20+ hours on the phone with the various Microsoft Engineers, we methodically worked through the different divisions in Microsoft responsible for certain aspects of their products. We gathered many network traces to analyze how each server request and response was being handled between the different products. During the troubleshooting with the Microsoft engineers we learned a few key points that are not written in any book or documentation. These points were key factors in finding a solution. When one Service Principal Name is configured to point at two service accounts, Kerberos authentication reverts back to NTLM authentication.
DNS records for SharePoint sites need to be defined at the root of the DNS tree in order to have SharePoint crawl websites properly. This is due to the way SharePoint handles and truncates DNS entries inside the application. In addition to the undocumented features listed above, there were a few other very useful results we learned during troubleshooting. - The entry point for crawling a site needs to be defined by a wildcard.
- Reliable Kerberos authentication only works when Kerberos is forced to use TCP communications instead of UDP.
- Kerberos Service Principal Names are only defined on IIS Application Pool service accounts.
One of the comments we heard from the Microsoft consultant made us smile. The consultant had tried getting Kerberos authentication to work with his SharePoint installation and couldn’t do it. His configuration kept reverting back to NTLM authentication. This confirmed in our mind that configuring SharePoint 2007 to use Kerberos authentication was a very difficult task which is also echoed across the many SharePoint blogs on the web. SaskEnergy is now one of the few places that have been able to make this work. Overall, working methodically through this issue with Microsoft was beneficial on both sides. They were obviously as interested in our problem as we were since they brought in their highest level engineers to find a solution. During the process, the Microsoft engineers identified a couple items to take back to their teams to improve. On the SaskEnergy side, we learned that our configuration was very close to being correct and that our architecture design is solid. Also of note is how pleasant the Microsoft support team was to work with over the phone. They were always courteous and answered our questions politely even after 20+ hours of collaboration. When we finally figured out the last piece to the puzzle (the DNS issue), Microsoft was very generous in their praise towards our team and confirmed that the solution made sense. The whole experience with the Microsoft premier support was excellent and worthy of very high ratings. What were some issues you faced with the actual deployment and how did you address them? Our deployment to production has been very smooth as we were able to take care of all the issues in the DEV and UAT areas. This speaks to how this methodology works as effectively in the IT Pro world as it does in the Development world. What is the “killer feature” that you found in MOSS 2007? We love all the features of SharePoint, consistent information management, template driven, document management, workflow, enterprise search, the speed to deliver a product but what really is the killer feature is the product suite. We can find many products that do one or two of these things well, but none that covered the entire suite well. I admit that other products are stronger at the niche specifics, but dollar for dollar they do not compare when you are looking at the price for an entire solution. So the killer feature in SharePoint is “SharePoint”…it is the plumbing for the house in a box; you just need to add the fixtures for it to work 
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A while ago I posted a couple of entries related to High Performance Computing (aka HPC). You can read them here (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) but I wanted to share a real world example of how HPC is being used and how it impacts the mining industry, as well as our lives. A few months ago I got the chance to visit with Paul Ruppert director of strategic research systems for the department of civil engineering at the University of Toronto and tour the University of Toronto’s Lassonde Institute and look at how they are using HPC to make life safer. In 2007 they opened the Rock Fracture Dynamics Laboratory, the first of its kind in the world. The purpose of the lab is to crush rocks; well more accurately they "perform stress tests on rock samples and then use the data collected to perform simulations and get real-time information on the effects of the different types of stress" the "rock crusher" can inflict. This data, once processed, is used to build models and simulations to enhance mine safety. When mines are dug, the removal of earth puts pressure on the surrounding earth. Too much pressure and the mine can collapse. By studying the stress levels that the materials that make up the earth surrounding the mine and knowing their "breaking point" mines can be dug in a much safer manner. 
The tool can exert pressure from multiple angles simultaneously as well as heat/cool the material being tested. All the data is streamed at around 400MB per second to a large 18.4 TB SAN where the data is then processed by the cluster. The cluster is built from 64 Quad Core (256 total cores) x64 Dell servers with a total of 320GB of RAM and runs Windows 2003 Compute Cluster Server operating system. 
Once the data is collected it is processed on the cluster and then simulations can be run. With 256 cores they can submit 256 models and run 256 processing streams at the same time with the same code. More models means more accuracy. 
What is really interesting is that this entire 64 server Windows HPC cluster can dual boot. There are two head nodes to the cluster, one running Windows and one running a RedHat Linux and the rest of the 64 processing nodes can be booted into a Windows or Linux HPC cluster. I asked Paul and his staff why they would go through the added complexity of a dual boot system and part of the reason was backwards compatibility. They have already created a number of jobs and applications to run on the Linux cluster from the days when they used other Linux clusters in the U of T. This lead to my next question on if you were already running it on Linux clusters, why install a Windows cluster? There were a few reasons with the big one being the tools that the students were using. The graduate students all develop their applications in C# and .NET using Visual Studio and then test their code on a multi core computer before running it on the cluster. Having the same tools on both the dev and production side obviously makes sense so they wanted to match what the students were already using and familiar with. The department was already running Windows and Active Directory so the integration into their existing environment was also key as was the ability to use the same management and monitoring tools that were already in place. One of the last reasons to why they went with a Windows cluster lies with visualizations. They found that the visualization capabilities on the Windows cluster were much better than on Linux clusters and allowed for much more detailed, high resolution models. The use of this technology and these models goes far beyond just mining. Roads, highways, bridges, tunnels all are affected by pressures which cause stress on the materials they are made of. By understanding their structure, how they react to these pressures and how that reaction changes due to temperature will make the construction of these traffic ways we all use safer as well. 
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