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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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There are a lot of webcasts, videocasts and resources available for those planning, piloting, deploying or managing Windows 7 at the Microsoft Springboard site. There are case studies and stories of deployment success and while still relevant they are typically based around US customers and scenarios. But we’ve got something totally Canadian coming your way! On May 27th 2010 we are inviting you to hear Fountain Tire’s IT Manager, Tobias Staley, speak with Travis Wizniuk, Compugen Senior Consultant, about the company’s experiences in tackling, and successfully resolving, their real-world Windows 7 deployment challenges. Join this one-hour panel discussion and get your questions answered about executing a successful Windows 7 pilot, building and managing a deployment project in your organization. Fountain Tire is a nationally recognized tire dealer in Canada, Fountain Tire offers a wide range of car, truck, and trailer tires, as well as complete automotive services, for any make and model of vehicle. Today, it has over 150 stores spanning as far west as Victoria, British Columbia and as far east as Thunder Bay, Ontario. - Event Title: Windows 7 Live Talk Webcast: Deployment Tips from Early Adopters - Fountain Tire
- Event Date: May 27, 2010
- Event Start Time: 9:00 am Pacific
- Event End Time: 10:00 am Pacific
PRESENTERS Customer: Tobias Staley, IT Manager, Fountain Tire: Mr. Staley has been with Fountain Tire for 6 years and led the team that successfully piloted and deployed Windows 7 over 50 seats and have standardized the OS for all future deployments (650 seats) across their organization. Consultant: Travis Wizniuk, Senior Consultant, Compugen: Travis Wizniuk is a highly skilled and progressively educated Senior Network Consultant with over 10 years of experience. Travis has acquired advanced specialized skills in systems management, which include extensive experience with the Microsoft System Center line of products as well as Microsoft’s previous generation of management products. Host: Raymond Phillips, Deployment Lead, Windows Client, Canadian Business and Marketing Organization, Microsoft: As the Canadian Windows Deployment lead, Mr. Phillips is responsible for Windows Client deployment and adoption for the Canadian Mid-Market and Enterprise accounts. Mr. Phillips leads the business strategies and directs elements of the marketing and relevant programs to drive Windows Client adoption and evidence through and to partners and customers. Registration is now open for this event. For more information, please visit our registration page at:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727431 
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A while back Ruth did an interview with Cameron McKay about an upcoming infrastructure project he was in the planning stages on. While the planning is done and the implementation also complete, I thought it was time to revisit with Cameron and talk about how things went. Turns out Cam was one step ahead and posted an entry on his blog which we are cross posting here. ------------------------- And here we are.... it's March 15th, I'm now 25 Years old, and the largest infrastructure project of my career to date is wrapping up. Now, I originally planned to have all work completed in a weekend... I may have been off by a week or two. Not a result of unknown factors, but delays in setting up systems and the occasional hour or two of sleep. February 27th at 10PM my Team and I started by redirecting all web facing sites to the ubiquitous "planned downtime" graphic to alert clients that the geeks are hard at work somewhere... :) First up on the task list was to modify our Cisco switches and firewalls and setup 10 new VLAN's. The tricky part here is that the Cisco VOIP servers also need to be re-IP addressed and this is where we had to take our time. While our contractors were busy checking everything with the telephony systems, our team was busy setting up the base AD Infrastructure (DNS, DHCP) and getting ready to deploy all our new servers. What servers exactly? - Windows Server 2008 /w Hyper-V
- Exchange Server 2007 SP1
- SQL Server 2008
- IIS7
- Team Foundation Server 2008
- Office Communications Server 2008 R2
- Groove Server
- ForeFront Client Security
- SharePoint Office Server 2007
Not to mention: - WSUS
- NAP
- Certificate Services
- Rights Management
- File Screening
And if that wasn't enough... We rolled out Vista Enterprise and Office 2007 to 100 workstations and also deployed the latest Blackberry Enterprise Server. I also felt the need to deploy the latest version of GFI Faxmaker to handle our some 300 faxes a day at the office. And of course, it's all managed by System Center. So around 2am on Saturday morning all the network changes were completed and the base AD deployment completed. At this point, we have taken a flat network and diced it up into 10 VLAN's, a DMZ, and 4 Windows domains. I'm still pretty excited and pushing through the night. Next up was taking all our existing physical and virtual servers and switching the IP's. This took us until around 6am... We took a coffee break and then moved onto deploying Exchange Server 2007. About this time I realized that I haven't slept yet and shrugged it off... I'm an IT Pro. At 9am we brought our SQL Servers online and IIS 7 web farm. My network team was working on all the ACL's and settings for the DMZ to make sure that we were ultra secure, as this is a Fortune 18 we work for and information security is paramount. Our developers came in around 10am to start migrating content from the old network and get the business up and running again. One challenge here is that there was no connectivity from the old LAN to the new network, so terabyte hard drives were used to move all the files. This took the better part of the day to get all the files over and onto the new servers. Once this was done, the Dev's could start configuring all the new database servers and IIS sites. I had our network team leave the edge network accessible from the internal LAN to make it as easy as possible for the development team to get access and complete the migration. Around 6pm on Saturday evening the Boss realized that I hadn't been to sleep yet and "suggested" that I go over to the hotel and get a few hours sleep. I slept from 7 until 11 and then showed back up at the office to continue working on the deployment. Sunday morning we started our LT deployment of Vista and Office 2007 to all the desktops. I was left configuring Exchange 2007 and the Blackberry Server and a half dozen other servers. We were having some issues with migrating the data. As it turns out, moving everything onto SQL 2008 and IIS7 is a big deal. Who would have thought? At this point, the comment of "backing out" came up. I didn't like the sound of that... and the discussion became a pow-wow a couple hours later. I'll spare everyone the discussion, but we decided to push forward and not roll back. Forgetting that all the workstations were already converted to Vista and on the new network, it would of been about 6 hours work to bring the old LAN back up. Around 2am on Monday morning I had my first real challenge of the deployment. The Exchange Hub Transport and Edge Servers suddenly stopped working. The EdgeSync connectors were all there and all the settings were correct and by-the-book.... but still, I couldn't send or receive email. So, 6 hours from the start of business, email was down. This was my worse nightmare. After a couple hours of troubleshooting and rebuilding the EdgeSync, I had email working again. Come Monday morning, we had core systems online and our CRM application was functional but none of the file shares or printers were up. Throughout the day we were busy assisting the developers, as their apps are all client facing and most of my Infrastructure changes were completed. Again, sent over to the hotel late Monday afternoon for a few hours sleep. Back at the office come 2AM. At this period, I'm feeling like the biggest geek in the world... and loving it. Tuesday I had the file shares and printers online. The task for the next couple days was to import all the old email from our 5.5 server and load it into each users new mailbox. This was a tedious task that took us until Friday to complete. Why? Lot's of old email... Over the weekend we brought ForeFront Client Security online. This is probably my most favorite piece of the new Infrastructure. All workstations and servers were now protected. The following week we were tweaking group policies and completing the configuration of all our web portals and databases. Fast forward to today. It's Sunday March 15th... and we have the most modern network in the company. Built for High Availability and Security from the ground up using the latest Microsoft technologies. I am very proud to say that I was apart of this great project and it has definitely been a fun and exciting ride. The best part is that 90% of the Datacenter is virtualized on Hyper-V. I'm a huge fan of the technology, and the benefits it provides our business in the DR / BC areas. It was interesting to see the entire IT Team, all 9 of us, pull together and stand unified behind this project. Sure, it's difficult and I've only had 20 hours total sleep in two weeks, but this is what I live for. We now have a platform to work off of that will drive the business for the next 6 Years. Was it as easy as I thought? NO. Would I do it again knowing what I know now? YES. Why? Because it had to be done. Our business is very competitive and we were working off technology that was 10 to 15 years old. More time was spent on maintenance and workarounds, then innovation. And how do I feel? Great. I slept in this morning and looking forward to getting back into the office tomorrow to work on my new state-of-the-art Infrastructure. All 100% Microsoft software based. ------------------------------ You can read more about the project at Cameron’s blog! 
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I met Mohamud Ashoor in my travels to Vancouver at various VanTUG events and we regularly chat on IM as well. A few weeks back he was telling me about his home lab setup and how he uses it to sharpen his skills, keep up with technology. In our discussions the topic of a blog post came up as Mohamud has quite the setup. Between Hyper-V, ESXi, Windows Mobile and everything in between. Take a read and let me know about your lab or how you keep up with technology!
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Over the past few years I have been working on simulating enterprise level networks in my home lab. The idea was simple. Learn new technologies and at the same time test complex and difficult migrations in a lab before doing it in production. At the earlier days, I started working with Connectix Virtual PC which later became MS Virtual PC as well as VMware Workstation. I have tested these products on my desktop. Virtualization became a mainstream technology and I remember getting a free promotional copy of Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition which later became a free product. I built a lab around Virtual Server 2005 and created some test labs. Microsoft has some step by step instructions on how to build a two node cluster using Virtual Server 2005: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/virtualserver/deploy/cvs2005.mspx
That was one of the labs I created for testing. Others included AD migrations, SQL migrations, Exchange migrations and client operating systems. I was even running Windows 98 SE in a lab to be able to update my Casio Watch, the first MP3 wrist player: http://www.gadgetcentral.com/casiomp3_intro.htm
With the release of Windows Server 2008, I've started to rebuild the entire lab and replace some of the legacy components. I built a lab with a Hyper-V server running AD and DNS, an ESXi server running some Linux and Windows environments and my desktop which is on Windows Vista 32bit and manages the Hyper-V and ESXi environments with the Hyper-V Manager and the VMware Infrastructure Client.
The desktop and the Hyper-V server are within the same domain as well as some downloaded test versions of SCE 2007, SCVMM2008, etc. Microsoft has tons of VHD files that you can evaluate and test high availability features of products without the need of purchasing expensive hardware. The majority of these VHDs were created for Virtual Server 2005 and therefore you would have to convert them to run in Hyper-V which is simple to do. It will mostly require the removal of VM Additions and installing the Integrations Services. An example of one of the images I've downloaded is found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/granth/archive/2008/11/03/converting-vs2010-ctp-to-hyper-v.aspx
If your environment uses Visual Studio Team System 2008, another useful image for testing is the current VHD file which doesn't expire until Dec 31st 2009: http://www.pluralsight.com/community/blogs/brian/archive/2008/12/24/happy-holidays-and-look-what-santa-s-brought.aspx
In my current home lab, I have the following domains:
· TrueG.local (a lab built for my own testing and migrations)
· Contoso.com (VHDs from Microsoft)
· NWTraders.msft (VHDs from Microsoft)
· LitwareInc.com (VHDs from Microsoft)
On the ESXi server, I have a Windows Server 2008 Core edition that provides DHCP services to any client that requires a Dynamic IP. There are more test machines in Hyper-V and the ESXi servers than what is displayed in the diagram.
I completed the SCVMM 2008 setup in the lab this past weekend and divided it into two, the SCVMM2008 server / admin console and the Self-Service Portal. Both are running on virtual machines under Hyper-V and ESXi. The Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer is a great tool to use before and after the deployment. As many others have experienced, I don't always read the entire deployment documentation and after the SCVMM2008 setup, my Hyper-V had a status of "Needs Attention". Luckily it was blogged on TechNet and only required two updates on the Hyper-V server and a quick reboot: http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/10/26/hyper-v-server-needs-attention-after-scvmm-2008-rtm-install.aspx
Continuing on my learning path there are few more features that I would like to test and implement in this lab:
- Running Dell Open Manage Server Administrator on server core (the Hyper-V server). I haven't found a way to run the Dell Open Manage in a server core environment and I'm not sure if it is supported.
- Install Dell OpenManage Management Pack for SCE Operations Manager on SCE 2007 Virtual Server. I want to monitor CPU, Memory, Storage, etc., from the Hyper-V server core server and pass the info to the SCE2007 virtual server.
- Enable Network Load Balancing and/or NIC teaming in the Hyper-V server core server.
- And try 2008 R2 of course….
 Mohamud Ashoor is an IT Professional from Vancouver. He is the network administrator of TP Systems Ltd., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. TP Systems is software and IT services company focused on government, health care providers and public service organizations. Mohamud works with various Server 2003 and Server 2008 technologies (Exch2007, TFS2008, SQL 2005/2008, TS 2003/2008, Hyper-V, Citrix XenApp, etc.) as well as delivering a broad user experience from the desktop to the data centre. He is very passionate about technology and always delighted to see how it enables people become more productive!
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It’s called the Ignite IT Award. And it’s a way for the community to recognize and reward the work that you do. Yes, that‘s not a typo… The community, your peers… They can review any submission and will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites. Voting starts in: 47 days (March 1st 2009). Tic Toc ….
There will be some great prizes but the best part is that you will be able to highlight your successes, your innovating thinking and by the same token, advance your career. Winners will receive the IT Professional grand prize or the Software Developer grand prize—including the Crystal trophy, a Software Kit valued at $1,000, and a prize of $5,000. Plus, all entrants who include a video in their submissions will be entered to win a prize pack valued at over $500 that may include an XBOX 360 Elite and a Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition XBOX game. So go ahead, go to the site Ignite IT Award, submit your stories and tell the world how good you are. We know it. Why not shout it out?
I’m always looking for ways to learn from the successes of others. And if you’re like me, you can review all the submissions for the Ignite IT awards. It may give you ideas; spark interest, who knows...
Don’t make me go out and get you… I will if I have to. But I’d prefer if you all signed up and told us about the wonderful things you guys and gals are cooking up.
Get the glory. Share your I.T. story.
Bookmark this page—submissions posting started on January 5, 2009 and voting begin on March 1, 2009, so check back often!
Cheers!
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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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After one of our events last year I got an email from Paul Gartner in Montreal. During the event I indicated that if you or anyone you knew was looking to deploy some of our newer technologies I may be able to get some additional resources to help through the IT Pro Momentum Program and to send me an email at damirb@microsoft.com or through the Email link at the top of the blog. Paul shared with me that he was about to undertake a project to migrate his organization to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and was also looking at Windows Server 2008.
The Exchange 2007 migration is completed and Paul has agreed to share his journey. Here it is in his own words.
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Last year, due to corporate restructuring and downsizing, we inherited our division’s IT role. This is in addition to the IT support and installations we perform for our clients. The transition was rough, basically we were give the servers and the passwords, no documentation on the network, no training on the specialized applications, and very little knowledge transfer. The network was in even worse shape! We spent the better part of 6 months figuring out how things were setup and worked together and making it work better. Proper backups, WSUS, firewalls and a managed anti-virus were all taken care of and updated.
The POP3 mail system that we were using was slow, unreliable, poorly supported, and had an expensive annual licensing for a mediocre anti-spam filter. With the renewal coming due, we convinced our management that this would be a great moment to migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. We got the OK and I started to hit the web to figure out how to deal with some of particularity of our environment. I already had a few Exchange 2007 installs under my belt, but nothing as complex or as grandeur as our division’s, so the basic deployment and migration was not that big of a task, and a quick lab with virtual server showed that we are on the right track for some of the more complex issues.
Our environment is different then what you might typically find in the SMBs that we normally work with. Our incoming email is handled by our head office in New York (they even outsource the edge connection) and forwarded to us on a secondary email address. There are some good, easy to follow, articles on TechNet that helped us configure this. We are not part of their Active Directory, so any changes to the email address had to handle by the corporate helpdesk who would issue a ticket to the correct IT group, how would in turn notify the outsourced edge provider. Our division is also multi-site, so VPNs were required. And we have lots of people working from outside the office. Outlook Anywhere solved those problems. And like everybody, including my mother, email is mission critical. No errors, no delays, no downtime. Just for added pressure.
Our network consisted of a Windows 2000 level domain, so deployment started with a new Windows Server 2008 domain controller, followed by a Windows Server 2008 & Exchange Server 2007 SP1 machine. Alpha testing revealed a few teething problems, mostly related to the differences in IIS with Outlook Web Access. It was harder to find forum posts about issues that we were experiencing. An SSL certificate was obtained and the beta testing lasted 2 weeks. Since we also decided to standardize our office platform to Microsoft Office 2007, we choose some of our stronger knowledge workers for the pilot. This was key that they figure out the new interface in the office applications, so that they can assist the general users with the migration learning curve, as there was no budget for end user training. General deployment was slow moving due to the fact that we are multi-site and we had to do multiple follow ups with our corporate helpdesk to get them to correct issues. To maintain proper mail flow, we forwarded emails from the old server to the new Exchange 2007 server. We preformed several test to ensure that email was not being routed via the old mail server. When we unplugged the old server, and low and behold, the head office AD still had a few emails addressed to the old server, sigh....
I’m a PC, and I make sure your email works!
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I was talking with Dana Epp when Rodney and I were out in Vancouver for the MySecurity tour a couple of months back. He was telling me about when he was trying to get a straight answer on how he license System Centre Virtual Machine Manger in his office and the software reseller he was talking to didn't quite understand the licensing as of yet. To be fair - the product had only just released to the public and as he states below, it's something that will be sorted out in the new year.
I'm impressed with what he's done with it since then. He's running Server 2008 as the host with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 as the virtualization solution. That's right - VS2005 R2 SP1, NOT Hyper-V and he's managing it with SC-VMM! Way cool - existing technology meeting the needs and getting ready for future of Hyper-V when he's ready to switch over. Have a Read...
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Dana Epp (Chilliwack, British Columbia, IT Pro & MVP) |
I’m a real fan of virtualization. For years I have used virtualization to test out software we write here at Scorpion Software and continue to create test lab deployments of complex environments that we simply don’t run here. We aren’t an enterprise shop, and don’t have the capacity to try everything an enterprise might normally see or have to act upon, making virtualization a great asset for testing.
In the last couple of years though the virtualization we use in development and in test labs has creeped into our production environment. We have transitioned from a shop that was running 12 different machines in the office down to three servers running Microsoft’s Virtual Server technology. This move alone has resulted in huge benefits to us. We have seen our power bill slashed in half. The server room is way quieter and nowhere near the sauna it used to be. And less hardware means less potential hardware failure over time as things age. Interestingly enough, with the use of some of Microsoft’s latest technology we have even reduced the reliance on hardware and can now easily move virtual machine guests across to new hardware hosts in the matter of minutes if and when things go wrong. Yes, that’s right... you read that correctly. We can easily move a virtual machine from one host to another in no time at all without caring about the underlying hardware.
This is all thanks to Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager, or SCVMM for short. SCVMM is quite a powerful tool; and one I almost lost out on and ignored. As a small business owner when Microsoft talks about anything that starts with “System Center”, my eyes usually gloss over. For the longest time I thought the technology seemed to be targeted for enterprises that were managing huge corporate IT infrastructures that required major scalability and reliability resources. I was wrong. Solutions like SCVMM and System Center Essentials are perfect for many small businesses.
I’ve been running SCVMM in our lab since some of the early betas and really like it. Recently though we moved it into our production environment and it’s been a nice addition to our existing Virtual Server infrastructure. No scratch that. Its introduction has become a great asset to how we run things here. And I wanted to pass on some of the experiences we recently had as we transitioned to fully run SCVMM in a production environment.
First some background. We have three Windows Server 2008 x64 systems running Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 as the hosts. Our first one is called CORPVS and drives our corporate line of business systems like SQL Server 2005, MSCRM and even our Quickbooks accounting system. Our second system is called RDVS and serves all the machines that our research and development department uses, such as our automated build system, defect tracking system and even our Linux based source control server. Our third box is called QAVS and provides our automated testing system, and various QA test systems we use when reproducing customer issues.
We keep the primary partitions on the hosts pretty small, and install NOTHING on them except for the parts needed to run Virtual Server 2005. All the virtual machine guests are stored on a secondary RAID array, making it easy to blow away the primary OS and read the virtual machines back in as needed. We then run SCVMM in a virtual machine itself and wire everything up to our Small Business Server 2003 domain. Nice tiny little package that fits on half a rack.
We used to manage each server individually by RDPing into it and using an unsupported product from Microsoft called VMRC Plus (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=80ADC08C-BFC6-4C3A-B4F1-772F550AE791&displaylang=en). It’s a great tool that really makes working with Virtual Server much easier. This worked ok, but didn’t give us visualization of all the systems across the network. In comes SCVMM to the rescue. It lets us see all machines across all hosts in a single centralized console.
It shows us CPU utilization and hardware load while letting us peer into the configuration of each system very quickly. We can easily start, stop and pause machines in an instant, and directly connect to any VM as we need to. And then there is my favourite feature, the “checkpoints”. This is a feature missing in Virtual Server that has saved my butt a few times now. A checkpoint is similar to having an undo disk, but with the power to let you restore multiple versions at different points in time. This is great news if you are like me and HATE rolling out untested patches or new software updates to the production systems. Now I just go and create a checkpoint just before the update/installation, and can IMMEDIATELY snap back to a previous working checkpoint in a couple of clicks if something goes wrong.
I could go on and rave about many of the other powerful features like how it can convert physical machines to virtual machines with the P2V wizard or how quickly you can deploy new servers with the built in provisioning with the Virtual Machine Library. But I just can’t do it justice. You have to see it for yourself. And you can. Microsoft has a FREE 120 day trial DVD you can order on TechNet here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scvmm/bb679927.aspx). You can even download a preconfigured VHD that you can drop right into your existing Virtual Server or Virtual PC environment.
I can’t stress enough how much of an asset SCVMM is to a small business like ours. And Microsoft realizes that this is a great tool for small business. Next month they are releasing a “Workgroup Edition” that will be generally available to the SMB, allowing you to centrally manage up to 5 hosts and as many guests as you like in SCVMM for around $500. Depending on your environment you will probably see an ROI in the first few months. A worthwhile investment that I think many small businesses should really consider.
Dana Epp [Microsoft Security MVP]
http://www.scorpionsoft.com/
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