Weblog.BassQ.nl » Windows 7

Available for download: Windows 7 SP1 Beta!

BassQ — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:09:32 +0000

Microsoft announced on Monday that the first Windows 7 Service Pack 1 public beta is now available.

Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, Corporate Vice President of Windows & Windows Live – Tami Reller announced the public beta. Microsoft revealed its plans for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 last month at its annual Tech-Ed conference. Windows 7 SP1 will include the usual hotfix patches and new virtualization tools in SP1 will help Windows Server 2008 R2 users prepare for cloud computing. SP1 will include RemoteFX which provides rich 3-D graphical experience for remote users. The service pack also will include a series of incremental updates, previously released on Windows Update for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

RemoteFX is a new enhancement to RDP’s graphical remoting capabilities. The idea behind RemoteFX is to allow for a full remote experiences including multiple displays, Aero and multimedia streaming to all types of client devices including low cost thin clients. RemoteFX achieves this by using a technique known as host-based rendering. This technique allows for the final screen image to be rendered locally on the remote PC after being compressed and sent down to that remote host. The enhancements are expected to greatly improve video streaming across remote sessions which is currently one of the major drawbacks of virtualized computing.

In April this year an early copy of Windows 7 SP1 surfaced on the Internet. The build leaked to file sharing sites. SP1 is also rumoured to include USB 3.0 support and enhanced Bluetooth/Wi-Fi stacks but Microsoft has not yet confirmed this.

Microsoft released a beta build of Windows 7 to testers earlier this month. Weighing in at 1.22GB the build was compiled on June 3 with the number 7601.16562.100603-1800. Microsoft released the public beta on its TechNet Evaluation Center page.

All the great MDT video’s! (Windows 2008 R2, Hyper V2, Exchange 2010)

BassQ — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:49:28 +0000

On Edge.technet.com of the Microsoft Technet site are a lot of great video’s made by Microsoft themself.

Because you probebly don’t hevae the time to see and find them all i made a great collection! Have fun!

Windows Server 2008 R2: Remote Desktop Services – The Series (P1)
Windows Server 2008 R2: Remote Desktop Services – The Series (P2)
Windows Server 2008 R2- Remote Desktop Services – The Series (P3)
Windows Server 2008 R2- Remote Desktop Services – The Series (P4)
Windows Server 2008 R2- Remote Desktop Services – The Series (P5)

Part 1 Master Your Environment with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Part 2 Master Your Environment with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Part 3 Master Your Environment with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Part 4 Master Your Environment with System Center Configuration Manager 2007

Hyper-V R2- Failover & Live Migration
Hyper-V R2- Making Highly Available VMs
Hyper-V R2- Making Highly Available VMs
Hyper-V R2- Dynamic Storage
Hyper-V R2- USB over Network with Fabulatech
Hyper-V R2- Introducing Cluster Shared Volumes
Hyper-V R2- Building a Hyper-V R2 Cluster
Hyper-V R2- Initial Installation & Configuration

Demo 1 – Hyper-V Live Migration
Demo 2 – Boot From VHD
Demo 3 – Windows PowerShell 2.0 Remoting
Demo 4 – Active Directory Enhancements

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – building install media for Windows 7
Windows XP Migration to Windows 7 RC using MDT Beta 1 – Part 1- The OS Install
Windows XP Migration to Windows 7 RC using MDT 2010 Beta 1 – Part 2- How To Build It…

Open Source Software (OSS) on Windows Server 2008

Exchange 2010 Demo: Read and Reply State
Exchange 2010 Demo: Conversation View
Exchange 2010 Demo: Move Conversation
Exchange 2010 Demo: Nickname Cache
Exchange 2010 Demo: UM Card

Interview with Kristian Andaker on Transitions to Exchange Server 2010
Interview with Kristian Andaker on Exchange 2010 OWA
Interview with Matt Gossage on Exchange Server 2010 and Storage
Interview with Scott Schnoll on Exchange 2010 High Availability
Interview with Scott Schnoll on Backup Strategy in Exchange 2010
Interview with Becky Benfield on Exchange 2010 Site Resiliency at Tech Ed 2009

Three Steps to a PXE-Free XenDesktop on Hyper-V

BassQ — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:33:21 +0000

http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2010/04/13/Three+Steps+to+a+PXE-Free+XenDesktop+on+Hyper-V

I ran into an interesting situation last week while working with Tony Sanchez from our Global Microsoft Team. He was setting up XenDesktop 4 on Hyper-V 2008 R2. However, the lab he was at used a Windows Deployment Server (WDS) for image management and it relies extensively on PXE. Rather than modify the WDS to support the Provisioning Services PXE boot file, we decided the best solution was to make a boot ISO that will load the OS directly from the Provisioning Services host and then boot the guests from that ISO.

Background

Since not all my readers are familiar with using the Boot Device Manager, I will set the stage. When configuring a virtual machine to boot off of a CD-ROM image for PVS, you need to do three things:

Add a Legacy network card on the host since the Synthetic network adapter is not created until the Operating System loads.
Configure the BIOS boot order so that CD-ROM is first in the list.
Assign a bootable ISO image to the CD-ROM/DVD drive.

Take Note
The PXE boot option is required in order for the NIC Option ROM to stay resident in memory during the pre-boot process. This way, UNDI will be available to the boot device to properly initialize the NIC. Otherwise, the “API not found” message would be displayed by the boot device.

In deployments of XenDesktop where you have more than about 15 machines, the XenDesktop Setup Wizard (XDSW) is normally used to create and link the XenDesktops with Hyper-V. Unfortunately, the XDSW does not support all the possible VM configuration options when duplicating the source virtual machine. One of the properties that is not transferred to the new virtual machine is the ISO in the DVD drive. Normally, this behavior is the preferred because Hyper-V needs a special configuration to support sharing an ISO across multiple guests simultaneously (See this Technet article), which if not configured correctly can cause startup issues.

If you do not want to configure ISO sharing, you can use the VMM server and VMM library to copy the boot ISO to each virtual machine’s folder. If the ISO was large, I would say spend time setting up the sharing configuration; however, in this case the file itself is only 300K and copying it will eliminate the possibility of file sharing/locking issues.

Now you understand some of the challenges, I can tell you the three steps to a PXE-free Hyper-V deployment.:

Create a PVS Boot ISO using the Boot Device Manager
Import that PVS Boot ISO into the VMM Library
Execute a PowerShell script

Step 1: Create a PVS Boot ISO

The Provisioning Services Boot Device Manager is a three-dialog wizard that lets you pre-configure the boot environment just like a PXE server would, except you can then write that to a drive or CD-ROM media. The Boot Device Manager is found on the Start menu of any provisioning server at All Programs >> Citrix >> Provisioning Services >> Provisioning Services Boot Device Manager.

I do not want to spend a lot of time discussing the various options or provide a tutorial on this utility; however, I will provide a few pointers. First, be sure to enable the “Citrix PVS Two-Stage Boot Service” and set it to start automatically on any servers you will use as the targets for the ISO image. Second, if you are using Windows 7, be sure to enable the PAE Mode on the second page of the wizard, like this:

Third, be sure to select Citrix ISO Recorder as the boot device (shown below) before burning the ISO image, lest you accidentally wipe out your local hard disk. For a complete guide on using the Boot Disk Manager, see this Citrix Support Article CTX121331.

Step 2: Import the ISO into the SCVMM Library

Take the ISO you created in Step 1 and save it to the folder where the SCVMM library stores are located. I created a new folder called ISOs at the same level as VHDs and placed the ISO in that folder. Next start the SCVMM Administrative Console and go to the Library tab. Select the MSSCVMMLibrary node and click Refresh on the context-menu to add the ISOs to the library as shown here:

Step 3: Execute the PowerShell Script

Next, you can copy the contents of the PowerShell script below and save it to a file called AttachISO.PS1. I realize that I am not yet a PowerShell guru, so I am aware that several optimizations and error checks could be made to this script. Feel free to modify it for your own use. My goal was provide a working example to help with this issue. The PowerShell script below does the following:

Sets the boot order to CD, PXE (Legacy NIC), IDE, Floppy
Copies the ISO image from the library to the VM’s folder
Creates a DVD drive object at the IDE bus 1:0 if no DVD drive is found
Removes any existing ISO and sets the ISO image to the one specified on the command-line
For larger environments, it lets you know how many VMs it has left to process

AttachISO PowerShell Script

# Purpose:      Attach ISO image from VMM Server Library to Guest Virtual Machine
# Date Written: 12 April 2010
# Author:       Paul Wilson (no implied or expressed warranties)
# Usage:        AttachISO [UNC Path to ISO in Library] [VM Name to Match Criteria]

# Check for the two required arguments and offer command-line assistance if not found

if ($args -eq $null -or $args.Count -lt 2)
{
   write-output "Usage: AttachISO.ps1 UNC_fileName_ISO_File VMNameMatches"
   write-output "Example: .\AttachISO.ps1 ""\\SCVMM\MSSCVMMLibrary\ISOs\pvbt.iso"" ""Desktop"" "
   exit 1
}

# Grab the arguments and store them for later use

$ISOPath = $args[0]
$VMNameMatches = $args[1]

# Get the name of the SCVMM server we are running this on.
# The VMM server could be passed as a parameter as well.

$VMMServer = Get-VMMServer -Computername "localhost"

# Get the ISO image reference object using the ISO path provided earlier.
# Using the full path guarantees the right object is found. 

$ISOImage = Get-ISO -VMMServer $VMMServer | where { $_.SharePath -eq "$ISOPath" }

if ($ISOImage -eq $null)
{
   write-output "Unable to find ISO: $ISOPath"
   exit 1
}

# Get the collection of VMs that match the name parameters supplied and output that information

$VMs = Get-VM | where { $_.Name -match "$VMNameMatches" }
if ($VMs -eq $null)
{
   write-output "No VMs match the pattern: $VMNameMatches"
   exit 1
}
else
{
   $LeftToGo = $VMs.Count
   if ($LeftToGo -eq $null)
   {
      $matchString = "Only one VM matched the pattern: {0}" -f $VMNameMatches
      $LeftToGo = 1
    }
    else
    {
      $matchString = "{0} VMs match the pattern: {1}" -f $VMs.Count, $VMNameMatches
    }
    write-output $matchString
}

# This loop goes through each VM found and does the following:
#   1. Sets the boot order to CD, PXE Nic, IDE, Floppy.
#   2. Gets the DVD/CD drive object.
#   3. The script will copy the ISO image from the library to the VM's folder.
#      The copy is part of the Set-VirtualDVDDrive and New-VirtualDVDDrive cmdlets.
#   4. Creates the DVD drive object if none found and sets it to the ISO.
#   5. Removes any existing ISO and sets the ISO image to the one specified.
#   6. Outputs the number of VMs remaining to process. Added for large deployments. 

foreach ($VM in $VMS)
{
   $LeftToGo = $LeftToGo - 1
   Set-VM -VM $VM -BootOrder CD,PXEBoot,IDEHardDrive,Floppy
   $current_dvd = get-VirtualDVDDrive -VM $VM

   if ($current_dvd -eq $null -or $current_dvd.count -eq 0)
   {
      $newDVD = New-VirtualDVDDrive -VM $VM -Bus 1 -LUN 0 -ISO $ISOImage
      $DVDResultMessage = "Created DVD Drive on {0}. {1} VMs left to go." -f $VM.Name, $LeftToGo
   }
   else
   {
      if ($current_dvd.Connection -ne "None")
      {
         set-VirtualDVDDrive -VirtualDVDDrive $current_dvd -noMedia
         set-VirtualDVDDrive -VirtualDVDDrive $current_dvd -ISO $ISOImage
         $DVDResultMessage = "Replaced existing media in DVD Drive on {0}. {1} VMs left to go." -f $VM.Name, $LeftToGo
       }
       else
       {
         set-VirtualDVDDrive -VirtualDVDDrive $current_dvd -ISO $ISOImage
         $DVDResultMessage = "Successfully attached ISO to the DVD Drive of {0}. {1} VMs left to go." -f $VM.Name, $LeftToGo
       }
    }
    write-output $DVDResultMessage
}

Announcing App-V 4.6 RC and integration with Office 2010 Beta!

BassQ — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:27:43 +0000

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/archive/2009/11/19/announcing-app-v-4-6-rc-and-integration-with-office-2010-beta.aspx

First of all, we are excited to announce the availability of App-V 4.6 RC! In August we announced the App-V 4.6 Beta. Since then we have taken in lots of customer feedback and continue to refine the App-V 4.6 release so that we can deliver a great product! We invite you to check out the RC release by registering and downloading the App-V 4.6 RC release via Microsoft Connect, where you can also submit feedback directly to the team.

We’re not done though, in addition we’d like to share some great news and also announce our integration with Office 2010 Beta:

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, Ready to be Sequenced With the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Deployment Kit for App-V

As you know the Office team just completed a major milestone Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, congrats to the team! Throughout the process of building Office 2010 the App-V and Office teams have been working very closely to make sequencing Office 2010 Beta possible with App-V 4.6 RC! We have taken the feedback and requests from post-Office 2007 and App-V 4.5 releases, and have been hard at work implementing a solid integration experience for Office when App-V 4.6 releases in H1 2010.

So what’s Different when using Microsoft Office 2010 Beta and App-V 4.6 RC together?

Office 2010 has introduced a new piracy protection initiative, the Software Protection Platform (SPP) service. This service uses a machine’s hardware characteristics and product key to activate the installation, which is performed during the first Office application launch.

Since the Office 2010 product activation is linked to the hardware on which Office is originally installed, customers who wish to deploy Office 2010 using App-V must physically install the SPP service on the sequencer machine before beginning the sequencing process – and on any client machines that will stream and run Office 2010.

Our engineering teams have collaborated to address the top customer issues that people were running into when virtualizing past versions of Office. As a result, Office 2010 has a much more integrated user experience. The Office 2010 integration delivers key productivity enhancements and a seamless user experience by enabling the following::

· Microsoft SharePoint Integration – You can open, edit, and save Microsoft Office documents using Microsoft SharePoint.

· Microsoft Outlook Fast Search – You can use Microsoft Windows Desktop Search to find specific messages in your inbox.

· MAPI Proxy – You can connect to your inbox using Microsoft Outlook Send To functionality.

· Microsoft Office Document Indexing – You can index your documents so that you can use Microsoft Windows Search to locate files.

· Virtual Mail Control Panel icon – You can use the Email icon in Control Panel to perform advance mail configuration.

· URL protocol handler – You can configure links in the browser and specify the appropriate associated Microsoft Office application.

· Send to Microsoft OneNote Printer driver – You can print documents to Microsoft OneNote.

To help customers facilitate this process, we have created the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V (Beta). The Deployment Kit contains both the required SPP licensing component and Office 2010 integration features.

And what’s even more exciting, you can get your hands on it now.

How Do I Sequence Microsoft Office 2010 Beta for App-V 4.6 RC?

1. Download Office 2010 Beta here

2. Download the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V (Beta)

3. Download App-V 4.6 RC on Microsoft Connect

4. Read the App-V recipe for sequencing Office 2010 Beta on Microsoft Connect.

For detailed information on whether your environment meets the requirements of Office 2010 and App-V 4.6 RC, please refer to the App-V recipe.

Please note: We are providing a recipe to support the sequencing and testing of these pre-release products on Microsoft Connect. Please provide feedback via Microsoft Connect, by choosing FEEDBACK once logged into the App-V 4.6 Program.

We look forward to hearing about your App-V 4.6 RC and Office 2010 experience!

Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool v2.1 (VHD)

BassQ — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:49:03 +0000

Source; http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/12/10/Offline-Virtual-Machine-Servicing-Tool-v2.1-.aspx

Virtualization affects how we plan, build, deploy, operate, and service workloads. Customers are creating large libraries of virtual machines containing various configurations. The patch-state of these virtual machines are not always known. Ensuring that offline virtual machines are properly patched and won’t become vulnerable the instant they come online is critical.

I am therefore very pleased to state that the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool v2.1 has now been released!

Congratulations to the Solution Accelerator team for this release!

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 has free, tested guidance and automated tools to help customers keep their virtualized machines updated, without introducing vulnerabilities into their IT infrastructure.

The tool combines the Windows Workflow programming model with the Windows PowerShell interface to automatically bring groups of virtual machines online, service them with the latest security updates, and return them to an offline state.

What’s New?

Release 2.1 is a direct response to customer and Microsoft field requests to support the R2 wave. Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 now supports the following products:
· Hyper-V-R2
· VMM 2008 R2
· SCCM 2007 SP2
· WSUS 3.0 SP2
· OVMST 2.1 also supports updates to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines.

Download here; Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1
More info; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc501231.aspx

PowerShell 2.0 Is Available For Download (XP and Windows 2003 Also!)

BassQ — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:54:06 +0000

Following quickly on the heels of the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 launches (they have PowerShell 2.0 built in), Microsoft has released version 2.0 for all flavors of Windows since XP:

Windows Management Framework, which includes Windows PowerShell 2.0, WinRM 2.0, and BITS 4.0, was officially released to the world this morning. By providing a consistent management interface across the various flavors of Windows, we are making our platform that much more attractive to deploy. IT Professionals can now easily manage their Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 machines through PowerShell remoting – that’s a huge win!

PowerShell v2 has finally been released for ‘legacy’ OSes (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008)! I’m saying legacy OSes because the latest OSes are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You could also say the out-of-band releases have been released. This happened somewhere in the end of October 2009.

If you are having a hard time finding those, that’s because it is in included in the Windows Management Framework.

The Windows Management Framework includes:

Windows Remote Management (WinRM) v2.0
Windows PowerShell v2.0
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) v4.0

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1.1

BassQ — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:41:34 +0000

The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer provides a streamlined method to identify missing security updates and common security misconfigurations. MBSA 2.1.1 is a minor upgrade to add support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

To easily assess the security state of machines in an environment, Microsoft offers the free Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) scan tool. MBSA includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Microsoft Windows systems.

MBSA 2.1.1 builds on previous versions by adding support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As with the previous MBSA 2.1 release, MBSA includes 64-bit installation, security update and vulnerability assessment (VA) checks, improved SQL Server 2005 checks, and support for the latest Windows Update Agent (WUA) and Microsoft Update technologies. More information on the capabilities of MBSA 2.1 and 2.1.1 is available on the MBSA Web site.

MBSA 2.1.1 runs on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems and will scan for missing security updates, rollups and service packs using Microsoft Update technologies. MBSA will also scan for common security misconfigurations (also called Vulnerability Assessment checks) using a known list of less secure settings and configurations for all versions of Windows, Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0, 6.0 and 6.1, SQL Server 2000 and 2005, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000, 2002 and 2003 only.

To assess missing security updates, MBSA will only scan for missing security updates, update rollups and service packs available from Microsoft Update. MBSA will not scan or report missing non-security updates, tools or drivers.
Choose the appropriate download below for English (EN), German (DE), French (FR) and Japanese (JA) for x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) platforms.

Download details Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1.1 (for IT Professionals)
Source: http://bink.nu/news/microsoft-baseline-security-analyzer-2-1-1.aspx

Remote Desktop 7 Screenshots in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, including HD Movie Support

BassQ — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:54:13 +0000

New Enhancements

The upcoming RDP 7 enhancements discussed are as follows:

Windows 7 Aero support
Direct 2D & Direct 3D 10.1 application support
True multi-monitor support
RDP Core Performance Improvements
Multimedia enhancements
- Media Foundation support
- DirectShow support
Low Latency audio playback support
Bi-directional audio support

Anyone who has been doing server-based computing, remoting, terminal services, Citrix or whatever you want to call it for any period of time. In this portion they show a 1080p high definition (HD) video being remoted from a Windows Server 2008 R2 Terminal Services.

WOW, is all I can say! I was left speechless. It was beautiful, not a single skip or hiccup, and it was beautiful. Microsoft accomplishes this not through virtual GPUs or server-side GPUs but by sending commands (code) from the server to the client. The commands are then executed on the local client’s graphics cards vs. the servers which Microsoft calls this, “RDP Client Rendering”.

The following image is a screen shot from the HD movie played over RDP 7. You will notice the resolution is very high and rich, now imagine it running in full motion with the audio synced. I never thought I would see the day.

Through RDP Client Rendering the amount of server-side resources are cut drastically. This eliminates the classic problem where one or two users running a graphics application at any given time renders the Terminal Servers box unusable. Not anymore. As the HD movie played, Gaurav showed us that both the server’s CPU and the network bandwidth utilization were running around 1%. Again, WOW is all I can say!

In the following image you will you will notice the Windows Task Manager’s CPU Usage and Memory Usage are very low considering a HD move is being remoted. Heck, mouse movements almost add more CPU…

Once they were done wooing us with the amazing eye candy in the demo, Nadim Abdo came back to discuss RDP Graphics Internals, the RDP graphics architecture, and which RDP rendering method was used by which applications.

Applications Supported?

As mentioned earlier, in Windows 7 and RDP 7 Microsoft has added the ability for the server to send commands to the Remote Desktop Client and have those commands executed by the local client’s graphics card vs. being required to have them rendered on the server, thus gaining the benefits we talked about above. But this is not always the case, and it was pointed out in the presentation where applications that run through and/or somehow embed Windows Media Player will take advantage of client -side rendering, called RDP Client Rendering, but that all others methods will not. For example, Flash media. We all know there are tons of Flash videos and banners all over the web today. Even DABCC.com has Flash. Microsoft commented that in the future we might see other graphics version move from a host rendering solution to a client rendering model.

The following chart shows the media types and whether they are rendered on the server and/or the client:

RDP 7 Graphics: Bringing it All Together

In the finial demo of the presentation, Gaurav Daga revisits the Direct X 2D and Direct X 3D applications shown earlier in the presentation, but this time he runs them both at the same time, side by side on the screen.

You will also notice the full Aero glass effect is present and running over RDP 7, notice the translucencies? Gaurav even showed off the eye candy “Flip 3D” support and it all worked flawlessly over a remote desktop session. Yes, a RDP session…

Virtual Desktop Support

One of the more interesting points Gaurav Daga made, which I found very compelling, was around virtual desktops. He made the point that today most virtual graphics adapters found on virtual desktops do not support truly rich DirectX and Direct 2D / 3D applications but with Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and RDP7, it won’t matter due to the fact the features are built into the operating system (Windows 7) and do not require heavy use of the server side graphics driver. This also means it does not matter what hypervisor Windows 7 runs on. All you need is a virtual Windows 7 desktop along with the Desktop Client for RDP7 and the user experience will be all that and a bag of chips.

This makes me think. VMware and a slew of other desktop virtualization venders use RDP as the remoting protocol for their VDI solutions so in theory they will be able to take advantage of these upcoming features. But the problem is solutions such as VMware View (formally known as Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM)) have a custom client. This being said, the VDI brokers will be required to update their current clients to support the upcoming RDP 7 enhancements. Only the upcoming Microsoft Desktop Services connection broker will be able to take advantage of these features by default.

What Clients will be supported?

At launch time and I can only expect for some time afterwards, the following clients will support all the new graphics and multimedia enhancements:

Windows 7
Windows Vista (Direct X remoting will not work)

The Bottom Line:

The bottom line is that Microsoft is stepping up the game with Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services, and RDP 7. The enhancements discussed and shown in the demos will go a long way to enhance the “user experience” in both Presentation Virtualization and Virtual Desktop worlds thus allowing wider adoption due to less pushback from users. (We all know user pushback matters…and delivering an amazing user experience is the key to overcoming user pushback.)

The only big drawback I saw was the fact that Microsoft is still using host rendering for a slew of common formats. For example, Flash. Needless to say Flash tends to be everywhere and typically does not perform well on my TS boxes… These new features will not directly benefit Flash video and the other formats of videos still using host based rendering.

Although at the end of the day for me it is simple….. when I can get my hands on this I will be retiring my MacBook Pro notebook and will be replacing it with a laptop running Windows 7! Sorry Apple… Put that in one in an upcoming “PC vs. Mac” commercial because “I’m a PC”!

New tool Sysinternals, disk2vhd!

BassQ — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:13:32 +0000

I am a big fan of sysinternals tools and I use these tools quite often to debug OS related issues. These tools are quite useful when you want to understand internals of OS. Mark and his team has been doing a great job in keeping these tools up to date and adding new features once in a while. One such new tool that got released yesterday is Disk2VHD. You can download it here. Here is how TechNet link decribes this new tool.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted)

I downloaded this tool in the morning and experimented a bit on my Windows 7 system. Usage of this tool is straight forward. You see a dialog with all disk partitions as listed in the screen shot here. All you need to do is select all the partitions you want to export to a VHD and click “Create”. The VHD export will take sometime based on the overall disk size you selected. For my experiments, I just selected first two partitions. This is because I have all the BCD information on partition 1 and without that my new VHD will be meaningless. You may see lot of CPU/memory utilization while the export is in progress. On my system, it looked something like this.

Once the export is complete, I rebooted my system in to Windows Server 2008 R2 and created a virtual machine and attached the exported VHD. That is it. My virtual machine is ready with installed OS and all the applications I was running on the physical Windows 7 system.

As I powered on the VM, the first screen showed me the boot menu I usually see on my physical machine. This is because I never removed the additional multi-boot entries I had in the BCD stored on first partition. This entries — if selected — won’t work because I did not export the partitions containing those OS images to the VHD.

At this point, I continued selecting the Windows 7 entry and started booting OS. Within a few seconds, I could see the user selection screen and after I logged in using my regualr user account, I could see all the applications working as usual. I also have Windows Virtual PC with WinXP mode in the VHD image. But — as I expected — that did not work as it requires hardware assisted virtualization which is something that will not be availble inside a virtual machine.

Complete Video of Steve Ballmers Keynote at Technet live

BassQ — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:22:43 +0000

Source: http://www.ngn.nl/ngn/STEVEKEYNOTE

On the 8th of October Technet_live was being held in The Hague, this included the Windows 7 introduction in the Netherlands. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft presented the Keynote. NGN-member Alex Warmerdam filmed the whole keynote with his mobile phone, and got to ask Steve Ballmer a question as well.

Enable Active Directory Object Restore With Windows Server 2008 R2

BassQ — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:51:51 +0000

The Active Directory Recycle Bin in Windows Server 2008 R2 by Jonathan Medd : http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/the-active-directory-recycle-bin-in-windows-server-2008-r2/

Since Active Directory was included as part of Window Server 2000, administrators have often asked for a simple way to roll back mistakes, whether that is the incorrect deletion of the wrong user account to the accidental removal of thousands of objects by deleting an OU. Before the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 there were a number of ways using built-in or third-party methods to restore Active Directory objects, but typically they were not as quick or complete as say retrieving a deleted email or file.

Microsoft has included with their release of Windows Server 2008 R2 the facility, under the correct conditions, to enable a Recycle Bin for Active Directory and allow simple restoration of objects which have been erroneously removed. In this article we will briefly cover some of the options prior to 2008 R2 and then examine how to enable the new Recycle Bin and restore objects from it.

Pre-Windows Server 2008 R2

The 2008 R2 Recycle Bin for Active Directory is a great motivating point for upgrading your forest and domain(s) to the latest version, but this is not always a quick process in many enterprises so it is worth knowing what options are available prior to this version. Like many things it’s a lot better to examine and plan for possible resolutions before a significant mistake happens that you need to deal with. Retrieving Active Directory objects typically falls into two available categories, authoritative restore from a backup or tombstone reanimation.

Authoritative Restore

The Microsoft KB article 840001(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840001) details how to perform the restoration of a user account using a system state backup of a domain controller. Typically, you would use a global catalog so that you can also restore all group membership information.

Tombstone Reanimation

The above article also details how to recover an account when you don’t have a system state backup by using tombstone reanimation which was introduced with Windows Server 2003 – you can retrieve objects from the Deleted Objects container where they are kept after deletion until their tombstone period expires. Obviously regular system state backups of Active Directory are critical for your full disaster recovery procedures, but taking advantage of tombstone reanimation means you can get objects back quicker than having to go through the full authoritative restore process.

You could use the procedure in the article which utilises the ldp.exe tool, but there are other methods around which you may find simpler.

The article itself links to a Sysinternals tool, ADRestore (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963906.aspx), which is a command line tool for reanimating objects.
The free ADRestore.Net, a GUI tool made by Microsoft PFE Guy Teverovsky. http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/guyt/archive/2007/12/15/adrestore-net-rewrite.aspx.
Quest produces a freeware product Object Restore for Active Directory, an easy to use GUI tool. http://www.quest.com/object-restore-for-active-directory/ (Note: there is a commercial version with more features, Recovery Manager for Active Directory.)
Quest also produces a cmdlet library for managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell (http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx). As of version 1.2 a number of the cmdlets had a Tombstone parameter added to them so that a search of objects would also include items which have been tombstoned. These results could then be piped through to the new cmdlet Restore-QADDeletedObject to undelete the object represented by the tombstone. For instance the command Get-QADUser –Tombstone -LastChangedOn ((Get-Date).adddays(-1)) | Restore-QADDeletedObject would restore all user accounts deleted yesterday.

The drawback with tombstone reanimation is that because most of the object’s attributes are removed at the time of the object’s deletion, a restored object using this method requires many properties of the account, such as address fields and group membership, to be manually repopulated. Whilst this is obviously preferable to re-creating an account from scratch it does not make for a quick overall process. However, you will at least get back the objectGUID and objectSid attributes which means there would be no need to re-configure a user’s workstation profile.

The original release of Windows Server 2008 introduced snapshot backups for Active Directory. You can take point-in-time snapshots of your Active Directory with the NTDSUTIL command line utility which utilizes Volume Shadow Copy to provide a snapshot. It is then possible to mount this snapshot using different ports on the same domain controller as the live Active Directory database and use standard tools to compare the two. This could really make the tombstone reanimation a lot simpler because after restoring the object you could view two versions of Active Directory Users and Computers side by side and view the properties of the restored object from a previous time, so making it simpler to repopulate properties.

The Directory Service Comparison Tool (http://lindstrom.nullsession.com/?page_id=11) takes advantage of these snapshots and makes the repopulation process more streamlined.

For those with Microsoft Exchange messaging environments, once you have the Active Directory account back, you can use the Reconnect Mailbox feature within Exchange to tie the restored account back up with the mailbox. This is of course providing you have a similar tombstone retention period for mailboxes that you do for AD accounts.

Active Directory Recycle Bin

The real reason you decided to read this article though was not so that we could spend time going over all the possible options for how you can piece together restored AD objects, but rather to find out how the Recycle Bin is going to make your life as an Active Directory administrator easier without necessarily the need for these different tools. The key differences from previous versions of Windows Server are that by default you get all of the attributes back and the tools to use are PowerShell cmdlets, which are quickly becoming a more essential part of every Windows administrator’s standard toolkit.

Firstly though the Active Directory Recycle Bin is not enabled by default and has certain domain and forest wide requirements before it can be enabled.

Firstly, all domain controllers within the Active Directory forest must be running Windows Server 2008 R2.
Secondly, the functional level of the Active Directory forest must be Windows Server 2008 R2.

Naturally organizations are typically cautious when upgrading Active Directory and these types of infrastructure projects don’t tend to happen quickly, but the Recycle Bin could be one of the features which gives you more weight behind a decision. You should also be aware though that enabling the Recycle Bin is a onetime only move, there’s no easy way to disable it again, so careful consideration of this decision must be taken.

It’s worth noting that if you are making a fresh forest install of Windows Server 2008 R2 the Active Directory schema will already include all of the necessary attributes for the Recycle Bin to function. If however you are upgrading your domain controllers from previous versions of Windows Server then you will need to run the well known procedure of adprep /forestprep and adprep /domainprep (for each domain) and possibly adprep /domainprep /gpprep (for Group Policy preparation)

before you can introduce Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controllers into the environment.

So let’s go ahead and run through all the steps we need to get the Recycle Bin enabled. Firstly, ensure that all of your domain controllers are running Windows Server 2008 R2 and then we need to use PowerShell; the great news with Windows Server 2008 R2 is that version 2 of PowerShell is installed by default and is placed directly on your taskbar.

After you have installed Active Directory Domain Services the Active Directory specific cmdlets are available to use via a module; modules essentially are the evolution of snapins from version 1 of PowerShell. To access these cmdlets you can either open the Active Directory specific version of the PowerShell console from the Administrative Programs menu, or the method I would prefer, use the Import-Module cmdlet. (Tip: You could add the below expression to your PowerShell profile so that the cmdlets are available every time you open PowerShell)

PS> Import-Module activedirectory

Once complete all of the Active Directory cmdlets will be at your fingertips. As previously discussed we now need to get the functional level of the forest up to the level of Windows Server 2008 R2. The most common way to do this previously was through Active Directory Domains and Trusts.

Now though we can do this through PowerShell. The Get-ADForest cmdlet will return information about your forest and the Set-ADForestMode cmdlet will enable you to raise the current functional level – since it is such a significant change to your environment you will be prompted to confirm that you wish to go ahead.

PS> Get-ADForest | Set-ADForestMode –ForestMode Windows2008R2Forest

Now that our forest is at the correct functional level we can enable the Recycle Bin, to do so we use the Enable-ADOptionalFeature cmdlet. This must be either run on the DC with the Domain Naming Master FSMO role or directed at that server with the –server parameter. Again you will be prompted to confirm your command since the action is irreversible.

PS> Enable-ADOptionalFeature ‘Recycle Bin Feature’ -Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet -target ‘test.local’

Now that we have the Recycle Bin enabled it’s time to go check out how we recover some deleted objects. In this environment we have a very simple AD structure with a couple of test accounts to illustrate the example.

Let’s take the situation where an administrator accidently deletes the Users OU. One of the most common reasons this can happen is because it is actually possible to delete OU’s from the Group Policy Management tool, not just Active Directory Users and Computers – so an administrator might think they are removing a GPO and in a bad moment delete the wrong item and remove a whole OU. The administrator is prompted for what they are about to do, but I have seen it happen more than once!

The initial release of Windows 2008 Server actually included a new checkbox ‘Protect object from accidental deletion’. In the example of the OU below any attempt to delete the OU will be met with an Access is denied response and the administrator will actually have to remove the tick from that checkbox before the OU can be deleted.

However, what you would naturally expect to happen as a consequence of the Protect object from accidental deletion would be any user or computer account created in that protected OU would also be supported by the same mechanism. Unfortunately by default they are not, so as a good practise you would either need to build that into your account creation process or programmatically check and set that checkbox on all accounts in the OU on a regular basis.

Consequently, in the above example if we accept the warning to delete the OU we are greeted with an Access is denied message since the OU has protection set.

So we were saved from deleting the OU, but all of the unprotected child objects were deleted.

(For the purposes of this article I now remove the Users OU by first clearing the checkbox for protecting the object from accidental deletion.)

We can browse the current contents of the Active Directory Recycle Bin using the Get-ADObject cmdlet, directing it at the Deleted Objects container and using the –includeDeletedObjects parameter.

PS> Get-ADObject –SearchBase “CN=Deleted Objects,DC=test,DC=local” –ldapFilter “(objectClass=*)” -includeDeletedObjects | Format-List Name,ObjectClass,ObjectGuid

We can see from the resultant output that we have both the Users OU in there and the two user accounts. So let’s try restoring one of the user accounts back, to do so we need the Restore-ADObject cmdlet and supply the ObjectGuid property of the user account.

PS> Restore-ADObject –identity 2df74fba-7e86-4f75-b16d-5725ef45a45f

Oh dear, it failed to restore, but PowerShell tells us that it failed because the object’s parent no longer exists either, i.e. we need to first restore the Users OU. (Note: an alternative would be to use the -targetpath parameter and re-direct the restore to a different OU)

To restore the Users OU we can use the same cmdlet (Restore-ADObject) as to restore users, just supply the ObjectGuid of the OU.

PS> Restore-ADObject –identity 20142376-8a48-4b56-9972-0e64eb9e9a0f

The Users OU returns.

Now we just need to get those user accounts back. Rather than have to type out the ObjectGuid for each account we wish to restore we can instead create a search which will match all of the accounts we wish to restore and then use the PowerShell pipeline to send those results to the Restore-ADObject cmdlet.

PS> Get-ADObject -ldapFilter “(lastKnownParent=OU=Users,OU=Resources,DC=test,DC=local)” -includeDeletedObjects | Restore-ADObject

The user accounts are back in the Users OU.

If we check the properties of the account we can confirm that different from tombstone re-animation we get all of the properties back.

Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack for PowerGUI

Although the Recycle Bin is a great new feature within Windows Server 2008 R2 Microsoft is already getting feedback that there is no GUI for managing it. Whilst a lot of administrators are comfortable with PowerShell, some may still prefer to use a GUI based management tool for these tasks. Fortunately a great tool to plug this gap has already been provided by the community; PowerShell MVP Kirk Munro has created the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack for PowerGUI (http://www.powergui.org/entry.jspa?categoryID=21&externalID=2461). This free tool has bundled up scripts using the previously demonstrated Active Directory PowerShell cmdlets and provides a graphical front end for administration.

Simply download the PowerGUI tool plus the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack and import it into PowerGUI. Open up the PowerPack and you will have a graphical view of the current contents of the Recycle Bin with the ability to drill down through Organisational Units. Options for restoring single items or recursively are provided in the Actions column as well as alternate restoration paths and emptying items from the Recycle Bin.

It is also possible to use the Configure recycle bin action to set the values for DeletedObjectLifetime, the amount of days objects reside in the Recycle Bin, and TombstoneLifetime, the amount of days objects can be restored using Tombstone Reanimation after they have left the Recycle Bin. In Windows Server 2008 R2 both of these values default to 180 days, in some earlier versions of Windows Server this value was 60 days and if you upgrade those domain controllers it will remain the same so you may wish to change the values – you can use the Modify action to do this.

For this example I have deleted from Active Directory the Resources and Users containers and the two user accounts which you can see nicely in the below screenshot using PowerGUI.

This time we will restore the account Joe Bloggs, but to an alternative location using the Restore to…. Action. (Remember: this is done in PowerShell using the –targetpath parameter of the Restore-ADObject cmdlet) Simply input the path to the Organisational Unit you wish to restore the object to. In this example we use the default Users container as the target location.

The user has been restored to the alternate location; this is particularly useful if we did not wish to bring back the entire OU(s) as we did previously.

If however, you do wish to bring back the contents of an entire OU and everything below it there is an action, Restore (recursive).

Using the Restore (recursive) action in this scenario brings back both the Resources and Users OU’s as well as the single account remaining in it, Jane Smith.

Hopefully in a future release of Windows Server this functionality will be provided out of the box, the most natural home would be a viewable container within Active Directory Users and Computers, until then the Recycle Bin PowerPack for PowerGUI will prove very useful.

Summary

One of the most requested features for a long time with Active Directory has been a Recycle Bin. Microsoft has finally delivered this with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2. It may not be a feature that enterprises get to use for a little while given the system requirements of all 2008 R2 Domain Controllers and your Active Directory Forest at 2008 R2 functional level, but it could be one of those compelling reasons that enables you to pursue an upgrade.

Administration is via the new Active Directory PowerShell cmdlets which Microsoft is using to provide a consistent command line interface across all of their products. Although currently there is no native GUI for these administration tasks, the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack for PowerGUI enables administrators to leverage the underlying PowerShell functionality and provide a graphical interface for carrying out these tasks.

Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 released!

BassQ — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:13:22 +0000

Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSUS 3.0 SP2) delivers updates to corporate environments from Microsoft Update. This release adds new features and fixes issues found since the release of the product.

WSUS 3.0 SP2 delivers important customer-requested management, stability, and performance improvements. Some of the features and improvements include the following:

Integration with Windows Server 2008 R2.
Support for the BranchCache feature in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 clients.
Compliance Report
Windows Update Agent (WUA) offers a collection of performance enhancements, user experience improvements, and bug fixes software updates.

WSUS 3.0 SP2 can be installed alone, or as an upgrade of WSUS 3.0 SP1.
This package installs both the WSUS 3.0 SP2 Server, WSUS 3.0 SP2 Administration Console components and WUA client for down-level operating system. You must install the server components on a computer that is running on Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later versions. You may install the Administration Console on a remote computer that is running one of the supported operating systems, see below the Supported Operating Systems section.
WSUS 3.0 SP2 Server Installation on Windows Small Business Server 2003
If you are installing the WSUS 3.0 SP2 product on Windows Small Business Server 2003, follow the instructions in Installing Windows Server Update Services 3.0 on Windows Small Business Server 2003.

Download Here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a206ae20-2695-436c-9578-3403a7d46e40#tm

Windows 7 legal for free for 120 days!

BassQ — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:16:23 +0000

Microsoft allows anyone to install and use any version of Windows 7 for 30 days without having to enter an activation key. There are no strings attached, and the operating system’s performance is not degraded or defaced during the trial.

Fortunately for us, the 30-day grace period can be extended up to three additional times — to a total of 120 days — using a Microsoft-supplied utility called the Software License Manager (slmgr). This tool conveniently ships with Windows 7.

How to use slmgr to extend the free-trial period of Windows Vista was first reported by WS editorial director Brian Livingston on Feb. 15, 2007. Because Windows 7 includes slightly different versions than Vista, the procedure has some new wrinkles. Listen up.

How to extend Win7′s trial to a full four months

In a nutshell: If you install Windows 7 and don’t enter an installation key, the 30-day activation clock starts. To see how many days you have left, click Start, right-click Computer, and choose Properties. At the bottom of the dialog under Windows Activation, you’ll see the number of days left in your trial period.

When that number gets perilously close to zero, you can extend the free period another 30 days via the following steps:

Step 1: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Enter your administrator password.
Step 2: Type the following command and press Enter:slmgr -rearm
Note the space after slmgr and the hyphen in front of rearm.
Step 3: Restart Windows 7.

Once the OS restarts, the Properties dialog described above will indicate that Windows 7′s activation grace period has been reset to a full 30 days.

You can run the -rearm trick a total of three times. If you perform a -rearm at the end of each 30-day period, you end up with 120 days of full, unfettered Windows 7 use without having to supply an activation key in the interim.

How to install Win7 Ultimate now, pay less later

When the activation grace period runs out — whether it’s in 30 or 120 days or somewhere in between — you need to feed Windows 7 an activation key. That’s when many Windows 7 customers will find themselves in trouble.

Let me clarify up front that the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Windows take the same keys. A key that works for 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium also works for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. However, different keys are required for Ultimate vs. Pro vs. Home Premium.

(I assume you won’t want to install the exceedingly limited Windows Home Basic, which is intended primarily for developing countries. And you won’t be installing Windows Home Starter, because you can’t buy a key for it. The Starter version is available only when preinstalled on a new netbook.)

Say, for example, you install a free trial of Windows 7 Ultimate. However, when the time comes to pay the piper, you want to shell out your shekels only for Win7 Home Premium. (That’s the version most individual users will choose, and it’s considerably cheaper than Win7 Ultimate — which isn’t worth spending more for, as I see it.)

If you installed a trial of Win7 Ultimate without knowing the secret, you’re stuck. The Home Premium key won’t activate an Ultimate PC. Your only option is a complete reinstall of Windows using the version that matches your bought-and-paid-for key — Home Premium, in this case.

The best solution is to install in the first place the version you probably want to end up with. If you expect to pay for Windows 7 Home Premium, you should install Windows 7 Home Premium. The same goes for Windows 7 Professional, which is for use in corporate domains.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to install either Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro from a Windows 7 Ultimate CD: simply delete a single file. Hard to believe, but true.

Convert Win7 Ultimate to Pro or Home Premium

Here’s the crux of the matter: If you put a DVD containing Win7 Ultimate in your PC and run the installer — either by booting from the disc or running the setup program from inside Windows — you end up with Win7 Ultimate. No surprises there.

However, if you first delete a tiny file named ei.cfg before making the installation DVD, the Win7 installer will give you the choices shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Delete or rename ei.cfg before burning a Windows 7 installation DVD, and a menu then allows you to select which version to install.

In fact, no matter which Win7 installation DVD you have — Ultimate, Pro, or Premium — if you delete the ei.cfg file from the disc, you’ll be offered the same choices and can install any version of Windows 7.

At the moment, only a small number of people have received a physical DVD containing Windows 7 Ultimate. Instead, most current Win7 users downloaded an .iso file, which includes everything on the Windows 7 Ultimate DVD: boot settings, file-structure details, etc. You burn the .iso file to a DVD. Then you either boot your PC from the DVD or run the setup program within an older version of Windows to kick the Win7 installer into gear.

If you have a Windows 7 Ultimate .iso file, it’s easy to delete ei.cfg. First, get a 30-day trial version of the gBurner utility, which is available from the program’s download page at CNET’s Download.com. Then install and run gBurner, open the Windows 7 .iso file, and delete (or rename) \sources\ei.cfg. Piece o’ cake, although it can take 20 minutes to save the altered .iso file.

You can then use either gBurner or Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder program (available from Alex’s site) to burn a version of the .iso file without ei.cfg to DVD.

What if you do have a physical Windows 7 installation DVD, but you don’t have an .iso file? In that case, use either gBurner or ISO Recorder to rip the DVD into an .iso file. Then follow the instructions above to delete the ei.cfg file and burn a new DVD.

Get the right version of Windows 7 going now and you won’t have to reinstall it — or pay an exorbitant price — later.

Source: windowssecrets.com

Great Microsoft Virtualization Free E-Book

BassQ — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:49:24 +0000

Today I have another great ebook to share with you. If you are interested in Microsoft virtualization solutions, then book “Understanding Microsoft Virtualization solutions” will be great resource for you. It is available as a free pdf download, and it covers Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, and Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. It’s been written by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Virtualization team, it’s been published by Microsoft Press, it has 431 pages and it is available as FREE DOWNLOAD.

Download “Understanding Microsoft Virtualization solutions – from the Desktop to the Datacenter” free pdf ebook

Original article: Microsoft Press – Microsoft Virtualization Solutions Free E-Book by Brian Johnson

RSAT for Windows 7 RTM is available for download

BassQ — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:34:29 +0000

The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7 RTM have been released to microsoft.com. These include the Hyper-V tools for remote management of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Once you install the update, you can enable one or more of the following tools from the Control Panel under Programs, Turn Windows features on or off.

Download Here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en