Lead, Follow, or Move

Weekly Post #7

Adam Bell — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:26:23 +0000

There’s some debate going on at the moment about whether System Admins prefer their administration tools with a User Interface (UI), or Commandline.

My issue has been that traditionally, Microsoft Tools were great at performing whatever the task was against a single machine, but didn’t usually scale to performing the same task against, say 1,000 machines. That has been were commandline usually picks up the slack.

My passion for PowerShell isn’t exactly secret, but I’m also lazy. If I need to do one task on one machine I’m happy to click around and use the UI. If I’m trying to build out an environment, then I’ll move to commandline.

What do you prefer? Cast your vote in the Poll on the Polls page or on the right of the front page.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

RTM – MAP 4.0 Released!

Adam Bell — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:49:15 +0000

Microsoft Assessment and Panning Toolkit 4.0

According to the MAP Team Blog, MAP 4.0 moved out of Beta yesterday :)

Download MAP 4.0

What’s New with v4.0?
Version 4.0 of this toolkit has the following new features:
• Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V R2 Server Consolidation
• Integration with the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Calculator
• Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests
• User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding
• Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance

Additional Features
• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation
• Windows Vista Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Windows Server 2008 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• 2007 Microsoft Office Readiness Assessment
• SQL Server Instance Discovery
• Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation
• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment
• App-V Infrastructure Readiness Assessment
• Power Savings “Green IT” Calculator

More infromation on this excellent tool is available on TechNet.

WAIK Beta Oddities

Adam Bell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:50:58 +0000

In the last post I talked about a first look at Microsoft’s MDT 2010 Beta 2.

My inplace upgrade from Beta 1 “apeared” to be successful. However when I went to update the deployment share, I received the following error:

Update Deployment Share - Failed

This appears to be caused by a directory structure change in the WAIK between Beta and RC. Uninstalling WAIK, and resinstalling with the RC version will resolve this, but which version is the RC version? The WAIK RC is available from here as per Michael’s recent post

I have two ISO’s that I’ve downloaded recently from Microsoft:

en_windows_automated_installation_kit_x86_x64_ia64_dvd_349519.iso
KB3AIK_EN.iso

So according to the filename on the link on Michael’s blog I should be using KB3AIK_EN.iso. Except that this is the one that I did install when I built the server for MDT Beta 1.

Looking at the readme.htm in both ISO’s provides no clue either as neither are clearly marked as Beta or RC. Using Orca from the MSI SDK 4.5 I took a look at the ProductVersion and ProductName from the Property Table in the wAIKAMD64.msi. The values were the same for both:

ProductVersion = 2.0.0.0
ProductName = Windows Automated Installation Kit

In the end the only way I able to differenciate them was by the PackageCode in the Summary Information Stream:

Beta = {7FB35EC9-03A9-49AF-B0A1-81BDBA3949F5}
RC = {3BD5A1BF-F520-4BAA-9C7E-FAA12EF37AAF}

Restarting the MDT 2010 Beta 2 Workbench after the correct version of WAIK is installed, caused the following prompt:

Follow the steps as described to resolve the issue.

I don’t know how the filenames got reversed because I’m pretty sure I didn’t rename either of the WAIK ISO’s, but it provided for an entertaining half hour!

First look at MDT 2010 Beta 2

Adam Bell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:56:15 +0000

Michael has been firing out a lot posts about the new features of MDT 2010 recently, and as this is a tool I do quite a lot with I figured it was time to start playing :)

I have a test server with the Beta 1 MDT 2010 already installed. I wanted to see if any issues are encountered if I just installed over the top.

The installation process didn’t notify me of any previous version, but it selected the installation directory of the existing MDT. I let it install to the same location, and it completed without any errors.

The new and improved workbench.

I like the new shiny icons, but more importantly I like how I can organise things in folders :)

My existing MDT items were all still available, with the exception of the deployment share. Selecting to open an existing share and selecting the upgrade check box appears to have brought everything up to date.

Property page has been updated

One of my minor annoyances for a long time has been resolved. You can now tab through the fields, though you have to tab through both sides *grrr*.

From a PowerShell perspective a quick look reveals that we have one snapin to play with: microsoft.bdd.PSsnapin.

The PowerShell Snapin for MDT 2010

16 cmdlets are provided by the MDT snapin

I haven’t played with these yet, but they look to be promising.

News and Events

Adam Bell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:22:24 +0000

The Summer Scripting Games finished last Friday. There’s always lots of PowerShell goodness to get you thinking! Richard has been detailing his solutions, and the complete list is available on the Scripting Guy blog.

Microsoft also held a Virtual Conference last week and the video’s are available here.

MDT 2010 Beta 2 has just been released and promises to hold a lot of great improvements. Michael, has shot out a whole bunch of posts in short time detailing some of the new features here.

Lots of great stuff to watch and play with! :-)

Weekly Poll #6

Adam Bell — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:25:38 +0000

Yes, after a break finally a new Poll is up.

Windows 7 – does Windows finally have some WOW factor?

Cast your vote on the home page or Polls Page

Microsoft Access Based Enumeration

Adam Bell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:37:48 +0000

Have you ever had one of those moments in IT, when you discover a tool, and a light bulb goes on inside your head, and you say to yourself “I’ve needed this for ages! This really fixes issue X”?

I’ve had that a few times (maybe I need to get out more?), and one of those times was a few years ago with a tool from Microsoft, named as only MS can: Windows Server 2003 Access Based Enumeration or ABE. I took it for granted that everyone knew about this great tool, and was using it. That was until I suggested to a client that it may help his corporate share restructering project, and he looked at me blankly. In fact the more people I’ve mentioned this to, the more blank looks I’ve got. So, if you’ve not heard of it you’re probably asking what the damned thing does?

ABE, is a very small download from Microsoft, that provides a piece of functionality everyone has been wishing for since, well NT4 in my case. Basically when you have a user connect to a shared folder, and they are browsing within that folder structure, if they don’t have permission to a folder/file then they just don’t see it. Gone are the previous issues of getting access denied messages, followed by helpdesk calls to clarify if they should be allowed in to Folder Y. Great huh?

As part of installing ABEUI.msiyou have the following options:

Configuration choice during installation

Post installation changes can be made through CLI using abecmd.exe or through a tab on the share’s property dialog:

Options for configuration ABE on the Property sheet of the share folder

Acess Based Enumeration requires Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. It’s not required on Windows Server 2008, because the behaviour is already included, but is not configurable. Finally ;)

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – Video Walkthrough

Adam Bell — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:20:23 +0000

There’s a pretty good video walk through available on Technet by Microsoft’s Richard Smith.

It runs for 30 mins, and provides a very good example of setting up a simple lite touch install in MDT. Well worth a look if you’re new to this tool!

It’s alive …

Adam Bell — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:10:09 +0000

Yes, despite something of a hiatus, there is still life here ;)

The move back to Australia, organising work, home and everything else associated with relocating 15,000 miles (again) caused more interruption than I originally imagined.

Now that everything is settled, and back to relative normality, you can expect to start seeing more activity from this small niche of the blogsphere.

Quick Tip: enabling a LAMP server on Ubuntu “desktop” 8.04

Adam Bell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:55:45 +0000

Something useful I noticed today is that you can install MySQL, PHP, and Apache onto the Ubuntu “desktop” easily with the following:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Found in the Ubuntu Community Documentation.

A quick way to get a development environment up nice and quick!