One of the stand-out things for me is the easing of OS upgrades. Hopefully the days of checking out the crackberry.com forums for the latest software will be long gone. The ability to actually schedule remote OS upgrades at a time convenient for the end-user is also very, very welcome.

I’m looking forward to 5.0

I’ve spent all morning trying to log on to Microsoft’s eAgreement website in order to sign our new OVS agreement, but have been getting error messages all over the place. I made sure I was using IE and not Chrome or Firefox, as they often cause issues.

After emailing their support team, it turns out that their website it not compatible with Internet Explorer 8.

So much for dog-fooding

The procedure should also apply to most recent Dell Servers running ESX 3.5, but your mileage may vary

Get your hands on the Software Update Utility DVD ISO and Burn it.

In terms of time, this is pretty much half the job, believe it or not. You’ll need to goto support.dell.com, find your Dell Server, and get the Dell Updates DVD ISO. For the PowerVault 1950 III, go here and then look under Systems Management for “Dell – DVD iso Images” “applies to: DVD ISO – Dell Server Updates”.

Patching the Dell Server

1. Be sure to VMotion off any Guest OSs that you need to keep running. Shut down everything else, and then put the target server into Maintenance Mode.
2. Insert the Updates DVD into the Server
3. Bring up a command prompt, as root, on the Server and run the following to mount the CD-ROM: mount /mnt/cdrom
4. Now navigate to the CD-ROM: cd /mnt/cdrom
5. Check what’s upgradeable on your system: sh suu -c
6. If you’re happy, then run the upgrade: sh suu -u
7. That’s it, you’re done

Dell OpenManage Server Update Utility User’s Guide

If you just do a straight Google search for “Dell OpenManage Server Update Utility User’s Guide”, the top result is the documentation for OpenManage Server Administrator 5.2 and not the actual Server Update Utility, which makes it pretty confusing!

And yes, it’s a Saturday and I’m patching Servers

If you prefer video/speech to reading, there’s a very good video available for download as well

And pretty much all I can find is NetApp employees/fanboys and EqualLogic employees/fanboys picking apart each other’s tiny failings and sniping at each other using negative language, in a manner that I can only describe as pathetic.

Seriously guys, stop it. I just want to know what’s best for me, not what’s best for you…

If you’d like to pre-install Vista updates and hotfixes while Vista is installing:

1. Go to your Distribution Share (C:\Distribution)
2. Go into Operating Systems, then find your Vista OS (C:\Distribution\Operating Systems\Windows Vista Business SP1 – 32bit\)
3. Create a new folder in this directory called “update”
4. Copy all of your Vista Update files (.msu) into this directory
5. That’s it The next time you run a Vista deployment, the updates will be pre-installed!

Extra tip

systeminfo | find /i “install date”

Picked this one up from windowsnetworking.com

Check out the Press Release, or skip straight to the Corporate Install download page if you know why you want it

After fruitless searching I resigned myself to the fact that if I wanted to deploy Vista 64 I’d just burn an ISO of the 64-bit WinPE Boot Image and install from there. Fortunately, we rarely need to deploy 64-bit Vista, but this may change soon.

However, just now, I found the solution…

To enable 64-bit Boot Images via PXE with WDS, you need to run this command on the WDS Server:

wdsutil /set-server /architecturediscovery:yes

Why this was never mentioned in the Documentation that I read for MDT/BDD I’ll never know (maybe I just missed it), but finally I can boot to 64-bit WinPE and deploy 64-bit Vista from the network, hooray!

I found the answer on EggHeadCafe by searching for: “mdt 2008 deploy 64-bit vista pxe”. Roughly half way down the hard-to-read page was the nugget I needed.

For reference, there’s a proper Microsoft KB article explaining the solution.

Really hopes this helps someone out!

If you want to get the Visual Studio setup to install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 instead, check out these great instructions by Aaron Stebner.

Here’s what I did for reference:

1. Went to the SQL Express 2005 SP2 download page.
2. Downloaded both packages.
3. Navigated to the Visual Studio install share and located the SQL Express installers (\wcu\SSE\).
4. Renamed the existing installers to *.old
5. Copied the new installers to the same directory.
6. All done

Here’s what you need to enable Remote Desktop remotely:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Network Connections > Windows Firewall > Domain Profile > Windows Firewall: Allow Remote Desktop Exception

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Terminal Services > Allow users to connect remotely using Terminal Services

Enable both of those options and you’ll be Remote Desktop-ing into PCs by the next day (or rather, until your Domain clients refresh their Group Policy settings )

Happy New Year everyone!

Phil

Support for corporate deployment of DisplayLink software
——————————————————–
It is now possible to obtain a DisplayLink software installation solution that supports automated and remote installation scenarios. This kind of installation requires specific installation steps, detailed in the User Guide that is part of the Corporate Installer.

Yup, it’s true: we’re releasing an MSI installer very soon.

I’m excited about this news on two fronts. Firstly, this is the first time that I’ve contributed directly to a software release; I wrote the Deployment User Guide, gave advice on what IT Administrators want from a corporate installer, and helped steer testing scenarios. Secondly, this feature will allow IT Administrators to deploy DisplayLink’s software onto thousands of PCs simply and easily, further strengthening our ease-of-use message. And I don’t need to tell you how awesome GPSI+MSI is for us IT admins!

The “Corporate Install” package is different to the standard software release and will require you to register with DisplayLink in order to obtain the MSI files and sign the EULA. Once obtained, you can then deploy DisplayLink software to all the computers in your network via Group Policy Software Installation. Of course, you can perform silent/unattended installs manually via msiexec if you wish as well.

It’s worth mentioning again that the MSI installer has not been released yet, but it is coming. 

Stay tuned for more info!

The info seems slighty…wrong :/

Here’s where I found mine:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Sun\Java\jre1.6.0_11

Enjoy

Smart Technology – Quick Logons through Facial Recognition

Continuing with the tradition of breaking tradition, ASUS introduces a whole new way in which users logon to their computers—through facial recognition. The SmartLogon system detects the user’s face and logs on without any intervention from the user. This system is designed to learn the variations of the user’s facial features, and is capable of performing detection in different lighting conditions.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I wonder what happens if you take a photo of the target user, print it out life-size and show it to the camera? It might even work with a high-res passport photo scan. Hmmmm, curious…

Two pieces of malicious software affecting Apple’s Mac OS X appeared this week: a Trojan horse with the ability to download and install malicious code of an attacker’s choice, and a hacker tool for creating backdoors, according to security vendors.

The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a new installer, Intego said.

Naturally, it targets users in a traditional way:

The Trojan is found on porn websites posing as a codec needed to play video files, a technique used to trick the user into downloading and installing it.

I find myself saying this a fair bit: Mac OS X is not necessarily more secure than any other OS. At the present time, given their lower market share, they’re just not as sweet a target as the Windows install base. As Macs reach a critical mass, they’ll become just as desirable to infect as any other computer.

DisplayLink DL-160

There are several technologies available today that can send a video signal through a computer’s USB port to a monitor or projector, but DisplayLink is by far the most impressive. The combination of software (to redirect video through the USB port), and hardware (in the form of a chip in the display device or external video adapter) lets you connect, and expand your desktop to cover, up to six monitors by way of a single USB port on your PC. With the DL-160 chip, DisplayLink adds support for monitors with up to 1,600-by-1,200 resolution, and it works with Windows XP, Vista, Vista 64-bit, and Vista Aero. There’s even a beta version of the software for Mac OS X.

Press Release

Windows 7 also manages wireless radios better allowing them to drop below 100% power draw while managing the connection. And by tweaking the OS kernel, the CPU can sometimes run at a lower frequency and stay idle longer. This results are a minimum of 11% better battery life for Windows 7 compared to Vista — and we’re still only talking about pre-Beta Windows 7 software, mind you. Nice. 

Nice, indeed