I was just reading “Cisco’s Billion-Dollar Server Guy Has Left“, over at Business Insider, and it explains Virtualisation as:

“virtualization software tricks applications into thinking they are on their own servers, even though they are sharing one with many others”

Which is an interesting take; although I think the use of “tricks” makes it sound a lot more hacky/dodgy than it really is.

As a Virtualisation enthusiast, explaining Virtualisation to a non-technical audience has always been an interesting conundrum for me.

How do you explain Virtualisation “in a nutshell” to non-techies?

Hope everyone’s keeping well

Phil

Since deployment, Bitlocker has been fantastic. The only issue we’ve had with Bitlocker since we deployed it is that of ensuring that end-users don’t suspend it or disable it, and that we most definitely have a good backup of the recovery key.

Effectively, without a management tool, you fly a bit blind until a problem comes up, or a Bitlockered laptop ends up in your lap with it disabled. Ignorance shouldn’t be bliss when it comes to full disk encryption and protecting your company’s data.

The AD backup of keys is a particular pain, as we’ve found that sometimes, Bitlocker just forgets to back itself up to AD when it’s enabled. To mitigate this, we’ve just instructed Bitlocker to also copy the key to a secure fileshare when it’s enabled during the MDT task, as well as backing it up to AD.

Fortunately, Microsoft have started to build a Bitlocker management tool called Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Management. You can read more about it on the Windows Team Blog.

It’s still in Beta, but I’m looking forward to trying this out!

Our situation was this:

• BES 5.0.2 installed using the default MSDE database (we have less than 100 BES users, so this isn’t a problem).
• When trying to install BES 5.0.3 upgrade, it failed, saying you need to upgrade the version of SQL you’re running before SP3 can be installed.

Here’s what you need to do in very basic terms:

• Install a “New Installation” of SQL 2008 R2 Express with the management tools on to the BES Server (don’t try and do the upgrade like I did; it doesn’t do anything to MSDE )
• Completely stop and disable all BlackBerry services under Administration Tools > Services
• Open up the SQL Management Studio, connect to the existing MSDE instance, and perform a Full backup of the BESMgmt database to a file location.
• Now, still in  SQL Management Studio, connect to the new database server instance (should be servername\sqlexpress) and perform a restore of the database you just backed up.
• Open up the SQL Server Configuration Manager:
  • Navigate to: SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for SQLEXPRESS
  • Enable TCP/IP
  • You may need to restart the SQL Service at this point.
• Re-enable (but do not start) the BlackBerry services you stopped and disabled earlier.
• Run the 5.0 SP3 installer, and point it at the new database instance. If you were using MSDE, you’ll need to change the connection port from the default to “Dynamic”.

Bootnotes:

When we first tried it, the installer threw an error at the last install step (after upgrading the DB). For whatever reason, rebooting and trying again fixed the issue and SP3 installed successfully.

In case you’re wondering, the reason for the full backup/restore step is because SQL express management tools wouldn’t let us move or copy the database. You may have better luck, however

Also note that, according to RIM’s compatibility matrix, SQL Express 2008 R2 isn’t supported for BES 5.0.3. You may wish to download and install SQL Express 2008 SP2  instead.

If you’ve recently added Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) to your MDT deployment, and you’re getting an offlineServicing error when deploying an OS, you may want to check this out.

The problem seems to occur when:

• You’re running Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010
• You’re deploying Windows 7 with SP1 integrated
• You’ve added IE9 in .cab format to the deployment via Packages
• When deploying an OS, you get a fatal error saying: “Windows could not apply unattend settings during pass [offlineServicing]“

To fix the problem, I removed the IE9 .cab from Packages and instead, integrated it into the install.wim image, using these instructions: Windows 7 – Add or Remove Packages Offline

I will attempt to write up proper instructions when I can, but the above link should provide you with enough information to work it out

I’ve spent the last few months playing with RemoteFX, including a fair amount of educated guesswork and hardware hacking to get a functioning system as – at the time – Microsoft’s documentation was a bit sporadic, and supported systems were just way too expensive for an exploration project. Mind you, even now they’re pricey; but RemoteFX isn’t aimed at the mainstream just yet.

It’s being retired now, so I figured I’d take a farewell photo of the AMD FirePro V5800 I managed to squeeze into a Dell R710 server.

Good luck RemoteFX – with some performance tweaks and a version 2.0, you’ll be awesome for VDI

It looks like this: after you’ve rebuilt the .wim image, and booted from it via WDS (Windows Deployment Services), WinPE boots up and shows the Solution Accelerator background, but after a short period of time, it reboots the PC without having done anything.

This happens if:

1. You’ve got Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 Update 1.
2. You’ve upgraded WinPE from 3.0 to 3.1, using the supplemental update ISO.

To fix this problem, Michael Niehaus has some instructions to follow.

Fortunately we don’t use WinRE, so we can use the workaround and still make use of WinPE 3.1. Had we needed WinRE, I would have restored the backup of the WinPE 3.0 files I’d made before copying over the 3.1 files. I’ve been bitten by MDT issues too often to not make backups of stuff I’m overwriting!

It would install perfectly if I installed it as a local admin user with the /q /norestart command, but doing the same thing through MDT resulted in the app hanging (and thus, the entire deployment).

After a quick search, it seems I’m not alone. Check out this thread on Technet for how to solve it!

1. Run the Office 2010 Customization Tool (OCT)
2. Open up your customised MSP file
3. Go to: Setup > Add installations and run programs > Add…
4. Then enter the information as seen in the image below.
   1. Target: [SystemFolder]\cscript.exe
   2. Arguments: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ospp.vbs” /act
      
5. Don’t forget to save your MSP!

This will activate Office immediately after it is installed, so that it won’t pop up the Activation Wizard when the user first runs Office. Think of this as either a kind of pre-activation or post-activation of Office 2010.

This guide makes the following assumptions:

1. You know how to load OCT (Office Customization Toolkit)
2. You are deploying 32-bit Office onto 64-bit Windows
3. You deploy Office 2010 at Deployment time using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (although, for this to work, you don’t have to).
4. You deploy Office 2010 using a MAK key.
5. You store your MSP file in the \Updates\ within the Office 2010 installation files on the MDT share (again, for this to work, you don’t have to).

I found this info after hopelessly searching around, finally coming across this page on Microsoft Technet.

You’ll find it here: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/10.x/10.0.0/misc/

Share and enjoy

Try this:

1. Plug your phone into your computer and mount it as a Disk drive.
2. Once it’s mounted, browse to the SD card on your Laptop (On mine it appears as E:)
3. Browse to E:\Media\audio\
4. Add a new folder called: alarms
5. Add your mp3 or wav files into the alarms folder.
6. Disconnect your phone

You can now choose your custom, personal, alarm sounds when setting an alarm

If you want to use the VMware vCenter Converter from within the vSphere Client you need to:

1. Install vCenter Converter on the vSphere vCenter Server (It’s an option on the vSphere vCenter installer)
   
2. Now log onto your vSphere Client and go to:
   1. Plugins > Manage Plugins > Install vCenter Converter Client
3. Once installed, right click on any ESX host, or ESX Cluster and choose “Import Machine…” from the bottom of the context menu.
   
4. That’s it. The vCenter Converter wizard will then pop up

Note: This is tested and working on VMware vSphere 4.1. Let us know how you get on with other versions of vSphere!

Setup

First we need to install the Dell Client Configuration Toolkit (CCTK) on the target system.

To do this:

1. Log onto the target system via RDP
2. Grab the CCTK MSI file
3. Install the CCTK onto the target system

Making Configuration Changes

On the target system:

1. Log onto the target system via RDP
2. Open up a Command Prompt
3. Navigate to: C:\Program Files\Dell\CCTK\
   1. If you’re running 32-bit OS, go into X86 folder
   2. If you’re running 64-bit OS go into X86_64 folder
   3. From here, run the relevant command…
   4. To enable and activate TPM on the target system:
      1. cctk --tpm=on
      2. cctk --tpmactivation=activate
   5. Reboot, and TPM will be enabled

Bootnote

This process was tested and confirmed working on a Dell Latitude E6410 running Windows 7 32-bit. Let us know in the comments if it works for you too!

More Resources

There’s a page from Dell which covers more background here: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/Dell+Client+Configuration+Toolkit

To do so, follow these instructions…

1. Download the OSC file from Microsoft
2. Run the following command from a command prompt: outlooksocialconnector-x86-en-us.exe /extract:C:\osc\
3. This will extract the msi files to c:\osc\
4. You can then use the MSI file to deploy OSC!

If you want to integrate the MSP Patch files are well, just do this:

Then you’ll be deploying the MSI fully patched

[SnapDrive Error]:VDS volume object for the LUN s/n ‘<serial>’ has not been found

The error shows up in the Report that SME generates when it runs a snapshot/backup job.

To get around this error, install the latest (apparently not-quite-released-yet) SnapDrive on to your Verification Server. You can get it here: http://now.netapp.com/NOW/download/software/snapdrive_win/6.2P1/

This problem appears to happen on Server 2008 R2 servers, and I can confirm that installing the download above fixed the issues for me.

For the record, this is our configuration:

Exchange 2007 SP2 running on a Server 2008 SP2 box, with a Server 2008 R2 box set up for Remote Verification

The full thread discussing this is here: http://communities.netapp.com/message/24568?tstart=-1

So I just bought an Acer Revo 3610 so that we can watch MKV files without converting them to MP4 and putting them on the Xbox/faffing around with 4GB file limits etc. The Revo is a brilliant box: cheap, tiny, near-silent and plays 1080p video with no dropped frames. I got mine from Amazon, if you’re curious. They had the best price at the time

Anyway, back to Windows Media Center. Out of the box, WMC doesn’t recognise MKV files. To get this to work:

1. Download and install Divx 7.
You only need the Codec bits, not the player/converter. This will setup MKV integration into WMC.

2. Download and install AC3 Filter
This will process AC3 audio if your MKV files has AC3 sound (a lot do, so it’s worth installing, otherwise you won’t get any sound)

3. Reboot your PC
4. Log back in, and open up WMC.
5. Ta-daa, you can now view (and hear!) MKV files

Spotted on the DrayTek website

The normal way of doing it is described on the Microsoft website. However, right clicking on the network connection had the “Remove from bridge” option greyed out, meaning I couldn’t remove it. I was also unable to delete the Bridge miniport itself from within Manage network connections.

To fix this, we can brute force the removal:

1. Open up Device Manager
2. Expand “Network Connections”
3. Right click on the MAC bridge miniport
4. Uninstall it

As your bridge has been uninstalled, your connections should now be removed from the network bridge

[Settings]
Priority=Default
Properties=MyCustomProperty

[Default]
OSInstall=Y
SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES
SkipCapture=YES
SkipAdminPassword=YES
SkipProductKey=YES

;Skips Welcome Screen
SkipBDDWelcome=YES

; VISTA LOCALE SETTINGS
KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809
UserLocale=en-GB
InputLocale=0809:00000809
SystemLocale=en-GB
UILanguage=en-US

;BitLocker
OSDBitLockerWaitForEncryption = "FALSE"
BdeRecoveryKey=AD
BDEInstall=TPMPin
BdeInstallSupress=NO
OSDBitLockerMode=TPMKey
OSDBitLockerCreateRecoveryPassword=AD

;SkipTimeZone=YES
TimeZone=85
TimeZoneName=GMT Standard Time

UserDataLocation=AUTO

SkipComputerBackup=YES

This will pre-fill a number of options throughout the MDT WinPE Deployment Wizard.

Share and enjoy

[Settings]
Priority=Default

[Default]
DeployRoot=\\MDTSERVER\Distribution$

SkipBDDWelcome=YES



KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809
UserLocale=en-GB
InputLocale=0809:00000809
SystemLocale=en-GB
UILanguage=en-US
UserDomain=YOURDOMAIN