Infrastructure Optimization

There’s a lot of truth to the following video, put together by the brains at Intel’s Emerging Compute Model center. Watch through to the end. I have a feeling we’ll be referencing that last bit in our own AppVirt discussions.

If that doesn’t work out, however, I look forward to maximizing my bitwise calculations per hour. I just need to use my remaining lunch money for the “Will Crunch for Food” t-shirt.

In the old days, Softricity was a partner of Citrix. Citrix is a partner of Microsoft. And Softricity was a partner of Microsoft, but is now part of Microsoft. See where this is going?

When Softricity was acquired, there was some industry speculation as to what would happen to the great interoperability between SoftGrid and Citrix’s presentation virtualization server product, MetaFrame, now called XenApp.

Chad Jones, Senior Product Manager for SoftGrid/MS AppVirt has posted a blog entry to a blog entry (ain’t the web meta-cool?) that dispels any remaining doubt, and demonstrates how Citrix and Microsoft continue to be “better together” as partners when it comes to application virtualization.

The article in question outlines how their two products work together for optimized interoperability. We’ve known this story for a long time, and in fact, Citrix has been the “gateway” technology for getting SoftGrid into many of our customer’s environments. We still believe that the two solutions work great together, and are quick to recommend their combination.

There are several jumps here - all of them are interesting reading:

Chad Jones’ article on the SoftGrid Team Blog

(There are two good KB articles on Citrix/MS AppVirt on this post.)

Working Together - Application Virtualization from Citrix & Microsoft (Citrix Community Blog)

My favorite highlights from the Citrix post:

There are several scenarios in which the application virtualization capabilities of both Citrix and Microsoft work together:

…

3.     Publish MS App Virtualization sequences in XenApp - In addition, it is possible for Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Application Virtualization to work together. Microsoft Application Virtualization packages can be published in XenApp.
4.     Apply XenApp policies to Microsoft Application Virtualization packages - This interoperability can be taken a step further. Existing Microsoft Application Virtualization sequences can interoperate with the XenApp policy features like SmartAccess and the XenApp Profiler, further extending the overall manageability of the joint solution.

If you’re a sysadmin for a small shop and are letting desktops update on their own, or if you’re at home and running XP, you may be wondering how to get SP3 Release Candidate to come down the pipe through Windows Update. It turns out that you need to flip a registry bit to get Windows Update to recognize that it needs to download and install it.

Microsoft has created a small utility to do this for you.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 via Windows Update

For those of you who have jobs and can’t watch the Microsoft KB article feed, you may have missed a couple of Hotfix Rollups for SoftGrid 4.1 and 4.2. For the impatient, here are the links:

SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 HFRU2

SoftGrid 4.2 HFRU 1

And here’s what’s new:

SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 Hotfix Rollup Package 2

This cumulative update for SoftGrid v4.1 SP1 provides the latest updates to SoftGrid v4.1 SP1. In addition to stability improvements, this update contains the following changes:

• The log level of the “Error reading from socket” message is now Debug. Therefore, the message does not appear in the Sft-server.log and the Windows event log at the default log level when you use SoftGrid Virtual Application Servers together with a hardware load balancer.
• SoftGrid Sequencer now preserves OSD GUIDs when it opens SoftGrid v3.2 sequencings for a package upgrade.
• Intermittent “0xBE” Stop errors that occur at system start on multiprocessor computers have been addressed.

New capabilities

SoftGrid now supports deployment of Virtual Application .msi files that are generated by the MSI Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization to SoftGrid clients that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and that have Terminal Services enabled.

SoftGrid 4.2 Hotfix Rollup Package 2

This cumulative update for SoftGrid v4.2 provides the latest updates to SoftGrid v4.2. In addition to stability improvements, this update contains the following changes:

• The log level of the “Error reading from socket” message is now Debug. Therefore, the message does not appear in the Sft-server.log and the Windows event log at the default log level when you use SoftGrid Virtual Application Servers together with a hardware load balancer.
• SoftGrid Sequencer now preserves OSD GUIDs when it opens SoftGrid v3.2 sequencings for a package upgrade.
• Intermittent “0xBE” Stop errors that occur at system start on multiprocessor computers have been addressed.

New capabilities

This update provides the following new capabilities:

• SoftGrid now supports Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).
• SoftGrid now supports deployment of Virtual Application .msi files that are generated by the MSI Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization to SoftGrid clients that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and that have Terminal Services enabled.

Any of you that read Ben Hunter’s blog, have probably noticed that the posts have been a little light as of late. Well, he decided to give it up. However, never fear: in the spirit of “Ben Hunter is dead! Long live Ben Hunter!” he’s combined efforts with several other Microsoft Deployment folks, and has created an aggregate blog called:

The Deployment Guys

From a Ben Hunter-penned entry called “What is The Deployment Guys”:

“The Deployment Guys” is a blog focused on deployment.

“The Deployment Guys” is a combined effort.

There many different blogs out there with useful deployment information. This is great but it can be difficult to keep track of them all, there must be a better way.

With this in mind we have decided to combine out deployment related blogs into one blog, this blog!

But that is not all…. We have also managed to convince a number of deployment gurus from within Microsoft Services that do not currently have blogs to contribute.  These are guys that have great information to contribute and will really add something to the blog.

So look out for posts from Richard Smith, Daniel Oxley and Ben Hunter as well as a host of others. We have a lot planned.

We have high hopes for this blog hopefully you will find it useful as well.

This post was contributed by Ben Hunter a consultant with Microsoft Services New Zealand.

Adios and welcome back, Ben! We’ll be watching!

From the excellent 4sysops blog:

Vista SP1 is officially only available for enterprise customers, but the reports about problems caused by this service pack are piling up. This post contains a list of all SP1 issues I am aware of.

List of Issues with Vista SP1 (4sysops)

Good to know, especially if you are managing Windows Updates at the Enterprise level. Also good to know for you early adopters with TechNet subscriptions.

Not to be left out of the Open Source buying frenzy, Sun has recently acquired an OS virtualization product called “VirtualBox” that looks to be a boon for developers and for IT Administrators looking for standalone lab environments. Sun already had a server consolidation virtualization product (datacenter grade) in xVM Server, but didn’t have a standalone desktop virtualization application (like VirtualPC or Parallels.) Now they do.

VirtualBox  was an open source project, and Sun has committed to keeping it free, but as with all open source commercial acquisitions, this sort of move always raises mixed feelings: it’s nice to have some dollars behind continued development, but people love their free software.

via Infoworld 

Hello, dear readers - I thought some of you might be interested in a free event that our team is putting on, centered around the business value of virtualizing applications. For Infrastructure Optimization wonks like myself, this technology is poised to become the centerpiece of many future IO engagements for me and our team.

The webinar should prove to be a great introduction to the benefits of the technology, both from an administrator’s and IT management perspectives.

Registration is free, and the webinar is an hour long. I’ll be there - and hopefully, I’ll be able to meet a few of you “in person.”

Details:

Desktop Management - The Business Value of Application Virtualization

March 18, 2008 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM EST

This is a FREE event. Registration link is below.

Attendees will understand how organizations around the world have leveraged application virtualization, to realize measurable business value. Both Gartner and Forrester have called application virtualization the technology to watch in 2008. Learn how businesses combined the newest technology, desktop management best practices and support changes to achieve significant savings.

Planned 45-minute agenda follows:

• Introductions
• Business Drivers
• Application Virtualization and Desktop Management Overview
• Business Value
• Demo
• Questions and Discussion

For more information please contact: IOConsulting@getronics.com

Registration page at:
http://www.getronics.com/us/en-us/getronics/events_data/desktop_management_form.htm

Is your company struggling with its migration plan to move to Microsoft Vista or Windows Server 2008? Does your IT Staff dread the thought of having to deploy new hardware in your enterprise environment? Do you still have technicians that run around with a handful of CD’s to deploy a new PC in a remote location? Do you have a separate image for every hardware platform in your environment? If an employee PC hard drive crashes, does it take more than 2 hours for your IT department to redeploy their system? Is your company still running Windows 2000 or maybe better yet, NT 4.0?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, don’t be embarrassed; because the truth is most companies today (both large and small) still struggle to migrate from one Operating System to the next.

At the heart of the issue for most companies is an ineffective strategy to rapidly create, maintain, and deploy images that will meet the needs of their entire enterprise as a whole. It is a well known fact that maintaining up-to-date images is an expensive, time-consuming problem in most large enterprises.

Despite the fact that today’s PC’s are blazingly fast and can practically jump through hoops, most companies ‘approach to Image Management is very antiquated. Typically, the process is very manual and difficult, at best, to keep up with today’s refresh cycles for hardware and software changes in the enterprise.

The nightmare for most IT departments begins because they work in heterogeneous environments where there are multiple PC and Server platforms from different vendors with unique hardware specifications. Secondly, from marketing, to finance, to human resources, each department and individual user has distinct application requirements. To further complicate issues, the great divide between geographical regions and their language requirements makes it increasingly impossible to develop, test, and maintain images across the enterprise. Most companies deal with this challenge by creating multiple images that eventually become outdated very quickly and a nightmare to update in a timely manner.

The Challenge

What if, like magic, you could totally automate the creation of your image and what if, you could condense the dozen or so images floating around your enterprise down to a single image that was capable of being applied to any hardware platform in your environment.

Device drivers and hardware dependent software tools could load independently of each other and do it dynamically as the image loads. And what if this was a highly compressed image that could be streamed across the network to multiple machines simultaneously and would be finished loading by time you came back from your lunch break.?

Better yet, what if you didn’t have to use expensive third-party software to accomplish all of this? Sound too good to be true? Could this be imaging nirvana?

The Solution

The reality is that there are IT shops that are experiencing this state of utopia and are successfully deploying PC’s and Servers throughout their environment with just a few mouse clicks.

You are wondering by now, how is this possible? Folks, the reality is, I have worked on several such projects in the past and customers are finding out that in most cases they already have the tools that they need to get out of the dark ages when it comes to image consolidation.

So here’s the deal, there is a global giant out there in the market place called Microsoft and over 95% of all companies (both small and large) use their software products (from the Client, to Messaging, to Management) to run their business.

Moreover, most companies using Microsoft software have made a huge investment in software licensing agreements for such products as XP, Vista, Server products, SMS, SQL, MOM, etc. and the list goes on.

The problem is that most of these companies find out that a lot of these products sit on the shelf and are underutilized for the amount of money that they have spent on it.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has spent a lot of time and effort in creating and developing what they call “Solution Accelerators”. These solutions are designed to help customers deal with point specific problems and to help them realize and exploit the capabilities of their existing software and infrastructure.

One such example is the Microsoft Deployment solution accelerator, whose sole focus in life is to provide the tools and guidance for rapid image consolidation and deployment.

Formerly known as BDD (Business Desktop Deployment), Microsoft Deployment is now in its fourth generation and has really come full circle as a solution that helps customers fill in the gaps to realizing and unlocking the potential of their infrastructure that they are already heavily invested in.

The latest name change signifies the fact the product has been extended beyond the desktop and is now capable of rapid server imaging as well.

Is this cool stuff or what? Imagine a world where, with a few mouse clicks, you can redeploy a client machine and deploy a dozen or so blade servers all at the same time.

And the best of all: this is a free download from Microsoft.

So I guess if my story has a moral, it would be this: you could quite possibly already have all of the ingredients in your lab to begin transforming the way you develop and deploy images in your environment.

If you haven’t already heard of it, you will: The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, or MDOP for short, is an add-on subscription for customers with Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) coverage for their Windows desktops.

The five core components of MDOP are SoftGrid Application Virtualization, System Center Desktop Error Monitoring, Asset Inventory Service, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, and Advanced Group Policy Management.

There’s a lot of great stuff in MDOP, but the application virtualization and error/diagnostics/recovery tools really caught my eye.

Application Virtualization with SoftGrid

Microsoft Application Virtualization (as you know from reading this blog, the word “SoftGrid” is disappearing, sadly!) transforms applications into virtualized network-available services that are not installed on user desktops or laptops, but are instead delivered as a service. This allows you to centralize your applications and the management of those applications. We’ve looked at (we think) all of the application virtualization products out there, and AppVirt gets it right.

As opposed to the ways of traditional Electronic Software Distribution (ESD), when users need new applications, you simply add those users to the list of users authorized for those applications, and voila, the application icon appears on their desktop. There is no installation, and no desktop visit required. None! This feature alone has sold more copies of MDOP than I can count.

This technology also makes having roaming users and disaster recovery easier with applications being centrally managed and delivered since the applications are tied to the user’s logon and not the machine.

Another really unique use is when new versions of an application need to be tested side-by-side with the previous version(s) of the application. Each version is isolated from the other in their own virtual “bubble,” so there’s no conflict and you can quickly see the results without the need to use different machines or load/unload different versions. I could have used this back in my application development days.

Decreased PC Sick Days with MDOP

We’ve all had the experience of encountering a PC that is either failing, generating an error (or the dreaded “unknown error” – my personal favorite!), or, if you’re having a really super day, won’t even boot.

System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) is one of the unsung heroes of MDOP. It provides an insight into application and operating systems issues.

You know the routine: many times if a PC “hangs” or at least stops responding, your users will merely turn the power off and re-boot the machine. Problem solved for today, but what about tomorrow? Will this error happen again? Will this error spread and begin to affect your other users? Will your users throw up their hands and say ”Nothing Changed! I Swear!” or “I don’t know why it’s hanging! But I just flip the power switch and it works again!”

Enter System Center Desktop Error Monitoring.

DEM provides an agentless way to track these events, identify their frequency, and provide crash details and automated responses to a centralized console that you control. This gives you a better clue as to what’s been going on and where to look in the PC, without relying on silent or unreliable user reports.

Having this head-start is so much better than just a short time ago (perhaps last week for some of you?) when you needed to look at everything on a sick PC just to try to figure out where to start diagnosing the real problem. Seriously: I’m sure you can imagine how the time savings from not having to do this is worth it. On top of this, DEM arms you with the tools to forecast problems down the road, and gives you the chance to take corrective steps before things get out of hand.

BUT: what if you’ve got a PC that is totally busted? DEM can tell you about it but it seems quite certain that once you know about it, you’ll be expected to do something about it. Well, MDOP’s got some IT Admin love for that too: a Swiss Army toolkit to allow you to resurrect dead PCs and pro-actively manage PC failures leading to better stability and reduced downtime.

The Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) can help you save time and reduce the challenges associated with troubleshooting and repairing system failures. The challenges include unusable PCs, issue diagnosis, and repairing unbootable or locked-out systems.

The toolset provides options for recovery, even when Windows Safe Mode or normal boot will not function. That’s a big benefit right there since you now have a better chance of not needing to reload or re-image the entire PC!

DaRT’s off-line boot environment helps you quickly restart computers, recover deleted files, remove malware whilst the computer is off-line and therefore protect the other computers on the network. Your desktop technicians will thank you if they have this tied to their utility belt.

Other coolness: DaRT’s ERD Commander boots PCs into a windows-like repair environment. Crash Analyzer determines the most likely cause of a crash. System Restore lets you safely remove changes that could be causing the system to malfunction. Taken together, this toolset allows you to work more quickly to minimize downtime due to lost productivity thus reducing associated support costs. Copy and paste that last sentence: your boss is going to love it.

Real quick: if you’re an SA customer with Microsoft, and are managing PCs, you are going to really want to get your hands on MDOP. It’s a great suite of products that we’re really excited about here on the team, as we’ve seen our customers’ real-world solutions reduce costs and downtime as well as increase productivity not only of information workers, but of over-taxed IT staff.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack