Infrastructure Optimization

Last week we had the pleasure of spending time with Shanen Boettcher, General Manager of Windows Product Management for the enterprise at the Redmond stop of his week-long press tour.. It was great to see first hand how much has MDOP plays a strategic role in the Microsoft’s desktop stack…

1. He told the press that Microsoft has sold over 6.5 million licenses of MDOP to date, making it the fastest-selling volume licensing product in Microsoft history.
   –> A lot of these will be deployed in the next 12-months which is GREAT news for most of us
2. He also told that officially, Microsoft had completed its acquisition of Kidaro, an Israeli-based startup that allows management of virtual machines and many other virtualization features much-much user friendly. Furthermore the product will be included in the MDOP offering, with the name “Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization” . This is fantastic news as it increases the value of MDOP tremendously. We are very exited about seeing the product come to market in the early 2009.
3. We will make a special posting on the Kidaro technology, but to give you an idea:
   during the demo we saw a scenario in which IE6 launched inside a XP-Virtual PC (transparent to the user) based on a specific URL being typed on IE7 - Very useful in application compatability challenges –

Shanen’s full article can be found at: Windows Vista News Blog

Exciting times coming ahead! - Look forward to the rest of 2008 and 2009.

PS - I noticed that we got a quoted by Ina Fried on “Beyond Binary / CNET “ blog … She noted:

I am sure we will be exploring this theme in the near future… Stay tuned!

For the company, such personally owned laptops can save on support costs and serve as a retention tools for Generation Y-ers, said Lee Nicholls, global solutions director for IT consultant Getronics.

“They have a really high expectation of what they want to work with,” Nicholls said. “They want a degree of flexibility.”

AppVirt Enthusiasts, rejoice! At MMS this year, they announced that RC1 of Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 will be made available via Microsoft Connect in June.

I decided to take a chance on the possibility that I could get MAV 4.5 Beta running on Server 2008 before a demo I have to give in Dallas this week, so I spent a rainy Sunday putting it together in a Virtual PC VM. Well, after several hours and re-dos, I got it, and am proud to say that it works like a dream. Here are the steps I took to get the Server 2008 + Microsoft AppVirt 4.5 Beta + SQL Server 2005 Express into a single VM server for demos.

Note that I did not type in product keys, because I won’t be using these past 30 days. If you decide to follow these instructions, you should put product keys in, or not, depending on your application.

Also note: These notes are provided as-is, and without warranties, express, or otherwise, etc. etc. Your mileage may vary. Not legal in places where things like this are not legal. {CAVEAT_MACRO}

That being said, if you are trying this, and have questions about what I did, or spottiness in my notes, feel free to email me, or comment here.

Why do this? It makes a great base to demonstrate AppVirt in action, or as a lab for your own sequencing efforts. And heck, if you’re like me, it’s fun!

Using Virtual PC 2007

1. New Virtual Machine, specified Server 2003 as the Model
2. Inserted Server 2008 disc, began setup
3. Did not enter a product code
4. Installed Enterprise
5. Downloaded MAV 4.5 Beta, SQL Server 2005 Express, will share out folder to these installers
6. Set admin password to *******
7. Added Virtual Machine Extensions
8. Update Sound Card driver by pointing update to c:\Program Files\Virtual Machine Additions
9. Added AD Domain Services Role
10. Ran DCPromo.exe
11. New forest root domain: server.contoso.com
12. Forest functional Level: Server 2003
13. Added DNS role
14. Left Dynamically-assigned IP address
15. Directory Services Restore Mode Administrator Account password: ******
16. Finished wizard, chose reboot on completion - need to reboot anyway for VM Extensions
17. DCPromo rebooted machine
18. Added  IIS role: added ASP.NET feature, Basic, Windows and Digest Authentication, IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility (all), IIS Management Scripts and Tools, Management Service
19. Open AD Users and Computers
20. Create an OU called “AppVirt”
21. Create a group called “AppVirt Administrators”. Add Administrator to this group.
22. Create a group called “AppVirt Users”. Add Administrator to this group.
23. Renamed computer to main.server.contoso.com. Restarted.
24. ———– SQL SERVER INSTALLATION ————-
25. Started SQL Express installer
26. Added Client Components and Connectivity Components
27. Mixed Mode authentication: password: ******
28. Installed SQL Server Management Studio Express
29. SQL Instance name: MAIN\SQLEXPRESS
30. Run SQL Server Configuration Manager
31. Enable Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols under Network Configuration
32. Restart SQL Server service
33. ———– Windows Update —————–
34. Automatic updates on
35. Checked for updates (trying to get SQL Server 2005 SP1)
36. Added Microsoft Update for other MS products

    Downloaded 7 updates (74mb), including SQL Express Sp2

37. Restarted
38. ———– MAV 4.5 Setup ————-
39. Start setup.exe
40. Select main\sqlexpress as the Database Server location
41. Create a new database (SOFTGRID)
42. Accept defaults for secure mode. (do not enable)
43. Accept defaults for RTSP port (554)
44. Administrator Group: AppVirt Administrators
45. Provider Group: AppVirt Users
46. Change to Explorer, and Create a folder called c:\Content
47. Specify Content path as c:\Content\
48. Finish installer
49. Close Virtual PC instance and SAVE STATE - this will serve as the base platform for the server

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.

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.

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

My colleagues and I have been hearing a lot about Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services RemoteApps. Very cool stuff: it’s a great way to publish applications to your users (thin or thick clients) especially if you’re not ready to make a heavy Citrix investment. But, a few of us are refugees from the old Softricity days, where we fell in love with a web-based application provisioning workflow called Softricity ZeroTouch. It was sweet: log into a website, and self-provision SoftGrid apps to yourself, basically. In a former incarnation, I installed this application as a matter of course on engagements where SoftGrid was a component - it just made too much sense not to.

Microsoft, soon after, and rightly, acquired Softricity and its products. In that process, SoftGrid has become Microsoft Application Virtualization, but due to an internal decision, ZeroTouch was retired. This, for old SG hacks, was a sad day. ZeroTouch was a great customer story, and remains so today. Today, however, we have to say that “such an app could easily be written” rather than “let’s install ZeroTouch on a pilot server and see how you like it.”

After our own experience with Server 2008 builds, and a few presentations in Redmond, a couple of us noticed that some of the screenshots of TS Web Access stunningly resemble the old ZeroTouch interface:

With all of Microsoft’s strategic force in the virtualization market, it’s good to see that they are including presentation virtualization and self-service provisioning portal technology into their out-of-the-box Server 2008 experience.

But, I’m still left with a nagging nostalgia. Bring me both. I love TS Web Access. But, bring me self-service AppVirt(SoftGrid) ZeroTouch. Or make some more noise on USSP with Microsoft Deployment - it’s gone pretty quiet, or else I’m reading the wrong blogs. I’m hoping that TS Web Access is only a harbinger of a unified solution.

If I had to guess, I’d say that this unified SCCM/AppVirt/TS application provisioning workflow is in the works, and we mere mortals just don’t know about it yet. I’m hoping that someone’s reading this post, and has the time to point out something that I’ve missed. I know it would be a pretty easy thing for some of my crack ASP.NET developers to write, since app provisioning in SoftGrid/AppVirt is as simple as adding/removing users from AD security groups (or now, in 4.5, modifying ACLs on SFT packages) but this product already exists, and I hate the thought of reinventing the wheel.

Time will tell, and if a solution doesn’t come from the mothership, one is bound to come from the cloud. That’ll be a good day for us all.

Buckle up AppVirt drivers! Microsoft has just released a set of “hands-on labs” for those of us that need to break something before we learn it. Good thing it’s virtual!

Books, papers and PDF’s are great but if you’re looking for a way to check out many of the features and concepts through a set of step-by-step, hands-on exercises these labs are for you.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Basic Sequencing
• Advanced Sequencing
• Advanced Sequencing for VFS (virtual file share)
• Active Upgrades
• Publishing

The easiest way to see all of the lab offerings and their course discriptions is through the SoftGrid Team Blog.

Now, get out there and break something - virtually, of course.

Best Practice Alert – did you folks in the app-virtusphere know that Office 2k7 was not initially designed for virtualization?

I’m a bit bemused by the SoftGrid Blog team using that phrase “not designed.” I just wonder, with my tin-hat on, waiting for the black helicopters – did MS do this with intention? Will Biff go into rehab?

From the SG Blog – (link) Microsoft Office Support of SoftGrid Outlined

“Keep in mind that Office 2007 was not designed for virtualization, so there are some features that will not work in a virtualized environment. Find out more about best practices and limitations at www.windowsvista.com/optimizeddesktop.”

With intention? I don’t think so - along the sequencing path there have been a few add-ons to achieve packaging nirvana as well as updates to the AppVirt client. For instance to the AppVirt sequencer base image - we’ve added Windows Installer, .Net and VC++ redistributables as needed. Hey, even the AppVirt sequencer needs a nip and a tuck every once in a while - don’t hate it becuase its beautiful!

Reading on -

“Depending on the usage scenario, we recommend that customers install Office 2007 on their client machines to ensure access to all of the product features, and use virtualization for older versions of Office in cases where they need to run multiple versions of office at the same time. “

Best Practice-

This last quote is the “one ring” to rule them all that falls into “best practice.” We have found in our AppVirt deployments that its beneficial for long term support – from within your own enterprise and from Microsoft to follow best practice and install Office locally and sequence other versions for AppVirt delivery. We learned this lesson back in the version 2.x days on a two thousand plus seat deployment. While Office sequenced and streamed it was trial and error to find all the touch-points where other applications needed Office connectivity. It became very clear we needed to install locally and sequence and stream older versions.

Biff did go into rehab - my helicoptor awaits.

As pointed out by my colleague Danny, and trumpeted in The Register, VMWare has recently purchased Thinstall.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/vmware_buys_thinstall/

This puts some heavy muscle behind one of SoftGrid/AppVirt’s competitors. One can only speculate what the San Francisco to Palo Alto move will mean for the product, but personally, I hope they invest heavily in bringing Thinstall’s feature set into parity or dramatic competition with AppVirt. My colleagues here in Seattle and I are passionate SoftGrid-ites from back in the dizay and have, on more than one occasion, evaluated Thinstall as a potential technology for our customers. We found it somewhat lacking, but definitely “one to watch.”

It’s no news to anyone that VMWare and Microsoft are on a collision course for domination of the burgeoning virtualization market. If one believes the free market theories, competition will only make both products stronger, meaning that our collective hallucinations and passionate ramblings about “Software as a Service” and the Zero-Touch Desktop will only solidify faster. This move is a big win for IT departments considering application virtualization as part of their overall strategy for decreased TCO on desktops, more centralized administration, and self-service application provisioning. Oh, and if you’re among those IT departments not considering this technology, I’d love to know why not! I’m not being flip here: after working with this technology and envisioning the new avenues these products and methodologies open up, I strain to consider how this could be a bad thing.

The IOTeam will be watching Thinstall with a greedy hunger. We’ll let you know what we find.