Lance Auman

Push installing both Office Communicator and the Live Meeting 2007 client are simple and well documented within published Microsoft Office Communications Server documentation.

• Office Communicator Deployment Guide
• Live Meeting 2007 Deployment Guide

These two guides include all the information required to silently install the application using Group Policy.  Office Communicator includes the configuration Group Policy Template (.adm file) on the install media CD-ROM.  The Deployment Guide includes instructions on how to configure these settings. What's NOT included (anywhere that I've been able to find) is a Group Policy Template for configuring the Live Meeting 2007 Client.

My team and I have developed a custom ADM template that can easily be imported into Group Policy to manage the Live Meeting 2007 Client.  What setting am I talking about?  It's the setting that tells the client what server to talk to! 

HERE'S THE FIX:

Step 1:  You can either download the ADM file directly from my Public SkyDrive (Very cool - thanks Microsoft!) or can copy the following code below into Notepad and save it as whatever_you_want.adm

Step 2: Import the new ADM into your Group Policy

Step 3: Since this is a "non-managed" Group Policy (meaning not a typical GPO managed Registry Key) you'll need to tell the Group Policy Editor to view it.  If you don't, you'll see the GPO Folder, but it'll be blank.  Select View > Filtering > Uncheck "Only show settings that can be fully managed"

Step 4: Enjoy

As promised, we'll run through the very simple scenario of pre-installing the Microsoft Calculator Plus software onto a users desktop.  We'll create a Group Policy and use it to assign the application.  As always, there's much flexibility in Group Policies.  By this, I mean that the software could be installed the either user or the computer...for our demo, we'll choose the user. 

Step 1 Create the Group Policy
The screenshot below is interesting and somewhat multi-purpose.  You can see my chosen methodology for Group Policy Naming Convention.  I typically use a name that matches the associated Group Policy.  For our example, we're going to apply this software to the "CorporateUsers" Organizational Unit.  I created and linked a new GPO - CorporateUsers.CalcPlus onto that OU.  This makes the GPO self defining and simple to navigate when the policy count begins to grow.  (This naming can't always work, but I've been fairly successful with some complex GPO architectures in the past using it).
You can also see the best Virtual Server tool out there - Virtual Machine Remote Control Client Plus.  I blogged about this free software previously, but I'm still stoked about it.  I use this software nearly every day testing out new software and new architectures in my own personal test lab.

Step 2 Edit the GPO - "New Package"
Next we'll open the new GPO to edit.  We'll right open User Settings | Software Settings | Software Installation and right click for "New Package". Notice that you can install software to either the User or Computer portions of the GPO.  Keep this in mind...if you want software to be on any computer no matter who logs on, then choose Computer.  If you want your software to "follow" the user, then choose User. I chose User for this blog posting, but I have typically published to computers.

Step 3 Choose your package and configure
The menu after you choose "New Package" asks you to locate your MSI file.  I chose \\DC\GPOSHARE\CALCPLUS\, a network share to provide easy access to my end users.  After this simple step, you are faced with the option for Publish, Assign, or Advanced.  We'll select Advanced so that we can see all the options, but it's worth it to take a moment and explain the difference between the first two.  A "published" application requires the user to install the new software using the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel.  I think this adds a layer of complexity for the (often technically challenged) end users.  "Assigning" the software will kick off the install for the user...they will log in and the new application will auto-magically be there waiting for them.

Step 4 Choose your options
You will now be faced with a pop up window wherein you can configure your software push. 

• General
  • Name your software package
  • Provide a support URL (a how-to page, for example)
• Deployment
  • Choose Assigned or Published
  • Option: Uninstall this application when it falls out of scope of management (like you've remove the associated GPO)
  • Option: Do not display this package in Add/Remove programs (I don't check this typically to provide a method to manually uninstall.  If the user uninstalls without permission, it will just reinstall itself again later, so I don't worry)
  • Option: Install this application at logon
• Upgrades
  • Packages that this package will upgrade (I haven't used this option that much, but I can see the relevance)
• Categories
  • Choose the categories under which this application will be listed in Add/Remove Programs.  (I typically leave this blank)
• Modifications
  • This tab provides the ability to apply Transform files along with the baseline MSI.  A full install of Office 2003, for example, relies heavily on these transform files.  You can think of them sort of like unattended files for MSI installs.
• Security
  • As always, you can add a layer of security to the package.  I haven't used this option as I know I want my applications to apply to the associated user/computer in the Group Policy that I'm pushing software to.

Review your settings:

Step 5 Login and check out your new software!

This tool is a simple replacement for the somewhat anemic calc.exe provided by Windows XP.  The interface is simple and intuitive with new features such as unit conversion.  Getting a quick output of miles to kilometers or the like is extremely simple with this tool...but why would such a small tool warrant a blog posting?  Simple...the installer is a small and simple MSI that lends itself very well to experiments with the Software Push install features of Group Policy in Active Directory (subject of a forthcoming posting). 

You can download the tool (and its simple MSI-based installer) here.  Note: The software was one of the early Microsoft releases to force a Windows Genuine Advantage registration that validates your copy of Windows before download. 

An interesting and WAN friendly feature of the DPM Agent is the ability to "Throttle" the usage. You'll see this option if you right click a protected agent from the Management Tab within the DPM Administrator Console (below):

From the new pop up menu, you can select to Throttle the Network utilization of the agent replication during or after "Work Hours"  I selected the default settings after clicking to enable the feature.  You can see that the agent will now use far less bandwidth during normal business hours, but will cut loose as the work day (and network requirements) end:

I can't believe it took me this long to find this gem...much newer than the Dell Rack Adviser v5.1 that I've been using for a while now (and blogged about below).  This software is simple to use and provides a drag-and-drop interface for estimating power, rack U, electrical plug, cooling, and related requirements for a given configuration.  Start with a blank rack - 24 or 42 U and than drag over whatever components you need information on...and this tool includes the newer 19xx servers (even the energy efficient models). 

I dragged a few random machines over and this was the output on the main page:

This is the "Report" view of the same stack:

You can see that the output is extremely useful and the input is extremely simple.  I must say that I would have preferred an MMC interface over the web-like interface, but I can't really complain.  You can either run the tool online, or download a local copy here.

I alluded to this point in an earlier post...DPM employs the seldom-used volume mount point feature of Windows Server 2003.  Picture, if you will, a DPM server with a huge array that protects many servers.  You can probably reason how it could become possible to run out of drive letters...Drive E, Drive, F, Drive, G, etc, etc.  With volume mount points

Drive allocation settings within DPM:

Matching Volumes that DPM carves out of the free allocated disk space...note the amount of unallocated space waiting to protect new servers.

Note that these DPM-created volumes don't have drive letters. If you were to right-click one of these volumes and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths..." you would see where the volume is mounted...on the C Drive!  To a casual user, it would look like an ordinary folder in the C Drive.  Very cool - nice work DPM team.  This little-used OS feature put to good use. 

You can't protect your servers without a place to store the data.  The "Protection groups" for DPM Agent protected servers will require disk space on the DPM server.  So, the first step is to add protection disks to the library.  This is performed under the "Management" ribbon at the top of the MMC.  The initial "Add Disks to Storage Pool" will look for an attached unformatted disk on startup (Screenshot below)

Add Disks to Storage Pool:

The newly added Storage Pool Disk:

Once the Storage has been allocated, you're ready to install DPM Agents to protected servers.  Stay in the Management Ribbon, but tab over the "Agents".   The "Install..." link is on the right (Screenshot below):

Location of the "Install..." link:

The Agent Installer will begin and look like so....(i've used self-explanatory servernames in my Demo Lab).  Add a server to install an agent...I'll start with my Domain Controller.

Give it an Admin account to use to install the agent:

Pick a restart level (I chose to go ahead and restart my DC):

Success of the Agent Install:

Now that the Domain Controller has an agent, it's time to schedule and protect the data.  On to the creation of Protection Groups.  For this Blog, I'll just create one single Protection group using the default name.  Essentially, though, if you wanted to give different levels of retention or schedules or the like, you'd want to cordon off servers into separate DPM Protection Groups.  Here's the opening screen of the Wizard:

Our new Domain Controller with both Folder Level and "System State" backup options (below).  I only care about the System State on this server:

Next is the Protection Level...note that this is the Protection Level for the entire Protection Group (if you add other servers to this Protection Group Later).  I have not Tape Drive attached to my VM, so that option is grayed out, but the Backup-to-Disk is pre-selected.  (Remember that backup to disk also means recovery FROM disk...much faster than tape, but tape gives you the option to archive off site).

Next is how long you want to locally retain the data (remember archive to tape).  I'll take the defaults:

Now DPM will consume some of the Disk that was allocated to protection previously.  It calculates a default based on the retention time as well as the data volume contained in the original folder. With that, I can comfortably take the defaults.  If you know the data volume will change significantly (meaning grow), you should manually allocate more space. 

Next step is to decide when to backup the data FOR THE FIRST TIME...do it now, schedule it for later, or manually (probably meaning restore from a backup tape).  I'll choose to replicate now.

Success:

RAM
Wow, much peppier with extra RAM.  My initial install had (only) 384MB of RAM dedicated to my test VM.  I bumped that to 512 and the machine seems much quicker. 

DUH
I knew this and still forgot.  DPM needs a dedicated drive to store the backup-to-disk data.  This makes logical sense, but I forgot to add an extra VM Hard Drive to my machine during the initial setup.  Easy enough to fix, but it's worth adding the screenshot of what DPM looks like before this new addition.  DPM v1 used the seldom-used Volume Mount Points to present the extra "protection" drive as part of C:\Program Files file system.  I'll add this drive, configure DPM and see how the new version presents the system.

DPM with no HD to create a Protection Group

I was one of the initial beta testers of the DPM 2006 product and actually used the beta in my old production environment and loved it.  I repurposed a few DAS Arrays that were leftover after we had introduced a SAN as file stores for the product and then bought agents for "Branch Office" style file stores.  Great product and it met all of our needs at the time, 100%.  My Case Study is available online here.

DPM 2007 has a few requirements to be aware of.  First, it requests 1GB or more of RAM...usually a minimum recommendation means you should have much more than that in reality, so keep that in mind.  The install requires that PowerShell is installed on your server...strangely, the installer does not install it for you.  (You can download it here).  DPM installer contains a copy of SQL 2005 express, but it can ALSO install to an existing copy of SQL 2005 (see the screenshot below).  The install using the SQL Express option takes a looooong time to install, so be patient.  I almost thought the install had hung and was about to cancel when I (finally) saw it move to the next step and finish.  More to follow after I check it out...

Option: SQL Express or SQL 2005?

We can also get a look into a possible (although unlikely) change in the product name?   DPM 2008? Here's a folder contained within the extracted DPM installer files:

Trials and tribulations.  This looks like some fantastic software, but I'm nearing what I can do within my virtual environment.  The software installs inside of a Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise VM, but Virtual Server does not!  So, SCVMM can manage multiple virtual servers, but I can't install virtual servers to test it with...at least not within this lab. 

On the plus side, the "Library" feature looks like it's going to be a winner.  As it appears now, the End User Self Service web site (if the user is granted permissions by you) will let them create VM servers based on templates that you, as the SCVMM Administrator, create.  This includes pre-filling information such as Admin Password, Domain-Join, Answer Files, etc.

New Guest OS Profile

Options for New Self-Service "Template"

"Library" settings with the default Blank VHD Templates

Need a quick guesstimate of server power and heat requirements for your data center?  This is an older application, but it can provide a simple interface to produce a report on power and heat from servers.  This, of course, doesn't take into account the newer energy-efficient servers, but should be applicable for newer 29xx and 19xx servers.

Application Interface:

Report Output from the application:

Download this software here.

I have been waiting so patiently for this software!  The early Beta of the software didn't seem to install in a VM environment (where I do 80% of my personal testing), but the Beta 2 version can! The software provides a MMC interface to manage your entire MS Virtual Server environment.  More to follow...

Here's a screenshot of the install process (pretty painless and easy, all in all):

Here's an unconfigured screenshot of the Management Console:

Install Notes:
The server needs IIS and Powershell to enable the User Self Service Website.
The server needs a copy of SQL 2005 - it can use an installer version of SQL Express or it can be attached to an existing copy of SQL Server.
The install also needs an install of the Windows Remote Management Update (available from the http://connect.microsoft.com System Center Virtual Machine Manager download site).
If you install the Self Service Site to a default IIS install - you'll want to delete the IIS Default Web Site - the service will not install with the existing site (port 80 requirement).

So, if you're going to do much work in Virtual Server, you'll want a good piece of software to edit ISO files.  I keep a generic ISO file that I mount, when needed, to my Virtual Machines.  I use this software to add/delete new files that, when mounted, show up as the VM CDROM Drive.  Handy tool.  The other great use for the software is to convert physical CR media into ISO format (that can then be mounted on Virtual Server).  I keep ISO images Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 and Windows XP Pro SP2 on my hard drive for ease of access.

WinISO Company Website: Here

NOTE:
Now, I have to admit that I favor this software because I purchased a copy.  I would also recommend a piece of software called PowerISO...arguably a better piece of code.  This software offers the features of WinISO, but it ALSO includes the ability to mount ISO files as local CDROM drives.

PowerISO Company Website: Here

This is a fantastic tool that, in my opinion, is leaps and bounds better than using the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Web Console.   Don't get me wrong, the web console does have a coolness factor, but I've always been bugged by the apparent lack of MMC to manage the server.  I run Virtual Server on my XP Pro SP2 laptop extensively to test new applications, so this new tool is a welcome new treat.

• Direct control of local or remote instances of the Virtual Server service. IIS and IE browser are no longer required!
• Tabbed interface to quickly jump between Virtual Server hosts and guest VMRC sessions.
• Reusable saved states: this feature allows users to preserve a particular saved state and return to that state at any time.
• Multiple guest selection supported for startup/shutdown/save/display.
• Browse button navigation for media, hard disk images, ISO images, .VMC files, etc.
• Drag and Drop support for .VMC files, ISO's images, VHD and VFD files.
• Resizable desktop support for guests running Virtual Machine Additions (maximize VMRC window supported).
• Limited cut and paste of text from host to guest (only).
• A built-in utility to take JPG screenshots of running guests. Useful when filing bugs.
• Built-in error notification with Virtual Server event log viewer.
• A Virtual Networks Manager and Virtual Disks Manager that cover all features.
• Keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl-S to save state a guest).
• Create multiple guests at once.
• Create guest from parent (or multiple guests)!
• Automatic reconnect to a designated Virtual Server host.
• Toolbars in both Guest and Console Manager for quick access.
• Unlimited number of guests.
• Maximum of 32 Virtual Server hosts.
• Sorting on columns of guests so you can sort based on status and multi-select.
• Automatic detection of Virtual Machine Additions and notification.
• Detection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

Here's a shot of the main console:

Here's a shot of a Guest VM under remote control:

Grab this new tool here.

This is a cool freeware tool from Microsoft to help get some visibility into the inner workings of obscure-looking XML documents. Given the preponderance of XML out there...this tool is well timed!

Here's a "before" view of some sample XML code:

-<rules-extension-properties>

-<account-provisioning>

-<container>

 <root>OU=Fabrikam,OU=SimpleAccountProvisioning,OU=FABNOA-DC-01,DC=fabnoa,DC=fabcorp,DC=fabrikam,DC=com</root>

 <enabled-users>OU=Users</enabled-users>

 <disabled-users>OU=Disabled Users</disabled-users>

 <groups/>

 </container>

 </account-provisioning>

-<management-agents>

-<fabrikam-ad-ma>

 <sam-suffix>-miis</sam-suffix>

 <upn-suffix>@fabnoa.fabcorp.fabrikam.com</upn-suffix>

 </fabrikam-ad-ma>

 </management-agents>

 </rules-extension-properties>

 

Here's the same code within the XML Notepad 2007 GUI:

 

Download it here.

Overview

Handy features include:

• Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.
• Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.
• Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.
• Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML Notepad and from the file system.
• Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.
• In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.
• Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.
• Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.
• Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.
• Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.
• Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.
• Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.
• Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.
• Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.
• Built-in XML Diff tool.
• Support for XInclude
• Dynamic help from XSD annotations.
• Goto definition to navigate includes and XSD schema information.

Wow, does this ever look like an improvement!!  First off, the software has been moved into the MMC...this is a pretty nice improvement over the previous web-centric view of the application.  It "feels" more like real software now in a way that's difficult to describe.  It seems to have pretty much the same overal features as the previous version in terms of managed clients, but it now includes all the new software such as Windows Defender Updates, SQL 2005 Updates, etc.   This is clearly a step in the right direction!  I can't wait until this is released in a full version...I'll snap it up!!!

I've been a fan of MOM since the MOM 2000 days (which were a little ugly).  Back when Beta testing was more of priviledge then it is now, I actively tested MOM 2005 and even ran it on some of my Production Servers as it reached Release Candidate Stage.  I only say this to explain why I am so excited to see a new version of the product - it can only get even better!

Below is a screenshot showing the Device Management page within the new MMC 3.0 console.  The point to note is that "Network Devices" is a default object.  This looks like a step in the right direction.  I started my career managing large server farms and ultimately ended up managing the network semi-reluctantly.  My network team had been using What's up Gold for years as a simple method to determine whether a network device was on or off, but they didn't use it for any other intelligence.  This new Network Device section looks very appealing to me.

My first impressions of this application is that if you've cut your teeth on MOM 2005, then you shouldn't have too hard a learning curve getting up to speed.  The initial installation process felt similar in that you can scale out your architecture onto multiple servers, if needed.  The installation (with SQL 2005 already pre-installed on my Test VM) was very quick and required little intervention.  The GUI Interface is similar enough to MOM 2005, that it was relatively simple to navigate. 

As always, Microsoft keeps producing cool new software for me to play with.  This tool seems to be fairly simple and just provides a WYSIWYG method of posting to my Windows Live Spaces site.   The setup of the application asked me for my account information and provided me with an opportunity to save my password (for extra simplicity).  This informaiton can be accessed later within the application menus if you want to make changes later.  After opening the application, so far it seems very self explanatory.  There is a built-in Spell Checker button that I will try now...it "feels" like the Outlook Express spell check feature to me, but it did work. 

Here are some of the formatting options Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Color. There are also options to add bulleted or numbered lists, hyperlinks, and even block quotes. 

Windows Live Writer (BETA) Screenshot: