IT Management

Thinking of a Remote Computing Solution based on Citrix/VDI/BladePC’s? Make sure your Network is up to the task, or you might have curious issues?

Dave Caddick — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:11:06 GMT

Recently I found myself at a school down near Melbourne carrying out what should have been a relatively simple PoC (Proof of Concept) of 20 x BC2500 BladePC’s in an Enclosure with some T5730 Thin Clients, and initially all went pretty well and then I found that I had some issues with the SAM Registration service….. from the BladePC’s not communicating very well (or at all) with the SAM Server

BTW – SAM = HP’s Broker, Session Allocation Manager

So then I was thinking through some ideas about what the next steps might be to help isolate it?

Initially I was getting a note in the Application Event Log for all the BladePC’s that they are unable to contact the SAM Server, and yet:

they can ping it successfully
I can connect to the blades using RGS fine
The Windows Firewall is disabled for now
There are exceptions in the firewall any way for the SAM Service

So I then used WireShark to take a trace and isolated one conversation with a blade and the SAM Server and got it to translate the TCP conversation and the resultant HTTP reply from the SAM Server indicated an internal error – so I simply rebooted all the Blades and the SAM server and I finally got the devices registered – hurrah!! I thought I was out of the woods.

Then as the day wore on it appeared that after a period of time the Blades would become “Offline” with a red circle and the diagonal slash indicating they were offline and they would no longer respond – a reboot will get them going again.

Now if I was just troubleshooting this it would not have been too bad – but I was also seeing some other very curious issues like:

When I connected from the T5730 to the BladePC via RGS direct (no SAM) it is verrrrry slow (5 – 10min login)
When I connected from the T5730 via the SAM Client it is verrry slow just to start the Login process (even longer?)
Once connected the experience is not too bad (not real snappy, but just about useable)
Connecting a USB device to the T5730 to test Video causes the RGS session to drop – with no warning – before the Media Player comes up

Now was I right to suspect the network at this point? I’m not a Network/Switch expert, but I know enough to be dangerous? ;-) but it was starting to look like there was more than just a hint of coincidence with what was going on?

Curiously enough I’ve also found that while my laptop is connected to their network and using the proxy to gain access to the ‘net to get email that the connection to exchange keeps bouncing quite a bit and when I send an email it can sometimes hold in my Outbox for hours before finally getting under way….

Outcome – all now sorted – it would appear that even though the SAM/Altiris Server AND the BladePC Enclosure was plugged in to the Core Switches there was a ProCurve 2650 that was throwing out FCS Errors and causing a ruckus – this also happened to be the unit that I was trying to go through with the T5730 Thin Clients……

This morning a Network Guru from their integrator turned up and updated all the firmware on the Cores and 2650 alike, found the issues were related to the 2650 only, this was then swapped out for a temp unit – then it seemed like nothing was working at all with no connectivity to the Enclosure, then it was discovered that Spanning Tree was the cause of this, so that was hit on the head – and now everything has settled down nicely.

Good news is that apparently HP’s ProCurve Switches come with a lifetime warranty – I learn something new every day? – so as it turns out it’s not too bad?

So a day or two late, but finally back on track.

Incidentally, when I was trying to update the Firmware in the Enclosure for the Switch and the IA (Integrated Administrator) via a simple TELNET I was getting timeouts and errors, after this wayward Switch was replaced it all worked a treat.

Lesson:
As with Citrix and VDI, as well as BladePC/BladeWS, it’s always worth remembering that this is typically the first time that a network will have been asked to provide “real time” network performance. Up to this point even things like email are effectively only “store and forward” process’s so do not be surprised when a relatively simple PoC (Proof of Concept) shines a Spotlight on any Network issues?

I hope this helps others?

Reminder regarding time sync in a domain

Dave Caddick — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:03:40 GMT

Hi All,

Just a note regarding an issue I had to help resolve a little while back?

Issue:
We had a pre-sealed image of an XPe intended for a customer, who wanted to join it to the domain, come through and during testing at our location and on site for the customer it was found that it simply refused to get it's time in sync

Research:
What we able to narrow down to is that the Registry Entry for:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters was listed as Type = NoSync and what was really needed to be changed to NT5DS.

What we were also able to identify is that while we are quite certain that any *Local* user on an XPe device will always get “access denied” when trying to run NET TIME as they are not a valid domain user – what can be done though is run the w32tm /resync command (if the module/executable is available? AND ONLY if the time is within the default 5 minute max…) *OR* alternatively simply restart the Windows Time Service. Both of these commands can be run without issue using Local credentials.

Looking deeper in to why the W32Time Type was incorrect we managed to come up with this little gem from Microsoft:

Registry entries for the W32Time service and within this we found the following:

Type : REG_SZ
Used to control how a computer synchronizes.
Nt5DS = synchronize to domain hierarchy [default]
NTP = synchronize to manually configured source
NoSync = do not synchronize time
The Nt5DS setting may not use a manual configured source.
Note When you join a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer to a domain, the computer may not synchronize its time setting with the time setting of the domain controller if the Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server check box in the Date and Time Properties dialog box is not selected. The default option (NTP) for Windows Server 2003 workgroup computers is disabled if the Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server check box is not selected. When you join the computer to a domain that has this setting, the default synchronization type (Nt5DS) for computers that are joined to a domain is not set and the time service does not synchronize from the domain hierarchy.

I have highlighted the interesting section in red. After further testing we found that the default image had this check box unchecked, however, once this was checked before joining the domain then the NT5DS setting would be in place immediately after the reboot following the Joining to the Domain and as a consequence the device would time sync correctly as soon as it was booted.

From what we can see this is an issue that is not restricted to purely XPe but XP as well and hopefully thi info might be useful to others?

Released: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 now RTM and available for download

Dave Caddick — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:05:27 GMT

So this mornings news from Alessandro is the release of Hyper-V - Download a trial here.

I have also included at the bottom of this post a number of links that Justin Zarb helped collate regarding where to find all kinds of info relating to Hyper-V

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0

Thursday, June 26, 2008 | 0 Comments |

After over three years of development (the product was originally announced at WinHEC 2005 conference) Microsoft finally releases today its first bare-metal virtualization platform: Hyper-V.
During this very long process the product was delayed, changed name, and lost some planned key features.

Unlike Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Hyper-V is a type-1 virtual machine monitor (aka hypervisor) which features an architecture very similar to the one used by Xen and its commercial derivatives.
This allows a direct comparison with platforms like Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, the upcoming Sun xVM Server and obviously with VMware ESX.

Unlike the latter, Hyper-V adopts a microkernel developed from scratch (so it's not the Windows kernel) which is less than 1MB in size and delegates most of the tasks to a so called Parent Partition.
Depending on the configuration you adopted, the parent partition automatically loads a full copy of Windows Server 2008 or the new Windows Server 2008 Core.

Being a first generation product, Hyper-V cannot really compete with the above in features, but it clearly offers a performance boost (up to +107% in case of disk I/O activity) and some much deserved improvements over Virtual Server 2005 R2:

Support for 32bit and 64bit virtual machines

Support for up to 4 virtual CPU per VM (the actual number depends on the guest OS)

Support for up to 64GB RAM per VM

Support for the Windows 2008/2003/2000, Windows XP/Vista and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux guest operating systems

Quick Migration (the capability to suspend, migrate and resume a VM from one host to another)

Automatic patching through Windows Update and WSUS

……

Microsoft Hyper-V is fully integrated with Windows Server 2008 64bit so any download of the OS includes it. Download a trial here.
For those customers already using the beta or the release candidate of Hyper-V, the product will be updated through the Windows Update service beginning July 8.

To demonstrate how much the company bets on this new product, Microsoft is internally adopting Hyper-V since a while and already migrated inside its virtual machines all the web front-ends that serve TechNet and MSDN websites.

Now the customers wait for the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, currently in beta, to centrally manage Hyper-V (along with Virtual Server and VMware ESX), and MAP 3.1, in beta as well, to perform accurate capacity planning.

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 | virtualization.info

Where should I look for Hyper-V Information?

So your looking for information on Hyper-V and struggling for where to look! So I wanted to get a nice bit of compiled information that Jeff did....

Websites

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page
Virtualization Case Studies
Virtualization Solution Accelerators
Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation:
Hyper-V FAQ
Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more):
Virtualization TechCenter:
How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper

Blogs:

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/
http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/
http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualworld/
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/
http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/

Webcasts:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032368894&CountryCode=US
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032372420&CountryCode=US

Renaming a Computer or Thin Client for large scale deployments? Whether you are using Altiris, PXE, RIS, SMS, etc. this is a tool worth checking out

Dave Caddick — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:16:59 GMT

While the deployment we were assisting with today was maybe not that large even by local standards the issue was something that comes up on a some what regular basis.

A customer wants to have a number of Thin Clients imaged to their specifications and then drop-shipped to various locations ready to go. Part of this involves creating and applying Asset Tags to the devices – a small thing to be sure – but for the poor folks in charge of keeping track of the devices this was vital.

The issue was that part of the FBReseal (First Boot Reseal) process renames the devices based on a process that combines the MAC address and the serial number and then comes up with a random name, and of course that was not making things that easy for the “Asset Taggers” ;-)

So we were testing the imaging process at the Integrators site using Altiris as the deployment mechanism and trying to figure out how we might be able to achieve something that would leave everybody happy and we discovered “COMPNAME.EXE”

My hats off to Oli at Willowhayes.co.uk as this is a great tool that does exactly what we were after, but it clearly has some great functions that make it really well suited for RIS with references to UUID and the ability to create and reference fake UUID’s when needed.

It is so easy because you can easily see the info it can pull out via the summary switch (examples below) and then reference them via the template function – so in our specific case we simply called a job that ran “COMPNAME.EXE /c HP-?s” and this then appended the serial number after the HP- prefix.

Now it was possible for the customer to receive a spreadsheet of all the devices, including a listing of the specific Computer Names so that Asset Tags can be printed and applied ahead of delivery.

Summary switch provides the following info:
Mainboard manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : 30C8
          serial       :
Chassis   manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : Notebook
          serial       : 2CEXXXXH29
System    manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : HP Compaq 2710p (#ABG)
          serial       : 2CE8060H29
Ethernet address       : 00:1F:3B:09:XX:XX
IP address             : 192.168.0.4
NetBIOS name           : xxxxxxxxxxx
DNS Host name          : xxxxxxxxxxx
System UUID            : 21FFBB999ADCXXXX111XXX8410012529

Switch Examples are:
?u = System UUID                        ?U = Fake UUID (24 zeros plus MAC).
?G = If System UUID is FFFF... or 0000... or null it uses ?U, otherwise ?u.
?i, ?j, ?k, ?l            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (decimal).
?I, ?J, ?K, ?L            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (hex).
?d = Hostname found by reverse DNS lookup of IP address.
?m = First MAC address.                 ?e = Existing NetBIOS computer name.
?D = day    ?M = month    ?Y = year
?1, ?2, ?3, ..., ?0       = 1, 2, 3, ..., 10 random alphanumeric characters.

COMPNAME /c acme-?s Changes computer name to "acme-ABCDEF" where ABCDEF is the system serial number.

Modifying RDP5 & 6 to always connect local drives as well as USB devices…

Dave Caddick — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:24:03 GMT

So if you have a look at the MSTSC.EXE file that starts the RDP session and use the /? to call further info from the component you get something very much like this:

But if you dig a just a touch deeper you will find that the MS Terminal Services Client or RDP Client as it is more commonly known draws the config information for most of its settings from the simple DEFAULT.RDP file that will typically be saved in the Users profile. (see example below)

So if you want to make changes to the way it behaves then it is fairly straightforward to make the changes in the GUI of the Client and then use the “Save As…” command from within the GUI – but what happens if you’d like to replicate this as standard behavior across multiple devices?

Search in the target computer to find the default.rdp file? (they should be hiding in each users profile) This is the settings that are used when the RDP Client is used – so open default.rdp in notepad or similar and you will find it is pretty straightforward to read?

Here in this example I have set the local C,D and E drives to be visible:

But at the same time some of these settings are pretty easy to guess at and start modifying with a reasonable degree of being able to accurately guess what they will change? I’ve highlighted some of the pretty obvious ones?

++++Example++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
screen mode id:i:2
desktopwidth:i:1280
desktopheight:i:800
session bpp:i:32     <<< Colour depth
winposstr:s:0,3,0,0,800,600
full address:s:
compression:i:1
keyboardhook:i:2    <<<Keyboard Shortcuts
audiomode:i:0   <<<Sound
redirectprinters:i:1   <<<attach local printers? 1 is on
redirectcomports:i:0
redirectsmartcards:i:0
redirectclipboard:i:1
redirectposdevices:i:0
drivestoredirect:s:C:;D:;E:;
displayconnectionbar:i:1
autoreconnection enabled:i:1
authentication level:i:0
prompt for credentials:i:0
negotiate security layer:i:1
remoteapplicationmode:i:0
alternate shell:s:
shell working directory:s:
disable wallpaper:i:1    <<<part of controlling “the experience”
disable full window drag:i:1
allow desktop composition:i:0
allow font smoothing:i:0
disable menu anims:i:1
disable themes:i:0
disable cursor setting:i:0
bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1
gatewayhostname:s:      <<<Part of the TS Gateway from here down
gatewayusagemethod:i:0
gatewaycredentialssource:i:4
gatewayprofileusagemethod:i:0
++++Example++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If this is the case then make the changes to the user's default.rdp – then use the “save as”... then test Test, and then replicate to the same location on all devices?

Login Consultants benchmarking tool to compare VDI vs. SBC?

Dave Caddick — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:31:03 GMT

My only disappointment is that we are currently in the middle of moving our current Solutions Centre from one Office location to the other so it'll be some while before I get a chance to test this.

It certainly looks quite impressive and it does have some lofty aims, but from a brief look through as well as their well deserved reputation based on Flex Profiles I'm sure this will stand up to it's promises.

Test Scenario’s
With login VSI you can compare many different scenarios:
• VDI vs. SBC
• VMware, XenServer or Hyper-V running virtual desktops or Terminal/Citrix Servers
• Virtualized XP desktops versus virtualized Vista Desktops
• Performance impact of application streaming technologies
• Impact of (different) virus scanners
• Performance impact of tuning parameters
• Different VDI platforms
• Different Storage platforms
• Impact of changes or updates like service packs or security fixes
• Hardware differences
• x64 vs. 32 bits
• Etc…

I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone who does have the facility to test?

Login Consultants develop presentation virtualization benchmarking tool

Monday, May 12, 2008 | 0 Comments |

The consulting firm Login Consultants just opened the beta program of the first benchmarking tool for presentation virtualization: Login Virtual Session Index (VSI).

The product will measures the performance of a remote desktop session served by a Microsoft Terminal Services / Citrix XenApp server or a VDI virtual machine.

To run the tool it's required to have a 4 tiers infrastructure: a domain controller for the authentication a file server for logging user sessions, a server to host the TS/XenApp/VDI service and a workstation to launch the user sessions.

The firm is also working to introduce support for application streaming.

Enroll for the beta here.

virtualization.info: Login Consultants develop presentation virtualization benchmarking tool

Thinstall to be reborn as ThinApp under VMware's new management?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:45:25 GMT

So along with Alessandro I'm curious as to why the name ThinApp has been chosen as it does have more than a passing resemblance to Citrix's new XenApp?

I wonder if this is any indication of the coming marketing campaigns in the push for customers attention in the Desktop Virtualization market? ;-)

VMware ThinApp is the final name for Thinstall technology

In January 2008 VMware, a hardware virtualization company, acquired an application virtualization startup called Thinstall.
The plan is to use the Thinstall technology to stream virtualized applications on the virtual desktops that VMware spawns through its connection broker: the Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM).

So fare VMware has been pretty fast in rebranding the Thinstall Application Virtualization Suite: the beta program for the new version is open since end of February and the testers can already download the beta 2.
The final version of the product, temporarily called Project North Star, is expected for the H2 2008.

The only information missing so far was the final name that VMware wants to use.
Now Micheal Keen, Director and Senior Solutions Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Alliance Technologies, reveals that the final name is ThinApp.

Duncan Epping further validates the news reporting that a former Thinstall employee confirmed.

The choice is interesting considering that Citrix just renamed its Presentation Server product in XenApp.

virtualization.info: VMware ThinApp is the final name for Thinstall technology

Future vision of VDI? What if the Hypervisor was cheaper and flexible enough to run on BladePC's/BladeWS's - could vMotion/XenMotion then switch on demand?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:58:13 GMT

I am sure this is not really what VMware had in mind when they were touting VMware OnDemand? I'm guessing they had more of an idea that it would combine some of the benefits of ACE with ESX? ;-)

I have just got back from some training in Houston and while listening to a question from a colleague from the UK where he asked if "VDI was going to be able to use the full suite of Hypervisor functionality like vMotion..." and that got me thinking...

Some of the Conventional Wisdom around the place holds that VDI by itself will likely not be able to cover all of any one customers needs and most will more than likely need to look at quite possibly a number of different approaches to cover ALL employees and ALL Applications.

So with this in mind I'd be interested in your thoughts on the following idea?

Just a few thoughts around VDI??

Let's say that we stock a couple of decent servers with loads of resources and allows us to run quite a few VDI instances? OK? So one of the possible issues with the classic VDI so far is that if a user places a bit too much pressure on the resources then it has the potential to impact on all other users, being as it is a shared resource? (This is still one of the classic gotcha's in Terminal Server and Citrix PS - the session is sticky and it stays with the same server unless a logout/login occurs)

So one idea I'm kicking around is the possibility that if a user started something like a 120Mb Excel spreadsheet that might consume quite a bit of CPU then would it be possible to use the vMotion to transfer him to a BladePC, if they started 3 or 4 of them (or they needed more resources?) then transfer them to a BladeWS.....?

Seamlessly!! with the user completely unaware that this has happened!!

Now the fundamentals of vMotion (or XenMotion for that matter?) requires shared boot storage - BUT I don't think it needs to be NFS or iSCSI, etc. - the Citrix Provisioning Server or OS Streaming method like Neoware IM would probably work just as well in this scenario? As this then leaves the Virtual HardDisk/Storage in a common area accessible by the Vitrual Desktops regardless of whether they are running on VDI's, the BladePC's or the BladeWS's.

The other point is the similarity of CPU would possibly cause an issue, and this probably extends beyond just Intel/AMD? This appears to be a fundamental of vMotion/XenMotion? So this might not fly today, but it is possible that with improvements in the Hypervisors this issue might be overcome at some stage soon?

Anyway, what do you think of the *idea/concept*? As a user requires more CPU and resources they might be able to be transferred from shared resources (VDI on ESX) to individual resources (BladePC) and then high powered resources (BladeWS) - once the high intensity workload has finished then the user would be transferred seamlessly back through the stack to a VDI instance on the ESX server.

Please bear in mind that this is only a concept at the moment and there are clearly problems and issues to be overcome - but the main reason for this post is to ask if you think it has legs? What do you think?

Clearly the ESX/Hypervisor would need to be able to run on hardware outside of it’s current Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) but with Xen this might not be such an issue?

Is wonder if this is where XenDesktop is headed? ;-)

Mixed Novell and AD Authentication issues

Dave Caddick — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:55:21 GMT

Recently I have been looking in to some issues relating to mixed Novell and AD Authentication at customers sites and there does not seem to be too much information that is readily available so I thought it might be useful if I post some of the details and links here as a helper to others? ;-)

One of the most interesting points is that it would appear that Novell really hasn't done much to the Novell Client in quite a while, and even with the advent of Vista it has not so much revisited the classic 4.91 SP4 version but simply created a new one from scratch that has no backwards compatibility or any relationship to the 4.91 version....

Also something to be aware of is that quite some while back it would appear that Novell did try for a Catalogue of sorts that may or may not have been somewhat similar to AD's implementation but it was dropped from NDS ver. 8.x and above - so if you are trying to get Contextless Login working the only other real alternative is to use a method of creating an Alias for all Users in one specific OU and then referencing all Logins to search that one specific OU at login.

Now if you are like me, this appears to be almost laziness on the part of the developers? Surely they could do better than this? And even if you do get Contextless Login working what it actually amounts to is that the user can use either the short User ID <davidca> or the UPN <david.caddick@novell.com> and when you either use:

Tab Key
Mouse to move to the Password box
Click on OK

you will then find that the Contextless Lookup is evoked and your user name is changed to match the Case of exactly what it is the NDS

Anyway, here is the documents that might prove useful if you are investigating similar issues?

One of the most useful documents would appear to be this one:

Configure AutoAdminLogon for Novell Clients for Windows NT/2000/XP

AutoAdminLogon can be implemented in any of the 5 combinations listed below. For each version of the client, we will describe which combinations can be implemented and how to implement those combinations.

Auto login to NDS and NT
Auto login to NDS and manual login to NT
Auto login to NT and manual Login to NDS
Auto login to NT and disable login to NDS
Manual login to NDS and NT

There is also this document that is more specific to Terminal Server/Citrix ~~Presentation Server~~ XenApp Server environments:

LDAP Contextless Login in Terminal Services Environments

In all versions of the Novell Client for Windows 2000/XP/2003 prior to and including Novell Client 4.91 SP3, the LDAP Contextless Login support will only perform a contextless lookup if a user interactively changes the contents of the "Username:" field or the "Tree:" field of the Novell Client login dialog.

As such, the LDAP Contextless Login support was not able to benefit scenarios involving Windows Terminal Services environments where TSClientAutoAdminLogon was being used in conjunction with credentials pre-supplied in the terminal connection, and/or with TSClientAutoAdminLogon in Citrix Metaframe environments that were launching published applications.

The widely used workaround for this limitation was to move or alias eDirectory users into a single container, such that in absence of contextless login support the terminal service environment could successfully default to a single context for all eDirectory user logins.

If you do have issues relating to getting Contextless Login working correctly the most authorative document I could find would appear to be this:

Setting Up LDAP Contextless Login and LDAP Treeless Login

Several large Novell customers have used LDAP Contextless Login to facilitate the merging of several trees in to one global tree. Before LDAP Contextless Login, users were often annoyed by being required to change their context information in the login screen when changes took place in the tree structure. This resulted in IT costs to manage and support the change. LDAP Contextless Login makes it easier for users to work in the new global tree because it makes it unnecessary for the users to manage or know about changes to their organization's name or its placement in the hierarchy. Because users no longer need to enter their context to authenticate, the context can be changed on the back end as many times as necessary without the users needing to know and without the costs associated with managing and supporting these changes.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an Internet communications protocol that lets client applications access directory information. It is based on the X.500 Directory Access Protocol (DAP) but is less complex than a traditional client and can be used with any other directory service that follows the X.500 standard. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Services for Novell eDirectory is a server application that lets LDAP clients access information stored in eDirectory.

If your network has LDAP Services for Novell eDirectory set up on your eDirectory tree and you are running Novell eDirectory 8.5 or later, users who are logging in to the network from Windows can log in to the network without having to enter their context in the Novell Login screen. To log in, users need to know only their username, password, and the name of the tree that is running LDAP Services. Optionally, you can also have users log in to the network without having to specify the eDirectory tree name.

User objects can be located in the tree by username or e-mail address. You can also enable wildcard searches. If wildcard searches bring up multiple usernames, the user is prompted to select his username.

SoftGrid Visio Stencils

Dave Caddick — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:53:53 GMT

Justin Zarb has a blog linked below that comes up with some very useful bits of info relating to SoftGrid, these Visio Stencils just happen to represent the "eye candy" ;-) , there is loads more and this is an extremely usefully resource if you're quite involved in SoftGrid Sequencing?

SoftGrid Visio Stencils

It must have been at least 3/4 months ago I came across these stencils and I said than I would blog about them..... well as you can tell I never did!

ubba cool stencils for visio when your designing all your pretty high level design for application virtualization.

The World Simplified is a Virtual World : SoftGrid Visio Stencils