Microsoft Tips

Information on Downloading and Installing Windows 7 Beta – direct download link to ISO here

Dave Caddick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:04:06 GMT

If you can’t be bothered reading the details – simply use this? :-)

Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. more details below

And just in case you are interested in the Keynote at CES from Steve Ballmer regarding the release of Windows 7

Windows 7 Home Page

As of today, I am running the Windows 7 Beta on several different PCs including my laptop, my work PC, and my PC at home, which I upgraded recently to Windows 7 from Windows Vista SP1. (I’ll be outlining the PCs I’m using to test Windows 7 shortly.) I’m all connected with HomeGroup, I’ve got several different Libraries set up, and I’m loving the new Windows Taskbar. I’ve got Windows Media Center recording my favorite TV shows and my Zune 80 syncing up with the Zune software. And things are even better with Windows Live Essentials installed. I find the Windows 7 Beta to be an amazing beta release and I am extremely excited for you to get your hands on it later this week! I’d like to take a moment to share some specifics regarding the Windows 7 Beta that I think are very important for people looking to give Windows 7 a spin.

On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta.

The Windows 7 Beta will be available in English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, and each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. After downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta, you will be required to burn the ISO image to a DVD to install Windows 7. So you want to be sure you have a DVD burner before spending the time downloading the ISO image.

To burn the ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta to DVD, if your PC comes with Nero or Roxio products – you should be able to burn the ISO image to DVD. If you don’t already have DVD burning software on your PC, you can also check out ImgBurn which is free and can be downloaded here.

The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades. So if you intend to do an upgrade – be sure it is on a PC running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. We are not yet announcing anything regarding finalized upgrade paths for Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Beta will be only available in one edition, which is roughly equivalent the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista.

Also, another important thing to keep in mind is that the Windows 7 Beta will expire on August 1st, 2009.

I also need to emphasize that this is a beta of an unreleased operating system. Be sure to backup all your important data. As much as the Windows 7 Beta completely rocks, part of the beta process is discovering bugs and reporting those bugs. Some of those bugs could possibly lead to data loss. I tend to be a risk-taker myself and have gone all-out with the Windows 7 Beta by putting it on almost all my PCs both at work and at home, but not everyone should do this. I recommend using Windows Vista’s Backup and Restore features to ensure your information is backed up before trying out the Windows 7 Beta. Click here for several methods of backing up your data in Windows Vista.

The Windows 7 Beta is targeted toward the enthusiast crowd – people excited and knowledgeable with technology. If you don’t quite understand much of what I’ve written above, it is probably best you don’t try to install the Windows 7 Beta.

If you are an IT Professional, you can visit the Springboard Series for Windows 7 on TechNet (see the Windows 7 tab) on January 9th to sign up for the Windows 7 Beta but also can also get access to dynamic resources including video walkthroughs and the new Windows 7 forums.

Waiting for Windows 7? Want to see what it's like? Here's how to test it yourself.

Dave Caddick — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:51:39 GMT

So anyway, I figured that with the stories getting around regarding the recent PDC that there would be Virtual Machines of Windows 7 being handed out on the portable Hard drives that it wouldn't take long for them to appear on Torrent sites etc... And so it would appear ;-) Download 64-bit Windows 7 6801 Pre-Beta ISO (Microsoft.Windows.7.64Bit.Build.6801.DVD-WinBeta Torrent)

So I started looking around to see how easy this might be to crank up under the old trusty VMware Workstation 6 (I really have been slack, haven't I, must update that shortly?) and this again didn't take long at all to find an authoritive article that shows the only real thing that needs to be set is the HDD to IDE as opposed to SCSI? Windows 7 + VMWare 6/VMWare Fusion 2

So this only left the possibility of the O/S complaining about needing to be activated, blah, blah, so I was wondering if this might be able to be bypassed as I was only curious about checking it out - not necessarily running the O/S on hardware anytime soon, and I turned this article out that solves that quite neatly at 15 Windows 7 Pre-Release Preview MAK Unlimited Activation Product Keys

All in all, this might take you about a hour or two after you have finished downloading to install and start testing Windows 7 - happy trails? :-)

Ask the Core Team : 10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

Dave Caddick — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:50:25 GMT

Given that Hyper-V has now just been released as RTM it’s likely that more people are looking at the product and quite possibly for the first time so this sort of information might be very useful?

10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

With the RTM release of Hyper-V just around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to re-visit some of the top things we have seen customers encounter when installing and configuring Hyper-V for the first time and give pointers to resources we have available to eliminate those when you start rolling this out in production for the first time. I have taken the liberty of linking many of these questions/issues to blogs written by our program managers on the virtualization team. We did a previous post on their sites but I thought this would serve as a quick reference and a pointer to them at the same time.

1. You don't have mouse functionality in your VM. One of the most commonly asked questions during the beta, internally and externally had to do with lack of mouse support in a guest when its running. One of the main reasons we saw this happening was that people were remoted into the parent and then controlling the guest from there, that wont work in Hyper-V. More information about best practices can be found here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/23/controlling-vms-under-hyper-v-without-the-mouse.aspx

2. Hyper-V wont install. Another common question had to do with Hyper-V not installing at all. People would add the role and either would get errors post installation, prior to installation, etc. So, to revisit the core requirements for the Hyper-V role to be installed and functional on your machine, see the release notes once we RTM. Top issues here though were folks not enabling Virtualization and DEP in their system BIOS, not shutting down the parent completely at the end of installation but rebooting the parent instead, and not adding the proper entries to the BCD store on a Core installation (hint: rebooting twice takes care of this in Core).

3. Import isn't working within Hyper-V for your Virtual Server VMs. Another common question is what the Import Virtual Machine button does within the Hyper-V console. Many people, myself included early on, thought that it was there to import a .vhd from a Virtual Server installation. It's not. It's there to import an exported Hyper-V virtual machine. The proper way to import a previously used Virtual Server .vhd file is to create a new virtual machine and use the existing hard drive function during setup.

4. Hyper-V clustering: Clustering Hyper-V installations is new and different in Windows 2008. Rather than re-inventing the wheel here I strongly encourage you all to use the excellent whitepaper thats out on the external Microsoft site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CD828712-8D1E-45D1-A290-7EDADF1E4E9C&displaylang=en

5. Snapshotting in Hyper-V. Snapshotting confuses a lot of people because they liken them to un-do disks in Virtual Server. They aren't the same thing. Excellent references below to how snapshotting works in Hyper-V and how to get the undo functionality that you're used to are linked below.

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/05/15/getting-undo-functionality-with-hyper-v-snapshots.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/04/26/virtual-machine-snapshots-with-hyper-v.aspx

6. Virtual Networks. Additionally virtual networking has been totally revamped in Hyper-V and many dont understand the purpose of the individual networking options within the console. Linkage to a great article on them is below:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/16/how-does-basic-networking-work-in-hyper-v.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/17/hyper-v-what-are-the-uses-for-different-types-of-virtual-networks.aspx

7. Using Hyper-V in Windows Server Core. Server Core is the new command line only installation option and its perfect for Hyper-V. For many people it can be hard to navigate and install new roles however. Below is a good link on installing Hyper-V in a Server Core environment.

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/30/how-to-add-the-hyper-v-role-to-a-windows-server-2008-server-core-machine.aspx

8. Remote Management. Managing Hyper-V installations, be they GUI or Server Core, is always a concern. An excellent two part article on this is located here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-1-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-2-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

9. Issues deploying virtual machines within a virtualized environment. I have seen this a lot internally, you have a RID/WDS server in a VM that you've used forever in Virtual Server. You decide to move that installation to Hyper-V and now you cant deploy new children VMs in Hyper-V. The problem here lies in the fact that you need to use the legacy network adapter rather than the synthetic device for the child VM you are trying to deploy to. We dont support PXE boot on the synthetic NIC in Hyper-V. You can add a Legacy NIC in the Add Hardware section of the Virtual Machine Settings.

10. One other virtualized hardware issue we have seen is SCSI boot. Or more specifically, the lack of it. We no longer support booting from the virtualized SCSI controller in Hyper-V. You can still use the SCSI controller for storage drives and you can utilize iSCSI or SAN storage as well, you just cant boot SCSI anymore.

Author: Joseph Conway
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support

Ask the Core Team : 10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

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.

XPe’s replacement, Windows Embedded ‘Quebec’ due in 2010?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:41:46 GMT

Well as far as I am aware, XPe as it stands to day will be available through till sometime in 2010, but it seems more news is getting out about is’s possible Vista based replacement? My personal view is that MS should take a deep hard look at the *LACK* of take up and interest in Vista before heading down this path anytime soon – but that doesn’t mean they won’t try regardless.

Now of particular note from the details below from Mary Jo Foley is the indication of the size of the OS? XPe may have a *core* size of 40Mb but it is typically 350Mb or so when deployed - does that mean that with a core of 300Mb for Quebec that the typical load will be around 2.5Gb and larger? If this is the case then it’s just as well that Flash manufacturers are able to keep making larger and larger memory modules?

But, really…. activation?? for an embedded OS – give me a break!!! That is unless MS are going to repeal the restriction that they have always had with the embedded OS in that they have always insisted that you are NOT able to install any of the Office products locally?

Who know’s? is it that far fetched? Thin Clients are getting more powerful CPU’s, RAM is pretty cheap, Flash sizes are going up and the price is coming down and yet here is an OS that is cut down to what we’d probably want Windows 7 to be? It also has (should have?) either EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) or the File Based Write Filter to maintain it’s integrity?

Interesting times ahead? :-)

Windows Embedded ‘Quebec’ due in 2010

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:23 am

Although it hasn’t said much about its plans for a Vista-based successor to its Windows XP-based embedded operating system, Microsoft already is working on one.

Microsoft released during the first week of June a new test build of its latest Windows XP-based embedded operating system, known as “Windows Embedded Standard 2009,” the final version of which is slated to ship by the end of 2008.

However, Microsoft also is readying the 2010 successor to this product — another Windows Embedded release codenamed “Quebec.” Unlike the 2009 release of Windows Embedded, the Quebec product will make use of a number of features that are part of Windows Vista.

Microsoft is on tap to share some information about the Vista-based embedded release at its TechEd Developers Conference this week in Orlando. A first widescale Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of Quebec is due out next year.

Microsoft’s Windows Embedded family of products, which Microsoft sells to device makers, is designed to power thin client terminals, point-of-service terminals, gaming devices, medical-imaging systems, DVRs and industrial-automation systems, among other products. Windows Embedded is not at the core of cell phones or ultra-low-cost PCs (ULPCs), however. Windows Mobile phones currently are built on top of a Windows CE-based core and ULPCs run full-fledged Windows. (Microsoft has OK’d ULPC makers shipping Windows XP on their systems through 2010.)

The forthcoming Quebec embedded release will include BitLocker drive encryption, Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, Address-Space Load Randomization — and on the memory-management front, support for SuperFetch, ReadyBoost and Dynamic System Address Space. On certain devices, the Quebec release will also provide as optional components Aero user-interface, Windows Media Player 11 and various Internet Explorer 7 features. Unlike Microsoft’s XP-based embedded releases, which are 32-bit only, Quebec will support both 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 processors.

Not surprisingly, support for all these features comes at a cost — size. According to a slide deck available to TechEd attendees, while Windows XP Embedded core’s minimum image size is around 40MB, according to a slide deck to be presented at TechEd on June 6, Quebec’s core is expected be around 300MB — not counting all the optional add-ons like Media Player, IE 7, etc.

The other cost is Quebec will require product activation; XP Embedded does not. The Quebec release will require basic retail activation or OEM activation. There will be a default evaluation product key that will allow the Quebec image to run for 30 days without activation.

Windows Embedded ‘Quebec’ due in 2010 | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

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?

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

Dell to give VMware ESX Server 3i for free?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:32:04 GMT

Talk about the cat among the pigeons? I was certainly aware that MS's 2008 was to have Hyper-V included at a minimal cost of USD$28 but that is not due for another 5 months or so, and it was always expected that the pricepoint would come down to meet MS but this is quite early I would have thought?

As Alessandro points out - this will cause some serious pain in the Sales Channel, this is where Citrix had a big jump on VMware and as far as I am aware VMware was getting very serious about trying to ramp this up ASAP - but it would now appear that one of those benefits or sales models that was being offered to the partners will now be disappearing?

So I wonder what this will do to Citrix's Xen pricing, I can only imagine that they are going to join VMware and MS and will want to be in there competing on price as well?

So the best guess at the moment is that most of Ron Oglesby's crystal ball gazing of a couple of years back is now coming to fruition and the Hypervisor is already a commodity - so let's move on to management of the Virtual World? ;-)

Dell to give VMware ESX Server 3i for free?

Saturday, March 15, 2008 | 4 Comments

Not only Dell is going to sell virtualization-ready solutions (hardware + VMware ESX Server 3i) in one click, but it seems that the OEM vendor is going to give ESX Server 3i for free.

As last article of the week The Inquirer reports the words of Martin Niemer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at VMware, which says that Dell will not charge anything for the hypervisor.

If confirmed this decision will have a serious impact on the sales channel.

On one side other OEMs that have a distribution agreement with VMware (HP, IBM, Fujitsu and other) will be almost obliged to do the same to not give Dell any competitive advantage.

On the other side the VMware distributors and resellers will see their chances to sell ESX Server in the SMB market fall down near to zero.

virtualization.info: Dell to give VMware ESX Server 3i for free?

Licensing Windows Client Operating System in Multiuser Scenarios - read Microsoft's definition here?

Dave Caddick — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:55:22 GMT

Now somewhile back I produced the following post regarding any other alternatives to RDP and ICA and at the time I might have been somewhat flippant about NComputing's model based on Windows XP SP2, and since then there have been a number of other companies like Miniframe jump on the same bandwagon where they are effectively using a desktop based OS to provide concurrent multi-user sessions and I always thought this did somewhat fly in the face of the EULA?

At the time I was sort of suspecting that MS might have actually been turning something of a blind eye to this in some parts of the world, but now it seems that MS has finally decided to get off the fence (or at least the Lawyers have now made a decision? ;-) and produced this document to clarify things.

So I'd like to clarify here that this is not that I don't think NComputing can add value, but in doing any due diligence anyone who seriously wants to consider either NComputing, Miniframe or any other method of using XP SP2 in a multi-user model should seriously check this document from MS before going too far down this path?

If I was contemplating, or indeed already using this scenario I would be asking the Vendor to review this document from MS and provide some sort of legal indemnification?

Licensing Windows Client Operating System in Multiuser Scenarios

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. The opinions expressed within are my own and should not be attributed to any other Individual or Company or the one I work for.

SPICE might be an alternative to ICA and RDP?

Now this is very interesting news because with all the interest around VDI there is still no real alternative to ICA other than RDP (or VNC...?) and in this I'm not even going to consider Ncomputing's WoIP, as from a techies point of view this would appear to simply be a rehash of RDP, although I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise?

But it might be exciting to see that there is a real possible alternative to the ICA/RDP stranglehold and this might have the makings of some interesting changes to how things might be approached in the VDI space?

******UPDATE******
As a consequence of this post I have been contacted by Ncomputing and it would appear that their WoIP is actually what they term a combination of UTMA and UXP and does indeed make the connection/transition/session at a lower level in the stack. However, you will not find much detail on the inner workings of this as it's proprietary, and I'm still trying to understand how this all plays out with regards to the Microsoft Licensing side of things as detailed here in a post on their Forum
http://ncomputing.com/ncomputing/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=963&hilightuser=1087

If/when I find out more I'll update either here, or as a separate post on my new blog at www.techagility.info
******UPDATE******

SPICE might be an alternative to ICA and RDP?