Tim Mangan

My Vote for an AD Schema Change

Tim Mangan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:19:00 GMT

I have been thinking a bit lately about how our computing environments are evolving into a more dynamic mode. In this article, I make the case that Microsoft should make some schema changes so that we have a standard way to do what we want in the future. If you think about combining Virtual Desktops with Virtual Applications and things like roaming profiles, you begin to think about separating out parts (containerizing them) and layering them together.

For example, if you have a lot of VDI going on, rather than store a complete OS image for each user’s virtual desktop, it would be great to store just one image of a “stateless” operating system, then layer on the personality changes needed for each instance. Because the hardware has been virtualized underneath, there is an awful lot of commonality in the bits. Sure, you need a computer name and a domain account identifier, but until you think about applications and users, the OS bits are all the same.

Add to this that you can separate out applications, using virtual application technology. Now separate out user stuff, by something like roaming profiles. This is the kind of dynamic world we are moving to, where layers of components are brought together “just in time” to meet our computing needs.

In layering applications and users, we will probably think about the user first, and what applications they should have, rather than the other way around. It might be easier to implement by adding apps then the user, but since much of the software applications are licensed on a per user basis we will probably always have to think of the user first. Which brings us into today’s topic! How do we associate users with applications?

Unfortunately, there is no one magic bullet to do this. If you use Citrix XenApp (aka Presentation Server, Metaframe, or just “Citrix”) you use (one of) the Citrix Management Console(s) and the association is stored in that private database. If you use SMS/SCCM, same story. Same for Symantec Altiris. Ditto TriCerat Simplify Lockdown. Even Microsoft App-V has its own independent database for storing these records.

Ultimately, Enterprises are often using Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) in a way that it wasn’t intended for. Many companies create an ADDS Container per application, and then add users as members to the container. Now when they go to this tool or that tool to assign users to an application they are dealing with, they don’t have to worry about the specifics of which user. They just pick the AD container for the application.

This model fits the enterprise environment well because it splits the tasks of handling applications from that of associating users with the applications. Quite often, the personnel that manage the applications are different than those who assign them. This allows application assignments by personnel that do not need to be trained in these specialized tools. ADDS is all they need to know.

On the other hand, this model is awful for the ISV community. Each customer creates his own scheme in ADDS for how to identify the applications. So there is no commonality between customers on how this is done, and thus no standard tools for managing and reporting and integrating into all of those management consoles.

What we really need is for Microsoft to advance the application into a first class citizen in Active Directory. Computers, Users, and Applications. Through a standard schema change everyone could build the tools that leverage a single infrastructure that will make all of this dynamic and just-in-time layering a reality without locking into a single vendor for all your needs.

Free Training without leaving your desk: Microsoft TechDays 2009

Tim Mangan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:55:00 GMT

First of all, this is not an early April Fools joke!

But for 24 hours on April 1st(GMT), Microsoft is hosting a rather large and free event that you can participate in without leaving your desk or home. The event is primarily aimed at developers, but there are a few other key jems hidden in the sessions. This is a 24 hour Live Meeting event called TechDays. Almost 90 in-depth sessions.

Best of all (in my blog, I get to decide what is best. Get your own blog!) I will be doing a session at 4PM Eastern US Time. Loosely based on the Briforum 2008 Session I did on "The Data Problem", although this time aimed at the developers.

Back in 2001 at Softricity, Microsoft's Stuart Schaeffer and I discussed how we were building this application virtualization platform (then called SoftGrid, now known as App-V) in part because the developers didn't know how to write applications, and how we should start a campaign to educate the developers. Uh, we got busy and forgot about all that (Mea culpa). So finally eight years later I am finally getting around to it.

Uh, you can get prizes for attending like 50% of a MS Cert exam, and Second Shot on cert exams (and not just developer ones) and MSDN subscriptions.

See http://www.msfttechdays.com/public/home.aspx for more information.

HyperV_Mon: a new free tool if you use Hyper-V

Tim Mangan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:43:00 GMT

If you use Hyper-V, or any OS virtualization platform, you know that you can't trust the Windows Task Manager from inside the VMs to tell you squat. Basically, the virtualization layer pulls the rug out from under the guest OS when it comes to CPU and the guest is clueless and assumes that whatever was paused just ate CPU the whole time.

I was looking at a performance issue on Hyper-V and needed to investigate. Searching the web I found Perfmon info but got sick of setting that up, and then having to do paper and pencil math to figure out what I wanted to know. So I did what I always do -- I wrote a tool! The tool is called HyperV_Mon and is basically a GUI that does all the hard work for you. Here is a screen shot:

A very short PDF White Paper about the tool can be downloaded from this link. Reading that will help you to understand the image above.

The tool itself is free and can be found from this link. You don't even need to register or anything silly like that. We don't even have salesperson to call you!

A few App-V announcements (Updated)

Tim Mangan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:09:00 GMT

Microsoft has made a few of announcements recently. Now that I'm back from the MVP Summit in Redmond I have time to summarize recent announcements surrounding Microsoft App-V.

[Note: This has been edited for clarity and detail based upon additional information supplied by Microsoft since the original post].

4.5 Hot Fix 3

This is a client side fix for a number of small issues that came out in January, as detailed in this KB Article. This Hot Fix includes Hot Fix 2 and presumably Hot Fix 1 - although I have yet to find any information on Hot Fix 1. You can download the hot fix via the KB article, but check out CU1 also.

4.5 CU1

CU1 (Cumulative Update 1) contains prior hotfixes, and new updates. CU1 has two purposes:

Production level update for XP and Vista desktop client software, Server 2003 and 2008 Terminal Server (Remote Desktop Service) client software, and the sequencer.
Sequencer and Client for use on the Windows 7 Beta.

Microsoft has stated the following to me, which I quote: “Customers must keep in mind that CU1 is a final release that provides support for running App-V and Windows 7 Beta/Windows Server 2008 R2 in a lab environment so that customers can start testing now. Full support for Windows 7 will come 90 days after Windows 7 general availability". Since the client is 32-bit only and Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only, I find this statement confusing. I think that you could put the server components (which were not updated in CU1) on Windows Server 2008 R2 for testing, but there is no 64-bit Remote Desktop Server client . I believe that the "final release" part means that there is no plan to release further App-V updates for any changes to Windows 7 until the 90-days after the full release of WIndows 7.

To obtain, you must apply via Microsoft Connect. Microsoft has indicated that existing packages from the 4.2 and 4.5 sequencers should work on Windows 7 with only an OSD tweak for the OS tag. Unfortunately that was also said for the 4.2 to 4.5 migration but many customers had to reopen packages to move to 4.5 (mostly due to .net) and I would expect the same here. I have run about a dozen 4.5 packages on Windows 7 without issue so far. Microsoft has also has release notes on CU1 here, which provides more details on the changes.

4.6 TAP Program

As part of the CU1 announcement, Microsoft announced that they will soon be looking for MDOP customers that want to take part in a Technology Adoption Program (TAP) program for the 4.6 release. The announcement indicates that this release would support a 64-bit client. While the announcement is an MDOP announcement, one would presume that the TAP would include the 64-bit Terminal Severe Client. The Terminal Severe community has been hammering for a 64-bit App-V client for some time. Given that it seems that Windows Severe 2008 R2 will be released in 64-bit only, this is badly needed. To be a TAP customer, you need to have a large installation and be willing to work with what is essentially beta code in production, with a lot of help from Microsoft. Look for a TAP announcement before the end of March.

SFT Format Documentation Released

Microsoft has released a word document describing the SFT, DSFT, and CP file formats under The Microsoft Open Specification Promise. While unfortunately not including the PKG format, this is a good step forward in opening up the platform for third party tools. Both Kalle and I have written tools around the SFT over the years but it is good to know there is official documentation behind them (Kalle's SftExplorer tool is excellent). In September Microsoft, along with Citrix, made an announcement regarding migrating several formats including SFT to a single VHD standard here. No official word has been made regarding when such a change would be made, but you could guess that documenting the current format either means they are encouraging third parties to create converters or that it might be a while so learn to love what you have. Unfortunately, no tools to convert can really be written until we see the details of how VHD will be used/tweaked to accommodate the needs of App-V.

A look at AppTitude from App-DNA

Tim Mangan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:01:00 GMT

Let us be clear up front. There is no magic bullet to eliminate the pain of application migration . AppTitude from App-DNA is a unique and valuable tool for acquiring and managing “ Application Intelligence ” on your software applications...(read more)

A Look at Microsoft "Hyper-V Server" on a Notebook

Tim Mangan — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:25:00 GMT

Summary

This article is a personal look at trying the Microsoft Hyper-V Server. It is not a formal "review", but more of a personal observation, in trying to use the product differently than perhaps Microsoft intended.

In this article, a look at trying the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server on a notebook computer shows that it is not for the faint of heart. Quite frankly, I don't think it is "ready for prime time" without some serious work to provide better management capabilities. The inability to create, start, stop, and access VMs running on Hyper-V Server from the Hyper-V Server Console itself is the real culprit. Instead, you have two options:

Install and configure either SCVMM on another machine and manage from there.
Install the Hyper-V Remote Management Console on a Vista SP1 box and configure.

As is shown in the post, the "configure" part of the second item may also prove impossible in certain situations (at least today). Hyper-V server also does not support wireless networks typical for a notebook, although I have seen posts that suggest you might be able work-around this issue.

The "Problem Statement"

My daughter came home from college for Thanksgiving weekend and made a request. She has a laptop with Vista on it and decided that she is sick of Vista. So she wanted me to back up here drive so that she could install Linux instead. But she wants the backup restored when she comes home for Christmas because there is this new game coming out and it won't run on Linux (at least not for a few extra months).

I could have spent the time talking to her about her issues with Vista and helping her get past them (UAC was number one on her list and that takes about 30 seconds to fix), but she also informed me she was switching majors from music to computer science so it probably isn't a bad idea for her to get some technical skills. Also, we could have gone with a non-hypervisor solution like Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation, but she already has so much stuff loaded into Vista on login that adding a VM on top of that might be slow.

Besides, I have been looking for a reason to try out the new, and free, Hyper-V Server. The laptop has an x64 AMD processor and a couple gig of ram, plus ample disk space. So I could back up Vista, install the Hyper-V Server, then load Vista in as a VM and show her how to add a Linux VM. Then she can go back and forth as she wants with little overhead involved. Sure, I figure it will probably eat up much of the weekend, but there is only so much turkey one person can eat.

____________________________

A Diversion to Perform a Backup

First, we want to perform a backup of what we have. Always wanting to try something different, I remembered that I have a whole bunch of tools in the SCCM 2007 R2 VM that I have for playing with App-V. The R2 release adds a bunch of imaging stuff so I start by looking there. It turns out that it isn't so much R2 I am looking for as much as it is one of the pre-requisites I had to install to get to R2, WAIK ("Windows Automated Installation Kit for Vista SP1 and Server 2008", download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94bb6e34-d890-4932-81a5-5b50c657de08&DisplayLang=en) .

The documentation with WAIK teaches me how to build a Windows PE bootable disk to perform the backup of a drive onto a network share. Cool. WinPE is the foundation used by the Microsoft Windows Installers when you install a machine from a CD/DVD or ISO. It boots a mini-OS (not too unlike DOS) into a ram drive. Normally, you use this to install an OS, but once booted, you can do just about anything. It understands the NTFS file system on the disks and you can run 32-bit command and even some windows programs including rescue virus scanners. I am wondering if maybe I should use this to defragment my windows partitions while the drive is not in use this way? Maybe for another day. Today, I just copy the imagex.exe program that comes with WAIK which I will use to do the backup of the C: drive the image of the Vista PC into the image I am creating. When the image is ready, I create a bootable ISO image and burn it to a CDROM.

I boot the PC with the CDROM. You get a DOS like shell that drops you into a X:\Windows\System32 folder. I don't expect wireless to work but I hope the ethernet NIC works. Run "netstat -r", check "ipconfig". It does not see a network card.

Drat. Have to boot back to Vista to locate the NIC, then off to the manufacturer to get a driver for it. If I was good, I would add the driver into the ISO, but I am not good. I plop it on a USB stick and hope I can access it from there after I boot to WinPE. Boot to the WinPE image, plug-in the USB stick. I can see it the files on the USB Stick. Install the driver. I get a DHCP address and can access the network. Sweet!

Now I run a couple of commands to gain access to a network share and make a backup.

Net use \\backupserver\share\backupfolder password /USER:domain\username

Imagex /capture c: \\backupserver\share\backupfolder\backupC.wim "Drive C" /verify

This creates a compressed backup of the C: partition to the file named backupC.wim on my server. Next up, Hyper-V Server. I am free to mess up that system as I know I can easily restore it to it's current state.

_______________________________

Hyper-V Server

Hyper-V Server (http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/default.mspx ) is the free barebones hypervisor and parent partition that Microsoft decided to give away free. It is basically the same hypervisor used in the Windows 2008 Server with Hyper-V, except it can be used on a machine without Server 2008. It is more limited, such as only 4 VMs and no more than 4 processors or 32GB of ram -- but we can live with that. It also doesn't provide any licenses for VM OSs, but here we are OK. It is intended for things like lab use, but I'm hoping that home use will be OK too.

Hyper-V server provides a "parent partition" OS that is very bare bones. Microsoft claims it is not windows, but it you thought it seemed like Server 2008 core with even more stripped out you might not be far from the truth. It basically has the network and IO stack to support Hyper-V, plus a very bare bones based User Interface is designed to pretty much only create and manage VMs as well as manage the parent partition.

I download the ISO for Hyper-V Server from Microsoft and burn a DVD image. Even though it is a small hypervisor and small OS, it doesn't fit onto a CD. I boot the machine, pass through the license click-through. When I get to the screen that provides a choice between upgrade and install, I notice that the upgrade option is not available. A note on the page informs me that upgrade is only available by running setup in the current OS. One of the things I could not find in on-line searhces was whether I would have an option to install and have the existing OS "P2V" into a VM. Seeing the note on the bottom of the page about running setup in the current OS for upgrade I decide to try this out.

So I boot back to Vista and try to run the setup from the DVD. No dice. The Vista OS is 32 bit and I can't run the setup.exe which is 64-bit I suspect if I had a 64-bit OS running this might have worked.

Boot back to the DVD. Microsoft has made this install so simple. If you need pictures, this link

http://www.elmajdal.net/Win2k8/Installing_Microsoft_Hyper_V_Server_2008.aspx

is an article that shows screen shots that follow what do to install in the following steps.

I select Install this time, reformat the partition and install. I think it took under 15 minutes. I now find myself sitting at a blue Ctrl-Alt-Dell screen. Provide the three finger salute, it prompts for a name and password. Since I formatted the hard drive it can't remember the one from vista. I try blanks, no luck. Try the old one (just in case), no luck. Try "administrator" with no password. I get what looks like an error, but it is just a box telling me I need to change the password. Type in the new password (one that requires more complexity than the old one)and complete the login.

The User Interface reminds me of the days of Windows 3.1.1. The UI consists of a grayish graphical background, and two cmd windows open. No start menu. One cmd window has a black background and is sitting at a command prompt. The other has a convenient blue background and is running a script (HVSetup.wsf) that gives me menus to manage the box. If you click on the minimize button of a window it minimizes to the bottom of the screen much like Win3.1.1 did. You can also ctrl-alt-del to the task manager and start a command, such as extra cmd windows.

The blue window also has an error message telling me that no active network adapters have been found , but more on that later. For now, let's look around.

The blue window script menu provides the following options of things I may do:

Domain/Workgroup
Computer Name
Network Settings
Add Local Administrator
Windows Update Settings
Download and Install Updates
Remote Desktop
Regional and Language Options
Date and Time
Log Off user
Restart Server
Shut Down Server
Exit to Command Line

This link

http://www.elmajdal.net/Win2k8/Configuring_Microsoft_Hyper_V_Server_2008.aspx

Shows screen shots of how to use most of these commands, but they are pretty self explanatory. Looking into the script, you have interfaces into basic commands like netdom.exe and control.exe (with cpl files).

Looking at the c: partition of the hard drive from the other cmd prompt, I find that it defaults to the C:\Users\administrator folder. Looking around, I find the "Windows" folder. And a "Program Files" and a "Program Files (x86)" folder. OK. So the parent partition is a 64 bit OS that definitely looks like it was once windows. The Windows folder has only three exe files. Regedit.exe is the only familiar one. The System folders looks very much like a normal windows System32 and SysWOW64 folders with all your favorite commands. Except explorer.exe, mmc.exe. I particularly bemone the lack of MMC. I even see a .NET folder, but surely there can't be .NET on this thing? Msinfo.exe provides a windows serer version that is 6.0 based (I forgot to write down the number).

Getting the NIC working

OK. Back to the problem at hand. Plop in the USB stick and use the back window to install the NIC driver. The installer I used was a win32 program so I wasn't sure it would work in the mini-OS provided. But it did. Sweet! The installer ran without an error, but the menu still said it didn't find an adapter. So I reboot.

Oh Shoot. The parent partition is running in 64 bits. While the 32-bit installer can run, the driver has to be a 64-bit driver. The Win-PE boot was in 32-bits so I didn't have that problem then. Back to the manufacturer, this time for the 64-bit drivers. Fortunately HP supports 64-bit Vista on this notebook (CQ50z). So I grab all the drivers since it looks like they all should install. Most of these drivers installed just fine. The modem driver didn't install, but who uses a modem any more? I'll ignore it. After installing the drivers and rebooting, we get Ethernet working, The wireless isn't working, although the LED now works when I turn it on and off. Need to figure out how to configure the connections...

Hyper-V server doesn't support wireless cards. Grumble, Grumble, I think I remember hearing that. But I'm not dismayed, after all, this is a windows-like OS, right? I find this article on the net:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2008/03/23/using-wireless-with-hyper-v.aspx

Which leads me to believe that I can probably work-around this issue, once I have my Hyper-V Server set up and a VM to work with. In the post, John Paul Cook explains I have three options.

ICS, which uses 192.168.0.1 and thus won't work everywhere.
RRAS, which requires a bunch of configuration.
A hack suggested by someone named Ken.

I plan to go the hack route, but leave the details until I get to the point that I can start trying it.

_______________________________

How to Create a VM?

Got to create some VMs. The remote Hyper-V manager for vista and the Server Manager console on the regular Windows Server 2008 are MMC based. Not finding mmc.exe on Hyper-V server, I decide to connect remotely using the hyper-v manager tool on my own vista desktop that I use to work with the regular Windows 2008 servers with Hyper-V to get me up and running. It does not occur to me (yet) that without a tool in the parent partition you can't take the notebook on the road because you could never access the VMs!

The Remote tool refuses to connect to the Hyper-V server. After a while, I realize that the firewall is on the Hyper-V Server host partition. I find the "netsh" command is available, and use it to temporarily turn off the firewall ("netsh firewall set opmode mode-DISABLE"). Try again. Now the manager connects, but complains that the RPC service on the computer is not running. I check this by using the net start command - it is running. I had dealt with this problem managing the Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V in my lab. John Howard had an exhausting 5 part post that details what to do. I find the post and discover that John has written a wonderful script tool (HVRemote.wsf) that simplifies things into two easy commands.

Resignation

Ultimately, I gave up trying to get the remote connection to work. The notebook was in a workgroup and my managing laptop is in a domain, which complicates things quite a bit . In the end I was able to create VMs and manage networks remotely, but never did get to start a VM. The problem, in a nutshell is that John's work makes assumptions that didn't work for me (not that I am complaining about John's tool.) We also had a DNS issue to work around. I am sure that given another few hours or days I could have gotten this connection to work, but…

It really shouldn't be so hard
I realized that without something in the parent partition to manage and access the VMs this effort was going no-where.
My daughter wanted her notebook back. NOW!

I left her on her own to install Linux and discover that the notebook has a too-new wireless card that people are struggling to get to work. She managed to get it working as I wrote this blog article! It reminds me that I'm going to have to take another look at Linux again soon.

______________________

Conclusion

I need to have VMs available to me when I am on the road to demo stuff. The idea of having a bare-metal hypervisor on my notebook rather than one that runs inside the host partition is fantastic. That I might be able to use a free one rather than install a full Server Core to get one is the right direction. But what Microsoft has released with Hyper-V Server does not cut it. The inability to manage and access VMs from the parent partition makes it a non-starter for this purpose.

Keep in mind that Microsoft didn't release Hyper-V Server to be used this way. They were thinking corporate lab environments. But in a lab where the full tools are in use, I still think that workgroup and multi-domain issues are likely to make the setup take far longer than it should. Labs are normally not set-up using the production domain. I suppose once you get past the issues this presents, this might be a reasonable tool.

I hope that Microsoft will be delivering better tools for the Hyper-V Server. If not, other vendors will have better solutions.

The Best of Two Worlds in App-V

Tim Mangan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:36:00 GMT

In our latest master level training class on Microsoft App-V 4.5 in Boston last week, Christopher Cawvey asked a question that lead us down an unexpected path; through it we may have discovered a new way to deploy virtual applications to terminal servers and branch office desktops. In this article, I explain what we found.

Background

With the latest version of Microsoft System Center Application Virtualization (App-V for short) we have three methods to deploy the virtual applications.

Use a Dedicated Server to stream virtual applications to clients.
Use an SCCM 2007 Sp1 with R2 server to push/stream virtual and non-virtual applications to clients.
Use an MSI method to install the app shortcut and deploy the virtual application.

Until 2008 we only had the first option available. This dedicated server provided the most feature rich deployment model, not only streaming the virtual applications, but centrally assigning applications on a per user basis and reporting on use of virtual applications. It also has a robust application license enforcement and monitor built in.

Last winter, Microsoft released a utility that gave us the MSI option. You could manually run the MSI or use an ESD solution to push it out, but once "virtually installed" you would have the advantages of virtual applications with none of the back end infrastructure. The disadvantages of this option was that there was no application usage reporting, or licensing, and you lost the ability to assign applications on a per user basis on terminal servers (or shared desktops).

With the App-V 4.5 release, Microsoft also offers SCCM as a deployment model. Like the MSI option, you loose per user assignments on shared PCs such as Terminal Servers. You also loose the application usage reporting and licensing, although you might be able to get a view into app usage with a crude form of metering.

Also in 4.5 is the Streaming Server, for use in the dedicated server environment at branch sites. Branch sites are a problem because of connectivity issues with the main office. Both available bandwidth and reliability come into play here. Before the streaming server, either branch office users connected back to the main site for the dedicated virtual application server or a local site copy of the dedicated server was deployed. In the local case, a site copy of the virtual applications would cut down on bandwidth considerably, but leave a dependency between the local server and the main site Sql Server. Sql Server replication has never been supported for SoftGrid/App-V.

As mentioned, this new Streaming Server is intended for the Branch Site. It focuses only on streaming the virtual app to branch clients from a local branch copy. Application publication still happens from the main site dedicated server, but application use is not recorded and no reporting or licensing is available (but this removes the Sql dependency).

An Unexpected Question

With the client in stand-alone mode for use with virtual application MSIs, or with clients configured for SCCM you do not configure the App-V client to talk to a publishing server. In fact, Microsoft made it very clear when they released the MSI tool last year that once you configure the client to work with MSIs it will only work with MSIs.

We were testing with the MSI client in the class last week when Christopher Cawvey asked what would happen if we did configure the client to talk to the publishing server. I told him that Microsoft said it wouldn't work. But then I thought about it some more, and decided that we should test it and find out. That is one feature of our class that I love -- we can go off the planned track when someone has an interest to learn more!

But first, why would someone want to do this? Simple. If you use MSIs, or SCCM, you loose two important features. The first is per-user application publishing, which you need for terminal servers. The second is reporting/licensing.

Now Chris has terminal servers with Citrix at branch office sites, and today these users connect to the dedicated server back at the main site. He uses a script to ensure that the virtual application cache remains full on these branch-site terminal servers. And Chris cares very much about application usage reporting and licensing at the branch office site. When he upgrades to 4.5, he might use the streaming server at the remote site (when he upgrades to the 4.5 release), but he has an SCCM implementation so he has other options. His SCCM implementation isn't R2 and probably won't be soon, so using SCCM to stream isn't an option. But using SCCM to deploy MSIs to the branch site to fill the cache is a possibility, if he can get the features he needs.

I was also interested in the MSI option for native terminal servers where desktops were shown. But I figured that maybe we could use the MSI with no start menu or desktop shortcuts, to add the virtual application and fill the cache, then try to use the dedicated server to perform per-user application publishing.

The diagram below shows the two options that we were thinking about. In both cases, we sequence the application and store on a file server share (the "content" folder). In one case, we publish the virtual applciation without shortcuts via SCCM R2. In the other case, we install the virtual applciaiton on the client using the MSI (which could have been pushed out using any version of SCCM, or SMS, or another ESD solution). In either case, we use the Dedicated App-V server to publish shortcuts on a per-user basis and collect usage information and enforce licensing. Because CHris would not use SCCM R2 to stream virtual applciations, we chose to test the MSI case.

An Unexpected Result

First, we set up a Citrix XenApp server in the lab and demonstrated how to publish the App-V application shortcuts to Citrix users using Web Interface. Coming into the class this had been a problem in getting this right in Chris's environment. Chris was OK with the idea of all the applications being technically available on the Citrix server but limiting access by using the Web Interface to publish only certain shortcuts to certain users. None of his Citrix users get a full desktop on the server, so they should not even know the apps are on the server.

Next, we set up an App-V Client to be configured for stand-alone operation. We installed a virtual application on the box using the virtual application MSI. , one with no shortcuts published to the start menu or desktop using the application MSI. When I say no shortcuts, I mean that when the application was sequenced, application OSDs were created but no shortcuts with icons were published to the Desktop or Start Menu. Then, we added the main-site dedicated server as a publishing server. In the dedicated App-V server, we published the same application but added in the missing shortcut to the start menu in the App-V Management Console while importing.

My expectation was that when I logged into the client, it would probably contact the App-V dedicated server and download the shortcut. And that is exactly what happened. But my expectation was that since the client was configured to not require authorization that when we tried to run the application it would just run it locally and never contact the server, or possibly not run at all. But I was mistaken! The client did contact the server. The virtual application ran correctly. And the usage was logged. I verified the usage by running the application usage report on the following day.

Moreover, we decided to try an active upgrade. We created a new version, published on the App-V dedicated server, but did not try to run the MSI (you cannot do upgrade using the MSI, you have to uninstall and install -- so the user would loose their preferences). When we ran the application again after adding the new version to the App-V dedicated server, the user received the upgrade and kept their application preferences. This setup is shown in the diagram below.

More Testing Needed

We still need to test this some more, but it looks very promising. We have not yet verified that the licensing module of the Dedicated App-V server works in this mode - but I have every expectation that it will. I also want to test the same concept using SCCM to push out the application initially but use the dedicated server for shortcut publishing to users, application usage reporting, and licensing.

But I am intrigued. I had been playing around with ideas to develop a shortcut publisher for terminal servers with App-V clients configured for either MSI or SCCM streaming, but it is looking very much like we have the tools necessary right in the product if we configure differently than Microsoft advises.

Citrix Summit Day 2+

Tim Mangan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:24:00 GMT

Tim Mangan is at the Citrix Summit this week. Citrix runs the Summit is yearly to update their partners on upcoming product changes. While this is an NDA event, preventing reporting on much of the details, there still is much to talk about this week. Today he reports on Day 2.

This is the second Citrix Summit event of the year. Because Citrix chose to move Synergy (the conference formerly known as iForum) from the fall into the spring this year (presumably to get it away from VMWorld), Summit has moved from a January event to be in the fall, this year from October 25 - 28th. This makes for a lot of Citrix conferences in the last 12 months, but there is also a heck of a lot that Citrix is doing so its not so bad. The event is being held at the Dolphin in Orlando Florida.

Other posts in this series:
Day 0 post
Day 1 post

Day 2 post

Day 3 post (below)

Day 3

Today is the "extra" day of the Summit Conference, what Citrix calls Tech Edge which is a new attempt to provide more detailed technical discussion than what was at the main program. It is nice that they didn't charge extra.

One thing that was striking at the conference this year was the population of Citrix Employees. I think I met 20 or 25 of them before I found one that was based in Ft. Lauderdale. Was this a sign that the center of the company has shifted, or simply that with the changing schedules of the conference they didn't need to bring all the employees together for some training?

My overall take on this week is that Citrix is growing, and growing up. In talking to the partners that are here, they seem to be largely building their businesses centered around Citrix and are happy with the relationship.

Quite frankly, Citrix did not have a lot of new things to talk about right now. )There were a few things, but for those NDA kicks in and you'll hear about them later on anyway). I feel this lack of wow especially since they are going to have another one of these events in just 8 months, after having one 9 months ago. I guess they thought that going longer than 12 months wasn't acceptable, but I'd rather have this week back. Maybe a massive "Go To Webinar" session for a day would have sufficed. That stuff is supposed to scale, right? But in talking to the VARs here they seemed to feel that it was worthwhile. Times will be more tight for a while and they need to get focussed on how to succeed. All this virualization stuff is as hot as anything can be, so strike while the iron is hot.

Some non-NDA information that appeared in relation to the Branch repeater. What was once called Project Evergreen, or Branch Repeater Enterprise Edition, or several other names is now called "Branch Repeater with Windows Server". There is another version called Branch Repeater that runs as a Linux appliance. The Branch Repeater with Windows Server was developed in conjunction with Microsoft so you can have one box at the branch to server multiple functions, such as file and print services as well as network services like DHCP. The file server storage can be used to pre-provision streaming apps or operating systems, or whatever fileserver needs the branch has. It is also manageable via WMI or Web. Oddly, the version of Windows is Server 2003 R2 instead of 2008 Server Core, but I would guess the latter has to be in the works, even if they didn't tell us about it.

Finally, since I know that some people at Citrix read this, I would like to remind Citrix that just like I shouldn't infringe on their trademarks and name a product something like "Xen Security" they shouldn't infringe upon my product naming either. At least not without talking to me first.

Vendors

A final shot at a some of the 3rd party vendors that were on the show floor.

Marathon Technologies Corp (www.marathontechnologies.com) is all about providing Fault Tolerance. They announced future support embedded inside Xen Server that was the basis the Xen Server demo Mark Templeton gave at the keynote.

Packet Motion (www.packetmotion.com) has a very nifty packet monitoring product that they were showing. The Management Server is a plug and play appliance that includes an Oracle Database. It sniffs packets off of the wire and identifies network transactions which it ties to Active Directory identities. For scale they also have a smaller probe that can act as a collector for the Management Server. You can configure rules to collect only specific transactions, or grab everything if you want. Want to see where HR employees are copying files to? Easy. Want to know what the employee that quit today touched in the last week? Easy. You can also set actions to occur on certain accesses, either shutting down the IP connection for the user or signaling something like Tivoli to disable the user account in AD. All of this is done without adding an agent to any computers. Well, except for one agent they have for Terminal Servers or Xen App, which was necessary because they are multi-user. Based in San Jose, CA, the company indicated that they get much more interest in the product outside the US then inside. They do direct sales inside the US, but work through the channel for all other sales. Looks cool but I'm glad I don't work for a company that has one!

Citrix Summit 2008 - Day 2

Tim Mangan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:36:00 GMT

Other posts in this series:
Day 0 post
Day 1 post

Day 2 post (below)

Day 3 post

Day 2

Last night we had version 2 of "Geek Speak Live". Rick D. did a version of the Brain/Benny VDI versus TS "debate". Charles talked about what it takes to "go green". Doug Brown and Simon debated Cloud computing. At the end, Sepago gave a talk about User Profile Manager which unfortunately drove people from the room to go find dinner. I say unfortunately because it started out sounding like a commercial. I stayed, and found out that Sepago is still responsible for developing User Profile Manager for Citrix and it was much better hearing directly from them rather than via the Citrix marketing arm.

This morning, Mark T. opened the second day keynote by announcing that next year Summit will be held as part of Synergy 2009 in Las Vegas. Citrix plans to expand Synergy into a much larger event. It will include the old iForum, Geek Speak Live, a Virtualization Congress, Network World Live, and Summit. Summit will be 2 pre-days (May 3-4) of the main conferences (May 5-8), giving the partners a chance to hear and understand the message before their customers arrive. Mark said that the Virtualization Congress would include all the players in the virtualization space. Details on Network World Live were not given, other than this is being driven by Network World to bring networking people into the conference. Mark indicated that they are planning for about 9000 people.

The Day 2 morning keynote is usually primarily about giving the partners direction on how Citrix recommends they sell the products. This morning Al Monserrat, the new Sr VP, Sales & Services who takes over from John Burris (SP), introduced his team and gave a message about how he was focused on simplifying how partners work with Citrix. Citrix continues to invest in the partner channel especially with the Advisor Awards program, and wants the channel to get trained and certified and follow the playbook that Citrix provides. There will be improvements in tools to help, such as myCitrix.com and a new virtual lab next year (the Citrix Virtual Demo Center) to use with customers, plus more on-line training. Additional specific announcements were made that partners will be notified about.

Vendors

Here are some more of the vendors at the exhibit floor and what they were showing.

Appsense (www.appsense.com) was showing their profile management solution. The differentiator they now have is that profile management occurs on multiple events, and not just logon/logoff. So logon can be quicker by bringing the profile for office over only when office is launched.

Dynamic Ops (www.dynamicops.com) Dynamic Cops is a two year old company that provides a management solution for virtualization. Most impressive was a self provisioning portal which would allow IT to set up a flexible lab and allow power users to provision their own virtual machines. Obviously they were showing it working with Xen Server and Xen Desktop but in talking to them they position themselves to be virtualization vendor agnostic. They sell through partners.

Extentrix (www.extrentrix.com) is a Dubai based company selling both a service and a product. The service is basically customization of Web Interface. They work through resellers and can remotely create the customization for the customer. A version of this shows up not as a web page but as a browser toolbar that has the user's application access icons. They also have software products that are in the security space.

InMage (www.inmage.net) Tucked into a quiet corner of the hall, InMage is in the backup and recovery space, with a new product announcement targeting XenServer. What they do is a continuous backup. DR-Scout (the product name) adds a small agent to the server that sends disk block level changes to InMage Server. This eliminates backup windows and may be appropriate when you aren't using a SAN to take care of this for you. A key differentiator is the history capability of this solution. Let's say the CEO deletes a file and the next day wants it back. Because the differential changes are still available that change can (in theory) be found and the file recovered. They call this "Backup to the millisecond". The company has been around for about 6 years with OEM products, but has been selling to the public for about 2 years. 95% of their business goes through the channel. They recently closed on a $15m investment from Intel (which happily closed just before the market changed).

Novel (www.novel.com) Novel purchased Platespin last spring and they were present. Platespin has some good conversion capabilities for moving between real and virtual machines. In talking to the Platespin employees, they feel the merger is providing them with significant resources while not interfering. Time will tell.

Whiptail Technologies (www.whiptailtech.com) is a new company, so new that they didn't even make the program. The company is based out of a New Jersey based VAR, but has developed some neat technology. They have a flash based storage device that looks wicked fast. Huge IOPS numbers were thrown at me which sounded fantastic, but it has to get put into a lab to figure out if it is hype.

3tera (www.3tera.com ) 3tera is a cloud computing company. They were demonstrating XenApp and XenDesktop being deployed on their AppLogic Cloud Computing Platform. You probably can't see me roll my eyes every time I hear about Cloud Computing, but trust me - they do. AppLogic contains some proprietary software to help out on the missing glue to create a solution for deploying Xen in a cloud. So what is a cloud? Great question. According to the tech I talked to this might be deployed inside a company, or in a data center, or maybe even an ISP. I must be missing something here, because it sounds like fog to me.

Citrix Summit 2008: Day 1

Tim Mangan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:34:00 GMT

Citrix Summit: Day 0

Tim Mangan — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

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