Microsoft Technology In Formula 1 Racing

An interesting story popped up on the Microsoft newsfeeds today.  Microsoft entered into a partnership with McLaren Electronic Systems to compete for a contract to supply monitoring systems in Forumla 1 racing cars.  Anyone familiar with F1 will know that the cars generate performance and racing metrics that are transmitted back to a central station when they pass the pits (via radio) and when they are back in the garage (via cable).  In the past, CA Unicenter was used by McLaren.  Despite this, they still own some world championships.
 
The MS Press story mentions that Windows Vista, Office 2007 and SQL Server 2005 will be used to gather and utilise the 1Gb of data that is gathered per car in every race, not to mention the countless practice laps that happen in the off season and at the factory on rigs.  I would be surprise if System Center Operations Manager 2007 (MOM 2007) isn’t being used.  It’s architecture would be perfect for this.
 
I wonder how long it will take the Penguin lovers (Linux) and MOM competitors to break out stories about there beign more crashes in F1 in 2008.

Exchange 2007 RTM

The product that I personally find the most exciting in the new range from Microsoft has just been released to manufacturing.  The Exchange team announced it yesterday in their blog.  Exchange 2007 sees some changes in the way it is architected.  Finally, Exchange will use the pysical representation of your network that is defined in Active Directory in AD Sites and Services.  The installation is component based.  And the introduction of Unified Messaging will mean a lot for business users.  Being available (only) for x64 means it is also more scalable for those larger customers.
 
I had a quick look earlier in the beta but didn’t get much time to play with it.  I’ve recently read some high level documentation on migration.  It’ll be simple enough for consolidated Exchange networks.  Complicated Exchange 2000/2003 networks will need to be very well planned due to the fact that there is no longer the concept of a routing group or routing group connector.  Exchange 5.5 people have some bad news.  There is no longer a direct migration for you folks.  You’ll have to step up to Exchange 2003 first.

Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003

Microsoft announced the availablity of a new NAS offering in the Windows Server 2003 catalogue called WUDSS 2003.  It includes "new features such as the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target technology, a new and revised storage server setup experience, new integrated share and storage management snap-ins".  It is available now with the Dell PowerVault NX1950 and other OEM’s are expected to follow soon.
 
There is some further documentation from Microsoft here:

WDS, BOOT.WIM and Additional Drivers

I got a chance to test out the solution in the aforementioned MS KB article.  I was testing with VMware workstation 5.5.3 and Windows Vista x86 RTM.  The article in question has a few typos.  Here’s the steps that I followed to add the NIC drivers.

First, we need to get things ready.

  • I copied my boot.wim to a working folder called D:boot.
  • I created a folder called D:Mounted.
  • I copied the vmware drivers from the vmware tools ISO (E:program filesVMwareVMware ToolsDriversvmxnetwin2k). For other drivers I’d presume you take everything in the folder where the inf is. More than likely all you need is the inf and sys.

We’re now ready to update the boot image.  Note that we know the boot index for the default boot.wim is 2.  You may need to run "Imagex /info d:bootboot.wim" to identify the boot index for your WIM file.

  • imagex /mountrw d:bootboot.wim 2 D:mounted
  • peimg /inf=D:Driversvmxnet.inf D:mountedwindows
  • peimg /inf=D:Driversvmware-nic.inf D:mountedwindows
  • imagex /unmount /commit d:mounted

Now we are redy to get things going.

  • Copy the boot.wim back into RemoteInstall folder where you took it from originally (Make sure you left a copy of the original).
  • Make sure the VM has 512MB RAM and boot it up with the <F12> option to boot from the network.
  • If everything works, your driver should run and launch the WDS client.

Adobe Reader 8.0

Adobe has released version 8.0 of their reader product.  Following the trend set by the likes of Sin-mantec, they’ve added extra functionality.  One feature is the ability to kick off online meetings.  My feeling on this sort of thing is that these companies should stick to what they are good at and stop producing over-featured software that becomes bug-ware.

WDS Boot Image Fails: No NIC Driver Support

I’ve been messing around with WDS and WAIK on my VMware lab at home.  The BOOT.WIM that MS provides does not have native support for the NIC driver required by the standard VMware VM NIC.  When you boot up your boot image you see the following error which prevents you from doing anything:
WdsClient: An error occurred while starting networking: a matching network card driver was not found in this image. Please have your Administrator add the network driver for this machine to the Windows PE image on the Windows Deployment Services server.
I was doing a lot of mucking around last night with WAIK to find a solution.  I was close (IMAGEX and PEIMG) but it looks like I missed out the piece about identifying and targetting the correct boot index.  I think I found a solution today on the Microsoft website.  I haven’t tested it yet.
 
This solution consists of two steps:
  1. Load a driver into your "failed" booted up boot image and test it.
  2. Import a driver into your existing boot image once you have verified that it works in step #1.

Ireland Launch: Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007

Today marks the business launch of Microsoft’s new range of products in the Irish market.  The logo’s say Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007.  Don’t be mistaken in thinking that it’s just three products.  Office is now a brand that encompasses a range of products in the Office System.  The core of this is the famous Office suite and add-ons such as Project, Visio and InfoPath.  But Office System includes server prodcuts too.  Using these server products you can enable geographically or logically dispersed users to work with each other.
 
If you listened to Newstalk this morning you may have heard a poorly chosen quote of a MS rep in the news.  MS launched a report that delves into how business are losing money because users cannot use, find or access information in a timely or efficient manner.  By using an integrated solution, e.g. Exchaange 2007, Sharepoint Portal Server 2007 and Live Communication Server, you can enable employees who work in logical teams to work together, no matter where they are located. 
 
The reality in modern business is that you can have a person in Dublin working with people in Los Angeles and Shanghai on one project.  They might work together for a short time but need rapid, secure and reliable services to collaborate.  Once the project is over they might work with different people on another project.  Having Sharepoint Services enable users to quickly provision and customise a secure collaboration web site where they can work together, share information and share files.  Using Sharepoint Portal can tie these websites together, enabling corporate branding and search mechanisms.  Live Communications Server enable voice and video so that people can talk face to face using an internal communications system without needless waste on travel time and expenses.  Exchange 2007 provides an integrated messaging solution that ties into these products.  The major step forward with Exchange 2007 for the business is that it features Unified Messaging.  UM enables Voice Mail and Fax services to be integrated into Exchange so that incoming messages can be delivered right into a users mailbox.  The mobility functions of Exchange 2007 enable a business user to access their data no matter where they are: on the WAN via Outlook, over the web via SSL secured Outlook Web Access and over the air via secure push mail to the PDA (without the need for Blackberry subscriptions).
 
Server solutions don’t stop there.  Microsoft Dynamics, Business Scorecard Manager and Project Server are just some more of the integrated business solutions that are availabel for business use.
 
The key is integration.  Many organisations choose solutions from many vendors.  But these solutions just don’t integrate.  The business gets basic functionality but cannot easilly integrate the solutions.  Business users then find doing what should be a simple taks to be quite difficult, often leading to wasted or redundant effort.  MS solves this by not only integrating the server solutions with each other by leveraging Active Directory but also by tightly integrating Office 2007, the cornerstone of the Office System brand.
 
I highly recommend that you look into these solutions if this is something you are interested in.