Aidan Finn, IT Pro

The Beta for Office 2007 is now over.  It is expected to RTM very soon with it probably hitting the shelves around the same time as Windows Vista.  What can you expect?

The user interface is much different.  Menus are a thing of the past.  Instead you have a series of … panels?  Each panel (?) has a display of icons for doing various functions.  Anyone who is really familiar with MS Word right now will hate the the new version.  Every thing is different.  For example, the styles selection menu is horrible to use.  But, I felt the exact same way with Windows XP when it came along.  Most people who knew their way around Windows hate the new style interface.  Everythign was moved to make it easier for users to navigate.  And it worked.  My eperience was that users loved Windows Fisher Price while administrators all swtiched to the classic theme and classic control panel.  I do think the new interface in Office 2007 works really well in Exchange 2007.  I’m not sold either way on Outlook 2007 yet.  I know the beta prompted you to download a desktop search engine that would cripple any computer not worthy of launching rockets into space.

What else to look out for?  The mass deployment method is changed slightly.  I’ve documented how to do it while at my last job.  The document discusses how to deploy it with SCCM 2007 but the same method applies for Group Policy or SMS 2003 deployments. 

The default is that Office 2007 will save using the new XML based formats.  Just when you thought that version incompatibilities, e.g. Office 95 vs Office 97 were over.  Now, Word will try to save a document as a .DOCX file.  You can change this to use Office 2003 formatting, i.e. .DOC but you do lose some of the new fancy formatting.  I recommend you do this until Office 2007 becomes the norm with your business partners or clients.  It’s possible to do it in each product but I expect an ADM template will offer you the ability to do it centrally from a GPO.

The ability to save a document as a PDF right out of the box has been removed.  Adobe had some concerns about this functionality which is understandable.  MS didn’t fight it much.  However, MS have made a free add-on available to allow you to save as PDF or XPS from Office 2007.

Office 2007 is Microsoft’s cash cow.  But you know, it’s not really that exciting for most people.  Companies are generally slow to go to a newer version out of compatibility concerns.  Lots of organisations are slow to move from Office 97.  Lots are still on Office 2000.  They really don’t see the need to change.  Microsoft has radically redesigned Office with this release.  Part of their effort was to introduce Office as a brand that includes a range of server products including the anticipated Sharepoint Portal 2007, Lice Communications, Project Server and of course, Exchange 2007 which will be a major upgrade on functionality and design.  With this entire brand, MS aims to get corporates to buy into this new Office release like they have never done before.

I can understand the advantages and the pitch, but I don’t see it working.  The message is not getting across clearly enough or at all.

The final public test version of Windows Vista has been released.  Release Candidate 2 is available for X86 and X64 clients on the Microsoft Connect site.  Vista is expected to RTM on schedule next month.  It will be available for general consumption in January.

From talking to clients, reading the press and reading chat forums, my gut is telling me this release could be a bit of a damp squib.  I wouldn’t rush out and buy any MS stocks right now.  In fact, I expect the reception to be quite negative in the technical community once the marketing types have moved onto other shiny new things.

RC1 should have been pretty close to what the curstomer can expect once it hits the shelves.  If so, things could be bad:

• There are many problems not only with 3rd party applications, but I’m hearing there’s problems with MS applications too.
• I’m reading that there has not been consistant improvements in performance.  Early betas sucked the life from any PC they were installed on.  Things got better, then worse, then better, then worse.  Who knows what to expect now.
• UAC is proving to be quite controversial.  Many are turning it off straight away.
• The activation process for Volume License editions is not popular at all.  In fact, it’ll probably hurt if not almost kill VLK sales of the OS.  There will be no advantage to buying VLK editions any more.
• Windows Vista Enterprise is only available to those who buy a VLK edition with software assurance.  SA will only be bought by those who are deploying a new OS withing 3 years of a major release and who plan to upgrade again then.  I’m sorry MS, R2 releases are not a justification for SA.
• I was keen to see BitLocker.  But now I’m hearing you need to prepaare a custom build for machines that will be encrypted with BitLocker including a special 1.5 GB partition for BitLocker itself.

I don’t have any problem with the stuff MS is doing with the Kernal that Symantec and McAfee and whinging about.  I also must temper the above points by saying I was skeptical of Windows 2000 and many on the net thought it would bring about the end of the world.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I’ve just completed the backup setup for my lab network.  My lab network used to consist of a bunch of PC’s of various ages and processors.  I’d gone the traditional route of one physical machine per role.  So I had a domain controller, mail server, web server and a PC, 3 of which were running all of the time for internet services.

I decided to do my bit for the environment.  I also wanted to reduce my electricity bills and stop my lab room from being the warmest place in the county.  So I decided to eat some of my own medicine and consolidate my network via virtualistion.  I had a choice of which platform to take but I settled on VMware’s free VMware Server product.  I really like the snapshot feature of the VMware products for lab work and the machines are pretty portable, e.g  they are portable between Server, Workstation and Player.

I built an AMD 2800 with 2GB of RAM.  It would be a domain controller (with all FSMO’s) and my file server.  I installed VMware Server onto it.  The disk was getting pretty full so I installed a 180GB USB 2.0 external hard drive which physically hosts my 3 VM’s:

• Another DC: it will give my virtual network the ability to be mobile.  If I lose the physical host, I can recover the VM’s elsewhere and sieze the FSMO roles.  Instant DR site on a shoestring 🙂
• EMail
• Web (doubles as WSUS)

I wanted to backup these machines.  I am using the Windows Server NTBACKUP on the host machine so I’ve got no fancy VMware agents.  My solution was to script a way of backing up my machines with minimal downtime.  The script pauses/suspends my VM’s, backs them up, and then restarts them.  The backups are to a file on a USB 2.0 300GB external disk.  I also backup the shares on teh host server.  Here is what the VM backup script looks like:

REM SUSPEND ———————

REM WEB
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" suspend

REM DC
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" suspend

REM MAIL
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" suspend

REM BACKUP ———————

<BACKUP COMMAND>

REM START ———————

REM WEB
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" start

REM DC
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" start

REM MAIL
call "C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Servervmware-cmd.bat" "<path to VM VMX file>" start

REM EXIT ———————

:EXIT

• Window Vista WIC (Windows Integrity Controls).
• Kerberos Token Bloat: how your Token can fill up with SIDs and break Kerberos authentication.
• DNS testing with DCDIAG.

This consise and easy to understand newletter is well worth subscribing to.  And you don’t have to worry about appearing on a spam list either.  You can subscribe for here: http://www.minasi.com/nwsreg.htm.

VMware announced on their 64bit blog that VMware ESX 3.0.1 will offer full support for a range of 64 bit gues operating systems.  64 bit computing is set to gain wider acceptance and in some cases become a requirement.  The following operating systems will have 64 bit support:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard and Enterprise Server R2)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 64-bit (UP7, UP8)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-bit (UP2, UP3)
• SuSE Linux Server (SLES) 10 64-bit
• Sun Solaris 10 (U2)

Hardware requirements will be as follows:

• AMD: Athlon64 or Opteron Rev E or later
• Intel: must include support for Intel’s Virtualization Technology (needs to be enabled in the BIOS)

64 bit computing will be especially important in the Microsoft world.  Microsoft has decided to only release a 64bit edition of Exchange 2007.

WMware ESX is the market leader in enterprise level virtualisation.  ESX offers the ability to deploy many virtual machines across a farm of servers with load balancing and disaster recovery while providing a near physical machine level of performance.  ESX is a key technology for consolidating servers and making full use of the processing power that otherwise would be underutilised by many of the business applications that are typically deployed.

Microsoft has recently claimed that businesses will adopt Windows Vista like nothing else before it.  Well, Houston, there may be a problem.

Anyone who sets out a clear mass deployment plan for XP desktops will be familiar with the difficulties of deploying and troubleshooting PC’s.  The growing trend in the market is to treat the PC as a dumb appliance that you rebuild when it breaks with a major problem that you can’t fix in a few minutes.  Applications are psuhed to the PC as required by Group Policy, Terminal Services, SMS or even Softgrid for Desktops.  This rebuilding process can’t be easily done with OEM licensing because you only get 2 builds activations for an OEM key without having to speak to someone in Lord knows what country to clear your license key.  Because of this, large business who want to save administration costs have ponied up for Volume Licenses, often in the form of a desktop core CAL.  This OEM upgrade provides a Volume License Key that does not require activation.  Microsoft had to resort to using the honour code with their VLK customers.

But change is on the way.  Microsoft is planning to change the way VLK customers have been able to deploy and rebuild without having to bother with activations.  The process of just rebuilding as required will be taking a serious administrative effort hit.

Microsoft plans to include Volume Activation in WIndows Vista volume license editions (Windows Vista Enteprise, Windows Vista Business and Longhorn Server).  The short story is that you will have to activate your installation within 30 days or it shuts down like an OEM installation of XP.

ZDNet has some more details.

Some detailed information is here.

If you don’t like this then I would suggest you pass your feedback to your Microsoft partner solution providers and presales representatives.

A blank page has appeared on Connect that informs us a Beta for Virtual PC 2007 is on the way.  It will be publicly available on the 11th of October.  No other details are available.

Virtual PC 2004 is now a free product and one that any self respecting sys admin should aim to use.  VMware’s excellent alternative still requires a purchase, giving Microsoft an advantage.  VPC allows you to run virtual machines just like you can with Virtual Server 2005 R2.  In fact, the machines are compatible.

I’ve used VPC before for lab work and for testing.  Where I also see it being useful is where you want administrators to use non-admin accounts for day-to-day office work such as email and browsing and a dedicated account for admin work.  Run-As is painful to use (who wants to keep banging in the password?) so an alternative is to run a VM with only the admin tools installed.  The administrator can log into their physical machine with a non-admin account and into a VM with their admin account.  This isolates their email and internet activity from their administrative rights and provides a layer of defense against viable threats.

Windows Vista Enterprise (requires software assurance) will include a virtualisation solution built into the OS.  I’m guessing now that VPC 2007 will be a solution for those who do not buy Vista with software assurance.

The October edition of TechNet Magazine is out.  You can read the free web edition online.  This months theme is "Connect".  In it you’ll find articles on:

• Mirosoft Office Groove and Sharepoint.
• Small Business Server.
• Automated Deployment Services.
• Using Windows PE