Month: November 2006

• Upgrading to Exchange 2007
• Exchange Management Shell
• Exchange and Outlook
• Mobility
• Journaling
• Spam and Phishing

The usual other stuff is also covered.

Exchange 2007 is a major improvement in an already excellent product:

• Each server is role based, i.e. it only has the required components installed.
• Architecture is much easier.  Finally, MS has realised that they might as well use the physical architecture as provided by AD Sites and Services instead of reinventing the wheel with routing groups and connectors.
• Unified Messaging integrates fax and voice mail with your inbox.  You can even check your mail over the phone!  Majoe telecoms players are quickly lining up behind UM.

Exchange 2007 will probably RTM in mid December and be generally available in late January or mid February.  MSVL, MSDN and TechNet customers will probably have it within 7 days of RTM.  MS is holding Vista, Office and Exchange launch events around the globe right now so it might be worthwhile checking their Events site for a show near you.  MS Ireland will hold their event on December 5th in Croke Park … the day event is invite only and the night events (2 * 1.5 hours) are open to requests (the early one is already booked out).

I was having a read of this month’s TechNet Ireland Newletter from Colm Torris (MS Northern Ireland) when I saw a link for controlling power management on Windows XP using Group Policy.  This is something that pops up on the Minasi Forum about twice a year.  The link was for a solution called EZ GPO from Energy Star.  You’ll know Energy Star from the little blue logo often found on Monitors and PC’s.  I actually remember someone mentioning this on MR&D before but I’d never followed up. 

The WAIK has been released by Micorosft.  Anyone looking to do network, unattended or WDS (Windows Deployment Services) installations of Windows Vista will need to download this kit.

Unattended installations have changed a lot.  The old unattend.txt has gone by the wayside, to be replaced by unattend.xml.  Vista installations are componnent based and takes places in a number of phases.  This has to be understood and the new XML unattend file can handle it.  Vista installations are also "image" based.  It’s bit level imaging like ghost, more like file imaging.  There’s who new ways to install additional drivers and applications.  You’ve also got Windows PE, a replacement for DOS in the pre-installation phase for preparing your machine and downloading an image from the network.  This appears to be included in WAIK.

Whatever way you intend to deploy Vista, make sure you download this kit.  You will find it’s a tough trawl at first, if it’s anything like the beta release, but it is worth it in the end.

I’ve been asking around and doing loads of reading today and I’ve decided there’s more I need to do on the WDS document.  I’ve got to spend more time looking at the two unattend answer files that I would use, the 7 phases of Vista installation, adding drivers to BOOT.WIM, INSTALL.WIM and adding drivers for plug and play.  Most of the material will come from WAIK, the Windows Automated Installation Kit.

I’ll hopefully get cracking on the lab work for that this week.

I’ve just finished typing up a whitepaper on Windows Deployment Services (WDS).  This will replace RIS on Windows 2003 SP2 and will be included instead of RIS in WIndows “Longhorn”.  This guide will serve as a primer to WDS and Windows Vista deployment via one of Microsoft’s recommended mechanisms.

Since Windows 2000 Server, we have had a technology available to us from Microsoft to quickly, and with little effort, build machines via the network. This technology was called Remote Installation Services or RIS. Few have ever heard of RIS. For most, it’s one of those subjects that only comes up in a few MCP exam questions. However, a few of us found this technology to be very useful.

What was RIS? RIS mixes the unattended setup, with network installations via a PXE boot up. Most of us will know PXE as that annoying prompt asking you to press <F12> to boot from the network. If you have RIS set up, you can press <F12>, log into a client, select an “image” (which is really an I386 folder associate with an unattended answer script) and walk away knowing that your PC would be built and added to your domain without any further effort on your part. Added to that, using an extension of RIS called RIPREP, you could actually deploy images of PC’s that included applications in them.

This sounds a bit like Ghost? Slightly, but it is different. Ghost is a bit level cloning tool. It also requires licensing for every machine that you build … something many organisations choose to ignore, I’m fairly sure. It also requires that you be careful with SID duplication so you have to make use of tools such as SYSPREP. Plain RIS images are really nothing more than a copy of the I386 folder from the Operating System CD, maybe some drivers added, and one or maybe a set of answer files for performing an automated or completely unattended setup. It’s not a clone at all; it’s a traditional setup. How doe RIS and Ghost compare? Ghost is quicker for deploying operating systems but it does cost money to use legally. RIS is free to use but does take slightly longer to deploy the operating system. An added advantage of RIS is that its close integration into Windows and Active Directory allow you to join the computer to the domain, choose the OU where the computer account should be placed and use customisable computer naming standard using Active Directory as your database.

Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 brings about a change for RIS users. Due to the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft is replacing RIS with Windows Deployment Services. WDS will provide legacy support for RIS (it upgrades cleanly) but it will also provide support for WinPE deployments of Vista’s Windows Imaging (WIM) file format via PXE deployments. WDS will also be a part of Windows “Longhorn” Server.

With this document, I hope to describe some of the fundamentals of WDS as included with Windows 2003 Service Pack 2.

Note: This document is based on the Beta Refresh of Windows 2003 Service Pack 2.

The document continues …

• Deploying Vista Step by Step Guide
• Managing Group Policy ADMX Files Step by Step Guide
• Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide
• Netsh Commands for Wired Local Area Network
• Performance Monitoring and Tuning Step by Step Guide
• Print Management Step by Step Guide
• Step by Step Guide to Controlling Device Installation and Usage with Group Policy
• Step by Step Guide to Device Driver Signing and Staging
• Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Multiple Local Group Policy
• User Account Control Step by Step Guide
• Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption Step-by-Step Guide
• Windows Vista Beta 2 Migration Step by Step Guide
• Windows Vista Beta 2 Trusted Platform Module Services Step by Step Guide
• Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface Step by Step Guide
• Windows Vista Speech Recognition Step by Step
• Windows Vista Windows Meeting Space Step by Step Guide
• Winlogon Notification Packages Removed Impact on Windows Vista Planning and Deployment

• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Business N
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Basic N
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Ultimate

The license key you input during the installation determines which version is installed.  Neither of the N version keys are available at the moment.  I doubt anyone outside of the EU offices in Brussels will give a $&!% about that.

Microsoft launched their new scripting language, Powershell this week.  The Minasi MR&D forum added a new section specifically for Powershell.  Considering some of the command line commandos who hang out there, it’ll be a good place to learn and share ideas about this new platform.

Powershell is going to be for Windows what Bourne, Korn and C have been for UNIX for 30+ years.  Already, the 2007 range of products are already featuring it to enable administrators to script complex tasks.

There release of Powershell for Vista isn’t until the end of January.  One of the MS guys gave a good explanation for this on the MR&D forum today.

The Powershell team has also got a blog running.

This one got past me but Windows IT Pro highlighted it.  Last week, MS launched the Windows Vista Secuirty Guide.  In it’s words:

This guide provides instructions and recommendations to help strengthen the security of desktop and laptop computers running Windows Vista™ in a domain with the Active Directory® directory service.

In addition to the solutions that the Windows Vista Security Guide prescribes, the guide includes tools, step-by-step procedures, recommendations, and processes that significantly streamline the deployment process. Not only does the guide provide you with effective security setting guidance, it also provides a reproducible method that you can use to apply the guidance to both test and production environments.