Month: September 2012

A Trojan Horse Was Shipped To My Kindle And I Don’t Want To Remove It!

Mark Russinovich’s new book, Trojan Horse, is now available.

It’s two years post-Zero Day, and former government analyst Jeff Aiken is reaping the rewards for crippling al-Qaida’s attack on the computer infrastructure of the Western world.  His cyber – security company is flourishing, and his relationship with Daryl Haugen intensifies when she becomes a part of his team.

But the West is under the East’s greatest threat yet. The Stuxnet virus that successfully subverted Iran’s nuclear defense program for years is being rapidly identified and defeated, and Stuxnet’s creators are stressed to develop a successor.  As Jeff and Daryl struggle to stay together, they’re summoned to disarm the attack of a revolutionary, invisible trojan that alters data without leaving a trace.  As the trojan penetrates Western intelligence, the terrifying truth about Iran is revealed, and Jeff and Daryl find themselves running a desperate race against time to reverse it – while the fate of both East and West hangs in the balance.

I won’t get a chance to read it for a while; I have a chapter due for the new Hyper-V book.

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Videos on WS2012 Failover Clustering and Storage Improvements

I was asked to produce a couple of short (10-15 minutes) videos on the improvements to Failover Clustering and Storage in Windows Server 2012.  At first I thought “Cool, I can do some demos in there too!”.  But then, as I assembled the information I realised that I barely had time for the briefing, let alone any demos.  The focus was on sharing Level 100 information, so that’s what I did.

Windows Server 2012 Storage Improvements

Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering Improvements

 

Reminder of Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 Licensing For VL Purchases

You can now buy Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 via volume license channels.  Here’s a quick reminder of the changes in licensing:

  • The Windows 8 editions: Remember that the RT edition is sold only on ARM tablets and is not in VL.  The Enterprise edition is a benefit for when you add Software Assurance (SA) to Windows 8 Pro.
  • Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera: The authors of Windows 8 Secrets did a much more complete job of comparing the editions of Windows 8 than the original Microsoft table did.
  • Windows Server 2012 Licensing In Detail: Windows Server Standard and Datacenter are GA.  Essentials is still in RC.  I’ve no idea about Foundation, but it’ll only be available via OEM channels and is not a VL SKU.
  • Windows Server 2012 Virtualisation Licensing Scenarios: If you are doing virtualisation of Windows Serer on any kind of hypervisor (including VMware) then you need to read this. These rules are not constrained to Hyper-V.

Don’t forget that the virtual launch for Windows Server 2012 is tomorrow afternoon, at 16:00 GMT.  We should expect TechNet and MSDN to be populated sometime around/after that.

Licensing The Sideloading Apps on Windows 8 PCs

Something weird popped up on the Microsoft Volume Licensing pricelist today that the sales folks had to ask me about.  I guessed that this was related to sideloading of apps as was promised in Windows 8, but I wasn’t sure of the specifics.  I did some Googling.

There’s a very good chance that mid-to-large enterprises will want to develop their own in house Metro …Windows 8 Style … Modern UI … *For Fu*k’s Sake!!!* Metro apps to run on their Windows 8 PCs.  It’s extremely unlikely that they’ll want to do this through the Microsoft Store.  It is possible to sideload those apps onto Windows 8, bypassing the Microsoft Store.  The tools will certify your app, making it a trusted app (see the GPO stuff later).

Note, this applies only to Metro apps.  Desktop apps are installed the same way as they always have, and don’t need to be treated any differently as they were on XP, Vista, or Windows 7.

There are two things you need to deal with.

Allow Apps To Be Sideloaded To Windows

There are two steps to enabling Windows to allow an app to be sideloaded:

  1. Sign/package the app with a trusted certificate.
  2. Configure the registry manually, via script, or via group policy to allow trusted apps to be added to Windows.

You can configure domain-joined machines to permit trusted apps to be sideloaded using Group Policy:

  1. Start the Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc).
  2. Navigate to  Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, App Package Deployment.
  3. Open the Allow All Trusted Apps To Install setting.
  4. Click Enabled and then click OK.

This GPO configuration will set the following registry setting: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftWindowsAppxAllowAllTrustedApps = 1. 

Allow Sideloaded Apps To Be Run

If have Windows 8 Enterprise (only available if your Windows 8 Pro PC is licensed with Software Assurance) or Windows Server 2012 then you can enable sideloading of apps on those machines by:

  1. Joining the machines to a domain
  2. Configuring the above Allow All Trusted Applications To Install GPO.

Alternatively, if you have any other edition of Windows 8 (such as Windows 8 Pro) or if the machine must not be domain-joined then you must:

  1. Configure the above registry key.
  2. Activate a sideloading product key using Slmgr.vbs.  And that’s the new SKU that our sales people saw in this month’s Microsoft VL price list.

Deploying the App

According to Microsoft there are two ways to deploy the app.

To inject an app into a WIM image before PC deployment then you can use DISM:

DISM /Add-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackagePath:C:App1.appx /SkipLicense

If the PC is already deployed then you can use PowerShell:

Add-AppxPackage C:ContosoAppExpenseApp.appx

You can use Get-Appxpackage to determine if an app is installed and perform updates to it by running:

Add-AppxPackage \FileserverContosoAppv1.1ExpenseApp.appx

Windows RT

All of the above applies to the x86/x64 editions of Windows 8.  If you’re running Windows RT then the experience is simpler by using a “management client”.  Don’t ask me a thing about it; like 99.9999% of the world’s population, I’ve not see Windows RT in person yet.

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Volume Licensing for Windows Server 2012 And Windows 8 Are Now Available

Come and get ‘em while they’re hot!  The volume license price lists have been updated.  Windows Server 2012 Standard and Datacenter are there and you can buy it today.

Windows 8 is also on the volume license price list and you can buy it today too.