… With MDOP, System Center and Virtualisation
Speakers: Jeff Wettlaufer (MS), Jeremy Chapman (MS) and Michael Niehaus (MS)
I briefly considered going instead to the Russinovich session on Windows 7 kernel changes but we noticed that it’s a PDC session, i.e. aimed squarely at developers. So here I am at a session that will probably focus on MDOP (a product set only available to purchase by desktop software assurance customers). I’ll probably never use anything from this session but here I am anyway.
Application Compatibility Toolkit
Jeremy Chapman: He seems a bit nervous but shouldn’t be. It’s a good presentation.
This presentation kicks off with Application Compatibility. We get a look at the survey and the most demo’d application on Windows 7 yet: StockViewer. It’s a XP app with loads of problems that you need to shim using AppCompat. First, Standard User Analyser is used and that fixes some of the bits but not all. The Compatibility Administrator is shown and it has a huge database of application shims/mitigations to make the apps work on Windows 7/Vista.
Tip from MS: When shimming an application then shim it’s dependencies.
Tip from MS: create a single SDB shim file for the entire company and include as many application fixes as possible. That makes it easier to deploy/manage.
Session Virtualisation can be used for some appcompat, e.g. W2008 has WOW32 for 16-bit applications.
MED-V should be used by medium/large organisations who are considering XP Mode. It provides centralised administration and control, e.g. change control. You also get policy for interaction between physical and virtual, e.g. allow copy/paste but not local disk access.
App-V DOES NOT solve appcompat OS issues. It does solve app to app compatibility issues. You cannot run legacy IE in App-V.
Windows 7 Deployment
Using W2008 R2 WDS multicast MS went from 17 WDS unicast servers to 1 WDS multicast server and quadrupled their total output to 2100 builds per day.
Michael Niehaus takes over with WAIK and MDT (check out my whitepaper on XP to Win7 deployment). Now we get a demo. This is a very demo intensive session.
MDT is light touch, e.g. LiteTouch.VBS. To get zero touch where the admin deploys from an admin station then you need to use Configuration Manager. SP2 adds support for ConfigMgr 2007. MDT is free. ConfigMgr obviously allows you to automate deployment from 0-100, e.g. report/collection for suitable machines and run a job on them to upgrade/migrate and then get success/failure reports.
Jeff Wettlaufer takes over.
ACT does integrate into ConfigMgr. V5.5 doesn’t at the moment but there is a fix on the way. V6.0 will integrate as well. I wasn’t aware of this integration.
You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade Assessment reports in ConfigMgr. Obviously you can add s/w and App-V distributions into a ConfigMgr OSD task sequence. In the future, there will be integration with MED-V similar to the current integration with App-V. That’s 12-18 months away with V2.0 of MED-V.
Michael Niehaus takes over again. This time to show how MDT can integrate with ConfigMgr to add additional features. You can create MDT task sequences in ConfigMgr and create boot images. Why? MDT task sequences offer more functionality. Documentation for this integration is built into MDT in the accelerator docs.
Configuration Manager 2007 R2
Jeff is back with some ConfigMgr R3 roadmap information.
The task sequencer has a new boot media creation process. You can do a pre-staged media boot image that contains the build, e.g. for road warriors or hardware providers. Give them the media and they build a machine outside of your network with your image using the media you create in ConfigMgr 2007 R3 – sounds similar to the MDT 2010 solution.