Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Install VHDMount

A while back, I mentioned how you could back up Vista to a VHD file which you could mount using a VM or a tool called VHDMount. VHDmount is a part of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2. Dave Northey blogged a way to install this component without installing a full blown Virtual Server:

Download the installer.
Extract it’s contents: setup.exe /c /t <drive letter>:<path to the .msi file>
Install VHDMount: msiexec /i "Virtual Server 2005 Install.msi" /qn ADDLOCAL=VHDMount

Someone also commented that you shouldn’t try this on a machine with an existing installation of Virtual Server.

Credit: Dave Northey.

Vista Group Policy Reference

There’s an Excel spreadsheet that lists all of the new GPO settings that are provided in the ADM/ADMX administrative templates with Windows Vista.

Pre-Register for “Longhorn” Beta 3

You can pre-register for notification of the availability of Windows "Longhorn" Beta 3. MS is claiming this will be a pretty complete build and will be the first "public" build. They’re hoping for lots of feedback.

Comparing Versions of Exchange

The MCS Ireland folks posted a link to an interesting article that compares Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 and their various SP builds and licensing versions. It interesting (a) to review to see how Exchange has developed over the years and (b) to decide whether you should go with Standard or Enterprise licensing.

VMDK (VMware) to VHD (Microsoft Virtual x) Converter

Activewin posted a quick article on an apparently free utility for converting VMware VMDK files to Microsoft VHD files. This means you can migrate VMware VM’s to Microsoft Virtual Server/PC VM’s. That’s pretty nifty.

Credit: Bink.

MOM Management Pack: Exchange 2007

Keeping their promise, Microsoft has released a MOM 2005 management pack for Exchange 2007 at the time of the products release to manufacturing. There is also a guide for the management pack.

Credit: Bink.

SMS Extended Security Update Inventory Tool

Microsoft has released another security update inventory tool for SMS 2003 called the Extended Security Update Inventory Tool. This inventory tool is intended to detect, download and deploy updates that are not detectable by the SMS Security Update Inventory Tool that relies on the Microsoft baseline Security Analyser. The new ESUIT is built on another new release, the Enterprise Scan Tool.

It looks like the tool will work on SMS 2.0 SP3 and SMS 2003

Microsoft RTM’s First Forefront Products

This is a busy news day. There’s loads of stuff in my inbox and RSS feeds this morning.

I didn’t see any big announcements but last week, Microsoft released the first two of it’s Forefront branded products to manufacturing. The Forefront brand will be applied to all of Microsoft’s security products. The first products are Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint. These are results of the Sybari acquisition a year or so ago. Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server is the successor to Microsoft Antigen for Exchange which was only released late last Summer. Considering how short the beta program was, I’m doubting that much has changed … we probably just have added support for Exchange 2007. In fact, almost nothing had changed in the Microsoft Antigen release since the last Sybari Antigen release… mainly the Enterprise Console was replaced.

I’ll let you read the features of the Exchange and the Sharepoint products for yourself.

Operations Manager RC2 Available

I just got a mail from Microsoft that says that System Center Operations Manager 2007 (MOM 2007) RC2 is available. You can download it from the Connect website.

I really liked MOM 2005. I had it running on a production network to monitor some key and troublesome servers while it was still a release candidate. When we evaluated monitoring products I found that were was no alterniative in my mind once I saw what it was capable of. We knew when something went wrong before the users or even the branch administrators knew. Partnered with SMS 2003, MOM 2005 gave us complete knowledge of what we had and how it was performing.

OM 2007 takes MOM 2005 to another level. OM 2007 views your network from the ITIL point of view, i.e. your network is a series of business services that are comprised of infrastructure and application components. This end to end monitoring can be modelled to accurately represent your organisation. This modelling will then be used to feed performance, fault and reporting information into other System Center solutions. This is all part of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). OM 2007 takes knowledge of what you have in the form of a model and provides you with information on how it is performing. You can expect to see the elements of DSI in all System Center products.

I strongly urge anyone who is seeking a monitoring solution or who is firefighting their network to check out MOM 2005 and OM 2007.

New WSUS Categories

The WSUS team briefly mentioned that the Firewall Client for ISA Server has now been added as a new product under the ISA category. This will allow Microsoft and you to control the updates of this product as and when required.

I’ve personally not seen anyone in Ireland (that is not using SBS or a single server) that is using ISA as a firewall. So, it goes without saying, that I’ve not seen the Firewall Client being used outside of a lab environment. Even then, I prefer to keep things simple and not use it.

The team also mentions that SMS 2003 and Visual Studio have been added. More sub categories will be added to VS. The SMS category includes SP2 for SMS 2003, something you will need to go to 2003 R2 and maybe for CM 2007 compatibility. The category is also there to support swusscan2.cab. This will allow SMS 2003 Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates to detect and deploy updates for SMS 2003.

Speaking of SMS 2003 R2: check out my documents/guides/whitepapers on the Inventory Tool for Custom Updates and the Scan Tool for Vulnerability Assessment.