Technically Speaking

Have been hooked on the idea of Groove and secure file sharing/collaboration for a while now, but the new version SharePoint Workspace 2010 is an even better application.

I am by no means an expert just yet, although I am hoping to dig in even more as I get my more opportunity with the product.  I did try a large file transfer within a Groove workspace and it was surprisingly fast across the LAN.  The file was about 500Mb and it was completed within 10 minutes.  Somehow I expected more delay than that.  Not sure if I would try such a big file across the Internet, well unless I knew the connections on both ends were fairly good.

What does SharePoint Workspace 2010 do?

This application is billed as the offline client for Sharepoint, however it still supports work group style collaboration that was available in Groove, but adds SharePoint functionality.

Personally I have found that disconnected collaboration works very well in both Groove and Workspace.  Suppose I am going to work on a project with two other individuals and they do not work for the same organization as I do.  Workspace 2010 (and Groove) allow me to create a collaboration session (or workspace) for the project and invite them to join.  When they do this all parties can trade files, messages, and other information.  Without the need to worry about firewalls or access rights.

Since all the content is encrypted share away, there is not too much need to worry about file transfer (although there is always some need).

Another way I have used SharePoint Workspace (and Groove) is to trade files with my other computers.  Suppose I am working on something at home and need to get it to the office.  Sure I could use a flash drive or cart my laptop to work.  Or I could put it in a workspace to which both of my computers belong.

This scenario might be good for those who are occasional road warriors.  In the office most of the time, but attend trade shows or other events from time to time.  Maybe they have access to the VPN, but if they are occasional travelers they may not.  Using a tool like SharePoint Workspace, the traveler could use a workspace on their work computer and on their laptop (or a company one that they checked out) to allow access to needed files while on the road.

Does it work?

So far, in the testing that I have done it works very well.  I have a few work spaces configured to trade files between my various PCs.  Another nice feature is that you can create an account (associated with your Live ID unless a Groove Server is used) and open or subscribe to as many work spaces as you need without the need to log in separately for each one.  Of course the multiple account scenario seems to be supported as well.  I tried that for a while, but didn’t like logging on to other identities to work with certain files.

When Office 2010 gets to you (it is already available on TechNet and MSDN and maybe even to business) I recommend giving SharePoint Workspace 2010 a look.  It might be just the collaboration tool you need, both with and without SharePoint.

I attended a Windows 7 seminar last night and it was pointed out that Windows 7 and Office <xxxx> were different products and that got me thinking a little bit.

When Microsoft pushes a new version of Windows out the door and then a new version of Office it seems that some people get confused by the two.  For example, my mom has Office 2007 at work running on Windows XP.  When Windows 7 came out she was sure that she needed to get Office 7 to support any coming changes, but Office 7 would probably not run well in Windows 7 given that the current Office version is actually 12 (soon to be 14).

I do not think it is bad that people think this way, but I do think it something easy to correct.  The problem has been around since the Rolling Stones’ “Start me up” was used in a Windows campaign, yup… Windows 95.

It really is a confusing problem if you look at it from an average point of view. Windows 95, Office 97, Windows 98, Office 2000…. etc.  The fun continues to present day with Office 2007 (and the forthcoming Office 2010) and Windows 7.

The numbering of applications and operating systems is a good idea, especially since there is only a rare occasion when the OS and Office Suite get to shelf in the same year (though Office 2010 and Win 7 are close… loosely). It keeps the product simple and easy to understand like all marketing it isnt perfect.

I guess user education is the key here.  For me, referring to Windows 7 simply as 7 needs to stop as it confuses some people.  That is afterall why the product is called Windows 7 (oddly not Windows 6.1 or Vista but better) to differentiate it from other numbered products like Windows Server 2008 R2 (2008) and Office 2007 or 2010.

Simple separation

Surely the separation of Office Products from Windows products should not be terribly hard, afterall the users must shell out separately for them both.  Since I cannot buy a PC with Office and get too far without Windows (or some other Operating System) but I can buy and run a PC with Windows and not Office.

Educating users and consumers, friends and family, and anyone around you might be the best thing to prevent the installation of Office 7 and Windows 2010 (until Windows 2010 actually hits… if ever).

My question here is simple, does Microsoft think about these things?  Surely people on the Windows and Office teams have seen/heard this before.  Also… which version of Office was Office 7, I am curious to know if there was one.

In a previous post, I looked at the reasons one might boot from a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD).  Here I plan to go through the process of doing so.

Creating a VHD

Before your Windows 7 PC can boot from a VHD, you have to create it.  To do so you will need the following:

• Windows 7 media
• Free hard disk space to contain the VHD file

As with any process there are typically multiple ways to accomplish the task, however I find the Pre-boot environment the easiest way to get started.

Question: Why do I need Windows 7 loaded to use the boot from VHD feature?

Answer: The boot from VHD feature is available only in Windows 7 and it makes use of the Windows 7 boot loader application to allow the file to boot.

Before we can load Windows 7 into a virtual hard disk, like a physical hard disk it must exist.  Let’s create a VHD file.

Open a command prompt window with elevated permissions by right clicking the command prompt shortcut and selecting Run as Administrator.

On the command line enter the diskpart command to enter the built in disk partition manager.

From the Diskpart command line, enter the following to create a fixed size VHD file:

Create VDISK File=”c:\my vdisks\win7vdisk.vhd” maximum=16000 type=fixed

Figure A

The Create vdisk command

This will create a vhd file of a fixed size on the C drive at the my vidisks folder location.  Now that the VHD exists we can load Windows 7 into it.

Insert the media for the installation and reboot the computer to boot the system from the DVD.  When the boot environment starts, press Shift + F10 to open a command prompt and enter the diskpart command.

Question: Didn’t we already use diskpart command to create the VHD?

Answer: Yes we did, but now we need to attach the VHD file so Windows can use it during the installation.

Attaching a VHD file will make it visible to the computer during the startup process so you can load Windows into the VHD.  Because it works similarly to a physical computer, with the only difference being the location where the installation will be placed, on a file rather than consuming the entire physical hard disk.

To attach the VHD you will need to select the file in Diskpart by entering

select vdisk file=”c:\path_to_vhd\disk.vhd”

Where path_to_vhd\disk.vhd is the path and filename of your newly minted virtual hard disk file.

Once the file is selected, you can attach it by running the attach command in diskpart

attach vdisk

This puts the virtual hard disk onto the system so that it can be assigned a letter and get Windows installed.

Enter assign letter=X where X is the letter of the drive you want to add to the vhd

Now you can exit Diskpart and proceed with the installation of Windows 7.  When you are asked where to place the installation, select the drive letter you assigned to the VHD as the installation location.

Once the install gets rolling, it will behave just like a usual Windows installation, the next part of the process makes the VHD a bootable option for the PC.

Note: without adding the vhd instance to the boot menu, the PC will never know that it is an option.

Adding the boot option for your new VHD is fairly simple, begin by opening an elevated command prompt by entering CMD into the search box on the start menu.  When CMD appears, right click the shortcut and select run as Administrator.

Within the command window, enter the following two commands and press enter between each as follows:

bcdedit /copy {current}  /d “My Win 7 VHD” <enter>

After entering the first bcdedit command, the prompt should display a success message and the CLSID information for the new entry.  Note: You will need the CLSID data for the next command.

bcdedit /set {CLSID} osdevice vhd=”[C:]\<path to vhd>” <enter>

Note: The [C:] is required to be entered as shown, the remaining portion of the path to your vhd file should be outside of the braces.

After entering the BCDEdit commands you can exit the command prompt and reboot the system.  If everything was done correctly, you should see additional options when booting your computer.  Selecting the VHD option will boot your computer into the VHD copy of Windows 7.

Bottom Line

If you do a considerable amount of demo work or need a Out of Box experience for any reason creating a VHD boot environment is a great way to accomplish this without carting multiple systems around.  You can create multiple VHDs and configure them to boot, keep in mind though that physical hard disk space is consumed by vhd files and should be considered when planning to use multiple vhds.

My recommendation is 5 or fewer VHD boot options, one of which being your primary system.  Doing that allows you to backup everything you use within your environment by backing up a VHD.  If and when your hardware fails, you can then get the things rolling with a new PC and vhd boot.

Lots of possibilities and points of view

Windows 7 brings lots of new possibilities to the table by allowing boot from VHD and other things Microsoft has really come along way.  Hopefully you will give boot from VHD a try and post any gotchas or success stories in the comments.  Good Luck!

Storage gets cheaper all the time.  Spindles get cheaper and capacities climb making large storage accessible for companies of all sizes.  For IT and users alike, this can mean less limitations and quotas and better virtualization and backup possibilities.

This leads me to wonder about…

Even though this is great news for organizations, what would you keep if your storage was limited to 4Gb?  How would you limit and manage use data to ensure that these things were stored properly?

I am curious to know what might become the data that you cannot live without, both organizational for business and personal.  Family photos, e-mail, writing and other documents?

But storage is cheap and getting cheaper why do I care?

I guess the curiosity comes from my coming move and huge need to get rid of things.  Even though my home data storage has a small physical footprint and fits on my desk, it is far more interesting to think about what might get rid of in terms of data.  Maybe that’s the geek in me.  Seeing the amount of physical stuff we are getting rid of and the amount we will be moving made me wonder about data.

Maybe if  we all thought about the the actual items and data we are keeping (and the number of copies of these items) and what we can, and cannot live without, the efficiency of our storage solutions and optimization of what we have to work with might improve as storage gets cheaper and more efficient in the future.

What would be your most important data?  Please take a few minutes and let me know in the comments.

Today, the Friday after Patch Tuesday, I get to hunt down some spyware on a remote system.  So far I appear to be getting back on track.  My thought today, after meeting some very interesting people this morning (before the spyware stuff began) centers around innovation versus up keep.

I know that spy ware is what some consider to be the root of all evil in the support arena, and I completely agree.  However does the bad software popping up all over the place at such a rapid pace put the developers of the software on the innovative edge of technology?  In many cases, the good guys (myself included) get to play catch up and chase these things down.  Sure it only happens once in a while because the protective Anti-Malware apps are very good at what they do.. keep users of all levels safer on the Internet.

Upkeep required

It seems to me that keeping the bad applications out is a reactive game.  Until the bad is known about, it cannot really be stopped.  A case of if you can’t see it, it isn’t there.

Hold a moment – off to investigate what was found

And we’re back…

Part of me used to think that the companies responsible for the protection applications were also somehow responsible for the malware, since they needed something to test their apps against, but that doesnt make sense to me anymore and here is why…

Companies selling applications (or giving them away and selling other things) want their customers to trust them and know that they are providing good software.  If the organization was found to be providing bad software to sell more protection software, customers would jump ship faster than the company could handle.  Causing a major (if not complete) disruption of business and share holders might revolt.  In short, producing software that does a user good and is trustworthy is far more lucrative than producing untrustworthy software in the long run.

The requirement or state of the information age that says we need to protect ourselves from viruses and other malware is not something that can be blamed on Big Company Inc because some hacker found a way and an opportunity to exploit their software.  It is the way it is and must be managed at the desktop.  After all, software innovation comes from very smart people.  People do miss things from time to time, I know I certainly do and sometimes it take a bit of work and intelligence to correct these things when they do pop up.

Bottom line…

Yes keep your software up to date and patched.  Make sure you get good and easy to use Anti-Malware applications.  But do not think that even the best anti-malware application is perfect and will never allow for new issues to correct.  Hackers and malicious programmers are innovative in the ways they find to get ahead of the companies protecting our computers.  It is a shame that so many use their intelligence for malicious intent or overbearing advertising to make a quick buck.  I wonder how much better the scanners and “white hat” applications for finding these things would be if these coders were on the other side?

In my recent travels around the web, I have seen a few comments about booting from a VHD in Windows 7 and I thought I would look at it just a bit more closely.  I have done it once or twice, but it was a while and a couple of formats ago.

First… what is a vhd?

A VHD is a virtual hard disk, essentially an image of a system and installed applications that runs on top of another environment.  It is also the format of the virtual hard disks used by Microsoft’s Hyper-V Hypervisor platform.

Ok.. so a VHD is a image of a system… why would I want to boot from it?

I had once thought that booting from virtual hard disks was a bit more work than just loading up a system and pressing the start button.  And indeed it is a bit more work, but in the end, for some it may be worth it.

Note: While it is not the goal of this post to go through the process of creating VHDs for boot, it is relatively simple to do (and can be done using the Windows 7 media).

Back to the why would booting from VHD be useful part.

Suppose you got a new system and it was running Windows 7 and had a fair number of the latest bells and whistles (64bit chip, lots of RAM, etc).  Rather than grabbing your binder full of CDs and loading them into this new system consider this for a moment.  Computers are only new for a short time, and the harder you use them, the more you might be inclined to format and rebuild.

What if there were a way to keep your base system as new as possible, and still run everything you need without crudding up the computer?

Suppose your system was freshly installed with Windows 7 and had no other applications on it (obviously reformatted or built from scratch).  If you create an image of the clean environment and store it on an external source and then create the obligatory repair disk you can keep your PC like brand new for a long time, as well as recover pretty much everything you use with very little work by booting to a VHD.

When you create the VHD, you will configure Windows inside the virtual hard drive and add programs like MS Office, Nero, iTunes, and the other gazillion things that are on your typical computer.  All of these things live within the VHD, which can be backed up to external storage.

Because Windows 7 allows you to choose the vhd as a boot environment, the copy of Windows running on the bare metal of your system is virtually never touched.  Sure there may be times, failed hardware, changes in config, random Sunday afternoon formatting, that cause your physical system stress and require a cleanup, but with a system image of the pristine environment of a brand new Windows 7 box and the repair disk, that is a snap.

Still sounds like more work

The setup is considerable, since a good many have licensing to take care of their needs for OSes or get PCs with a retail license already installed.  Given the return that the IT department will get on reduced repair time will be worth it because the “possibility” of a pristine image of Windows 7 being available for use is huge.

Being able to push an image out to a workstation and reboot into that image in a short period of time, depending on size of organization might be a very good trade off given the time it takes to deploy Windows and applications needed (even though Windows 7 has a shorter time to deploy than previous versions).

Something to consider

If your environment turns over frequently or needs methods for testing deployment scenarios this might be a great solution for your environment.  I encourage you to give booting from a VHD a shot, it might be a great time savings in the medium to long term.

What are your thoughts on deployment from a VHD?

Windows NT at its base has been around a long time.  The concept of administrator rights versus user rights (and permissions) on a Windows NT based operating system is certainly nothing new and there should seemingly be very few applications that point out this distinction anymore.

If only that were true.

Today I was asked about an application that collects data from a serial device regarding temperature and other information.  Great concept.  Put this thing in your environment for a day (week, month, etc) and it will collect information about its surroundings.  Then you can attach it to your PC and pull the information from the device and use it to somehow make your organization or products better.

I love the idea of that.   However the implementation doesnt make sense to me.

When installing software, typically I use an administrative account and select some kind of All Users access for the application so that anyone who logs on to the PC can use the application.  This works for most things, like Office or Adobe Reader.

But some applications (even some from Microsoft) require the user to have local admin priveleges on their machines to use the appliation.  This makes no sense.  Sure it is easier for both the developer and the administrator to allow anyone to do whatever they want on the PC, but this practice (with a few exceptions) should be almost unheard of in the IT Community today.

An application should run however it is installed.  If it needs high level access to the OS, use the admin account with which the application was installed or pop up a UAC box (in the case of newer versions of Windows) to ask for it.  I realize that UAC was a huge annoyance in Windows Vista, but it did start many developers down a path to properly integrate with the Operating System.

I guess it is just frustrating that I need to provide users with local administrative rights to run applications they need to do their job properly.  Sure some applications have work arounds, but when those do not work, I am right back at square one users being added to the local administrators group.

Sure if you do not tell the user about the administrative access concept – you can do anything you want to your PC because you are an admin, they will think nothing of it.  Many will likely think you are the coolest person ever because the PowerPuff Girls Screensaver installed without a hitch.

I wish there were a solution to the problem, maybe App-Locker in Windows 7 and better coding practices on the part of the software developers will help correct this problem, but in my environment today, there is little to be done except give the software what it needs and scan for everything.

I am curious to find out what your thoughts are on applications needing administrative rights…

In doing a bit of digging for something completely unrelated to Office, I stumbled upon the Microsoft Store where there is a promotion going on now to allow those who purchase Office 2007 now, to get Office 2010 for free.

Being someone who likes to use the latest applications and gets asked questions about getting the new version of product x, I thought I would share what I found here.

Click here to learn more. Just as an aside, please read the fine print at the bottom.

The benefit I see this having is for those getting new computers.  This way if they buy Office 2007, they can upgrade to 2010 at release without needing to rebuy or purchase an upgrade.

One of the coolest things going on in business is mobility of data; from the user perspective at least.  As an administrator, this stuff makes me cringe.  Allowing users to access their data from anywhere is a key requirement, but letting the data travel on a flash drive or portable device is somewhat sketchy because the media can be lost, broken, stolen, etc.  This would allow in many cases, the data to get into the wrong hands.

The IEEE standards board is working on IEEE1667 which is an encryption/authentication method for USB devices to allow them to support enhanced storage capabilities.  Microsoft supports this standard in all SKUs of Windows 7.  Hopefully soon, the devices that make use of the standard will hit the shelves.

The idea is that the device supports a certificate (and many types of certificates) to allow authentication by the host system and the device to protect data.

An example of how this might be helpful

Suppose that Joe User is working in a company and carries his most used data on a 1667 supported flash drive.  This way he has it everywhere just in case he needs it.

The device has a certificate to ensure that it works with computers within the organization, but not on computers outside the organization because the certificate authentication cannot happen.

It works great for moving between the company computers.  Allowing Joe to be in the Washington office where he works every day, using the flash drive and data, but also to travel to the New York office and plug right in and continue working.

When Joe goes home and plugs into his desktop PC, the drive will not work because there is no certificate there for authentication with the device.

New, not perfect

This provides a bit of peace of mind to business for the majority of their users travelling with and possibly losing flash drives, however it is likely far from perfect at this point.  Going forward other applications and “smart” enhancements for USB drives will make this technology a great standard, keeping employees happy because they can use portable media without stepping on the toes of the IT department and risking data loss.

Windows 7 does recognize these devices and can make use of them when they arrive, which is definitely something I am looking forward to.  I hope the idea takes off simply to encourage companies to properly handle the portability of Information by employees.

There are other uses for this technology I am sure, but the data portability portion is something I have been working to correct for quite some time, maybe this is just the technology needed to do that job.

All people who use a computer have some contact with storage.  From the disk inside your PC to the flash drive that stores all of the photos of your kids, we all get to interact with storage.  Over the past two years I have been a Microsoft MVP in the File System Storage area and it has provided a great opportunity to see that there is more to storage than the disk(s) that hold the data.

Working with enterprise class storage, using SANs or direct attached storage in file servers, is an interesting role.  My organization uses a network attached storage box running Windows Storage Server 2003 with a very small amount of disk space.  Certainly not the piles of disks used by large companies, but still a good amount of storage to manage.

Finding out more

Last week I was in Redmond learning about storage and the ways it works within Windows Server (and client) as well as storage (or file system) related features in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.  The opportunity to interact with other MVPs and the product groups based around storage was amazing and I am hoping to really begin digging into storage more.  My first goal is to rebuild my Windows Server 2008 R2 box to look more at iSCSI and Storage Server.

My goal isn’t to build Peta-bytes of storage, but to look at smaller storage possibilities for mid-sized businesses.  Companies similar in size to my employer who might not have the resources for huge amounts of storage, but might want to create a very efficient storage platform perhaps using Windows based iSCSI and a reasonable amount of physical disks.

Storage is all about disk isn’t it?

For a good portion of my career I thought that disk was the only component of storage, after all to store the data, there has to be some where to put it.  However, another factor is the method by which the data gets to the disk and its availability.  Other things that influence storage (or certainly could in the future) are items like Virtualization.  Being able to captialize on the mobility of virtualized servers and the reduced hardware overhead they provide seems to bring a better storage utilization.

Many opportunities but just getting going

With the MVP Summit 2010 behind me, I am very interested in what I learned and the relationships I have formed.  Getting the opportunity to work with those at Microsoft, like Suzanne Morgan, who works with the storage initiatives in and around Windows Server is amazing. In the next few months I am sure I will have a few questions, both of Microsoft and of other Storage MVPs as my learning about enterprise storage is just getting started.