The Cranium Cabinet

TechEd, so far, has been the venue for some pretty groundbreaking news. The keynote started with displaying Windows 7, AppV, BitLocker to go, and other awesome technologies that will really open up the way that Admins manage their systems, users, and remote access. It was announced yesterday that Windows 7 is on track for a holiday (Christmas) release, which is good news.

After the keynote, I headed off to my first session of the day, WSV207: Windows Server 2008 R2, a Technical Overview. Unfortunately, this session wasn’t that great, it was very high level and I was looking for more of a deep dive. That being the case, I will probably stay away from the 2## sessions for the rest of the week, as they are the least technical of the three (2##, 3##, 4##). There are a bunch of new features in Server 2008 R2, and the biggest caveat is that “Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only, get over it”. I’ll cover more of the new RD (formerly TS) service enhancements later.

After the Server 2008 R2 session, I attended what was, so far, the most exciting session yet: WSV328 , Windows Server 2008 R2: Hyper-V. This is when Microsoft announced one of the coolest things (IMO) yet, free live server migration. If you don’t know, live server migration is essentially vMotion. If you don’t know what vMotion is, just think of seamless failover. There was a demo given of a media server running a streaming video and they failed it over while showing the video from the client-side perspective. There was not one hiccup in the video and it failed over seamlessly. I’d say that Microsoft is stepping up, and although they are not innovating too much, they are making everything readily available at a much better price point. The new Hyper-V does a number of new, awesome things like:

• Centrally managed in SCCM
• Virtualized Workloads (Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint) are easily handled
• Live Migration
• Load Balancing via Group Policy
• Cluster Shared Volumes
• 64 Logical Processor Support (32 and 64 VMs)
• Core Parking
• Add/Remove Storage and .vhds while VM is running
• Supports TCP/IP Offload Processing (As long as your NIC supports it)
• Jumbo Frame Support

And much more nerdy stuff that most people reading this probably don’t care too much about. Basically, all you need to know is that it is awesome and you should probably find some way to implement it in your infrastructure.

The final session of the day for me was WSV308: Remote Desktop Services. This is the new name for terminal services. I still don’t know why they changed it, but they did, so, there ya have it. Some of the new features include Multi Monitor Support, something called DFSS which prevents one user from slowing down other RD users’ sessions by maximizing CPU Utilization. This was demonstrated, again, with a video over RDP on one session to the server and another session running a CPU Burn In app. It not only worked awesomely, but even when the burn in app was not running, it smoothed the video better than without DFSS.

RD Gateway now has something called RD Web Access. It supports SSO as well and I could definitely see it replacing our company’s VPN, especially if we integrate certificates and PKI. Another cool thing was the RemoteApp. Instead of having to RDP to a box and start an application, the apps can now be fed into the user’s Start Menu and can be launched from the client’s Start menu. Very, very cool stuff. Think of it as a secure RSS feed for apps.

They then had some kind of after party, but it turned out to be an extended vendor session. Not really my cup of tea. They had Boca burgers there, and I tried one for the first time in my life. It was disgusting. Stay away from Boca, eat cows.

That’s about it, I’m probably going to be a day behind on updates because there is so much to do here.

I’ll post pictures soon.

Remember how Windows Vista had all those different versions that made little to no sense? Well, although Microsoft has learned from some of their mistakes from Windows Vista, it is apparent that they haven’t learned from all of them. The official versions have just been announced:

• Windows 7 Starter: up to 3 concurrent applications, ability to join a Home Group, improved taskbar and JumpLists;
• Windows 7 Home Basic: unlimited applications, live thumbnail previews & enhanced visual experience, advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing), and Mobility Center;
• Windows 7 Home Premium: Aero Glass & advanced windows navigation, improved media format support, enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To, and multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition;
• Windows 7 Professional: ability to join a managed network with Domain Join, data protection with advanced network backup and Encrypting File System, and print to the right printer at home or work with Location Aware Printing;
• Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate: bitLocker data protection on internal and external drives, DirectAccess for seamless connectivity to corporate networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, BranchCache support when on networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, and lock unauthorized software from running with AppLocker.

So, which one are you going to be pirating buying?

Imagine this, you’re in class, at work, wherever, and you give a Linux distro to a buddy.  Out of nowhere, you are tackled by Knoxville’s finest and thrown in jail for illegally distributing software without paying for it! Well, it’s not that bad, but it is that stupid.

From PC PRO News:

A teacher has thrown a student into detention and threatened to call the police for using Linux in her classroom.The teacher spotted one of her students giving a demonstration of the HeliOS distro to other students. In a somewhat over-the-top reaction, she confiscated the CDs, put the student on detention and whipped off a letter to the HeliOS Project threatening to report it to the police for distributing illegal software.

“I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom,” writes the teacher, identified only as Karen.

 

“At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.

Of course, the guys from Helios wrote a reply. Here’s an excerpt:

“Please…investigate to your heart’s content. Linux is a free as-in-cost and free as-in-license operating system. It was designed specifically for those purposes…

“I don’t know when you attended college Karen but the Linux of even two years ago pales in feature and ability to what there is available now… and that in turn will pale in a year’s time. Linux is superior to Microsoft Windows in so many ways, they are too numerous to mention here.”

Wow, what a moron.

All this talk about insubordination makes me wanna get my criminal on. I’m about to do something totally illegal! Here’s a link to the newest release of Ubuntu, 8.10.

Tags: 8.10, illegal, linux, ubuntu

Apparently Japan got the demo for Resident Evil 5, but no one else did. That’s ok, because you can download it and burn it to a disc!

Just fire up your favorite torrent program and go to this link for the torrent file.

After it is done downloading, simply the Content directory to a DVD and pop it in your 360. Navigate to the Game Library and it should be there. Best part is, its all in English.

UPDATE: You may need to disconnect from XBL and all profiles to run this demo.

Enjoy!

Tags: Demo, Resident Evil 5, US

This guide assumes some things:

• That you already have the initial machine that you want to clone built and fully functional.
• The initial machine is named Host1
  

The easiest way that I have found to do this is as follows:

Cloning the .vmdk file:

1. Shut down the host machine (the machine to be cloned).
2. Log on to the VMWare ESX Server Console (either physically or SSH) as root or a user who is able to su (for this example, I am using root).
3. Navigate to the directory in which all of your VMs are located, usually something like /vmfs/volumes/storage/
   

   cd /vmfs/volumes/storage

4. Make new directories for the new virtual machines; e.g. Host2, Host3, etc.
   

   mkdir Host2 Host3

5. Navigate into the inital host’s directory and make note of the .vmdk filename (Note: do NOT use the *-flat.vmdk file).
   

   cd Host1
   ls -l *.vmdk

6. We will use the command “vmkfstools” in the following way to clone Host1 to Host2.
   

   vmkfstools -i Host1.vmdk ../Host2/Host2.vmdk

7. After the clone is complete, make sure that you log off of your console session. This is an important step. If you do not log off, you cannot select the disk in the next set of steps to complete the creation of the new virtual machine.

Creating the Cloned Virtual Machine:

1. Log in to your VMWare Infrastructure Client and begin the “Create a new Virtual Machine” wizard by right clicking on your VMWare domain and selecting “New Virtual Machine…” or on the Getting Started tab, select “Create a new virtual machine”.
2. For the Wizard Type select “Custom”.
3. Name your virtual machine appropriately. For this example, we will name ours Host2.
4. Select the appropriate Datastore. Our example’s datastore is “storage”.
5. Select the appropriate Guest Operating System.
6. Configure the appropriate CPU, Memory, Network, and I/O Adapters information.
7. On the Select a Disk section, choose “Use an Existing Virtual Disk”. This will allow you to browse to the Host2.vmdk that was created. Navigate to and select the Host2.vmdk file.
8. Enjoy!

So that’s it, simple right?

Google’s new browser, Chrome, has been released for download in a beta version.

My first impression: slower than FireFox. 

http://www.google.com/chrome

Edit: Also has no idea what to do with a .pdf.