Network Load Balancing – NLB – also known as Windows Load Balancing – WLB – has always been a little like living on the edge.  It does the job but you are always wondering when and where the next issue is going to come from and what will you need to do to fix it pronto. We have had that issue a number of times in the last 6 months from a variety of causes, some even seeming unrelated changes messing everything up.

Our existing pool of TS Servers has 8 machines in it, using Multicast with IGMP to stay converged. This means loads of traffic everywhere and isn’t the most-recommended solution. So as part of the pre-testing for the Virtualisation, we have P2V’ed the Terminal Servers into a Virtual Sandbox and then created 2 NICs for the VMs and changed them to Unicast mode.

Boom… the WLBS query command showed them as Converged but the GUI management tool wasn’t able to add them. Considering we need the GUI for some of our lesser-skilled staff, we were racking our brains to work it out.. eventually, the light-Bulb went on.

Turns out in creating the VM’s, the automatic DNS registration was left on and the NIC designated as the NLB NIC (as opposed to the Management NIC) was being added to DNS. With the NLB IP being used by DNS, the TS Servers cannot communicate amongst themselves (hence the management NIC) and could not load the NLB GUI Tool.

All I had to do was uncheck the Register this connection’s Addresses in DNS checkbox (as shown on the left – taken from the production pool, not the test one) and then do an ipconfig /flushdns on the TS boxes and it was all good.

Now that this works, we are ready to go live on our Virtual TS pool for all. A simple problem but one that wasn’t readily obvious to us as we were all focusing on the NLB hosts and the Unicast/Multicast.

After I fixed it, I did a search on all the instructions and fault-finding stuff that I usually check and not one mentioned it as a potential “gotcha”. Either we were really unlucky or it is something that is just presumed…

So, if you you come across the same issue, those of you that are still using Windows 2003 NLB, check the DNS of your Terminal Servers.

What a night! Fist my Broncos get up in a thriller at the Gold Coast Stadium and then Collingwood, behind by 29 points at one stage, triumph with a shot on goal with 15 seconds left in the game… Both my teams advance on through the finals, Collingwood are one game away from the grand Final. Come on Pies and Broncos!

Last day of the conference, got up all stiff and store… Been some time since I was able to drink a bunch of beers and run around like a kid shooting things in the dark. Back into it though, once more into the breach.

Sessions:

• Direct Access – Heavy going for first session after the big party. However, it was a great session, lots of tech detail on what is required for Direct Access. Lot of talk about IPv6 and the IPSec requirements. It’ll be a hard sell but i think the incremental approach will be best. Definitely more reading required for this one…
• OCS R2 Conferencing – A good session for going into details about using OCS to replace the use of ACP for in-dial conferencing. Some interesting figures on costs, especially if you have already deployed. Case studies showed a 308% return in 7 months for 500 user deployments
• Windows 7 After Hours – I knew this one was gonna be good because I know Dugie’s passion for all things Media Center and all things Windows 7, I was surprised, yet not so surprised at how little Windows 7 and Windows Home Server had, even in a room full of geeks. Excellent display of Play To, Homegroups, Media Center, Xbox Extender and most importantly, the Arcade Machine. Awesome session
• Mobility Smackdown! – What can you say about the Smackdown. It is a one-of-a-kind session. Cool demos using phones, demos that somethimes even work. Hi-energy stuff with contests for phones, Xbox, headsets and all manner of stuff. Not only that, there was tons of swag being thrown about every which way… They are a great way to finish off the sessions.
• LockNote – Featured a presentation and demo from Microsoft Research. Talking at a million miles an hour, he touched on many things about MS research and some of the things they are looking at. The future vision videos were shown and then we saw some of the MS Surface development path that moved froma bloke that was sick of carrying around chess pieces (which is where it all started from) all the way to doing stuff on the Surface as well as display a secondary projection on a cylindrical block place on the top. This is just the start of some of the concepts in those videos that I posted about back here. Very interesting stuff. Nick Hodge made a brief appearance to talk about all the Netbooks and to let us know where the Netbooks that were returned are going. They will be going to charity to be re-distributed to those in need, like the Victorian Bushfire victims.

and that was it…. We’d already checked out and the girls happened to be nearby so I was gone pretty quick afterwards. Funnily enough, my Phone stayed connected to the TechEd Wireless well into Carrara as we left. We were almost to the Pacific Highway before it dropped away. I guess the boys did a great job on that.

Next TechEd will be on the Gold Coast again, 24 – 27 August 2010. I’d expect that there will be more Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and plenty more to see. Make sure you plan ahead to get there… You can pre-register here to be notified about the event.

Thanks to all who made this event run so smoothly and to the people that made it such a great time…

Woke up to yet another brilliant blue (Azure perhaps?) sky here on the Gold Coast. What delightful weather… and of course, I am inside all day. At least my family is making the most of it….

Sessions:

• Personal Productivity for IT Pro – This was a really good session. Basically and Office session where we learnt about the myriad ways that we can make ourselves more efficient in our day-to-day processes within Office. Some great titbits from Presenters and crowd-sourced tips as well. Did you know that only 50% of users use CTRL-C and CTRL-V for copy and paste (the most common commands) and 98% do NOT use CTRL-O to open files. My favourite tip was the CTRL-Alt-1, 2, 3 for Heading 1, 2 ,3 in Word. Awesome!
• Top 10 reasons for Deploying Windows 7 – This was an interesting session, one I went to so I can make the business case. They were introduced in reverse order and each were broken down into features relating to the reason.
• RDI Session – Looking at Windows Server 2008 RS RDI, Virtual Desktop and all that. Good to see that Session Host Applications, Personal Virtual Desktop and Pooled Virtual Desktop Sessions all look and act the same for the End User.
• From Exchange to Exchange Online – looking at transferring Exchange mailboxes from on-premise to Hosted solution. Also had a section on moving from Groupwise to Exchange online. Glad I don’t have to manage that one!

Next up is the big Dreamworld party… Imagine 53 busloads of geeks descending on Dreamworld!! Arrived and stood around the gates for a while befroe getting in.. The sprint was on, half to the rides, quarter of them to the food and the rest straight to the bar…  After a feed, a few beers and watching the people stagger off The Claw, I ended up at the AVPX “ride”. I had no clue what it was about but we soon got the gist. Team v Team laser tag with Alien and Predator statues that shoot back! I struggled the first time, slowly got better as I worked out the layout and finally, in the last run, made it into the egg room and racked up buckets of points and top –scored for the round.. Huzzah.! Had to bolt after that to make the last couple of buses but it was well worth it!

Early start, say goodbye to the family who are taking advantage of 21st floor apartment on the Gold Coast and headed over to get started.

Keynote: The keynote this year was a mix on different themes this year, segments on Windows 7, Office 2010 and some strange dude in an “I’m a PC” strip show….

Sessions:

• Exchange 2010 – I went to 3 sessions on Exchange 2010, covering Introduction, Architecture and High Availability. There are some massive improvements in Exchange 2010. The High availability options will make a big difference in how Exchange is configured, used and backed up. I am excited about the opportunities that this could add to our site, especially if we start to add Exchange Online functionality as well. I’d recommend it to any existing or prospective Exchange Admins
• Office 2010 – I went to the Office 2010 preview sessions. This session had 600 sign-ups and seats for 200… They're looking to re-schedule another already. This was a great session showing many new features across Outlook, Word, Excel,PowerPoint and a few Access bits. I’ve been using Office 2010 Tech preview since the day it was made available and there were things that I hadn’t even touched on. Awesome. this will be another must-have upgrade.

As with any mob of 2500 people with free netbooks and free wireless, there were a few idiots that started using BitTorrent and jammed up the wireless network. These guys were warned (well threatened by MAC Address blocking) and service soon returned to normal. The Swarm on Twitter certainly showed that these idiots were a minority and garnered no support.

Food has been wonderful, a great array of food and plenty of fresh fruit available. Congrats to the Gold Coast Convention Centre for this..

A good number of sessions and looking forward to tomorrow

Arrived on Tuesday evening on the sunny Gold Coast – all freshly washed from previous days thunderstorm - and headed straight into registration, barcode at the ready. A quick sidetrip to pick up the goody bag, a sling bag with all the paperwork and coupons, and then on to the heavenly gates to pick up my new HP Mini-Note 2140 with Windows 7 Ultimate (and Office 2010). Once picked it up, I took itupsatirs to power on, go through the OOBE and enjoy the love…..

I powered up successfully and did my usual little customisations. Wallpaper ( Halo Legends Poster) and use the Windows 7 LogonUIChanger program to set my Logon page to different screen ( I have to differentiate from the other 2499 laptops about.

Laptop powered on, logged on and connected to the wireless network and all good… Retired to the hotel for a quick dump of gear and attended the Welcome party. I grabbed a few beers and wandered the Tech Expo, grabbing swag where I could. The Xbox stand was pumping with Forza 2 AND Forza 3 playing. It is amazing the work they have done when you can see them side-to-side.

It all sets up for an exciting day tomorrow….

  No more excuses for Death by PowerPoint... Admittedly I haven't tried out PowerPoint too much except to read a few existing powerpoint files. This video sure shows that I need to be looking a little more closely at it. Combining the demo'd effects with the improved file export functionality, I should be able to show this kind of thing anywhere.

Quote

YouTube - PowerPoint 2010 Slide Show Teaser
  

 

So I have had my Laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate for a couple of weeks now. So, how have I found it in the last couple of weeks? Bear in mind that this is not a test of all the features and functionality, just what I have found in regular usage so far.

Fantastic

Good

Not So Good

So our new Hardware is in place… This half a cabinet is what is replacing our previous 7 racks of equipment spread over two datacenters. The hardware is as listed below

• Dell PowerVault TL4000 Tape Library (obscured)
• Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Chassis
• 6 x Dell PowerEdge M710
• 2 x Dell PowerEdge M610
• 1 x EMC Clariion CX4-120

It is due to be loaded with 6 x VMware vSphere 4.0 hosts and 2 x Windows 2008 Servers and using a bucket-load of disks to host all of our servers virtually. We also have a small amount of hardware at our Head Office that will provide a warm backup of our retail application ready ti bring online as well as backup data for our non-core systems.  The Head Office Systems will consist of the following:

• Dell PowerVault TL2000
• 2 x Dell PowerEdge R710

One Server is and ESXi Host and the other Windows 2008 Server that we call the FLOD server. This stands for a F***load of disk as it currently hosts 6 x 1Tb Disks internally.

We are currently in the process of installing vSphere on the hosts now with vCenter Server and the Navisphere monitoring is all set up and waiting.

It truly is an exciting time to be at work… all the new things we dreamed of are really happening at long last.

Now that the RTM is out and looking all good. I have re-imaged my Laptop and built it with W7 Ulitmate. I did a clean install as there wasn’t anything that I needed to bring across that couldn’t be installed.

before starting however, I did take the precaution of backing up my PC with our Windows Home Server that we run here at work. It is only a Virtual machine running on our ESXi host, more for Proof of Concept than anything. I did a full image which was an overnight process 9due to it being the first backup) and once I came in and got the laptop, there was a full backup image from which I could grab a single file or completely build my laptop if I so desired

The build was bloody quick. I had already prepared a USB boot Image. I did cheat a little and used the BootUSB program to create the Install Disk rather than doing it myself. It took about 15mins to install and another 5 mins to do the post-config setup and I was in… This was the first time that I had actually had the full Aero effects. My Windows 7 RC experience had been on 2 lower-spec laptops at home and also on VM’s here at work. Seeing Aero really broguth home how much improvements have really gone into this interface.

Now I am up and using Office 2010 as well and in conjunctions with Windows 7, it is truly a delight to use. Over the last week or so I have been refining my usual work processes so I can make full use of the simplified interfaces between Windows 7 and Office 2010. The only drawback is the fact that VMware are still to release a version of vSphere Client that will allows me to connect to VCenter Server. Disappointing since we are under way on a migration to vSphere 4.0 right now…

All in all, it has been a great success with no problems with my laptop as yet. I would recommend this upgrade to anyone and everyone… As soon as the renovations are finished and we can unpack all my other home machines (the laptops, the Media Center and the Home Server) I will be doing the others as well…

Are you having trouble with trying to get the vSphere client running on Windows 7? Do you think that dolts who reply with such helpful posts as

“windows 7 is not yet released so don’t expect a fix…..” and “just use XP mode…”

Well, you can stop tearing out your hair because a dodgy fix is here, courtesy of a VMware Communities thread:

1. Obtain a copy of %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll from a non Windows 7 machine that has .NET 3.5 SP1 installed.
2. Create a folder in the Windows 7 machine where the vSphere client is installed and copy the file from step 1 into this folder. For example, create the folder under the vSphere client launcher installation directory (+%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib+).
3. In the vSphere client launcher directory, open the VpxClient.exe.config file in a text editor and add a <runtime> element and a <developmentMode> element as shown below. Save the file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
...
<runtime>
<developmentMode developerInstallation="true"/>
</runtime>
</configuration> 
4. Create a batch file (e.g. *VpxClient.cmd*) in a suitable location. In this file add a command to set the DEVPATH environment variable to the folder where you copied the System.dll assembly in step 2 and a second command to launch the vSphere client. Save the file. For example,
SET DEVPATH=%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib
"%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"
5. (Optional) Replace the shortcut on the start menu to point to the batch file created in the previous step. Change the shortcut properties to run minimized so that the command window is not shown.

You can now use the VpxClient.cmd (or the shortcut) to launch the vSphere client in Windows 7.

Note that this workaround bypasses the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism so that assembly versions in the DEVPATH folder are no longer checked. Handle with care.

Thanks to Fernando for his diligent work….

This serious disease could be on the rise….

Sure, he was a little crazy but considering his upbringing, he never really had a chance for a normal life. now I dunno whether he was “naive and/or innocent” or a rock-spider but one thing I know for sure, he was a tortured soul and one of the finest dancers in the modern era..

I was not a big fan of the man himself, but I did enjoy his music, well his earlier stuff anyway. The last album I had was Black & White. One thing that I was always impressed with was his dancing. I still prefer to remember him for his music and his dance…

RIP Michael, may you finally find what you have been searching for…

this one was always my favourite..

and here is a mashup cut with Fred Astaire. Many call it plagarism, some call it inspiration, Whichever, it still show the talent that he has had…

and to show more of the fred Astaire Micheal Jackson connection..

I have now joined the program and installed it here on my home machine. The first few times I attempted an install, I was getting a failure code of  80070643 when attempting to install... The install then bombs out

Looking through the install log, located at “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Microsoft Security Essentials\Support”,  I see this error

SI (s) (E0:1C) [19:17:10:808]: Note: 1: 1401 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\MSSE 3: 5
MSI (s) (E0:1C) [19:17:10:808]: Product: Microsoft Security Essentials -- Error 1406. Could not write value  to key \Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\MSSE.  System error .  Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

It turns out that, obviously, the permissions on that key were incorrect. I couldn’t just set to inherit so I had to manually do some permissions updates and then rebooted. I then ran the install again and it ran all fine.

After the update, I ran my scans and it all came up good, nice to know… It is only taking up 3K of memory during activity, I'll see how it goes for scans, which honestly, I don’t do a lot of anyway. So It is off to a good start so far, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes once I really start ripping into some activities that may or may not be regarded as questionable.

So far my it has grabbed my interest. I will add it to a couple of older laptops I have that are running Windows 7 RC as well

Having completed (most of – damn flags) for Assassin’s Creed, I was looking for my next game. Fortunately, I had picked up some extra work for some beer money, just in time for the EB mid-year sales. Last year I picked up a bunch of games and this year was no different. I picked up the following

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
1. Have played this through on the PC already, just wanted to get it for the XBox because it is so damn good. I have already started this… it is taking me a while to adjust to controller. Also, doing it on veteran difficulty so plenty of dying…
2. BioShock
1. I had purchased this previously but when I finally went to play it, the disc was missing aaargh!
3. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
1. Well, I have all the others…
4. The Orange Box
1. I didn’t initially realise that it has Half-Life 2 and episode 1 in it as well, I had mainly got this for Portal. I must be one of the only people that consider themselves Gamers that hasn’t yet played HL2

How’s this for a job ad for Windows 8 Development… Whether or not he is already the there, it’s a great take on future Windows Development. I particularly like his take on the Libraries features. Could this be the WinFS functionality that has been such a pipe dream for so long?

I also like the grouping,m Like having the Favourite Stuff, like links, Music and others in the same spot.

Anyway, It sure has kicked of a bit of debate on speculation… well, perhaps a bit of a murmur if anything.

Thanks to Long for picking this up..

As you know, Windows 7 features a whole new bunch of lovely wallpapers. Also there are a bunch of wallpapers that are available for the various regional themes that can be applied to your PC. Currently, there is Australia, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and the US. These are fantastic and really do wonders for a theme. Of course, in Windows 7 you can implement the desktop to run as a sllideshow and adjust the time that it changes. the intervals are from 10 seconds up to 1 day..

I have uploaded these wallpapers for download here if you want to grab a copy. It is great to see some Aussie colour in there. It isn’t often that we get localised content so it is good to see some at last…

Spend a small fortune advertising how cool you are and spin a web of bullshit about how bad the other guy is…

As you can see below, not exactly the most effective result from that campaign…

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