NEBytes February Event: Direct Access and Dynamic Consumption in C#

After over 80 attendees enjoyed the North East Bytes launch event in January, we've got another great event lined up for this month.

Direct Access has been the most requested session topic recently, so I'm very pleased to have two presenters to cover it at this meeting. We're glad to welcome Dr Dan Oliver (Managing Director of Sa-V Ltd a Newcastle based Infrastructure Optimization Microsoft Partner) back to speak, and coincidentally the day after I'd confirmed Dr Dan, Conrad Sidey from Microsoft also offered to do the session. I'm happy to say that they're going to collaborate to present Direct Access together.

From speaking to people in the IT pro community, I don't think that people are as excited about Direct Access as they will be when they realise what it gives them...

While an IT pro may sell Direct Access to the management as a "better VPN", where drives can be automatically mapped at logon and all the good stuff that the user gets from logon scripts that connect to resources on the LAN, users are pretty much used to "getting by" with the VPN they're already using. Where the story is really improved by Direct Access is that laptops hooking up to various connections around the world now stay under the scope of management, the same as any other domain computer that's wired to the LAN. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about all the benefits of that!

There are a lot of people who appear to be scared of the requirement for IPv6, and in fairness if you don't currently have any IPv6, that isn't an insignificant barrier to entry, however you don't need your whole network to be IPv6 enabled in order to use Direct Access.

And for developers, Oliver Sturm is an experienced presenter who really knows his stuff, so his session on Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0 should be a good one.

It should be a really good event, so grab your ticket:

Time to move on from the Windows 7 Release Candidate

If you are still running Windows 7 RC (I'm sure a lot of people are because it was pretty darned stable), the time to move on is fast approaching.

From 15th February, warning messages will start, saying that from 1st March Windows 7 RC will shutdown every 2 hours. You really want to be off the RC by then because you will lose any unsaved work.

If you continue to use the RC through the bi-hourly shutdowns, on 1st June 2010 the RC will cease to meet "genuine" Windows criteria and will not be able to download anything that checks whether the copy of Windows is genuine. You'll also lose your wallpaper, but by that point that's the least of your worries! ;-)

I've still got one machine running the RC - that will change this weekend!

Running Windows 7's Problem Steps Recorder from the Command Line

Last month we had a VBUG Newcastle meeting for IT Pros with two great presentations (it would've been three but we've had to re-schedule one - more news on that when I have it). The first presentation was from Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, Richard Diver, called Implementing the “Black Box” – Performance Monitoring and Analysis for proactive and reactive support, server baselining and capacity planning and covered a number of tools...

If you haven't been using them, you should take a look into:

• The Windows Sysinternals tools, which can be run without downloading, via Sysinternals Live by mapping a drive direct to \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\
• IT Pros should especially look to Process Explorer to give a more comprehensive view of what's happening on a system. You can even replace Windows Task Manager permenantly with it.
• Many people who have opted to stay with XP until perhaps an upgrade to Windows 7 may not have seen the newer features of Performance Monitor (perfmon) and the Reliability Monitor (which was introduced in Vista and Server 2008).
• Windows 7's fabulous Problem Steps Recorder, which allows users to easily record screenshots of the issues that they're having to send to the support teams (or to let you see exactly what the relative that always calls you up for tech support is doing wrong!).

...and some of the other useful links that Alex put in the TechNet UK Newsletter, after she and Sarah joined us on the night.

One of the questions that came out of the audience, regarding Problem Steps Recorder, was "can you run it from the command line?" At the time I think there were a few chuckles as people thought about how it might be used as a tool for spying, but after a while I started to think about the possibilities of automating around PSR...

Out of the box, if you want to use Problem Steps Recorder, you have to tell a user (let's imagine they're on the phone) to open the Start menu and type "psr" or "psr.exe" or some part of "Record steps to reproduce a problem", which is how it is officially surfaced in Windows 7. You then have to tell them to start recording, go through the steps that are causing them the problem, stop recording, name and save the PSR output file somewhere and perhaps email it to you.

I thought, what if I could have them launch something that would automatically decide on a file name (based on the username, machine name and time), start recording and pop up a cut down UI that just had a button that would stop recording and save the file to a network share, or potentially email it straight to me. I know that's not really saving a lot of steps, and they aren't especially complicated steps anyway, but I'm a great believer in technology being as invisible as possible, so if something can be tailored to suit a particular environment, to make life a little bit easier for specific users, then I think it's worth doing.

It turns out that there are command line parameters for Problem Steps Recorder, but they aren't all that easy to find. Once I've written my script I'll post it here, but in the meantime, here's the help for psr.exe:

psr.exe [/start |/stop][/output <fullfilepath>] [/sc (0|1)] [/maxsc <value>]
    [/sketch (0|1)] [/slides (0|1)] [/gui (o|1)]
    [/arcetl (0|1)] [/arcxml (0|1)] [/arcmht (0|1)]
    [/stopevent <eventname>] [/maxlogsize <value>] [/recordpid <pid>]

/start            :Start Recording. (Outputpath flag SHOULD be specified)
/stop            :Stop Recording.
/sc            :Capture screenshots for recorded steps.
/maxsc            :Maximum number of recent screen captures.
/maxlogsize        :Maximum log file size (in MB) before wrapping occurs.
/gui            :Display control GUI.
/arcetl            :Include raw ETW file in archive output.
/arcxml            :Include MHT file in archive output.
/recordpid        :Record all actions associated with given PID.
/sketch            :Sketch UI if no screenshot was saved.
/slides            :Create slide show HTML pages.
/output            :Store output of record session in given path.
/stopevent        :Event to signal after output files are generated.

PSR Usage Examples:

psr.exe
psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.zip /sc1 /gui 0 /record <PID>
    /stopevent <eventname> /arcetl 1

psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.xml /gui 0 /recordpid <PID>
    /stopevent <eventname>

psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.xml /gui 0 /sc 1 /maxsc <number>
    /maxlogsize <value> /stopevent <eventname>

psr.exe /stop

Notes:
1.    Output path should include a directory path (e.g. '.\file.xml').
2.    Output file can either be a ZIP file or XML file
3.    Can't specify /arcxml /arcetl /arcmht /sc etc. if output is not a ZIP file.

I'm pleased to say that Richard enjoyed presenting to the group as much as we enjoyed his presentation, so he's coming back to do another session on 25th November on Advanced Troubleshooting with Sysinternals Tools. I'll post more details shortly.

Great Windows 7 offer for UK students

From October 1st, students in the UK (with a .ac.uk email address) will be able to get a copy of Windows 7 for just £30!

This will be a limited time offer and you must already have a copy of XP or Vista on your PC. It's the best pricing that I've seen for Windows 7, so if you're eligible you don't want to miss out.

Full details will be available from October 1st at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/studentoffer/default.aspx

23rd September, Newcastle: Three fantastic Microsoft enterprise IT presentations

We are very pleased to be able to announce a stellar line up of technical presentations and speakers from Microsoft at the September VBUG Newcastle IT Pro meeting...

The Dynamic Desktop Experience – Windows 7, Windows XP Mode, App-V, MDT, MDOP and System Center (Dan Oliver)

Windows 7 offers Microsoft’s customers with an opportunity to deliver a platform that releases new capabilities that deliver real business benefit and significantly reduced cost of ownership. The challenge for most companies is that deploying and migrating desktops is time consuming and traditionally offers service continuity risks with Application Compatibility that can prevent progress. This presentation will show capabilities, architectures and strategies that allow companies to move forward cost effectively to the benefits of a modern operating system. Level: 100

Dan Oliver is a Pre Sales Architect within Microsoft UK’s Speciality Technology Unit with some 14 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the virtualization and systems management fields. Dan has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial, Telecoms, Partners, Legal, Professional Services and Healthcare. Dan has also had the opportunity to work as a Chief Technology Officer for the Faculty of Advocates in the Scottish Legal Sector.

Novell and Lotus Notes – Migrating to Microsoft (Conrad Sidey)

The business value of implementing Microsoft technologies like Active Directory, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint are clearly understood within Microsoft. For our customers that are still running their organisation on technologies like Novell and Lotus Notes they are starting to gain an understanding of the value of migrating to Microsoft technologies. The purpose behind this presentation is to provide the technical community with an insight into leading a project and architecting a solution to migrate environment that are running both Novell Netware and Lotus Notes. The presentation will discuss envisioning & planning of a Novell and Notes migration project, approaches to undertaking the migration depending upon the business drivers, providing an overview of the approach we are taking in migrating a UK Local City Council while providing coexistence, as well as presenting a number of migration & coexistence recommendations or lessons learnt from the project. Level: 200

Conrad Sidey is a Solution Architect within Microsoft Consulting Services with some 17 years’ experience of Microsoft-based solutions primarily in the infrastructure field. Conrad has a background that covers a broad spectrum of industry sectors ranging from Financial and Insurance, Manufacturing, Aero-Engineering, Defence, UK and European Government Agencies, Power Generators, Retail and Brewing. Conrad has also had the opportunity to work with large scale outsourcing services providers.

Implementing the “Black Box” – Performance Monitoring and Analysis for proactive and reactive support, server baselining and capacity planning (Richard Diver)

All current versions of Windows come with a free tool that can prevent server downtime and solve many mysteries – Perfmon!

A little bit of practice with this tool can really help to solve issues with servers that may not even be performance related. Working at the OS level, you can find cause to most performance bottlenecks regardless of server function (Exchange, DC, Web etc).

This is something that has even more focus in future versions of Windows; a brief overview of these benefits will be shown also! Level: 300

Richard Diver is a Premier Field Engineer with 10 years experience implementing and supporting a range of Microsoft technologies, specialising in Active Directory, Server Platform and Virtualisation.

Wrap up Q&A with all presenters at the end.

Location: Room 118, Claremont Tower, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, GB

Time: 18:45

Price: FREE

Please register for your place at the VBUG site so we can make sure we have enough space and refreshments. :-)