Month: October 2014

Tune and optimize performance of your Office 365 connection

Microsoft has published a new course on Office 365 Performance Management at the Microsoft Virtual Academy, which contains 11 modules across planning and troubleshooting areas including:

  1. Office 365 Performance Management Course Introduction
  2. Office 365 Datacenters and Network
  3. Planning for Office 365 Internet Capacity – Exchange Online
  4. Planning for Office 365 Internet Capacity – Lync Online
  5. Planning for Office 365 Internet Capacity – SharePoint Online
  6. The Baselining Model for Internet Capacity Planning
  7. Best Practices & Real Customer Projects Planning Internet Capacity
  8. Planning for Office 365 Firewalls Whitelisting
  9. Performance Troubleshooting Process and Tools Used
  10. Performance Troubleshooting Tests
  11. Troubleshooting SharePoint Online Customizations

MDT v.Next Coming….

New core tools

Windows 10 ADK supports Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 deployments.

Windows Image Configuration Designer (WICD), pronounced Wicked ?   🙂  Is supposed to be able to build a customized mobile or desktop image, and also create provisioning packages that allow you to customize a Windows device, without re-imaging.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit v.Next (MDT) (standalone)

New upcoming version of MDT is in development, not much info presented yet, but a few items were mentioned in the session:

Windows 10 Deployment and Upgrade Support, as well as updated Task Sequence binaries

Removed deprecated components from Deployment Workbench, and making OSD more accessibility compliant.

MDT documentation will be on TechNet (removed legacy help file and DOCX)

Clean Up your template before Sysprep and Capture a reference image in MDT

When you create a reference Image it will in most cases it will be updated with patches. That will make the image bigger and bigger and there fore the deployment of that image will take longer and consume more network resources & unneeded disk space. That can be corrected by getting rid of superseded patches, junk, temp files and much more.

The Solution

Since MDT is the preferred method to create reference images you can download the script, import it as an application and then run the application just before the Sysprep and Capture step. The Script works for the following versions of Windows:

  • Windows 7 SP1
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 8.1 Update
  • Windows Server 2008 2 SP1
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Windows Server 2012 R2

To make this work in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 you need to add a hotfix to Packages in MDT. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386

Download the script

Download the script from here: Mirror Mirror 2

Action-CleanupBeforeSysprep Applicationimage

Task Sequenceimage

Created a Group Clean.
Add install a application –> Action-CleanUpBeforeSysprep
Restart Computer (Very Important) without it will not work

image

Source

Deploy Windows 10 and Windows Server vNext Technical Preview Using MDT 2013

1. Mount boot.wim file
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:”D:\DeploymentShare\Operating Systems\Windows Server Technical Preview\sources\boot.wim” /index:1 /MountDir:D:\offline

2. Copy the dism.exe and DISM folder from the Windows 10 Technical Preview boot.wim file to your deployment share, in my case D:\DeploymentShare\Tools\x64.

The dism.exe file and DISM folder are found in the X:\Windows\System32 on your boot image (once booted), or D:\Offline\Windows\System32 if you just mounted the boot.wim.

3. Unmount the image|
Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:”D:\Offline” /Discard

4. Edit the Task Sequence
image image 

After copying the files, add two run command line actions to your Windows 10 Technical Preview and Server vNext Preview task sequence after Preinstall – Enable Bitlocker (Offline)

Copy WTP dism.exe
cmd /c copy %deployroot%\tools\%architecture%\dism.exe x:\windows\system32\ /y

Copy WTP DISM subsystem
cmd /c copy %deployroot%\tools\%architecture%\dism\*  x:\windows\system32\dism /y

5. Deploy Machines

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Installing Windows 10 & Server vNext Technical Preview via PXE on Gen 2 VM

If you try to PXE boot a Windows 10 or Server vNext Technical Preview VM running on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2, you are greeted by a nice error message: Boot Failed. EFI Network. Failed Secure Boot Verification.

The simple fix

Until there is an update available turn off secure boot for the Gen 2 VM.

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Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 3.0 Released

New Features in Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 3.0
The 3.0 release of MVMC adds the ability to convert a physical computer running Windows Server 2008 or above server operating systems or Windows Vista or above client operating systems to a virtual machine running on Hyper-V host.

Standard stuff is:

  • Converts virtual disks that are attached to a VMware virtual machine to virtual hard disks (VHDs) that can be uploaded to Microsoft Azure.
  • Provides native Windows PowerShell capability that enables scripting and integration into IT automation workflows.
    Note The command-line interface (CLI) in MVMC 1.0 has been replaced by Windows PowerShell in MVMC 2.0.
  • Supports conversion and provisioning of Linux-based guest operating systems from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts.
  • Supports conversion of offline virtual machines.
  • Supports the new virtual hard disk format (VHDX) when converting and provisioning in Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
  • Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.1, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts Hyper-V virtual machines.
  • Supports Windows Server® 2012 R2, Windows Server® 2012, and Windows® 8 as guest operating systems that you can select for conversion.
  • Converts and deploys virtual machines from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts on any of the following operating systems:
  • Windows Server® 2012 R2
  • Windows Server® 2012
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
  • Converts VMware virtual machines, virtual disks, and configurations for memory, virtual processor, and other virtual computing resources from the source to Hyper-V.
  • Adds virtual network interface cards (NICs) to the converted virtual machine on Hyper-V.
  • Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.0, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts to Hyper-V.
  • Has a wizard-driven GUI, which simplifies performing virtual machine conversions.
  • Uninstalls VMware Tools before online conversion (online only) to provide a clean way to migrate VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.
    Important MVMC takes a snapshot of the virtual machine that you are converting before you uninstall VMware Tools, and then shuts down the source machine to preserve state during conversion. The virtual machine is restored to its previous state after the source disks that are attached to the virtual machine are successfully copied to the machine where the conversion process is run. At that point, the source machine in VMware can be turned on, if required.
    Important MVMC does not uninstall VMware Tools in an offline conversion. Instead, it disables VMware services, drivers, and programs only for Windows Server guest operating systems. For file conversions with Linux guest operating systems, VMware Tools are not disabled or uninstalled. We highly recommend that you manually uninstall VMware Tools when you convert an offline virtual machine.
  • Supports Windows Server and Linux guest operating system conversion. For more details, see the section “Supported Configurations for Virtual Machine Conversion” in this guide.
  • Includes Windows PowerShell capability for offline conversions of VMware-based virtual hard disks (VMDK) to a Hyper-V–based virtual hard disk file format (.vhd file).
    Note The offline disk conversion does not include driver fixes.

Download

Source

Virtualization 2.0 For Dummies

Virtualizing your servers was the first step to achieving cost savings, high availability, and greater IT efficiency. But as your business is evolving and growing, your virtualized infrastructure needs to do the same – leading to the next-generation data center running on Virtualization 2.0.
In Virtualization 2.0 For Dummies®, we will explore:

  • How Virtualization 2.0 can deliver improved visibility, optimized planning and more predictive control through capacity management and performance monitoring
  • A deep dive into virtualization beyond the server, including operations management, virtualized backup, storage, and networking
  • How to prepare your IT environment for the next steps in your virtualization journey, with advice on storage options and security
  • Technical tips, best practices, and links to in-depth resources to help you save time setting up, managing, and troubleshooting

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