Software

Adobe CS2 & Windows 7

If you have Adobe CS2 and plan to install to a Windows 7 machine, please note the following:

The installation program will NOT recognize the Program Files (x86) folder and will not allow installation in the Program Files. Through browsing for the folder you may get the program to install. However, when you try to run one of the included apps you will be presented with an error message stating that the
personalization info cannot be found or is invalid.

To correct this, uninstall CS2 and reinstall using Progra~2 for the installation folder.

Thanks to Google for providing the solution.

– habanero_joe

GFI MAX Service Provider Tool

I have no data to back this statement up but here goes: every IT has heard of LogMeIn.

I offer an alternative: GFI MAX. http://www.gfimax.com/remote-management

On the advice of himuraken I have been using MAX to support two Windows servers, one Windows desktop and (now in beta) a Debian server. I still have a ton to learn but the initial though it that this service is pretty solid. The main IT user interface is the dashboard which is very intuitive. Similar to LogMeIn Central, the monitored devices are split up in to client groupings. A big advantage of LMI is that all the cost is in the connected server/PC fee. There is no additional cost for the dashboard functionality.

Agent install is straight forward with multiple delivery options. You do have to configure the remote control separately from the monitoring agent.

Much more to come as I dig in to this service. Certainly interested in hearing from anyone that uses this.

– habanero_joe

12/30/12 Update

I am still using this service and I am really enjoying the notification system. Alerting is very easy to configure and can be applied to groups of systems that have similar needs.
The Linux agent is now in general release. Looking forward to getting more clients set up (and paying!) for this tool in 2013.

– habanero_joe

Windows 8 First Look

Most of the news from Microsoft these days surrounds Windows 8 desktop OS which is anticipated to be released to the general public as early as October this year.
In support of the new OS, Microsoft has updated many of its development tools including Visual Studio. This new version of VS allows development of the metro-style apps that make Windows 8 so exciting. One caveat – you need to load Visual Studio on Windows 8 to develop the metro-style apps. The installer identifies the host OS and configures appropriately.
With Windows 8, Microsoft has really embraced the touch-based functionality. This OS was clearly designed for the tablet space and to compete with the iPad.
I loaded the Consumer Preview when it released at the end of February. I used an old Mobile Computing pen tablet, Virtual Box vm and a brand new Samsung Series 7 slate. Clearly the Samsung was the winner, but I was impressed that the pen tablet worked as well as it did. All components were detected and configured. The Virtual Box vm performed very well as would be expected.
At the end of May, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Release Preview. There has clearly been a lot of work under the covers in this latest version. I did an in-place migration and it went very smoothly. The only option was to perform a reload and ‘keep nothing’. As with other Microsoft OS upgrades, the installer moved the previous version to Windows.old folder. I was easily able to retrieve downloads, etc. that had been saved. Initial thoughts are that the latest version is more stable and feels like a finished product. The App Store works well and there are quite a few games, news readers, etc. available. The included Mail app works well connected to Gmail or an Exchange server. Note: annoying feature – the preview of the Mail app does not allow the mail account password to be changed. You must remove the account and re-add. I am sure this will be fixed in the final release.
As mentioned, Microsoft has updated Visual Studio in parallel with Windows 8. This has now been announced as Visual Studio 2012 and will be available in several favors as in the past. This includes Blend for Visual Studio which is an app design tool focused on creating the UI. Visual designers should find this more friendly than working directly in VS.

Windows 8 vs. iOS
To be fair, it is tough to compare all tablet/slate devices to an iPad. I will certainly try…
First off, this release from Microsoft seems to be the first real touch-based desktop OS. While there is a ‘real’ traditional desktop behind the start screen the real magic is in the metro-style start screen. This has been referred to as NUI or natural user interface. It takes about 5 seconds to get used to the swipe-able start screen. The icons are either static or live tiles. The live tiles show app data, for lack of a better word in the tile before the app is opened. For example, new emails will cycle through on the tile. Kinda cool. Windows 8 is also designed to be more ‘connected’. You can choose the option to associate your Microsoft Live account to the OS login. Users of SkyDrive or OneNote, to name a few apps, will find this helpful.
I believe where Windows 8 departs from the typical tablet OS is that it is still a fully functioning desktop OS. By selecting the appropriate tablet, corporate IT departments could offer this as a desktop/laptop replacement. While the original Samsung Series 7 Slate does not have 3/4G, other and future models will. There are USB slots available, front and rear cameras, SD card reader, HDMI output and other useful functions that are not available on the iPad (today). iOS 6 which is scheduled to be released this fall appears to offer a lot of new functionality, but the hardware is still what it is. The Samsung Series 7 is also a bit more expensive. A 64GB Samsung is about $950 and a 64GB iPad 3 is $849.

Bottom line thoughts: for the mobile user that carries a laptop and an iOS device today, a Windows 8 tablet could be a suitable replacement.

UPDATE:

Monday (6/18/2012) Microsoft announced that the company will be releasing an in-house developed tablet designed for Windows 8. With this move, MS is officially targeting the iPad market.

– habanero_joe

UPDATE: 12/30/2012

I have been using the Samsung Slate 7 with the general release on Windows 8 since it was released in October. I have MS Office 2013 installed as well. The application performance is very good. I am working to get my hands on tablet hardware designed specifically for Windows 8. I still would not rush out and load it on standard desktop (non-touch screen) hardware. It has been very interesting to be part of a team that is working to develop a mobile touch app.

– habanero_joe

XEN vs. VMware ESXi

I use server Virtualization to make money. With the new licensing model that VMware has announced with vSphere 5 it appears that a typical setup will now cost more. Times are tough! What is a sysadmin to do?
vSphere 4 will clearly remain viable for at least the near future. I have not taken the time to fully understand what v5 will offer that is better. Our current environment is two ESXi 4.1 hosts managed by vCenter. Each host has 32GB RAM and the guest RAM is probably over subscribed, but not by much.
In the next week I plan to load the VMware tool that will provide indications as to what the new licensing will look like for the current environment. Should be interesting…
All that as it is, I think it is time to seriously look at XEN Virtualization. Loaded it up on descent hardware today (right before the power went out!) So more later on the testing.
Question: anyone using DTC-XEN for ‘managing’ XEN guests?

-habanero_joe

09.26.2011 Update: loaded VMware ESXi 5.0.0 over the weekend. Installation is as straight forwarded as expected. Quickly installed two MS Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 64-bit servers and a MS Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit desktop. Will be digging into new license model limitations this week. So far, for a single host, I can’t find a reason to load 5.0.

I did get XEN loaded on Debian Squeeze, then wrecked the install. I will be rebuilding shortly for a comparison.

VMware Workstation 8 has been release a few weeks ago. One nice feature is a much easier migration path from Workstation to vCenter and vSphere. VMware is claiming over 50 new features with this release.

-habanero_joe

Alternatives to MS Windows (desktop)

I have worked with and supported just about every version of MS desktop operating systems. That is life in the corporate environment. No matter your opinion of Microsoft OS, it gets the job done for the business user. However, there are many less than desirable “features”, such as licensing costs, hardware requirements, resources used by the OS, and the list goes on…

Some of my early experience was as a sys admin for a SCO UNIX network. I was impressed with the stability and reliability of the system. If I remember correctly the server had 128MB RAM to support 100-plus users. The serial network certainly had no bells and whistles, but it was easy to maintain. Server uptimes were measured in months instead of days for a typical Windows server. Adding a NIC and TCP/IP made the server very versatile and improved performance. As is common in the corporate environment, after a few years, new software required Windows servers and the UNIX box was retired. I pretty much lost touch with *nix in general.

Fast forward five years…

At some point I began loading various Linux distros on older laptops to check it out. Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE and all the other usual suspects were checked out. CentOS seemed to be one of the more popular distros supported. Along the way I met some more-serious Linux users and began loading Ubuntu starting with the 8 series releases. By now I had converted a personal laptop and the main home computer to Ubuntu. Stayed involved and moved along with updates until 10.04 LTS. Was very pleased with how it all worked. The variety of supported hardware is excellent (except maybe audio) and the stability was always very good.

Fast forward to Thursday June 16…

My Lenovo laptop with an XP install was finally experiencing some OS corruption and general performance degradation. Time for a reload with Linux. Off to Ubuntu.com to download 11.04 ISO. I loaded it up and the process was the same simple install I had come to expect with Ubuntu. Rebooted and logged in. I immediately noted the new UI. Complete crap was my first thought. I poked around for the rest of the day and my opinion got worse. It was not intuitive at all. Played around a couple more hours and tossed it in the bag for the night.

Fast forward to the next day…

Thoroughly disappointed with Ubuntu 11.04 I looked up Debian and did a little research. Seemed pretty solid and why use a derivative when you can get the original? A couple answers later (thank you himuraken!) I was installing Debian 6. (look for a future post on using ISO files and a USB drive)
Knowing that Ubuntu is based on Debian, I expected it to be familiar and it was. Two days later and I am very happy with the decision to replace Ubuntu 11.04. I look forward to using it daily.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in Linux to check out Debian. You will not be disappointed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_GNU/Linux

– habanero_joe