Available Technology - For Professionals

In my last post I talked about Visio 2010 and how we are seeing tools which can drive a lot of business value by representing data in intuitive ways through SharePoint. I raised the concern about once you see the data the next question is how does technology empower action. The answer involves several aspects and perhaps the most important one of which is role based security. The question comes down to this, if I want to share information with my boss and co-worker and give them the ability to perform different actions, how is this done using SharePoint?

It appears that the answer today for SharePoint 2010 is that role based security is still a weakness.

This provokes another question. Is it time for Microsoft to create a role based security model which is robust and can be leveraged to empower action oriented interactivity with the data and business process? The answer should be a sound barrier breaking "YES". Here is why.

We now have the pieces of the puzzle coming together to empower business users to not only see the information which is important to them but then take action on that information. Being able to trigger a SharePoint Workflow within the right security context should be a skill that is achievable for the average SharePoint user. Consider this, the SharePoint User is now not only consuming data but also re-purposing it for the use of others. Setting the conditions under which others in the organization might or might not be able to trigger a specific workflow should require skill and knowledge yet still be simple enough that a user could do it without being a developer. To do this from a user's perspective with only a few clicks, one should be able to select anyone who works on my team can do a "follow up call" workflow but only my manager can "approve expenses" workflow. This is role based secuirty and is not present in SharePoint 2010.

And so SharePoint 2010 will lack the deep security model which is required to leverage the full power it offers to users.  The Achilles' Heel of developing a solution will be the need to create your own role based security model to supplement this weakness in SharePoint 2010. There maybe 3rd party products out there that help with this short coming.

Folks on the SharePoint team, please talk to the CRM team about their role based security. Although it is not the whole solution, it would be great to leverage a unified role based security model.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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A few years ago Microsoft started talking about 'Model Based Programming' which would bring software development skills to the masses by making it easier to conceptualize program flows, decision paths and layout key functional areas while intuitively reflecting business processes. Visio 2010 is shining light on this important avant-garde vision. And it is doing it in a manner that seems so intuitive to regular folks that it is hard not to see the value.

Software developers and network admins were not the only users of Visio and as the Visio team looked at the other Personas, one can't help but deduce that the Visio team was among the first to see the power Model based design. In fact, one should have been able to predict that Visio would be the place where model based programming would first surface. I confess I didn't not see it. And so emerges another Microsoft product with ground breaking and important new features.

Still, I wonder if Microsoft understood Visio is the natural tool to put Model based programming in the hands of the masses. Looking around the help files, we can see that Visio can be used to create, import or export a Microsoft SharePoint Workflow,  which is the engine which puts Model based programming into effect.  Is it possible the team put these technologies together without understanding that they are the basis of Model Based programming? I believe, they understood perfectly well.

In fact if you look at the Visio Team blog, they talk about The Visio Graphics Service for SharePoint 2010. I recommend you spend some time on the blog since the Visio team is doing an exceptional job of laying out how this product is putting together a triple play of technologies that is sure to be a winner for business value.

A sample SharePoint / Visio mashup shows a Supply Chain Dashboard with real time data linked to the components of the supply chain.

So, the Visio team has shown how decisions are better informed by the data being represented graphically through SharePoint 2010 using the Visio Graphics Service, but I have yet to see how they have  built in the functionality to empower people to act on that data. This of course would be the ability to launch a workflow through a right click on the diagram which would leverage an underlying security model to empower certain actions based on roles. Too much to ask? Maybe so. Still, for those who know Dynamics CRM offers this type of functionality, seeing information is only half the battle but empowering action is where the battle is won.

As we look toward how the technology will impact business, I believe the impact will be impressive. The tools exist to give businesses tremendous value and once again Microsoft Partners will be essential in helping companies leverage the technology to maximum effect. I look forward to spending more time working with the new version of Visio 2010, and team thanks for a job well done.

 Jeff Loucks
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To get the Office 2010 Beta: http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx

Microsoft officially released the Office 2010 beta at WPC in July. This exclusive to partners and other influencer release ended yesterday as Microsoft made the beta of MSO-2010 available to the world.

Early reports are Office 2010 removed some of the feature not liked in Office 2007 while keeping and adding the features people loved. From my own experience I am prepared to move from 2003 which had remained my primary Office application platform although I have been using Visio and Project 2007.

Top Ten Reasons published by Microsoft:

 Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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First thing to know about SharePoint 2010 is it is 64 bit only.

Huh, let's talk about 64bit a little. Exchange came out in 64 bit in the current version 2008 and I think Microsoft is going mainstream in support for 64 bit applications and operating systems. As a side note, a number of my family members are upgrading around Windows 7 and 64 bit is the choice for me in advising them. We are seeing more and more mainstream support for 64 bit and Acer to name one manufacturer is putting out mass market Home Premium boxes preloaded with 64 bit in Windows 7. I have run 64 bit workstation OS for three years as have everyone in our entire office. We knew then that we were ahead of the curve but now it feels like situation normal. This is different from the mixed feeling we saw about 64 bit computing in less than a year ago for average users. Hooray 64 bit is here! Over the next year I believe we are going to see the other side of the hockey stick with an upswing in the number of 64 bit OSs that are shipping both for consumers and administrators.  Server hardware has supported 64 bit for 3 years and by the time SharePoint 2010 ships 64 bit servers will be four years old. .Windows 7 may be the last OS to support 32bit.

Upgrade requirements

Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617150(office.14).aspx#section1

So Office 2010 is around the corner and developers are upgrading their environments to support solutions they have built for previous versions of Office. The situation is your are supporting an new office version with a new version of Visual Studio and a new .Net Framework. So you want to know, what is this process going to be like for me.

I found this pre-release information to help people in the same situation as we are:
Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4bez6837(VS.100).aspx

Visual Studio 2010

How to: Upgrade Office Solutions

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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This is an early report of a fix to a problem which showed up in EBS at a client site.

First, I would like to say if you are facing this problem the fix will not be instantaneous because of a number of technologies at play.

The Problem

1) When a user goes to save a new SharePoint item such as an announcement, the page returns an error. As a result of the error, the item is not created. The page reports a Postback Error.

2) When a user uploads a document to SharePoint there is no problem. When the user then opens the document for editing  it is only available for read only. Changes to the document cannot be saved.

The Fix

 From the TMG console:

1. Select Firewall Policy
2. Right Click 'Allow Authenticated Users to access SharePoint services' and select Properties
3. The 'Allow Authenticated Users to access SharePoint services' Properties dialog will appear. Select the Paths tab
4. Click the Add Button
5. Using the default settings add a path for  /webresource.axd*
6. 
7. Click Apply and then OK to exit.
8. I suggest you run IISreset on the Management server where SharePoint is located by default..
9. Additionally you should wait fifteen minutes for TMG to update and start applying the path.

Since this is an early fix if I have updates over time I will report back. If you have different experience please touch base and leave a comment.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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So you have discovered that the EBS' Remote Web Workplace is the best thing since Captain Kirk. Users are using it everywhere. A frequent user request is to lengthen the timeout period before the application automatically logs out if the user is not active. As an administrator you have to realize that the reason this is in place is to protect the company and the indivudal employee. When you make this change you make it for everyone and therefore as an organization this decision has to come from the people who would fire you if information is lost or compromised.

Scenario:

An employee, Sharon is working from a remote location, in this case a school. Sharon uses a school computer to connect to RWW and to connect email, Sharepoint and some document folders. The power of RWW is that this is possible and that Sharon can do it when she needs it. Sharon is just about done the work she needs when a teacher asks for her help. Sharon thinks to herself, I have 30 minutes to get back to the computer to finish this off or it will log out. Sharon should log out before leaving her station.

She walks away to help the teacher leaving RWW logged in. Sharon is gone for 45 minutes and while she was gone Josh a good kid who is courious about computers walks by the computer and naturally glances at the screen. If Josh walks by at 27 minutes, he sees what ever Sharon was working on and has full access to email, document folders and all the power of RWW. Even good kids can be courious in this scenario. If Josh walks by at 33 minutes, RWW logged itself out at 30 minutes and the system is protected by the password. As it so happens Josh does walk by at 33 minutes and the system is logged out. Now think of the possibilities when you increase the timeout period for OWA and RWW.

How to:

To change the server time-out setting for Remote Web Workplace in EBS

1. On the EBS Messaging Server server, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

2. At the User Account Control prompt, click Continue.

3. In the left pane, double-click the name of the server to expand the tree.

4. Double-click Sites to expand it, and then double-click Default Web Site to expand it.

5. In Default Web Site Home, double-click Session State.

6. In Cookie Settings, change the Time-out (in minutes) to the desired amount of time.

7. 

8. Click Apply to save the changes.

To change the client time-out setting for Remote Web Workplace in EBS

1. From the Messaging Server

2. Open Registry Editor.

3. Open the following registry key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WSSG\RemoteUserPortal\PublicTimeOut

4. In the Value data box, type the number of minutes that you want to elapse before the Remote Web Workplace session times out. (Must be less than 1440)

Note: You can create a .reg file with the following content to make the registry entry with the right spelling and location and a 60 minute timeout:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WSSG\RemoteUserPortal]
"PublicTimeOut"=dword:0000003c

Please use the preceding tips with care and diligence.

For more infromation please read this excellent SBS post by Chris Puckett,
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/06/15/how-to-configure-the-rww-timeout.aspx

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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There is a never ending source of learning in EBS and I wanted to document a solution we rendered for Michael Hensley around Single Sign On with TMG and EBS to deliver SharePoint without multiple prompts. Before Available Technology resolved the issues, every time a SharePoint page was loaded from the outside world through the Remote Web Workplace, the user was prompted several times for various reasons.

The first was because of unsecured content being presented through the https page. This caused a warning to fire for each bit of content that was coming from an http source.

The second was related to portal issues with TMG rules and the need to enable SSO in the SharePoint rule.

Issue 1: Security warnings for http content through https page.

The first issue was related a couple of logos which had been added to the internal SharePoint site, known as Companyweb, which referenced the public website for the organization. Although the native SharePoint tools had been used to reference these image resources, the images remained as reference to the public website resources. Every time the page was loaded internally or externally, the page would go out ot the Internet and retrieve the logo. Because the SharePoint site is used internally through *http*://companyweb/SharePoint  the issue was noticed. It was only in the context of remote secure access which uses *https*:// that the extra warning prompts were raised.

The solution was to add the logos to the Company Logos section of Companyweb and then reference those links as the image sources. In straight SharePoint talk, add the logos to the sharepoint site. The first benefit was that the Security warnings stopped which reduced the prompts by two per page load. The secondary benefit was a reduction in bandwidth consumption from their internal use of SharePoint which was referencing public websites. With 150 users using SharePoint extensively all day that is a big factor with every page load adding 10-50KB to their Internet usage. If the majority of users are external however, the solution might be to use a https:// reference to the external site.

Issue 2: Configuring the TMG SharePoint rule for SSO

From the TMG interface on the security server we selected the SharePoint Rule.

1. From the properties we selected the Listener Tab
2. and the External Listener from the Dropdown
3. Then we selected the Properties button.

From the External Web Listener Properties we selected:

1. The SSO tab
2. Enable Single Sign On Check Box was checked
3. Clicked the add button
4. added the FQDN for the domain including the prefix period ( . )

As a result non-domain joined computers can authenticate through the TMG interface when connecting to the SharePoint internal website and are only prompted for credentials once.

The net result was that we reduced all prompting to a single log on to TMG.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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There are a few areas which catch the us off guard when we plan to create a test environment. If you are going to repurpose hardware make sure you review this Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 information to make sure you have the required hardware and software.

Microsoft Official System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: A list of supported guest operating systems can be found here.

Processor: x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled.
Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP), specifically Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit), must be available and enabled.

Minimum CPU speed: 1.4 GHz; Recommended: 2 GHz or faster.

RAM: Minimum: 1 GB RAM; Recommended: 2 GB RAM or greater (additional RAM is required for each running guest operating system); Maximum 1 TB.

Available disk space: Minimum: 8 GB; Recommended: 20 GB or greater (additional disk space needed for each guest operating system).

DVD ROM drive

Display: Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution monitor.

Other: Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.
Note: The actual system requirements will vary based on your system configuration and hosted guest operating systems.

Available Technology Minimum recommended configuration (For testing purposes only)

Processor: x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled.
Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP), specifically Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit), must be available and enabled.

Minimum CPU speed: Quad Core

RAM: Minimum: Minimum 16 GB, Maximum 1 TB.

Disk: At least four independant dirves or drive arrays. SATAII or SAS as available. RAID not required.

DVD ROM drive

Display: 1600x1200.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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This article covers using Outlook to Migrate a contact folder from Exchange Public Folders to a PST File to then migrate to CRM.

A CRM client needed their contacts which were currently kept in public folders migrated to CRM. Obviously the first step is to get the contacts from Public Folders in to a format that is can be imported to CRM. So in this case we need to get the contacts to a PST file and the steps below are taken from Microsoft KB327304

Certainly, many people would first think of using Exmerge to get PST data from Exchange, however Exmerge does not work with public folders. This article does not cover the steps of migrating data from Outlook to CRM since that information is well covered elsewhere.

ExMerge does not work with public folders, it only works with mailboxes. When you use ExMerge to upgrade to Exchange 2000 or to Exchange 2003, you have to download public folders on the server that is running Exchange Server 5.5 to a .pst file on an Outlook (MAPI) client, and then publish this file on the new Exchange 2000 computer or on the new Exchange 2003 computer.

1. Use an account on a Microsoft Outlook 2002 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 client computer that has administrative rights to log on to a mailbox on the server that is running Exchange Server 5.5.
2. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Outlook Data File.
3. Click Personal Folders File (.pst), and then click OK.
4. Name the file Public.pst, save the file to a path that has a lot of free disk space, and then write down the location where the file is saved.
   
   NOTE: The .pst files have storage limits of 2 gigabytes (GB) each. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   208480  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208480/ ) Description of the purpose and capacity of Outlook storage facilities
5. Accept the default settings that are listed in the Create Microsoft Personal Folders dialog box, and then click OK.
   
   A new folder group that is named Personal Folders is created in Outlook.
6. In the Outlook folder list, expand Public Folders, and then expand All Public Folders.
7. Drag each top-level public folder that you want to export to the Personal Folders folder that you created in step 4.
   
   All top-level public folders and their subfolders are copied.
8. Log off the Outlook client.
9. From the Outlook client, use an account that has administrative rights to log on to a mailbox that is homed on the Exchange 2000 computer or on the Exchange 2003 computer.
10. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Outlook Data File.
11. Click Personal Folders File (.pst), locate and click the .pst file that you created in step 4, and then click OK two times.
12. Drag the folders from the Personal Folders folder to All Public Folders in the Outlook folder list.

Jeff Loucks
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Microsoft recently worked with  MarketTools's Zoom Panel Tech to conduct a 2000 IT Pro survey on the subject of how and why they use solution providers (IT consultants, resellers, system integrators and hosted service providers).

Here are the highlights:

• Consultants were indicated by IT decision makers as the most commonly used solution provider (57%) vs. resellers (43%), solution integrators (38%), and hosted service providers (36%)
• 42% of IT decision makers view solution providers as "highly" or "extremely" influential in the direction of their IT systems, versus other outside influences, such as vendors, peers, publications and analysts.
• About 40% of IT decision makers say their solution providers help them save money (7, 8 or 9 out of 1-9 scale.)
• "Strategic advice, guidance and overall expertise" (39%) were cited by IT decision makers as the most important value provided by solution providers, over skills such as deployment and implementation (21%) or ongoing support/maintenance (14%)
• 54% of IT decision makers say "Overall planning, strategy and management" by solution providers provide the greatest value versus specific technical cababilities, such as systems management (38%), storage and disaster recovery (35%), virtualization (34%), security (28%) and others.
• 47% of IT decision makers want their solution providers to most closely align with MSFT - by far the top vendor preference.
• Versus IBM (12%), HP (10%), Vmware (9%), Symantec (2%), RedHat (2%), Other (8%)

Jeff Loucks
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There is a good article on the Office Communication Server 2007 blog about the XMPP Gateway which released on OCtober 2, 2009. I hope to do a review on this technology in the new year. Until then, here is the link.

http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/10/02/620.aspx

Jeff Loucks
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There has got to be a way to create a bootable USB drive using Windows! In this article I will describe how to do it with nothing more than the Windows DVD and a separate Windows workstation. First of all, I hate that HP utility that needs a floppy. What the tarnation is that? If you don't have a DVD of a floppy drive you need this method.

Before we begin you will need to know a few things. You will need to know the drive letters of your drives such as the DVD drive with the Windows 7 media, the drive letter the USB stick.

WARNING: The drive letter of the USB drive might change during this process.
WARNING: All information on your USB drive will be erased.
WARNING: Your USB drive must be large enough to store the content of your DVD drive. (3 GB or larger)
WARNING: This article assumes you have significant administrative experience and understand the consequences of each command. Proceed at your own risk.

Task 1: Making the USB drive an Active Primary Partition.

1. Open a command prompt (with administrative rights if required by your OS).
2. At the command Prompt type Diskpart and press enter
3. Type List Disk and press enter
4. You will see a list of all the disks on your computer.. A number will identify each disk.
   1. If you do not know which disk is you USB drive go through the list by typing Select Disk 1 enter and then type details. repeat until you know you are on the right USB drive. Hint: It is probably the last one.
5. Type select disk 4* and press enter. The system will report: "Disk 4* is now selected" (*Where disk 4 is the number of the USB drive, change this number to reflect your system).
6. Type Clean and press enter. The system will report "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk." This will remove the disk from your current drive letter for your USB.
7. Type create partition primary and press enter. The system will report "DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition."
8. Type select partition 1 and press enter. The system will report "Partition 1 is now the selected partition."
9. Type active and press enter. The system will report "DiskPart Marked the current partition as active."
10. Type assign and press enter.  The system will report "DiskPart successfully assigned a drive letter ..."
11. Type detail disk and press enter. Details will be listed and under the column heading "LTR" you will see the drive letter. I will assume it is U: for the remainder of the explanation.

12. Type  exit  and press enter. This will leave the DiskPart context.

Task 2: Formating the USB Drive and copying the install files.

1. If the command prompt is not still open, open the command prompt.
2. Type format U: /fs:fat32 /q and press enter. (Where U: is the letter of your USB Drive)
3. A warning will appear indicating all information on the drive will be lost. Type Y and press enter.
4. You will be prompted to enter a label for the drive. Press enter to continue.
5. We have now formatted the drive and can proceed to copying the files. Assuming Drive d: for DVD and Drive u: for USB
6. Type xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f u:\  . The files will copy and may take a long time depending on the USB drive performance.

Once the files have completed copying, the USB drive is bootable. You may have to change the Boot Order in the BIOS settings of the machine you which to boot from the USB drive.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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Well dual boot just went obsolete. At least installing to two different directories it did. Now you can achieve true isolation. Mark Rusinovich wizard extraordinaire and the Microsoft Sysinternals team launched a great new tool. Disk2VHD excerpted from the Sysinternals site:

 Download Disk2vhd (704 KB)

Introduction

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

The Disk2vhd user interface lists the volumes present on the system:

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Thanks Dieter Rauscher for the heads up,

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

If you are involved at all with Microsoft on a professional level, you could not miss the fact that Microsoft is lugging the Juggernaut that it is toward Cloud computing. Branch Office is a logical intermediary step in the strategy since technology that Microsoft develops here will be leveraged to connect to a platform in the cloud like Windows Azure.

Over the remainder of the month I am going to deep dive on new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Win7 as they relate to Branch Offices. I will talk about strategies for mitigating common problems and provide an in depth look at these new features. This is an introductory article on the series.

Microsoft is leveraging some of the peer-2-peer technologies we have seen evolve for allegedly legal and illegal software and music distribution through tools like Kazaa and also through initiative like IBM's Peer to Peer Remote Copy or the European Unions P2P-Next. I first saw this type of software leveraged commercially by a gaming company about 2 years ago and Microsoft is putting it into commercial application in one of its applications of Branch Cache. The use of peer-2-peer technologies is not only a revolutionary step forward but also an acknowledgment that resources that pass through Internet are constrained and the more you can share locally with other users the less you strain that resource.

These are only a few of the ground breaking tools we have seen emerge with this new release generation and I hope you will subscribe to my blog to keep up to date on how the technologies we see in Branch Office are going to shape the future if consumers and business act the way Microsoft and others in the industry predict.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

New Research from the University of Michigan duo Jie Yu and Satish Narayanasamy looks into encoding a set of tested correct interleavings in a program’s binary executable using Predecessor Set (PSet) constraints. These constraints are efficiently enforced at runtime using processor support, which ensures that the runtime follows a tested interleaving. They analyze several bugs in open source applications such as MySQL, Apache, Mozilla, etc., and show that, by enforcing PSet constraints, one can avoid not only data races and atomicity violations, but also other forms of concurrency bugs.

Source: A Case for Interleaving Constrained Shared Memory

 Conclusions:

Testing and verifying a multi-threaded program is more difficult than a single-threaded program, because the number of possible interleavings is exponential over the number of memory operations executed by different threads. They make a case for an interleaving constrained shared-memory multi-processor which avoids untested interleavings.

This paper makes the first step towards designing an interleaving constrained multi-processor. To detect untested interleavings one needs a set of invariants fundamentally different from the ones used to detect incorrect interleavings such as a data race invariant or AVIO. They focused on constraining the runtime interleaving such that, no two remote memory operations are allowed to depend on each other at runtime, unless that dependency was observed in at least one of the test runs. They built a software tool to detect PSet constraints and enforce them, but as expected, it incurs significant runtime slowdown. They proposed extensions to a multi-processor design, which enables efficient detection of PSet constraint violations. On detecting a violation, checkpoint support is used for re-executing the program with an alternative interleaving and resolve the PSet constraint violations.

They analyzed several bugs in real applications, and showed that the proposed system can avoid not only data races and atomicity violations, but also other unstructured memory order related concurrency bugs. The number of false constraint violations in a well tested program is very small, and as a result, the resulting performance overhead is also negligible.

Thanks for the great read!

 Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Well I am deep into using Hyper-V R2 and I have probably forgotten a dozen things that caught me off guard at the beginning. I have resolved to just blog about them as they come up rather that put them in order of importance.

In order for Hyper-V 2008 R2 Integration services to be installed on Windows Server 2003, SP2 needs to be installed. Now in most circustances this would not be a problem because you could use slipstreamimng to make another ISO image with the SP2 or SP3 install files. For more information on slip streamimng look here: How to integrate software updates into your Windows installation source files.

Having said that, there are instances were you can't slip stream media because of deeper integrations. Just one such case is with SBS 2003 R2. It so happened that I was creating an SBS 2003 VM when I hit this snag. It is one of those catch 22 situations. The network card does not work because integrations services are not installed but you can't install integrations services without SP2 installed and you can't get SP2 on to the VM because you don't have a network connection yet.

So I started thinking through how to get SP2 on the box. My first two thoughts were Pass-Through Disk or Build an ISO. I quckly abandoned those. I started downloading SP2 while I was thinking and that is when VHD support in Wndows 2008 R2 came to mind. Before the download had completed I shutdown the VM with the partially installed SBS 2003. The following is a step by step of how to mount a VHD as a drive in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2.

Task 1: Attach VHD as Drive on Parent Partition

1. Click Start > Rick Click on Computer
2. Select Manage from the right click context menu
3. Select Storage
4. Right click Disk Management
5. Select Attach VHD from the right click context menu
6. Browse or type the location of your VHD file (In my case it was the OS drive for SBS 2003)
7. Click OK. Assign a drive Letter (I will assume you selected V: for the rest of the description)
8. You have now mounted the VHD file as a hard drive and can access it like a regular drive.

Task 2: Add Windows 2003 SP2 to the drive

1. Right click on the Windows 2003 SP2 installer file you downloaded earlier
2. Select Send to > V: (V: being the drive letter you assinged to the VHD file)
3. You have now copied the file to the VHD file on you. You can vaerify this by using Windows Explorer.

Task 3: Dettach the VHD from the Parent

1.  
   1. Click Start > Rick Click on Computer
   2. Select Manage from the right click context menu
   3. Select Storage
   4. Click Disk Management
   5. Right click on Drive V:
   6. Select Dettach VHD from the right click context menu
   7. You have now detached the VHD file as a hard drive and can start the VM again.

Task 4: Restart SBS 2003 R2 Child Partition and install SP2

1. Start your Child Partion
2. After you have logged on
3. Open windows Explorer and go to the c: drive
4. Double click the Windows 2003 SP2 installer.
5. After the installer complete and you have completed the required restarts, insert the Integration Services disk
6. Once the integration services complete the network card will find its drivers.

So finally I could complete the install of SBS 2003 R2 on Hyper-V 2008 R2.

Hope that helps,

 Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Every now and then you try to dig up the information regarding downgrade rights that come with your software. This post shows paths to downgrade SQL Server. Source: SQL Server Licensing Guide.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Over the past 2 weeks I have been conducting performance testing on Autodesk Inventor using three different Operating Systems. Essentially the results of the testing revealed that unless applications are optimized for specific hardware much of the horse power we buy goes unused and wasted. One has to wonder if the inherent monitoring tools we see in Windows are really giving us the full picture. Perhaps the easiest thing to point at is Windows 7 current lack of GPU monitoring.

Diagram of a possible Windows 8 Task Manager.

Essentially the next Windows version after Windows 7 will be tackling new hurdles that reflect the way we already use computers but will essentially help to bring huge performance increases which do not exist today. Perhaps the single most important reason why we have not been paying attention to the whole picture as it relates to bottle necks in performance is because we have not had the tools to do it. The saying "out of sight out of mind" brings on new meaning as it relates to monitoring and the GPU is one clear area that has been out of sight. 

I certainly want to give credit where credit is due. The Windows 7 team made big strides in performance and my testing revealed improvements of up to 20% over Windows XP in intensive graphics rendering and stunning differences related to DriectX11. Simply on performance alone, Windows 7 makes the cost of upgrading for CPU hungry users worth the lower than ever operating system price.

As we look to the future of monitoring and performance, we are going to see better cooperative processing between GPUs and CPUs. This will mean we will need tools to monitor what is going on to help pinpoint and troubleshoot issues. We are also going to see the removal of what I call "Multi-Core management bottlenecks" through initiative like Barrelfish and we will need a way to monitor that.

I think more than ever we are seeing that hardware relies on the operating system to capture the inherent performance increases which exist under the covers.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology