This cool tool has been upgraded!

Download here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d00e3eae-930a-42b0-b595-66f462f5d87b&DisplayLang=en

Just a ping for the Windows 7 RTM news.

Configuration Manager 2007 RTM Hotfix
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969991

Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 Hotfix
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970093

Cool, now my next SCCM project can kickoff ;-)

Recently one of my customers call me and wanted me to take a look at his DFS replication. All files didn’t replicate to the headquarter from the Branch Offices. Is that a problem? Yes it’s a big problem since backup only runs at the datacenter servers. That’s why we replicate all files to the datacenter in the first place!

Hmm, I did a check up at all replicated folders and found a couple of errors and dead replication members, but nothing seemed to relate to the files not getting replicated and DFS-R seemed to work as it should. I found out that all the files not getting replicated were PDF files and all PDF files were company contracts? But other PDF files replicated okay!

After a little investigation I found that all PDF files were scanned from a multi-copy printer and that lead me to check the files scanned with that printer. After scanning a document, the document is mailed to you and you are able to save the PDF files to your Namespace….but the PDF file did not replicate to the headquarter, WHY?

There is a pretty good explanation.

Checking the PDF files, I found out that all the PDF files not replicating were marked as temp files. DFS-R don’t replicate files marked as temp files, of course, why replicate a file that’s going to be deleted soon. So all PDF files scanned with that printer was marked as temp files (temp attribute), not so good. My customer worked out a temporary solution. All scanned documents are opened in Adobe Acrobat and saved from there to the Namespace, resulting in a PDF File that get’s replicated. My customer is now contacting the manufacturer of the printer to get a solution.

DFS-R cannot be configured to replicate files with the temp attribute

But how did I see the temporary stamp on the files?
Using fsutil.exe (part of Windows OS) you are able to see the attributes at the file. Using Explorer, attrib.exe don’t display the attribute.

fsutil usn readdata D:\shares\Production\Contract.pdf

Major Version : 0x2
Minor Version : 0x0
FileRef# : 0x0021000000002350
Parent FileRef# : 0x0003000000005f5e
Usn : 0x000000004e531000
Time Stamp : 0x0000000000000000 12:00:00 AM 1/1/1601
Reason : 0x0
Source Info : 0x0
Security Id : 0x5fb
File Attributes : 0x120
File Name Length : 0x10
File Name Offset : 0x3c
FileName : Contract.pdf

File Attributes is a bitmask.
0x100 (Temporary) and 0x20 (Archive) = 0x120 indicates the temporary attribute is set.

Other values

READONLY 0x1
HIDDEN 0x2
SYSTEM 0x4
DIRECTORY 0x10
ARCHIVE 0x20
DEVICE 0x40
NORMAL 0x80
TEMPORARY 0x100
SPARSE_FILE 0x200
REPARSE_POINT 0x400
COMPRESSED 0x800
OFFLINE 0x1000
NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED 0x2000
ENCRYPTED 0x4000

Now lets create a replica of a folder already published in DFS. It’s fairly simple, if DFS is already installed at all involved servers, all services will be started automatically.

In the DFS Management console right click the Folder you want to replicate, in this case the Sales folder and choose Add Folder Target

Enter the UNC path to the server where the Folder is going to replicate to and press OK

Now DFS can see that the Folder has two Folder Targets, that’s why you are presented to the question: Do you want to create a replication group?. And the answer is…Yes

and the Replicate Folder Wizard turns up. At the first page I have never changed something as it is presenting information I already have entered, Next

Replication members are listed, Next

Choose the Primary Member. The Primary member is used if files are present at both replication members for example if you have a Folder in DFS which is already in use and you want to replicate that data to server2 in another location. Then you can copy the data to a DVD and send the DVD to the location and the copy the data to the server there (Prestaging). When you create your replication, the Primary member, is where you have the most recent data, if a file should exist at both servers. Select Primary Member, Next

Choose Replication Topology. As we only are replication between two servers, we can only choose Full Mesh. Hub and spoke topology is used in larger environments and requires at least 3 members. Next

Choose Replication Schedule and Bandwidth. At this time we’ll choose Full Bandwidth. Controlling bandwidth will be covered in the next part. Next

Information page is showed. Create

You’re done. Close

Now when Active Directory replication takes place the replication members will get aware of the new configuration and will start replicating the files. Until then, some errors can or will occur in the event log, that quite ok.

Next part will cover controlling the bandwidth used when replicating files using DFS-R

Microsoft has released a hotfix to fix the known 1 hour cache issue, when redeploying an OS to a computer using PXE within an hour.
After the hotfix installation the cache limitation will be 1 minute.

Read more here. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=969113

The rumor has circled around the internet the last week and as an attendee of both MMS and TechEd, I do see, why a merge is a possibility. Almost all sessions at MMS are at TechEd too. The 2 conferences are held with only a week in between, so why not just do it all together. Maybe "Better together" brings a new meaning to all of us. There are both pros and cons, but I vote for a merge!

UPS!
Didn’t have much time blogging the last days of MMS.
..but I did see sessions about:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Configuration Manager
Deploying Windows 7
USMT4

All in all a great conference in Las Vegas.

Had a terrible trip home…..24 extra hours in Chicago, hmm what can I say. I’m finally home in Denmark and ready to work.
Have to work at those DFS parts……

When we talk about replicating data between two or more servers, one think to keep in mind is the replication technology. From Windows Server 2003 R2 and later, RDC is used as replication technology. RDC has the ability to do delta replication, only replicate the changes to a file, and that is a great advantage, when we replicate data over WAN lines, with a small bandwidth. Still the whole file has to be replicated once.. when it’s created. But Microsoft has a solution for the too….

When you have a Windows Server Enterprise as one of the replication partners, cross file RDC will be available! So what is cross file RDC? That’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. Let’s say we have two servers, serverA and serverB. The servers replicate files between them and one is running Enterprise edition, the other one standard edition.

A user copies an old PowerPoint document to a new document at serverA, and edit it. The user changes a few thing and add a few slides and then exits and saves the document. Now the document will be replicated to serverB, but since serverB already knows the original document, serverB will only ask for the changes to the already known document, and the create the new document.
Keep in mind that Cross-file replication will be used if you have only one Windows Enterprise Edition in your replication technology.

When replication files between servers we often talk about two methods, data publishing and data collection.

Data Collection is used for collecting data into a central datacenter for backup and redundancy reasons. So if a server fails at the Branch Office, the user is redirected to the replicated data at the central datacenter. When and if the Branch server comes online again, the Branch User is redirected back to the Branch Server. See below.

Data Publishing is used to publish data to servers and for backup and redundancy reasons. The data are present at the local Branch Servers to secure a good user experience, for both local Branch Users and users travelling between Branch Offices. So, if a user changes files in Branch1 and the travels to Branch2. Then the changed files are replicated to all Branch Servers the thereby securing a good user experience because the user don’t have to open files over the WAN link. It’s all controlled by DFS.

Using DFS to provide the same entrance to data for all users, will result in better productivity! AND in Windows Server 2008 Access Based Enumeration (ABE) is a build in feature, hiding the folders that users do not have access to and thereby delivers a greater overview.

Three things to remember:
1. If you want to replicate files, using DFSR, to a central file cluster (Microsoft failover Clustering), that’s NOT possible before we get Windows Server 2008 R2!

2. When you publish data to two or more servers, conflicts may occur, if users changes the same file at different servers (replicas). DFSR will handle the conflict (see later part) but the user who saves the file last, will always win and the one who saves first, lose. This issue must be solved in future versions of Windows Server.

3. Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 introduces BranchCache and that brings more opportunities (More about that at a later time)

Next part will cover creating a DFS replication

It’s time for an update from Las Vegas!
I arrived at Las Vegas sunday morning after a terrible flight to Chicago/Las Vegas, no further comments needed ;-)

After a relaxing sunday, monday morning, it was time to register at MMS and get on going with some instructor led labs (ILL) about Powershell (for absolute beginners…) and Windows 7 deployment. After the ILL and sessions Microsoft Denmark was host for a drink or two ;-). This Microsoft Denmark meeting is held every day after the sessions.

Today, the morning started with running 5 km in Las Vegas, with Brian Lauge from Microsoft Denmark…quite hard, it’s so dry!
After the keynote I attended the one and only “State of the union”, certainly a must when attending MMS and I was not disappointed. We saw the next version of Configuration Manager and got some very good information.
Then I attended an awesome session about how Microsoft IT uses OSD for deploying Windows 7, one of the best sessions I have ever seen at a Microsoft conference! After a session about driver handling, I finished the day with a Hyper-V v2.0 session…IT ROCKS, look out Vmware, it’s so cool.
Tonight I will spend with our Microsoft Partner Account Manager, Lars Aabye, he usually finds a good place to eat.

That’s all for now!

Saturday I’m travelling to US to attend MMS 2009 and I’m looking forward to attend this year as it has been 2 years since last time (San Diego, 2007). My primary focus this week will be, Windows Client and Server deployment, but I’ll also try to fir in some sessions about Hyper-V v2.0 and Windows Server 2008 R2 generally.
The week will for sure inspire me as always! Now my only concern is, if I’ll get some time left over to blog about MMS…..let wait and see…

The following info is available at our Microsoft Partner Site.

We are pleased to announce that Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available. Windows 7 RC is the prerelease version of Windows 7. Since this is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.
Test-drive Windows 7 RC today to see for yourself—and to show your colleagues and customers—how Windows 7 delivers improved management, security, reliability, and performance.
Download Windows 7 RC
Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now. Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.

NOTE: Can't find the info anymore ;-(

I have spend some time lately, trying to create a nice agenda for my company’s Infrastructure days in May. All Danish companies are allowed access for free. Right now I cannot reveal the entire program but these products will be covered for sure:

Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2
System Center Configuration Manager
System Center Operation Manager
Exchange Server 2007
Office Communication Server R2
Office Sharepoint Server 2007
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

A colleague and I will present the keynote about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, before we continue with the breakout sessions. Most sessionspeakers will be from EG A/S. Later I will post the whole program.

Do you want to reduce IT Costs?

See this video with Jeff Wettlaufer and Bill Anderson discussing how the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Optimization Model (Microsoft IO) and System Center products can help you drive your IT costs down.

See the video here:
http://edge.technet.com/Media/How-System-Center-Helps-Reduce-IT-Costs/

Read more about Infrastructure Optimization here:
http://www.microsoft.com/infrastructure

Microsoft will tell more at Microsoft Management Summit 2009 in Las Vegas, hope to see you there.
http://www.mms-2009.com/

By the way – The company I work for, is one of the leading players, world wide, in Microsoft Core Infrastructure Optimization ;-)

Distributed File System (DFS) has been a part of Windows Server for about 10 years now and still a lot of companies and IT Administrators have not yet adopted the features of running DFS in their environment. DFS has so many advantages that I personally haven’t got a clue, why all companies are not using DFS already. That’s why I decided to spread some information about the big advantages in using DFS.

When using a mapped drive letter (mapped to \\server\share) some applications are using the UNC path instead of the drive letter. Is that a problem? YES.
In the future (sometime) the file server has to be replaced with a newer one and the new file server will get a new server name. Then you can use File Server Migration toolkit to copy files, ACL and shares to the new file server, edit login script and all seems ok. But it’s not! Because of the applications using the UNC instead of the drive letter some programs may still be looking for the old file server and links are broken. I have seen these problems a lot of times.

One solution, is to start using Domain based DFS. You’ll experience the same problems as mentioned above, but it will be the last time. When using DFS (always as domain based in my opinion) you’ll be able to access your data through the domain name example \\corp.redsky.local\Data, where the data share is your DFS Namespace (formerly called DFS Root). If DFS is not already installed on your Windows Server 2008 box, then you can add the File Server Role and remember to check Distributed File System.

The wizard now allow us to create the desired Namespace, Data.

Finish the Wizard without creating any Folders.

Before going any further, I recommend that you add another Namespace Server for the Data Namespace. This is done for redundancy.

In the Data Namespace it’s now possible to create a Folder (formerly called links) with a Folder Target. A Folder Target is the actual UNC path to the data, so creating a Folder called Sales with a Folder Target to \\server\share within the Data Namespace, will look like this for the Admin:

..and like this to the user, who has mapped the Data Namespace to drive S. The client will ask the Namespace servers for the path to the Sales data when the user clicks at the sales folder and the client will seamless get redirected to the sales data, where ever they are.

Keep in mind that the Folder Target could be on any server in the company, the user doesn't see the difference, only the Folder Name is seen. So now you’ll be able to add all your shares to one view in the Data Namespace and already have a bunch of advantages. (It’s possible to create more than one Namespace too).

You’ll only have to map one drive letter, all users will view the data the same way and applications which uses the UNC instead of the drive letter will use \\domainname\namespace and because of that, moving the files between servers is perfectly okay, the Domain Name, Namespace Name and the Folder Names will be the same and all links will be intact.

Replicating files with DFS and DFS-R will be covered in part 2.

Today DNS does not offer any form of security (without 3. party software) and is then vulnerable to spoofing, man-in-the-middle and cache poisoning attacks. Attacks of this kind can compromise all future communications to the host or client. For this reason, it has become critical to secure DNS.

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) will be a part of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Read more here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7a005a14-f740-4689-8c43-9952b5c3d36f&DisplayLang=en

FYI.

First off: thank you for your interest in beta testing Windows 7! As we near January 24th, we wanted to update everyone again on the next steps for the Windows 7 Beta. The amount of feedback we have received has been amazing and continues to pour in. We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers and feedback coming in to meet our engineering needs, so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta.

Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don’t want anyone to miss out we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10th. Customers who have started but not completed the download process  will be able to do so through February 12th.

The shutdown of general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will occur in 3 phases over the course of the next few weeks:

Microsoft has released a lot of goodies about Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2)

Release Documents for this Beta Release of Windows 7
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=139ff495-0cd2-4e88-be98-1090867ab28f&DisplayLang=en

Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 Beta documentation
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f1bae135-4190-4d7c-b193-19123141edaa&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Enterprise Application Compatibility
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8767a699-3c36-4e3f-a41c-83c56681887b&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Deployment Image Servicing and Management
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=886cd1dd-91aa-4bf4-8557-decedef7fa5d&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: BitLocker and BitLocker to Go
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6e419e75-bbec-44bf-bf94-48ec4e1265ac&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Problem Steps Recorder
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b72d3ac2-4352-4184-9992-e122dbb80883&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: AppLocker
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7a919629-4d8b-43c5-8115-78bc30a187c2&DisplayLang=en

Windows 7 Walkthrough: User State Migration Tool
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e263796c-c7e4-44d6-96dd-32e821c88a25&DisplayLang=en

MTC (http://mtc.sri.com/about_mtc/) has recently testet a lot of AV products and Microsoft beat up wellknown Antivirus products. (Trend Micro, McAfee and Symantec).

See total ranking here:
http://mtc.sri.com/live_data/av_rankings/

In the last 6-7 years I have worked with designing and implementing DFS based infrastructures. One of the big advantages in running DFS and DFS-R is, that you can replicate data from Branch Offices to a central datacenter and backup all data in the datacenter. A lot of companies are designing high available (HA) solutions in the datacenter to ensure that systems are running at all times! To do that many companies have implemented Microsoft Failover Clustering.
When designing replication I want to replicate my data to a Failover Cluster in the datacenter……but that’s not supported in Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and R2 nor in Windows Server 2008! We (a colleague and I) have requested support for DFS-R on Microsoft Cluster for a long time and….. NOW IT’S COMMING. I cannot wait to the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 and not just because of this one thing but also because of:

DirectAccess
BranchCache
Live Migration
DNSSEC
…
..and so on!

Now we just need a solution to the “last save wins” problem with DFS-R/N ;-)