April 2007 - Posts

• WinPE 2.0: Lessons on capturing images

  This past two weeks I have been working on a deployment that involves technologies like PXE, WinPE, Windows Deployment Services, the Windows Automated Installation Kit, and others. I was stuck for a while with WinPE, having issues when trying to capture a Windows image using the WDS Capture disk. Most of the issues I had were driver-related. When I started, neither the network nor the hard drive of the machine (SATA drivers!! argh!!) were available to WinPE. So, I did the following: Get the storage drivers from Intel’s website. You can download them from here. Make sure you download the Vista version of the drivers. Unpack them on a temporary directory. In my case I ran:          iata621_enu.exe -A -PF:\intel Mount the Capture WinPE 2.0 wim image (generated through the WDS console) to a directory:          imagex /mountrw d:\temp\capture.wim 1 d:\temp\wpe Copy the file C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe to d:\temp\wpe or where you mounted the wim image). Now, add the drivers to the WinPE image with the following command:          peimg PF:\intel\*.inf d:\temp\wpe\Windows Unmount the WinPE wim image:          imagex /unmount /commit d:\temp\wpe Add the WIM image to WDS. On the console, select Windows Deployment Services->Servers->->Boot Images->(Right Click)->Add Boot Image, and browse to the WIM you just unmounted Boot the target machine using PXE and make sure it loads the correct WIM image Ok, so here is where I had issues: First, the WDS Image Capture Wizard didn't list the SATA drives. Turns out the driver loaded correctly, but for some reason it couldn't see the drive. If you run into an issue where the driver won't load, try using the drvload command from the WinPE command prompt.. Because of those issues, I had to fall back to the command line. To do this, press Shift-F10 in the Capture Wizard, and that will open a command prompt. Once in the command prompt, create the image using imagex:          imagex /capture c: c:\myimage.wim "My Image" /compress maximum With the image created, map a network drive on the server, and copy it back:          net use i: \\\share * /user: Copy the image back to the server (I: drive) Turn the machine off. Enjoy your newly captured image!!!! Posted Apr 26 2007, 02:33 AM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Tools

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2 is out

  Today Microsoft released the Beta 2 of Carmine System Center Virtual Machine Manager. This Beta 2 release adds long-awaited functionality, like P2V and V2V migration, among others. From the release notes: Completely new look-and-feel (same as System Center Operations Manager 2007, Service Desk and System Center Essentials) Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) Conversions Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) Conversions 64-bit VMM server support EveryVMM component is now remotely installable Full Windows PowerShell support Better overall performance and scalability Every feature from Beta 1 with more functionality and enhancements I am currently downloading it, and will post back once I get a chance to play with it a little bit. One of the features that I’m dying to try out is the Powershell support – as powerful as vbscript is, I’m not particularly fond of it, and replacing its use on yet another MS product is another step in the right direction. You can download Beta 2 from https://connect.microsoft.com/vmm. Remember you have to register first! Posted Apr 25 2007, 05:21 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Ok, there's one more... another Virtualization Lab scheduled!

  Last week it seemed that the Paris and Zaragoza events were going to be the last ones in the Virtualization for Developers lab series. Well, due to popular demand, there's a new lab scheduled for Singapore, on May 16-18. Click the link to sign up, or check out the series at the Virtualization for Developers Lab Series homepage. Posted Apr 24 2007, 06:45 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Sign up for the last Virtualization for Developers Labs!!

  In a couple of weeks we’ll have the last of the scheduled Virtualization for Developers Labs. The two labs will take place on the same week – one in Zaragoza, Spain, on May 8–10, and the other one in Paris, France on May 9–11. If you are interested in Virtual Server, the upcoming Windows Server Virtualization, or Virtualization in general, I suggest you check them out. So far we’ve had some great reviews of the labs, and it is a great opportunity to get hands-on training with Virtual Server and its APIs.   Posted Apr 20 2007, 04:51 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Spring Cleaning or How to Optimize the Performance of Your PC Using a Free Tool

  Ever since we saw this post over at the Virtual PC Guy’s Weblog, we have been using Dave Whitney's Free Defragmenter on our virtual machines’ dynamic VHDs to improve the compaction process. The results so far have been great – we have managed to shrink dynamic VHD files to levels far beyond what we could with the standard Windows Disk Defragmenter. This week I decided to do a little spring cleaning on my work laptop. I installed Windows on it around 2 years ago, and have been installing/uninstalling tons of software ever since. The machine, predictably, had become painfully slow. Yesterday I managed to remove about 3.5GB of old software and files, leaving the hard drive horribly fragmented. So I decided to leave the Whitney’s defrag tool running overnight… today in the morning I am surprised on how responsive it is! Outlook now takes a few seconds to startup (with a multi-GB pst file), compared to over a minute yesterday. And I can’t believe how quickly the Windows Live Messenger and Visual Studio .NET 2005 started up. I was so surprised, I even decided to write about it here! HOT TIP: I also recommend an utility called CCleaner to help you optimize your system. It removes all sorts of temporary files and safely cleans up the Registry. I my laptop it freed up around 750MB! Posted Apr 20 2007, 03:53 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Tools

• Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 RC

  You can now download the Release Candidate for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 from https://connect.microsoft.com. Remember that you need to be registered in the beta program to be able to download the files. This release contains bug fixes from Beta 2 – other than that, it doesn’t have any additional functionality. Posted Apr 19 2007, 08:08 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization