demo blog post

this is how simple this is to create and publish a blog entry

user virtualization – huh?

**subtitle**  do words in marketing matter anymore?

OK I had my laugh when the term ‘cloud’ (drawn in network diagrams to visualize the internet) became associated with the latest marketing blitz and especially when it became associated with things that have nothing to do with the internet aka ‘private cloud’.  Now I read from company AppSense that they are selling a product that provides (no joke) user virtualization.  Yes, that’s right you don’t even need users anymore for your network.  Human resources is going to be a lot more simplified and without even any off shore outsourcing?  …ha-ha well not exactly

I’m sure this is but clever marketing but maybe too clever to be understandable or of use beyond the shock of an irrational construct.  As I tried to discern why I had emails coming from this company, I opted to just go to their homepage and see if any memories of research or of a prior business conference encounter perhaps got triggered …none did.  Nevertheless the product offering of ‘user virtualization’ struck me right away – holding back to stay objective and explorative I couldn’t help wonder what this strange coined product offering could entail.  My marketing BS O-meter warning was going off.  Now after reading in their words and explanation I am not certain of anything beyond a vague conceptual management layer to allow an administrator to manage and importantly provide governance over every possibility a business user might broach from this single software interface.  Pie in the sky fluff?  Dunno – gut says likely not likely so simple -  in any case not really going to investigate further at this time to invest the time for a demo.  Perhaps this is but a mere formality to publish to the public some novel description as their sales are not intended to be driven via this venue and the target audience were investors.

As I expand my knowledge and skill into IT governance for the growing need for business compliance to PCI DSS, HIPPA, …etc., it is inevitable this road will get crossed again.  Hopeful by that time that the marketers have clearly ‘cut to the chase’ or are cut out and replaced with usable language from technical salesmen.

reference – http://www.appsense.com/user-virtualization

autorun.inf AV blocking gotcha

Discovered this today from within Windows 7. …Any software process that involves copying, moving, or even deleting the autorun.inf file can fail as a result of current default antivirus software (aka AV) behavior.  This file is at the root of every Windows drive.

In preparation for an SBS 2011 install I wanted to create a bootable USB drive of the install media.  To start I attempted to clean off the drive of all its contents but that process failed with the autorun.inf file.  Then I realized that I should’ve just reformatted so to be thorough; of course that sledge-a-matic action worked.

I’ve done this before for SBS 2011 and WHS 2011 which can require this type of USB drive install media on headless servers.  The odd thing is that never before was this an issue so this must be something new that has emerged behind the security scenes but of which I was not aware.  What I uncovered was the Trend Micro WFBS Agent settings were blocking both ‘delete’ and ‘copy’ actions to the autorun.inf file.  This isn’t specific to just TM though as the Google search result I found pointed to a different AV vendor.  If you hit this error, disable the AV temporarily as the workaround. 

Initially I opted to go the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool method (creates a bootable USB drive from ISO or DVD) but hit an issue when it failed during the copying process.  After trying variations and getting the same failed result, I opted to go the longer manual creation route as detailed by Tim Barrett in his www.NoGeekLeftBehind.com blog.  During that process I hit the root issue in a way that gave me a usable error message to find the solution.  After disabling the AV I hit success.

RWA connections from XP for SBS 2011, WHS 2011, SBSE 2011, WESS 2011

There is an issue when attempting remote connections from Windows XP SP3 through the latest greatest Microsoft OS suite for Small Business that is based on Windows 2008 R2 and the correlating Remote Gateway implementation. You need to install two things to make this work:

Here are the links:
· http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20609 – XP RDP 7.0 client – doesn’t require restart
· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951608 – Microsoft FixIT – repairs Credential Security Support Provider (CredSSP) Service in XP – requires a restart

**ref** SBS 2011 release documentation which covers the second linked fix above and other possible remote connection issues:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg491249.aspx

SPLwow64.exe Terminal Server/Remote Desktop Service tweak needed

Now having had two clients with a related system process problem, I am documenting what I’ve discovered and the needed tweak to fix it.  Both of these small businesses are heavily using Remote Desktop Services aka Terminal Server.  One with SBS 2011 and Windows 2008 R2 on the member server (both virtualized on Hyper-V); the other uses SBS 2008 with Windows 2008 on its member server.  The first biz uses 98% of its connections as thin clients and has seen huge amounts of memory (commit size) set aside for instances of ‘splwow64.exe’.  The second client experienced an issue with Windows 2000 clients (yes they are still out there …yikes!) not automatically ending their session when they closed the Environment Tab specified application that their TS session is limited to running/displaying – just got the blue logoff screen in a hung stasis.

On the first I tried changing the configuration of the main shared printer.  The printer is which I determined was where all the SPLwow64.exe related print tasks were being sent.  First I disabled spooling and secondly I unchecked the box to render print jobs on client (in this case the RDS server).  Neither satisfied the desired memory release I wanted to see achieved.  I could confirm the correlation with the SPLwow64.exe process and actual memory consumed via the Hyper-V Manager console which showed the dynamic memory demand of this RDS machine.  When the topmost listed instances of the SPLwow64.exe process were ‘ended’ the overall memory dropped equally dramatically.  This server which typically needed roughly 4 GB of running memory was underperforming when maxing out at 10 GB that were dynamically being made available to it.

The link below states in the first post that you can adjust the time this process takes to release its memory and links to a dead KB article.

http://forums.techarena.in/windows-x64-edition/816779.htm

That applicable control registry key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\SplWOW64TimeOut

The second client’s issue led me to find the following thread and and in the last post the solution.  It’s a simple technique that can be applied if you want to turn off the use of system processes, SYSwow64.exe in this case, for a Terminal Server.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\SysProcs
Add a REG_DWORD called "splwow64.exe" set the value to 0

**Here’s another related conversation thread by an application developer found in the private Microsoft Forums

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/appvclients/thread/da0c76ea-5653-4439-a515-8246a2135cdc