Mike's Tech Head Blog

MDT 2010 – USMT Bug

So, this one is nasty, the problem will be that when doing a refresh from Windows XP to Windows 7 the USMT will not apply all settings, due to a small issue. The result will be that some settings are lost, it captures some setting but not all. If you read the USMTcapture.log you will see “Downlevel Manifests folder is not present. System component settings will not be gathered.”

and here is one solution

http://systemcenterideas.com/2009/09/usmt-issues-with-mdt-2010/

And no, there are no official fix for this at the moment…

/mike

TechEd Europe 2009 – TechEd Online (The free stuff)

So You did not go to TechEd, and you don't want to buy the TechEd Online ticket to see all the sessions, in that case let me show this:

Of course, there are others to, also you will see TechTalks from other TechEd’s around the globe, check this out:

http://www.msteched.com/online/channels.aspx?cname=track&channel=Windows+Client%2c+Server+%26+Management

/Mike

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V – 10 things to remember

1. Storage, store the .VHD file and the settings file at the same location and if possible format the hard drive using 64k blocks instead of using standard, that will increase speed and lower impact on the parent partition
   
   
   
2. The Time Synchronization service should ONLY be enabled when the child OS does not have any other way of getting the correct time, that means that member servers, domain controllers, workstations in a domain should NOT get the time from the parent partition. Also it is important the the parent partition get’s the correct time, if the parent partition is part of a domain then it should sync from that of course.
   
   
3. When upgrading from Hyper-V RTM to Hyper-V R2 you need to turn of all running machines and you need to remove all snapshots. BEFORE you start them up please modify the following:
   1. Add a SCSI interface and move all disk’s to the SCSI disk instead of having them on the IDE interface, that makes it possible to de-attach them if needed whiteout turning of the machine later on (It has NOTHING to do with performance, just management)
      
   2. Check the CPU Setting, there is a new feature that enables you to migrate between machines that NOT have the same CPU, you wnat to have that checked before you want to move it, otherwise you will have to turn it off before moving it, kind of boring
      
4. Use separate NIC’s, the minimum of NIC’s is TWO, one for management, and one for the child partitions. I recommend 4 NIC’s if you use iSCSI or have a decent load on the server. In the case of using iSCSI as storage for the parent partition use one NIC for management (that should have the highest order in the binings list)
   
   (this is NOT my hyper-V server, ok, just want you to understand what I mean with “Binding Order”
   Also on the Network adapters that you use for iSCSI, DO NOT USE any kind of loadbalancing stuff from the vendor, iSCSI it self is redundant when you add MPIO and configurea that for iSCSI use (Go into control panel and check the “Support for iSCSI”, wait two seconds and reboot)
   Also, use Jumbo Frames if possible on the iSCSI network, it does require that all network devices on that network can handle Jumbo Frames
5. Will contione later on, need to back to work now.
   

TechEd Europe 2009 – Berlin – Day 2

Next up, day number two. Worked at TLC all day long, the TLC stands for Technical Learning Center. Worked in the EBS Booth. At lunch I meet with people from the Setup and Deployment team, for some reason the where missing staff over at the Windows 7 Deployment boot, and since I’m a very nice guy I helped out the rest of the day in that boot answering question in a steady flow, most people have seen Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 in some demo and then they wanted ask more question and I was happy to help them out. Fun day at work :-)