New VHD available from Microsoft – Forefront Identity Manager 2010 Rc1. This VHD is really useful to get you going with FIM, because clean FIM installation and configuration can take pretty much time. You need to install all FIM components (and believe me, there are a lot of components), configure provisioning etc, etc.   Anyway, now with FIM 2010 VHD available for download, you can try all features:

• Provisioning of users and groups to AD
• Creating new dynamical groups
• Self service password reset
• Integration with office
• And much more…

If you are interested in identity management, grab your VHD here , create Hyper-V Virtual Machine and manage your identities.

One day I ran into one very useful and nice web site where you can find a lot of virtualized applications for download. Check it out here, and grab your virtual appliacations. On that site you can find applications for all kind of different purposes:

• Audio/Video
• Financial
• Games
• Internet
• Messaging
• Productivity
• Programming and a lot more…

So maybe you are asking yourslef, what do I do with those applications, or what are benefit of using virtualized applications. Well first using virtual appliactions can be very useful for you and your precious computer:

• Virtual applications are never installed on your OS, so they do not slow down your system (e.g big registry etc…).
• Virtual applications are in their own virtual bubble so they do not have incompatibility issues with other appliacations.
• Your registry is a lot smaller when using virtualized applications.
• Managebility of virtual applications is just great and easy.
• Virtual applications are in one way portable applications, because you can grab them on your usb key and carry them around without need for installing them.
• And a lot more benefits.

Ok, after we mentioned few benefits of virtual applications, how can you launch them on your computer, after downloading from this site? Well there is one thing you need to have and that is Microsoft Applications Virtualization Client – one tiny software which you can download as part of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. Of course if you  wanna use your applications with APP-V management server you will need to change one parameter in OSD file of application package, and that parameter is servername. If you don’t have management server then you can use App-V standalone mode described nicely here and here.

Hello again. I am happy to announce that Microsoft published free Windows Server 2008 R2 E-Book (with two virtualization chapters), and you can download it from here (PDF file, 11.1 MB). Book has 200 pages and following chapters :

Introduction    xvii
Chapter 1    What’s New in Windows Server R2    1
Chapter 2    Installation and Configuration: Adding R2 to Your World    9
Chapter 3    Hyper-V: Scaling and Migrating Virtual Machines    25
Chapter 4    Remote Desktop Services and VDI: Centralizing Desktop and Application Management    47
Chapter 5    Active Directory: Improving and Automating Identity and Access    65
Chapter 6    The File Services Role    91
Chapter 7    IIS 7.5: Improving the Web Application Platform    109
Chapter 8    DirectAccess and Network Policy Server    129
Chapter 9    Other Features and Enhancements    147
Index    163

Download and enjoy reading.

When I first read news about this free physical to virtual tool, I was happy for couple of reasons:

• On projects, customers are often asking about some kind of free tool from Microsoft  to create VHD’s from physical computers. Of course till now we had Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), but to implement SCVMM customers need to buy appropriate licenses. Now they can try P2V with this great free tool.
• Some times customers would like to try Hyper-V, and their main scenario is  P2V. Now if they don’t need all enterprise features of SCVMM, they can first use P2V.
• P2V tool runs on running system, there is no need to shut down the computer.
• Lastly but not less important, with this little bit very useful tool you have portable Physical To Virtual utility in your packet (I mean on your USB flash drive).

How to use the tool?

1. Download tool from here. 
2. Unzip it and run it on physical computer you would like to transform into virtual.
3. User interface pops out in which you can check or uncheck disk which you would like to convert to VHD format.
4. After VHD creation if finished, create virtual machine (Virtual PC or Hyper-V) as you normally would and attach VHD to it.
5. Done.

Enjoy using this tool and big thank you to Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell for creating it.

Bing.com just released new great, fun and useful feature called Visual Search. Visual Search is new type of search organized by categories and then when clicked on category, sorted by criteria. For example; open Bing.com/VisualSearch (before clicking on that link make sure your country/region is set to United States), click on Digital Cameras,  and then on left menu click on criteria Highest Megapixel. You will see how Bing quickly shows all types of digital cameras and then sort them by highest megapixel. Also, going with mouse pointer over image, information about the digital camera is nicely displayed in upper left corner. Same rule applies to all other categories.

Try it out for your self – go to www.bing.com/visualsearch , but as I said earlier change your country/region to United States.

Finally I must say, great job Bing team.

Today many companies implemented some version of Sharepoint as their internal document management system and overall document repository system. Sharepoint is great and easy to use, and companies can really benefit of Sharepoint’s use, so in some point they decided to use sharepoint site for various kind of documents. That’s really great, and everything work fine for those kind of documents if users have Office installed locally. They simply open Internet explorer, type sharepoint url and click on document they need. Of course, because everything is installed localy, when user click on, for example, xml document it is automaticly opened with Microsoft Office Infopath. Same rule applies to Word documents. But what when users are using virtualized version of Office applications? Well then the thing get little more complicated. When Office is virtualized with Microsoft Application Virtualization and then streamed to a client, every file association is discovered properly, so with virtualized Word, users normaly open .doc or .docx documents if these documents are placed somewhere on users disk. But if those documents are placed on Sharepoint site, then when user click on xml or .docx document,  SharePoint is looking for ProgID’s “Sharepoint.OpenDocuments.*” which are not part of file association, but are part of SharePoint COM objects. So when you try to open those documents with virtualized Infopath or Word you will get error that you don’t have appropriate application for opening documents, or something similar. But luckily things can be fixed.

How can this be fixed?

So if you have Sharepoint site and virtualized Office(Infopath or Word), you should do the following:

1. Sequence Infopath (Word) by best practices, but then in shortcut phase of sequencing include shortcut to Internet Explorer (It is easy, on application phase just click Add new application and then browse to executable of local Internet Explorer.)
2. Install Sharepoint services support from the Office CD. You can find this by normally installing Office and then in Office Tools subtree only check on Sharepoint services support.

If you do all that, opening document from sharepoint site should normally work.

It is really great when someone makes free tool which is useful for everybody. One of those tools is new Application Virtualization tool released by Login Consultants. Everybody can download tool for free here.  Simple said, with this tool installed you can carry all your virtual applications, and then import them easily. Read more about the tool here.

Great news for everyone working with App-V has been announced few days ago – App-V 4.6 beta is available for download. It is great news for many reasons but maybe most noticable because of:

• Support for 64 bit clients
• Ability to virtualize 64 bit applications.

So if you can’t wait to try it out, hurry up to Microsoft Connect and download your App-V 4.6 beta.

Howdy… Herby I would like to mention great post written by my collegue Ilija Brajkovic on brajkovic.info. Found out why is Ilija prefering Windows, rather than other operating systems. Get some intersting facts, and conclusions about Linux, Mac and others… Read the rest of this entry here.

Duke Nukem 3D goes virtual or ‘How to virtualize Duke Nukem with Microsoft Application Virtualization’

Have you ever wondered is it possible to virtualize 3D games with Microsoft Application Virtualization? Well, the answer is simple yes. And what about the process of virtualizing? Well whole process is rather simple, as I will show post on this post. Of course, I know that virtualization of Duke Nukem 3D is not great bussiness example but it shows possibilities of application virtualization. Also, it is good example to show in your Microsoft Application Virtualization demos, because process of virtualizing is fast and easy. Ok, so let’s see how to virtualize legendary Duke Nukem. As Duke would say “Let’s rock” :

• First thing you need to do is download Duke Nukem setup. Download is available here (size=1.4MB).
• After that, place setup file on dekstop or anywhere else.
• Run Microsoft Application Sequencer and enter package information as shown on following picture.

• Click Begin Monitoring button, and then create folder or browse to previously created folder. Make sure you create that folder on Q drive and also make sure that folder is empty, and name of the folder is in 8.3 naming convenction. So that means that name of folder can me 8 letters long and after that dot and then three letters. For example Duke.001. After that you are ready, and Sequencing Wizard minimizes automaticly.
• Now install Duke Nukem as you normaly would, but when asked for installation folder, browse to previously created folder on Q drive. So installation wizard appears, you click next and then browse to folder as shown in following pictures.

• After installation is done, launch Duke Nukem by clicking on shortcut placed on dekstop. Everything should work fine. After that quit game, and bring Sequencer wizard forward, and click Stop Monitoring.
•  On “Add aditional files to Virtual File System” click Next.
• On “Configure applications shortcuts”  remove Duke Nukem internet explorer shortcut because you do not need that.
• On ” Launch Applications”, Launch Duke Nukem 3D. If everything is fine, you will see start screen of Duke Nukem 3D like in the following picture. After you tried that everything work, close the game.

• Now in Deployment tab of Application Virtualization Sequencer enter name of your management server, choose protocol and enter name of folder in which you will place saved package. Note that the name of that folder is not folder on Q drive but some folder you create on desktop or anywhere else. That will be the folder you copy on management server in Content folder.

• Copy folder in which you saved your package to Content folder on management server. On management server go to Application Virtualization Management console  and import application as following picture shows.

• To import application package browse to content folder and find Duke Nukem package. Choose .sprj file. New General dialog appear on which just click Next. In Published Shortcut phase check “ Publish to User’s dekstop” and click Next. On File Associations click Next. On Select Groups, select one group in which are users that you want give rights to use and launch Duke Nukem virtual application.
• After that virtual Duke Nukem should appear in management console along with other virtualized applications.
• The final step is done on Application Virtualization client computer, on which you just need to log on or refresh App-V tray icon. Of course you must me logged with appropriate user(user belonging to previously choosed AD group).

• After refresh or log on, application shortcut appears on dekstop and you  can lounch Duke Nukem 3D as you normaly would. Just play and enjoy. J

Finaly just to note what kind of OS i used and some other technical informations. Well in this scenario i used one notebook on which is installed Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V enabled. I created four virtual machines. Two Windows Xp (Sequencer and App-V client), two Windows Server 2008 (App-V Management server on one and on the other one Domain Controller). Also i joined later one physical Windows Vista computer on which I installed App-V client.  I joined user to AD domain and then just refreshed with App-V tray icon. On Vista computer also everything worked just fine.

So that’s the process of virtualizing Duke Nukem 3D. It is rather simple, and it is good for some demoing of Microsoft Application Virtualization solution.