Tag Archives: Windows

System Center Essentials 2010

Posted by on July 22, 2010 No comments | 3,271 views

System Center Essentials 2010 LogoThis summer I have been working for my old employer for nearly 5 weeks. The local council offices at my hometown. In the server room 3 new HP ProLiant rack servers were in boxes. I have set up a new domain controller for a subdomain, a new Exchange 2010 and DC server to replace the old Exchange/DC, and last but not least, a System Center Essentials 2010 server to monitor license usage and to push updates (which WSUS does for free anyway).

First step in the process was installing Windows 2008R2 server on the box. Plain sailing with HP’s SmartStart CD which gives you the option to easily configure the disk arrays and then push the OS installation onto the disks with drivers and everything going along with it. I set up 2 disk arrays, 2 146 GB Raid 1 mirror sets. One for the OS and one for the System Center Essentials (SCE) installation.

System Center Essentials 2010 is a stripped down version of the large and more expensive System Center tool. SCE is for smaller organizations up to 500 clients and 50 servers. We have about 20 servers and 200 clients, not counting school student computers. SCE is quite affordable, especially on our Volume License. The SCE software package itself is about a 5 GB download which I grabbed at our MS Volume License account. There is a good set of guides at Microsofts Technet website here. There isn’t much to say about the installation process itself as it went rather smoothly. Except that it took quite a while to complete. SCE can run on Windows 2003 servers, but to get the virtualization bit to work properly, Windows 2008 is needed. SCE uses a MSSQL server as storage, but it is bundled with a MSSQl server that can be used instead if you don’t have a full MSSQL server in your organization. We have 3, but I decided to leave them alone and installed the bundled MSSQL locally.

When everything got up an running, I got to have a look through the management interface. I pushed out the client installation to the primary domain, which during the summer only has about 20-30 computers up and running. A nice test environment. I also set up the WSUS service to push updates via group Policy, and now after a few days, it seems to run smoothly. I have not yet enforced installation deadlines on the clients but that is an option as I seem to remember it is in the WSUS tool as well.

SCE ScreenshotWhat I liked the most about SCE is the ability to monitor resource status on computers. It checks hardware, manufacturer/model, disk usage and capacity, RAM, CPU and generally all you otherwise would manually punch into a asset database or those good old spreadsheets we used when I first started in IT in 1999. SCE also scans all installed software and versions thereof. Giving you a highly detailed and somewhat messy output. However the summary screen gives you a nice overview of operating systems in the organization. Today we run a tool I coded many years ago in VB6.0 which runs an inventory of resources (disk and RAM) and versions of a specified list of software. This is imported into a MySQL database and cross referenced with the computer inventory table. This works quite well actually, but is regularly in need of updates as things change in Windows and applications.

The virtualization part of SCE I have not tested yet, it is the main new feature of this release though. We do have a few VmWare servers running, so I might get around to it soon. SCE also has a nifty report generation tool that will generate reports from a long list of predefined reports. SCE also have a software  package deployment tool which is next on my list to test out. I hope I can set it up to push out software like Firefox and other non-MS tools we use, as well as Office 2007/2010.

Windows 7

Posted by on June 6, 2009 No comments | 1,321 views

Last week my Vista key on my laptop would no longer activate. The installation was from my old job, so I have no idea what happened to the key. Anyway, I decided to download the last RC of Windows 7 instead. It is available through Microsoft websites and you can get a trial key with your Live ID. It will last until March next year.

I have to say, the first impression (keeping in mind I came from Vista) was surprisingly good. Now, I have done a lot of graphic design work in the past, and I have to admit design is a factor when I choose software and OS. I think most will agree that Vista and Win7 looks great, and with 6gb of RAM, the wasted memory is something I can afford.

The first thing I noticed was the redesign of the taskbar. It is just that little bit better. The file explorer is also slightly improved. I was finally able to set the viewing properties I wanted as default, i.e the detailed view with name, size, type and date like I’m used to from the old Windows versions. Also they put back in the name of the file you’re currently copying into the file-copy dialog/progress box. The differences in appearance to Vista is minimal, with a few minor changes here and there in system panels and control panels. The real bonus is that Win7 seems to run much smoother than Vista, my games have better fps and less latency and I have less compatibility issues with software than I had on Vista (thus far at least). The list of improvements are located here.

Win7 seems to run fine on Vista drivers, so I have really had absolutely no installation problems or compatibility issues even though I’m running the 64-bit version. That is an absolute first for me when it comes to new Windows versions, and I have run them all since 3.11 and NT3.51 when I went from Amiga to PC. I must say that compared to Windows in the 90s, the NT5 and NT6 cores are rather nice to work with (Windows 7 is version 6.1). I have had a few Linux installations when I have had need for them, but at the end of the day, Windows is much more useful to me than Linux because of gaming, which is a bit tricky on Linux.

Oh, and let me also link in xkcd‘s little comment on Vista/Win7 :)

Restore Vista MBR

Posted by on May 30, 2009 No comments | 1,315 views

If you have played around with test installations of other operating systems on your computer on other partitions or disks than your main OS, you may have run into boot problems when removing these other test installations. If you have, like I have, had Linux installations, you may be left with a non-working GRUB boot loader and maybe even no Windows CD to fix the problem. Well, this happened to me today, but no worry. There are easy solutions. Microsoft made a Windows Vista Recovery Disk, which Neosmart are hosting as torrent files. They can be found here:

All you need to do now is start it up, select repair instead of install, open the command prompt and type:

C:\>bootrec /fixmbr

…and you’re back in business.