Issue Creating custom11.prf with Office 2003 Resource Kit

I recently ran into an issue installing Office in a Terminal Services/Citrix environment with the Office 2003 Resource Kit.  No matter how many times I uninstalled and re-installed Office 2003 I could not get the transform to generate my custom11.prf file for Outlook profiles.  I had an idea that there might be some remnants of Office that were not completely deleted so manually deleted all of this office folders and registry entries. Still…. No .PRF file was created and my client’s Outlook profiles still would not work.

Installing Office via the “Custom Installation Wizard” is common practice in this kind of environment and I was surprised not to have seen this issue or a fix for it documented anywhere out on the web.  Perhaps my Google search skills need sharpening, however, after many tests and tweaks I found my fix. Re-installing Office 2003 without re-installing the 2003 Resource Kit caused my issue.  Not only does Office and all of its keys need to be deleted, but the same approach needs to happen for the 2003 Resource Kit as well.  I deleted all instances in the registry of:

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeCustomizeWizard

Then, after everything is uninstalled and cleaned out, re-install the Resource Kit and create a new transform .MST file with the specifications for your exchange environment. 

vSphere Upgrade and migrating from SQL 2000

So, with the introduction of vSphere, SQL 2000 is no longer supported.  For several environments this isn't an issue, but there are a few environments out there that want to upgrade who have kept SQL 2000 around.  Fortunately, after a little research and some trial and error, I found a process that helped me to successfully make the jump.  The main thing to watch out for is the orphaned user which I will discuss below.

• First, create the same username/password combo on the new SQL Server that owns the VMware databases on the original.  
  

• Create a backup of both your Virtual Center DB and your VMware Update Manager DB.  Back these up through SQL Enterprise Manager as .bak files and copy them somewhere accessible to the new SQL Server

•  Using SQL Management Studio, restore these databases into your new SQL Server

• Now you need to make the user account that was created in step 1 db_owner for both databases, however, when doing this you will most likely get an error. This is because of the orphaned user. Thanks to a coworker of mine, I found a quick fix.  To resolve this, you need to run a SQL script through Management Studio like the following

sp_change_users_login 'report'


If your application user is listed there, then run


sp_change_users_login 'auto_fix', 'your_user' (obviously, substitue the actual user for ‘your_user’)


In the first one you can identify user logins that might be a problem. Normally this will be an empty result set, but if a user is identified, you can use the second sp to try to correct their permissions.


You can also use the second sp on a user even if it does not show up in the first sp. The second sp will probably not find anything to fix, and will report that 0 orphaned users were corrected

• You can now assign the db_owner permissions.
  

•  Now, rename your System DSN connections for the Virtual Center and VUM Databases

• Create new System DSN connections matching the original names using the SQL Native Client and point these to the new SQL Database Server

That's it! You should now be ready to rock an roll with your virtual center upgrade without any issues.  Just make sure you keep the backups of  your databases just in case.  Also, as part of the upgrade backup your SSL information as is instructed in the vSphere upgrade documentation.

NetScaler as a Virtual Appliance is Now Available for ESX and ESXi

NetScaler VPX is now available for ESX and ESXi. 

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1689968

Migrate Provisioning Server Devices

I was rebuilding a PVS infrastructure with a new database and ran into an issue with the migration.  I was trying to decide whether it would be faster to migrate the existing database or start from scratch and rebuild everything.  Nothing was in production yet and after a little research, migrating the existing PVS database to the new server could be tricky.  Instead, I decided to start from scratch and export my devices from the old PVS database and import them into the new.  Citrix wrote this helpful guide on how to export to a .CSV and I was able to get everything transferred over quickly without any issues. 

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118832

So, if you're migrating to a new database server and want to start fresh with a newly created farm, this is for you.  Take advantage of this opportunity to perform a redesign without having to recreate all of your devices.

vSphere Update 1 Breaks EMC Storage Viewer

The EMC storage viewer has always been a handy interface to peer into your VMware storage in the vcenter interface.  Due to depreciated changes in the plugin framework, this no longer works after update 1.  Rumor has it that version 2.1 of the plugin should be out any day now and this newer version should be fully compatible with Update 1. 

For more information on the EMC Storage Viewer, check out this article by Mr. Sakac:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/04/where-to-get-the-emc-storage-viewer-vcenter-plugin.html

XenDesktop 4 is now Available

XenDesktop 4 is available today with FlexCast, HDX, and more.  Check out the Citrix Blog for more information:


http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2009/11/16/XenDesktop+4+is+here!

EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering)

There's a new functionality on the horizon with EMC Storage Arrays and the way that they handle their data.  The standard way to provision storage has always been to size your performance requirements correctly and statically assign a RAID Group with a certain number of disks running either SATA or Fibre Channel, and most recently EFD (Electronic Flash Drives).

With FAST, the goal is basically to allow EMC customers to get the best value out of their storage.  This works by letting the array automatically provision and re-provision data to the most appropriate storage tier based on  performance requirements.

Take a look at this video to see how the performance increases using FAST and EFDs.  The example is using Symmetrix, however, note that it mentions that their medium class (CLARiiON) and NAS class (Celerra) arrays will be supported as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKBDvo8214