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Planning a Windows 7 Deployment

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Last July I left the County of Lennox & Addington and moved to the Upper Canada District School Board. One of the the first things I helped with was the Windows 7 Deployment.

This Windows 7 deployment is a 11,000 seat deployment and when I joined, the image was just about finalized. At this point the heavy lifting of planning, and figuring out what is in the environment was completed, but let me help you walk through your planning.

The first thing you need to do is get a sense of what your hardware is. In our environment,we have a tool that was developed to track that information. But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, Microsoft makes a great tool FREE tool called MAP, Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. You run this tool against your AD computer and then you get a great report of what is in your environment and what the capability of the computers are.

After running this tool, you should also be using the Application Compatibility Toolkit, another free tool. This application runs creates an MSI that is run on workstations. I push it out with GPO but you can use any tool you have to push MSIs out. This tool then runs for a predetermined amount of time (you set that) and then it returns what applications are installed and how much it has been used. From that report, it will make a list of what you have running for applications and which ones are supported on Windows 7. It also contains fixes for common application which won’t work natively with Windows 7. We used this tool to fix AutoCad 7 when it wouldn’t work correctly with Windows 7.

So, those two tools will help you get planning your Windows 7 deployment. Use these two tools, gather your information and plan your deployment. Good planning upfront will prevent a lot of a pain in the deployment phase.

In another post, I will cover off the deployment side.

New Announcements in Microsoft Desktop Virtualization

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Microsoft has an announcement on their Press site with regards to new features with Desktop Virtualization. As I travel across Saskatchewan this week doing the Windows 7 Deep Dives, one of the topics is Windows XP mode within Windows 7.  Windows XP mode had required hardware virtualization to work correctly. That left me in the cold on my little Toshiba laptop. It works great but lack virtualization technology which meant that I couldn’t run Windows XP mode. As part of the release today, they have announced that you won’t need Virtualization Technology to use Windows XP mode.

This is a good change. It allows those who would like to go upgrade to Windows 7 but have applications that need Windows XP the ability to upgrade and continue to keep the apps running in an XP environment. For me, its more about being able to demo the Windows XP mode than actually utilizing it, all my applications work under Windows 7.

The full press release can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-18DesktopVirtPR.mspx

Setting up a KMS Server

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Windows 7 Volume licensing basically has three ways to activate, MAK, MAK proxy and KMS. The first two require a key and the proxy needs to use the Volume Activation Management Tool. I won’t get into MAK today, its is somewhat straight forward. If you need information, check out the information on MAK at TechNet, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979805.aspx.

What I want to talk about is KMS, Key Management Service. Setting one of these servers up is as easy as making Kraft Dinner. Yes, simple. In reading in the forums I see people having troubles getting one up and going. I’ll walk you through the easiest setup. This walkthrough isn’t meant for someone already using a KMS server for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.

If you want to activate Windows 7 clients, the simplest choice is install Windows Server 2008 R2. You can use Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 but you need to install an update. If you have Server 2008 R2, I recommend using it, its just the easiest thing to do. There is a hierarchy of how the setup works, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979804.aspx will give you the low down.

For me, Windows Server 2008 R2 based KMS server made the most sense. The next step is to locate your KMS key for your volume activation. The key you are looking for, is the Windows Server 2008 Std/Ent KMS B (note the KMS B). System Information

Instead of using the MAK key when you enter the key for activation, you will enter in your KMS.

Windows Activation

You will get an warning message that you are using a KMS key, like this.

Windows Activation

Click OK and you will have then made a KMS host machine. That is all there is to it. Some people get worried and think they have to add a Windows 7 key for the KMS host to accept Windows 7 clients. You don’t need to do that, at least I didn’t have to.

The other thing to remember is that in order for your server to activate computers, you must have at least 5 Servers checked in for server activation to occur or 25 Windows 7 or Vista machines checked in for client activation to occur. To check the status of the computers, I find the VAMT tool which comes with the WAIK works well.