Lead, Follow, or Move

First look at MDT 2010 Beta 2

Adam Bell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:56:15 +0000

Michael has been firing out a lot posts about the new features of MDT 2010 recently, and as this is a tool I do quite a lot with I figured it was time to start playing

I have a test server with the Beta 1 MDT 2010 already installed. I wanted to see if any issues are encountered if I just installed over the top.

The installation process didn’t notify me of any previous version, but it selected the installation directory of the existing MDT. I let it install to the same location, and it completed without any errors.

The new and improved workbench.

I like the new shiny icons, but more importantly I like how I can organise things in folders

My existing MDT items were all still available, with the exception of the deployment share. Selecting to open an existing share and selecting the upgrade check box appears to have brought everything up to date.

Property page has been updated

One of my minor annoyances for a long time has been resolved. You can now tab through the fields, though you have to tab through both sides *grrr*.

From a PowerShell perspective a quick look reveals that we have one snapin to play with: microsoft.bdd.PSsnapin.

The PowerShell Snapin for MDT 2010

16 cmdlets are provided by the MDT snapin

I haven’t played with these yet, but they look to be promising.

News and Events

Adam Bell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:22:24 +0000

The Summer Scripting Games finished last Friday. There’s always lots of PowerShell goodness to get you thinking! Richard has been detailing his solutions, and the complete list is available on the Scripting Guy blog.

Microsoft also held a Virtual Conference last week and the video’s are available here.

MDT 2010 Beta 2 has just been released and promises to hold a lot of great improvements. Michael, has shot out a whole bunch of posts in short time detailing some of the new features here.

Lots of great stuff to watch and play with!

Weekly Poll #6

Adam Bell — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:25:38 +0000

Yes, after a break finally a new Poll is up.

Windows 7 – does Windows finally have some WOW factor?

Cast your vote on the home page or Polls Page

Microsoft Access Based Enumeration

Adam Bell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:37:48 +0000

Have you ever had one of those moments in IT, when you discover a tool, and a light bulb goes on inside your head, and you say to yourself “I’ve needed this for ages! This really fixes issue X”?

I’ve had that a few times (maybe I need to get out more?), and one of those times was a few years ago with a tool from Microsoft, named as only MS can: Windows Server 2003 Access Based Enumeration or ABE. I took it for granted that everyone knew about this great tool, and was using it. That was until I suggested to a client that it may help his corporate share restructering project, and he looked at me blankly. In fact the more people I’ve mentioned this to, the more blank looks I’ve got. So, if you’ve not heard of it you’re probably asking what the damned thing does?

ABE, is a very small download from Microsoft, that provides a piece of functionality everyone has been wishing for since, well NT4 in my case. Basically when you have a user connect to a shared folder, and they are browsing within that folder structure, if they don’t have permission to a folder/file then they just don’t see it. Gone are the previous issues of getting access denied messages, followed by helpdesk calls to clarify if they should be allowed in to Folder Y. Great huh?

As part of installing ABEUI.msiyou have the following options:

Configuration choice during installation

Post installation changes can be made through CLI using abecmd.exe or through a tab on the share’s property dialog:

Options for configuration ABE on the Property sheet of the share folder

Acess Based Enumeration requires Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. It’s not required on Windows Server 2008, because the behaviour is already included, but is not configurable. Finally

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – Video Walkthrough

Adam Bell — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:20:23 +0000

There’s a pretty good video walk through available on Technet by Microsoft’s Richard Smith.

It runs for 30 mins, and provides a very good example of setting up a simple lite touch install in MDT. Well worth a look if you’re new to this tool!

It’s alive …

Adam Bell — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:10:09 +0000

Yes, despite something of a hiatus, there is still life here

The move back to Australia, organising work, home and everything else associated with relocating 15,000 miles (again) caused more interruption than I originally imagined.

Now that everything is settled, and back to relative normality, you can expect to start seeing more activity from this small niche of the blogsphere.

Quick Tip: enabling a LAMP server on Ubuntu “desktop” 8.04

Adam Bell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:55:45 +0000

Something useful I noticed today is that you can install MySQL, PHP, and Apache onto the Ubuntu “desktop” easily with the following:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Found in the Ubuntu Community Documentation.

A quick way to get a development environment up nice and quick!

Weekly Poll #5

Adam Bell — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:12:37 +0000

This weeks poll is about 3rd party applications for PowerShell.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve omitted someone please drop me a comment. For details check the PowerShell Toolbox

Weekly Poll #4

Adam Bell — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:45:43 +0000

So due to an unfortunate hardware situation we missed last weeks Poll, but It’s been resolved now, and so here’s Poll #4:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Here’s the detailed breakdown of the features in the 2.0 CTP

Weekly Poll #3

Adam Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:43:19 +0000

A little late this week, but here it is.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve missed any significant options please leave a comment. There’s becoming quite a tower of power, but I tried to keep the list reasonably short.