Gallery 2.2 (Double Double) is now available for download! In what has been close to a year of development, the Gallery team has packed this release full of new features and security enhancements. Major new features include: Downloadable Plugins which let you download, install, and upgrade modules and themes through the web interface; Dynamic Albums which let you set up albums based on keywords, ratings, and more; and WebDAV support for managing your photo library like a network hard drive with folders of images.

Read more in the official announcement and the press release

Filed by h0bbel at 04:30 under Computing, Gallery

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Google Summer of Code 2007 is on, and the mentoring organizations has now been selected. Gallery pleased to be amongst the accepted organizations this year too, along side a list of fine Open Source projects.

Get cranking on those student applications, it’s a great way to earn some extra cash over the summer as well as a excellent way to get started with Open Source application development and culture.

Filed by h0bbel at 10:15 under Computing, Gallery

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After the Windows Server 2003 SP2 release, I decided to give the Hotfix Scan Tool a spin, to see if it would identify any potential problems prior to testing the SP2 installation itself.

The first thing noticed was that the installation details on the download page are incorrect. The site states “Download the compressed file and double-click to activate it. It will then extract files to a directory you choose.” which doesn’t apply to this download. The installation routine places HotFixScanTool.vbs directly in %systemroot%\system32.

Secondly, since this is a vbscript, and it’s installed in the system path, you should be able to run it by double clicking it, typing the filename in a cmd window or directly from the run command on the start menu. In my case, that didn’t work and I got the following error:

Doing Start->Run->cmd.exe and typing in cscript %systemroot%\system32\HotFixScanTool.vbs did the trick though:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cscript %systemroot%\system32\HotFixScanTool.vbs
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Detecting if any updates in the Block installation list were 
installed on the system...

No updates in the block installation list were detected.
You can proceed to install Windows Server 2003 SP2

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

So far, so good but if this is an indication of the quality level of the rest of SP2 I’m somewhat worried.

Filed by h0bbel at 13:16 under Job, Computing

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All of a sudden, Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 is available for download. Check the Microsoft site for more details regarding what patches are included in SP2.

Microsoft has also made a Hotfix Scan Tool available than scans for hotfixes that will potentially regress after the installation. Be sure to run that to make sure everything applies properly. The tool can be run before SP2 deployment as well as after.

KB931940 should have more details about the tool (vbscript) but that seems to be unavailable at the time of writing.

Happy patching and updating.

Update 1: If you run, or plan to run, Windows Server 2003 R2 be sure to upgrade to R2 before applying Service Pack 2. If you don’t, you will not be able to uninstall SP2 after the R2 installation.

Update 2: Apparently you need to uninstall IE7 before installing SP2, as SP2 installs IE6. I have not verified this though.

Filed by h0bbel at 12:57 under Job, Computing

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So, there is a video from Microsoft floating around showing what Windows Longhorn Server Virtualization will provide:

Video: Longhorn - Windows Server Virtualization

As far as I can tell, all this really proves is that Microsoft is trying to emulate just about every feature seen in VMware ESX server and Virtual Infrastructure 3.

VMware VMotion is the same as Microsoft Live Migration and so on. Live Migration makes we wonder about Microsoft licensing restrictions on virtual machines. In one end Microsoft is limiting its users flexibility, in the other they are showcasing the very technology that they want to limit?

The only “real” benefit shown so far is the support for 8 cores, but then again how real is that feature for customers? I’m pretty sure VMware will provide that support too, as soon as it’s actually needed for other purposes than testing. Who knows, perhaps VMware already has that support slated for their next version of ESX, but haven’t showed it of yet? Longhorn is still some time away, and who knows what other vendors might have up their sleeves in the time to come.

Longhorn virtualization looks cool, and I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a great product but Microsoft has still not convinced me that this is the right way to go forward with virtualization. I am still very much leaning towards the bare-metal hypervisor approach, instead of bundling the hypervisor with the core OS.

Also, check out the new Windows hypervisor web forum, hat tip to Alessandro Perilli

Filed by h0bbel at 09:28 under Virtualization, Computing

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Citrix has made Presentation Server 4.5 for Windows available via MyCitrix, and as far as I’m concerned the timing is perfect. I’m about to redo our Citrix farm, and I had scheduled a pilot installation next week and now I can do that on the new version instead.

I’ll be sure to post more details about the new version as I set it up and test it.

Filed by h0bbel at 09:58 under Computing

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Gallery 2.2 RC2 is now available for download! This is the final release candidate before Gallery 2.2 will be complete.

A release candidate helps users like you test out new features and provide feedback so that the final version has as many issues resolved as possible. We have 4 different packages for you to choose from. You can read all about it on the Gallery Site.

Filed by h0bbel at 02:30 under Gallery

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Since Microsoft Vista doesn’t include Hyperterminal, like earlier versions of Windows, I had to start digging around to find an alternative. A quick google session later Poderosa was installed on my laptop, and it’s doing a great job.

The default Poderosa install doesn’t include connections via com ports, but there is a small plugin available that enables it for you. Poderosa is Open Source (Apache Licensed).

Give it a spin, it really helped me when configuring our new HP ProCurve switches here at work.

Filed by h0bbel at 12:52 under Computing

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Microsoft sent Mary Jo Foley, of ZDnet an email with an official reponse regarding the VMware whitepaper.

Addendum: On February 27, Microsoft supplied an official response to the VMware white paper, attributable to Neil. Here it is in full:

“Microsoft believes the claims made in VMware’s whitepaper contain several inaccuracies and misunderstandings of our current license and use policies, our support policy and our commitment to technology collaboration. We believe that we are being progressive and fair with our existing licensing and use policies and creating a level playing field for partners and customers. We are deeply committed to providing high-quality technical support to our customers who are utilizing virtualization technology. In addition, we are committed to working collaboratively with industry leaders to foster an environment of interoperability and cooperation that best serves our customers.

“We believe it’s better to resolve VMware’s claims between our two companies so that we can better serve customers and the industry. EMC is a long-time partner of Microsoft. We’ve extended this courtesy to VMware due to our mutual customers and partnership with EMC. We are committed to continuing to collaborate with VMware as we have been doing on regular basis. Consistent with this, Microsoft believes that we will be able to accommodate a mutually agreeable solution between our two companies and clear up any existing misunderstanding with regard to the points raised in the whitepaper.”

source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=283

While this seems to indicate that Microsoft will be looking to resolve the issues raised by VMware, I still see this email as nothing more than an attempt to further muddy the water as it really doesn’t address anything at all. Microsoft also seems to ignore the fact that there are more virtualization vendors out there, besides themselves and VMware. The licensing restrictions put in place by Microsoft doesn’t just affect VMware customers, and Microsoft should really try to tackle this in a much more generic way.

Filed by h0bbel at 08:46 under Virtualization, Computing

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In a recent VMware press release/whitepaper Microsoft has been accused of “playing dirty” and using unfair tactics in the virtualization market. VMware provides a list of areas where they believe that Microsoft imposes limits on their customers flexibility and tries to utilize their market share to force customers to not use other virtualization vendors technology and products.

VMware presents a very good case in that document, and there are a few key points that I really do find interesting:

3. De-Activation of Microsoft Virtual Machines on Third-Party Virtualization Software

Some Microsoft VHDs are now configured to de-activate themselves if they are run on any virtualization product besides Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server (for example, this Internet Explorer / Windows XP trial VM).

4. Prohibition of Translation or Manipulation of Microsoft VMs into Other Formats

Another restriction is that Microsoft’s VHD End User License Agreements forbid the conversion of the Microsoft VMs into any virtual machine format other than the VHD format. Microsoft is strictly enforcing their VHD format on users and ISVs as a closed ecosystem and not allowing compatibility or translation with other formats (for example, this Windows Server VM).

This is something I have experienced directly. Some time ago Microsoft approached the Gallery project, asking us why we were not actively supporting MS SQL Server as a RDBMS option. Our reply was simple; We don’t have the licenses needed for our developers to be able to develop for that platform, and the Gallery project is not in a position where we want to spend a lot of money on licenses for developers.

In the end we settled on using the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition VHD for our development purposes. That enabled us to get quite some testing and bugfixing done, so it has definitely helped the Gallery project, but the VHD is limited to a 30 day trial, which effectively means that we need to rebuild it every 30 days. The second problem with using it, is that you have to run it inside Microsofts Virtual Server software. Converting the VHD renders it useless. Again this means that every Gallery developer that wants to test their code on Microsoft SQL Server, will have to run this on a Windows based host.

Running this with VMware Server/Player, or even Xen, would have been much more flexible since we wouldn’t have to worry that much about which host OS the developers use.

This is a direct example of how the limitations imposed by Microsoft makes it hard for end users and developers, and thats even after Microsoft themselves approached us to have us support their products. Truth be told, we are talking to Microsoft regarding getting proper licenses for our development needs, but that seems to be a time consuming task and I’m not really sure Microsoft themselves really know how they should tackle that.

5. Licensing Restrictions on Server Virtual Machine Mobility

Situation: One of the most important benefits of virtualization is the mobility of virtual machines, given that an entire application and operating system environment can be encapsulated in a virtual machine and then moved from machine to machine, replicated to disaster recovery sites, and migrated without downtime from one machine to another dynamically through VMotion. Most virtualization customers have adopted and actively use capabilities such as VMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduling to balance resources across their applications and hardware, avoid hardware downtime, and facilitate scaling and responsiveness in their IT infrastructure.

This point really bothers me. Basically the new license terms prohibits movement of Windows Server licenses more than once per 90 days. Does Microsoft really believe that VMware VMotion users will abide by this? And seriously, what is the point? First they give me 4 virtualized instances for each Microsoft Server 2003 Advanced Server license I buy, then they try to tell me that I can’t move the virtualized instances between my physical hosts? I’m sorry Microsoft, but you will definately have to drag me to court, kicking and screaming, before I even consider taking that seriously.

As far as the rest of the document released by VMware goes, I’m going to leave that to the experts. Closed APIs in Longhorn etc. are beyond my current knowledge level so I’ll refrain from commenting on that.

Mike Neil, Microsoft GM virtualization strategy, has also posted on the Technet Windows Server blog commenting on recent virtualization buzz and sharing his views on where virtualization is heading. While I agree with Mike’s view that desktop virtualization isn’t mature enough for consumers yet, I don’t think that is a valid argument for the EULA limitations on running the home editions of Windows Vista in a virtualized environment. After all, the maturity level he is looking for can only come from mature virtualization vendors, and right now Microsofts actions can not be seen as mature at all.

I really thought Microsoft were beginning to understand the value of virtualization, at least it’s value to end users, with the 4 for 1 license deals and the recent SQL Server Enterprise license change, sadly it seems that this is just the somewhat random results of Microsofts repositioning in the virtualization field.

Filed by h0bbel at 00:03 under Virtualization, Job, Computing

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