Recently we started evaluating Citrix Edgesight, on a enviroment we are currently building, consisting of XenApp5 2008 x64 and XenDesktop 4 Farms.

After the installation of the EdgeSight agent, suddenly a bunch of applications running within a Java Virtual machine stopped functioning. Throwing the “Could not launch the java virtual machine” error.
These Java apps tried allocating quite some memory using these java arguments (eg: XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=20 -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio=35 -XX:NewRatio=2″   initial-heap-size=”32m” max-heap-size=”1024m”)

After some investigation a colleague (Hugo Trippaers) found out that there was only 0,9 GB of memory allocatable on our Citrix XenApp machines using the memtest32.exe tool. While our other servers happily reported 1,5 GB of allocatable memory (Within WOW64). (Physical Machine = HP DL380G6 with 48 GB of memory, uh should be enough?)

After some deeper digging using memalloc.exe, I discover some substantial differences in memory allocation between our XenApp Servers with the edgesight agent installed and servers without the EdgeSight agent.

XenApp servers with Edgesight Agent 5.2 SP1 x64: memalloc.exe with edgesight
XenApp Servers without edgesight: memalloc.exe – without edgesight

The main difference here is all the Citrix hooks being loaded, see below.
This apparently consumes so much memory that it was not possible for java to allocate enough memory.

For more insights on WOW64 look here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/gauravseth/archive/2006/04/26/583963.aspx

By default 32bit applications within WOW64 can leverage the full 4 GB of memory availlable, which is not possible on a native 32 bit system because of the separation of kernel and user space.
Applications need to be compiled with /largaddressaware (Visual Studio : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wz223b1z(VS.80).aspx) or patched using editbin (http://bilbroblog.com/wow64/hidden-secrets-of-w0w64-ndash-large-address-space/), to fully use the 4 GB availlable otherwise they can only allocate 1,6 GB of memory.

We will open a case with Citrix on this; to be continued.

Citrix hooks being loaded when edgesight is installed:

Address 61200000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\EdgeSight\Agent\Agent\Core\rsintcor32.dll
Address 61201000, length 18000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\EdgeSight\Agent\Agent\Core\rsintcor32.dll
Address 61219000, length 9000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\EdgeSight\Agent\Agent\Core\rsintcor32.dll
Address 61222000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\EdgeSight\Agent\Agent\Core\rsintcor32.dll
Address 61223000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\EdgeSight\Agent\Agent\Core\rsintcor32.dll
Address 61300000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\edgesight\agent\agent\edgesight\esint32.dll
Address 61301000, length 8000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\edgesight\agent\agent\edgesight\esint32.dll
Address 61309000, length 3000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\edgesight\agent\agent\edgesight\esint32.dll
Address 6130c000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\edgesight\agent\agent\edgesight\esint32.dll
Address 6130d000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module e:\program files\edgesight\agent\agent\edgesight\esint32.dll
Address 67f60000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\CtxSbxHook.DLL
Address 67f61000, length 58000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\CtxSbxHook.DLL
Address 67fb9000, length a000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\CtxSbxHook.DLL
Address 67fc3000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\CtxSbxHook.DLL
Address 67fc7000, length 7000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\CtxSbxHook.DLL
Address 6db20000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 6db21000, length 96000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 6dbb7000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 6dbb8000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 6dbba000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 6dbbe000, length 5000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.4148_none_5090ab56bcba71c2\MSVCR90.dll
Address 751e0000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 751e1000, length c6000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752a7000, length 3000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752aa000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752ab000, length e000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752b9000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752ba000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752bb000, length 6000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 752c1000, length 5000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\twnhook.dll
Address 75320000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 75321000, length 63000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 75384000, length 2b000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753af000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753b0000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753b1000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753b2000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753b3000, length 3000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753b6000, length 5000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4016_none_d0893820442e7fe4\MSVCR80.dll
Address 753c0000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753c1000, length 1d000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753de000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753e2000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753e3000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753e4000, length 3000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\scardhook.dll
Address 753f0000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\wdmaudhook.dll
Address 753f1000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\wdmaudhook.dll
Address 753f3000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\wdmaudhook.dll
Address 753f4000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\wdmaudhook.dll
Address 753f5000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\wdmaudhook.dll
Address 75400000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\System32\cxinjime.dll
Address 75401000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\System32\cxinjime.dll
Address 75402000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\System32\cxinjime.dll
Address 75403000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\System32\cxinjime.dll
Address 75404000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\System32\cxinjime.dll
Address 75420000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75421000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75423000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75424000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75425000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75426000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\Sfrhook.dll
Address 75430000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mmhook.dll
Address 75431000, length f000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mmhook.dll
Address 75440000, length 2000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mmhook.dll
Address 75442000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mmhook.dll
Address 75443000, length 3000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mmhook.dll
Address 75450000, length 1000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mfaphook.dll
Address 75451000, length 2c000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mfaphook.dll
Address 7547d000, length 9000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mfaphook.dll
Address 75486000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mfaphook.dll
Address 7548a000, length 4000, state 1000 MEM_COMMIT, type 1000000 module E:\program files\Citrix\system32\mfaphook.dll

Today I started to lock down the permissions the Xen Desktop Delivery Controllers (DDC) have on vCenter. There is not much documentation on this. Except for the kb article on VMWare Infrastructure 3 and XenDesktop which is lean and mean. But then i stumbled on this great blog post: http://theether.net/kb/100114

Which describes the solution to the error “This virtual machine could not be retrieved from the hosting infrastructure”
The solution basicly describes the proper permissioning for the accunts which access Virtual Center from the DDC and this even works for vCenter 4!

In VirtualCenter:

- Select View | Administration

- Click Add Role
- Enter the name XenDesktopGlobal
- Check Global | Manage Custom Attributes
- Click OK

- Click Add Role
- Enter the name XenDesktopDataCentre
- Check Datastore | Browse Datastore
- Check Virtual Machine | Inventory | Create
- Check Virtual Machine | Provisioning | Deploy Template
- Check Resource | Assign Virtual Machine to Resource Pool
- Click OK

- Click Add Role
- Enter the name XenDesktop
- Check Global | Set Custom Attribute
- Check Virtual Machine | Interaction | Power On
- Check Virtual Machine | Interaction | Power Off
- Check Virtual Machine | Interaction | Suspend
- Check Virtual Machine | Interaction | Reset
- Click OK

- Select View | Inventory | Hosts And Clusters

- Select Hosts & Clusters
- Select the Permissions tab
- Right click and select Add Permission from the context menu
- Select XenDesktopGlobal for Assigned Role
- Click Add
- Select the account used in the Logon Information properties of the Desktop Group
- Click OK
- Click OK

- Select the Datacentre that contains the virtual desktops
- Select the Permissions tab
- Right click and select Add Permission from the context menu
- Select XenDesktopDataCentre for Assigned Role
- Click Add
- Select the account used in the Logon Information properties of the Desktop Group
- Click OK
- Click OK

- Select the Cluster or Resource Pool that contains the virtual desktops
- Select the Permissions tab
- Right click and select Add Permission from the context menu
- Select XenDesktop for Assigned Role
- Click Add
- Select the account used in the Logon Information properties of the Desktop Group
- Click OK
- Click OK

Source: http://theether.net/kb/100114

I was pretty impressed when trialling Flash HDX myselfs… seeing is believing The movies below are not mine, but linked from youtube.com. It’s worth trialling yourselfs, you won’t be disappointed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Download the Technology preview of Citrix HDX Mediastream for Flash here.

While testing the Aladdin eToken (USB form Factor Smart Card) with PKIClient 5.0 on windows 7, I discovered that the certificates are no longer published into the “Personal Certificate Store”.
Which makes the eToken quite useless for now on Windows 7. I can however logon to the Windows 7 system using the eToken. But for all other purposes like VPN, website authentication etc it cannot be used since Windows 7 does not offer you to pick an certificate to authenticate with.
The Smart Card device forwarding still works, over RDP and also within XP Mode on Windows 7.

I dropped Aladdin an email and asked them for timelines and Windows 7 support, but until now, nothing but silence. I will update this post when I know more. In the meanwhile if you’ve got a workaround… please drop a comment.

eToken and PKIClient 5.0 on Windows 7

eToken and PKIClient 5.0 on Windows 7 with XP-Mode.

Related issues:

Cisco VPN, Windows 7 and eToken
Website Authentication, Windows 7 and eToken

From: http://www.pretentiousname.com/misc/win7_uac_whitelist2.html

List of binaries which are allowed “auto-elevation” :

http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/02/05/list-of-windows-7-beta-build-7000-auto-elevated-binaries/

VMware vCenter Lab Manager is the ideal solution for IT organizations who want to provide self-service provisioning and management capabilities to internal teams. Policy-based access control reduces administrative burden for IT, lowers infrastructure management costs and empowers project teams to deliver applications more quickly and with greater agility.

Deliver Higher Service Levels and Lower Infrastructure Costs

Lab Manager offers unique capabilities to simplify management of the internal cloud for dev/test:

• Self Service Portal – Provides on-demand access to a library of virtual machine configurations for end users while eliminating time-consuming provisioning tasks for IT by 95%.
• Automated Resource Management – Allows dynamic allocation of resources in a multi-team environment, enforces quotas and access rights, and reclaims unused infrastructure services.

Enterprise Scalability – Provides long-term return on investment with a scalable architecture for worldwide deployment, best in class performance and seamless integrations with in-house and 3rd party solutions.

We will try not to disapoint you. We have some very interesting projects comming-up which involve very mission critical XenApp and XenDesktop environments. We will post our hands-on experiences here! So stay tuned !

A stretched cluster is the practice of having ESX member servers in a cluster that are geographically separated.   The reason this is generally done is to provide the ability to dynamically move workloads from one datacenter to another.   Often, the customer is also considering it for disaster recovery purposes (“I’ll just VMotion in case of a disaster”).  Can this be done – ABSOLUTELY – but not considered lightly.

More here: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/06/the-case-for-an.html

Haven’t tried it myselfs so i’m curious to your experiences, please leave a comment, thanks.
Overview of latest xendesktop patches here: http://support.citrix.com/product/xd/v3.0/

Citrix is working on a hotfix to have XenDesktop working with vSphere 4. Currently people are experiencing issues with the Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) to communicate properly with the vSphere SDK webservice. Also the XenDesktop Setup Wizard, which automates creation of Virtual Desktops, seems to be broken.

A partial workaround seems to be availlable; reapply the hack to enable /SDK over plain HTTP and HTTPS.

Change “c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\proxy.xml”

The section should look similar like this:

<e id=”1″>
<_type>vim.ProxyService.LocalServiceSpec</_type>
<serverNamespace>/sdk</serverNamespace>
<accessMode>httpAndHttps</accessMode>
<port>8085</port>
</e>

The hotfix, when availlable, will be posted here. More info can be found in this support thread of the Citrix Forums

Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 could be used as workaround as well (The smart card is accessible from XP Mode!). But the following requirements must be met for this to work;

• Virtual XP Machine needs to be a domain member
• Have the CLM Client tools installed
• Have the SmartCard middleware installed.

Abstract:  The Apache authentication module mod_auth_kerb allows Apache to authenticate users against a Kerberos KDC including one from ActiveDirectory. Kerberos itself can be fairly complex to set up. This guide will attempt to show the specific steps required to make this possible as well as discuss security limitations specific to the interoperability matters. This guide assumes a basic understanding of Kerberos V and that the Active Directory domain controller is properly configured prior to starting this process.

Technical Analysis: Apache with mod_auth_kerb and Windows Server

Components used:

On linux:

• openssh
• openssh-server
• samba-common
• samba-client
• krb5-workstation
• krb5-libs

On Windows:

• Windows Support Tools

OpenSSH on Linux using Windows/Kerberos for Authentication

Putty With Kerberos

For the people who want to have a bit more insights:

SSH into your Equallogic group, login and enter “support”.

Be aware of the following message!

You are running a support command, which is normally restricted to PS Series Technical Support personnel. Do not use without instruction from Technical Support.

When running “cachetool”:

When running “netstat -i”:

IP Statistics:
4137170846 total packets received
183707 total bad packets drop
0 bad header checksums
0 with size smaller than minimum
0 with data size < data length
0 with length > max ip packet size
0 with header length < data size
0 with data length < header length
0 with bad options
0 with incorrect version number
0 fragments received
0 fragments dropped (dup or out of space)
0 malformed fragments dropped
0 fragments dropped after timeout
0 packets reassembled ok
4136987139 packets for this host
0 packets for unknown/unsupported protocol
0 packets forwarded (0 packets fast forwarded)
183707 packets not forwardable
0 redirects sent
5530887305 packets sent from this host
0 packets sent with fabricated ip header
0 output packets dropped due to no bufs, etc.
47 output packets discarded due to no route
0 output datagrams fragmented
0 fragments created
0 datagrams that can’t be fragmented

There are more commands to discover. Try TAB completion and mind the difference between “Bad Command” & “Ambigious command”. These commands are not shown when using “help” and most have a -? or -h option.

AGAIN: ONLY DO THIS ON TEST SYSTEMS AND WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’R DOING ONLY!… Don’t come whining here if stuff breaks…

The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219. In what’s perhaps a nod to the recession and increased competition in the software market, the prices are about 10% less than what Microsoft charged for the corresponding versions of Windows Vista when that product shipped in January of 2007.

More here: http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218101310&subSection=All+Stories

4 days earlier then I had in my previous schedule, Microsoft has now set July 13th for RTM “sign-off”

Sign off is the process where all divisions sign that they agree on the final code, which means the actual RTM build will be created a few days earlier, which is targeted on July 10th.

The general availability (GA) is set to October 22nd, this is when you can buy it in stores in a box or on new PC’s (OEM).

We can expect the RTM much earlier on MSDN, Technet and Volume Licensing download sites, probably a few days after July 13th.

Soon I found some discussion on this topic on several forums including the Lenovo support forums.

Lenovo has an official kb article on this:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70822&selectarea=SUPPORT&tempselected=5

The solution according to Lenovo:

Symptoms #1 and #2 were caused by a design change agreement between Microsoft and the audio chip hardware supplier. The new change drops the support of mixed-stereo function and direct playback of microphone. The change in design calls to have these function implemented in application level in future. The goal of this design change is to begin standardizing the audio industry. The design change affected all PC vendors worldwide. In the future, Microsoft and audio vendors expect individual applications developers pick up these functions.

The industry has been trying to protect digital rights for ages without much luck so far. And consumers are fighting this with all sorts of workarounds.
So I started looking for workarounds on this one…  since I am not trying to workaround DRM, but just want to create a webcast using sound from my PC. (In this case a demo of the Flash HDX Experience Tech preview of Citrix).

Some Workarounds I found but did not work for my T500 with Windows 7:

• Change driver inf file from crippled drivers
• Stick a cable between headphones out and mic… does not sound like a very good idea…mic-input is mono and will give you terrible sound.. and maybe even blowing up your soundcard (mic’s are passive devices)
• Buy an external Audio card, USB or PCMCIA… but we did not buy quite expensive notebooks to buy extra soundcards…
• Use Virtual Audio Cable

I tried the last without luck either because. The installation went OK but after the installation I got this pop-up:

Mmm, wonder if this kind of driver ever gets digitally signed. This also counts for Vista X64 versions.

Apparently other major vendors, like Dell and Packard Bell introduced the same issues. Dell however fixed it with an driver updated, since they only crippled the driver. But with Lenovo however it seems to be hard coded in the chip (In my case a Conexant High Definition SmartAudio 221).

Rumors go that this was done under the pressure of the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America).

For now I can only record my microphone sound… yeah! I wonder where this goes in the future… and if you have a solution to workaround this issue… please drop a comment, thanks.

The only workaround I found to record “what you hear” is to use Total Recorder Pro, which installs a signed kernel driver to record all sounds. I installed a trial which seems to really work on Windows 7, but I haven’t figured out on how to use this kernel driver to record Audio in other applications. Or use the Physical Cable solution…

More info here:
Lenovo Support forum thread
Ripten on Dell Stereomix issue

From: http://blogs.technet.com/askds/archive/2009/03/23/understanding-dfsr-debug-logging-part-1-logging-levels-log-format-guid-s.aspx

Ned here again. Today begins a 21-part series on using the DFSR debug logs to further your understanding of Distributed File System Replication. While there are specific troubleshooting scenarios that will be covered, the most important part of understanding any products logging is making sure you are comfortable with it before you have errors. That way you have some point of reference if things go wrong.

As you can probably guess, these posts were a long time in development. They are based on an internal DFSR whitepaper I have worked on for six months, and which went through review by a number of excellent folks here in Support, Field Engineering, and the Product Group itself. Except for the removal of all private source code references, this series is otherwise unchanged.

I’ll start with a couple posts on the logs themselves, how they are formatted, how they can be controlled, etc. Then I’ll dig into scenarios in detail, for both Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008. Don’t feel like you have to read and memorize everything – this series is a reference guide as well.

Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 1: Logging Levels, Log Format, GUID’s)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 2: Nested Fields, Module ID’s)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 3: The Log Scenario Format, File Added to Replicated Folder on Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 4: A Very Small File Added to Replicated Folder on Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 5: File Modified on Windows Server 2003 R2)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 6: Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 File Modified on Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 7: Microsoft Office Word 2007 File Modified on Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 8: File Deleted from Windows Server 2003 R2)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 9: File is Renamed on Windows Server 2003 R2)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 10: File Conflicted between two Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 11: Directory created on Windows Server 2003 R2)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 12: Domain Controller Bind and Config Polling on Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (part 13: A New Replication Group and Replicated Folder between two Windows Server 2008 members)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 14: A sharing violation due to a file locked upstream between two Windows Server 2008)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 15: Pre-Seeded Data Usage during Initial Sync)
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 16: File modification with RDC in very granular detail (uses debug severity 5))
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 17: Replication failing because of blocked RPC ports (uses debug severity 5))
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 18: LDAP queries failing due to network (uses debug severity 5))
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 19: File Blocked Inbound by a File Screen Filter Driver (uses debug severity 5))
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 20: Skipped temporary and filtered files (uses debug severity 5))
Understanding DFSR debug logging (Part 21: File replication performance from throttling (uses debug severity 5))

This toolkit has three tools;

xperf.exe – Captures traces, post-processes them for use on any machine, and supports command-line (action-based) trace analysis.

xperfview.exe – Visual Trace Analysis Tool – Presents trace content in the form of interactive graphs and summary tables

xbootmgr.exe – Automates on/off state transitions and captures traces during these transitions.

So what do these tools do?

Performance Analyzer is built on top of the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) infrastructure. ETW enables Windows and applications to efficiently generate events, which can be enabled and disabled at any time without requiring system or process restarts. ETW collects requested kernel events and saves them to one or more files referred to as “trace files” or “traces.” These kernel events provide extensive details about the operation of the system. Some of the most important and useful kernel events available for capture and analysis are context switches, interrupts, deferred procedure calls, process and thread creation and destruction, disk I/Os, hard faults, processor P-State transitions, and registry operations, though there are many others.

One of the great features of ETW, supported in WPT, is the support of symbol decoding, sample profiling, and capture of call stacks on kernel events. These features provide very rich and detailed views into the system operation. WPT also supports automated perf testing. Specifically, xperf is designed for scripting from the command line and can be employed in automated performance gating infrastructures (it is the core of Windows PerfGates). xperf can also dump the trace data to an ANSI text file, which allows you to write your own trace processing tools that can look for performance problems and regressions from previous tests.

More info:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2008/04/03/windows-performance-toolkit-xperf.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc825801.aspx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/E/6/5E66B27B-988B-4F50-AF3A-C2FF1E62180F/COR-T594_WH08.pptx

Download the tools here:

• WPT Kit v.4.1.1 x86 version (4.4MB)
• WPT Kit v.4.1.1 x64 version (4.8MB)
• WPT Kit v.4.1.1 ia64 version (7.0MB)

Click here to view the embedded video.

When we look at the competition in the IT industry there’s nothing that beats the marketing guerrilla we are experiencing in the virtualization space.

This is perfectly understandable considering that the vendor in control of the hypervisor is able to influence and in many ways able to control all the other companies that provide other pieces of the computing stack.
For the first time ever the absolute domain of the OS vendor is threatened by the hypervisor vendor so that the former tries to turn virtualization into a platform feature while the latter tries to impose the technology as absolutely independent.

It’s also true that compared to ten years ago the vendors have new tools to spread fear, uncertainty and doubts (FUD) against their competitors: paid bloggers, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so much more are available to influence the prospects and build armies of fanboys that are ready to overreact and defend their beloved products no matter what.

Nowadays is becoming increasingly common that marketing departments cross the line.
It’s much more uncommon to see a company that publicly apologies for a bad marketing action.

It’s the case of VMware which apologized for distributing a video of Microsoft Hyper-V crashing when its virtual machines were running a certain version of the proprietary VMmark benchmark platform.

The video, which was available here, was realized by the VMware Performance Team and uploaded on YouTube by Scott Drummonds, Technical Marketing Manager at the company.
Despite Drummonds is in the VMware Performance Team, where every aspect of the virtual infrastructure is taken deadly seriously, he didn’t publish any technical information about the test environment.

The lack of details unleashed a number of negative comments obliging Bruce Herndon, Senior Manager of R&D at VMware, to unveil that VMmark was executed inside Hyper-V virtual machines with unsupported configurations.

At the end of the saga Drummonds had to apology and Herndon had to admit that:

One of the more interesting emails I received pointed out that it unreasonable to blame Hyper-V for the collapse of these very large and very busy websites. Hyper-V’s stability issues would bring down individual VMs or small groups when the parent partition blue screened. I think that this is a reasonable observation, so its worth including here. I can’t say that Hyper-V was responsible for the MSDN and TechNet crashes. That would be for Microsoft to say, when and if they choose to expose the issue behind the outage.

Of course Microsoft couldn’t be happier to overreact: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

The few vendors busy in the virtual lab automation space (which include VMware, Surgient, VMLogix, Skytap and the almost died StackSafe) may soon have a big, big problem called Microsoft.

After wasting years not leveraging its huge developers community to spread virtualization in every corner of the world, the company is finally moving on.

Announced in November 2008, the integration between Visual Studio 2010, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 and Hyper-V 1.0/2.0 for virtual lab automation scenarios is now a reality called Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management.

The product just entered the beta 1 phase and has the potential to become a huge hit in the .NET world.

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