Hyper v.nu - Introducing Microsoft MED-V

Editor's Notes

• #4: September 2009, Windows 7 is not even released. Between Beta and RC market share has grown from 0,1% to 1,0%.
• #5: Increase of Windows 7 market share over the last 6 months and was only release on october 22 nd . Windows XP market share has shrunk in favor of Windows 7. Windows' increase in usage share for February was almost exactly mirrored by a decline of Apple's Mac OS X Last month was also the first time since Windows 7's launch that Windows Vista lost more share than Windows XP. Even so, XP has slid 75% more than Vista in the last three months, not surprising since the eight-year-old-and-counting operating system is the most popular on the planet by a large margin, making it more likely that people are replacing XP -- not Vista-- with Windows 7. Since Windows 7's release, XP's share has dropped more than twice as much as Vista's. Prediction 10% in march.
• #6: • When planning to eliminate Windows XP, don't expect to deploy Windows 7 for mainstream users before the first half of 2011. • Test applications during 2009 and 2010, and create remediation plans to ensure you will not have to delay your migrations while you are fixing your applications. • Plan to eliminate Windows XP from your environment by year-end 2012. • Prepare budgets to deploy Windows 7 on new and existing PCs during 2011 and 2012, so you can eliminate Windows XP before it becomes problematic.
• #7: • The typical organization will need 12 to 18 months once Windows 7 ships until their critical vendors support the new OS, and they can complete their application testing, image building and piloting. • Applications that do not run on Windows Vista likely will not run on Windows 7. • Although Microsoft will support Windows XP through 14 April 2014, support for third-party applications on Windows XP will become a problem by 2012. • Skipping a release (such as Windows Vista) means that organizations will not be able to move to the next release (Windows 7) leisurely, via PC attrition.
• #8: You have budget for your project for T1 – T4. Now application run out of time and budget and there is no way back. But the time for testing and delivering applications is fixed. There are no shortcuts. The migration delay is a result of the application delay.
• #9: Organizations on Vista have an advantage because it’s more lilely that their applications will continue to work. OS Versioning Any application that specifically checks for the OS version will get a higher version number. Application installers might prevent themselves from installing the application, and applications might prevent themselves from starting. Applications might warn users and continue to function properly. Some applications might become unstable or crash The internal version number for Windows Vista® and Windows Server® 2008 is 6. The internal version number for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is 6.1 UAC Custom installers, uninstallers, and updaters might not be detected and elevated to run as Administrator. Standard user applications that require administrative privileges to perform their tasks might fail or might not make this task available to standard users. Applications that attempt to perform tasks for which the current user does not have the necessary permissions might fail. How the failure manifests itself depends on how the application was written. Control Panel applications that perform administrative tasks and make global changes might not function properly and might fail. DLL applications that run using RunDLL32.exe might not function properly if they perform global operations. Standard user applications writing to global locations will be redirected to per-user locations through virtualization. IE Protected Mode Applications that use Internet Explorer 7 will not be able to write directly to disk while in the Internet or Intranet zone. Applications might not know how to handle new prompts. Windows x64 Applications or components that use 16-bit executables, 16-bit installers, or 32-bit kernel drivers will either fail to start or will function improperly on a 64-bit edition of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. In this case, the following error message is displayed: When a 16-bit installer or application is launched, the following error message is displayed: The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher. Installation of 32-bit kernel drivers will fail on the 64-bit system. If an installer manually adds a driver by editing the registry, the system will not load this driver, which could cause the system to fail. Installation of 64-bit unsigned drivers will fail on the 64-bit system. If an installer manually adds a driver by editing the registry, the system will not load the driver during load time if it is not signed. GINA The user will not be able to successfully install custom logon applications. The user will not be able to log on using custom logon applications (using the Windows XP technology) in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. These applications might include biometric devices, custom logon UI, or virtual private network (VPN) solutions for remote users with custom logon UI. Session 0 Printer drivers, which are loaded by the spooler service. All drivers authored with the User Mode Driver Framework (UMDF) because these drivers are hosted by a process in Session 0. Application classes affected by this feature include: Services that create UI. A service that tries to use window-message functions such as SendMessage and PostMessage to communicate with an application. Applications creating globally named objects. Help deprecated Windows Help(WinHlp32.exe) HTML Help 1.x (HH.exe) Help and Support Center (HelpCtr.exe) Assistance Platform client (HelpPane.exe) HTML Help and .chm files will continue to be supported IPv6 Applications that use the Windows XP® TCP/IP stack, are unaware of the IPv6 protocol, or both will not function properly and might crash or create an unstable system. The implications of the strong host-routing model for the applications are as follows: Connection from a non-loopback address to a loopback address and vice versa will fail. Packets with a source address of 127.0.0.0/8 will not be allowed to be sent by a Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 computer on a network. Named Pipe Hardening Many services are running under lesser privileged accounts like NetworkService (NS) or LocalService (LS) rather than Local System. Under Windows XP®, an RPC server creates a named pipe, and the ACL on the pipe grants LS or NS Full Control. Microsoft Agent The "msagent.exe" runtime and libraries The characters Merlin, Genie, Peedy, and Robbo The Agent Character Editor All related Microsoft Agent software, tools, and documentation WRP Registry Applications that may have been using the now-protected settings as a data store or as a rare or unintended extensibility point In rare cases, the detection mechanism used to identify application setups may not recognize a particular setup and so the application compatibility mitigation layer may not be applied
• #11: When you are facing an OS upgrade you are required to go through a process of mapping your applications and testing that all of them work on windows 7. Although we offer a range of methods and tools to fix compatibility issues, in most cases, there is going to be a subset of applications that are not yet officially supported by their vendor, or might not work at all. Getting the application to work, upgrade to a new version that supports Windows 7, or find another workaround for all those application takes time. You will find yourself with a set of applications that are not ready when you are ready to move to Windows 7. That is what MED-V is trying to help you with.
• #12: Using Virtual PC to run a previous version of the OS, such as Windows XP, and on top of it run the applications that are not supported or tested on Windows 7. From the end-user perspective those applications are available from the start menu, just as any Windows 7 application, and they run on their desktop seamlessly, so there is almost no user training required.
• #13: Another common question I’d like to address is what’s the difference and another MDOP virtualization technology – App-V. It’s important to understand that these are not competing technologies. Nor is one replacing another. These are two different technologies that address two different use cases. Application Virtualization can simplify the way you deliver applications to the desktops. With App-V you create a package for every application that is self-contained and is isolated from all other applications on the desktop. This application can then be delivered and become instantly available to users on their desktops without any wait time for installation. We recommend every IT organization to consider App-V as part of their Windows 7 application deployment strategy.
• #14: MED-V is different from Application Virtualization because we do not create a package for one application. We actually create an additional instance of Windows on the same desktop. So that you create a copy of Windows XP on the same desktop that is running Windows 7.
• #16: User experience in Virtual PC has additional overhead for the user. It provide additional operating system with additional desktop, star menu, taskbar and etc
• #17: MED-V simplify the user experience and create a single desktop experience for the end user, by unifying the start menu, the taskbar, tray icons, etc
• #18: Before I continue to talk about MED-V, one of the common questions we get is how the solution I just described with MED-V is different from what was recently introduced in Windows 7 Pro – the Windows XP Mode. First I want to quickly describe the history of Windows XP Mode. Up until Windows 7, Microsoft had a virtualization software called Virtual PC 2007, that focused on enabling multiple OS for developers and IT. With Windows 7, we provide virtualization software, that is focused on assisting small businesses to run incompatible applications on Windows 7. Windows XP Mode, is a preconfigured Windows XP environment that is available for customers who have Windows 7 Pro and up. It allows those customers to manually install their incompatible applications on this Windows XP image, and run them seamlessly on their Windows 7 desktop.
• #19: However, while Windows XP Mode is a great solution for a single user or a small business. When it comes to larger organizations, where IT needs to deploy incompatible applications in scale, they need a way to deploy those virtual machines, provision and customize them accordingly, control their settings centrally and finally support and troubleshoot.. That's what MED‑V is providing – the deployment of those Virutal PCs in the enterprise. Another thing to remember about MED-V when comparing to Windows XP Mode, is that it will not require PCs to have hardware assisted virt (such as Intel VT or AMD-V technology) Not available as a side by side solution. Windows Virtual PC can’t be on the same box as Microsoft Virtual PC
• #20: It all starts from a Virtual PC image that encapsulates a desktop environment: an operating system (OS), applications, and any management or security tools commonly used desktops. One of the common questions is how do I manage this virtual machine once it’s deployed, how can I deliver applications to it, patch it, apply corporate policies to it, run anti-virus in it, and more. The recommended solution is to join each deployed virtual machine to the organizational Active Directory domain, and manage it as any other desktop. MED-V facilitates this process and makes it easy to configure and transparent for the end user. Then the virtual PC image is loaded into a centralized repository (which is an IIS-based web-server) that holds all the images ready to be deployed. The next component is the management server that enables administrators to take the images from the repository, associate them with a policy, and provision them to Active Directory users or groups. The server components, are controlled from a single management console. Finally, on the end-client, a client component needs to be installed using any standard software distribution that the organization has. The client has two roles: It authorizes against the server, obtains the usage policy, retrieves the image from the repository, and apply the policy to the local Virtual PC settings The second role is to manage control the Virtual PC session end-to-end providing a seamless user experience