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Recently, I faced a situation in which I had to activate Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise which didn’t have internet connection. In the earlier days of Windows 2003 there was a Phone Activation option within the wizard. However, in the current edition Windows 2008 onwards the option doesn’t exist. I am going to show you the steps involved in quickly activated Windows Server 2008 onwards over the Phone using the following command line parameters: Start –> Run –> Command Prompt right click and “Run as a administrator” Type the following command to retrieve the Product Installation id slmgr.vbs /dti (A pop-up windows will appear with a long string of digits) Call the Microsoft activation centers as per your locations from this Microsoft Activation Centers link I used the India number 1800 11 11 00 or 1800 102 1100 Provide the Installation ID to the customer care representative and they will provide a C onfirmation Number (A long sting of numbers) Type slmgr.vbs /atp ...

Recently I attended the VMware Partner Exchange 2013 and there was a session called “Technical Battleground – View VS XenDesktop”. In this post I will try and cover the differences that VMware showcased during their session and I am going to add an additional column for my comments and thoughts on this comparison. The following table shows the feature comparison between View and XenDesktop: VMware View 5.2 XenDesktop 5.6 (XD) My Comments Uses only VMware Hypervisor. Use the power of vSphere 5.1 with capabilities such as Fault tolerance, VMotion and Site Recovery Manager No tight integration with Hypervisor and flexible with XenServer, vSphere and Hyper-V I seriously feel it’s better to have multiple hypervisor support. That way you have the choice to: stick with the current hypervisor the company runs and manages;   use lower cost alternative hypervisors; or use a hybrid hypervisor model Content based Read Cache (CBRC) feature available on vSphere using RAM cac...

What is application virtualization? I am attempting to answer this oft-asked question here. Besides application virtualization, let us look at various other methods of delivery too. The minor differences between vendors and their capabilities often confuse our decision-making. Let us see how my blog helps in addressing these questions and more. Let us first understand what the different types of Application Models are. Traditional Application Deployment Session Hosted Applications (SHA) Application Virtualization (AV ) The application is installed locally on to individual desktops and laptops, either using manual or ESD methods The application is installed on the server and only the screen pixels, keyboard and mouse clicks are sent back and forth between the server and the client The application is separated from the OS, aka profiling, and installed in a virtual container. The entire package is stored at a fileserver from where it is streamed to the client or the serv...

Last month I submitted an idea @ Nokia Your Wish is my Command Contest . Unfortunately my idea was not selected due to poor responses of likes on Facebook since the user was required to allow Nokia application to access his or hers Facebook profiles and my dear techie friends refrained from doing that and did not caste votes for me. On the lighter side I thought let me post this idea to my personal blog and see if there are any enthusiast to build an application which could be a solid Hit in the enterprise and consumer markets. Challenges There have been a lot of recent incidents in which group of data thieves spread across the country have been recovering data from old smartphones in which people think they have deleted all their data. But unfortunately these data robbers have been extracting people information and selling them to marketing\advertisement companies and adult websites with intimidating personal photos and videos. In this modern era all smartphones have a lot of buil...

  With the increasing popularity of Google Chrome browser and the capabilities it can bring with the usage of its Extensions I thought why not stream Chrome to the end-user devices using the Citrix Profiler 6.0  and XenApp 6.5. How to Profile the Google Chrome setup? The most important thing to note here is the normal Chrome setup is available in the online mode. Now the challenge is using the online mode you cannot create the profile for Chrome. The purpose of writing this blog is the older process in which flipping the registries and lengthy process was involved can all be avoided now. Google Chrome recently introduced a special enterprise MSI  package in which there are no hassles of tweaking the registry. Simply double click on the installer and you can profile the application. Download Link: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?msi=true . Using Citrix Profiler how to create the profile? I am going to attach a step by step guide at the end of this bl...

Chrome Remote Desktop Extension from Google Chrome Browser is a fantastic solution with which one can access their remote desktop/laptops/servers and also perform user-2-user screen sharing all over the Internet. The best part is the complete package comes for free and the only requirement is Chrome Browser and the extension installed on the PC/MAC/Tablets/Mobile etc. How to install the Chrome Remote Desktop? Go the Chrome Web Store located under your browser and search for “ Chrome Remote Desktop ”. It’s a 21 MB file simply click on “ Add to Chrome ” to install the extension. What are the most important features of Chrome Remote Desktop? There are two important features of this extension as follows. Make sure you have the Google Chrome Browser and Chrome Remote Desktop extension as a pre-requisite. Remote Assistance: This feature provides the ability to perform user-2-user screen sharing just like other screen sharing software available in the market. Click on the “ Sh...

I managed to install and test the Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) 2012 and I would like to share my experiences with the community. If you are looking for step by step installation please check RDS TechNet Lab Guides in this blog. I’m only covering new features, functionality and things I learnt. RDS Installation With the new Server Manager, installation of Roles & Features has over simplified. Sitting on one server, we could install all the RDS roles such as Connection Broker (CB), Licensing Server, Web Access (WA) and Session Host from one console to all the servers\VM in the environment. All the pre-requisites (IIS, .Net) are installed by the Role & Features wizard automatically. There are two explicit options under the new RDS Wizard - “Session Virtualization” and “Virtual Desktop Infrastructure”. See more details as below. Session Virtualization After you have installed all the roles such as RDS Licensing, RDS Session Host, RDS Web Access and ...