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The Solution Accelerator for LOB Application Consolidation and Migration provides comprehensive, lab-validated guidance that is intended to facilitate deployment of applications based on the Windows Server 2003 platform. This Solution Accelerator includes guidance for assessing and determining the most appropriate Windows Server 2003 technologies to be used for consolidating and migrating Windows NT 4.0-based applications in heterogeneous environments. It also includes in-depth planning and prescriptive implementation guidance for application consolidation using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and the Virtual Server Migration Toolkit (VSMT). Now available for download at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/techguide/msa/solacc/lobsa/default.mspx.
Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes a tremendous number of new policy settings, but there is an important issue around the use of .adm files that are shipped with the Service Pack. The .adm files in Windows XP Service Pack 2 will not load correctly on older versions of GPEdit and require fixes to be applied.
Note that this issue “only” effects administrative workstations – it has no impact whatsoever on the application of Group Policy!
By default, when viewing or editing a GPO in GPEdit, the timestamps of the .adm files in the GPO (stored in Sysvol) are compared with those on the administrative workstation (see KB 816662 for details). This means that the mere act of viewing an existing GPO from an XP SP2 machine will result in the new .adm files being uploaded to Sysvol - eventually used by any other administrative workstation (whether XP SP2 or not). Without fixes, this will produce error messages in older versions of GPEdit. This scenario is described in full in the following KB article which has just gone online: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=842933.
The KB article does not include a fix for all Windows version that this applies to as of this writing. Please check back regularly if the fix for your version is not yet included.
The Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Operating System Deployment (OSD) Feature Pack (Beta) provides support for SMS to create and deploy Windows Operating System images. The OSD Feature Pack allows the deployment of Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows 2003 Operating Systems to systems currently running NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows 2003 via SMS advertisements or CD based installation with the following features:
- Support for unattended image deployment to Windows Desktops
- Support to create and distribute OS images using SMS 2003 advertisements or CD triggered installations
- Fully integrated with SMS 2003 SP1 leveraging SMS inventory based planning and targeting, advertisement status and site to site content replication
- Built in imaging using advanced Windows Imaging (WIM) format
- Advanced image installation task scheduler supporting scripts to perform installation custom actions
- Includes Microsoft Windows Pre-Execution (WINPE) version 1.5
- Leverages the new Microsoft Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) 2.6 to capture and restore user state
Available now at http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/downloads/2003/dpfbeta.asp