Globalize Networks blog

I finally (and reluctantly) upgraded my own production machines from Windows XP SP3 to Windows 7 this past month. (What with the new Android phone and the new OS, I feel like a new man!) We also recently upgraded one very small client to Windows 7. I have not yet come across any software or hardware that worked with XP but is completely incompatible with Windows 7. In fact, our client had an OLD 16-bit MS Access based application that ran just fine after I copied over the program files manually and stuck a few DLL’s into the \Windows\System directory. It made me yearn for those simpler times before installers.

Whenever we do an migration like this, it’s always nice to have the old system available in case something is forgotten.  In the event that we need to do an in-place upgrade, and we don’t have extra hardware standing by I like to use Virtual Machines.  (Note: When I say “in-place upgrade”, I mean a clean re-install of a new OS on the existing hardware.)

So the idea is to:

1. Convert the OS running on the existing hardware (i.e. XP sp3) to a Virtual Machine (confirm that it is functional and copy to a USB drive or network location)
2. Install Windows 7 on the existing hardware
3. Move the VM into the Win 7 environment, run it whenever a missing application or configuration is encountered

Now Microsoft does offer XP Mode based on their free Virtual PC product. However, their Disk2VHD tool to convert physical disks to virtual disks seems pretty basic. It’s not really a full P2V tool. If you don’t mind spending some extra money, there are plenty of good 3rd party apps for P2V such as Acronis Universal Restore.

VMWare is a more robust and mature virtualization platform and their VMware vCenter Converter Standalone product is an excellent free P2V solution. Also, the free VMWare Player actually seems to have more configuration options than Virtual PC. So I chose to use the VMWare products.

Now you may run into Windows Activation issues if using OEM Windows licenses because OEM licenses are not transferable. In this scenario where the VM is running on the OEM licensed hardware there does appear to be a way for VMWare to pass the physical BIOS info into the VM. You can add the following to your .vmx config file:
smbios.reflecthost=”TRUE”

One positive feature of Microsoft virtualization products is the lenient licensing. You can run multiple servers with Windows Virtual Server products and up to 5 VMs on Windows 7 when you have Software Assurance. But I don’t want to get into Microsoft licensing right now, that might be a good topic for another post.

What should we do about Vista?  The major hardware vendors are making it harder to get XP pre-installed, so licensing will begin to get dodgy.  Also Microsoft will end “Mainstream support” of XP on 4/14/09 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&C2=1173&x=13&y=13

1. 1. Personally I would prefer to stick with XP until the bitter end, but we will begin to see increased support overhead after mainstream support ends.  My main concern is the “Non-security hotfix support” which will require a special agreement with Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy.
   2. It makes sense start putting  together a roadmap to transition to Vista.
      1. full environment software and hardware inventory
      2. determine possible hardware problems
         1. Printers, scanners, business-card readers, etc.
      3. Determine software problems
         1. Compatibility of standard software
         2. What about non-standard, business critical
      4. set up training for techs and end users

At a large HMO I used to work for, they used to have a tough re-image policy.  I believe that if a problem took more than two hours to solve, they would just have the desktop support person re-image the machine.  This approach did lead to plenty of problems, lost user data, etc.  But, if managed properly it probably could have cut down on user downtime and support costs.

1. User data – My current approach is to backup all user data to the server anyway.  Sometime users will save files outside the standard folders (i.e. My Documents).  This HMO also had a clever script that would locate all supported data files (i.e. – .doc, .pdf, .pst, etc.) and back them up prior to the image drop.
2. Non-standard software – Once drawback to this method is that IT didn’t necessary have images that included ALL of the software required by all the departments.  One group required SAS tools that weren’t in the base image.
3. Software updates – This approach would work best if the images were updated with the latest Windows updates, etc.   Otherwise you need to re-run all the patches each time you drop an image.
4. User profiles – On the one hand you could keep the user profile on the network, but on the other hand sometimes a corrupt user profile is the cause of the problem.

I haven’t tried this method at the small business level, but I think that it would be very difficult to reduce support costs by taking this approach.