Using Shadowing to Make Demos during Presentations more Comfortable

I love giving demos during my presentation. But I also love presenter view in PowerPoint because I can stay in touch with my audience as well as my presentation. Apart from that, what’s on my desktop is only my business ;-) As soon as I switch to my demo, I am in a difficult situation. When my demo is visible for the audience, I need to turn around to be able to see it. Altough I do not like duplicating my primary display for the reasons mentioned above. But now, let me show you how to use the shadowing feature in Remote Desktop Services. After shadowing had disappeared in Windows Server 2012, it is now back Windows Server 2012 R2.

Useful Features in Remote Desktop Services for Cloud-Based Labs

I have recently blogged about the cloud-based lab which I have been using for more than a year now. It is a single, dedicated server running all my virtual machines. With the update to Windows Server 2012 R2, I decided to utilize more features of Remote Desktop Services. Because my virtual machines are located on virtual networks on the hypervisor, I cannot access them directly from the outside. Therefore, I have always used the server as the first hop before working on the VMs. Although I am using remote management whereever possible, I still need to RDP into VMs regularly. I have now implemented the following features to make my life easier.

Network Teaming Issues with Windows Server 2012 R2 in VMware Workstation

I have been using VMware Workstation for my lab for several years now. Using Client Hyper-V just does not cut it for me because I have been working with different hypervisors lately and need nested virtualization. But I have not been able to get network teaming to work in Windows Server 2012 R2. Now, I have finally traced this to the type of network adapters in VMware Workstation 10.

My Lab in the Cloud

Most of us IT professionals are in dire need of a lab environment to evaluate new products as well as product versions. As I travel a lot, I like to travel light. Therefore, I do not want a powerful laptop because of it’s size and weight. I do not want to buy the appropriate hardware because of the cost. And I do not want to use company-owned hardware because I want to be independent of perational decisions regarding such an environment. Now, let me tell you about my root server.

MVP 2013 for RDS

I am really proud to announce that I have been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in 2013. It has been for the fourth time in a row :-)

Citrix CloudPlatform from a Partner's Point of View

When Citrix expanded their cloud-based offerings with CloudPlatform to embrace Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), they introduced new opportunities as well as new challenges for partners in the existing ecosystem. Although partners can tell a much more consistent story, they will have to invest to develop their consultants’ skill to offer Linux-based products.

Enterprise Customers require Enterprise-class Monitoring (Hear me, Citrix?)

In the past there have been many rumours about EdgeSight being discontinued. It’s less than two weeks to the release of XenDesktop 7 and now that Citrix is offering more and more insight, it’s time to take a closer look at the monitoring facilities in XenDesktop 7.

Offline Servicing of VHDs against WSUS

Every month we are hit by Microsoft’s patchday. And every month the same workflow fires: learn about updates, test them, approve necessary updates, check compliance of machines and manually fix machines with failed updates . But don’t think you are done. You still need to update VM templates so that new VMs have the latest updates. I’d like to provide you with a useful script to automate this important task.

[reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration”) Out-Null

How to enable all Wi-Fi channels on the US Surface Pro

Did you know that there are subtle differences how Wi-Fi works depending on the geographical region you are in? For example, you may have issues operating a US device in Europe. The device will not be able to see or connect to some wireless networks.

Multi-Homed Servers and Windows Firewall Profile

I recently stumbled across the issue that a domain-joined host applied the domain profile of the Windows Firewall to all network connections. It seems this is by design because the Network Location Awareness stops evaluating network conditions as soon as the domain membership was discovered. Read on to learn how to force the firewall to apply different profiles to different network conditions.