Slide Deck (German): ITA-Workshop in Böblingen

I held a talk about VDI at the IT-Administrator Workshop in Böblingen. Please download the slide deck here.

R2FeatureTalk (German): Netzwerklastenausgleich (#26)

Watch me explain “Netzwerklastenausgleich” in Video #26.

Watch all videos here.

Beware of Hosting Web Interface on XenApp Servers

Do you host your Web Interface on one or more XenApp servers? Then I recommend you heed this article before changing your setup. You may well loose your XML service when migrating the Web Interface to another server. And loosing your XML service may result in an outage of your application delivery infrastructure! When XenApp is installed on a server running the Internet Information Services (IIS), the installer offers to activate port sharing between the XML service and IIS. What this actually means is that the XML service is not setup as a system service but as a DLL inside IIS.

Performance Monitoring Part 6 - The Link Between Disk Activity and Swapping

While writing the previous article about monitoring the performance of the physical disk, I realized that I should also explain why memory management and disk activity are closely connected. As this section started to get rather lengthy, I decided to publish the topic in a separate article.

Performance Monitoring Part 5 - Physical Disk

In the last two articles of this series about performance monitoring, I have introduced how to monitor the characteristics of the memory subsystem and the processor subsystem. Now, I’d like to explain why the physical disk is of importance to performance monitoring and how it relates to the memory subsystem.

Creating Your Very Own Office 2007 Ribbon - No Programming Necessary!

The famous German IT magazine c’t has recently published an article about creating your own and modifying existing ribbons in Office 2007. Not again, you may be thinking. But the article shows how a simple DLL helps without any knowledge of programming.

Performance Monitoring Part 4 - Memory Management

In the last posts of this series I gave an overview why performance monitoring is important and that it is not a trivial subject, that terminal servers are an entirely different matter and they require special attention and, in the last post, how to monitor the processor and related corners of the operating system. Continuing my way through the operating system, I’d like to take an extensive look at the memory subsystem in this post.

What does WoW64 mean for Application Management?

As Windows Server 2008 R2 is now RTM and is only available as x64 edition, you need to ask yourself how Windows x64 effects application delivery because sooner or later you will succumb. Although a general adoption of x64 is still a long way gone, many companies are beginning to actively pursue evaluating Windows x64 and testing applications on it. But considering Windows Server 2008 x64 on a very high level, there are pitfalls you need to be aware of.

Performance Monitoring Part 3 - Processor

After the introductory articles about the importance of performance monitoring and the characteristics of terminal servers in that area, I finally dive into the first and most obvious subsystem of an operating system – the processor. The processor or rather the processor cores are the workhorses of the system. They are collectively responsible for executing commands for each of the active processes. But they also switch the context between running processes to reflect the priorities assigned to each process by the operating system. In this article, I will introduce the well-known as well as some rarely used metrics to monitor the load put on the processor subsystem.

Who Needs Aero Glass Remoting? Although It's Cool!

The Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Team has release a very intriguing article about Aero Glass Remoting with Windows Server 2008 R2. Being a tech guy, I have tested this on a development system and I must say that I am officially impressed.

In the last years, I joined the ranks of those migrating to Windows Vista and, later, to Windows 7 RC not only because it was the next incarnation of the Windows operating system but due to Aero which is part of the Home Premium (or higher) editions.

But soon after the initial euphoria subsided, I asked myself who would actually profit from Aero Glass with or without remoting it? Consumers apparently are but this is not my business.