Wanna see something truly amazing?

It’s hard these days to really find a technology that blows my mind. Most of the stuff is normally just an upgrade or evolution of what is already out there. Sure some stuff is gee whiz but there ain’t much HOLY COW anymore.

Well take a look at this and I’m sure you’ll agree this stuff is truly amazing.

Firstly, watch the presentation of the technology at :

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

then visit the following to see it in operation for yourself.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

I would try and describe what it is but the presentation and the site do a much better job.

It isn’t really Windows unless

I’ve download the beta release of Windows 7 and just installed it under a Hyper-V virtual machine and started to play with it. (I have to say again what a magic thing Hyper-V is).

So what’s the first thing you do when you install a new version of Windows? You check that all the critical applications are still there. So I checked and

yes, thank goodness Solitaire is still there in Windows 7. Phew. Even better it seems like there a few new games on offer as you can see from

So, let me just test these ‘critical’ applications for a bit and let you know how I go with the ‘less’ important stuff in a coming post eh?

I’m sick of patching

You know that you’ve go to do it. You know that it could cause problems with yours and your customers systems but all good tech people know that it is just a part of life. Sigh.

A recent post from Susan Bradley detailing recommendations of how resellers should approach patching just confirms to me why I want someone else to do this. There is just so much time and hassle involved it demonstrates to me that we have built our technology on shaky ground. I acknowledge that patching applies to all software simply because it is developed by fallible human beings but man, you’d think it would be getting better. Even if you aren’t a techie read the post and consider that someone should be doing this for all your systems at least every month. What a waste or time and money but without doubt it needs to be done. Sigh.

The most likely reason is that because technology is so pervasive these days it means it has to support people who have software from pre-Y2K to 2009. That’s a hell of a lot of software and when you start mixing and matching it on different PC’s, that an even greater number of variations you have to account for and patch.

I can see why customers believe that there is conspiracy going on here between developers and IT professionals. Not only do they have to pay for the software they also generally have to pay for someone to update it and debug and issues that arise. To a customer this is painful and seems to happen on a never ending basis.

Again, it confirms to me why cloud computing is so appealing from a customers point of view. Any updates are applied on someone else’s hardware and they don’t have to worry, it is all part of the monthly fee. Sure, many resellers make money out of offering update services but I reckon many customers don’t have this service and many probably don’t want to pay for it anyway. It is always tough to sell a service that simply maintains the status quo. To be more effective maybe you are better off simply selling a repair service and making money when the client finally appreciates they should have done something. I’ll guarantee you’ll have their full attention then!

Honestly, this is all getting far to hard. Honestly, you gotta wonder whether these IT systems are really making any return on investment given the constant maintenance that is involved. Honestly, I’m sick of testing patches on multiple systems before I apply them in production. Honestly, I’m sick of the downtime they cause. Honestly, I want it to be someone else’s problem because it is all just too much work and it is preventing me from doing my work!

I thought I had updated

A few days ago, like many IT people worldwide, I received a distressed call from a friend about the recent Microsoft Internet Explorer issue that they had seen all over the media. What did they need to do? I told them that they had to run a Microsoft Update from their browser. Having never done this (first bad sign) I had to given them an idea of what needed to be done. They were much calmer now knowing what make then safe. After not hearing again from them after a few day I assumed all was fine.

I was actually visiting this same friend today so I thought I’d just take a look at their system to ensure that it had been updated. I was amazed to find that the machine was not up to date at all and in fact was still vulnerable. After starting the update process I quizzed my friend as to why they hadn’t updated. Their reply was “I thought I had”.

So what happened? In theory Microsoft Update is only for Microsoft to inform the user about patches that need to be applied to the system. That is UNLESS they haven’t installed Service Pack 3 for Windows XP! If that hasn’t been installed you’ll see a screen like this:

The top option, and the one most likely to be picked by unsuspecting users like my friend, is to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 and no other updates. So what happened is my friend pushed the top button, not reading the actual instructions on the page, as non-computer people do, and merely installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 on their machine and nothing else.

Was their machine still vulnerable? Yes. Were they likely to run another update? Nope. Chalk up another win for the bad guys. This time in my books it really is an own goal on Microsoft’s part. Sure Windows XP Service Pack 3 is important but it isn’t a critical update. Being the first choice on the screen it is what most users (who aren’t computer people) are going to select in their quest to be “safe” given all the hysteria. Microsoft updates should be for critical updates only and if you are going to put a message about a Service Pack make it the second choice. Microsoft, please remember, most people have no idea about technology.

Perhaps I should have told my friend to keep running Microsoft Update until there were no more updates. Perhaps they should have read the update screen more carefully. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Yet it only takes one maybe for an attacker to compromise a system. Once they get control, your only real option is to reformat and reload, today’s malware is just too sophisticated for any cleaning tool to deal with 100% effectively. To guarantee that your system is clean after an infection the only option is a complete reload. Who wants to do that? No-one but the odds are stacked in an attackers favour. Why? You need to defend your system against EVERY threat in Windows, Office, iTunes, Acrobat and piece of software you have installed on your machine. Not just Windows, the lot. An attacker only needs to exploit ONE SUCCESSFULLY and they can have control. So who’s got the better odds? It certainly isn’t you!

It further illustrates to me the divide between those that develop IT systems and those that use them. The void between the level developers believe users are and where they actually are is immense and getting bigger everyday. Wasn’t technology supposed to get easier? The reality is that is only getting easier for attackers to compromise systems. What does that say for a system we put so much faith in these days. Our common technology is built on very shaky ground, very shaky indeed.

How to crash SBS2008 (and Vista)

I came across a bug in Microsoft Vista that allows it to be crashed from the command prompt by simply typing a single command. Apparently, Microsoft don’t believe that it warrants enough emphasis to provide a patch. They say they will fix it in the next Service Pack (due soon).

I was then a little curious. If Vista and Windows 2008 (and therefore SBS 2008) are based on the same TCP/IP stack would I also be able to crash SBS 2008?

I made sure my SBS 2008 machine was up to date:

Firstly, I go to the command prompt as an administrator and type:

route add 1.2.3.4/240 4.3.2.1

[On my test SBS2008 server it did not always happen immediately but I could normally force the issue if it didn’t happen initially by removing the route via the command:

route delete 1.2.3.4

]

I then wait a few moments and

BAMM! Blue screen of death!

Sure, to actually execute this command on Vista or SBS2008 you need to run it from a console but what is to stop some enterprising person getting this to run on a victim’s machine? We all know users just love to click and install spyware. So even though Microsoft say it isn’t a big worry I’d be concerned, especially as there is currently no patch available.

Information about the Vista issue is here but ladies and gentlemen the same thing happens on SBS 2008 so beware. Roll on Service Pack 2.

My life with Hyper-V so far

It has now been about 6 months since I converted basically all of my CIAOPS infrastructure to a single physical box running Microsoft Hyper-V so I thought I’d give you a progress report.

In summary, everything has gone much better than I ever would have anticipated. Previously I had converted most of machines to Microsoft Virtual PC’s so I was part of the way there. Going to Hyper-V has greatly increased performance, reliability and flexibility. Converting from Microsoft Virtual PC to Hyper-V machines was relatively straight forward (once you remove the Microsoft Virtual PC additions). After a few configuration changes for network cards and loading of the Hyper-V client software everything was up and running.

Probably the thing I like the most about Hyper-V is when it comes to update time. I simply shut the virtual machines down and take a snapshot backup. I found that sometimes a Hyper-V machine freezes if you take a backup when it is running, so I now always shut them down. I boot the machines back up, install the patches, reboot again and if everything is working ok I delete the oldest snapshot backup. That way I always have a backup copy I can roll back to if there are issues.

Because my Hyper-V host machine is running a standard version of Windows Server 2008 I also need to update that from time to time but again I can either shut the client Hyper-V machines down or I can simply freeze them while I install updates on the host Windows 2008 server. All in all a much quicker and easier process than when I had to install updates on all my physical machines.

In a perfect world I’d run one Hyper-V machine for production servers and one for test servers, but alas that is currently not the case. So on the one Hyper-V machine I am also running Windows Server 2008 Premium (i.e. 2 servers) again without issues. I am extremely please that I can get all these machines (6-8 in all) running on one piece of hardware, which also saves a huge amount on power bills.

If you haven’t investigated virtual PC technology like Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V then I’d recommend you give it a serious look. It has greatly cut down my admin time as well as saving me on my power bills just to mention two things. There are some downsides like a lack of USB support but you can normally work around these and I fully expect these things to be supported in future releases.

So in summary, Hyper-V has proved a real bonus for my business and helped me do more with less.

Connecting to local drives in Virtual PC

When you run up a Microsoft Virtual PC chances are you are going to want to copy files from the host system on which the Virtual PC is running to the actual Virtual PC. This is possible by simply going into the settings for that Virtual PC and selecting the Shared Folders option as shown below:

If you then select the Shared Folder button over on the right you are able to select a local directory which can be mapped a drive letter on the Virtual PC. Perfect for copying files up and down.

It is not possible to use this option to connect a Virtual PC drive to a network mapped drive you may have on the local machine. It only works with drives that are local to the host machine on which Virtual PC is running.