I migrated the awesome intranet WIKI system Confluence from v4 on Linux to v5 on Windows. This was not straight forward (it was hell) but it’s now working great. As a JAVA based app it runs fine on Windows and it’s easier to support on this platform (IMHO). Some findings/gotchas: Confluence config settings All references to setenv.bat in Atlassian docs should be ignored. Making JVM config changes to this file has no impact.

Have a server app (NetApp SnapDrive 7) which installs a .Net service. The service fails to start and the MSI package rolls back. It fails to start because it’s doing publisher cert checking and the servers don’t have internet access via proxy. The workaround offered was to edit the app .config file and add Described in this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629393(v=vs.110).aspx And: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.permissions.publisheridentitypermission(v=vs.110).aspx Found this cert check can be turned off per machine in machine.

SQL Enterprise licence cost avoidance Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition licensing changed from per-server (and CALs) to per-core. This makes SQL Server Enterprise on our 16 core blade servers very expensive to licence. To workaround this licencing cost we bought 8 core servers with a higher clock speed. TL;DR - Save money on SQL Enterprise licensing by choosing fewer cores with faster clock speed. Benchmarked the new 8 cores @3.5GHz SQL server hardware vs our previous SQL server hardware.

My first trader VDI setup. A remoted desktop environment with two machines per trader, one keyboard and mouse, and up to 8 screens. Historically traders had two machines: One (trading machine) ring-fenced for Bloomberg and trading, and a second (non-trading machine) for MS Office, surfing the web, some 3rd party apps etc.. They would swap between the machines using KVM switch boxes. We switched to a VDI style solution where the trader’s machines are moved to the datacentre and accessed via a ’thin client’ terminal.

Our development team have adopted the AGILE project management methodology. Along with new continuous testing tools they’re able to implement changes much more quickly now. They’re now finding the next barrier to agility is us, the IT operations department (the ops in DevOps). We can’t rollout software as fast as they release is. Ideally IT Operations would be able to deploy their changes within a single AGILE sprint cycle (the dev cycle).

Installed SharePoint as a Google like search engine for documents on filers. Configuring it as a stretched farm (servers in multiple sites) with a SQL backend. This is overkill for a search site, but makes it possible to failover SharePoint to DR site an will be useful if it’s used as a doc library in future, or for SQL 2014 data analytics. Also SharePoint automatically shares the indexing work between servers in a farm.

Some of our the desktop hardware used by researchers was getting to end of life. Simulations within MATLAB required more RAM. Our desktops ground to a halt when simulations exceeded physical RAM and the OS began swapping pages of memory to disk. The desktops had 16GB and 32GB of RAM but researchers wanted 64GB. Upgrading desktops to 64GB RAM would cost £3000 per PC. £500 for RAM and £2500 for Workstation class hardware (Intel Xeon required to accommodate >32GB RAM) To pick a new MATLAB desktop hardware platform I profiled the application using SysInternal Process Monitor to expose how the app used CPU, RAM and the Network interface.

The Microsoft Migration and Assessment Planning (MAP) tool was originally designed to help you plan your migration to HyperV. But the reports it generates are also very useful for the annual Microsoft licensing true-ups. https://www.microsoft.com/map https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7826 It can now audit Linux too (with a view to virtualising it on HyperV/Asure) http://blogs.technet.com/b/mapblog/archive/2013/01/29/determine-linux-machine-readiness-to-move-to-a-windows-azure-virtual-machine-using-the-map-toolkit.aspx Next time you need to gather data for Microsoft licensing, check out The Microsoft Migration and Assessment Planning (MAP) tool.

Deploying VMs from templates harks back to the bad old days of disk imaging. But using “baremetal templates” ensures your virtual hardware configuration is consistent (choice of NIC, choice of array controller, disk is thin provisioned etc..). Then make a baremetal template that boots straight into WinPE for unattended OS deployment. Then you get consistent VM hardware config without maintaining a distributing OS disk images. Create VM template or factory image with WinPE on harddisk Create VM with required virtual hardware configuration

The traders with 6 screens and two machines each needed a more elaborate VDI system (see my rgs post). But for the back office, with a mere two screens each, I deployed VMware Horizon View. I’ve upgraded though View 3, 4 and 5 and expect to upgrade to View 6 soon. We have mixture of HP thin clients and repurposed PCs (Vmware view client as shell). With a little VDI optimisation Windows 7 will work great in a VDI environment.