I recommend WAIK if you have already tried out earlier versions and know your way around SYSPREP and Windows volume licenses. Be prepared for a somewhat steep learning curve, especially if you are going to try to automate everything for your deployments and have a large collection of diverse PC hardware. While you can’t beat the cost (it is free), Kbox or SmartDeploy might be a better alternative for these more complex situations.

You can download the WAIK tool here.

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The global recession forever changed the face of business; some would call it scarred, others would say its visage has become gaunt. Few believe that business will ever look the same again. Certainly, enterprises must run leaner now, and they must also run smarter and faster. This remains true even as the recession fades, markets regain their luster, stocks rise and hold, and profits return to corporate coffers.

A bevy of innovations have recently boiled to the top of the technology brew to assist enterprises in making their global operations run faster, smoother, and with greater profits. It may surprise you that Windows 7 is high on that list.

“With improved licensing formats, user-friendly language packs, and virtualization features that reduce workload on the back-end, Windows 7 simplifies conducting business internationally compared to previous operating systems (OS),” says Doug Miller, CDW Microsoft solution architect.

Simplified Licensing Becomes a Strategic Advantage

In the past, licensing issues were usually left to the legal department.  IT and business unit leaders largely ignored them. That’s because licensing was seen strictly as a legal representation of the deal and nothing more.

The global recession changed that view. Many businesses found themselves struggling against immovable restrictions that made it nearly impossible to cut back costs even when staff cutbacks left dozens to hundreds of licensed seats empty.  This problem was magnified over multiple licensing contracts with a single vendor to cover enterprise operations per country.

In a particular savvy move that recognized these multi-country licensing hindrances, Microsoft simplified licensing for international Windows 7 deployment.

“Rather than licensing their operating system country by country, as was the case in the past, Microsoft enables businesses to license one OS that can [be] used throughout the globe,” explains Miller. “Not only is this cost-effective, but it increases interoperability throughout the organization by enabling a standardized OS to be used company-wide,” he added.

These days, simplified licensing is a hallmark of enterprise strategy to enable faster, more unified deployments. It creates more agility in responding to global operational challenges.

Language Packs Add Personal Versatility in Multilingual Environments

Another power feature in Windows 7 is uniquely and ideally suited for enterprises with global operations and/or diverse workforces: Microsoft’s language packs.

“The language packs don’t just translate key components into a respective language; rather most information is translated, providing a much more encompassing experience,’ explains CDW’s Miller. “Also, businesses can install Windows 7 with literally just icons, no words at all, further standardizing the OS company-wide.”

“Finally, utilizing Windows 7’s virtualization features enhance usage of the language packs while simultaneously reducing maintenance time and cost on the back-end,” he added. “The operating system’s desktop virtualization functions enable network administrators to deploy Windows 7 with several feature sets, allowing the user to select any language he/she sees fit. This eliminates the need to install the application several different times for each respective language.”

It also means you can easily have desktop interfaces in different languages for different users on the same computer.

Centralized Deployment Speeds-Up and Eases Operations Globally

Another key advantage in using Windows 7 to enhance global operations is the operating system’s centralization benefits including its centralized management of desktop workloads. This also improves business continuity, say experts.

“Virtual Desktop Infrastructure has finally caught [up] with the competition in Windows 7,” says Anil Parambath, vice president of CSS Corporation’s Global Testing Practice.

“It can now become an alternate delivery model for corporate users to access desktops running centrally in the cloud,” explains Parambath. “Each user gets authorized access to a personal desktop, thereby improving flexibility for the user and also [for] IT departments who can take advantage of the centralization.”

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers each user access to a personal desktop from any authorized device. It works by using virtual machines hosted on servers. Beyond leveraging the advantages of remote access, it also enables users to reuse virtual machine (VHD) images to boot a physical PC. VDI in Windows 7 delivers a better user experience and offers better graphics, audio and local device support.

“User workspace management is the way forward to face every change in your desktop environment, now and in the future, at a lower total cost of ownership, without losing control and without compromising the user experience and productivity,” said Bob Janssen, RES Software’s CTO in a prepared statement.

Virtualization Powers Productivity

Indeed, Windows 7 virtualization tools present a powerful business advantage.

“Windows 7 has tools that ease the corporate IT to drive desktop virtualization as a means to reduce cost of managing globally dispersed user workstations,” says Amit Sen, director and practice leader of Business Consulting Services at Patni Americas. Patni is a global IT services provider.

“It has been a dream for the corporate IT infrastructure management team to drive down the cost of managing user workstation environments and drive down the cost of support by standardizing the corporate application footprint,” he added.

“So far, there has not been a significant cost advantage to go virtual with desktop environment just to replace the current workstation environment. But with the next refresh to Windows 7, companies will have the opportunity to go virtual with their desktop environments,” explains Sen. “Windows Virtual PC, which is included with Windows 7, will make this experience of virtualized desktop relatively seamless. This will enable applications currently meant for XP to run in a Windows 7 environment.”

The drive to marry the virtual desktop with cloud services will continue to grow.

“Many applications which used to be part of Windows will now have to be downloaded from Windows Live,” says CSS’ Parambath.  “This will drive more users to the Live platform and we will start seeing more integration between the desktop and the live cloud platform.”

There are virtualization tools beyond the desktop, too.

App-V (Application Virtualization), for example, streams applications on demand over the Internet or via the corporate network to desktops, terminal servers, and laptops.

“It enables you to transform applications into centrally managed virtual services (Cloud) and increase user productivity,” explains Parambath. “The BranchCache feature in Windows 7 will make App-v faster since it has to traverse the network only once, avoiding network traffic delays and centralization,” he added.

In coming days, Windows 7 will become increasingly central to the changes in business operations underway now on a global scale. Attempting to compete with an older operating system will significantly hamper many other competitive advantages.

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Microsoft offers backwards compatibility for Windows XP-specific applications atop Windows 7 through a free desktop hypervisor application called Virtual PC 7. This combination, called XP Mode, can work well for many “line of business” Windows XP applications that are somehow incompatible with Windows 7. Virtual PC 7 hosts a real and running version of Windows XP SP3 and gains real Windows XP compatibility as a result. For some IT departments and user needs, however, XP Mode might not be enough.

While XP Mode is useful for many applications, it doesn’t support certain kinds of peripheral hardware and has hardware limitations. Some computer systems may not be compatible at all with Virtual PC 7 (a test program for this is listed below). Support for non-Windows operating systems under VPC7 is… on your own.

The requirements for Windows XP are varied. There are applications, no matter what you do or how you might configure Windows 7 compatibility modes, that just won’t work correctly under Windows 7. Or the applications may work, but aren’t validated or known to be safe under Windows 7. Some use profiles that require Windows 7 users to run Windows XP for software testing, quality assurance, or development and compatibility needs. Whatever the need for Windows XP: When you need it, you need it.

For that WinXP-on-Win7 need, several distinctly different choices are available,  each with its own costs, benefits, and potential limitations. The options amount to:

• Dual-boot of Windows 7 or Windows XP
• Windows XP as a “guest” operating system
• Windows XP accessed through the use of virtual desktop integration (VDI) or VDI/Windows XP terminal services, and
• Windows 7 as a “guest” operating system of Windows XP—the reverse of XP-as-a-guest.

Dual-boot

Some organizations can use the simplest choice, which is a dual-boot computer system that lets a user run either Windows 7 or Windows XP. You use one OS or the other, but not both at the same time. Compatibility issues are usually minor, but many compelling features of Windows 7 in terms of user interface and Windows Server integration/performance are lost on Windows XP. User patience is required, as one operating system must be shutdown and the other started up between sessions. Compatibility issues are low for Windows XP, and Windows 7 issues are a function of vendor driver support. It’s a low-tech solution that can work where time isn’t pressured.

Dual-boot installation can be simple. Each operating system needs a disk partition. If a computer currently has Windows XP installed, you can boot Windows 7 and install it  on a free partition. After installation of Windows 7, at start time users are offered a choice of OS to load.  The two operating systems don’t ever interact in this scheme, and it’s used mostly for experimentation with Windows 7, we’ve found.

Manufacturing this method over a number of users may prove difficult, as it means re-sizing partitions (Partition Magic helps with the pain), re-writing the partition tables to accommodate Windows XP and Window 7 partition growth, and documenting the entire process—something that might be tough over a sizable number of computers.

Desktop Hypervisors

Windows 7 users can install Microsoft Virtual PC7 and Windows XP to be run by Virtual PC in a relationship called XP Mode. It’s likable because it’s free for Windows 7 Professional Edition+ users  (including the XP license) and is supported by Microsoft for this purpose. A system must have an AMD or Intel 64-bit, virtualization-capable CPU and appropriate BIOS setting to make this work, and Microsoft has a program that checks major PC brands for compatibility with XP Mode.

Once installed, XP Mode integrates in one of two ways. There’s a mode where the entire Windows XP session appears inside its own window (it can be expanded to a desirable size), or another mode that works in the background, called only when a Windows XP-specific application is started by the user. Applications integrate in this mode to the Windows 7 Start Menu with its own tree of applications that appear alongside Windows 7 applications.

For tips and techniques on using XP Mode, see Windows XP Mode: Can it ease your migration headaches?; IT Expert Voice has plenty of info on XP Mode.

The limitations of this mode are subtle. Windows XP applications called in the integrated mode won’t size or ”snap” like Windows 7 applications. Dual monitor systems only display applications in the primary monitor, not split between them. Windows XP in either mode is a hosted Virtual PC 7 session, and must be managed alongside Windows 7 separately. This means that anti-spam/malware, firewalling, and other security settings must be managed as though the user had a second computer system. Many organizations can handle this, as they’ve been managing Windows XP for nearly a decade. Admins face a lot of work, however, no matter which desktop hypervisor platform they choose.

Hypervisors such as VMware Workstation 7 and Oracle’s Virtual Box 3.1 go a bit further than Virtual PC 7 in terms of features and potentially, integration.  In addition to a discrete or integrated use mode, both products can provide additional admin-friendly features, including the ability to take guest “snapshots” (block/state backups of the Windows XP guest) and integrate more fully and transparently with Windows 7’s user interface.

Further management components are available as well. An example is the team components framework in VMware Workstation that manage fleets of VMware Workstation users.

These desktop hypervisors also have support for non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, and even Windows server guests as well. Windows XP virtual machines created by VMware Workstation 7, and VirtualBox 3.1 can also be migrated easily to VDI platforms.

Virtual Desktop Integration

Most VDI platforms consist of a host server-like machine that runs a microkernel hypervisor, onto which multiple virtual machines are added—in this case, instances of Windows XP (and/or many other operating systems). Microsoft and Citrix use a combination of resources, including Hyper-V and XenDesktop, to achieve links that allow a range of integration between Windows 7 and virtualized and located-elsewhere Windows XP resources.

A terminal service-like link is achieved between a Windows 7 machine and the server where a session is hosted. XenDesktop offers a variety of session types, including persistent sessions (that are likely owned by specific users), and ad hoc sessions that are designed for one-time, non-persistent use. Non-persistent sessions are generally used for applications where users sign-on, do something, finish, logoff, and allow the session to be destroyed. Human Resource benefits administration applications often use this “kiosk” approach to session use and management.

The resources used by VDI hosts and Windows XP sessions can be quite cost-effective, and often they retain a high degree of Windows XP compatibility for these keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) type sessions. VMware mimes similar functionality through the use of VMWare View, although Citrix leads in terms of the sheer number of session types (including one of Citrix’s long-time strengths, terminal services).

You can also use hardware device links, where the hardware device is actually a small computer terminal to a Windows XP session on a host. The hardware device may sit alongside an Windows 7 workstation, but may also be a session-initiating hardware device, such those supplied by MokaFive. And RingCube allows users to establish virtualized sessions through their vDesk product, to work on and offline, usually in highly mobile situations—while synching with a VDI session.

And strangely, it’s possible with third party VDI providers to run Windows 7 as a guest operating system if desired. There’s an argument that says that if Windows XP isn’t broken—don’t fix it, although a switch to Windows 7 is inevitable as XP starts to reach the end of its service life, or to simply put a toe in Windows 7 water.

No matter the reason for retaining Windows XP, it still must be managed as a separate operating system instance. The location of that instance may increase administrative overhead if it’s a guest in a desktop hypervisor as it must be treated separately from Windows 7 administrative support needs. VDI has become increasingly convenient for administrative support of what are now becoming ‘legacy’ or ‘life-cycled’ Windows XP applications, as virtualized hosts become increasingly easy to manage as well as isolate for security purposes.

Still, desktop hypervisors have strong flexibility for users outside the bell curve of usage profiles: administrators, developers, security analysts, and another popular group known for its hardware compatibility needs—gamers.

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Before participating in Microsoft’s early testing of Windows 7, the country club had used an unwieldy — and all-too-often unstable — blend of Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows Vista housed on Microsoft Office Server 2000, says Cory Strait, general manager at the Ames, Iowa-based club. Ames Golf and Country relied extensively on Jonas Club Management software to support its office and point-of-sale activities.

But the IT infrastructure frequently crashed, frustrating the employees and the approximately 150 daily guests. Cashiers in the club’s golf shop often were forced to manually note clients’ purchases, while pool-side and restaurant wait staff jotted down orders and prices, says Strait. Once the system was up-and-running again, staff then had to input recent sales into the POS solution, a time-consuming, tedious, and potentially error-prone approach, he says.

“It was a nightmare,” recalls Strait. “Systems would go down. Even the server would go down. Something from ME or Vista might crash the server or the server would go down on its own. Suddenly I have no POS anywhere, in any department. That’s a bad deal. To switch a business that runs fully electronically to paper, it doesn’t work.”

In fact, about 99% of Ames Golf and Country’s sales are based on signing privileges, not on cash or credit cards. So without an accurate POS system, the club easily could lose track of chits and hand-written receipts, he says.

“I think I potentially lost sales in rings and mis-rings, and also spent a lot of money on IT support,” adds Strait. “I’m not the computer genius but this [wasn't] working.”

Ames Golf and Country buys products and support from Heartland Technology Solutions. When the VAR suggested the club could be a Windows 7 test site, Strait jumped at the opportunity. Since January 2008, the club put the OS through its paces, relying on Windows 7 to power its operations. Based on that success, the facility now is testing Microsoft Office 2010.

Out with the Old

Recognizing the club needed a new server, Heartland recommended a server running Windows Small Business Server 2008. In addition, Ames Golf and Country purchased several desktop PCs and three notebook computers, bringing the organization’s IT stable to a total of one server, four notebooks, one tablet PC, and nine desktops, says Strait.

Once the requisite paperwork was over, Heartland installed Windows 7 on all Ames Golf and Country’s computers except the tablet, which would not run Microsoft’s latest OS, he says. Despite some misgivings because of the OS’ newness and the nervousness of being in a “trial,” the facility immediately began reaping the benefits of the single, new OS versus its prior multi-generational, multi-OS approach.

“I thought, ‘The reason we’re testing it [is] there are going to be some problems.’ But then I thought, ‘It can’t be worse than what I’ve been dealing with for the past year,’” Strait says.

His concerns that Jonas’ POS might be incompatible with Windows 7 happily were baseless. While there were minimal driver issues at times, these were easily resolved and caused no major problems, he says.

In with the New

The club’s operations now are at least 30% more efficient, says Strait. The boot time alone is dramatically improved, he says. “It just comes right on,” says Strait. “I used to hate it if I had to restart. That doesn’t happen now.”

Ames Golf and Country expects to realize significant savings during its peak hiring time, in March or April. The facility — which has about 15 full-time, year-round employees — hires between 160 and 170 seasonal employees each spring, all of whom require training on the POS solution. Since employees receive paid training, the club saves money and immediately boosts employee productivity by using a simple, easily learned operating system, says Strait.

“We are seasonal and we are a university town, which means we have about 80% new hires each year,” he says.

Windows 7 features like sticky notes and Aero Snap, coupled with its extremely user-friendly interface, should reduce training times by about one-third. “I think time-wise it’ll cut a lot, simply because it’ll be easier for people to go thru a module on their own. I think it’ll save me 30%,” adds Strait, noting that since hourly employees are paid to attend training, these features will directly reduce the club’s annual costs.

As he travels around the club’s many acres and facilities, Strait relies on his notebook to stay connected with staff and members. Since installing Windows 7, he has gained about a 50% increase in the battery life on his laptop, says Strait. This gives him more freedom to move around the club without worrying about losing touch, he says.

Strait, who has worked at Ames Golf and Country since 2007 and was named general manager in 2008, has seen a number of upper management and support staff leave the facility. Without on-staff people to turn to, Strait previously spent countless hours tracking down prior years’ reports, documentation, and other data vital to current operations. Windows 7’s search capabilities have eliminated this nightmare, he says. Although difficult to quantify in saved hours and dollars, the ability to effortlessly and quickly search through years’ worth of data had boosted his productivity, says Strait. Previously, he spent hours opening and closing documents, in search of the one he wanted.

“Having had so many operating systems, the old server, so much turnover — even in management at one time — and trying to find files was next to impossible,” he recalls. “Windows 7 searches and it finds. It’s hard to put a number on that, because that’s a lot of stuff I won’t be doing this year. I can’t even put an amount of time it saved me last year. And that’s great.”

The OS’ Problem Step Recorder is another valuable tool, both in training new employees and for communicating problems with Heartland, says Strait. By capturing a user’s movements, Ames Golf and Country sends clear, concise details to Heartland, thereby saving the club support costs, he notes.

Other time-savers include Snap, Peek, and Shake, which allow Strait to simultaneously juggle the multiple documents required to oversee the golf course, tennis courts, golf, and tennis pros’ schedules, pools, bars, and restaurants, he says. And he is able to more easily and speedily switch between spreadsheets or Word documents via the task bar’s Jump List and Pinning.

“Time is definitely money,” says Strait, “and Windows 7 saves us a lot of time.”

With Windows 7, Ames Golf and Country scored a hole in one.

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Unlike the PC Mover and Zinstall approaches, they are designed for large-scale deployments of hundreds or more PCs. A more complete video that describes the process by one of Kace’s techs can be found here.

This screencast demonstrates and evaluates the software.

About This Product

KBOX 2100 Systems Deployment Appliance
Kace Systems Management Inc.
Mountain View, Calif.
877-646-8366
$4,500 for 100 nodes, additional nodes $13
$39,000 for unlimited nodes

If you’re an old tech coot like me, you know that the “Imminent Death of the Internet” has been  predicted for decades now. While the Internet is in no danger of dying anytime soon, the days of relying on the old core TCP/IP protocol IPv4 do appear to be coming to an end.

After years of delaying it with techniques like Network Address Translation (NAT), we’re finally really running out of IPv4 addresses. Major ISPs like Comcast, and Web sites such as YouTube now support IPv6. This time around, IPv6 really is getting attention in corporate networks and the Internet. Fortunately for the enterprise desktop, Windows 7 is also ready.

Early Windows versions of IPv6 were, ah, crude. Though that’s not to say that Windows 7 does a perfect job with IPv6 even now. Certainly, the people who appear to have IPv6 connectivity but no network access have learned this the hard way.

As Scott Hogg, the director of advanced technology services for Global Technology Resources, pointed out in a NetworkWorld article, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 both still use “random interface identifiers when creating its IPv6 addresses.”

That’s not how IPv6 addressing should work. Instead, an IPv6 device should autoconfigure its address with the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) to determine their network and interface identifier and to form the computer’s 128-bit IPv6 address. The details of how addresses should be assigned are in these documents:

• IETF RFC 2373, IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture
• IETF RFC 2464, Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Ethernet Networks
• RFC 4941, Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6

For some reason, Microsoft mixed up how the interface identifier should be created even though Microsoft engineers helped write RFC 4941. Be that as it may, you can force Windows 7 to use the correct method by issuing the following command from a DOS prompt:

netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled

I recommend that you run this as an automated command on all your new Windows 7 installations. Doing so avoids any possible IPv6 network problems with  other Windows 7 systems and with IPv6 address-compliant networking equipment such as Cisco Catalyst Switches.

That out of the way, Windows 7 does quite well with IPv6. For starters, Windows 7 comes with two networking programs that rely on IPv6. These are DirectAccess, Microsoft’s IPv6 enabled Virtual Private Networking (VPN) program, and the small group friendly HomeGroup.

If your networking equipment is IPv6 ready, then Windows 7 is ready as well. However, you may find that your gateway, routers, and switches aren’t IPv6 ready. The only long-term solution to this problem is to get network hardware that works with IPv6.

I know, I know, just what you need: another mandatory hardware update. Many businesses haven’t seen a compelling reason to upgrade to IPv6. With the upcoming shortage of IPv4 addresses on the Internet, that’s about to change. While your core business can continue to use its existing addresses, by the fall of 2012, according to the most optimistic estimates, we’ll be out of IPv4 addresses.

While this shortage doubtlessly will be mitigated by the creation of a market for TCP/IP addresses similar to the ones that currently exist for domain names, the bottom line is that you’re going to find it increasingly difficult and more expensive to get additional blocks of IPv4 addresses for new offices and branches. In short, you’ll have no choice but to upgrade to IPv6.

In the meantime, though, you’re much more likely to run into problems with non-IPv6 compliant network equipment. To get around this, you have several choices (besides begging for more budget from the CFO).

First, you can use Teredo. This is an IPv6 transition technology that provides address assignment and tunneling for IPv6 traffic. Teredo does this by hiding  IPv6 packets within IPv4 User Datagram Protocol (UDP) messages.

In practice,  on Windows 7 systems you do this by enabling the Microsoft Teredo Tunneling Adapter device from the Device Manager (or installing it, if for some reason it isn’t there). After opening Device Manager, click on the “View” menu and select “Show Hidden Devices.”  Next, scroll down to locate “Network Adapters.” There, you’ll find the  Teredo Network Adapter. Right click on it and select “Update Driver” to make sure you have the most current version. After a reboot, Teredo should be working.

If that doesn’t get Teredo underway, you may also need to enable the Teredo Adapter. To do that, open an elevated command prompt and run :

netsh interface ipv6 set teredo client

That should get your Windows 7 system working with Teredo.

Of course, if you have a cranky IPv4-specific gateway, you may still need to set up a Teredo server or relay to make it out of your IPv6 intranet to the Internet. Fortunately, Windows Server 2008 R2 with DirectAccess up and running provides a Teredo server by default. For more on that, and how to work with Teredo, I highly recommend the Technet Magazine article, Support for IPv6 in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Of course, if worst comes to worst you can always disable IPv6. While you can do this with regedit, it’s easier to just turn it off by just going to the Network and Sharing Center and from there selecting “Change adapter settings.” Once at the Network Connections window, pick the “Local Area Connection” for the network card, then “Change settings of this connection,” un-check the box for “Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6).” Close all the windows and reboot.

Just be sure to remember one thing: Before you replace that Windows 7 PC with a new computer, you are likely to need to reactivate IPv6. Whether or not you’re ready, IPv6 is coming to the Internet. Fortunately, for you, Windows 7 is already set up for IPv6. Alas, now if we could only say that about the rest of our networking equipment!

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The first dual-core desktop processors appeared on the market in early 2005, with the release of the Intel Pentium D and AMD Athlon 64 X2. Dual core processors were really just the logical result of CPU process technology allowing Intel and AMD to make CPUs so small they could stick two into one package. For years, it was possible to get a dual processor computer, but that merely meant two physical processors were under the hood, and hence drew twice the power.

Windows XP, the prevailing operating system on the market when dual-core processors were first released, had basic multicore support. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 were capable of seeing two logical processors per core as Core0 and Core1 and it was possible to do something called Process Affinity, where the end user told an application to run on one specific core. The vast majority of times, applications defaulted to the first core, but in some cases, especially games, one application would try to run on two cores and it would not run very well at all.

Microsoft addressed the dual-core issue with Windows Vista, adding a number of features in the deep plumbing of the operating system to prevent conflicts, lock-ups, or other problems. Multi-core was still emerging as a technology and the development cycle for Windows Vista was, shall we say, chaotic, but some important features were added.

There is, of course, only so much that Microsoft can do in terms of multi-core support. The true benefits of multi-core can only be realized at the application layer, which Microsoft is supporting by heavily modifying its Visual Studio IDE and various SDKs to support multi-threading wherever possible.

Intel has also provided its own tools to examine code and to look for areas where an application can be multithreaded, and both Intel and AMD provide their own developer support along with Microsoft. But in the end, all the work by Intel and AMD on the CPU and Microsoft on the OS will not make Adobe Photoshop multi-threaded. That’s Adobe’s job.

The task of developing multi-threaded applications will get easier when Microsoft ships Visual Studio 2010, as the upcoming release of the software development environment will offer many improvements in parallel programming support. Among them are a Task Parallel Library to run repetitive tasks in parallel when possible, Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ) for parallel data operations, Microsoft Concurrency Runtime for building scheduling and resource management into the application, Asynchronous Agents Library, and the Parallel Pattern Library for C++ users.

Starting With Vista

Still, there are things Microsoft can do. Starting with Windows XP and then expanding in Vista, Microsoft introduced support for nonuniform memory architecture (NUMA) systems (AMD Opteron and Intel Nehalem families), pervasive prefetching, an improved DLL loader that creates new processes faster than Windows XP, and an improved thread pool. Vista could support multiple pools per process, something XP couldn’t do.

Vista has something called “anti-convoy features” to keep performance from degrading when a large number of threads were blocked, waiting for resources. You probably have encountered these. The whole system would freeze for several seconds and not respond to any input, then suddenly, bam, the system takes off again, running all of its processes. That was a convoy locking up everything.

If ten threads needed a resource and only nine got it but one thread failed to acquire the resource, all ten threads would lock. Vista ended this by letting threads that need a resource get that resource, then send the thread that couldn’t get a resource back to the end of the line.

Windows 7 Builds On This

Windows 7 was developed in parallel with Windows Server 2008 Release 2. The two share the same kernel and thus many features. One of them, for example, is support for up to 256 cores. AMD and Intel are at the six/eight-core range, but in a system with multiple processors, that adds up fast. Intel intends its new Nehalem-EX processor, with eight cores, to be used in servers with four sockets. That’s 32 cores and 64 threads.

Windows XP was built back in the time of Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP), where multiple cores in a CPU were seen as separate physical CPUs, as were multithreaded CPUs like the new Core i5/i7. Memory was seen as a single fabric. Windows 7, with its NUMA concepts, sees cores as functional nodes, manages threads between the nodes, and allows for partitioning or allocating memory between cores.

This led to all kinds of headaches involving overwrites or conflicts over the same memory allocation memory. NUMA lets a portion of memory be allocated to a core. Switching memory from one core to another, though, isn’t trivial, but with Windows Vista, Microsoft added C functions to copy memory from one allocation to another.

As much as Windows 7 performs well on an older processor, you will see real benefits of Windows 7 if you get a newer computer with an Intel Core i5/i7 processor or AMD processor, since they both have NUMA support. In fact, benchmarks and tests have shown dramatic improvement when run on a Core i7 system instead of a computer with an older Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad processor.

Power management and core management is also improved. Intel’s Nehalem and AMD’s Phenom architectures actively monitor their cores and shut them down to conserve power. Prior to Windows 7, though, the OS ran threads wherever a core was available. This made it harder for quad-core machines to shut down idle cores, for example. Applications may create threads, but they don’t assign them to cores; that’s the operating system’s job.

So with Windows 7, there is a concerted effort to assign cores to an execution pipeline, such as a core. Now, threads get sent back to the same core where the last threads for that application executed, so an application more closely sticks with one core. This lets idle cores shut down and makes for smarter processor affinity. Instead of throwing threads at every core, it just goes to one.

Windows 7 also has something called “SMT parking” or “core parking.” Both are used interchangeably. This is a feature developed in partnership with Intel, which supports the Hyper-Threading (HT) in the new Core i5/i7s. In addition to managing the threads in cores, Windows 7 also manages the HT in the Intel chips. AMD has chosen not to use HT technology, so you won’t get the benefit on an AMD computer.

The OS recognizes which systems have Hyper-Threading and schedules for performance and thread management accordingly. It also recognizes hyperthreads and physical threads to make decisions on where to assign threads; it migrates threads to an available core at the appropriate time when necessary.

Windows 7 improved on the anti-convoy features, which benefits both Intel and AMD systems. In testing Vista, Microsoft found that a lot of lockups and system freezes came from multiple applications trying to access the Graphics Device Interface (GDI). In Vista, a single application could lock the whole system while it waited for another thread or application to let it access the GDI and redraw the system.

The Windows 7 kernel features a new GDI and improved memory allocation. Microsoft rearchitected the GDI’s internal synchronization mechanism, ending exclusive locks on the GDI by one thread. It adds a little overhead, but it keeps your whole system from freezing while multiple applications fight for the GDI — a worthwhile tradeoff.

Multi-core Windows PCs benefit because more than one application can be rendered by the GDI layer at the same time. In fact, each core can do a concurrent GDI rendering, and the GDI stack can send multiple requests out to the GPU for rendering work.

Now that multicore has become a permanent fixture in computing – not just desktops and servers, but even hand-held devices, as Intel’s Atom processor and ARM’s embedded Coretex processor are both available in dual-core designs – operating systems are being made more and more multi-core aware.

But always remember that the operating system is the program loaded and task handler. Your applications won’t be made multithreaded by Windows; that’s something the developers have to do, and they are, but that’s a whole other story.

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In Windows XP, volume licensed versions of the operating system did not require activation, just a valid license key. However, Windows 7 must be activated by Microsoft within 30 days of first use, just as individually-purchased retail instances of its operating systems have been for many years. Furthermore, in most cases they also must be revalidated at regular intervals. I won’t bore you with the rationale behind this; you can find it explained in great detail on the Microsoft website). Suffice it to say that this process is becoming pervasive in Microsoft (and other vendors’) products. Users will even have to validate Office 2010 — a first for that application suite.

As a volume licensing customer, you have a couple of choices of activation methodology. Every computer does not necessarily need to connect to Microsoft’s authentication servers to activate, and one size definitely does not fit all.

Here are your choices, and an overview of how it all works.

Microsoft offers two activation methods for customers with volume agreements: Key Management Server (KMS) and Multiple Activation Key (MAK). Microsoft’s default method, and the one it recommends, is KMS, but there are conditions to fulfill before KMS works.

First, you need, yes, a server. Microsoft says the KMS application is sufficiently lightweight to coexist with other services; it does not need a dedicated system. It  actually runs on a workstation, but can only activate client OSes in that case. If the network environment has Dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS) and allows computers to publish services automatically, deploying a KMS host can be straightforward, although the admin needs to open a new TCP port (1688) on the firewall if not using the Windows Firewall (it has a configurable KMS exception available).

Next, you need 25 or more Windows 7 volume licensed clients with a Windows marker in the BIOS (ask your OEM if in doubt) or five or more Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. KMS doesn’t even try to activate a single computer until those thresholds are reached. Both physical and virtual machines count towards the threshold.

Clients use anonymous RPCs to commune with the KMS server sending a single request packet. The server responds with the count of machines requesting activation so far. If that count meets or exceeds the threshold for the client OS, activation occurs. If not, the client queries the server every two hours until it’s activated.

Activation is valid for 180 days, then the client goes through the process again. If the PC (or server) can’t phone home, Houston, you have a problem, and you might need to consider MAK activation. You may also have a challenge if sufficient hardware is changed at one time to make the activated system appear to be a different machine. That will require reactivation, perhaps even a call to convince Microsoft that it is, indeed, the same computer you licensed.

MAK was designed for computers that aren’t continuously connected to a network, or for organizations whose computer count doesn’t meet the KMS thresholds. As its name suggests, it’s a license key that may be used a specific number of times to activate Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 machines through Microsoft’s hosted activation servers. The MAK count is based on (but does not exactly equal) the customer’s volume license. Unlike KMS activations, MAK activations do not expire.

MAK activations can occur in one of two ways: Each computer can directly connect to Microsoft, or a MAK Proxy can submit requests for multiple machines. The Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) lets administrators configure how the activation requests are accumulated and sent, receives and distributes activation codes from Microsoft, and caches the codes so a re-imaged machine can be automatically re-activated. VAMT also enables migrations between MAK and KMS activation.

Totally disconnected computers aren’t hung out to dry, however. Administrators can perform MAK activations over the phone. And for isolated, high-security networks with sufficient computers, Microsoft recommends using a KMS, itself activated by phone, to securely activate machines within that network. Failing that, a local VAMT server can discover the computers using AD DS, computer name, IP address, or membership in a workgroup. It can then use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to install MAK product keys and CIDs and to retrieve status on MAK clients.

For test, development, and lab environments, even Microsoft realizes that activation may be an expensive exercise in futility, since systems are regularly built and rebuilt. In these cases, it recommends that, if the machine is to be rebuilt within 120 days (the 30 day grace period can be reset three times without activating), you don’t bother activating.

Microsoft’s TechNet offers a ton of resources and tools to help you manage your Windows 7 volume activation as painlessly as possible.

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Globally, IT spending will reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, an increase of 4.6% compared with last year, Gartner predicts. Competitor IDC estimates IT spending will only hit $1.48 trillion this year, an increase of 3% in common currency. Hardware sales will grow 5% in 2010, according to IDC, with PC sales estimated to expand by 3%.

“Aggressive promotion by PC vendors and channels stimulated consumer PC demand,” said Mikako Kitagawa, lead analyst at Gartner. “However, some vendors made damaging price cuts to increase market share.”

But there is some evidence that Windows 7 could, in part, propel these figures even higher – especially as corporations that choked on hardware purchases over the past year or so plan to acquire Windows 7.

Big Bang Theory?

Early adopters of Microsoft’s latest OS planned to refresh half their existing PCs and notebooks, and replace the other half with new hardware better-capable of tapping Windows 7’s features and capabilities, according to panelists at the Gartner Symposium in October. While some companies were involved in early pilot programs, all four participants plan full-scale launches in the coming months.

Fifty percent of computers will be fork-lifted, with the remaining half refreshed, said Mike Capone, corporate vice president and CIO of security provider ADP. The scene is the same at BMW Group, which uses 85,000 PCs across the world. About half of these devices will be replaced, said Mario Mueller,  vice president of the IT infrastructure at the luxury auto manufacturer. The other half of the BMW computers will undergo technology refreshes, he said.

In some cases, scheduled technology refreshes coincided with the migration to Windows 7. At least one company, however, views Windows 7 adoption as more important to the company’s bottom line than waiting for the calendar to turn to its pre-scheduled investment in new hardware.

“We don’t think we can wait on the refresh cycle to [upgrade],” said Randy Benz, vice president and CIO at Energizer, which expects all its 8,800 worldwide computers to run Windows 7 by the end of the year.

Pella Corp., manufacturer of doors and windows, is extending its rollout of Windows 7 into 2011, primarily to stretch out its hardware dollars, said Jim Thomas, the company’s director of IT operations and infrastructure. But the company planned ahead, and began purchasing Windows 7-ready hardware in 2009, he said.

“We’ve been buying hardware we knew was going to be compatible, so we’re well on our way,” explained Thomas. “The reason we’re dragging out into a 2011 rollout will be the wrap-up of the hardware refresh. We’re letting it be a natural lifecycle.”

Smaller organizations may be buying on a less grand scale, but also are being propelled into new hardware purchases. Take the City of Miami, for example, which upgraded from Windows Vista and Windows XP to Windows 7. First, the IT department expected to implement the new OS on 30 department PCs, then buy approximately 100 new machines pre-loaded with Windows 7 for use in other departments within the 2,900 PC-strong Florida city.

Across-the-Board

In all these cases, the corporations planned to standardize on Windows 7, rather than create a hodgepodge of multi-generational operating systems. Since many businesses avoided Windows Vista and operate on Windows XP, they are rightly concerned about the software’s impending end-of-life — meaning an end of support and potential security and compliance holes.

“Very few ever made the move to Vista. With the end of any remaining support for XP — there will be security patches to 2014 — we’ve hit the end of support for a 9-year-old operating system,” said Mark Tauschek, lead analyst at Info-Tech, who recently embarked on a Windows 7 research study that will, among other topics, address companies’ plans to refresh versus replace.  “It’s come down to necessity.”

Since the harsh economy forced businesses to extend refresh rates, many businesses simply have to buy new hardware if they want to use Windows 7, he said.  “Over the last year and a half, people were pushing those refreshes out to four or five, sometimes even six years,” said Tauschek. “I think a lot of organizations will push to four or five years but won’t back beyond that.”

Already Microsoft is benefiting from its new OS: The software giant reported revenue of $19.02 billion in its most recent quarter, 14% more than the same quarter last year. In fact, through the end of Microsoft’s second quarter, it had sold more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses, the developer stated.

It’s unlikely that many companies expect to get the most out of the OS if they run the OS on what were the top-selling PCs of 2006, 2007, or 2008.

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That description of Zinstall XP7 sounds a bit like what Microsoft supports with its XP mode for Windows 7, but not quite. The problem, as you can see from this Web page on Microsoft’s site, is that XP mode is only supported with limited “V-chip” CPUs. You also need to reinstall an entire XP desktop on the virtual machine from scratch.

Zinstall works by using the “windows-old” directory that the Windows 7 installer creates to rebuild your original Windows XP desktop. It is a neat trick, and I really wanted it to work. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get a stable VM from the product, and so I can’t recommend Zinstall until they do some additional quality control.

If you want to experiment, make sure you use a drive imaging tool (I use Acronis or Symantec’s Ghost) to create a backup copy of your Windows XP desktop first. Next, disable your firewalls and uninstall any anti-virus software. Now you install Windows 7, making sure to boot from the install CD and choose the custom in-place install option, where it copies the Windows OS and all your applications to that “windows-old” directory.

Once that is done, you can start up Windows 7 and install the Zinstall software. Zinstall actually supports two different migration scenarios. Besides the in-place one, the other scenario lets you migrate between two computers. Choose the “only have this PC” to indicate that you are doing an in-place migration; then hit the big GO button as you can see in the screen shot below.

Zinstall will migrate your XP desktop and still keep the old XP running as a virtual machine under Windows 7.

The process takes several minutes to an hour to complete, depending on the size of your hard drive. Speaking of which: Make sure that you have plenty of extra room to install Windows 7 as well as the working copies of Zinstall’s files. I would estimate a spare 30-40 GB should be enough. You can filter out particular files – like videos and mp3s — that you don’t want to migrate if you are tight on space.

Once this process is done, you can switch back and forth between Windows XP and Windows 7 by clicking on an icon on the taskbar. Booting up your Windows XP desktop initially takes some time; after all, you are loading a new VM here. But once that is done, switching between the OSs takes a second or two. If you have used VMware or something similar this will be very obvious. You leave your existing Windows XP desktop unchanged, with its existing apps (that may not run under Windows 7). Everything on your old Windows XP system is preserved, including files and applications. These aren’t migrated to Windows 7; you have to install new apps now just as you would for any new OS install. This differs from PC Mover, where you give up your older Windows XP system and migrate it completely over to the new operating system. You can even view and access the files on the other OS too, again by clicking on the taskbar icon.

Or so they promise. Too bad this wasn’t quite my experience.

I began this review trying to migrate the oldest PC that I had in my office, an old Windows XP system [2.80 GHz Pentium with 2 GB of RAM without any service packs. I couldn’t get the migration to complete without errors. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my three drive partitions, an unused video driver for a card that I no longer had in the PC, or some other gremlin. Next I set up my Dell Dimension desktop with a virgin copy of Windows XP with SP2, and got a fresh version of Windows 7 installed on top of it. The Zinstall setup worked just fine until I tried to reboot the PC, and then I somehow trashed the master boot record. All my efforts for the day were lost. After I jiggled my BIOS battery, I was able to get a working drive again and I could start taking complete breaths. Two serious attempts to make it work; two failures. What if the user was a not-quite-so-journeyman IT support person?

I really wanted this software to work, because it is such an elegant solution that no one else can deliver on. If it worked, it would be the perfect way to move slowly into the modern era of Windows 7. But alas, I can’t recommend the product.

About This Product

Zinstall XP7
Zinstall.com, (877) 444-1588
Windows 7 Migration utility
Price: $89 for a single copy. An enterprise version is available for $1,799 (11 licenses included) that supports virtual desktop infrastructure, domains, and scripts.

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