Windows IT Pro dec07 notes

It was a while since I read december 2007 Windows IT Pro issue, but here goes some notes from stuff I found particular useful, or otherwise hard to remember :-)

PDF utilities, similar to PDFcreator (that does not work on Vista), and working on Vista: CutePDF and PDFTools. I use PDFcreator all the time, but I dont use Vista just yet, but this is good to keep in mind! Some quotes from PDFTools features:

• encrypt a PDF file by assigning it a password
• create a protection-free version of encrypted PDF file
• create a PDF file by joining multiple PDF files
• split a PDF file in multiple ways, such as splitting each page to new PDF file and splitting a file after a given page number
• arrange pages in a PDF file
• overlay text or an image over a PDF file
• convert an XML file into a PDF file

Note that you need Java Runtime Environment/Java Development Kit (JRE/JDK) 1.4 or later to use PDFTools.

It was interesting to read "Are IT Pros Steering Their Children Away From IT" and "A Good Career For Your Kids", as since I recently became a dad I have actually been thinking about this several times!

I am certainly not recommending IT business to just anyone. I like to think of IT as being a "call", a desire, for helping people, deliver results, services and service to people, a call to engineer stable and innovative IT systems. For my daughter I will encourage her to do what ever she likes, and if that is IT, that is OK. I think an IT developer, administrator or project manager can be a happy job, but you have to be very aware of the all the factors. This is a hard topic to just put down some notes on, I definately have to give it some more thoughts and its own post, its really interesting and worth dicussing with wife, family and friends!

As you probably know Windows 2008 will have the Server Core option, which has a very limited GUI. This will be exciting to use, and undoubtly we will have to get used to many new command line utils and new/better usage of existing ones. One of the new tools we will get used to is the script SCRegEdit (Server Core RegEdit). Although regedit is a gui that will work in Server Core, SCRegEdit will help edit many registry keys, eg.:
scregedit /ar 0 enables remote desktop
scregedit /au 4 will download and install updates
scregedit /cs will allow Pre-Vista clients to connect with terminal services
... check out Microsofts Server Core guide, there are good tips:

Managing a Server Core installation: Overview
...
The script is located in the \Windows\System32 folder of a server running a Server Core installation. At a command prompt, open the folder, and then use the following command to display the usage instructions for the previous options:

cscript scregedit.wsf /?

Note:
You can use this command with the /cli option to display a list of common command-line tools and their usage.

Some VMware Server and VMware Workstation differences. So far I have managed fine with Server version. ESX will be next, the Workstation is never considered! But anyways interesting:

• Price, VMware Server is free :-)
• Server is service, Workstation is a desktop application
• Multiuser access for Server, not for Workstation. Server has a webinterface too!
  
• Workstation supports virtuals machines (VM) up to 8 GB RAM, Server only 3.6 GB RAM.
• Server can have only one snapshot, Workstation can have many.
• You can clone a Workstation virtual machine. In Server copying a VM is a manual process, but works fine.
• Workstation lets you manage several VMs in teams, eg. to have certain VMs startup before others. Server dont have VM Teams.
• Drag and drop objects from your desktop to the Workstation VMs. Server can not.
• You can capture an .avi movie of all activity in a Workstation VM.

So it was another great Windows IT Pro issue :-)

UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that VMWare workstation can be set up as a service [http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=429&tag=nl.e101]