Amazon Web Services is taking over the world! (of IT)

I have recently found my self back in USA jobless.  I loved my time in Thailand, but after being laid off I felt it was best to return to USA.  USA is (was?) the mecca for all things IT after all.  Having been in IT for something like 20 years, I occasionally have to retool my skill set.  I think every long term IT person does this.  Having been stuck in a rut professionally speak, the technology landscape changed without me noticing too much.  Google and AWS datacenters have spread like wild fire.  I decided I needed to get a better look at AWS.  Nothing against google, I just don't know how to break into their training model.  I found a free beginner course for AWS, but then came across a smoking deal thanks to slickdeal.net website.
https://slickdeals.net/f/12845278-amazon-web-services-certified-architect-developer-bundle-lifetime-access-14?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1
For $14 and lifetime access, but you only have 18 more hours to buy the course (at 96% off?!).  I don't usually promote such things, but even I had to say "wow".
Here's amazon's website where you can cross reference the courses.
https://aws.amazon.com/training/


You get a little over 40 hours of training and should be prepared for 2 certifications.  I'll do a follow up post to let you know how I did, but this offer is only good for a little while.. hopefully I didn't waste $14 haha.

The elusive trombone error message

Hello fellow techies,  you're here, because you do what I do when you get an error message. you google it.  Who is killing the application?  Is it Dr. Watson in the library with a Pipe (wrench)?  Or perhaps Professor Update has come for his monthly visit that's even more unwelcome then your girlfriend's?  Generally googling leads you to some user forum or blog that keys off the exact error message you had "unable to wax the trombone 374". (if you're a short attention millennial that just jumped to the error message and what comes after it... you missed out on the inter-monologue... return to home, do not pass go.  Dead Pool guys, I'm expecting an email some day.  I'm looking at you Ryan Reynolds.)  If you're really unlucky, you get some "dreaded techy white paper" that just happens to use those words somewhere in the article and you have to read a bunch of crap before you realize you're barking up the wrong tree.  I put the dreaded white paper in quotes, because most people dread reading them unless you're on the spectrum.  If you do have asbergers, well.. what the hell are you doing reading this?  You've already read the application error logs and found the problem.  Isn't it time for your weekly re-re-degauzing of hard drives?  You know those machines aren't 100% right?  Sure you do.. so crack those cases open and get to tacoing some platters.  Go on, you have a tendency for violence anyway, so let it out in a constructive way.. 

(is he gone?  .. ok, let's continue)

where was I?  Oh right.. the greasy trombone error message the poor application keeps getting side swiped with.  (Ryan Renolds you have ruined my inter-monologue voice.. it's not even my own anymore.. it sounds like RR (I'm not writing your name out anymore.. it's too long.  Come on, isn't it a known hollywood thing have a short name.  Come on.. look at mine.  Hollywood memorable name like Arnold Swartzene.. wait.. no.. I mean Sylvester Stallone,, ack!  .. uhh.. Leonardo Decapri..  damnit.. this is not going my way..  Cher!  ha!  boom.. Prince.. maybe I was supposed to be in the music business.  Jason Ice Hess... too many "S's".  Jason T Hess. nah someone with say transvestite. hmm... Chris Pine!  there it is.. Chris Pratt too!.. love you guys!  Thanks for saving my article.  Still love you though Ryan.  I think I'm giving up on the techy part of this post.  This stuff is just falling out of my sleep deprived head.. body.. maybe other parts (RR probably drops it out his butt hole).  How is it that Dead Pool 1 and 2 are "trending" for years now?  Well.."trending" according to the last flight I was on, but I'm not sure that Hong Kong airlines is a proper source for "trendiness".  Is there really that many people with sleep deprived, caffeinated (we'll just say it was "Coke aCola".. still looking at you RR and DP writing staff), inner thoughts that ramble on like this?  

ok I should wrap this up.. techies.. go check on Mr. Asbergers.  Do NOT try to stop him if he has begun though.  They do not do well with leaving things unfinished.  I swear man.. I bet Isaac Newton knew a guy on the spectrum when he came up with the 1st law.  (wait.. was newton on the spectrum?.. is that how we jump ahead evolutionarily?) If you think you're up to being an equal and opposite force to Mr Berger.. well have at it, but don't say I didn't warn you.  Better bet, buy him a coke.. ask him to look at the missing trombone error message.  He'll have it figured out in an hour.  You can then take credit for the fix at the next staff meeting he skips out on (he doesn't care about credit and is really uncomfortable in t e staff meeting.. win win).

Jason Hess

(Thanks CP.. you da man... unless RR calls me and says he has a problem with you. this post has a pretty heavy gay vibe..(bro-mance even.. bro-mancing the stone!?  how has that not been pitched in Hollywood yet?  Will Farrell and that shake and bake guy?  Dwayne Johnson and the 4'2" guy with a big mouth.. their into jungle movies lately..)  but don't get the wrong idea.. I'd punch all of you in the dick just to smell one of Gal Gadot's farts.. (wait.. wonder woman.. how come Superman never got on that?  I mean.. come on.. you're telling me he's perfecting happy holding back with Louis Lane!?  Might as well tell a Klingon he can only bang humies now (man I really wen full nerd there.. ehh.. it happens..it's my blog, suck it))  no..I'm too old for fart sniffs... oh but Rucy Ru 2..,, man.... I bet she smells like jasmine... sure's it's racist, but I don't care.. it's been a long time since I smelled beautiful #pitchblack #vindieseil #callmeINeedaNewJob #andsleep

VMworld 2013

I sure there are a lot of these posts going up, but here's the highlights I managed to learn about.

NSX - it's a big deal.  Think 1000v without the Cisco IOS.  Think parity bits and raid 5 "controllers" instead of VSM pair in "Raid 1" (this is the new virtual networking "plane").  I wonder what the cost associated with this new hotness.

vSphere 5.5 = much better SSO setup.  SSO has never been my favorite thing or even idea in 5.1. 5.5 is a great step forward even though I still don't like how its been forced on us.  I have a background somewhat different than what I suppose a lot of the world deals with I suppose.

VCHS = VMware "hybrid" cloud (competition for amazon.. But much easier to get in and more importantly.. Back out of.). Will be interesting how well this cloud is or isn't accepted in the world.

Lots more caching options with SSD.. Too many actually... Do we need all of these options?  I suppose, but I doubt anyone will actually use all of them in 1 environment.

Puppet = it's like seadoo apparently. "Everybody's doin it"

vCenter Server Appliance (V5)

This appliance is new to me.  I heard there was an instance of vcenter appliance rather than server dating back as far as 2.5.  I have never seen it until this version 5 though.  It's built on SUSE linux 11 SP1 "for VMware".  First thing I want to note is root did work as a login for the web interface (https://yourapplianceIP:5480) with a password of vmware.  I couldn't find it documented anywhere for this beta copy.. so it was just a lucky guess.  Once I logged onto the webinterface once I was able to logon to the consol with the same root/vmware.
I chose to use "embedded" as the database option.  I had stood up a sql2008 instance for this, but oddly that selection was missing from the drop down menu.  Only embedded and oracle.  I wonder what the embedded DB really is.. MySQL?  I heard a rumor that vmware was working on their own DB.. could this be it already?  the "db2" folder under /opt would eluded to a db2 instance.. but I find that rather odd.  it says version 9.7.2 if you're curious.  I asked more about this and hear it will move to postgres at sometime in the future, but for now it is in fact db2 and only oracle being the other alternative.
On the upside, they embedded the vi client back into the home page instead of linking out to the vmware site.  I understood vmware's thinking to have it on thier home site to ensure a more current version is proliferated, but for isolated environments (like my lab) it sure is convenient to have at least some version of the client readily available.. thanks vmware for the new vCenter Appliance!

ESXi5

In my previous post I talked about the upgrade of vcenter to vsphere 5 (this is beta code, so if you're reading this and the release is out.. well go find an updated blog post too!..lol).  The upgrade for my ESXi hosts was done from VUM.  I uploaded the iso for the installable ESXi5 to VUM and "pushed" the upgrade to the hosts.  Not much to report other than screens looked a little different.. I had to increase the ram on each host from 2 gig's to 2.5 gig's for the upgrade to proceed.  Also, it complained of "3rd part" packages that weren't going to be compatible.  These hosts were actually VM's that I didn't fo much with.  There were 2 different sub rev's of 4.1, but both upgraded fine.  So I mounted up some NFS storage off a 2008R2 (in my lab.. it was also the domain controller) server.  Now I thought I'd roll out a new VM.  I noticed there is more options for choosing your network setting during creation as well as a grayed out option for "Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed","Thick Provision Eager Zeroed", and "Thin Provision".  I'm assuming mine was grayed out because this is NFS storage.  Still it's good to see the "Zeroing out" has bubbled up to the GUI.  Although it was grayed out.. it did have the radio button for "thin" selected for my nfs VM.  Good thing since I don't have a lot of space to play with.
Sure enough, I created a new vm on local storage and all the options were available for thick/thin.  So, let's talk about this "Zeroing out" of VM's.  What does it mean?  What is the difference between a lazy zero and a eager one?..lol oh the words techies use..
Rather than repeat techie jargon.. have a look at this thread on the vmware community if you want more background on zero's:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/263289
This is where my lab has become so slow.. I don't want to go on living.  Ok, that's a bit much.. but again.. you get the idea.  Come on money bags company o'mine.. give us at least some shared time on some horse power hardware!

First look at vShpere5

vSpere 5 must be right around the corner since VMworld is coming up and we've read/heard about some "leaks" about it.  I got my hands on a beta copy of vSphere 5 yesterday.  So, to the lab I went... and by lab, I mean vm's inside my laptop.  I'm probably in some "Non-Disclosure Agreement" with vmware with this software, so I'll be generic in my information.. sorry.. I like my job.  I would have liked to include screen shots.. but like I said... I like my job and there's an NDA of some sort I'm sure.
First thing to note: there is an in place upgrade for vCenter.  There's lots of talk about a vcenter appliance, and apparently there has always been an appliance out since vcenter 2.5.  The only limitation I'm aware of so far is the new appliance doesn't support linked mode vcenter appliances.  Something about needing windows to tie into AD for replication services.  Back to the upgrade..
So.. in place upgrade.. local sql express (hey this is in my laptop.. what do you expect!..lol) so upgrade the DB as well.  It warns about VUM being an old version and it'll probably break until it's upgraded as well./
vCenter Agent Upgrade?
This option is an automatic upgrade for all the host's vcenter agent.  This doesn't upgrade the host to esxi5.. just an update to the agent that vcenter uses to talk to the host.
I got an error regarding my FQDN, but I'm in a domain... I tried a host entry, but no luck.. pushing forward regardless..
There's a new (to me) option to increase the number of ephemeral ports right at the end of the install.  Probably put there due to large vmware view installations.  It talks of more than 2000 vm's to check the box.  I don't know how many ports it would have set if checked.
There's a new vCenter Inventory Service.. what's that do?  Sounds like it inventories stuff.. and if you ever worked retail.. you'd thank god if there was a service you could hire to do it for you.. I digress.
So, post install.. fire up the 4.1 client.  Prompts to run the installer for a new version.. sweet.
After we get in, we'll hop back out and upgrade VUM too.. then my 2 esxi hosts.. then I'll make lunch.. perhaps I'm noting too many activities without any substance.. Did I mention there's an NDA at play here?
Drats.. my hosts are in a disconnected state complaining about the host agent upgrade.  My laptop isn't exactly the fastest hardware, so maybe it'll just take some time.  It's complaining about not having enough space and pointing me to KB1016262 which is for 4.1, but much to my dismay.. I now realise my hosts were not running a very current version of software... not even update 1.  Don't be like Jason folks.. update your hosts to the latest version of 4.1 before attempting an upgrade to 5.
Woo hoo.. that wasn't as bad as I thought.  Somewhere around the 4.1 update 1 time frame the syslog would fill up the scratch area.  I just set the syslog in the "advanced settings" to the local datastore..maintenance mode.. reboot.. and wala.. it connected and updated the vcenter host agent.  As it turns out.. I had 2 different versions of esx4.1 on my hosts.. again.. don't be like Jason. but setting the syslocal to local datastore did fix the agent issue on both versions... or was it just the reboot cleared up enough space for a few minuets to get the agent on?  I tried to enable HA but not that agent is failing due to disk space as well.. ugg.
On to upgrading VUM (5.0.0.8039 btw) and I'll fix the hosts later.. or never.
Woo.. new things afoot here.  No more is there even an option to patch VM's.  I had heard a rumor of this.. and most places don't use these feature anyway, but if you are one of those shops.. you'll need a new patching tool if you upgrade to vSphere5.  Also, all hosts need to have some version of 4.x since 3.x upgrades are not supported either.
This is enough gibberish for one post.. I'll start another for the host upgrades and note the list of other tools now available on the install screen for vcenter.

Data centers in a box?

So I've become aware of a growing trend of "Datacenter-in-a-box". Some call them integrated stacks, cloud computing in a block, etc...
Long story short, corporations struggle with different silos within their organization all coming to agreement on products to buy. Some of these DIB's (just coined that acronym.. Use it at free will but make me famous.. I'm narsasitic like that) are able to bring a proven packages from PO to fully integrated in 30 days. We all know of some corporations that get so wrapped up in themselves that it can take 6-9 months to get a new system fully up and running. So let's say you were in upper management and wanted to entertain the idea of one of these solutions. Which one should you pick? Are they all pretty similar or are there vast differences besides just what vendors are involved? I've only researched a few and already pretty lost myself. Generalizations are pretty easy to make, but what really matters is what you are going to be happy with? If you're biased to a particular vendor, the decision is pretty easy as most only offer 1 DIB, with different models depending on how much power you for see needing. These things are very powerfully and somewhat expensive. Keep your big picture in mind and they generally are very cost effective though.
Jason

From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, what do you mean I can't install 2007 now?!

Exchange 2010 is out!  What?  It's been out for a while now?  I was planning a cross country move and .. ok that's not a good excuse.  Truth be told, I've been in government contracting world where they still run exchange 2003.  Come on.. how much longer can anyone really run Ex2003?  Even the government has hopped on the vmware band wagon with ESXi 3.5 and even 4.1 now.  Yet, still plugging along with a mail server almost a decade old.  I'm sure there is an upgrade of massive proportion on the horizon.. will it be to Ex2007 or the "new" Exchange 2010?  Did you know that if you stand up a Exchange 2010 server in your domain, you can no longer stand up an Exchange 2007 server?!  I can't take credit for this little tid bit of info.  Eva Soohoo of Convergent Computing was kind enough to school me on this little, but very important detail.  A little about Eva.. it's become apparent to me that Eva really brings things together for cco.com.  Convergent is known for their "unleashed" series of books such as Exchange 2010 "unleashed", SQL 2008 "unleashed", etc.. (you can go see for yourself at http://www.cco.com/Publications/tabid/61/Default.aspx)

CCO is just one of the things that Rand Morimoto does and generally gets all the press for things, but Eva deserves a lot of credit.  (oh.. and since I didn't clear any of this text with Rand or CCO.. Eva is most likely the one that'll be contacting me to take this down or they'll be suing me for something or other..lol)

Anyway.. back to the point.  If you're in a 2003 exchange environment like I know there are still a lot of... and thinking you'll skip 2007 and just go straight to 2010... you might want to stand up a 2007 box before that first 2010 box, just in case plans change.

Where I.T. all began, Silicon Valley

If you had to pack all your belongings into a pickup truck, what would you take?  To most people this is a hypothetical question that is fun to talk about over a drink.  To others (like myself), this is a reality that will come to fruition tomorrow.  I'm off to move cross country from Florida to California.  I only know 2 people in California on a personal basis, but they love it there.  My exploratory nature requires me to move from time to time and luckily the IT field allows for that sort of behavior.  I chose the San Francisco bay area because, well that's the only place I've visited in California. (technically I've been to places from santa cruz to sacramento)
I did pick up one of those fancy new iPhone 4's since this will be the first job in a long time that won't be issuing me a cell.. one of these days I'll work at a place that issues cool stuff like iphones instead of blackberries.. but no time soon I imagine.  I'll be flying out, but my truck will arrive with the culmination of my life's belongings a couple of weeks later.

Jason goes to Europe

I'm departing from the regular I.T. techie post. It's my blog, I can do what I want.  I've gone on vacation to England for starters. However, before I go into England, a word about the airline I used to get here. British Airways (http://www.ba.com/), I've never used this airline before. Prior to departure I wanted to change the date/time, but was met with an awful $300 fee plus whatever the flight difference was (had I made the change I wanted to, it would have cost as much as the original ticket... not much of an option). I stuck with my original booking... the flight was near empty as far as a 777 goes. An exit row was easy to get and lots of rows had no one in them (easy to stretch out and try to get an hour or so of shut eye). Hopefully for their sake this isn't a normal occurrence being so empty. While I was annoyed by the inflexibility of the airline, I have to say they won me over. Once in the air they came around with the cart and asked what I'd like. What I didn't know at the time was that alcohol was free on British airways!?! The fellow sitting to my left (beyond the empty seat between us, ordered up a couple of little bottles and fizzy water (he was English ;). A quick chat and I found I could order anything I wanted without charge. I've flown around quite a bit in the US. Sometimes you're lucky to get peanuts, much less booze. While it was a nice surprise, that's not won me over. While contemplating in my head which powerbar I would eat to ward off hunger, I was asked "beef or pasa" in an thick English accent. I replied "uh?", "beef or lasagna" she thought I miss heard "pasta" (which I did, but compounded by my loss of comprehension that there could be hot food on a flight anymore.. did we loose that to terrorist or something..lol.. I'm kidding, but you get the idea.. there hasn't been hot food on US flight for.. what.. 20 years?). I went with pasta (which was also vegetarian as she pointed out). Even though I'm not a vegetarian, this was damn good lasagna. I mean for how they have to keep it hot, and servable on a plane.. just top notch British Airlines (I'm picking up some proper English, hence the "top notch" ;)). If we could some how combine southwest flexibility in booking and British Airways service.. we'd have an airline everyone would flock too. Anyone wanting to give this airline a go, I'd be happy to run the I.T. department of such a company. We would have to beware of the unions and strikes. I was unaffected by the strike British Airways is dealing with right now.

Industry Standard Mailbox Sizes for email

Gary McFadden wrote an interesting article discussing exchange 2010 and it's new features/functions.  I stumble upon while searching for "industry standard mailbox sizes".  I know the first answer is like a lot of things in IT "It depends".  For a SMB I'm thinking 1GB for exec's 500 meg for mid management and ..??  what for everyone else.  Actually, is 500 meg enough?  perhaps 1gig, 3/4 gig, and 1/2 gig for the tiers?
I'm hoping someone out there will reply with what they think is standard and what size company they are used to.
thanks!

ISA and sharepoint gridviews

Rather then bore you with all the details of hours spent to find this little gem.. I'll just say
"Link translation".
If you turn off link translation for the rule that publishes your sharepoint site in ISA, Gridviews (aka. dataviews of datagrid views) will work like you were hitting the IIS server and not looping through ISA. Now a little more about this scenario. The sharepoint site was up and running just fine and dandy with it's new ISA reverse proxy when came the calling.. the "gridviews are locking up". Turning off link translation either just for that firewall rule, or if you like.. turn off the "add-in" link translation filer all together (first way does one site, the second turns off the feature on the ISA server and all the sites it publishes).
I hope that saves one of you hours of work.

VMworld, the good, the bad, and the ugly

My first VMworld was great, confusing, and just weird at times. First off, the guest pass I previously questioned purchasing. I did purchase it and my guest and I attended the 2 events. While it was fun, I don't think it was worth the price. The food provided was... well not to our liking. I'm sure some were happy with it, and the free beer/wine was nice.. just wish it was something I actually drank or would eat. Maybe we're just too picky though.
Now from a technical stand point, VMworld is awesome. I had direct access to several of the vendors we actually use on a daily basis. I was able to walk 20 feet and discuss our plans for some new brocade switches, walk 20 feet and talk about an issue we're having with our bluecoat device (web filtering, they put me in touch with a top notch tech support guy.. I'll be holding onto his contact info like gold). Walk another 10 feet and talk about stuff you've been wondering about with whom ever. The classes given were outstanding as well. Now locating what class you could/should attend, was were the confusing came in. So much to pick from, and no indication of what was the hot stuff and what was an uneventful event. I missed the "super sessions" simply because I didn't know they were "super".
Now the great news for me... I won a conference pass for next year! Simply fill out the request to review vmworld that they email you to be entered and walla... real people actually win a pass! :)
Feel free to drop me a line if you're looking to check it out next year.. the more the merrier!

heading to Vmworld!

I'm back on a VMware project and just so happens VMworld is coming up again in San Fransico. I'm pretty excited about it as this will be my first VMworld. Also, I had a hard tyime figuring out if the "guest pass" was worth the $275. In the end I did purchase one and hope that the party(s) will turn out to be worth it (it's nice to have a company footing the bill for me.. but they aren't going to buy guest passes for people too). While the confrense is going on here is something for the spouces:
(this was taken from vmworld's website http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2009/agenda/evening)

Is your spouse unable to attend VMworld evening events? Crystal Lowe has graciously offered to arrange some fun activities for spouses this year at VMworld. She's gathered a lot of great information, and is planning day trips to the wine country, Alcatraz and more. So, while you are having fun at VMworld, your spouse can be exploring the sights and sounds of the Bay Area. For more information, contact Crystal at: Email: vmworldspouses@gmail.com

From one new Vmworlder... THANKS CRYSTAL!

Citrix provisioning server license error

As you may already know... Citrix was nice enough to include a piece of provisioning server along with the platnium edition of XenApp (I knew there was a reason to upgrade from enterprise ;)). I've been playing with it for a few days now. One key piece of info that I thought I'd share was to be sure you have this hotfix CTX121223 for provisioning server and at least 11.6 of the licenseing server (here).
Hopefully that saves somebody some time (I would have liked to have known that a few days ago.. ugg).

Office 2007 SP2

After searching for a while I found the direct download for the Office 2007 SP2. I'm hoping that posting it hear saves someone some time over the next few weeks (after that google should have found it directly).
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5&displaylang=en

If you'd like to read about some of what it does (I haven't even installed it myself yet.. maybe there's a readme?) have a look at:
http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/16/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx

The skinny on the CCEE requirements (maybe)

I've been asking around on the yet to be released CCEE. I got a call from citrix today stating the new CCEE will have a requirement of the CCA Platinum. I didn't get the warm and fuzzies that this was set in stone... and since it has yet to be released.. I can't really expect it to be I suppose. I was simply asking what test I should study for that would count towards the CCEE. I assume they must have had some idea of at least 1 or 2 of the requirements. So if you can't wait for the official requirements release... study up on the CCA Platinum.

error 1203 randomly when mapping drives

Here's one that I couldn't find anywhere on the net after days of researching. I had an issue where a customer reported not being able to map a network drive from citrix servers at random times. The end users would log off and on over and over until they get the drive letter that was missing. It always happened to the same drive letter and it only happened about 25% of the time. Further research revealed a error during the logon script of [error code 1203]. The Microsoft explanation of that error is:
"System error code 1203 means "The network path was either typed incorrectly does not exist or the network provider is not currently available. Please try retyping the path or contact your network administrator." This error code may also display as "ERROR_NO_NET_OR_BAD_PATH" or as the value 0x4B3."
Since this was only happening on 1 drive letter and only from terminal servers (the citrix server piece of info turned out to be someone inaccurate.. it was actually any windows 2003 server, but only seen on terminal servers because that's the only servers that a user logon script is run on). I finally found some articles talking about DFS and the webclient service. The drive letter in question was being mapped to a server that had DFS installed, but wasn't even being used. Still...
turning on that webclient service cleared up the random 1203 errors. The webclient service is disabled by default on windows 2003, but on be default on windows 2000 and xp. It would seem it was deemed unnecessary on servers since it's a client mapping "helper" application and generally users don't log onto a servers desktop to do work. Except for terminal servers that is... almost seems like MS should turn that service on when terminal server gets setup. I plan to put in a gpo tied to the OU of the terminal servers, but for now just starting the service manually has fixed the issue.
Hope this helps someone save some time.

Delivering Office 2007 using Application Streaming

Citrix support was nice enough to publish a document on how to setup a streaming Office 2007. Unfortunatly there are a few typo's I've come accros. In all fairness I believe the author was simply trying to offer up examples of how you can tweak the office install, but the typos may though some people off none the less. So When you get to the adding registery entries part of the custum admin setup.. they should look more like: (note the path with an extra \ and the missing n in "shown")

The path is wrong in the second reg entry example as well.. and I believe the value should be POINT_STRING rather then PONT_STRING, but since we control this with a gpo, I can't be sure without more work then I care to do right now :P. Maybe someone can comment on this one.

citrix 11 client and pass-through authentication

Another fun one for citrix. The settings for the client application have moved around a few places. Basically starting at version 10 they moved from the appserv.ini to the registry. The issue I found, was with the new version 11 client. If you right click the system tray icon and select options.. you should see a drop down box for "prompt user" or "pass-through authentication". If you don't.. reboot (the single sign on piece needs a reboot after client install, but doesn't ask for it for some reason). If after a reboot you still don't see it.. you need to get a new client install package (that's another blog for another time). Now say you have it in the drop down, but need to set it for your whole network.. well the registry setting isn't easy to find. There are a number of registry settings that look like they should work like:
HKLM\Software\Citrix\PNAgent]"EnablePassThrough" set to 1.
While this setting does have some play (if it's set to 0 things definitely won't work), it's not the end all be all of enabling pass-through.

This little sucker is the one that eluded me for some time:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Citrix\PNAgent]"Configuration Model 000"

The contents of that key is what is modified when you change the drop down box from "prompt user" to "pass-through authentication". The contents is a hex bunch of crap as far as i can tell. I'll be testing if I can just drop this key on all my machines and walla .. or if I have to come up with 3-4 different ones based on difference variables.. (maybe the type of machine matters? the user account?, the full moon?.. just not sure what makes up that key exactly yet).