Kurt Shintaku's Blog

We just released a press release around the final 6 tools we’ve made to grease the wheels of Windows Vista deployment:

• Microsoft® Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007
  As long winded as the title is, BDD 2007 is a heck of toolset.  It provides 3 core technologies:
  1) Lite-Touch Deployment:  The ability to deploy Windows Vista through imaging by simply booting up a PC over the network or booting from a CDROM.  Everything else is automated:  User data migration, workstation driver updates, disk partitioning, etc.
  2) Zero-Touch Deployment:  The ability to deploy Windows Vista completely remotely over the network, requiring no actual visitation of the workstation by a human.  This is the most automated an painless methodology however it requires the automation technology behind Systems Management Server 2003, and as such requires that SMS2003 be installed prior to using BDD2007.
  3) Zero-Touch Provisioning:  Provisioning provides complete deployment of a user’s needs to the machines, such as new applications post imaging, configurations, etc.
  DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/desktopdeployment
• Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0
  The ACT 5.0 is of course a tool that will tell you not only if the applications on a given machine are compatible with Windows Vista, but also tell you HOW TO GET THEM TO WORK through tweaks and other changes to the application’s deployment or to Windows Vista’s configuration itself during it’s deployment.
  DOWNLOAD:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905102.aspx
• Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 1.0
  This is a helluva tool.  It enables organizations to scan each machine on the network for Windows Vista hardware compatibility without the need to install anything on those machines.  It then gens a report that tells you the administrator what machines are okay, what functional levels you can expect from them, and what you need to do with the machines that still need upgrading.
  DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/wvha
• Volume Activation Management Tool
  One of the two ways to distribute Windows Vista licenses to newly installed machine is the use a Multiple Activation Key, a single key that is assigned a number of activations for Microsoft Volume Licensing customers – folks that purchase Windows in "bulk" at a discount.
  This activation process normally, like retail activation keys, requires either Internet based communication between the workstation and Microsoft over the Internet to validate the MAK.  For some this is acceptable.
  For those that would prefer to have workstation activation occur entirely over the InTRAnet without the need for each machine to connect to Microsoft, it’s possible to instead use the Volume Activation Management Tool, to allow a company administrator to activate multiple workstations and "cache up" those activations on a server on the corporate network, then have Windows Vista machines connect to the server with the "cached up" activations to activate themselves.  This has the benefit of only requiring a one-time connection over the Internet to Microsoft’s Activation Center, managed and orchestrated by the administrator himself, instead of having workstations connect over the Internet individually.
  DOWNLOAD:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=77533
• Key Management Service for Windows Server® 2003
  This is the second way to deploy Windows Vista licenses to machines.  The Key Management Service is, in a nutshell, a service that has historically run on Windows Server Longhron to respond to Windows Vista activation requests within a corporate environment, eliminating the need to have these machines activate over the Internet through Microsoft’s Activation Center.  This service allows machines to be deployed using a single key without concern over machines "getting lost", making the company "lose a Windows license" because if the machine leaves the corporate network and is unable to contact the KMS server in 180 days, the machine cripples itself, minimizing the functionality of the machine to just basic features.

  This Key Management Service is now available for Windows Server 2003
  DOWNLOAD:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82964.

• Virtual PC 2007
  I’ve discussed this in another post so I won’t go into great detail on this, suffice it to say that it makes it possible to run Windows Vista within a Virtual PC, and it allows people to run Virtual PC using Windows Vista as a host.  This provides the following scenarios:
  – Testing application compatibility within a Windows Vista virtual machine
  – Configuring Vista-incompatible applications for execution within Windows XP inside a virtual machine for running on Windows Vista
  DOWNLOAD:  http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc