Welcome to Kraft Kennedy
Kraft & Kennedy, Inc. provides technology and strategic consulting services to law firms, corporate legal departments and financial services firms. We can help you analyze, plan, implement and manage business and technology solutions to optimize your organization's functionality and processes.
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BitLocker is quickly becoming standard in Kraft Kennedy’s Windows 7 deployments for clients with Windows 7 Enterprise licenses. BitLocker is easy to configure and enable automatically during MDT or SCCM workstation builds. Enabling BitLocker automatically via 3rd party tools is also rather simple. Combined with ease of deployment, BitLocker’s ability to backup encryption recovery keys in Active Directory make it a very attractive option for clients looking to implement manageable desktop and laptop encryption.
Microsoft provides ample documentation describing the process for enabling Bitlocker in the enterprise. There are only a half a dozen or so steps required to prepare then Active Directory environment and then a few minor modifications to the SCCM or MDT task sequence to enable BitLocker during builds. In the field I have found there is one area where the BitLocker documentation is lacking and thought I would share this tip.
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Several months ago I posted an article about MacBook Airs and if they were ready for business. It’s been 4 or so months and I thought I would follow up with my thoughts and findings.
I started out running only the Apple OS X operating system. I had Office 2011 for Mac for my productivity suite and I was able to do many work related tasks. However, I found myself using Citrix or my Windows computer for other work related applications such as our Document Management System iManage, our ticketing system ConnectWise and other web applications that only work fully with Internet Explorer.
I then decided to purchase the external DVD drive so I could install Windows directly on the MacBook Air via the built in Boot camp utility. This lets you dual boot between Windows and OS X as opposed to running a virtualization product such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. I use VMware Fusion on my home iMac and it works great. On a laptop with limited RAM, CPU and battery life, virtualization does not make sense.
Running native Windows via Boot camp works VERY well. The Apple hardware runs Windows as good, if not better, than a computer made to run Windows. Apple includes all the Windows drivers and makes the process very easy. Over time, I found myself using Windows exclusively and never booting into OS X as I use this primarily for work duties. I decided to take the plunge and remove the OS X partition so that Windows is the only operating system. I did this to give more space to Windows as I only have the 64 GB solid state drive.
Continue reading…
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Although it has been out for some time now, one feature introduced in Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 that frequently gives administrators trouble is the “Sysprep and Capture” task sequence.
This was a welcome addition that provides an easy way to create a Sysprep’d WIM of an existing machine. The problem, unfortunately, is if you try to PXE boot and run the “Sysprep and Capture” task sequence it fails at the Execute Sysprep action and returns a series of errors, including “Unhandled error returned by LTIsysprep: The system cannot find the file specified.”
This happens because the “Sysprep and Capture” task sequence wasn’t designed to be run from Windows PE. To run this task sequence:
- Boot the machine into Windows and log in with an account that has access to the deployment share.
- Connect to the deployment share, i.e. \\NYDEPLOY01\Deploy$, and launch LiteTouch.vbs in the Scripts folder.
This initiates the deployment process just as it would from PE, but now grants the “Sysprep and Capture” task sequence access to the files it needs and allows it to complete successfully.
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Kraft Kennedy is pleased to announce achievement in 8 Microsoft Gold and Silver Competencies (and counting!) for 2011.
The requirements to participate in the Microsoft Partner Program have recently evolved to help differentiate technical and business capabilities among participants; Kraft Kennedy has risen to the challenge by quickly exceeding the goals set forth by the program.
Each competency requires specific individuals with deep technical skills, Microsoft verified customer references, and challenging certification exams to be completed. This commitment demonstrates our breadth, deep specialization, and proven expertise across a range of Microsoft technologies.
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About Kraft Kennedy
Kraft Kennedy provides business and technology-related consulting services to the legal community. By combining outstanding technical skills with an intimate knowledge of our clients’ business and information needs we tailor solutions that enhance attorney productivity, effectiveness, and client value.
We focus on the business needs of the client and ensure that technology is used to enhance, not inhibit their business. KK’s talented staff of strategic consultants, project managers, and network consultants have years of experience with hundreds of projects for firms from small to large. Our services portfolio includes advanced infrastructure projects, business continuity and data center consolidation, desktop deployment, network design and implementation, storage design and replication, and messaging systems migration among others. Our Microsoft specialties include: Desktop, Server Platform, Unified Communications, Portals and Collaboration, Search, Systems Management, Virtualization, and Small Business Specialist Community.
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The Problem – Hidden Outlook Reminders
In Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010, reminder windows pop up in Outlook, but they do not steal the focus if you are working in another program. For example, if you currently working in Word or Internet Explorer, you won’t see a reminder window if one pops up, since you’re not in Outlook.
In previous versions of Windows, this wasn’t as big of a deal because you would still see the reminder window in the task bar. So even though you didn’t see the actual window, you would see the tab for it flashing on the taskbar.
In Windows 7 however, the default grouping of same-application windows, makes is much harder to see when a reminder window pops up. For example, the image below shows a second Outlook window, which is actually a reminder window.
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I’ve seen a lot of talk lately about VMware’s Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) and how it is affected by ASLR in Windows 2008/Windows 7. I wanted to see if there was any real measurable reduction in shared memory when using ASLR vs. when it was disabled. First, let’s talk about what TPS and ASLR actually are and what the acronyms mean.
Continue reading…
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For years the best practice has been to disable screensavers on virtual machines. Screensavers take memory and CPU cycles to run and that can hurt consolidation ratios, especially when there is no reason to run a screensaver on a server VM. After all, why run a screensaver on a server that doesn’t actually connect to a monitor? Seems obvious and almost unnecessary to bring up in 2009.
While working on a recent VDI project, I noticed unexpectedly high CPU utilization on a seemingly idle virtual desktop. Turns out that the desktop image we were given had the 3D Flying Objects screensaver enabled. When it kicked in after the desktop went idle it started taking a fair amount of the CPU. How much CPU it was using might surprise you. Take a look:
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The legal industry has traditionally been conservative when adopting new OS and software versions. Law firms need to know that whatever solution they choose to implement has been tried and tested. This isn’t news to anyone. Let’s see a show of hands of law firm CIOs who have overseen successful deployments of Windows Vista. *crickets*. Yep, that’s pretty much what I figured.
The landscape has changed though with the release of Windows 7. There are a few reasons why Kraft Kennedy is advising our customers to deploy Windows 7 now:
- Still 6.x: Since the build of Windows 7 is actually 6.1 (Vista is 6.0), most applications that were designed to be compatible with Vista will be compatible with Windows 7. When Microsoft made the jump from 5.1 (XP) to 6.0 (Vista), it took software vendors months to re-write their products to be Vista-compatible. We’ve seen these compatibility issues become more sparse with Windows 7.
- Better than Vista: Simply speaking, Windows 7 is the OS that Microsoft wanted Vista to be. It looks slick, performs well, and has a lot of useful features that firms will likely take advantage of.
- From Beta to Omega: Kraft Kennedy started using Windows 7 with our application set as soon as the first Beta was available. Nearly all our staff was using Windows 7 fully before the RTM was released on October 22. In addition, we’ve already developed processes for a completely automated and zero-touch deployment of Windows 7 using Microsoft technologies.
For reasons similar to this, Kraft Kennedy is also advising our Worldox DMS customers to upgrade the latest version, GX2, when implementing the new Windows 7 desktop. GX2 is already supported on Windows 7, and like Windows 7, is using similar (but much improved) code to its previous version, Worldox GX. Kraft Kennedy has had betas running in it’s research lab, and now has the final released version running as well. The new features of GX2 were described in a previous blog post.
This week, Kraft Kennedy will be completing its first 64-bit Windows 7 deployment and Worldox GX2 rollout at a client site. Initial pilot and lab testing has been successful, and the performance of launching Microsoft Word 2007 on 64-bit Windows 7 is a sight to behold! Look for myself and other Kraft Kennedy bloggers to report on the success of this deployment in the coming weeks.
It’s time to start implementing the future today.
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