Varrow Blogs

In case you missed it, the release of the Citrix online plug-in v11.0 this past year signaled the end of Program Neighborhood.  PN is considered a legacy client which allows for making direct connections to Presentation or XenApp servers.  While there are certainly better ways to provide access to Citrix resources in a user environment, [...]

I have been tasked with setting up a Cisco Catalyst 6509 that Cisco loaned us in our lab. I wanted to get a good idea of what IOS was already on the switch, so I consoled in: Console> sh vers WS-C6509 Software, Version NmpSW: 8.1(3) Copyright (c) 1995-2003 by Cisco Systems NMP S/W compiled on [...]

I got the chance to play around with a new WYSE P20 thin client today at our lab.  The new P20 is designed specifically to take advantage of the new PCoIP technology found in VMware View 4.  What makes this thin client different is that is optimizes performance using a dedicated HARDWARE PCoIP engine from [...]

Taking a break from blogging about virtualization, storage and disaster recovery, I thought I’d blog about the other big part of my life these days, baby management. My Wife recently gave birth to twin girls back in October and the road traveled so far as been quite challenging, but rewarding.
I have discovered along the [...]

Virtualization has been around for a while (Timeline of virtualization development). It is not a new concept. I started playing around with virtualization when I obtained a copy of VMware’s virtualization software around the 2005-2006 time frame. Virtualization is the next greatest thing. Everyone is virtualizing some aspect of their data center. Everyone has heard [...]

One hot topic when discussing Avamar always seems to be tape out for weekly and monthly backups. In the past it has been a functionality that was missing from Avamar. All that has changed with the release of Avamar Data Transport. Avamar Data Transport is a server that runs virtually inside ESX 3.5 U4 or [...]

Well, it was formally announced.  The Apple tablet…the iPad…is here.  Like every other major announcement the reviews range from the Apple fanatics that love it no matter what to those that point out every single thing it doesn’t have, or was supposed to have depending on where you get your rumors.  It doesn’t have a [...]

It’s not unusual for a columnist to write an edgy piece and buck the norms and trends of an industry.  Sometimes they truly feel this way, sometimes it’s for hits, and sometimes it’s just to be the guy that’s different and if you’re right you hope to look like a genius (I’m looking at you [...]

As arrays become more and more dense and as energy costs trend upward, it becomes more imperative to take advantage of such features of Disk Spin Down Technology. As part of FLARE 29 on the EMC Clariion CX4 arrays, the ability to track disk idle time is not only an important feature but a necessity in multi-purpose arrays.
With the introduction of FAST, the dexterity to automatically tier to SATA as part of an archive or storage tiering initiative quickly becomes a win-win. Not only from the…

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As arrays become more and more dense and as energy costs trend upward, it becomes more imperative to take advantage of such features of Disk Spin Down Technology. As part of FLARE 29 on the EMC Clariion CX4 arrays, the ability to track disk idle time is not only an important feature but a necessity [...]

EMC has released Storage Viewer for vSphere Client Version 2.1.  This release is compatible with and should address any issues that occurred with VMware vSphere Client V4.0 Update 1. See Matt Taylor’s blog – vSphere Update 1 Breaks EMC Storage Viewer EMC Storage Viewer compatibility matrix For more info, please check the EMC Storage Viewer [...]

This past week while working on an EdgeSight for Load Testing engagement I discovered an incompatibility with the Launcher and version 11.2 of the Online Plug-in.  Upon trying to launch an application session for script recording, the session would immediately close.  Uninstalling 11.2 of the client and reverting to version 11.0.0.5357 of the XenApp Hosted [...]

One of the complaints of vCenter 2.x was the limited number of alarms that could be configured. With vCenter 4.x VMware addressed this by giving admins the ability to create alarms for just about any event on any object. There are several alarms that are configured out of box and defined at the topmost vCenter [...]

I recently ran into an issue installing Office in a Terminal Services/Citrix environment with the Office 2003 Resource Kit.  No matter how many times I uninstalled and re-installed Office 2003 I could not get the transform to generate my custom11.prf file for Outlook profiles.  I had an idea that there might be some remnants of

I recently ran into an issue installing Office in a Terminal Services/Citrix environment with the Office 2003 Resource Kit.  No matter how many times I uninstalled and re-installed Office 2003 I could not get the transform to generate my custom11.prf file for Outlook profiles.  I had an idea that there might be some remnants of Office that were not completely deleted so manually deleted all of this office folders and registry entries. Still…. No .PRF file was created and my client’s Outlook profiles still would not work.

Installing Office via the “Custom Installation Wizard” is common practice in this kind of environment and I was surprised not to have seen this issue or a fix for it documented anywhere out on the web.  Perhaps my Google search skills need sharpening, however, after many tests and tweaks I found my fix. Re-installing Office 2003 without re-installing the 2003 Resource Kit caused my issue.  Not only does Office and all of its keys need to be deleted, but the same approach needs to happen for the 2003 Resource Kit as well.  I deleted all instances in the registry of:

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeCustomizeWizard

Then, after everything is uninstalled and cleaned out, re-install the Resource Kit and create a new transform .MST file with the specifications for your exchange environment.