Category: Microsoft

Integrate the VcRedist PowerShell Module with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)

The VcRedist PowerShell Module by Aaron Parker provides an easy to use evergreen module to integrate the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtimes into your MDT Reference Images.

If you are using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to build your Reference Images and Citrix Master Images, you are most certainly trying to include the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables for Visual Studio into your Reference Images. Recently I switched to the VcRedist PowerShell Module by Aaron Parker to achieve this task and with this blog post I’m going to show you how to do this yourself. Continue reading “Integrate the VcRedist PowerShell Module with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)”

Office 365 ProPlus now officially supported on Windows Server 2019 + release of FSLogix

Today Microsoft made a huge announcement for the EUC community: Office 365 ProPlus now officially supported on Windows Server 2019 and FSLogix is now available for everyone who is entitled!

You can find the official announcement from Microsoft here: Improving the Office app experience in virtual environments

Additionally Microsoft finally releases a slightly rebranded version of the FSLogix Full suite which is now called Microsoft FSLogix and doesn’t need a license key anymore. Also the versioning has been changed, to reflect the style of several other Microsoft of Citrix products with now 4 digits,the first 2 digits refer to the year, and the last 2 digits refer to the month. The version being now is called 1907. Check out if you’re eligible. You must be licensed for one of the following Microsoft products: Continue reading “Office 365 ProPlus now officially supported on Windows Server 2019 + release of FSLogix”

WSUS Automated Maintenance

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) aren’t always fun to manage.
Console stops responding? Large WSUS folder? Decline superseded updates? Hundreds of Language packs? Windows XP updates? There is a solution!

In many companies, either small, medium or large Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is a must. WSUS is necessary if you plan to cache and control the distribution of Windows and Office updates in your local network. But WSUS has its issues out-of-the-box. Let’s take a look at WSUS Automated Maintenance by Adam Marshall! Continue reading “WSUS Automated Maintenance”

Download and install latest Tablacus Explorer

In all of my current EUC deployments, I install Tablacus Explorer as an alternative to explorer.exe for use as a published application. This is an evergreen PowerShell script, that downloads and installs the latest version.

In one of my past articles I presented Tablacus Explorer as an replacement for explorer.exe in Citrix Virtual Apps und Desktops (formerly XenApp) as a published application. With automation more and more being mandatory in IT projects, I needed a way to install Tablacus Explorer evergreen with PowerShell each and every time I deploy it to Windows Clients, RDSH, Citrix virtual apps or desktops or in MDT Task sequences. Once again I used one of Trond Eric Haavarstein example scripts and altered it to fit my needs. Here are the results. Continue reading “Download and install latest Tablacus Explorer”

Installing the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Debian Linux with Saltstack

Installing the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Debian Linux (msodbcsql17) with Saltstack requires to pass ACCEPT_EULA=Y to the package manager. This blog post shows a possible solution.

Introduction

Microsoft offers several open source utilities for quite some time now. One is the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Linux which can be leveraged with unixodbc. In my case, I need this driver to query Microsoft SQL Server for my Zabbix ODBC monitoring, to execute native SQL queries for monitoring purposes. As I have to take control over 30+ Zabbix Proxies, I’m currently transforming all of them into Salt minions. My goal here is to achieve 100% automation, as soon as I install the Salt minion on a fresh Debian Linux. Continue reading “Installing the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Debian Linux with Saltstack”