The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

During the analysis phase of a windows 7 x64 migration I have been using the MAP, ACT and OMPM tools.

After handing over all the lists on the application and current client side infrastructure, the first question that came is: “ok I see a lot of applications listed that are only installed on one machine, can you give us the machinenames?”.

ehm well, it should be possible…

in the ACT GUI you can find the computername if you click on the application, but I had to find a way to automate this

So I installed the SQL management studio express and dived into the ACT database.

Here is the SQL query to give you all applications installed on only 1 machine:

SELECT DISTINCT
Application_Computer_Count.computerCount,
Application_Computers_Query.machineName,
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName,
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID

FROM         Application_Computer_Count INNER JOIN
Application_Report_Complete_vw ON Application_Computer_Count.appID = Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID INNER JOIN
Application_Computers_Query ON Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID =Application_Computers_Query.appID

WHERE     (Application_Computer_Count.computerCount= 1)

ORDER BY
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

What is more interesting is the following query, which will give you all applications installed on 1 pc marked with 1 or more issues:

SELECT DISTINCT

App_Issue_Counts.appID,
App_Issue_Counts.activeIssuesCount, Application_Computer_Count.computerCount,
Application_Computers_Query.machineName,Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

FROM         App_Issue_Counts INNER JOIN

Application_Computer_Count ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Computer_Count.appID INNER JOIN

Application_Computers_Query ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Computers_Query.appID INNER JOIN

Application_Report_Complete_vw ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID

WHERE     (App_Issue_Counts.activeIssuesCount >=’1′) AND (Application_Computer_Count.computerCount = 1)

ORDER BY
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

another thing with ACT 5.6, was that it did not seem clear to me why none of the 16 bit applications were listed in the collected data

Luckily there is a way to find them with another SQL query, checkout (and credits to): http://www.theexperienceblog.com/2011/04/14/how-to-find-16-bit-applications-in-your-act-inventory

The last thing for now on ACT is that the collector is not capable yet to work with windows 7 sp1.

you need to import a sql script to make this possible

Here is the content of this script (the import can be done via osql.exe -E -i<thenameofthesqlscript> -S”<sqlserver\instance>” -d<dbname> :

INSERT INTO.[dbo].[OS]
([osID]
,[osName]
,[majorVersion]
,[minorVersion]
,[buildNumber]
,[servicePackName]
,[servicePackMajor]
,[servicePackMinor]
,[csdVersion]
,[productType]
,[suite]
,[publishedDate])
VALUES
(N’6.1.1′
,N’Windows 7 SP1′
,6
,1
,0
,N’Service Pack 1′
,1
,0
,N’Service Pack 1′
,0
,0
,’2011-02-22′)
GO

Also remember, the infliction point to test applications during a migration is:

COST of failure X PROBABILITY of failure > COST of testing

As my first contribution to the D-Spot I would like to give some more detailed information about a specific Microsoft Tool: ACT 5.5. This tool is mainly used to retrieve information from one or more computers. More info about the ACT can be found here.

The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.5 contains the necessary tools and documentation to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Windows 7, Windows Vista®, a Windows Update, or a new version of Windows® Internet Explorer® in your environment.

1. Prerequisites

Before installing the ACT you need to have an SQL server installed. These are the SQL server versions you can use:

• SQL Server 2005
• SQL Server 2005 Express
• SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Express

The client OS you can install the ACT on are all the client OS between Windows XP SP2 and Windows 7. The server OS needs to be at least Windows Server 2003 SP2.

Last but not least you also need the .NET Framework 2.0 or newer.

2. Installation of the ACT 5.5

When launching the installer of the ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit.msi) a wizard starts and you need to go through the 6 steps. The wizard will ask you some questions about the SQL server database, log files, etc.

3. Different topologies

4. The Application Compatibility Manager (ACM)

This is the main tool you use to manage the DCP’s (Data Collector Package) and all the retriever information from all the machines you ran the ACT on. The ACT is dependent from an agent (called a DCP) which you create in the ACM. In the following screenshots you can see how to create such a Data Collector Package.

Once you saved the msi-file you can start to distribute the package among all the computers you want the ACT to retrieve the information from. There are several ways to do this:

• Put the file on the network share
• Put the file on the local drive of the computer
• Put the file in a GPO
• Put the file in a startup/logon script.

If the file has been run on a computer you’ll receive the information in the ACM. In the following set of screenshots the DCP will be run on a local machine and outputting the data to the same machine.

When the output is available in the ACM we can analyze all the information:

• Which programs are installed on the machine(s)?
• Which computers have been scanned?
• Which devices are discovered during the process?

Be aware:

The “ACT Log Processing Service” needs to be started otherwise there will be no output shown in the ACM.