The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

In addition to the Office 2010 Deployment-post, here is how to integrate (slipstream) Service Pack 1 into the Office 2010 network installation point.

• Download SP1 for Office 2010 (x86)
• Extract the sources: execute this at the command line:

officesuite2010sp1-kb2460049-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\temp\SP1>

Accept the License Terms and click continue.

 

After extracting is complete, you will find the unpacked files into the folder you specified.

• Apply SP1: Copy the extracted files to your Office 2010 network installation point into the Updates folder, no more no less.

Microsoft released an update for User State Migration Tool 4.0 (USMT). The main focus is Office 2010 support.

Read more about this info on Michael’s blog.

We had serious performance issues with our virtualized Office 2010. First launch could take up to 6 minutes, while Feature Block 1 was only about 100MB!

Because only Office 2010 was having this slow first start (and autoload), we blame our sequence, the App-V infrastructure or the application itself. But neither of these were the cause of the problem.

What got our attention was the Network utilization, it only reaches 2%. While this wasn’t an issue at all with other App-V applications. Streaming other applications goes fast and uses up to 95% of the available network bandwidth. But Office 2010 was sequenced with the 4.6 RTM version of the Application Virtualization Sequencer. Most other applications were sequenced with App-V sequencer 4.5.

Since version 4.6 the blocksize is fixed at 64KB, there is no way to change this with the GUI sequencer.

I managed to change the blocksize with the trail version of SFT Encoder. Once the blocksize was changed from 64 to 32K, Office 2010 launches ten times faster! However this isn’t a permanent solution for the slow launch. We don’t want to convert all newly sequenced packages with SFT Encoder!

So the reason why only Office 2010 suffered form this slow first start was because it was the only large package sequenced with version 4.6. Other packages made with sequencer 4.6 where to small to notice the slow launch.

A colleague of mine changed the network card speed from 1GBit/Full Duplex to 100Mbit/Full Duplex. With this setting changed, packages created with sequencer 4.6 are streaming fast like it should.

Maybe it’s a networking issue (switches?), maybe a network card setting misconfiguration (teaming?) .. to be investigated. But at least our 4.6 sequences are streaming fast again!

Thanks to Madelinde Walraven for the help with this issue!

To be continued!

Many company’s choose to deploy Microsoft Office 2010 with the Windows 7 rollout, including mine. I will describe in short our Office 2010 deployment process in this post.

1. Create a network installation point

• Create a folder on a file server. For example: \\servername\sharename\office2010standard
• Copy the Office 2010 CD to that folder, this location becomes the network installation point (this approach differs from previous versions, such as Office 2003).
• Copy each language pack that you want from the source media to the installation point. When you are prompted to overwrite duplicate Setup files, click No.

2. Make a customization file with Office Customization Tool in Office 2010

• Start setup with the /admin parameter, to launch OCT (\\servername\sharename\office2010standard\setup.exe /Admin)
• Select your Office version, I choose Standard 32bit, or open a previous created msp file.

Setup

• Choose install location and company name.
• Setup licensing and user interface; we ‘re using a Key Management Server (KMS), we don’t like having users canceling the setup, we don’t like setup to display error messages and other dialog boxes that might interrupt the installation and we’re accepting the EULA automatically:

Features

• Modify user settings;
  • Disable Opt-in Wizard on first run: Enable (to disable the Wizard)
  • Enable customer experience improvenment program: Disable
  • Automatically receive small updates to improve reliability: Disable

• Language settings:

• Choose features you’d like to install.

Additional content

• We’re moving the shortcuts to another place in the Start Menu, it’s your choice to adapt this.

Outlook

• Outlook profile

• Add accounts

Save the customization file in de Updates folder: \\servername\sharename\office2010standard\Updates\yourFile.msp

3. Config.xml

Although some settings are already configured with OCT, this is my Config.xml file:

<Configuration Product=”Standard”>

  <Display Level=”basic” CompletionNotice=”no” SuppressModal=”No” AcceptEula=”Yes” />
  <Logging Type=”standard” Path=”C:\YourLogPath” Template=”Microsoft Office 2010 Standard Setup(*).txt” />
  <COMPANYNAME Value=”CompanyName” />
  <Setting Id=”SETUP_REBOOT” Value=”Never” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”match” ShellTransform=”Yes” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”en-us” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”nl-nl” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”fr-fr” />
  <LIS SOURCELIST=”\\servername\sharename\office2010standard” />
</Configuration>

Display

I like to immitate the /qb installation method, this can be done with this line:

<Display Level=”Basic” CompletionNotice=”No” SuppressModal=”No” AcceptEula=”Yes” />

Other options for Display Level are : None / Basic / Full

CompletionNotice set to None. To hide the setup end screen. Users don’t need this screen.

SuppressModal set to None, This way setup doesn’t display error messages and other dialog boxes that might interrupt the installation.

AcceptEula to accept the End User Licensing automatically.

Logging

We like to have some logging to troubleshoot install failures.

<Logging Type=”standard” Path=”C:\YourLogPath” Template=”Microsoft Office 2010 Standard Setup(*).txt” />

Setting – Reboot

To suppress a reboot after setup:

<Setting Id=”SETUP_REBOOT” Value=”Never” />

Setting – Suppress Activation using MAK actication

If you’re using a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) and you want to automatically (silent) activate Office 2010, add the following line to your config.xml. So users don’t get bothered with activation.

<Setting Id=”AUTO_ACTIVATE” Value=”1″ />

AddLanguage

A system engineer in a multilanguage environment needs to enable extra languages. Use the following lines to match the User Interface (Shell UI) language of the user’s Locale, and install some languages used in Belgium.

<AddLanguage Id=”match” />
<AddLanguage Id=”en-us” ShellTransform=”Yes” />
<AddLanguage Id=”nl-nl” />
<AddLanguage Id=”fr-fr” />

LIS Sourcelist

Add extra lines to the LIS Sourcelist if you’re having multiple fileservers holding the Office network installation point.

<LIS SOURCELIST=”\\servername\sharename\office2010standard” />

 

Hotfixes and patches

Hotfixes can be placed in the directory \Updates. These patches will be installed by setup during Office installation.

4. Deployment

Install Office with the /config parameter, pointing to the config.xml file.

\\servername\sharename\office2010standard\setup.exe” /config \\servername\sharename\office2010standard\Standard.WW\Config.xml”

 

Happy deploying!

Update: Integrate Service Pack 1 into the network installation point.

Late last week, the Office engineering team announced that Office 2010 RTM has been released.

As it seems, the public beta was already downloaded by 7.5 million people, this latest Office release is going to be a success.

If you want to read more on the new features in this release, or are just curious, checkout here

The Final build number is 14.0.4763.1000.

Downloads for msdn/technet people should be available on April 22th, for existing Volume Licensing customers with SA the date is April 27th.

Retail boxes should be available from June on

A Virtual Launch event is also planned on May 12 : http://www.the2010event.com

Enjoy!

This morning I came across the Office 2010 deployment kit for APPV, so I figured why not give this  a go…

I had already downloaded the office 2010 beta and have an appv client and sequencer running in 4.6 RC for a while already in my 4.5 SP1 environment.

The thing is, I do not really get the purpose of this deployment kit so far; You have to install it on your sequencer machine before creating the 2010 package AND on the client.  I did find that it installs a licensing service which can be configured with the included OSPP.vbs script.

On with the preparation part, First of all I created a transform file for Office 2010.  this can still be done with the command line setup /admin (hurray for that !).  While comparing the OCT from office 2010 with the one in Office 2007, I noticed some new things in there.  Fortunately they did not change the majority that was already there…

The first thing I noticed is that you can configure your KMS host for office 2010 licensing from within the OCT wizard:

  

Under the Modify User Settings part of the wizard I noticed an entry Disable Items in User Interface where you can choose to disable commands or shortcut keys for a certain office application.  Configuration of the Outlook Cached Exchange mode is now brought under the Exchange part instead of elsewhere like in office 2007, good one!

Another useful entry in there is the File Block Settings where you can configure whether users can open, view or edit office application files for a large number of different versions:

Time to save my customizations into an MSP file

On with the sequencing part (after installing the Office deployment kit on the sequencer machine)

If you haven’t been able to try out the slightly revamped sequencer of APPV 4.6, it acts similar but yet more user-friendly.  For instance, it doesn’t minimize any longer on the point where you have to start the actual installation:

The rest of the steps are quite similar as any other application sequencing, so I’m not going to describe them (fyi: I haven’t activated Office 2010 yet).

Saved the Sequence and imported it into my APPV console.

On my 4.6 test client, the Office 2010 sequence launched really well.  But oops, haven’t installed the deployment kit on that client yet…  Strangely enough Office did not complain, but shows unlicensed version in the titlebar.  After installing the Office 2010 deployment kit for Appv on my test system with appv 4.6 rc I imported my license with the following command: cscript ospp.vbs -inpkey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX (note: you must replace the X’s).  Right before this Office 2010 asked for the license, copy-paste didn’t work ??  So now the license is present, but Office 2010 is still not activated…

I guess the option to insert the Office 2010 licence into our KMS server will be the best one, less work and no fiddling around.  The Office 2010 deployment kit for APPV might come in handy in some cases, but will need some documentation first…