How to manage an Windows Vista Enterprise Project

It's been a very long time since I did the last blog post here. So what did happen, did I just disappeared a few weeks before Windows Server 2008 RTM. Oh no, But Windows Server 2008 RTM has been a lot of work to me and the entire company, as you may been aware of I have been responsible for putting Windows Server 2008 Pre-release code out in production at a bunch of customers, It's definitely been a lot of challenges and a lots of fun to driving this program, as well it did put a lot of value both to the customers that participated and to Microsoft – for all the great feedback we did give them, and all the bugs we did found and got resolved before the product did hit RTM. I will quote a line for the RTM announcement I received from Microsoft. "When you look at Windows Server 2008, you should think there is a little price of you in that product – thanks for helping us making this product" and I would say thanks for letting me having the opportunity to be a part of the Longhorn project. It is a few days now since I've installed the first Windows Longhorn DC back in early 2005. I would like to thank many people at Microsoft and at last, but not least Mikael Nyström (TrueSec Employee) and Anders Jansson (former TrueSec Employee) for running this program with me.

So what are I'm up to know? Did I move straight on to the next Windows version? Well in fact I did, I went on to early builds on what's next after Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 even before Windows Server 2008 did hit RTM, but that's another story.

Let's stay with Windows Vista for a while, okay wait a sec, aren't I'm supposed to be a server guy, or more specific AD guy? O Yes I'm, don't get me wrong there. But I got very bored of all noises about Windows Vista like "There is no way you can migrate an enterprise company over to that crapy platform". Eh, if you know me you know that I'm totally are in love with large enterprise environment, the complexity, scalability issues, communication, and working across different countries, working with multiple teams. So I did decided to join and drive one of the most interesting and challenging projects I've come across so far, I happen to be in Team Platform Core:

Deploying and migrating over 60 000 clients from a mixture of Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional with a time line of only 3 years, reaching out to 95% of all internal business units with Windows Vista SP1 and Office 2007 SP1 using System Center Configuration Manager 2007. This customer dose currently has around 10000 + applications. Oh yes they have to remain working once we switched every PC into Windows Vista form now and the coming two years. It gets even more complicated, they happen to have an industrial line that runs 24/5 around the globe.

I think we have so far done a lot of right decision in this project, and it's the best team I ever been working with, both internal and external people in this project is very skilled and professional in what they do, we definitely have the right people here. The most challenge part so far has been time, but there is no way to delay the final results of this project, you may ask why? The answer is pretty simple: End of support for Windows 2000 Professional by year 210 (most of the workstations are running at this platform today) not receiving security updates nor there is going to be any support beyond that date isn't an option for an enterprise customer like this. So we have about 2 years left, we haven't deployed a single Windows Vista PC in production yet. So if our calculations are made right. (Yes our team did get the statistics of the network performance at over 640 sites, did put together I formula for when to use a SCCM DP, SCCM Branch Office DP, SCCM Secondary Site Server, when to create an AD site, did calculate with the size of the Windows Vista Image to go over the wire (approximately 3GB) plus Office 2007 (approximately 1GB), and what we refer to as app0 (HW based apps) and app1 (core apps) as well USMT data during migration (approximately 20GB) going upstream and downstream.) Our rollout team has to migrate around 100 PCs each day in two years to be able to successfully accomplish the goal. I will report more from this project and what it is like to be in the middle of it, next post will probably be about application compatibility, what strategy we did choose, why Microsoft ACT wasn't enough, what custom tools our team did put together to in order for making it all possible for Team Application.