Tag: Microsoft

Download and install latest Office 365 via Office Deployment Tool (ODT)

Inspired by Trond Eric Haavarstein’s evergreen PowerShell setup scripts, I created a download and install script for Office 365 Deployment Tool (ODT).

Microsoft Office 365 is the new standard in the EUC space right now. To honor this, we need a fast and reliable way to install it with our favorite deployment tools like MDT or PDQ,  for example when you rebuild your master images.

There are a few different ways to deploy Office 365, but they are all similar:

  • You need the Office 365 Click-to-run setup.exe (Office Deployment Tool (ODT))
  • You need a XML configuration file
  • You decide to deploy from a pre-build offline cache or the files are downloaded from Microsoft each and every time

And then you go: setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

Pretty straight forward you think, but non the less I had problems with this approach. And this is due to the fact, that the Office Deployment Tool itself gets updated pretty often. And this breaks your unattended deployments sooner or later, as the setup.exe stops working. Continue reading “Download and install latest Office 365 via Office Deployment Tool (ODT)”

Release of FSLogix Apps release 2004 (2.9.7349.30108)

Today Microsoft released FSlogix Apps release 2004 (2.9.7349.30108)

You can find the source of the announcement here, including the Release Notes. A copy of the original release notes are quoted below.

Source: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/e82cb114-2459-4a99-bcbf-50b7d314b5b9/release-notes-for-fslogix-apps-release-2004-29734930108?forum=FSLogix

Release Notes: Continue reading “Release of FSLogix Apps release 2004 (2.9.7349.30108)”

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”

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”

Windows Server 2008 R2 – Update cleanup with cleanmgr.exe

After many years with with Windows Server 2008 R2, we received over 200 different Windows Updates. The c:\ partition grows year after year. Among other things, Windows Updates creates uninstall information for every installed update. So if you ever needed, you could revert a single update. There are systems where this is crucial, but there are also many Windows Servers, where we know that this will never be necessary. In this case, you have the ability to use cleanmgr.exe to remove the following things automatically:

  • Downloaded Program Files
  • Internet Cache Files
  • Offline Pages Files
  • Previous Installations
  • Recycle Bin
  • Service Pack Cleanup
  • Temporary Setup Files
  • Thumbnail Cache
  • Update Cleanup
  • Upgrade Discarded Files
  • Windows Upgrade Log Files

The trouble is, that these options are only available, if you install the Desktop Experience feature. And we all know that we don’t want that on each and every system.

But there is a solution, although it’s unsupported. This description, although thoroughly tested, is provided as-is, and I grant no warranty. Continue reading “Windows Server 2008 R2 – Update cleanup with cleanmgr.exe”