Monthly Archives: March 2019

Do we still need to tuning storage/SMB for PVS 7.* servers?

Recently I spent lots of time to check how to improve PVS 7.* server performance to reduce the vDisk loading time.
And it seems on the internet there are lots of articles talking about tuning storage (both storage server and PVS server) to enable ‘oplock’.
But I found that almost all these articles are based on PVS 5.* and windows 2003/2008.
So do we still need to tuning storage/SMB for PVS servers?

Citrix has a good article to answer this quetion:
https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2018/09/05/pvs-internals-4-vdisk-stores-and-smb3/

Just check the summary part:

Using file share storage for vDisks is still a valid and recommended approach, if sufficient capacity and high availability is in place. Especially in environments without redundant resp. highly available file services, I’d rather recommend local replicated vDisk stores instead of using just a single file server that definitely constitutes a single point of failure. And no one needs to invest in expensive file clustering solutions if its only purpose would be to provide file shares for vDisk storage.
Caching will help to significantly reduce the load on file servers or filers. Unlike earlier versions, there are no tuning requirements, neither for the PVS servers, nor for file servers. The defaults are perfectly fine. Sizing guidelines for PVS server memory (RAM) from past articles still apply.
Consider the caching behavior of the SMB redirector. There is a chance that shutting down all target devices connected to a particular vDisk will also remove the vDisk’s cache entries and the cache will need to be warmed up again on the next boot.
Leverage the latest SMB protocol if possible, at the time or writing this article it’s SMB 3.1.1. Not only Windows file servers support SMB3, but also modern filers such as NetApp, and even my home lab Synology is able to support SMB3.
Leasing is key for caching, so don’t use SMB 1.x or 2.0 (in fact you shouldn’t even enable the optional SMB 1.x feature on your PVS servers), and forget about any ‘oplock tuning’. Anything from SMB 2.1 onwards is fine with its defaults, but SMB 3.x brings added features that might be beneficial for you, such as ODX when taking copies of a vDisk file.

So it seems the only thing we need to do is to disable SMB 1.0 on PVS server. How to do it? Here is the link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2696547/detect-enable-disable-smbv1-smbv2-smbv3-in-windows-and-windows-server

Customize Office 365 Home installation

I just switched from Office2019 retail to Office 365 Home edition.
And we also can’t choose which office program to install, which means by default access/outlook will be installed on my computer and OneNote will not be installed.

And I checked MS document (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/product-ids-that-are-supported-by-the-office-deployment-tool-for-click-to-run-77654e77-aaeb-4ed6-84eb-1d8b0e086590), it seems we can also use Office Deployment Tool to customize Office 365 Home/Personal installation.

1, go to https://config.office.com to generate a configuration file for installation. For Office Suites, you can choose Office365 Proplus, and we’ll change it after the configuration file is generated.
2, select the Apps you want to install.
3. For the update channel, select “Monthly”
4. Answer the rest questions
5. Click export to download the XML file.
6. Open the XML file, change prodouctID from O365ProPlusRetail to O365HomePremRetail or O365PersonalRetail.
7. Download office deployment tool from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117
8, open command line, run

setup.exe /configure Configuration_home.xml

Done!

And below are my configuration files, you can use it if you want.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Monthly" ForceUpgrade="TRUE">
    <Product ID="O365HomePremRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Access" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Outlook" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="0" />
  <Property Name="PinIconsToTaskbar" Value="TRUE" />
  <Property Name="SCLCacheOverride" Value="0" />
  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" />
  <RemoveMSI />
</Configuration>

fix new iphone can’t sync with outlook.com issue

It seems Microsoft is encourage people to use the app outlook. The app is good, but I still need to sync the contact between my iphone and outlook to get my contacts number.
Spent some time to check this issue, here is the fix:


    Login to outlook.live.com
    In the browser, click on Settings icon (gear at top right) ; scroll down the Quick Settings panel and click on 'View all Outlook settings'
    In the pop-up window, select 'General'; 'Mobile Devices'
    Select the iPhone, note if you have more than one iPhone (e.g. an older device), select the 'Edit' icon (pencil) to check the details including the version, 'OK' to exit details
    Click on the 'Delete' icon (bin) to remove the device
    Power off the iPhone
    Power on the iPhone - device should attempt to re-register with Microsoft
    Open the iPhone Mail app and look for email with subject: "ACTION REQUIRED TO SYNC EMAIL" (note, this email won't appear in the online version of Outlook, only in the iPhone Mail app)
    Scroll down the message and click on: "Continue using this email app".