Software Diagnostics Library

Seems railroad to it was a success: just got this message in my e-mail:

“Congratulations on passing your recent Microsoft Certification exam, inspiring confidence for your employer, your peers, and yourself with a widely-recognized validation of your skills on Microsoft technology.“

Because I haven’t done any exam since Windows Internals beta I assumed that I passed it and I was right! After registering at Microsoft certification site as MCP I was able to build my logo:

Here is the link to Exam 70-660 information and required skills:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exams/70-660.aspx

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The most downloaded is StressPrinters:

http://support.citrix.com/product/xa/v4.5/tool/?sortBy=READCOUNT

The best rated tools are:

http://support.citrix.com/product/xa/v4.5/tool/?sortBy=RATING

• - Resource Manager Semantic Model Demonstration 
• - CDFControl 
• - Automatic Farm Tuner 
• - Extentrix Mobile Device Starter Kit for Citrix Presentation Server 
• - Mobile VM Manager 
• - MessageHistory 2.0 for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms 
• - TestDefaultDebugger v1.0 for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms   

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Everything is memory dump.”

I’m very excited to announce that Volume 2 is available in paperback, hardcover and digital editions:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2

In one or two weeks paperback edition should also appear on Amazon and other bookstores. Amazon hardcover edition is planned to be available by the end of October.

I’m often asked when Volume 3 is available and I currently plan to release it in October - November, 2009. In the mean time I’m planning to concentrate on other publishing projects. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The book is nearly finished and here is the final TOC:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2: Table of Contents

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Today Citrix officially joined the club of public symbol server companies! Please refer to the following article for details:

How to Use the Citrix Symbol Server to Obtain Debug Symbols

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Crash dumps are fossils” 

Here is the draft TOC for the previously announced book Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers (Windows Edition) which I’m co-authoring with Thomas Monahan, a Lead Escalation Engineer at Citrix Systems:

Table of Contents

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

New version of StressPrinters tool is available that has a fix for the following bug:

When you run the tool it enumerates all installed printer drivers. When Citrix Universal Printer driver is found the enumeration procedure skips the rest of the list. This results in not showing all the drivers installed in Citrix terminal services environment.

You can download the new version from Citrix support website: CTX109374.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org - 

A year passed since I coined the word Citrixware. Now there are even more Citrix products on the market so definitely this word deserves more widespread use.

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Sometimes ETW (or CDF) traces can be really huge. Unless we trace the elusive but the specific error we already know about, there is no need to make such traces if we can reproduce the issue. My favourite example is connectivity problems when you cannot connect to a terminal server. The best way is to start tracing, try to connect, get an error and stop tracing. Usually it takes no more than a couple of minutes. We can even trace all modules here just to make sure that we don’t miss anything. It is also better to focus on one specific scenario per one lean trace instead of packing several of them into one big trace.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This is a new Xen book that I got in the post a few days ago and it seems to be so good that I took it home from work to start reading it during this weekend:

Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization

I’ll post a review once I read past the first chapter which is the excellent overview of different virtualization technologies.

See also another good Xen book that I discovered previously:

XEN from a system programmer’s perspective

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This is a picture from PubForum event gallery. I’m on the left and Rich Crusco, MVP, Citrix Technical Evangelist for Application Delivery and Virtualization technologies, is on the right. Visitors often think that these books are just on crash dumps… Click on it to enlarge:

More pictures can be found on here.

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

PubForum pictures are available where you can see me selling Crash Dump Tools to the audience and explaining broken clipboard chains:

Pictures

All presentations from that event are available  here:

Presentations

My presentation is also available here:

Citrix Tools: PubForum Presentation

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Here is the presentation PDF file:

Citrix Tools - everything you need for troubleshooting, optimization and analysis

It is based on my previous presentation with a few added slides which can be downloaded from Citrix support web site:

Selected Citrix Troubleshooting Tools

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

There are few tools available. Please drop a comment if you know any other. As the focus here is mainly troubleshooting Citrix terminal service environments I put links to Citrix articles where possible:

• - CDFControl

• - ASC/AMC: Using Citrix Diagnostic Facility and the Access Suite Console for Tracing

• - tracelog: How to Collect System Startup Traces Using the Microsoft Utility Tracelog.exe

• - Windows Performance Tools Kit

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’m presenting Citrix Tools at the famous PubForum event. It is a non-commercial Microsoft Terminal Services, Citrix, Virtualization and Server-Based Computing event. This year PubForum is held in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. See the final event details and agenda:

PubForum, 2008

My presentation date, time and topic are:

Friday, May 9, 19:00 “Citrix Tools - everything you need for troubleshooting, optimization and analysis”

See you there

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Preliminary Table of Contents is available for previously announced Windows® Debugging Notebook:

Draft Table of Contents

This book also features:

• - 256 pages 

• - 64 essential WinDbg commands

• - 32 essential concepts

• - 16 essential tools including Citrix

• - Hexadecimal and binary page numbering

• - Quick base, meta and extension command reminder at the bottom of each page

• - Expanded Crash Dump Analysis checklists

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Due to demand from people that prefer ebooks I published Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1 in a digital format that can be purchased in Crash Dump Analysis Store. This format has color pictures inside.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’m very proud to announce that it is finally available in both paperback and hardback. Why have I made available both editions? Because I personally prefer hardcover books. You can order the book today and it will be printed in 3-5 days (paperback) or 5-10 days (hardcover) and sent to you:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1

Note: although listed on Amazon and other online bookstores it is not immediately available at these stores at the moment due to the late submission. I apologize for this. However, I expect that in a few weeks pre-orders taken there will be eventually fulfilled. In the mean time, if you want the book now, you can use the link above.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Because Citrix CDF traces are ETW based it should be possible to process and analyze them using XPrerf and XPerfView from the latest Microsoft Windows Performance Tools:

Windows Performance Tools Kit, v.4.1.1

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I posted a job ad on the portal:

Citrix Escalation Engineer (Dublin, Ireland)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -