June 2006 - Posts
Ok... So I finally have the Agent Desktop portion installed. What this means is I have installed all of the basic web services, I have installed the database on Sql Server 2000, I have configured "AzMan" - aka Authorization Manager - and I go to run the "Agent Desktop" - and i get an error...
An hour later I'm able to get the thing to tell me what the error is... but it's not helping much. A simple "Access Denied" a 401. Fabulous.
So I went through IIS and configured all the web services to allow Anonymous access. This gave a wonderful appearance that it might work... I could pull the asmx files up... but then I tried to pull up the application and it failed miserably. Why? Well, this was obvious... because it uses Integrated Auth all the way through to SQL server.
So I'm stuck. What I have now is the web services and iis are not really performing integrated windows authentication properly... I'm sure this is some IIS6 lock down thing I just need to sort out. A gent at the office, Doug McCoy, brought up an interesting point - the original IISLockdown tool would not just disable, but would configure whatever it was you wanted. So that's my next clue. If I figure this out - I'm blogging it for sure...
Ah--- the mysteries of authentication and authorization and Windows and NTLM and NTFS... *sigh* what a pain in the kiester! A whole day to unravel the mystery.
Oh - and of course, none of this b.s. is in the Customer Care Framework deployment guide. None of it! Now - I'd assume the author(s) either forgot this particular detail - or weren't involved in configuring it.
There is something to be said for having knowledgeable IIS geeks as developers... and I know IIS pretty well - but this is one of those things where there are too many layers of authorization.
This is the third day I've spent working on setting up Microsoft's Customer Care Framework 2005 (CCF 2005). Now, why has it taken 3 days? (or more?) - I've had to spend some time getting the virtual servers set up and configured before even performing the steps in the 100+ page "Deployment Guide".
Now, this is a very spread out deployment, although, sometimes it just "feels" big when you have to crank up 4, then 5, then 6 virtual machines to emulate the environment they call for.
CCF is truly an end-to-end-lets-see-how-many-Microsoft-techs-we-can-use product. To set up the "Deployment" environment for development (what I'm attempting to do) I've installed Windows Server 2003 (a couple of times - although one install copied a couple times for the most part), SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, and the Enterprise Instrumentation Framework. I haven't gotten to the BizTalk 2004 Server set up beyond configuration of the Enterprise Single-sign-on. The clients I am setting up right now on two Windows XP SP2 virtual machines. The authentication makes extensive use Active Directory (AD) and a tool I was once taken with - AzMan (or Authorization Manager).
So my voyage of discovery for CCF is just three days old, and I haven't looked at a single line of code, and I'm on page 37 of 116 in the deployment guide. Hopefully at this point I have all the virtual hardware I need because I'm running out of physical RAM.
As my voyage begins to get exciting, I'm going to blog about what I discover and the questions I'm pondering as I go through the Customer Care Framework. Now, CCF currently runs on .NET Framework 1.1, and Sql 2000. Two techs we're hoping to upgrade very soon. And with Microsoft announcing .NET Framework 3.0 -- yeah - seems like if MS does put together a CCF 2006 running on .NET 2.0 and Sql 2005, that it'll be slated for upgrade in a year when the next version of the framework hits the streets.
Stay tuned, more to come on the Customer Care Framework 2005.
I saw a WebCast today from TechEd in Boston given by Martin Granell. At the end of the web cast we received the URL to his blog to eventually get code from the session. Visiting Martin's blog uncovered more than just some cool info on Grandmothers and Missile Defense Systems... it uncovered some really cool tips for setting up virtual server and optimizing it for best performance.
I'm looking forward to putting these to good use here in the next few days, and will let you know how successful I am.
Honestly, I'm finding that Virtual Server 2005 R2 runs a lot faster than Virtual PC 2004. And I'm already pleased with it's performance. But like most folks, I'll take any opportunity to eek more power out of anything! Especially if I'm having to run Visual Studio 2005 (the processor and memory hog that it is!).
Martin Granell's Blog.