Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator

Release Notes

© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Release Date: February 3, 2009

Important: Installation and use of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator requires separately purchased licenses for the following software products:

• Microsoft Word 2007 or Microsoft Word 2003 SP2
• Microsoft Excel 2007® or Microsoft Excel 2003 SP2

Table of Contents

Documentation

• About This Document
• Additional Guidance

Localization

Installation Prerequisites

Installation Notes

• Installation Process and Logging
• Installing the Solution Accelerator
• Uninstalling the Solution Accelerator

Known Issues

Additional Information

• Support
• Send Feedback

Terms of Use

About This Document

This document provides the prerequisite information you need to install and start using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator. You should also use this document to obtain information about any late-breaking updates and known issues in this release. 

Additional Guidance

After you have installed the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator, additional guidance is available by clicking Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator on the Start menu, and then clicking Getting Started Guide. The following guidance is available from this document:

• Overview of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator.
• Assessment scenarios supported by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator.
• Information on using the wizards.
• Information for performing configurations on remote computers in order to conduct assessments.
• Information about the results (reports and proposals) for each assessment scenario.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator user interfaces and most reports and proposals are not localized. Localized reports and proposals are only generated for the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, Office 2007 Assessment, and SNMP Devices documents. These are available in the following languages:

• German
• French
• Spanish
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Japanese
• Korean

Note: The previously mentioned reports and proposals are localized only when the Display Language, for the computer generating the reports, is configured to one of these specifically mentioned languages. If you want the reports and proposals generated in English then you need to change the Display Language to English.

Install the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator (MAP) on a computer that meets the requirements specified in the following table.

• If the setup wizard is run on a computer joined to a domain and the logged on user is an account from that domain then you need to be connected to a network that can contact a domain controller on that domain before running the setup wizard. This is required so that the setup wizard can verify that the credentials of the user are valid before installation begins.
• The setup wizard will detect if there is available disk space on drive C to download, extract, and install SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. It is not able, at this time, to allow the user to select the drive in which to download and extract the SQL Server installation package. For this reason, if you have multiple partitions and the system partition does not have sufficient disk space, then the setup wizard will prevent installation. To work around this issue, make sure you have up to 600 MB of disk space on the system drive.
• The setup wizard installs the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator for use only by the user that installed the application. Reports generated by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator Wizard will always be stored in that user's My Documents (or Documents in Windows Vista) directory.
• Installation of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator is not allowed on computers that have a pre-release version of Windows Vista, Microsoft Excel 2007, or Microsoft Word 2007 installed. If a pre-release version of this software is installed, then you will need to upgrade to the released version before running the setup wizard.
• In some limited scenarios, the setup wizard may fail and display an unclear error message. If this occurs, you should close all open applications and try to run the setup wizard again.
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition NOTE: If the SQL Server 2005 core components are already installed on the computer and if the SQL Server 2005 Express installation fails in the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator Setup Wizard, you should uninstall the SQL Server 2005 core components and run the setup wizard again. Refer to section 2.1 of the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Readme for more information.
• Before beginning an uninstall, repair or upgrade you should close the solution console and any open documents generated by the solution.

• When the Assessment Wizard is run on a Windows Vista computer with 1.5GB of RAM or less, the lsass.exe service may cause the CPU utilization of the computer to jump to 90% or higher for a sustained period of time. When this occurs the wizard may fail with timeout errors. If you encounter this issue, we recommend that you try running the wizard again. If this issue occurs again, we recommend that you run the wizard on a Windows Vista computer that has 1.5GB or more of RAM.
• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator collects the Number of Hyperthreads (per core), Number of Cores, and the L3 Cache Size for computers running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. For all other operating system versions, the corresponding cells in reports will be blank or display the value "Unknown."
• In order to collect performance data by using the Performance Metrics Wizard, the Remote Registry service must be running on the remote computer. By default, it is disabled on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Refer to the "Remote Registry Service" section of the Getting Started Guide for more information.
• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator Wizard uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect the data required to complete the assessment. To enable the WMI connection between the computer running the wizard and the computer being inventoried, refer to the Getting Started Guide , which is available on the Start menu after installation.
• Computers running Windows XP Home edition cannot be inventoried and assessed because remote WMI connections are not allowed to computers running this version of Windows XP.
• For assessments of large environments (more than 2,000 computers), we recommend using Microsoft Excel 2007. Microsoft Excel 2003 limits the number of rows in a worksheet to 65,536 rows. Some of the worksheets created during report generation may exceed the 65,536 row limitation in large environments.
• The report generation process might fail if either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel is open while the reports are being generated. If an error occurs, then you should close all instances of Microsoft Word and Excel and rerun the wizard.
• Generation of the reports may fail if all of the latest Microsoft Office 2003 software updates are not installed.
• For assessments of environments of more than 5,000 computers, we recommend that you use a dedicated machine running only the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator. Hardware and software recommendations can be found in the Getting Started Guide  under the section titled "Installing the Accelerator."
• At the time of this release, additional security features included in Windows Server 2008 and Vista are known to impact performance of large scale inventories (i.e. 1000 machines or greater) conducted by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool. For best inventory performance use Windows Server 2003 following the guidance provided in the Configuration Recommendation section of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Getting Started Guide.

• The console should only be opened and run on the computer and under the user context on which it was installed.

• Server Consolidation: Reported guest values are rounded and may not equal the sum of the host total values exactly.
• The Windows Server 2008 Assessment and Vista Hardware Assessment: If the "Manually enter computer names and credentials" option is the only discovery method selected during inventory, the "VirtualMachineInventory" worksheet in the "WS2008HardwareAssessment" and "VistaHardwareAssessment" reports may not display both virtual machine hosts and virtual machine guests if credentials for a host are specified but not the guest, or vice versa. To work around this issue, either specify manually credentials for both the host and all of its guest computers, or use another inventory method such as "Use Active Directory domain services."
• The Windows Server 2008 Assessment and Vista Hardware Assessment: The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit may not report the physical host associated with a virtual machine in the VirtualMachineInventory worksheet if that a virtual machine is the last machine inventoried. Re-running the inventory process will typically cause the missing physical host to appear in the VirtualMachineInventory worksheet in this report.

Support

For questions about how to use or install the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator, you should review this document and the Getting Started Guide.

Support for the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator is provided through Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS). Premier customers should contact Premier Support for assistance. Support offerings and regional contact information for support can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.  

Send Feedback

To send feedback or suggestions for improving the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator, send e-mail to mapfdbk@microsoft.com.