You have reached the home of the RESguru Blog. This is a technical blog dedicated to the products of RES Software, namely Workspace Manager, Automation Manager, VDX and the Service Orchestration Module. Although this blog has been been around since early 2009,  I eventually figured out it would make  sense to write a short intro to our new visitors :-).  The old hands who have frequented the site over the years know where to go, so the following  intro is for you, our new prospective patrons.

PS: If you like what you find here, please consider giving the site a Google +1 here:

RES Software makes Desktops Dynamic. Right, so what does that really mean? In short, we make sure that all the configuration, security, performance, documentation and stuff is taken care of, without having to rely on scripting and policies. While other vendors focus their efforts on giving you the best operating system, virtualization or delivery systems, at RES Software we strive to manage the actual deliverable; the desktop as easily and effeciently as possible. There is a primer article here, which will give you a good introduction to what dynamic desktops are and how you set them up with the RES products.

If you are new to Workspace Management, Run Book Automation, Service Orchestration, or Reverse Seamless Windows – or you want to learn more, this site is definatly for you.

For those of you wondering; is this site an official RES resource? The answer is NO. This is just another fine site for mindsharing and experience exchange. I originally created it to avoid having to answer the same questions time and time again. Anything you find and use from here is your own responsibility. Please refer to the “Fine Print” section further down on the right side”.

With that aside, let me give you a quick tour around the block. At the top, you may already have noticed a menu of sorts, that look like this. Below it is a more detailed overview on what you will find in these areas.

• The Technote library, is the central repository for for reference articles, howto’s and all sorts of usefull bits of information I’ve collected from various sources. Each article is numbered and briefly outlined in the technote library.

• In the Video Vault you will find pretty much every RES related video ever made available. The videos are sorted into 4 categories: Technical Presentations (mostly from tradeshows and such), Tutorials (shows you how to do certain things),  Commercial videos (a bit more highlevel, not necessarily tech stuff) and finally the Legacy video section which may be obsolete in terms , although the capabilities may still be relevant.

• BB’s for WM is an abreviation for BuildingBlocks for Workspace Manager. Buildingblocks are prebuilt configuration pieces which you can import into Workspace Manager to make it do certain things. Examples are preconfigured settings and applications. The buildingblocks found in this section have been created by yours truely and other community guru’s.

• BB’s for AM is short for BuildingBlocks for Automation Manager. These buildingblocks will show you working examples on how to configure machine specific options, install software and do lot’s of other cool things. Note that these downloads may be somewhat larger than the Workspace Manager counterpart as they may contain binaries.

• I originally created the RESpedia as a one-stop reference to all the RES related buzzwords and jargon flying around, when you hang out with Workspace Geeks like yours truely :) In this crosslinked reference, you will find explainations of everything from Alligators to Zones. Note, where ever you see a link in italics, it is a link to the corresponding RESpedia entry.

• The Forums button is a direct link over to the RESug Forums. The RES UserGroup is a great place to ask questions, share ideas and experiences with your peers.

• Finally, in the Writers section, you will find introductions and bio’s on the contributing authors that provide content to this blog.

Below this article you will find other shorter postings. The aim of these postings is to follow current events in the RESverse, of a technical nature. These postings go back to early 2009, so there are plenty of them to read.  Just hit the << Older link at the bottom of each page.

I hope you will find this site as interesting as it is fun for me to write. Go dig around the site. I will soon improve RESguru with a new search plugin, so it should become more easy to find what you are looking for. In the interim, the site is now fully indexed by Google, so you can always use a site: search to find what you need.

Thanks for your interest,

Max Ranzau

From the link-here-and-win dept. The winner of the RESguru giftcard contest was drawn today. The winner has asked to remain anonymous, which I of course will respect, although I can reveal he is a big fan of RES technology in the United Kingdom.  To all who now links to the ‘Guru, thanks a bunch fellas! If I haven’t linked to your RES technology related site yet, please let me know about it.

Stay tuned for other competitions in the future.

From the toys-aren’t-quite-us dept. In an effort to spread awareness of the posibilities with RES PowerFuse and Wisdom, I’m kicking off a little prize drawing over the next month. The prize is a $75 giftcard for ThinkGeek.com. If you’re a techie like me, you’ll love the stuff they’ve got. All sorts of gadgets, duds and consumables that any geek worth their salt could ever crave.

The compo is quite simple;

• If you run a blog or a regular website and you like RES products (since you’re reading this blog, I presume that may be the case :) – consider adding a link to RESguru to your site*
• Email me the URL where you’ve linked to RESguru.com. Put ‘RESguru Link‘ in the subject.
• On October 1st 2010, submitted URLS will be reviewed (see below) and the winner will be drawn at random and I’ll contact you directly. If you want to have your name out or not, is completely up to you.

Review: While I don’t expect you to plaster a 8000px blinking banner on the front of your website, on the other hand – if you tuck in the link on some backwater page where only the spiders crawl, isn’t exactly what I’m aiming for either :) Stick a link to RESguru.com into your BlogRoll (see the Places that we like section further down on the right hand side on this blog), or you can put in a little banner like the ones here.

* Note: Although being more than welcome to link, Employees of RES Software are not eligible to enter prize drawing. Sorry guys, but we got to keep things fair.

From the bleepin’ bird dept. This is kinda old hats by now as my account has been live for a couple of months. Anyway – I could have sworn that I’d never jump on the Twitter bandwaggon. Not that I have anything against it, but so far LinkedIn has catered nicely for most of my online presence needs. But what the heck – Twitter’s got one cool thing going for them; the SMS update thingy. So, if you want, you can follow what’s going on, here @RESguru.

Greetings fellow Guru’s, and happy new year!

It’s been quite a while since something has happened over here on RESguru. New customer projects, job transitions and in general running around in small circles throughout 2009, has attributed to the dip in the steady flow of content.

What matters is that the ‘Guru back in great shape for the new year, with loads of upcomming new and interesting stuff for 2010, which you can use to wrangle even more value out of your PowerFuse and Wisdom environments.

As usual all the good stuff is being put forward to the community in the context of the RES Software Usergroup. Articles found here will be accessible through resug.com also.

In related news, we are on the brink of seeing the release of the brand-spankin’ new PowerFuse 2010 and the Orchestration Pack for Wisdom this year. Plenty of questions will be answered about these. Due to the hush-hush about  new releases, I unfortunatly can’t go into the nittygritty details about PowerFuse 2010 until mid-febuary.

Some of the noteworthy improvements onthe  blog include:

The technote library is receiving a long needed overhaul. I’ve had some catching up to do in regards to what’s happened with product releases, etc. This meant that all articles had to be reviewed and amended if needed. A full list of updated articles is being published soon.

The glossary, which has been around for a while,  is also receiving a facelift. If you haven’t visited it before, you will find in the right side of the toolbar at the top of the page. The glossary has been updated with new terminology relating to PowerFuse 2010 and the upcomming RES Orchestration Package for Wisdom. In general a glossary is a great ressource for those who are new to the RESverse and need a quick reference to all the buzzwords and tech jargon flying around in here.  This is a living document which I hope you will find it worth contributing to. The idea is to create a list of all the often used phrases, technologies, oddities etc which are associated with the RES technologies. This should be a one-stop ressource where RES novices and professionals alike can look up stuff.

New buildingblocks and articles! To start with, there are a couple of interesting new articles in the technote library from RGO1C and up. These are the first of hopefully many to come. As always, if you have stuff you want to share, come forward – YOU can be a RESguru too!

One final little thing, which hopefully will make alot of readers happy. Up until now all large screenshots opened up in a new window, which was annoying. I finally got the LightBox 2 plugin installed in WordPress, so big graphics just zoom up on the existing page. Links to other pages will however still open up in new windows so you can continue reading the article you’re currently at.

RESguru.com is back in action – with a vengeance! ;-) Stay tuned!

Oh yeah, and Mike M – totally love your movies, so please forgive the blatantly crappy  photoshop above! :-)

May 4th 2009 at 21:00 GMT, it was officially announced that the people behind the RES Software User Group and the RESguru.com website are joining forces to provide even better content and information to the entire RES community.

Yuri Haak, co-founder of RESug.com: “This is indeed a match made in heaven as the newly started community provides an officially vendor sanctioned place for all RES community members; administrators, integrators, distributors and RES employees alike to share ideas and all sorts of things. Merging with Max’s RESguru.com provides a massive influx of material which will be of great value to the community.

Max Ranzau, aka the RESguru; “This is an exiting opportunity to contribute content to this cause. Until now, due to the fact that I’m at RES Software, I was constrained to write under pseudonym for legal reasons. As RES Usergroup is an seperate legal entity, I am now allowed to write under my own name as a regular community member. It will be a pleasure to continue serving the community with new and interesting material.

So, what’s going to happen at RESguru.com? This message has been posted on both sites. In a short while, all previous content from RESguru.com will be still available in it’s current form. The forums at RESguru.com will however be replaced with the forum at RESug. We all believe that this marriage of effort will bring the best of both worlds to the RES community.