Power Management in Windows Server 2008 R2 – Improving your “gas mileage”

Everybody pays the power bill. 

Well... except maybe the power company.  But who wouldn’t want to reduce that bill?  Not to mention their environmental impact?

The biggest power savings many organizations will probably experience with Windows Server 2008 R2 is through server consolidation with Hyper-V, the built-in Hypervisor.  But we also had several other goals in mind to help people manage power and control costs while we were developing R2.

One of our goals was to improve power efficiency, out-of-the-box, with no manual configuration required on the part of administrators.  This improvement is derived from a variety of features, including an improved processor power management engine, timer coalescing, tick skipping, and R2’s new core parking capabilities.

As you may have already heard, these out-of-the-box improvements can help improve power efficiency by up to 18% over Windows Server 2003 running on the same hardware.

Some have asked, “Will every one of my servers save 18 percent?”  In brief, no.  To be clear, just as a car’s gas mileage depends on many factors - make and model, average speed, city or highway driving, today’s traffic congestion, and how well maintained it is - improvements in power efficiency will vary, as well.  Your specific savings will depend on many factors - on your particular server, your specific hardware configuration, the type of workload that server is running, and the server’s utilization level from moment to moment.  The only way to nail down specific savings is to actually test it.

While working on these power management features during the development of R2 we tested a variety of servers – new and old, large and small, relatively busy and relatively idle, running various workloads – in order to ensure that the changes we were making would help improve power efficiency across a wide variety of environments.  And they do.  But the specific improvement you see will depend on your own particular environment.

Another goal for R2 was to provide new capabilities to help people measure and manage power consumption.  If you walk up to a server running Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and fire up perfmon, for example, you can’t see power consumption, let alone easily collect that data across your environment.

But with Windows Server 2008 R2 and supporting hardware – such as the recent G6 servers from HP which have earned the Enhanced Power Management Additional Qualifier (www.windowsservercatalog.com) – you can monitor power consumption locally or remotely via WMI, change power plan settings, and even do power budgeting.  Of course, these features do require some work on the part of IT administrators to make use of this data – to set goals, make changes, and measure impacts. 

R2 offers the possibility to impact the environment – and costs – in a worthwhile way for organizations large or small.

Dan Reger

Senior Product Manager, Windows Server

  

Windows 2000 Server Approaching End of Life

Danger, Will Robinson! If you’ve got machines still running Windows 2000 Server in your enterprise, your robot will be blaring this warning ever more urgently the closer we get to July 13, 2010. That’s the end-of-support date for the Windows 2000 Server platform. Folks still running Windows 2000 after this date will be doing so without security hotfixes, patches or service packs.

Keeping your corporate infrastructure, data and especially customer or partner data safe is a key requirement to stay within regulatory compliance requirements. But it also means:

Staying competitive: Move to the latest business software and the best tools for your workers, and use R2’s in-box virtualization suite to deliver those resources to your users and customers easily and with the ability to quickly respond to changing requirements and workloads.

Saving IT costs: Using in-box virtualization to consolidate server sprawl as well as new power saving features that extend from the server to the desktop, Windows Server 2008 R2 can save you significant power and cooling costs both in the data center and the office.

Easily Manage Your Network: The Windows Server family has significantly decreased the complexity of managing your infrastructure. New console UIs have been coupled with new wizards to give IT generalists the lowest learning curve possible for managing their servers. And new features like PowerShell 2.0 give Windows Server 2008 R2 administrators a simple and powerful toolkit for IT administration building custom management tools.

That said, migrating servers is no one’s idea of a party. If you’re worried about your migration project generating migraines, make sure you leverage all the resources Microsoft is making available to Windows 2000 Server end of lifers:

Your first stop should be the Windows 2000 End-of-Support Solution Center, a new site loaded with migration planning and technical tools. Check out the Windows Server 2008 R2 Upgrade Paths as well as the Windows Server Migration Tools, the Assessment and Planning Toolkit and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. The site also has great guidance on migration planning as well as technical guidance on migrating specific server roles.

Look for more tools and guidance around Windows 2000 Server end of life in the coming months, both here and on www.microsoft.com/windowsserver.

Oliver Rist

 

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Microsoft & HP Announce Landmark Expansion of Technology Alliance

This is fantastic news for customers. Microsoft and HP have had a long-standing technology partnership that's spanned over 25 years. But today, we've announced an expansion of that agreement that likely makes this the deepest and most far-reaching alliance of its kind in the industry.

Today, both companies have agreed to invest $250 million over the next three years aimed at simplifying IT technology environments and driving innovation for the next generation of computing. The idea is to provide a series of new end-to-end solutions tightly integrated from the hardware layer up through applications and services - a concept we're calling the infrastructure-to-application model.

This long-term agreement is huge news for customers across several fronts. First, we'll be collaborating with HP on engineering roadmaps and product development. That means total management control and performance tweaking capabilities across the entire IT technology stack. It also means the ability to much more easily deliver on new technology visions, including on- and off-premise cloud computing. Tight product integration also means new product possibilities, notably pre-configured hardware/software stacks optimized not just for performance and reliability, but also capable of delivering push-button simplicity when it comes to management and monitoring. This will be especially helpful to Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server customers with easy deployment, simple management and lower TCO. Look for these products to be:

• Optimized for virtualization via Hyper-V,
• Offer new management capabilities with the integration of Microsoft's and HP's management software, and
• Leverage these technology combinations to help deliver on on-premise cloud computing in heterogeneous datacenter environments.

These solutions will combine server, storage, networking and application technologies into automated and self-managing product offerings all aimed at redefining what businesses can expect from their IT resources. And that concept will be extended beyond your in-house servers and out to the cloud with Microsoft and HP collaborating on the Windows Azure platform with new tools and services.

What I really like about the agreement is its intention to develop not just for enterprises but for small- and medium-sized businesses as well. The new IT stack that will come out of this alliance will offer tools that let enterprises build the most powerful data centers they've ever had. But it'll also redefine how small- and medium-sized businesses can compete and differentiate themselves using IT. And with both Microsoft and HP's partner networks available and capable of designing customized IT solutions using the fruits of this alliance, the next three years look especially rosy for businesses looking to maximize their IT investment dollars.  

Which also means new opportunities for Microsoft and HP's partner community. The new agreement means shortened sales cycles using new Smart Bundles and all-inclusive product packages that will appeal to many industry segments. Partners will also be able to leverage flexible financing options through HP's Financial Services as well as new sales and lead-generation tools via HP and Microsoft's combined partner resource community.

Check here for some immediately available solutions out of the new alliance. And for more information there's this outline of the new agreement as well as a teleconference of Microsoft and HP executives announcing the agreement available here.

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Symantec solution available for “Network Path Not Found” and other errors.

Many folks have been encountering network connectivity issues and other errors when running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Antivirus. So I’m writing to let you know that a solution has been available for the past year and is highly encouraged as an upgrade.

Context

When a Windows Server is running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 or Symantec Antivirus 10.2, they may experience performance issues for network shares, or intermittent loss of connectivity to SMB shares.  We’re hoping we can help you avoid a costly and time consuming support incident by making this issue more visible to help you plan your deployments. 

Solution

If you are running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2 you should get the solution from Symantec. Symantec confirms that this is a known issue and there are updates to resolve the problem.   For more information, please see the Symantec Knowledge Base article about this issue . For information about Symantec support for Endpoint Protection 11, visit the Symantec Support site. (http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index.jsp)

Please note: If you are unable to upgrade promptly or remove the software, Symantec urges you to contact their technical support to determine if there are any workarounds available to you.

Symptoms

The symptoms are varied, but many can be traced to lost connectivity issues to servers running this software.   Here is what we’ve learned about the problem by examining case notes from Microsoft support:  

·        Symantec Endpoint Protection versions prior to 11.0.4202 (MR4-MP2).  Older versions of Symantec Symantec Antivirus (prior to 10.2) can also cause this problem.  The problem occurs when you have the Autoprotect feature enabled in the applications.

·        The problem can affect 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2.

·        The problem is intermittent, can affect client connectivity within hours to up to a week after installing the applications.  Usually a server reboot will restore connectivity for a short period before the problem happens again.  You generally are able to ping and RDP to the server when the issue occurs, but shares are inaccessible using either \\IPADDRESS or \\ServerName\Share operations.

·        The problem results from a deadlock in SRTSP.SYS or SRTSP64.SYS in a push lock operation, which then causes blocked kernel mode server threads handling SMB negotiation requests.  Network traces will show the server not responding to the SMB dialect packet.

Here are the most common symptoms you may experience that may help you diagnose this issue.  Note that if you have this software installed, the easiest troubleshooting step to determine if this is the cause of connectivity issues is to simply remove the software and reboot the server. 

·        Error message: “The network path was not found” or “The specified network name is no longer available” when attempting to open shares, map a drive, run DCDIAG to the to the affected server, use netdom to reset secure channel

·        Error message: “RPC Server is unavailable” when trying to connect via Active Directory Users and Computers

·        Error message: “RPC Server is too busy to process the request” when attempting to join the Windows server domain

·        Error message: “No network provider accepted the given network path” or “File or network path no longer exists” when copying a file over the network to affected servers

·        Printing issues (cannot update printer IP address via DNS)

·        AD replication failures

·        Cluster service fails to start, or inability to access existing File Share resources even if they are online according to the Cluster Administrator snap-in

·        Event log Event ID 4226 and or 2022 may occur frequently (up to every 20 to 30 seconds)

More Information

For more information about specific problems, error messages and troubleshooting for these issues, please visit the Microsoft support site for the following articles. Please note, we are currently in the process of updating these articles, all updates should be in place by next week.

 

KB 961293	Unable to access Shares "The specified network name is no longer available"
KB 961654	A file sharing connection to a Windows Server 2008-based server drops unexpectedly if the server has Symantec Antivirus installed
KB 948732	Network shares become unresponsive on a Windows Server 2003-based computer after some time, and you receive an error message
KB 923360	You may experience various problems when you work with files over the network on a Windows Server 2003-based or Windows 2000 Server-based computer

 

Robert Paige

Senior Program Manager

Windows Partner Application Ecosystem Team

Posted by WindowsServer | 0 Comments

Filed under: Windows Server, Networking, isv

Forget a Wreath, Deck Your Halls with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Poster

If you want to add a little geek to your holiday decorating, check out this free download of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components poster. This is a free 2.5MB PDF download that diagrams all eight of Windows Server 2008 R2’s key new feature areas: BranchCache, DirectAccess, Remote Desktop Services as well as the new enhancements to Active Directory, File Services, Hyper-V, IIS and Management.

The poster has already generated some good responses here and here. Plus, you can see a zoomable preview on Live Lab’s super-cool Seadragon as well as a video with the poster’s creator, Martin McClean.

Happy Holidays and happy poster printing,

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Windows Server and Windows Azure come together in a new STB organization: the Server & Cloud Division

Microsoft is announcing today the formation of a new organization within the Server & Tools Business that combines the Windows Server & Solutions group and the Windows Azure group, into a single organization called the Server & Cloud Division (SCD).

 

This change reflects the alignment of our resources with our strategy, and represents a natural evolution for Microsoft as the Windows Azure business moves from an advanced development project to a mainstream business, as we announced last month at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). 

 

SCD will deliver solutions that help our customers realize even greater benefits from Microsoft’s investments in on-premises and cloud technologies.  And the new division will help strengthen an already solid and extensive partner ecosystem. 

 

As the only company in the industry that has the leading server platform complemented by a massive investment in online services, we have the unique ability to offer our customers a choice to tap into one or both approaches simultaneously through one consistent platform. 

 

Together, Windows Server, Windows Azure, SQL Server, SQL Azure, Visual Studio and System Center help customers extend existing investments to include a future that will combine both on-premises and cloud solutions, and SCD is now a key player in that effort.

 

The details of this organizational change are noted below:

1.       The Windows Azure development team, will move from under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie to the Server & Tools Business, led by Bob Muglia, President, Server and Tools Division.  Senior Vice President Amitabh Srivastava will lead the newly formed SCD, reporting to Bob.

2.       The Windows Server and Solutions group, led by Corporate Vice President Bill Laing, will join the Windows Azure team to form the Server & Cloud Division.  Bill will report to Amitabh and will continue his role as a key member of the STB leadership team.  Bill will partner with Amitabh to continue the bilateral sharing of technology between Windows Server and Windows Azure, which has been a key design goal of Microsoft’s software + services strategy.

3.       The Windows Azure business and marketing team, will continue to be led by Doug Hauger.  Doug will join the Server and Tools Marketing Group, led by Corporate Vice President Robert Wahbe, reporting to Corporate Vice President Bob Kelly, who is also responsible for Windows Server, System Center, and Forefront.

 

The Windows Server team is very excited to be part of SCD and to continue our work together with the Windows Azure team to deliver the best of both software + services.

 

 

Wingin' Migration -- Now migrate even MORE server roles to Windows Server 2008 R2!

The Windows Server Migration team's been cooking...no, not cranberry sauce and stuffing, but a new Windows Server Migration Utilities download package that lets you use the Windows Server Migration Tools to migrate Hyper-V and Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS). Brand-spankin'-new beta migration guides are available for both Hyper-V and RRAS, with detailed, step-by-step guidance about how to use the Windows Server Migration Tools (after the Utilities package is installed, of course) to migrate to servers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

Still not feeling the love? We've got new beta migration guides for Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), Health Registration Authority (HRA), Network Policy Server (NPS), and Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 (WSUS). AD CS, HRA, NPS, and WSUS don't even require the Windows Server Migration Tools; you can migrate from prep to production, just by following the guides.

We can't say it enough: your feedback rocks. The Windows Server Migration team is collecting feedback about the beta guides and the Utilities download package through the end of 2009. You can use the following methods to speak your mind about Migration Guides and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta package. Share your migration experiences; they're critical to the quality of the Migration Guides, Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities, and the whole Migration solution for WS08 R2!

• Take the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta Survey. Nothing goes better with a cup of coffee.
• Got an earful about how to improve Migration guides or utilities? Reply to the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities release announcement on the Windows Server Migration forum.
• Found a bug in our migration guides? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), and any workarounds that you used to resolve the problem. Unless the problem defied workarounds, of course; in that case, you can just send us a hard luck story and/or flame mail, we still want to hear from you.
• Found a bug in the tools? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), the steps to reproduce the bug, and the following logs:
  • %windir%\Logs\SmigDeploy.log
  • %windir%\Logs\ServerMigration.log
  • On Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2: %localappdata%\SvrMig\Log
  • On Windows Server 2003: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\SvrMig\Log

Visit the Windows Server Migration Portal on TechCenter to see the complete collection of Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Guides, and a truckload of other migration resources, too.

-- Cheers from the Windows Server Migration team!

Thoughts on the Professional Developers Conference

Greetings!  Chris Steffen here again. You may have read my posts regarding virtualization and green IT in the past.

I had the opportunity to spend the week at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) recently.  While I am not a programmer, as a technical architect, I took away several interesting tidbits from the conference that I thought I would take a moment to share:

1.  Windows Azure is the real deal. Previously, it seemed to be a hodge-podge of somewhat related technologies, with some of them helping customers get into the “cloud” – something elusive and barely defined, but very likely the next cool thing.  PDC 2009 changed that forever.  Now there is a complete roadmap, from application development to system monitoring tools to OS and database support.  Microsoft is the only company out there that has the complete solution—and it is about time someone did.

2.  The “cloud” defined (sort of).  What does it mean to be part of a “cloud”? I have actually had this discussion on multiple occasions, and while two individuals might be able to come up with an acceptable definition, no one has come out and established what it means to be “cloudy.” Finally, Bob Muglia, in his keynote address on Tuesday, has done so. Flexibility, scalability, self service, on-demand provisioning and virtualization are all key components to being part of the cloud.  More importantly, he also made it clear that you don’t need to do all these things to be part of the cloud – covering most of them is acceptable.  Of course, Microsoft has a solution for each of these components, with more tools in development to make it even easier.

3.  Some is better than none.  It was refreshing to hear that Microsoft is not thinking that everyone will migrate everything to the cloud immediately.  In fact, they are taking a very realistic approach to the cloud as a whole, fully expecting that it will be a deliberative process and that it is very likely that some sort of hybrid environment (part public cloud and part private cloud) will always exist.  Some of the other existing cloud providers could stand to learn a thing or two from this approach.

4.  One size does not fit all.  Probably the most interesting thing that I heard (repeatedly, I might add) is the idea that Azure is not a “one size fits all” solution.  Quite the opposite, in fact. Microsoft wants to bring cloud computing to the masses, but is keenly aware that providing for the masses means that there are niche markets for which they will not be able to directly provide, and that their partner hosting providers are expected to fill this space.  They understand that they are going to get the business – either directly through subscriptions to Windows Azure or through hosting partners, using Microsoft’s operating systems and management tools.  Pretty smart long-term thinking…

Overall, the developers that I talked to at the conference were excited about cloud computing.  Much in the same way that virtualization is the “it” technology among systems and operations folks. 

The forecast is cloudy!

 

Chris Steffen

Principal Technical Architect

Kroll Factual Data

Haiku for Fun and Prizes

For all geek poets,

A Windows Server haiku

Means prizes click here

 

Oliver Rist

PDC 2009 – Windows Server and Windows Azure Platform

Yesterday at PDC, Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia announced the global availability of Microsoft’s new cloud computing service – Windows Azure Platform. In addition, Ray and Bob announced a number of additional announcements related to Windows Server.  I wanted to take a moment and provide some context for all our existing Windows Server customers and partners.

For our existing Windows Server customers, the most important announcement at PDC was that in the future Windows Azure will support Windows Server virtual machines.  This Windows Server VM support will make it easier for customers to move their existing Windows Server applications onto Windows Azure. Microsoft is still evaluating the best approach and the timeline for VM support on Azure but we do know that virtual machines on Windows Azure will allow customers to take advantage of Windows Azure’s automated management capabilities. We also strongly encourage our customers to work with our thousands of hosting partners such as GoGrid, RackSpace, MaximumASP that provide hosting of Windows Server and SQL Server. If customers have increased compute capacity demands or need to deliver new applications to their customers as soon as possible, our Windows Server and SQL Server hosting partners are another great option. Here is a site to find out more about our Windows Server hosting partners.

Bob Muglia also announced today the beta release of Windows Server AppFabric. This new Windows Server technology allows developers and IT Pros to more easily build and manage composite web-applications and to more easily create scale-out application on Windows Server and IIS. Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 is available now and will be available and will be supported on Windows Azure in the future.  This will allow customers to write an application once and then run it either on Windows Server or Windows Azure with minimal or no re-factoring.

So what is Windows Azure? Windows Azure is both a new cloud platform and a management service hosted in Microsoft datacenters. It is optimized for independent software vendors and enterprises to build new applications that span from consumer Web applications (such as the Dominos Pizza web site) to enterprise applications.  Windows Azure is not simply hosted Windows Server. It is a new cloud computing platform that makes it easy to build new scale-out applications and provides an integrated development platform via Visual Studio.

Importantly, Windows Azure was designed to interoperate with Microsoft’s existing products. This integration allows our customers to leverage existing skills sets and investments in Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio and System Center. For instance, an enterprise can use their existing Active Directory infrastructure to provide user access to a Windows Azure application in order to maintain a single authentication approach for all applications. As another example of leveraging existing investments, developers build Windows Azure applications in the same tool that they develop applications for Windows Server. Over time, customers will be able to manage Windows Azure applications in System Center in the same way they manage their on-premises applications.  These examples highlight a key strategy of Microsoft – we will provide customers platform flexibility while delivering common application technologies, developer tools and system management tools for datacenters behind the firewall or in the cloud.

Some great news from PDC.  I encourage you to watch the conference online at www.MicrosoftPDC.com and to start evaluating both Windows Azure and Windows Server AppFabric.

Mike Neil

General Manager

Windows Server

Improve Web User Experience with IIS SEO Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC

Remember the scene in Diehard when he shoots the glass? That was cool. What’s even cooler is now you can fine tune your Web site for the search engine, thus improving the experience for your Web users.

 

Today, Microsoft announced the releases of IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC – both extensions for IIS.

 

Don’t take it personally – I know it can be hard when your significant other tells you how to make improvements on something you worked hard on, let alone a faceless piece of software. But really, they are both just trying to help. Think of the customers.

 

The IIS SEO Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to improve their Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly. The IIS SEO Toolkit helps to improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines, control how search engines access and display Web content, and inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing.

 

We’ve all been to a cocktail party when you’re trying to impress that certain person, and they ask for the URL of the latest project you are working on. It’s embarrassing when you have to rattle off a long-winded URL with question marks, equal signs, random ID numbers, and ampersands. But with URL Rewriter, you don’t have to anymore.

 

IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 adds support for outbound response rewriting and enables Web administrators to create powerful rules to implement URLs that are easier for users to remember and easier for search engines to find. IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 can now replace the URLs generated by a Web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent, modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a Web application behind a reverse proxy, and fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching. IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 helps to easily define rules that match URLs or HTTP headers to generate more friendly and consistent URLs, protect content and assets from unauthorized linking and scanning, and integrate with existing IIS features to improve management, performance, and troubleshooting.

 

Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including IIS SEO Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC. From IIS Extensions to the Windows Web App Gallery and beyond, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

 

Oh, if you run PHP, be sure to check out our learning section on Running PHP Applications on IIS. We have a ton of brand new and updated content to help provide PHP on Windows users a single source of end-to-end guidance. Pretty sweet!

 

For more information or to download, please visit the IIS SEO Toolkit RTW page and the IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC page.

 

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

 

Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2009 Opens Today!

From Berlin one week to LA the next, Microsoft product managers love planes. Apparently. Me? Trans-Atlantic plane rides are still a good way to extract military secrets from me, but I'm new. Maybe long plane rides will grow on me. Like fungus.

But if you're in Los Angeles or have the plane-loving impetus to go there, the Professional Developer Conference 2009, one of the world’s leading events for software developers and strategic architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform starts today! I hope you can make it to PDC 2009, but if you're not able or plane rides are as happy for you as they are for me, you can still participate via the Web. Tune in to watch Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect and Bob Muglia, president of the Microsoft Server and Tools Business (STB), give the PDC 2009 keynote address streaming live at 8:30 a.m. Pacific. In addition, you can follow PDC 2009 on Twitter (hash tag #PDC09) and checkout this blog and the Forefront blog for more updates during the show.

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Windows Server 2008 R2 Developer Training Course Now Live

If you're a developer looking to build apps for Windows Server 2008 R2, there are a host of new technologies to consider. Although R2 is an incremental release, it's not your "average R2". Key new feature areas include "many-core" scalability, virtualization, power management, web workloads, and enterprise network solutions. To build the best app, you'll need to learn about select R2 platform technologies and build your own integrated solutions.

Fortunately, Microsoft has completed an online training course aimed specifically at developers looking to leverage all the new feature sweetness in R2. Head over here to get a deeper desciption and access.

Oliver Rist

Catch a Great Keynote from TechEd Europe 2009

I’m just heading out of Monday’s Keynote address here at TechEd Europe 2009, and it was definitely a stunner. If you couldn’t attend, here’s a short summary, and if any of this floats your boat, check back to the New Efficiency Virtual Launch Event in a few hours because we’ll be posting a recording of the session there.

The session began with an intro by Achim Berg, Chairman of the Managing Board Microsoft Germany and Area Vice President International, who explained why I was left with standing room only: over 7200 people from 104 countries completely sold out the TechEd Europe 2009 event a few days ago and a large percentage of them had filled the keynote theater to capacity! Achim then introduced Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, but first he paid homage to the historic celebration happening in Berlin today. It’s been 20 years to the day since the Berlin Wall came down, symbolically ending the cold war and re-uniting both Germany and Europe. He also pointed us to an impressive artistic project focusing on today’s celebration of the event and using several Microsoft technologies to build a mosaic of impressions, remembrances and opinions of the Wall from people around the world. You can take part yourself by clicking over to www.citymosaic.de to participate.

Stephen Elop also paid homage to Berlin’s history, but then got down to business, explaining just what Microsoft means with our New Efficiency campaign. With help from Microsoft execs and customers deploying our newest platforms, he did a great job of clearly explaining the New Efficiency and what it means to businesses and IT operators today. Tune in when we post the recording for a fascinating discussion with IT operators on the cutting edge. All are facing challenges like a workforce that now spans four generations, an economic landscape that can shift on a dime, and new competitive technologies, including cloud computing and virtualization, and balancing them against a cost-conscious management mind set.  My favorite line? “Ninja-proofing your IT infrastructure.”

He also oversaw a great demo of Exchange 2010 – loads of stuff I didn’t even know Outlook 2010 or Exchange 2010 could do, even though I’ve been using both for over a month now! Get set for much smarter voicemail, email discussion views and way easier Exchange server management.

Stephen then introduced Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Marketing, to talk about all the new capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2. We’ve covered them here in depth, but even so Robert dropped a few new facts, like that 460,000 customers have so far downloaded Windows Server 2008 R2 since it became available and that all major server makers are already offering it on new hardware. He also monitored a great demo of the synergy between System Center 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2, including not just an easy dashboard-style interface but the cool capabilities of PowerShell.

All this is well worth the look once the recording posts. Meantime, check out a new Forrester study on the Total Economic Impact of Windows Server 2008 R2. I’ve sat through many a keynote in my day, and this one really is worth the time; thanks to Stephen and Robert for making it so interesting.

 

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Increase Web Application Scalability and Reliability with ARR 2.0 RTW

Today, Microsoft announced the final release of IIS Application Request Routing (ARR) 2.0 RTW.

 

Customers - such as hosting providers, Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, and IT Professionals are changing the way they do business as a result of ARR 2.0. ARR 2.0 delivers cost savings, elastic scalability, and flexible deployment options. With IIS 7.5 and ARR 2.0, customers can create a native Silverlight infrastructure and configure their CDN so that it provides superior live and on-demand media offerings for their users. Customers can implement new capabilities in their CDN and as a result, can replace Apache Squid on their edge servers and cut costs. By deploying this new solution based on ARR 2.0, customers can provide a better viewing experience for Web consumers, boost the scalability and level of control they have over their CDN, and enhance the reports they can provide their users.

 

There are now several new scenarios available to the Microsoft Web Platform. My personal favorite is a media solution combining IIS Live Smooth Streaming with ARR 2.0 to deliver live HD video over a CDN – a scenario nobody else can do today. ARR 2.0 also adds support to enhance disk based cache and cache proxy for CDNs while increasing Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. ARR 2.0 is able to cache on disk any HTTP traffic that passes through the server. By combining the disk caching capabilities along with a hierarchy of IIS Web servers running ARR 2.0, CDNs and hosting providers are able to considerably reduce the network traffic that traverses up to the origin server.

 

In other words – get your free software load balancer with caching on top of Windows Server! And oh, if you want to stream live HD media across a CDN – we got you covered! Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including ARR 2.0 RTW. From IIS Extensions to the Windows App Gallery, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

 

If you still aren't convinced that ARR 2.0 is the coolest thing since sliced bread, as LeVar from Reading Rainbow would say, "But don't take my word for it!" Internap, an Internet Service Provider company based out of Atlanta, Georgia deployed ARR 2.0 and IIS 7.5 in the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system to implement new capabilities in its content delivery network. As a result, the company can replace Apache Squid on its edge servers, cut costs, and improve scalability, reporting, and the users' Web experience. Be sure to check out their brand new case study.

 

For more information or to download, please visit the IIS ARR 2.0 RTW page.

 

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web