If you’re in IT you are likely pulled between an almost infinite need for more computing power to deliver business solutions and the ever increasing demands for greater agility, higher efficiency and lower costs. Fortunately, you can now deliver...

I remember being a kid and having a big secret that I couldn’t tell anyone. Stuff like Bobby has a crush on Susie or Jeffrey has a tail. Okay, I didn’t know anyone who had a tail but you can imagine how hard it would be for a 10 year old to keep a secret...

The thing I love most about Microsoft is our focus on customers. Prior to coming to Microsoft, I spent the majority of my career working for companies that competed against Microsoft. Microsoft would release a new product into a market and sometimes they...

In case you didn’t hear or read the news, today at IT Forum in Barcelona we announced the new name for the virtualization feature in Windows Server 2008 , as well as the product lineup. What we use to call “viridian” internally, or Windows Server virtualization...

Building on our commitment to provide customers with the right technologies to virtualize their IT environments, today we’re announcing that the public beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 will be released by the end of...

Thanks much to the Microsoft Learning and MS Press folks for such a fantastic giveaway. I remember getting the pre-cursor for this book, Introducing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 , before I joined Microsoft and it was a huge help in getting grounded with...

MSDN and TechNet subscribers - get your shorts on and your skateboards out!! Windows Server 2008 Technical Beta participants - slip into those bikinis and hit the pool!! That's right - the June 2007 Community Technology Preview of Windows Server 2008...

As a number of sites and blogs have reported, last weekend we posted another Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of WindowsServer “Longhorn” to the Microsoft Connect site for our TechBeta participants. The February 2007 CTP is another milestone on...

Late on Wednesday, as part of our commitment to deliver regular updates of Windows Server "Longhorn" to our communities, we released the April 2007 Community Technology Preview of Windows Server "Longhorn". This marks the last CTP we will release before...

Take a look at Jeffrey Snover's blog post, Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect for Window Server, where he discusses standards-based storage management in the next release of Windows Server codenamed "Windows Server 8". Read Jeffrey's post on...

Hello, my name is Lutz Ziob and I am General Manager here at Microsoft Learning. Our organization provides Microsoft customers and partners with the necessary knowledge and skills to optimize the adoption and use of Microsoft solutions. I am very excited...

Today Microsoft released to the Web the final version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1. Available at no charge, this service pack adds support for hardware-assisted virtualization and improved backup services and compatibility. A new feature to the service pack is Volume Shadow Services, which provides improved support for backup and disaster recovery. Instead of scheduling downtime for backing up each virtual machine individually, you can now take snapshot backups of physical machines, with no downtime. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 also supports host clustering, which offers customers minimal downtime depending on the speed of storage and amount of memory assigned to a virtual machine. Host clustering is storage agnostic, comes with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise or Datacenter editions, and is a high-availability solution for both planned and unplanned downtime. And with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, downloadable today as a beta 2 version, customers will have tools for high availability migration. I'm told there's been more than 5,500 downloads of the product in the past 30 days. Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1 adds support for Novell SLES 10 and Solaris 10 as a guest operating system; bringing the total to 11 non-Windows operating systems supported on Virtual Server 2005 R2. In less than one year, there have been more than 15,000 downloads of the Linux add-ins for Virtual Server 2005 R2. We're also seeing uptake amongst hosting service providers. I'm told there are over 5,000 companies delivering hosted services to their customers using Microsoft products today. These services range from web hosting to high-end IT applications. Even Microsoft IT is using Virtual Server to offer utility computing. Another example is RackForce, which spends at least 22% less time on support in March 2007 than it did in late 2005. Using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, RackForce mirrors a customer’s hosting environment on a backup server, and then, if a physical server fails, restore the customer’s site on another server in minutes. RackForce also uses virtual servers as “hot standby” backups that can boot instantly and take over for a physical server that experiences an outage. RackForce also is evaluating System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage many physical and virtual servers, consolidate underused physical servers, and provision new virtual machines. If you're a hosting service prover, you should know that over five years ago Microsoft launched a subscription-based licensing program called the Service Provider License Agreement, which gives you a way to license MS products on a monthly basis. Patrick ...

Hello everyone, Today, I’m very excited to announce that Microsoft has acquired the technology assets of Interactive Supercomputing (ISC), a company that specializes in bringing the power of parallel computing to the desktop and making high performance...

For homo sapiens, getting older is painful. Take me for example. Nine hours on a plane never bothered me when I was in my 20s with a rubber backbone. But a couple of weeks out from birthday # 43 and one cross-country airplane ride translates into a sudden...

Hi Everyone – I wanted to introduce myself. The IT Folks who run Microsoft.com generally refer to me as the “ Lone Server .” Unfortunately, resemblance of my name to the Lone Ranger's is only coincidental. I’m not fighting crime, unless you count enforcing...

Today at the Microsoft Management Summit, Bob Muglia announced the new name for our new task-based command line shell and scripting language: Windows PowerShell (What do you think - like it?) Formerly known under the code-name "Monad", Windows PowerShell...

In my last blog, I mentioned that as we progress towards releasing the next version of Windows, many of the details are getting decided and communicated. Last week we announced our official product name (“Windows Server 2012”) and that the...

I have been talking with a number of customers, CSOs, CIOs and industry professionals over the past few weeks and I realized that the availability and benefits of using the Server Core option of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 was not as...

We in Windows Server are sorry to report a disturbing trend among IT professionals. Ever since Windows Server 2008 R2 was first released as a public beta, and Best Practices Analyzer for Windows Server roles was first available, we've been getting some...

Following up on Joseph’s post last week, some first-time customers of Windows Server Update Services have asked something to the effect of "why can’t I see patches for Office and SQL Server?" Be assured, they’re there as this screen capture shows. ...

Greetings from Los Angeles and the 2007 edition of Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (known on the streets as WinHEC 2007 ). This yearly confab brings together the industry's key PC hardware eco-system players to help define and drive...

In case you aren’t up on current events: Windows Server 2012 ROCKS! Do yourself a favor and get educated on all that it can do for you. Kevin Beares will tell you how. Cheers! Jeffrey Hey, this is Kevin Beares, Senior Community Lead for the...

Windows Home Server has reached the Beta 2 milestone! While previous releases have been tested by 1000+ Microsoft employees and some of our hardware and software partners, we are now starting to invite a broader group of external testers to participate...

Today at Microsoft WinHEC , Bill Gates announced the Beta 2 releases of Windows Vista , Windows Server "Longhorn" and the 2007 Microsoft Office system and customers, partners and technical reviewers can barely contain their excitement over the new features...

Building off the great work done on Windows Server 2008, I’m happy to share that next week, a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers will be getting their hands on Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Beta. As we have done in the...