Barnaby's Canadian IT Pro WebLog : 64-Bit

Great x64 Resource (and he's in Canada)

Barnaby_Jeans — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 07:34:01 GMT

After I published this blog post, I was pointed to a great resource from one of our MS MVP's The "Unofficial x64 FAQ" is maintained by Charlie Russel who is one of our MVP's living out in B.C.

If you are trying to figure out how to get Windows working with the latest devices, check out the site.

Great work Charlie.

ISA Client for 64-bit runs a short beta program

Barnaby_Jeans — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 20:06:00 GMT

From Volker Will's blog:

The ISA Server Team will release an update to the ISA Server 2004 Firewall Client. As part of the development process, they are running a short beta program to collect valuable feedback.
Highlights:

Support for the Microsoft Windows Vistaâ„¢ operating system (builds 5231 and later).

Support for the the 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

If you are interested in joining this beta program, please follow these instructions:

Go to http://beta.Microsoft.com

Sign in using your Passport account details

On the home page, click the link below the welcome message ("If you were issued a Guest ID by Microsoft, you can sign in by clicking here")

Enter the Guest ID: ISAFWC_x64

Choose "Survey" on the left side of the page

Complete and submit the survey.

[Via VolkerW's WebLog]

SQL Server 2005 features and versions

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:38:00 GMT

If you are trying to figure out which version of SQL Server 2005 has the feature that you are interested in, take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/sql2005features.mspx for a great matrix that should help.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer]

Tag the Launch

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:25:00 GMT

Are you blogging about the joint SQL Server / Visual Studio / BizTalk launch this November?

If you are, you might want to consider tagging your blog posts to make it easy to search for anything "Launch 2005" related.

Simply tag your posts with Launch2005 by adding the following somewhere in your blog post:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Launch2005" rel="tag">Launch2005</a>

If you're uploading pictures to Flickr, you may want to join the Launch2005 group; and remember to tag your photos with Launch2005 as well.

I'll be presenting at almost all of the Canadian tour dates, so look for me in your city starting November 8th.

Update: Don't forget to ping technorati to let them know your blog has been updated.

Tags: [Microsoft] [SQLServer] [Launch2005] [VisualStudio] [BizTalk]

Running Exchange on 64-bit

Barnaby_Jeans — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 01:39:00 GMT

I just came across a post from the Exchange team that explains the issues with trying to run current versions of Exchange on Windows Server 2003 x64.

To quote their blog (http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/07/11/407529.aspx):

In short – running current versions of Exchange, including Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2003 x64 editions is not supported.

Their blog post goes on to explain some of the technical reasons why, as well as to point you to the list of applications that do run under 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.

The good news is they have plans... (just not with the current version of Exchange).

Update: I noticed there were some wierd format things happening. Should be fixed now.

SQL Server 2005 x64 on Server 2003 x64

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 04:29:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of the TechNet Spring Tour where we talked about both IT Pro and Developer topics, I will be giving a presentation and demo for the Toronto SQL Server User Group. We'll spend an hour or so talking about the x64 (Intel and AMD 64-bit) architecture in relation to both SQL Server 2005 and Windows Server 2003. I'll be demonstrating SQL Server 2005 x64 running on two or three different AMD based 64-bit machines all running Windows Server 2003 x64.

If you are interested in attending, head over to http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032276880&Culture=en-CA to sign up.

If you want more information on the Toronto SQL Server User Group, check out: http://www.tssug.ca/

Hope to see you there...

Download Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (Beta)

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:55:00 GMT

This morning, Steve Ballmer announced the beta release of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1). We are very pleased to tell you that SP1 is now available on Microsoft Beta Place.

To participate in the beta program, you need to:

Go to http://beta.microsoft.com.
(Note: You need a Passport account to sign in. If you don’t have one, BetaPlace will help you create one.)
Once logged into Beta Place with a Passport account, provide vssp1BetaTester as the guest account. This will take you to the nomination page for the SP1 beta.
Note: The Guest ID is both case and space sensitive and must be entered exactly as shown. The most common reasons for a “Guest ID is locked out” or “invalid Guest ID” error message is because you either incorrectly entered the Guest ID or you entered a space before or after entering the Guest ID in the Guest ID field.
Follow the directions on this page to nominate yourself. You will receive an e-mail notice when you've been accepted into the program. About 24-48 hours after you receive this e-mail, you will be able to log in to Beta Place and download the SP1 beta, read the documentation, etc.

SP1 provides support for 64-bit host operating systems including 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, performance enhancements, built-in support for network installations of guest operating systems, and several other features. We look forward to the participation of a large group of beta testers as we complete the development of this product.

Is 2005 the year for 64-bit computing?

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:38:00 GMT

In a previous post we talked about whether 2005 was the year for Linux, in this post we'll discuss whether this is the year that 64-bit computing really takes off both in the enterprise and on the desktop.

I have spent the last week sitting in sessions at an internal Microsoft conference called Envision. Today I have just finished sitting through a couple of sessions that were discussing 64-bit computing and what Microsoft has to offer in this space. What was most interesting is the realization that a number of you out there probably already have 64-bit capable hardware today. Most of the newer Intel Xeon processors already support the 64-bit extensions. Additionally, for those of you running AMD, a number of those processors are already 64-bit too. In fact, the most recent PC I bought for home is actually an AMD Athlon 64 machine. Part of the reason you may not be aware of this is that x64 platforms also run x86 Operating Systems.

So how does Microsoft fit into this? Microsoft is actively working with the hardware partners to ensure that we have solutions in place to support both 64-bit with the Itanium Processor Family (IPF) and 64-bit with EM64T and AMD64 (which I'll call x64 from now on). To that end, Microsoft has been shipping Windows Server 2003 for Itanium for a while now. For x64 based systems, there are a couple of things in the works. Windows Server 2003 for x64 is currently available to Beta customers. If you are more interested in the desktop side of things, we also have Windows XP Professional x64 Edition available as a Customer Preview.

I have been running Windows Server 2003 x64 on my home machine for a month or so now and have had no real problems with any of the software that I use. However, the most important thing to remember in moving to Server 2003 x64 or XP Pro x64 is that you need to have fully 64-bit drivers for all of your hardware. Additionally, any software that has kernel mode drivers will need to have those available 64-bit. As for the rest of the Microsoft products, SQL Server 2005 will be supported on both x64 and Itanium systems, and from what it looks like (from my earlier post) the SQL Server 2004 SP4 will add support for running in WOW on x64 platforms.

What this means for most of you is that may already have the hardware in place to try out some of the new x64 versions of software that are available in pre-release. Take a close look at that new machine you have at home, you never know, it may just be a 64-bit machine that is running a 32-bit OS.

Let me know what your experiences with 64-bit have been and if you are running a 64-bit system with Microsoft software.