Musings of an IT Pro Evangelist : Windows Server 2008

Power Management and Windows Server 2008

txsnow — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:00:03 GMT

Green IT is a a phrase that's buzzing all around the various publications and being uttered by those executives who help determine the direction of your IT department. Well what can you REALLY do to improve the power efficiency of your data center? Last week Adam posted a video with Francois Ajenstat who is the Director of Environmental Sustainability here at Microsoft that addresses some of the solutions out there. Today I'll follow that up with a link to a white paper and blog post that the Windows Server Performance Team has posted. These two items will help you discover how Windows Server can help you save power TODAY and not have to wait for future versions of Windows.

SP2 Customer Preview for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista now available.

txsnow — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:33:42 GMT

Customer Preview Program (CPP) availability for Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista was announced today over at the Windows Client Springboard TechCenter. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the SP2 CPP now, the rest of you will get access on Thursday.

I wanted to take a few minutes and share with you all some of the changes that are included in this service pack. What makes this service pack interesting is that it's a single service pack that applies to both the client and server operating systems (Vista and Windows Server 2008). How is this done? Well the code base for Windows Vista is shared with the same code base of Windows Server 2008. This means a single update can be deployed across your entire infrastructure. This also helps provide the ability to detect and incompatible driver and warn users of loss of functionality during installation or even use that detection to block the installation of this service pack.

On the server side there are three main features:

Improved power savings over the RTM release of Windows Server 2008
Integration of Hyper-V into Windows Server 2008. SP2 includes the Hyper-V RTM Code.
All previously released hotfixes and security updates are rolled into SP2.

For Windows Vista IT Pros will see improvements in:

Emerging Hardware Support such as the ability to record data on Blu-Ray media, Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack as well as support for the new VIA 64-Bit CPU.
Improvements in performance including Windows Search 4 that enhances indexing performance and integrating Windows Search into Group Policy.
A new Wireless Feature Pack and fixes for issues where Wi-Fi Connections were lost after resuming a PC from Sleep.
A really cool service pack clean-up tool that restores hard disk space by deleting the previous versions of the files serviced by Windows Vista SP2.
Of course this service pack includes all previously released updates, hotfixes, and patches since the release of Vista Service Pack 1.

You do need to be aware that you must have Windows Vista Service Pack 1 installed (or Windows Server 2008) in order to get Service Pack 2 installed. I reccomend pulling down this service pack and get your testing started on your lab machines.
For more information on Windows Vista SP2 take a look at the Notable Changes in Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Vista SP2 Beta post on TechNet. Of course for all of your Windows Vista needs head on over to Springboard.

Powershell to the rescue

txsnow — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:59:34 GMT

It's been a couple of weeks since TechEd and I'm finally getting caught up. A good friend and fellow Geek Gordon Ryan (Gordo) and I were having a chat about Powershell before one of my sessions. As we were chatting he mentioned some work he was doing with Data Protection Manager (DPM) and how a Powershell is playing into his management of DPM. Here's a quick post from Gordo on how Powershell was used to remove inactive protection points in DPM 2007.

Remote Server management from Vista for REAL!

txsnow — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:23:03 GMT

Another crazy week, but we have some seriously good stuff coming out of Redmond today. We have officially released to the web the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT). So what the heck is RSAT? Well basically it's the next version of ADMINPAK. Yep you can actually manage your Windows Server infrastructure from you Vista SP1 machine and no I'm not talking via RDP to your server! RSAT includes tools for Windows Server 2003 as well as Windows Server 2008. BOOYAH!

The goodies are available via download:

RSAT for Windows Vista SP 1 x86 version

RSAT for Windows Vista SP1 x64 version

Be sure to check out Edge the rest of the week for an interview withe the product manager of RSAT, a blog post on one of the features you can implement using RSAT: Group Policy Preferences as well as a Group Policy preferences screen cast. Now for some RSAT details:

What does the RSAT include?

Role Administration Tools:

· Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools

· Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools

· Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools

· DHCP Server Service Tools

· DNS Server Service Tools

· Shared Folders Tools

· Network Policy and Access Services Tools

· Terminal Services Tools

· Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:

· BitLocker Drive Encryption Tools

· Failover Clustering Tools

· Group Policy Management Tools

· Network Load Balancing Tools

· SMTP Server Tools

· Storage Manager for SANs Tools

And not to be outdone, we have the tools in the following list that are fully supported managing Windows Server 2003 servers as well:

· Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools

· Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools

· Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools

· DHCP Server Tools

· DNS Server Tools

· Group Policy Management Tools

· Network Load Balancing Tools

· Terminal Services Tools

· Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools

Windows Deployment

txsnow — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:24:40 GMT

Today's post on Edge is an interview I did recently with Michael Niehaus and Jeremy Chapman regarding Vista deployment. These guys have done a TON of work around making deployment (not just Vista) much easier to handle. Check out the interview. For even more good stuff on deployment, you should check out the Deployment Guys blog.

So I was doing my normal morning run through of the blogosphere and hit a post from James O'Neill on Virtualization that I found really interesting. I won't give up the details here so James can get his due credit. Take a look.

Active Directory Migration and Windows Server 2008

txsnow — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:47:21 GMT

About two years ago I was the lead on an Active Directory migration/consolidation project where we collapsed several domains and restructured two others. It was a monster of a project and I don't know that we would have had the success that we had without the use of the Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) and the Migration Guide documentation. It looks like there is a new version of the tool (version 3.1) and Tim Springston has all of the details at his AD blog. If you have a current migration project or have a project on the horizon check out the post here and get a head start!

Catching up

txsnow — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:06:43 GMT

Okay I've been very bad at keeping this blog updated over the past three weeks, but it's been a bit hectic with the Windows Server Launch, an internal conference, and getting settled into the new home here in the pacific northwest. We've got a bunch of great content hitting Edge in the next week. The first of which is a great screencast from MVP Corey Hynes demonstrating the new Active Directory Database Mounting Tool that is up now. Check it out. Corey does some cool stuff in taking a snapshot of AD then mounting it up for read only use in ADUC.

In other news the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide I wrote about previously as in beta has now been released. If you played with the beta, time to swap it out for the fully released version. As I mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the guidance in this solution accelerator so give it a look.

My SQL friends need to take a look at a new series of podcasts that we are running on Edge. Buck Woody is doing a series of podcasts for the real world DBA. The first episode is about choosing the right SQL Server edition. The second issue posted just today is on choosing the right IDENTITY function. It's good stuff to drop onto your zune and take with you for a bit of a geek fix outside the office.

One last item that I have is from earlier in the week where the folks over at the Vista Springboard website hosted a panel of experts hosted by Mark Russinovich to chat about Vista and their deployment/adoption experiences. I suggest checking it out even if you are just starting to discuss Vista in your IT world. Some good things about UAC (User Account Control), application compatability as well as some image management stuff I found to be interesting. Well worth the hour or so of viewing.

Server Manager Command Line

txsnow — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:33:34 GMT

I have posted my first entry over on Edge about Server Manager Command Line. A great tool in Windows Server 2008 that allows for command line based installation of roles and features on a Windows Server 2008 Server. Give it a look and as always comments are encouraged.

An attempt to cure the Superbowl hangover

txsnow — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:23:14 GMT

WOW! An amazing game to watch, even though the Pats fell short of making history. So I've been noticeably absent the last few days as I've just gathered up the wife, kids, and dog and made the big move from Houston, Texas to Redmond, Washington. It's a bit crazy living in temporary housing and waiting for the big truck to make it's way from Houston with basically every thing I own. Things are going well and hopefully it won't be long before we gain some sense of normalcy.

Well some BIG NEWS today in IT Pro land. Yep I'm making you go over to Edge to get the details. :) Gather your thoughts and comments and post them here or on Edge. I am curious to hear what you all think about the big announcement and even the big game last night!

Enjoy!

It's time to start...

txsnow — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:45:00 GMT

WOW where did the time go? It's time to start preparing for the big launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008! Registration is now open for launch events all over the country. I LOVE launch events! I remember the first one I ever attended. It was for the big Windows 95 launch. We were in Symphony Hall in Salt Lake City. I remember specifically how cool it was sitting in a huge concert hall looking at a massive video screen as the Rolling Stones blared and the START button that we all have come to know and love fades out to a shot of Bill Gates surrounded by the development team. I wish I could have been in Seattle that day. What fun that must have been. Another thing that sticks out in my mind about that launch event was that with all the new features that were introduced in Windows 95, the most popular one at all of the demo and "test drive" stations was pinball. I guess one would say that it was a much simpler time in our IT life, unless of course you had to install Windows 95 on floppy disk (I think I still have those 13 or so floppy's around somewhere).

So register for an event and attend! We have some experts on hand to answer your questions, demo stations for you to test drive, as well as some promo kits you can take home with you.

Windows Server 2008 Security Guide - Beta now available

txsnow — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:16:42 GMT

One of my favorite documents for Windows Server 2003 is now available in beta form for Windows Server 2008. If you have never reviewed these guides I strongly recommend them. The guide makes it easy to tailor the security configuration to accommodate the needs of your organization. There is also a really cool GPOAccelerator (Group Policy Object Accelerator) tool to help you rapidly setup, test and deploy configurations of Group Policy security settings. Here are some of the resources for Windows Server 2008 Security Guide:

Check out the Executive Overview.

Join the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide beta.