Musings of an IT Pro Evangelist : Windows Vista

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.

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.

Easy transfer and cool stuff on EDGE!

txsnow — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:12:57 GMT

I missed yesterdays entry because I was busy setting up the new laptop. Yeah... I'm bragging, but don't tell me you don't do the same when you get a new toy! The only pain is making sure you got ALL of the files from the old laptop. I've been running Vista for a while and have managed to keep myself from overriding the default settings and storing as much as possible in my own personal folders that Vista creates. I was able to use the Easy Transfer Wizard tool to migrate all of my files and my settings for most of my applications! It's good stuff. For easy to follow step by step instructions on using this tool check out this KB article.

There are two cool new video posts from my fellow Evangelists over on TechNet Edge. The first is Adam's interview with Microsoft IT and a member of the NAP (Network Access Protection) team at Microsoft. They chat about NAP and how it's installed at Microsoft. Yeah I know that was on Channel 9 before, but hey it's really IT Pro content so now it's home where it belongs. The second is from Giovanni who had the opportunity to speak with the folks over at the online multi-player game Eve. They talk about how the folks at Eve are looking into High Performance Computing and some other cool geeky stuff about Eve Online.

Check out the new videos and don't forget to leave comments! We like to hear from you. And on the topic of hearing from you, while visiting the Edge, stop by The Perimeter and participate in the discussion. No need to be shy, we are all friends!