Windows Server Division WebLog

In the video below Microsoft introduces three best practices that can help organizations cut branch and remote infrastructure costs. 1. Use virtualization technology to more efficiently use hardware and save money on energy 2. Centralize branch infrastructure Read More...

The beta is now available to manage WS08 R2 Hyper-V and MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Check out RakeshM's blog post. Rakesh is the principal group program manager for SCVMM, and can answer any questions you might have that he doesn't address. If you're looking for brevity, see Larry's post over at the System Center team blog. You can download the beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 from the Microsoft Connect site. On a related note, join Microsoft's sr. technical product manager, Edwin Yuen, in a live web chat on March 31, 8am-noon PST [11am-3pm EST]. Edwin will answer your questions about Hyper-V, SCVMM, App-V, MED-V and other items. See more here. A reminder also that the Microsoft Management Summit is April 27 - May 1 in Las Vegas. Patrick Read More...

For those of you who’ve enabled the Hyper-V role in WS08. It has been determined that a certificate error can occur resulting in the inability to start or connect to virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. The Hyper-V virtualization host and the existing virtual machines will continue to operate without disruption. A hotfix designed to prevent/resolve this error has been created and is available for download starting today. The following is a brief description of the issue as well as a link to the KB Article that provides the resolution. Even if you are not currently experiencing this issue, we recommend you download and install this update. Symptoms and resolution: § You may be unable to start or connect to virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. § KB Article 967902 has been created that details the symptoms and resolution. This KB article provides a direct link to download the quickfix to resolve this error. Read More...

Do you remember the tale of the Windows Server 2008 “Lone Server” ? Maybe it was read to you as a bedtime story as a change from “Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?” There he was, this poor Windows Server 2003 server, all alone in a server farm Read More...

Looks like many of you are saving big money with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. And today we announced that, on average, it's $470,000 per customer per year. Not bad at all and very gratifying to see. Here's just one example provided today: Saxo Bank had an average physical server utilization of just 20 percent and was deploying nearly 200 new servers per year before using server virtualization. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V allowed the bank to reduce the number of servers needed by 36 percent and realize savings equivalent to $1 million (U.S.), because of lower server hardware costs and associated reductions in space, power and cooling costs Besides the words and all, another interesting part were the videos seen at the site. You can see/hear from Saxo Bank, Banverket, Rand Morimoto (who wrote a book on Hyper-V), and a video featuring Santa Barbara Web Hosting and Microsoft's Bob Muglia. Read More...

Hi, my name is Jerry Melnick. I am chief technology officer at Marathon Technologies. Today we announced an expanded development and marketing agreement with Microsoft that underscores industry recognition of the growing need to eliminate downtime for your most important applications. Working together, Marathon and Microsoft will bring sophisticated fault tolerant availability technology to Windows Server and Hyper-V. In a nutshell, this collaboration is all about making it a lot easier for a lot more companies to get cost-effective, easy-to-deploy fault tolerance for their critical Windows applications. I wanted to use this blog post to answer two questions: why this announcement matters and how could it impact your role managing your Windows infrastructure. There are two key factors that are driving the increased need for Windows-based fault tolerant computing. First, more customers are relying on Windows Server to run their mission critical applications, and the number of these applications is increasing. Second, with the growing popularity of server virtualization (where applications are being consolidated onto fewer servers) the impact of downtime is often magnified. Fault tolerant computing is becoming more relevant than ever. Read More...

Hi, Manlio Vecchiet here. I'm director of product management on the Windows Server marketing team, focused on Windows Server networking, terminal services and VDI. I'm in Barcelona right now attending Microsoft TechEd EMEA conference. Whether you are one of the many IT Pros that have successfully deployed Terminal Services over the past decade, or whether your company is considering virtualization technologies to implement a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or even if you are new to the concept of a centralized, remote desktop - this will matter to you. Today we are introducing Windows Server 2008 Remote Desktop Services – the next generation of server tools and platform that allow you to accelerate and extend centralized desktop and application deployments to any device. So, what exactly is ‘Remote Desktop Services’? Read More...

Excerpt from the post on the SBS blog by group program manager Dean Paron: On behalf of the SBS team, I am extremely pleased to announce that Windows Small Business Server 2008 software has been finalized! Today both SBS Standard and Premium are being Read More...

Helping businesses address the growing complexity of managing their IT environments, today at Microsoft Management Summit 2008 we announced the public beta release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly referred to as code name “Virtual Read More...

What a Launch Wave it has been! I've just returned from celebrating Windows Server 2008 with many of you all over the world. It was great to hear your stories and see how Windows Server 2008 will fit into many of your organizations. For those of you who Read More...

I’m really pleased to say that the release candidate of Hyper-V is available for download today. You can read the announcement and Jeff’s more detailed post. This milestone is important to the hundreds of customers and partners in the early adopter programs, and those of you trialing Hyper-V on your own, because it’s feature complete, better performing than the beta, and you’ll have a better experience using it. Reports from the Hyper-V early adopter programs have matched some of the third-party reviews and first looks, with comments such as: · “External deployments have exceeded Beta coverage goals” · “External TAP deployments have increased significantly” Amongst the early adopter customers, the three most common Windows Server 2008 roles run within Hyper-V are IIS, application server and Terminal Services. The four most deployed Microsoft applications are SQL Server 2005 and 2008, Exchange Server and Forefront, while more than half of the customers are running an AV/security application, nearly 50% are running a backup appliance at this point, and around 75% of the customers are running Hyper-V with some attached storage. At the same time we’re starting to see more and more and more ISV partners announce plans to support Hyper-V. So overall we’re seeing good enterprise uptake of Hyper-V. I was in France and the Nordics two weeks ago attending launch events for Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Lots of the attendees had already started testing the beta of Hyper-V. Several people remarked that they were impressed with early testing of the multi-site clustering capabilities for remote disaster recovery. Beyond the technical capabilities, total cost of ownership was another hot topic. Given that Hyper-V is a role within Windows Server 2008 – the beta of Hyper-V was included with Windows Server 2008 – customers attending the launch were looking forward to having these server consolidation and DR capabilities built into Windows Server 2008. I did have to remind several folks that Hyper-V will be available with three, x64 editions of Windows Server 2008 (the versions of Windows Server 2008 without Hyper-V are $28 less). And I often noted our work on cross-platform interoperability with Citrix/Xen, Novell and Sun, and that we’re opening up APIs to the community. Read More...

Lots happening in Orlando at Convergence 2008 - the Microsoft Dynamics users' conference. Steve Ballmer and vice president Kirill Tatarinov are speaking and the Dynamics team is making a number of announcements , including a partnership with EDS to extend Read More...

The team behind Windows Essential Business Server 2008 for midsized companies (part of the newly announced Windows Essential Server Solutions family and formerly known as "Centro") has launched a team blog here . Group Program Manager Eric Watson provides Read More...

In the course of talking to many Microsoft partners and customers, the Windows Small Business Server team has learned that there are sometimes misperceptions about the product, in many cases based on experiences with the earlier versions of SBS. In hopes Read More...

As I write this, I’m in the room where it all happens - in building 26, better known as the ship room. Ten minutes ago Windows Server 2008 officially RTM’d. Also in here with me are my colleagues who have been working on Windows Vista SP1, also RTM’ing Read More...