April 2008 Archives

We have, on a couple of occasions, linked to the nomination form for the ServerWatch Product Excellence Awards. Now that nominating is done, it's time to vote for some winners.

Here's a link to the ballot.

This year's categories are as follows:

• Small Business Server
• Midrange Server
• High-End Server or Mainframe
• Storage System
• Blade Server
• Operating System *
• Virtualization Platform
• Virtualization Tool
• Automatioon or Compliance Tool
• Green Initiative

To be eligible, products must have been released or significantly upgraded between March 2, 2007 and March 1, 2008.

* There's a certain Microsoft Server operating system we discuss here on a daily basis that's a finalist in this category.

The Windows Server Catalog is the place where you can find servers or hardware that runs on Windows Server 2008 (or 2003 for that matter).

You can search for hardware by product category, vendor, and architecture by clicking here. You can do the same for servers by clicking here.

And to keep track of which applications can play nice with Windows Server 2008, you can click here for a rundown on the difference between Certified for Windows Server 2008, Works with Windows Server 2008, Pledged Applications, and the Supported qualification.

The latter is important to understand if you're migrating from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008.

The "Supported" qualification level is designed to clarify to customers if existing Designed for Windows Server 2003 systems will be supported when the system is upgraded to Windows Server 2008. Microsoft provides the "Supported" qualification to indicate that a system is compatible with Windows Server 2008, but does not take full advantage of the Windows Server 2008 operating system's functionality and is unable to obtain the Certified for Windows Server 2008 logo.

For all of the benefits, there are a few things about virtualization that IT pros need to be aware of when they plan on implementing virtualization. One of these is the way virtualization can create a single point of failure.

Let's say you have 10 servers running 10 workloads. When one fails, you have a problem, but a fairly small and manageable problem. Now adopt virtualization and put those 10 workloads on two servers. See what I did there? Lose one and you have a much bigger problem.

VMware's VMotion is a popular tool to help migrate virtual servers when there's a failure. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 has as a similar option. Jeff Woolsey from Microsoft's virtualization product team takes a closer look at this feature and compares it to Live Migration with VMotion in a three-part blog series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Hyper-V integrates with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering so that if you pull out the power plug, all of the virtual machines will automatically restart to another node without user intervention. Furthermore, this capability is simply included (at no extra $$$) with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Editions.

As for VMotion:

In the case of unplanned downtime, VMotion can’t live migrate because there is no warning. Instead you must have VMware HA configured and the best it can do is restart the affected virtual machines on other nodes which is the same as what is provided with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Failover Clustering.

Thanks to Malcolm Bullock for the links.

Our own Paul Rubens, author of our articles on Windows Server 2008 Server Core and Hyper-V, has a new article on ServerWatch this week featuring eight tips for trimming that data center electricity bill.

The vicious cycle that is the need for more powerful servers and thus more powerful cooling is sucking up energy at an astounding rate, as any data center manager knows well. Some of this is overkill from the commoditization of x86 servers. When their prices dropped it was way too easy to just add a server when new applications were brought online. Paul has an example of the old way of thinking:

It may seem like you can always plug in another piece of hardware, but ultimately there is a limit to how much power can easily be supplied to a given building in a given location. Once you hit that limit, you are, to used a non-technical term, stuffed.

Paul Shearer, who does a site called The Informed CIO, has done a number of video tutorials on using Windows Server 2008 features. In this video, Paul shows you how to add the backup and restore in Windows Server 2008, as well as running a full backup to disk.

We'll be posting more videos from Paul going forward.

Thanks to some extra work by Dave Northey of Microsoft Ireland we're able to bring to you a whole bunch of demos that were created for the Heroes Happen Here launch events in Dublin and Belfast. He created them by using screen captures, in part to ensure nothing would go wrong when he tried them live, and then voiced over his comments. Then he posted them on his blog for all to enjoy.

There are seven demos, covering most of the Windows Server 2008 bases. The demos are done in Silverlight, so make sure you have it downloaded, then watch them in order (or skip around of you prefer).

• Install and Configure (run time approx 7 minutes)
• Server Core (2.5 minutes)
• Server Manager (2.5 minutes)
• Failover Clusters (5.5 minutes)
• NAP (4 minutes)
• IIS 7.0 (10 minutes)
• Terminal Services (6 minutes)

David Strom took a look at the state of the virtualization market on Datamation a couple of weeks ago, including a product comparison featuring the three big players: Microsoft, VMware, and Xen.

According to Strom, there are four reasons that virtualization is becoming more attractive to mid-tier users:

1. The free versions are more capable
2. Prices are coming down
3. Setup and management is easier
4. It reduces power and cooling costs, just as the environment and energy prices are popular topics (Happy Earth Day, by the way)

He also identifies four trends that have become established in the virtualization market in the past year:

1. Growth of the hypervisor
2. Interoperability
3. Falling prices and improved functionality
4. Widening channels

If you're interested in the news and views on virtualization, we also recommend the Virtualization Watch area on ServerWatch.com, which includes the weekly Virtually Speaking column.

If you'd like to get the daily blog updates by feed, or if you already grabbed the blog feed, you need to know we made a slight change. The new location of the feed is:

http://blog.devx.com/win2008/atom.xml.

 And if there's any topics you'd like to see covered in the blog, feel free to use the comment feature and we'll try to get them covered in the coming weeks.

Amit Pawar, a technology specialist at Microsoft Australia, did a lengthy blog post on running Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008. Amit lists several of the benefits, but there's a few things to keep in mind. Namely:

To run Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 you will require Exchange Server 2007 SP1 no other version of Exchange Server, including the released to manufacturing version of Exchange 2007, is supported on Windows Server 2008. Also remember that since Exchange 2007 SP1 is a 64 bit version only you will require x64 version of Windows Server 2008.

There's plenty of information on upgrading and backing up, and at least one known incompatibility issue. There's also a link to the TechNet article on Migrating Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2003 to Exchange 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008.

Actually, it wasn't just Windows Server 2008. Microsoft IT deployed all three of the Heroes Happen Here products -- Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008.

In our latest video, fresh from the YouTube universe, Jim DuBois, General Manager of Information Security & Infrastructure Services for Microsoft IT, highlights Microsoft's internal deployment of the three products.

Why is this important to you? Well, Microsoft has a pretty complex IT environment and the company IT staff was able to upgrade without creating a disaster. It also provides another layer of testing for these products in a real-world environment. Jim mentions in the video that 500 bugs were found and because of the testing Microsoft IT conducted with the products.

So without further ado...

The Core Install option in Windows Server 2008 lets users install a minimal Windows Server 2008 installation, with no graphical user interface shell, no Start button or system tray, and the ability to install just the features or services needed to perform any of nine server roles.

Our own Paul Rubens wrote about Server Core for the Windows Server 2008 Innovation Center:

A Server Core installation actually makes a great deal of sense in many instances, and here's why. A Windows server is often deployed to fulfill a particular role - a DNS or DHCP server for example - and in this role it will never need many of the services or features that are present in a full installation.

Cutting out the things you don't need makes your server more secure, more reliable, and easier to manage.

Jose Barreto has word today of a new whitepaper from Microsoft IT called "Enhancing Availability with a Server Core Installation of Windows Server 2008."

You can download the whitepaper at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc500983.aspx.

Also, from the Server Core blog, there's some advice on reducing the server core disk footprint:

In addition to reducing disk usage, this could be used to ensure an administrator doesn’t add a role or feature to a server that is supposed to perform a fixed function.

Just note that it's a one-way operation and can't be reversed without a re-install. You've been warned.

Don't worry, Microsoft is throwing a Heroes Happen Here Launch Event in Second Life on April 26. Just like a real-life launch event, the Second Life launch event has an agenda, breaks for things like lunch, and session descriptions. You can find all of the info at the blog.

The location, by the way, is the Microsoft User Group Island in Second Life. There are three simple steps to taking part:

1. Join Second Life, if you haven't already, at http://www.SecondLife.com.  It is FREE to join so come on in and hang with us.
2. Download and install LiveMeeting for the demos we will be showing during the event:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733831033.aspx
3. After you have joined Second Life and played around a little, then click on this link to go to the Microsoft User Group Island at this location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/

If you're more interested in real-world islands, John Weston is trying to drum up some attendees for the Launch Event in Honolulu on April 30.

Last week, Jane Lewis blogged about the technologies that have been removed from Windows Server 2008, when compared to its predecessors. Her post was prompted by a question from a customer about Services for Macintosh (SFM), which is on the list of technologies no longer supported.

Some of the technologies that were "removed" were actually replaced by different technologies that serve the same purpose. Basic Firewall in Routing and Remote Access, for example, is now part of Windows Firewall, and Static IP filter APIs for Routing and Remote Access was replaced with Windows Filtering Platform APIs.

There is, of course, a whole list of the new networking features for Windows 2008. Microsoft says they provide more flexible options than the old way of doing things.

A couple of weeks ago we told you about the nominations for the Product Excellence Awards over at ServerWatch.com. The nomination process ends on Friday, so make sure your favorite server-related product gets nominated before the end of the week.

You can nominate a product by using the feedback form at ServerWatch.

Here is a list of the categories:

• Small Business Server
• Midrange Server
• High-End Server or Mainframe
  
• Storage System
• Blade Server
• Operating System
• Virtualization Platform
• Virtualization Tool
• Automation or Compliance Tool
• Green Initiative

To be eligible, the products must have been either released or significantly upgraded between March 2, 2007 and March 1, 2008. Windows Server 2008 makes the cut.

There are a number of Launch Events taking place next week all over the United States, from Pittsburgh to Albuquerque to Hartford to Alaska and Wisconsin. In addition to Windows Server 2008, the events are also the coming out party for SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, and they feature experts, test drives, trial versions of the software to take home, and, like any good tech event, swag.

John Peterson of ASP 101 went to a Launch Event and detailed what he saw and did while he was there.

On the swag:

Fujitsu stood out with two of the best pieces of swag... a rubber duckie and a LED keychain flashlight. Either one alone would have put them near the top of the list. Offering both sealed the deal.

Editor's Note: I don't think swag ever recovered from the dot-com bust.

On the food:

Considering what often passes for food at this type of event, the turkey sandwich was quite good and even included bacon! A bottle of water, another apple, and a Snickers bar rounded out the meal and left me relatively impressed. The food was nothing fancy, but as far as box lunches go, it was quite good and the reusable cooler if came in was quite nice as well.

As for the sessions, John reports that after the keynote they split the group into four:

• Developer
• Infrastructure IT Pro
• Data Platform IT Pro
• Technology Decision Maker (TDM) (until 2:00pm) / Partner (starting @ 2:00pm)

Get your swag, your turkey sandwich, and your technical information on Microsoft's newest products by signing up for a lunch event near you.

Update: Keith Combs added the video of some interviews he did at the Dallas Launch Event to his blog if you want to check them out.

The fine folks over at Datamation have published an excerpt of Windows Server 2008: The Complete Reference by Danielle and Nelson Ruest. They are both Microsoft MVPs and are the authors of multiple books, including The Definitive Guide to Vista Migration.

From the introduction:

This book outlines detailed explanations of each new feature in Windows Server 2008, and then it provides guidance on how to implement them. Because we do not work for Microsoft, we do not need to provide information for every possible installation situation. Instead, we provide known recipes—recipes that are proven to work when you want to use a specific feature set. If you use the recommended approaches we outline, then you will meet some very specific goals that will provide some very compelling benefits.

If you after you read the excerpt you want to buy all 826 pages, you can get your copy at Amazon (which also has the book available for the Kindle if you're into that sort of thing).

As you no doubt know, the annual RSA Conference is underway in San Francisco this week, meaning that security is at the forefront (no pun intended, no really...) of the tech news these days.

Yesterday it was Michael Chertoff, U.S. secretary of homeland security, with a high-profile speech that urged cooperation between the government and private industry when it comes to protecting the Internet. David Needle has full coverage over at InternetNews.com:

"The risk of a cyber attack is not the same as managing a transit system or securing borders," Chertoff said. "The government doesn’t own the Internet, thank God, and the federal government can't be everywhere at once ... it can't protect every computer system or home computer from attack."

The Microsoft representatives at the show are keeping a blog of the goings on at http://blogs.msdn.com/rsa2008/. Last night Jeff Jones summarized the comments by Symantec CEO John Thompson, one of which jumped out at me:

Symantec believes computing may have reached an inflection point where more malicious code is created daily than non-malicious code.

But judging from my e-mail accounts, more spam is created daily than legitimate e-mail so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Microsoft's Brandon Baker has an entry on Isolation of Virtual Machines. With virtualization taking off, and with Hyper-V marking Microsoft's big step into the hypervisor market, you can expect to see more written about the security of virtual machines in the near future. I'm hoping to focus more on the topic in the near future. Baker sums up the issues quite nicely:

 It would be like having to worry about software from one physical machine finding its way across the carpet into all of the other machines in the same room.  This is not something that a system administrator or security professional wants to worry about.

Indeed.

Last week ServerWatch published an article by none other than Paul Rubens, who wrote our articles on Server Core and Hyper-V, about keeping a watchful eye on data center costs with the economy slowing down.

Among the questions Paul suggests data center managers consider is whether that "five 9s" uptime (99.999%) is really necessary. Would, say, three 9s be sufficient? Frameworks like ITIL and the Microsoft Operations Framework can also help increase efficiency and control spending when the budget gets tight.

Virtualization, of course, figures prominently in the discussion, and Paul goes beyond the common justification of increased utilization and saving power and colling costs.

Virtualization also shrinks costs by reducing the amount hardware that must be replaced. If you operate fewer servers, you then have fewer to replace when they reach the end of their lives. Thanks to advanced virtual machine management software from the likes of Microsoft and VMware, the time spent setting up and configuring them (and thus the associated cost) can be much less than that spent managing comparable physical servers.

By the way, there's a free Internet.com eBook on the topic of Surviving on a Tight Budget, and there is another one on data center costs in the works.

If you find yourself at Storage Networking World down in Orlando, Fla., this week, there's a Windows Server 2008 demo at the Microsoft booth. You'll find Jose Barreto, a member of the Storage Evangelism Team at Microsoft, manning the booth.

Over at his blog, Jose talks about the demo and has a diagram:

We'll have two servers running Windows Server 2008 Core, both with the Hyper-V role installed and connected to an iSCSI Software Target, running WUDSS 2003. These two Windows Server 2008 Core servers will be configured as a Failover Cluster using the iSCSI SAN as shared storage. We'll use a third Windows Server 2008 with a Full install to remotely manage the Failover Cluster and Hyper-V.

If you find yourself in the area, check it out.

You've got more than eight months until you can sit through 24 hours of "A Christmas Story" so why not fill a small portion of that time with 24 hours of Windows Server 2008 TechNet Webcasts?

Throughout March and April there are two dozen one-hour Webcasts focusing on the features available in Windows Server 2008. Most of the Webcasts focusing on virtualization and Hyper-V are archived and available on-demand. As of today, they are in the middle of the IIS 7.0 Webcasts. Server management, PowerShell, and Active Directory are all coming up in the next few weeks.

You can get the full schedule of upcoming Webcasts and a list of the archived events at Microsoft's Events Web site.

Thanks to Harold Wong's blog for the tip.

Don't shoot your eyes out, kids.

I'm probably late to the game on this one, but I haven't seen it and it made me chuckle. Windows Server 2003 walks into a bar, where Windows Server 2000 happens to be the bartender...

You can imagine where it goes from there. In his own words, from The Lone Server Web site:

Once I was almost famous. For years, my friends and I were on the front lines: we were the Windows Server 2003 servers that powered Microsoft.com, one of the hottest Web sites in the world. Then, early last summer, everything changed. Quietly, without warning, the new kids took over. Windows Server 2008.

As you undoubtedly know, the Hyper-V virtualization engine went to the Release Candidate stage a few weeks ago. Stuart Johnston had the details over at InternetNews.com.

Hyper-V also now runs on all 64-bit (x64) versions of the various editions of Windows Server 2008 -- Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter. Earlier betas ran only on the Enterprise edition. The release candidate also features partial localization for German and Japanese, which means that "when Hyper-V is enabled on Windows Server 2008 Japanese or German many of its text strings will appear properly translated," the blog entry stated. Hyper-V will provide full localization for the two languages when it is released.

Paul Rubens also has a rundown on Hyper-V, which he calls "revolutionary" right on the Windows Server 2008 Innovation Center.

If you already had some virtual machines running on the beta version of Hyper-V and you want to upgrade to the Release Candidate, Alves Arlindo has a blog post educating you on exactly how to do that.

I can't argue with this: "Planning the next generation of technical infrastructure for corporations is a complex and daunting task." It's from a link I found over at James Senior's blog about Microsoft's Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides.

The guides can be used by infrastructure planners and architects who have a firm operational grasp of the technology; partners and consultants who design infrastructure solutions; and business managers who want to understand how the technology decisions being made both support and affect the business.

You can find the guides by clicking here.

The series consists of the following titles:

• Series Introduction
• Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
• Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization
• Microsoft Server Virtualization
• Windows Deployment Services
• Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services
• Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services

Both Windows Server 2008 and Vista have a Reliability Monitor that displays the system stability history and provides details on day-to-day stability issues. There are more details, as well as screenshots and an example, over at the Ask the Performance Team blog.

Here is one scenario where the Reliability Monitor could come in handy:

Let’s say your computer has been crashing for the past 2 weeks, but you are not sure what you did to make it start crashing.  While looking at the Reliability Monitor, you discover that there were no crashes prior to 2 weeks ago. The day before the crashes started, the anti-virus drivers were updated.  It’s safe to say at this point that this anti-virus update is the most likely suspect and caused your computer crashes.

Have a favorite server product that you've deployed in your organization in the past year? The editors over at ServerWatch are looking for nominations for their annual Product Excellence Awards. Making a nomination is simple: just head over to the nomination form and nominate those products you think are deserving.

Here are the categories:

• Small Business Server
• Midrange Server
• High-End Server or Mainframe
• Storage System
• Blade Server
• Operating System
• Virtualization Platform
• Virtualization Tool
• Green Initiative

Some things to keep in mind when nominating:

• It's a nomination process, not a vote. Multiple submissions of a single product are unnecessary
• The nomination process will end on April 15 at midnight EDT
• A ballot of finalists will be available on April 29.
  
• Products must have been released or significantly upgraded between March 2, 2007 and March 1, 2008

Windows Server 2008 just makes the cut.

Found this one on YouTube, which has the most annoying April Fool's Day prank of all time going on today. In this video, Chris Pirie, General Manager of Sales and Marketing for Microsoft Learning, talks with Michael Johnson, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, about how early readiness for Windows Server 2008 has directly impacted his business and enables IT professionals to immediately adopt and deploy the new technology.

We also have a Q&A with Lutz Ziob, GM of Microsoft Learning on the site, which discusses training and certification. I blogged about the certifications that are available last week.