August 2008 Archives

Well, whether or not you asked for it or need it you're getting it. Yesterday Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 for Windows Server 2008 (and other Windows platforms as well). Beta 1 was really for developers to work out app compatibility issues and now with beta 2, it's time for IT to work out deployment and upgrade issues.

Couple of things you should know - you can't deply IE8 side by side with IE7 or IE6, so the best way to test is to set up virtualized environments each with a different version of the browser. Also, IE7 compatibility is turned OFF by default - this is keeping within the goal of making IE8 be more in compliance with Web standards as part of Microsoft's Interoperability Principles for open connections, standards support and data portability.

Microsoft hasn't committed to another beta or a final release date for IE8 - I guess it depends upon how many issues come up with this beta and how much work they need to do to fix them.

Having problems connecting via VPN using RRAS on Windows Server 2008? It might be a problem with the "DisableTaskOffload" setting in the registry.

DisableTaskOffload is a setting that has been around since Windows Server 2000. Essentially it was designed to allow intelligent network adapters to manage network transfers instead of the server CPU - notably TCP checksum calculations and IPSec encryption - thus freeing CPU bandwidth for other tasks .

Well Microsoft Support Esclation Engineer Aydin Aslaner just published in the Routing and Remote Access Blog their discovery that Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008's TCP/IP stacks do not configure DisableTaskOffload properly. It should either be set to 0 (allow offload) or 1 (disable offload). Vista and WS set this value to 255, which stops aplications that depend on this flag. Aslaner suggests modifying the registry entry for DisableTaskOffload to enable it.

Of course, this makes me wonder why turn it off? Why not turn it on since most network adapters in today's servers are intelligent and can easily handle these tasks.  

The Distributed File System technology comes in handy when you need to provide access to geographically dispersed files. In Windows Server 2008 it's a role service in the File Services role.

TechNet has a lengthy step-by-step guide to setting up DFS, but we've got a step-by-step video from Dave Lawlor of DaveLawlor.com that takes you through the process.

Jabez Gan has a brief article on the past and present of Simple Network Management Protocol over at Enterprise Networking Planet. Windows XP/Vista and Windows Server 2003/2008 all have SNMP built-in like their predecessors, but now IPv6 is natively supported by SNMP in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

The most useful information is probably the step-by-step guide to configuring the SNMP agent on a Windows platform. There are a couple of caveats (aren't there always?):

SNMP now works with the IPv6 protocol, but Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP and earlier will not be able to respond to queries made to their IPv6 addresses. And here's another catch: Even if the IPv6 protocol stack is installed on Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP, neither will be able to respond to SNMP, which uses IPv6 addresses, too!

The answer is RenderMan, the award-winning special effects software from Pixar. Version 14.0 (yes, 14.0) of RenderMan Pro Server is going to support Windows HPC Server 2008, Microsoft's operating system for high-performance computing clusters and supercomputers.

As for what this means for people in the special effects, this is what Todd Needham had to say on the Windows Server Division blog:

Incredible image complexity, accelerated ray-tracing, optimized hair performance, every last strand, RenderMan is the gold standard, they win Academy Awards, you can’t do animation right without RenderMan.  A new SDK? Python binding? Custom tools? George Lucas would’ve killed to have this stuff...

Pixar uses RenderMan to make its own movies, like The Incredibles, but it's been used in pretty much every movie you've heard of with special effects (including the aforementioned Spiderman). You can see the list of movies on the Pixar site. How's this for a gold standard?

Every Visual Effects Academy Award Winner of the past 15 years relied on Pixar's RenderMan. In fact, 47 out of the last 50 Visual Effect nominees used Pixar's RenderMan.

You don't have to be in the movie industry to find that impressive.

Or, four steps to configuring a domain computer group to forward Windows Events to a single collector. The Windows Server Customer Advisory Team is blogging about Event Forwarding, calling it "one of the least known yet most powerful management features to ship with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008."

Not only do they give you 10 reasons why Windows Event Forwarding is exceptional, but there are four easy steps to implementation:

1. Create Event Forwarding Subscription
2. Configure WinRM Group Policy
3. Configure Event Forward Group Policy
4. Test

Complete with the appropriate screenshots to walk you through the process.

Looking to start experimenting with Hyper-V? Whether it's programming or scripting, it's easy to get started. If you want to do some coding, all you need is a language that can access WMI. Microsoft bloggers have advice for getting started with each one.

We'll start with Richard MacDonald who shows you how to get started programming with Hyper-V using C#.

Hyper-V provides a nice interface for scripting and programming.  The interface is usable from any scripting/coding language that can access WMI.  For example: VBScript, C++, PowerShell, C#, etc.  In this short tutorial I'll look at connecting and querying via C#, but the techniques can be easily adapted to the language of your choice.

Ben Pearce, meanwhile, is starting a series of blog posts on Scripting Hyper-V with WMI and PowerShell. There are a couple of options for scripting: Using the virtualization WMI provider that ships with Hyper-V or using the cmdlets provided by System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Provided that you have System Center, of course.

Use SCVMM 2008, and scripting Hyper-V is like a pleasurable dream.  The cmdlets are task orientated, provide a rich set of features and really do work very well.  So why is this a guide to Option 1 – Using the virtualization WMI provider?  Well, sometimes Hyper-V will be used without an accompanying System Centre deployment, and if that’s the case, using WMI is your only scripting option.

Information Week's rolling review of network access control technology sets its sights on Microsoft NAP this week. There's a big market for such technology. Information Week's own research found that 80 percent of respondents are evaluating or deploying network access technology. The big holdup is a concern over interoperability.

...the fact that Microsoft is offering its Network Access Protection technology free with a Windows Server 2008 license can only help drive adoption. In fact, according to our poll, NAP already is pulling equal with Cisco Network Admission Control in terms of framework familiarity.

It's worth noting that they didn't put Microsoft and Cisco head-to-head in testing.

In the end, there was good news and bad news for fans of NAP. The review found the configuration process a bit complicated, and there are still some pieces of the system they'd like to see added. On the bright side:

NAP is a great value for organizations that have yet to invest in NAC. For now, it's all about the price; if you're buying a Windows 2008 license, you're getting the functionality for free. In addition, as more vendors develop the System Health Validators needed to expand on present policy enforcement capabilities, we expect Microsoft NAP to mature to the point where it will pose a significant threat to established NAC players.

Here's a chance to be part of a beta project for the Microsoft Storage team. It seems the team was getting a lot of requests for a version of the File Server Migration Toolkit (FSMT) compatible with Windows Server 2008.

The version 1.1 beta covers two main features:

• File Server Migration Wizard, which copies shared folders, files, and their security settings from a source file server to a target file server'
• DFS consolidation root wizard, which maintains the original Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of files after they are migrated to a new server.

If you want to be part of the beta, which means you get early access and the chance to supply feedback, you have until August 8. Instructions for signing up are available in this Storage Team blog post.