Microsoft IT Professional Blog

It’s a wrap guys Hyper-V has officially RTM’d  final version number is 18016 and it’s available to download right now from Microsoft links are bellow, this update will go live via Windows Update on July 8th.

Hoping to hear some comments from you

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RTM information

Press release on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RTM
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/jun08/06-26hyperv.mspx

John Howard’s blog post about Hyper-V RTM
http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/26/hyper-v-rtm-announcement-available-today-from-the-microsoft-download-centre.aspx

Hyper-V RTM Guest Operating System Support Note (this link will not be live until the end of the day today)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954958

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RTM download – Direct Links

Windows Server 2008 x64 Hyper-V Parent Partition RTM package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED

Windows Server 2008 x86 Hyper-V Management RTM package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6F69D661-5B91-4E5E-A6C0-210E629E1C42

Windows Vista SP1 x64 Hyper-V Management RTM package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88208468-0AD6-47DE-8580-085CBA42C0C2

Windows Vista SP1 x86 Hyper-V Management RTM package
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BF909242-2125-4D06-A968-C8A3D75FF2AA

The MS ask the core team blog has 10 of the most asked questions during the duration of the hyper-v beta, you might want to head there and check those out, and those questions are:

1. You don’t have mouse functionality in your VM

2. Hyper-V wont install3. Import isn’t working within Hyper-V for your Virtual Server VMs

4. Hyper-V clustering

5. Snapshotting in Hyper-V

6. Virtual Networks

7. Using Hyper-V in Windows Server Core

8. Remote Management

9. Issues deploying virtual machines within a virtualized environment

10. One other virtualized hardware issue we have seen is SCSI boot

Hi all, I’ve been missing for quite some time busy with different topics.  About a month ago I became VMWare VCP certified on VI3 and today I had the opportunity to take part in the beta test for the new 70-652 Microsoft certification focusing on Hyper-V, I must say it was a definetly a very interesting exam very complete in my opinion and the foundations that I learned with VMWare helped understand some of the topics the exam outline covered when I was studying for it.

Since I can’t share with you what was in the exam due to the NDA’s you accept when you undertake any type of technical certification I’m able to share with you the materials I used for studying for it all of them freely available from different blogs or technical resources provided by Microsoft.

• Preparation Guide for Exam 70-652
• How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
• Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Hyper-V
• Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V FAQ
• Windows Virtualization Team Blog
• The Virtual PC Guy Blog
• Jose Barreto’s Blog
• Performance Tunning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008
• Windows Deployment Services Step-by-Step Guide
• Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Windows Virtualization

In order to complement my reading I did several labs with Hyper-V in cluster scenarios, the scenarios I used for my lab where all using iSCSI storage my scenarios where based of on this 2 posts:

• Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V failover clustering options
• How to create a Windows Server 2008 Cluster within Hyper-V using simulated iSCSI storage 

Aside from setting up a clustered enviroment I toyed around some with both System Center Virtual Machine Manager and System Center Operations Manager, I really did not have too much documentation or how to guides for these except for this:

• SCVMM How To Videos
• Clive Watson’s Weblog
• How to Integrate SCVMM and SCOM

Finally I reviewed some excellent on-demand webcasts Microsoft has available on Hyper-V and SCVMM, those are listed bellow:

• Windows Server Virtualization Under the Hood (Level 200)
• Server Virtualization  with Hyper-V Features and Architecture (Level 200)
• Managing Hyper-V (Level 200)
• Examining Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 (Level 300)
• High Availability with Hyper-V (Level 300)
• Overview of the Next Version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager Beta (Level 200)
• Jump-Start Your Virtualization Projects with Microsoft Solution Accelerators (Level 200)
• Planning for Hyper-V and Terminal Services (Level 300)
• Windows Server 2008 Server Virtualization Solution Scenario (Level 300)
  

Hope this links prove themselves useful to you when you are getting ready to understake your cert, good luck.

I’ll let you know if I passed when MS notifies me once the beta test results are out.

Hi sorry that I’ve not written anything the past couple of days, I’ve been busy at work and studying for an upcoming certification I’m doing on VMWare ESX VI3 3.5 and this is taking most of my time since I’m in the planning stage of my virtual infrastructure training environment, it’s pretty cool I’ll share some of the diagrams for your reference when that’s ready.

So now let’s talk some shop viewing the Windows Server 2008 online launch experience site, I found out that Microsoft Press is having 30% off on selected titles relating to all things Windows Server 2008, I recommend browsing thru the list as there are some interesting titles that I myself am looking to purchase such as:

• Windows Server® 2008 TCP/IP Protocols and Services
• Windows Server® 2008 Networking and Network Access Protection (NAP)
• Windows Vista™ Administrator’s Pocket Consultant
• Windows Server 2008 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant

Also recently I saw an  add on a printed magazine (Redmond) for a coupon code for a free Microsoft Learning course (individual courses not clinics) available until Marc 31st this would be a great opportunity to take a look at some of the Windows Server 2008 courses or Visual Studio ones if that’s what your into.

Finally we have 40% off on certifications exams on the Server 2008 track this would be 70-640, 70-642, 70-643, 70-646 or 70-647.

 Windows Networking has an article that’s worth reading regarding the top1 10 reasons (according to the author) to upgrade to Windows Server 2008, the article highlights the following 10 features:

• Server Manager and the Advanced Event Viewer
• Server Core
• Terminal Services Gateway
• Terminal Services RemoteApps
• Native IPv6 support
• Read Only Domain Controllers
• Hyper-V
• Network Access Protection (NAP)
• Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)
• The Windows Advanced Firewall and Policy-based QoS

This new version of the Windows Server product provides a lot of the needed functionality and flexibility being asked for by large corporations since Windows Server 2008, if you would like more information on each of this features please feel free to go to the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library.

Today Microsoft is making the world wide launch of Windows Server 2008 and other new and exciting products such as SQL Server 2008 and the new Visual Studio 2008 development suite, with this they’ve put together the heroes happen here (HHH) campaign please go out and check the site for events Microsoft will be hosting worldwide related to the launch of these products. Also the site is shocked full of useful information to get you started with this technologies.

So you might be wondering what is a hero? A hero is each of us IT professionals who man’s the IT help desk and uses remote monitoring and managing abilities to solve the end user problems before they even notice. A hero is someone who has implemented high availability technologies to keep your business going online without leaving his families side when it counts the most (yes we’ve all been there missed birthdays, or big family events), and all of this is made possible thru some of the technologies available in Windows Server 2008. (Yes Microsoft marketing you can steal my definition)

What’s your definition of a hero? the Canadian IT Professionals blog has also a definition of what a hero is.

As you all know the Terminal Services role enables your users to access Windows applications that are installed on a terminal server remotely without them having them to install them in their system or access complete Windows desktop hosted in the server, excellent to have remote users log in using thin client computers that have no data stored on them and avoiding the risk of those computers being stolen and having information compromised.

With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft introduced 2 new Terminal Server role services that provide even further flexibility to the terminal service roles these are:

• TS RemoteAPP - Allows programs installed in Terminal Services to be accessed remotely and appear as if they where running on the local computer.  The user can just hit the start menu and open the remote application in his desktop very similar to how Citrix solutions allows access to published application, the feature of RemoteAPP that most impacted me is the fact that I can associate file type entries in my local registry let’s say .doc to open up a RemoteAPP just by double clicking a .doc file.
• TS Gateway - This role service uses RDP over HTTPS to establish a secure, encrypted connection between remote users on the Internet and the internal network resources.

Some of the features that have received an overhaul in Windows Server 2008 that are worth mentioning are:

• TS Web Access - Building on TS RemoteAPP, TS Web Access allows you to access applications on a terminal server over the web, without having to install an ActiveX controller like in past instances of TS Web Access since this control is already a part of the RDC bundled with Vista and Windows Server 2008.
• TS Session Broker - This is mostly a new feature in Server 2008, however you could manually do some work on 2003 to get a session broker to work and load balance sessions between multiple terminal servers in an active directory environment based on Server 200.
• TS Printing - The printing section of terminal servers has had a major overhaul by the addition of the Terminal Services Easy Print printer driver and a Group Policy setting that enables you to redirect only the default client printer.

I could probably go on writing more about each of the previously mentioned features however I think there is already a good set of documentation available in the links provided in this article and in the articles the Microsoft Performance Team was publishing prior to the launch of Windows Server 2008.

Hi All! sorry I’ve been away and haven’t had the opportunity to share with you some more and exciting information about the new features in Windows Server 2008, but my attention has been focused on other items. In order to re-mediate this I have some homework for you all or how should we say some assigned reading material that will help you prep on your road to success with Windows Server 2008.

The Windows Performance team in their blog over at TechNet has been posting the following articles daily since the beginning of February regarding some of the real back-end work that goes on in Windows Server 2008 when talking about topics such as printing, terminal services and some other important topics, I would like all of you to review them at your own pace and I specially recommend the ones highlighted in bold bellow as I think they are quite valuable and worthwhile.

This article series by the performance team will last a couple more days till the official release of Windows Server 2008, so I will add to the list the pending articles they will publish in the upcoming days for your personal reference.

WS2008: Upgrade Paths, Resource Limits & Registry Values
WS2008: Startup Processes and Delayed Automatic Start
WS2008: Windows Service Hardening
WS2008: Service Shutdown and Crash Handling
WS2008: Windows Error Reporting
WS2008: Dynamic Link Library Loader and Address Space Load Randomization
WS2008: Memory Management, Dynamic Kernel Addressing, Memory Priorities and I/O Handling
WS2008: The Print Services Role
WS2008: Understanding XML Paper Specification (XPS)
WS2008: Client-side Rendering
WS2008: The WSD Port Monitor
WS2008: Printer-Driver Packages
WS2008: Print Management Enhancements
WS2008: Terminal Services Architecture
WS2008: Terminal Server Management and Administration
WS2008: Network Level Authentication and Encryption
WS2008: Terminal Services Printing
WS2008: Overview of the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) Client
WS2008: Remote Desktop Connection Architecture
WS2008: RDC Enhancements and Administrative Sessions
WS2008: Frontside Authentication and SSO
WS2008: Terminal Services RemoteApps
WS2008: Terminal Server Web Access Architecture
WS2008: Terminal Server Session Broker Overview
WS2008: Session Broker Load Balancing
WS2008: Terminal Services Gateway Overview

I will come back tomorrow to you all with a post on terminal Services on 2008 and a good point to start and then continue on reading some of the articles mentioned on this extensive list.

TIP: I normally bookmark this articles using a social bookmark aggregator such as del.icio.us or ma.gnolia.com, websites that allow you to store your bookmarks online and access them regardless of your location or the system you are using to browse the web. Be sure to check out services like this to save your personal bookmarks and save some valuable study time.

In pasts posts I’ve talked a bit about the Server Manager tool that is bundled with Windows Server 2008, that will allow you to set up, configure and monitor different roles in your server installation. Microsoft has also bundle with this new version of Windows a command line version of this tool (only available in full installs of 2008 and not in core) that allows you to:

• Install new roles/features
• List currently installed roles
• Remove server roles
• View the possible outcome of installing a new role before doing so

Also this tool allows you to automate some role installations via answer files, pretty similar (but with XML yey!) as to what we used to do in Windows Server 2003 with unattended installations. This will come in handy to setup IIS quickly in a couple of boxes after doing a fresh install of Windows Server 2008 in case you don’t have an imaging solution already in place that is more practical for these scenarios.

Let’s go quickly over some of available switches for this command line based tool and what they do.

ServerManagercmd.exe –query
Will list all of the currently installed roles (IIS, Active Directory, Terminal Services, etc.) and features (Remote Server Administration tools, telnet client, etc.)

ServeManagercmd.exe -install <role-or-feature-name>
Does pretty much what the command says it does, install a new role such as IIS or Terminal Services, however I would like to exercise a word of caution when using this tool first of all some roles require to reboot your server and you will be prompted for this afer you issue the coomand you can avoid being prompted and reload the server using this command with the -restart switch the complete syntax of this command would be ServeManagercmd.exe -install <role-or-feature-name> -restart

Also I would like to mention the fact that the role names are “case sensitive” and sometimes the name of the role is not spelled out clearly for more information on the usage of this command please review this TechNet document titled Server Manager Technical Overview Appendix.

ServeManagercmd.exe -remove <role-or-feature-name>
Pretty self-explanatory, does the same the contrary effect of install and removes roles be vary careful with this command as the possible impact it can have to you infrastructure could be severe if not used carefully and always remember run a backup before modifying anything of this importance, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it is my motto!

ServeManagercmd.exe -install <role-or-feature-name> -whatif
Provides information as to what exactly would be installed/modified when adding a role pretty useful when a role has sub-dependencies and you would like to know what else would be added to your box.

I also mentioned earlier in this post that you can create answer files for the installation of roles this is done via XML and the documentation for it is avaiable in the document I linked from TechNet above, but for a practical example of a real-world scenario I found this article titled Installing IIS 7.0 using ServerManagerCmd.exe, Additionally for all of the previously explained commands you are allowed to dump the results to an XML formatted file for your viewing pleasure in your favorite XML editor for some info on this please refer to this MSDN blog article titled using ServerManagerCmd.

Windows Networking had a feature on ServerManagerCmd that might be intersting to take a look at as a complement to this post.

Many of us have grown really fond of the computer management MMC available in Windows Server since the days of Windows Server 2000, and some got used to the Manage your Server screen in 2003 (I for one did not use it, but some IT administrators I know used it quite a bit). In Windows Server 2008 Microsoft introduced a new tool that you could consider to be the illegitimate child pumped up in steroids of both Computer Management and Manage your server called Server Manager this new tool even allows you to install additional features and roles in your server which some of us used to do in the add/remove components wizard located in control panel.

Basically Server Manager will be your one stop tool to setup server roles and provide ongoing management post initial configuration of the server. Microsoft has good write-up on Server Manager that’s not too technical and everybody can understand and pick up quickly on to start using Server Manager right from the get go.

Before moving on I might add that Server Manager will open up each and every time you log on to your server and doesn’t offer a quick and easy way to disable this behavior like the Manager your Server tool did in 2003, to get rid of this behavior simply modify this registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Server Manager with a value of 1 to disable it and 0 to re-enable it.

Server Manager is based on MMC 3.0 which allows you to have a 3 pane Window that is basically dived into a Console tree, the actual content of each branch in the tree and the actions pane related to the currently selected item. This makes administration of components really fast except that now you have a lot of information on your screen and it can get a bit overwhelming sometimes, but there’s a way of removing or resizing some of the on screen information and this is done with my new 2 favorite buttons in Server Manager which allow you to hide either the console pane or the action pane.

In my opinion the thing that really just works out fine and perfectly within server manager is the role management area, since it allows you to add/remove roles, view information about roles such as current services status, manage the roles and even stop them all from one little tool.

In the screen shot above you can see all of the different options I mentioned above for the file server role, this would be pretty much the same for other roles such as IIS and Terminal Services.

My recommendation would be use it, play around with it and it will start to grow on you quickly and you will start thinking how you lived without it in the past (for real). If you would like to do some additional reading on the Server manager please refer to the following articles:

• Windows Networking - How Longhorn Server’s Server Manager will Change Server Management
• Network World - Chapter 20: Windows Server 2008 Management and Maintenance Practices

In my next post I will talk about a bit about the console version of server manager and how you could use this version of server manager to automate part of the setup and configuration of your desired server roles.