All posts in Uncategorized

A new whitepaper was release this week describing how to set up, configure and troubleshoot Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering.

With Windows Server 2003 and earlier versions, organizations had to deploy multiple certification authorities (CAs) to provide redundancy in case a critical network server failed. You can still have multiple CAs operating in your Active Directory forest, but with failover clustering there is no need to deploy more than one CA to protect AD CS from unexpected failure.

This white paper explains the detailed steps that are required to set up failover clustering with Windows Server 2008 and to run AD CS on shared storage with a network hardware security module (HSM).

Title: Configuring and Troubleshooting Certification Authority Clustering in Windows Server 2008

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15c75333-be26-4955-a32c-03077daf1631&DisplayLang=en

No feature of Windows Server 2008 is more widely misunderstood than Hyper-V, which previously went by the codename Viridian and its more pedestrian original moniker, Windows Server Virtualization. Part of the reason is timing: Unlike every other Windows Server 2008 feature, Hyper-V didn’t ship in final form with the rest of the product back in February. Part of it is confusion over the bifurcated nature of Hyper-V: There are actually two versions of Hyper-V available (or soon will be), the feature that’s part of Windows Server 2008 (which Microsoft refers to as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V) and the completely separate standalone product, which the software giant will market as Microsoft Hyper-V.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/win2008_hyperv.asp

In April, the number of web attacks rose sharply, and Microsoft was quickly blamed for the problems. The software giant investigated and concluded that security groups had jumped to conclusions and that the attacks were not related to security vulnerabilities in IIS 6.0, ASP, ASP.Net, or Microsoft SQL technologies. Instead, it was found that the attacks were due to automatic exploits of SQL injection vulnerabilities, and the company pointed to its own guides on following good practices to avoid such attacks.

Full Article – http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/06/26/microsoft-offers-tools-for-fighting-sql-injection-attacks

“Microsoft has published a new whitepaper on Windows Server 2008 power savings, and the results and methodologies of the tests run to develop the paper.

This is an excellent document, which outlines the test results (downloadable in separate spreadsheets) and the role of virtualisation in optimising energy efficiencies in your data centres.

Check it out at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61d493fd-855d-4719-8662-3a40ba3a0a5c&displaylang=en

A demo showing Windows 7 and its touch functions can be viewed here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2008/06/25/windows-7.aspx

Hello everyone,

we heard a lot of feedback from you about the need for the Remote Desktop Connection client 6.1 to be made available as a standalone install for Windows XP SP2 to ease deployments of Windows 2008 Terminal Services.

In response to this feedback, we have released the Remote Desktop Connection client (RDC 6.1) for Windows XP SP2 on x86 platforms.

You can download RDC6.1 for Windows XP SP2 from the Microsoft Download Center (KB 952155) for the following languages:

Arabic, Chinese – Simplified, Chinese – Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese – Portugal, Portuguese – Brazil, Russian, Spanish – Spain, Swedish, Turkish.

We have also released the MUI package for RDC6.1 on Windows XP SP2 from the Microsoft Download Center (KB 952230).

These are some of the supported features of Remote Desktop Client 6.1 for Windows XP SP2:

• Windows Server 2008 & Windows Vista feature support
• TS Web Access support
• TS Easy Print support
• TS Remote Programs support
• TS Gateway support

Please review the complete list of features and details about RDC6.1 for Windows XP SP2 in this Knowledge Base article.

RDC6.1 is now available on the following platforms:

Windows Server 2008

Windows Vista SP1

Windows XP SP3

Windows XP SP2 (KB 952155)

Hello Windows Live Messenger beta testers!

This is a reminder that the Messenger v9.0 Beta program will close TODAY.

Thanks again to everyone for all of your time and energy during this beta testing period. Your feedback has been super helpful to us as we planned the next version of Messenger, and we can’t wait to get your reactions to the new beta version! Look for announcements about the next beta in the coming months.

The Windows Live Messenger Team

How has Bill Gates’ thinking evolved over the years? Internal Microsoft memos and e-mails provide a glimpse inside his mind, showing how he has approached the struggles and opportunities facing the company, from BASIC to Windows Vista. Microsoft has made some of these messages public as part of its historical record, but many were disclosed in lawsuits against the company. Click the links to read the source documents.

February 1976: “An open letter to hobbyists“: In this seminal message, a young Bill Gates rails against software piracy among early computer hobbyists and displays the blunt approach for which he will become known: “As the majority of hobbyists must be aware,” he writes, “most of you steal your software.”

Full Article – http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141871.asp?source=rss

Since launch last week in excess of 17.3 million downloads of Firefox 3 have taken place.
The browser saw eight million downloads within the first 24-hours of its release, more than ever downloaded in a single day before and a statistic currently being considered for inclusion within the Guinness Book of Records.
Firefox 2 was downloaded 1.6 million times in its first 24 hours of release; to date, it has been downloaded more than half a billion times, according to Mozilla.

In case you haven’t heard, this week is BillG’s last week as a full-time Microsoft employee as he transitions to working full-time at his foundation. Sure, he’ll still be the Chairman of the board and there are some projects that he will work with directly, but it is still a bit weird to think about Microsoft without Bill Gates.

In this 30 minute Channel 9 interview with Charles Torre, you’ll hear Bill talk about his transition, Ray Ozzie, competing against Google, improving Microsoft’s agility, what’s going to be important for our platform in the next decade and of course Bill’s role at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2008/06/23/bill-gates-transition-interview-on-channel-9.aspx

There are many ways to implement Windows Server Failover Clustering with Hyper-V. I could actually find five unique methods to do it. Some of them will actually not give you a fully fault-tolerant solution, but most of them actually make sense in specific scenarios (even if only for demonstrations). In any case, just trying to understand and differentiate them will probably be a good exercise.

1 – Parent-based Failover Clustering with two physical servers

In this first scenario, probably the most common one, you implement Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering at the Hyper-V Parent (Host) level. You will need some shared storage, like a Fibre-Channel or iSCSI SAN.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/06/17/windows-server-2008-hyper-v-failover-clustering-options.aspx

The Live Mesh team has been working hard to fix bugs reported by our Tech Preview users, and to include popular feature requests (such as removing the requirement that UAC be enabled in Windows Vista SP1). Below is a list of the most prominent fixes implemented in the latest Live Mesh release. Thank you for all your great feedback!

Fixes

· Live Mesh is now available in all English-speaking countries (not just the U.S.)

· Removed the User Account Control (UAC) requirement when installing and using Live Mesh with Windows Vista SP1

· Index for Desktop Search now works with Live Mesh folders

· Fixed bug where an underscore in a Hotmail account name returned an “Invalid Hotmail Address” error

· Fixed bug with Silverlight 2 Beta 2 failing to load in Silverlight Media View

· Fixed bug where the notifier tooltip incorrectly indicated that Live Mesh Remote Desktop was unavailable for a computer running in non-admin mode

· Fixed bug where the Live Mesh folder icon was not displayed in the e-mail inviting someone to share a folder

· Fixed one of the bugs that caused Live Mesh to fail to start

· Fixed problem with Live Mesh returning errors when waking from sleep/hibernate

Did You Know?

You can install Live Mesh on multiple devices-then Live Mesh can keep all the folders in your mesh synchronized for you! To add a computer to your mesh, visit www.mesh.com from the computer you wish to add, sign in, and click Add Device on the Devices page.

To get even more from Live Mesh, share folders with friends and family! Simply open a folder you’ve added to Live Mesh, click Members in the mesh bar, and then click Add.^* Your friends will be able to access your folder as well as install Live Mesh on their devices.

* You can enter any e-mail address to invite others to a folder; it doesn’t have to be a Windows Live ID. However, they will need to use a Windows Live ID to sign in to and use Live Mesh.

Feedback

Thanks for being one of the first to use Live Mesh. We’re working hard to create the best experience and appreciate any feedback you have. Please send us feedback using our online form. You can also submit (and view others’) feedback and bugs here on the Microsoft Connect website.

Thank you,
The Live Mesh team

— Taken from an email sent to me this morning.

MySpace launched part of its expected redesign today and the new look gives a much needed overhaul to the formerly cluttered social networking site.

The appeal of MySpace has always been its media-rich environment and a large amount of creative control that users have over their environment. However, Facebook has been able to catch up to the world’s largest social networking site with its clean design and far more simplified user interface. With these new rounds of changes, MySpace has taken some of the appeal of a cleaner design but retained the appeal that makes the site so popular in the first place.

Full Article – http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007130.html

Microsoft Wednesday said it plans to release at the end of the month another beta of its Windows HPC Server 2008 and that the final version will ship by year-end.

The beta is the first release candidate (RC), which Microsoft says is feature complete. An RC is a final beta before the code is considered finished. Microsoft officials said they plan to have one more RC before development is complete.

Microsoft made the announcement at the start of the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, where it also placed for the first time in the Top 25 of the world’s largest supercomputers.

Full Article – http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061808-microsoft-hpc.html?fsrc=netflash-rss

While it is possible to create some complex networking environments in Hyper-V, the basic concepts are relatively straight forward. This post walks some simple scenarios and how the main components operate in terms of the flow of data.
Let’s start by setting a level playing field and a “best practice”.

• When adding the Hyper-V role in a full installation of Windows Server 2008, you have the option to create one or more external virtual network switches. (This option is not available in server core installations of Windows Server 2008). I’m going to assume that no external virtual network switches were created during installation, and the Hyper-V role is enabled.
• Our recommendation, in a simple deployment, is to have at least two physical NICs in a physical machine– one (or more) dedicated to the physical machine, and one (or more) for virtual machines. The reason will become obvious as you work through this post.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/16/how-does-basic-networking-work-in-hyper-v.aspx