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Today the product group has released the HPC Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP). This is the next major milestone on our way to RTM. As always, the software is available via Microsoft Connect.

If you are interested in the CTP build, please visit this page on Microsoft Connect. You’ll have to provide a bit of information about yourself and any intended use. As always, the team provides newsgroup support via Microsoft Connect.

For more information about Windows HPC Server 2008, please visit the Microsoft HPC homepage and use the Windows HPC Community Portal for all things technical information.

Although the deployment of the Windows Server® 2008 operating system is still in its relatively early stages, Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) has already discovered noticeable benefits in the day-to-day management and operation of its network environment as Windows Server 2008 makes its debut in data centers across the enterprise.

Download Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4752fa07-3c8e-49b0-b2e3-c75268128866&DisplayLang=en

Although the deployment of the Windows Server® 2008 operating system is still in its relatively early stages, Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) has already discovered noticeable benefits in the day-to-day management and operation of its network environment as Windows Server 2008 makes its debut in data centers across the enterprise.

Download Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4752fa07-3c8e-49b0-b2e3-c75268128866&DisplayLang=en

Mozilla today released a new beta version of Firefox 3. Beta 4 builds on the existing releases of Firefox and includes more than 900 enhancements from the Beta 3 and includes ‘drastic improvements to performance and memory use.’ It also provides other fixes based on feedback from the community.

Full Article – http://apcmag.com/8416/firefox_3_beta_4_hits_the_streets

The rapid growth of mobile broadband is set to make Wi-Fi hotspots irrelevant, according to an Ericsson executive.

“Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era,” claimed Ericsson’s chief marketing officer Johan Bergendahl, speaking to delegates at the European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm.

Full Article – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/176220/ericsson-predicts-swift-end-for-wifi-hotspots.html

Microsfot employees have enjoyed the benefits of Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 since long before it was shipped. See how in the webcast: How Microsoft IT Deployed Windows Terminal Services 2008 and Terminal Server Gateway Technologies, scheduled Tuesday, March 18, 2008. You can also read the white paper:

How MSIT Uses Terminal Services as a Scalable Remote Access Solution

This white paper discusses how Microsoft IT used Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services to create a scalable remote access solution that is accessible by using HTTPS connections from any location worldwide.

Link – http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/03/07/how-miscosoft-it-uses-windows-sever-2008-terminal-services.aspx

Information for Windows Ultimate users.

http://ultimatepc.com/

Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We’ve spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.

We tested Vista:

• as it comes out of the box (RTM — or “release to manufacturing”)
• as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied (“RTM patched)
• with the final SP1 service pack applied

Full Article – http://apcmag.com/8373/vista_sp1_up_to_86_faster

Empower your people to find and act on information.
As an IT professional, you need a search solution that allows you to deliver the simple, easy-to-use experience your users expect, while helping to meet the security and manageability requirements your IT environment demands. Microsoft® Search Server 2008 offers an enterprise-ready search solution that empowers your people to find the information they need.
Product Highlights
Find and act on your information

• Empower your users to quickly find the information they need through a familiar Search Center interface
• Deploy a search capability optimized for business data to deliver highly relevant results across intranet and public-facing Web site content
• Pinpoint the most relevant information you need with recommended best bets, authoritative sources, term definitions, hit highlighting, duplicate collapsing, search alerts, and query correction
• Build upon a familiar user interface and application platform that lets you customize your search experience and the actions you can take on your search results

Grow and extend your search solution

• Index common information sources with Indexing Connectors for file servers, Web sites, Microsoft SharePoint® sites, Microsoft Exchange Server public folders, as well as EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, and Lotus Notes repositories
• Federate your searches to indexes in other data repositories, applications, and services using the Open Search standard
• Scale your deployment to meet your needs with no preset document limits and continuous index propagation

Help secure and manage your search deployment

• Review common administrative tasks, search status, and settings in a single view
• Manage content sources and search scopes, authoritative sources, key words, best bets, and other configurable relevancy settings through a powerful, easy-to-use management console
• Maintain high availability and load balancing using a variety of topologies; configure multiple Web, query, and clustered database servers
• Monitor search performance and improve search relevance with query and results reporting
• Help ensure that only the right people can find information with a search engine that utilizes your user authentication infrastructure for security

For more information on Microsoft enterprise search products, please visit www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch
D2KBC-9JQ6T-4P6C2-F7BFF-BB96D
Dont lose this product key!
You must use it to install this software. If you misplace this Product Key, visit the Microsoft Download Center.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5de047e1-0289-4e8e-81de-56bf74ecc89e&DisplayLang=en

The Windows Server 2008 Developer Story introduces users to new features of the Windows Server 2008 operating system by providing a cohesive story about how the features fit together to make a compelling platform for developers. The Developer Story topics explain how to take advantage of a new feature or solve a problem using the new Windows technologies. The topics include conceptual information for context and technical specifications for practical application of each scenario.
This download contains the Windows Server 2008 Developer Story (ServerDevStory.chm).

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=056bb5f7-65ff-4c42-bdae-65754d96b021&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft has put in place the preparations for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 ready for Mix 08.
A full features page has been revealed which lists the following additions to Internet Explorer:

• Activities
• WebSlices
• Favorites Bar
• Automatic Crash Recovery
• Improved Phishing Filter

Activities allow users to lookup/send information in a right-click contextual menu, such as retrieving an address map from Windows Live Maps, submitting a story to Digg, sharing a page on Facebook etc. WebSlices allows users to crop a specific area section of a site and bookmark it. Improvements have been made to the phishing filter which continues to block known Phishing sites and now blocks sites known to contain malicious software that could harm users’ computer or steal their information.
Perhaps one of the best new features is Automatic Crash Recovery which recovers your tabs if your browser crashes. It is widely expected that Microsoft will release the first beta of Internet Explorer 8 at this years Mix 08 which begins today.

View: Internet Explorer 8 New Features
View: Internet Explorer 8 Download Page

This document provides more detail about the notable changes made to Windows Vista in Service Pack 1, which were focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards.

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d69c4e1b-c81a-41be-b1f5-66e615ba5912&DisplayLang=en

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) tools company Zend Technologies is announcing this week that its Zend Core product will run on the Windows Server 2008 platform, providing parity between Windows Server and Linux in running PHP.

version 2.5 is certified for Windows Server 2008. “The certification means that customers who choose to use it on Windows Server 2008 know that it will work as it should,” said Andi Gutmans, CTO and co-founder at Zend.

Microsoft and Zend have been collaborating to enable PHP applications to run on Windows. Microsoft has a feature called FastCGI intended to enable PHP to run reliably on Microsoft’s platform, said Gutmans. Users also need Microsoft Internet Information Server to run PHP on Windows, he said.

“Now that Zend and Microsoft delivered the technology, we’re going to be working with customers on adoption. We’re also going to be targeting some of the hosting companies,” to entice them to use the product, said Gutmans.

All Zend products are to support Windows Server by the end of the year, he said.

CHICAGO – Microsoft is developing a number of tools and technologies designed to make it easier to manage users in Active Directory and for companies to confirm identities with partners.

Prototype of the tools were shown Monday at NetPro’s annual Directory Experts Conference (DEC) conference and focus on a simple interface that streamlines the discovery of user and schema information. The federation tools provide a simple UI that fronts canned and customized PowerShell-based scripts that build federations via Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) and lets companies securely share data.

Full Article – http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030308-microsoft-simplify-directory-management.html?fsrc=netflash-rss

This article is based on a prerelease version of Windows Server 2008. All information herein is subject to change.

A common misperception about Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is that in order to use it, you must deploy native IPv6 addressing and routing, which requires a detailed analysis of IPv6 addressing schemes, router updates and configuration, and a rollout schedule. Although this should eventually be done for native

IPv6 connectivity, you can easily deploy tunneled IPv6 connectivity using the Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP). With tunneled IPv6 connectivity, hosts that support ISATAP can communicate using IPv6 traffic that is encapsulated with an IPv4 header (the IPv4 Protocol field is set to 41). ISATAP traffic can traverse an IPv4-only intranet, so you can begin testing IPv6-capable applications immediately, without having to wait for a native IPv6 infrastructure.

ISATAP is an address assignment and automatic tunneling technology defined in RFC 4214 that provides unicast IPv6 connectivity between IPv6/IPv4 hosts across an IPv4- only intranet. ISATAP hosts use a logical tunneling interface that is assigned ISATAP addresses, which have the form UnicastPrefix:0:5EFE:w.x.y.z (when w.x.y.z is a private IPv4 address assigned to the ISATAP host) or UnicastPrefix:200:5EFE:w.x.y.z (when w.x. y.z is a public IPv4 address assigned to the ISATAP host). UnicastPrefix is any 64-bit unicast address prefix, including link-local, global, and unique local prefixes. Examples of ISATAP addresses are 2001:DB8::98CA:200:131.107.28.9 and 2001:DB8::98CA:0:10.91.211.17.

Full Article – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc194397.aspx