If you have ever wondered why Exchange uses Transaction Logs read on.
The Transaction Logs are an important part of Exchange Server, and are used to store data before it is written to the Database. The Transaction Logs allows uses to send / receive emails, without needing to touch the database thanks to the write-ahead method of logging.
When a message is sent, the transaction is first recorded in the transaction logs. Until the transaction is committed to the Exchange database (EDB), the only existence of this data is in the system memory and the transaction logs. In the event of a crash, you lose the contents of the memory and all you are left with is the record in the transaction log. These transaction logs are crucial to the recovery of a failed Exchange server, whether it was a minor crash that required a reboot, or a more catastrophic failure requiring the deployment of your disaster recovery plans. The same goes for other transactions such as received messages, deleted items and messages moved to different folders. For this reason, it is recommended to house the transaction files on a redundant storage system, like a RAID 1 array, so that in the event of a hardware failure, no data is lost. Losing a set of transaction logs will not prevent you from restoring from your backups, but you will lose all the messages and changes since the last full backup.
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How Exchange server uses transaction logs
Windows Server 2012 R2 will also launch October 18th
In a blog post, Microsoft said that not only will Windows Server 2012 R2 launch on October 18th, it will also release System Center 2012 R2, and the latest update to Windows Intune on that same day. The blog states, “We’ll make evaluation versions available through the TechNet Evaluation Center, and these products will be available for new purchases when they hit the price list on November 1st.”
Windows Server 2012 Essentials RTM
Windows Server 2012 Essentials is a significant milestone in our efforts to help cloud-enable small businesses and home offices. It is designed to help you protect business data, to allow highly secure access to the information you need from virtually anywhere by using almost any device, and to offer the flexibility to choose which applications and services you want to run on-premises and in the cloud—we have even made it easier than ever before to run Essentials itself in a hosted environment. Excitement about the release of Windows Server 2012 Essentials has been growing. In 8 weeks of public previews, we’ve had more than 23,000 downloads—far surpassing pre-release downloads of past versions.
Microsoft to deliver its new small-business server by end of 2012
Microsoft already started rolling out the final versions of most of its Windows Server 2012 SKUs this month. The last of them — Windows Server 2012 Essentials, which is its small/mid-size business server — will be out before year-end, officials said this week.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials is Microsoft’s intended replacement for Windows Small Business Server and Windows Home Server (for those SMBs who were using WHS for business purposes). The Essentials product is a hybrid on-premises/cloud server. It will have a 25-user limit and sell for $425, Microsoft officials have said.
Read More – http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-to-deliver-its-new-small-business-server-by-end-of-2012-7000003066/
Windows Server 2012 released to manufacturing!
! Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for. I’m proud to announce that Windows Server 2012 has been released to manufacturing. That means the final code is complete and we are delivering it to our hardware and software vendor partners this week. We will also make the software available to our volume licensing customers in the next couple of weeks.
Windows Server 2012 RTM coming in August
Yesterday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, the company announced officially that Windows 8 is on-track to reach the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) stage in the first week of August, with general availability to come later in October – essentially confirming many thoughts of the industry on when Windows 8 would be released.
There was no word at the event on when Windows Server 2012 would be released, but a post today on the Windows Server Blog reveals that the operating system will also RTM in the first week of August alongside Windows 8. General availability will be in September (earlier than Windows 8) through “multiple channels”.
The Release Preview of Windows Server 2012 has been downloaded over 500,000 times, according to the blog. Come September, it will definitely be interesting to see what differences there are between the shipping version of Server 2012 and the RP.
Windows Server 2012 SKUs
The official Windows Server 2012 page shows all four versions along with a brief description of each feature. The pricing ranges from $425 for Essentials up to $4.809 for the Datacenter SKU. One of the versions, Foundation, has no price listed, with Microsoft saying it is just for OEM businesses.
Windows Home Server is no more
Microsoft’s efforts to offer a version of Windows Server specifically for home server use have now changed. As revealed today in a new PDF FAQ document for the just announced Windows Server 2012 Essentials, the company announced it won’t continue to offer new versions of its Windows Home Server product.
In the PDF document, Microsoft states:
Windows Home Server has seen its greatest success in small office/home office (SOHO) environments and among the technology enthusiast community. For this reason, Microsoft is combining the features that were previously only found in Windows Home Server, such as support for DLNA-compliant devices and media streaming, into Windows Server 2012 Essentials and focusing our efforts into making Windows Server 2012 Essentials the ideal first server operating system for both small business and home use—offering an intuitive administration experience, elastic and resilient storage features with Storage Spaces, and robust data protection for the server and client computers.
The first version of Windows Home Server was launched in 2007. It was accompanied by server hardware made specifically for the operating system, including HP’s MediaSmart Home Server. However, the home PC server market never really caught on with the general public. The last major version of Windows Home Server was released in March 2011.
Bing.com runs on Windows Server 2012
With the recent announcement of the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC), we at Bing.com considered how we might benefit from some of the operating system’s new features. Bing.com is a cloud service that runs on thousands of computers spanning many datacenters across the globe. Performance is a key component in running a successful cloud service such as Bing. Bing serves thousands of user queries every second, and users demand both relevancy and speed in those results.
Our deployment of Windows Server 2012 leveraged four key new features, in particular:
- Built-in Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, included with Windows Server 2012, including the background garbage collection and associated improved latencies
- Improved performance at startup, enabled by the multicore JIT functionality of .NET 4.5
- Ability to collect call stacks for 64-bit .NET JITted applications
- Evaluation of Hyper-V 3 (the version of Hyper-V in Window Server 2012)
Read more – http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/06/07/bing-com-runs-on-windows-server-2012.aspx
Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter is Now Available
The next release of Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, will offer businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware, cloud-optimized infrastructure. It securely connects across premises and helps IT Professionals to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently.
Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC):
- Takes you beyond virtualization
- Delivers the power of many servers with the simplicity of one
- Opens the door to every app on any cloud
- Enables the modern work style
Need more information? See the product details page.
Download – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx?ocid=&wt.mc_id=TEC_108_1_33
Windows Server 8 – Deduplication
One of the long overdue features of Windows Server 8, is Data Deduplication. Deduplication can be enabled for NTFS volumes, and is part of the File Server role.
Deduplication works by examining the files on the disk, looking for duplicate files, once one is found the duplicate file will be referenced to the first file found. This means that two identical 1GB files, would only take up 1GB (The First File) + 4KB (The second file that points to the first file). This will intern allow us to store much more data onto a single disk.
Installing Deduplication –
The first step is to add the data deduplication role service; this is done in the new Server Manager and is a single step.
Once the role is installed, the next steps are to start the Data Deduplication Service (ddpsvc) and set it to Automatic startup. This is done in the normal services management snap-in. Then, each eligible volume needs to be configured for deduplication. Keep in mind that C:\ drives are not supported for NTFS deduplication, Configuring a volume for deduplication is done by right-clicking on the volume in Server Manager and selecting “Configure Deduplicationâ€.
There are two primary options for deduplication, folder and file type exclusions. Those are configured in Server Manager when deduplication is configured. Microsoft don’t recommend deduplication certain file type such as; SQL Databases, VHD Files, Exchange Database. As this could result in a performance decrease. (Testing in a small lab, the performance decrease was unnoticeable.)
Top 5 SQL Server 2012 Features
Quite simply, SQL Server 2012 is going to revolutionize the way we think about availability and recovery. Today, when we think about these concepts, we consider an individual database (log shipping, replication, mirroring) or an entire SQL Server instance (failover clustering). In SQL Server 2012, in addition to Failover Clustering enhancements, we’ll be able to treat a group of databases as an entity – a much more common requirement with today’s complex, multi-database applications. This entity is called an Availability Group.
Windows 7 Professional Pack for Small Business Server 2011
Windows 7 Professional Pack for Small Business Server 2011 is an add-in for Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. The add-in simplifies some aspect of managing client computers running Windows 7 operating system.
Link – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27122
Windows Phone Connector for Windows Home Server 2011
The Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector add-in enables you to connect to your home, business, or storage server by using your Windows Phone 7 phone. This document provides help for the integration of Windows Phone 7 into Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
Microsoft shows off early peek at Windows Server 8
Microsoft officials showed off on July 12 at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference a first public glimpse of its coming Windows Server 8 operating system.
Windows Server 8, the server complement of Windows 8 client, is on the same development track and path as Windows 8 client. If we Microsoft watchers are right, both Windows 8 client and server should be out in 2012, possibly in the first half of the year.
Link – http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-shows-off-early-peek-at-windows-server-8/10002
