Boot Camp Public Beta 1.2 – Full Windows Vista support

Apple has released Boot Camp 1.2.

The software is still a beta version. The final version will be included in Leopard (Mac OS 10.5).

Some new features are:

Support for Windows Vista (32-bit)

Updated drivers, including but not limited to trackpad, AppleTime (synch), audio, graphics, modem, iSight camera

Support the Apple Remote (works with iTunes and Windows Media Player)

A Windows system tray icon for easy access to Boot Camp information and actions

Improved keyboard support  for Korean, Chinese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, and French Canadian

Improved Windows driver installation experience

Updated documentation and Boot Camp on-line help in Windows

Apple Software Update (for Windows XP and Vista)

Windows Recovery Environment on Vista

Dave Northey, of Microsoft, has a very interesting post on Windows Recovery Environment.

WinRE offers some repair options, such as
- startup files repair
- system restore (restore Windows to an earlier point in time)
- Windows complete PC restore
- Windows memory diagnostic tool
- Command prompt

WinRE replaces the good ol’ Recovery Console.

You can access WinRE either by booting with the Windows Vista installation DVD, but ideally you have it available as a boot option.  You actually end up with your PC booting into it automatically if Windows won’t load for any reason.

The post gives a procedure to follow to create the WinRE with very useful pointers to the technical documentation.

New Sysinternals utilities

The Windows Sysinternals site provides utilities to help the IT Professionals manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose Windows systems and applications.

Here are some of the new or updated utilities available within the last month:

• Process Monitor v1.1, an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, registry, and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two earlier Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of new enhancements.
• AccessChk v3.0, a security utility that shows you the methods that users have to gain access to files, registry keys, and services. The update adds support for processes, including display of their Windows Vista object and running integrity levels.
• PSExec v1.80, a lightweight Telnet replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems. This update enhances the -i option to allow process launch in a specific session; on Windows Vista, the -l switch runs a process with low integrity.

Apple TV is shipped

I am a happy man. Overnight, I got email from Apple that my Apple TV is on its way.

I ordered it during Steve Jobs’ latest show, back on January, 9.

Expect some review post on the blog.

Steve

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is out

The title says enough

More information on the dedidated Technet site.

Vista DreamScene Content Pack

If you have Windows Vista Ultimate edition and the preview version of DreamScene, then you can get the Windows DreamScene Content Pack.

The Content Pack contains four video backgrounds, which are now available on Windows Update.

The four videos are:

• A field of thistle, with a bee gathering pollen
• The rushing water of a forest stream
• A streetlamp reflected in a puddle, with softly falling rain
• Orange wisps flowing in a computer-generated scene

Time to hit the Check for Updates button.

Mac OS X 10.4.9 Update

The last Mac OS X build before Leopard is officially out! The build number is 10.4.9 and is available for both Intel-based Macs and PowerPC-based Macs.

The update is available through Software Update.

More information can be found on Apple’s website.

Microsoft TechDays 2007 in Paris

If you are interested, Microsoft France has just released about 600 webcasts from the sessions held during the TechDays in Paris (5, 6 and 6 February 2007).

The content is in French and can be accessed here:

www.microsoft.com/france/vision/mstechdays

Samsung Ships the World’s First Hybrid Hard Drive

Press release – March 7, 2007 

This could be interesting in conjunction with Vista’s features.

Steve

Samsung MH80 Series Hybrid Hard Drive Ships

Samsung Electronics Ltd., the worldwide digital consumer electronics and information technology leader, announces the shipment of its hybrid hard drive to the commercial marketplace. Samsung’s MH80 Series hybrid hard drive is offered in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities. Samsung is a leader in hybrid hard drive technology and is one of the first companies to offer a commercially available unit. The MH80 hybrid hard drive is currently shipping to select OEM customers and will soon be available in retail and commercial outlets.

Optimized to work in conjunction with Windows Vista capable notebook PCs, Samsung’s MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128 or 256 megabytes of flash memory. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft’s ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology.

“As a leader in both hard drive and flash memory technologies, Samsung brings to market a unique hybrid hard drive that is sure to revolutionize the notebook computing experience,” Albert Kim, national sales manager, Storage Systems for Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “The MH80 hybrid hard drive provides the ideal solution for two major issues that notebook PC users continually face: faster boot and resume performance and extended battery life.”

The MH80 hybrid hard drive preserves the high densities of magnetic storage technology, while the advanced NAND flash technology enhances the overall value with lowered power consumption, higher reliability and faster read/write access than traditional hard drives. The MH80 features Samsung’s ReadyBoot technology that offers up to a 50 percent reduction in boot and resume times from traditional magnetic media technology. In addition, the drive consumes 70-90 percent less power than a traditional hard drive, which extends the battery life by 30 minutes before a recharge is needed.

The MH80 also offers up to five times the reliability of traditional notebook PC hard drives. As the drive’s platters are idle 99 percent of the time, the MH80 eliminates the need for the hard disk to constantly spin whenever a computer is operating on battery power. As a result, the drive is much less susceptible to shock damage, resulting in less data loss and fewer needed repairs. Furthermore, the drive operates at a lower temperature than a regular hard drive, reducing the likelihood of damage and hard drive failure.

For more information about Samsung’s hard disk drive products, visit http://www.samsung.com.

About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2006 parent company sales of US$63.4 billion and net income of US$8.5 billion. Employing approximately 138,000 people in over 124 offices in 56 countries, the company consists of five main business units: Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business, Telecommunication Network Business, and Digital Appliance Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones, and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit http://www.samsung.com

TechNet Evening Session 20070307 – Windows Server Codename “Longhorn”

As posted earlier, yesterday 7 March 2007, Arlindo Alves, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist for BeLux, hosted a session on Longhorn.

I was in the room and thought it would be interesting to share with you the highlights of the session.

Though we were shown a lot of new features, we did not see all of them, due to the short length of the session (2 hours).

In summary, Longhorn will offer

• more control: through enhanced task automation (PowerShell) and role-based installation and management
• increased protection: with the help of OS hardening and policy-based management (NAP)
• greater flexibility: thanks to integrated server virtualization (Hypervisor), anywhere application access, extensible Web solutions or improved deployment

Let’s now go more in-depth for some new cool stuff.

Installation

The installed process has been greatly improved. In short, the installation of a Longhorn machine goes like this:

1. Insert the DVD and start the installation. Select the country and the language, enter the product key (can be done at a later stage), select the partition and boom…
2. After the reboot, the Initial Configuration Wizard shows up to help you set the admin password, the server name and domain, configure Windows Update etc…
3. Last, the Server Management console shows up to select additional server roles of features.

Server Management

The out-of-the-box experience (OOBE) is here maximized.

The server management console allows to add roles with their required dependencies. Also, when a new role is added, all the MMC snap-ins needed to manage the role are installed and accessible through the Server Management tool.

It also seems that the backup tools have been improved as well.

Windows PowerShell

Nothing really new in this area.

More on Powershell can be read on Microsoft Website.

It is worth mentionning that the Powershell ecosystem is growing with more and more partners, like Quest, PowerGadgets or PrimalScript.

IIS 7

Guess what… it is a full redesign with

• modular architecture (40 different modules, to date)
• comprehensive extensible APIs (public APIs)
• deeper integration with ASP.net
• unified configuration model, with XML config files
• administrative tool based on MMC 3.0
• powerful diagnostic capabilities
• delegated administration (granular level is possible)
• scripting language (appcmd)

A few extra words on the configuration. There is no metabase anymore!! IIS and ASP.net properties can be defined in the same file. XCOPY is then the key command when copying or replicating sites across prod, non prod, development environments.

The IIS configuration can also be stored centrally in the DFS-R or on the client cache side.

More info on IIS7 can be read here.

Server Hardening

Defense in Depth service model with layers.

The size of the layers are being reduced while the services are being segmented. For example, RPC does not need access to the registry, but requires access to the network 135.

Also, the number of layers is greater than before and the number of drivers in the kernel is reduced.

The integrity of the boot process is also verified. Validation occurs on HAL, boot files etc…

Furthermore, the integrity off all Windows binaries is being validated through hashing, to make sure that they have not been tampered with.

Still on the protection side, Longhorn offers the ability to block the installation of new devices. It is granular enough to allow exceptions, based on hardware ID. Enterprises can then let the users install USB sticks, on the condition that they are from a specif vendor or model. This can all be controlled at computer level with Group Policy Objects.

The intagrated firewall is also improved with inbound/outbound rules and domain isolation with IPsec.

More info on OS hardening can be read here.

Server Core

This is a minimal installation option for Longhorn with low footprint on the server.

The option will be available on Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions in both 32 or 64 bits versions.

It will let the server boot in a headless (no keyboard, no screen) scenario. 

The UI is rather simplistic, as you only have a command prompt available. The management can be done through local or remote commands, via remote MMC or RDP client.

In fact, no CLR .net components are included. Immediate drawback of this is the lack of Powershell. Microsoft does not intend to release Powershell on Windows Core before Longhorn R2, due to the complexity do dissociate the CLR components the right way. For the moment, it is a all or nothing scenario.

There is a major benefit in the parching area. Microsoft thinks that the number of patches to apply on Windiws Core should be reduced by 60%.

By RTM time, Windows Server Core should be able to run the following roles: DNS, DHCP, File, Print, AD, Virtualization (as parent partition), Media Server and more to come.

Important to note: there is no Server Core upgrade path. When you want to switch from 2003 to Server Core, from Longhorn “standard” to Server Core, from Server Core to “standard”, it will always mean a full re-installation of the server.

It is needless to say that good scripting knowledge will be required to operate Windows Server Core servers:

• to change admin password (net user)
• to activate the OS (slmgr.vbs)
• to configure static IP address (netsh)
• to join the domain (netdom)

During the demo, a “blank” Windows Server Core had a footprint of 178 MB in the memory with 27 processes, while a “standard” Longhorn was at 462 MB with 45 processes.

Network Access Protection (NAP)

The Windows client computer (Vista or XP) will have a certificate of health, which will be presented to the Network Policy Server. The latter will validate the health of the client.

If the health is OK, the client is granted access to the corporate network.

If not, the client will be connected to the remediation network, where SMS, WSUS or FTP servers will help the client to reach the required level of conformity.

Good to know, the NAP is not only active at boot time but also during the session.

Failover Clustering

New name: Windows Server Failover Clustering.

• complexity is reduced
• no need anymore for domain account; the service can run on each cluster member in the LocalSystem context
• stability: no quorum model, so no SPOF anymore
• cluster validation before the installation: network, server version and storage are checked before the installation
• enhanced management capabilities through MMC 3.0 support
• majority quorum model
• for geographically dispersed cluster, the witness can be put on a file share in a 3rd site for instance
• no more single-subnet limitation
• configureable heartbeat timeouts

Branch Offices Deployment

• read-only domain controller
  • unidirectional replication
  • no secrets caching (can be changed thourh GPO)
  • not member of Enterprise Domain Controllers or Domain Domain Controllers groups
  • the local admin of the server is not administrator of the domain
  • requirements
    • 2003 forest functional mode
    • PDC role must be on a Longhorn server (should no longer be the case with RTM)
    • having multiple Longhorn DCs per domain is recommended
• BitLocker for encryption: requires TPM 1.2 or UDB flash drive

Restartable Active Directory

Active Directory Directory Services can be stopped for maintenance purposes, without bringing the full server offline.

Very useful for restore the AD, defrag the DB etc… while keeping the other services available to the users.

This is to me, based on past experiences, a very cool feature.

Windows Server Virtualisation

Hypervisor is a layer between the operating system and the hardware. Note that the hardware must be based on Intel VT or AMDV.

The host must be running on 64 bits and allows parent partitions (VHD) running both 32 or 64 bits. 

Live migration of a running virtual machine to another physical system will be possible.

New Terminal Services capabilities

• single sign-on for managed clients
• TS gateway will allow remote access to internal server resources (RDP over RPC over HTTPS). SSL encryption end-to-end. Granular access control at the perimeter (who can connect to which computers)
• Remote Programs: seamless window integration (à la Citrix) based on MSI or RDP packages. It will also be possible to use Flip3D within an TS session (even though I don’t see the advantage of it, considering the impact on the bandwidth)

Miscellaneous

• Active Directory has been renamed to Active Directory Domain Services.
• There will be the command “oclist” to list, install and un-install roles and features on Longhorn servers.
• The final name is not yet known.
• Initial planning is: RTM should reach the market in H2 2007.
• A new feature should come in the area of load balancing.

Steve.