Microsoft Windows Vista evaluation VHD

For the people wanting to evaluate Windows Vista, Microsoft has released a VHD containing Windows Vista.

In order to use this evaluation package you will need to have either Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 installed on a physical machine.

You will also find a readme document as a part of the download.  Please refer to this for additional details on how to extract and use the VHD as a part of the download.

Here is the link.

Steve

Bye “Longhorn” … Welcome Windows Server 2008!

What a surprise .

The final name for Windows Server codename “Longhorn” is Windows Server 2008.

This was announced by Bill Gates during the WinHEC 2007 keynote in Los Angeles.

But, in fine, What’s in a name?

Microsoft Website for Windows Server 2008.

Steve

Windows Server Virtualization planning and feature update

Mike Neil, Microsoft GM for Virtualization strategy, has a post on the planning for Viridian (aka Windows Server Virtualization) and gives an update on the features of the product.

In short,

• a beta version of WSV will be available with the RTM of Windows Server “Longhorn” in H2

• some features are postponed to a future release of the product:

  • no Live migration

  • no hot-add resources (storage, networking, memory, processor)

  • support limit of 16 cores/logical processors (e.g., 2 processor, quad-core systems is 8 cores; or 4 processor, quad-core system is 16 cores)

But, as they say, shipping is a feature, too.

Steve

Windows Server Codename “Longhorn” – Restartable AD DS in action

Another cool feature in “Longhorn” is the ability to restart Active Directory Domain Services, like any other Windows services. This alleviates the need to reboot the server in “Directory Services Restore Mode”, like we used to do in Windows 2000 or 2003 when we would want to perform online defragmentation or restore operations.

The immediate and huge benefit is that other services that are running on the server and that do not depend on AD DS to function, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), remain available to satisfy client requests while AD DS is stopped.

In the rest of this post, I will perform an offline defragmentation of my Active Directory, without bringing the whole server down. Pretty cool, no?

Let’s say that my domain controller SRO-LH-01 is running fine but we have received some notification that the AD database requires some offline defragmentation.

At the Command Prompt, we type the usual ntdsutil commands. As expected, no chance, as Active Directory is online (don’t mind the activate instance NTDS command for now – I’ll come back on this later on):

 

As explained, AD has now its own Windows service:

I clicked on Stop. There are some other services depending on AD DS, which must also be stopped:

 

AD DS is now stopped, as shown in the Services snap-in:

Also, in the Active Directory event log, we find confirmation:

So, back to work and let us do the actual offline defragmentation operation:

We finish by copying the new (compacted) NTDS.DIT to its final place and by deleting the log files pertaining to the old (uncompacted) Active Directory database:

I start again the AD DS service:

and…

Some checks show nothing wrong with AD. Note that the services depending on Active Directory (that we stopped earlier) have been restarted. 

Wow, I like that!!!

So, if I had to do this in Windows 2000/2003, I would need to:

1. reboot the server in Directory Services Restore Mode (F8)
2. log on with DSRM account and password
3. do the offline defragmentation / put new DIT file in place
4. reboot in normal mode
5. log on with administrative privileges
6. check

==> huge impact on the users connected to the server (downtime, …).

Now, with “Longhorn”, the sequence is:

1. log on with administrative privileges
2. stop AD DS service
3. do the offline defragmentation / put new DIT file in place
4. start AD DS service
5. check

==> minimum impact on the users

Steve

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Beta 2 on VHD

As posted earlier, SCVMM beta 2 is out.

Now, Microsoft goes one step beyond and provides a free evauation version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM) pre-installed and pre-configured in a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD).

This VHD contains:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 SP1 Trial Software (30-day version)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP1
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0
• Windows Remote Management (WinRM)
• Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0
• Windows Server Internet Information Services (IIS)
• Windows PowerShell 1.0
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Server Beta2
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Administrator Console Beta2
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Self Service Portal Beta2

Steve