Month: January 2007

I saw something on MR&D earlier today and Bink has just confirmed it: ISA 2007 has been release to selected testers for a private beta.  Some new features allegedly include:

• Full NAT support
• Redundant ISP connections
• IPv6 support (the Chinese deployment is really forcing this)
• SSL VPN connectivity (an intersting solution from the Whale Communications acquisition)
• Support for 64 bit computing (this will be required for SBS "Longhorn").

The beta for WSUS 3.0 is coming to an end.  The first release candidate will be available sometime this quarter.

Office 2007 will be added as a category in time for it’s first expected update.  This is expected either in February or March.

You’ll often find people on support forums looking to know if their disk subsystem has been adequately configured for tehir Exchange server.  Sure, we’d all love to have a disk susbsystem with arrays for OS< paging file, database log, database, database log n, database n, etc but few have the budget.  But the question always remains, will my server handle the load?

Microsoft have given us a tool that will let us know if the subsystem is capable or not.  You run the tool and specify a number of users to simulate.  You then use your performance monitoring tools to monitor the server and the disks.  Microsoft does mention that this should not be done during production operation. 

There’s a 32bit and a 64bit version and it’s supported on newer version of ESE.DLL on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.  They also list newer WIndows OS platforms… I guess this means "Longhorn".

Back in October I posted some information about the then forthcoming Desktop Opimisation Pack (Optimization for anyone with a USA spell checker!).  I just noticed on Bink today that the pack is now available to download on the MSVL site. 

This pack will be of great use to anyone who is considering deploying Windows Vista in the near future.  I won’t rehash everything I wrote before … you can read that in my original post.  But this pack will aid systems administrators in the deployment and management of their desktop network:

• Application deployment will become a breeze where you will no longer have to worry about applications working on Vista or with each other.
• Group Policy management can become more structured and controlled.
• Detailed information (even more than SMS can do!) about the deployed applications can be gathered.
• Helpdesk will be armed with desktop diagnostics and repair tools.

Each of this suites is a result of Microsoft acquisitions of best of breed, innovative solutions in the last year: Softricity, Winternals, AssetMetrix and DesktopStandard.

Here’s the bad news.  This pack is only available to software assurance customers.  Considering how PO’d many people are with SA after the XP "experience" I don’t think many will re-up this time around, despite the promise of a new release of Windows Vista "R2" in two years time.  This will also alienate customers who cannot afford or justify SA, probably leaving them on XP or W2K for many more years.  And as far as I know (I could be wrong here), the Desktop Optimisation Pack still will cost around $10/seat for SA customers.

We’ve seen Microsoft change some licensing terms for the benefit of customers in recent years, e.g. Virtual Server and Virtual PC so I really hope they change their minds about restricting this pack to SA customers only.

ENN is reporting that the Irish public sector is to spend big money this year on IT.  We all know about the PPARS types scandals.  This years spend is going to be focused on consolidation.  The growing opinion in the Irish market is that the past spend on "iron" has often been unwarranted.  Last year saw increased interest and marketing in virtualistion technologies for server consolidation.  I also think that the irish market is starting to understand that Microsoft solutions are scalable and don’t require the distributed "computer room in every office" approach of the past.  In my only brief encounter with public sector (a very progressive department) last year it was clear that there was keen interest in virtualisation.

I just saw on Bink that Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate is available for download on Connect.  Some new features have been added to VPC 2007:

• Support for Intel and AMD hardware assisted virtualisation.  You will need a hotfix that is on the beta site if running AMD hardware assistance and a 64 bit host OS.
• PXE support is added for network installs, e.g. SMS OS deployment pack, CM 2007, RIS or WDS.
• Support for Vista as (1) a host and (2) a guest operating system.
• Support for 64 bit host operating systems. 
• There is allegedly a 64 bit and a 32bit version.  That was the claim on the site with the last beta release but when I installed it on Vista x64 it installed as a 32 bit version and support claimed there only was a 32 bit version of VPC.

It’s disappointing not to see 64 bit support for guests.  VMware keeps its advantage here.