Month: January 2008

I’m often asked "why should I consider Windows Server 2008".  The first thing I mention is the new TCP stack.  The next thing I consider is IIS7.  But there’s just SO much it’s hard to stop there.  Terminal Services, OS installation, Server Manager, NAP, simplified clustering, Hyper-V, Active Directory (of course!) and branch offfice infrastructure in general.

Microsoft has posted a summary of the improvements in Windows Server 2008.  It’s a big release and it’s going to offer real soluitons to business problems unlike never before.  It’s well worth getting involved with now.

I was asked to sit down for a quick video interview at Microsoft Ireland late last year to talk about my early impressions of Windows Server 2008.  The video has just been posted.

EDIT: The video is also posted onTechNet Edge.

Note that you will need Microsoft Silverlight to view the video.  Don’t worry; it’s kind of like Flash.

The Windows Server 2008 User Group for Ireland (WS-UGI) has been launched and yours truly is the leader of the group!

This user group will be a cooperative community where members will help each other develop skills and share experiences of the Windows Server 2008 product and related solutions.  We’ll accomplish this via an online presence and by hosting seminars across Ireland on a regular basis.

Although it is sponsored by Microsoft, it is my intention that this group will have an independent voice.  This is pretty important because I don’t want people to see the group as a marketing machine. It certainly isn’t going to be that.  We will be creating an atmosphere where contributions and questions are welcome from all members.

I’ve launched a blog for communications.  On there you will see that we have announced our first of what will be many seminars.  These will be free.  The first seminar is scheduled to be in Dublin on March 12th at 19:30, the day after the Irish launch of Windows Server 2008.  This will give people an opportunity to attend the Microsoft event and then bring questions to our event.  We are hoping to have a very special guest who will be in a superb position to answer those questions.  Attendance will, of course, be free. More details on location (central) and seminar contents will be announced as soon as possible.

We’ll continue to have seminars on a regular basis.  We’ll have access to speakers from within Microsoft but I really would like to get members to contribute as much as possible.  The venue will give members the opportunity to market themselves either as representatives of their organisation or personally for career advancement.  And contact me if you do have a blog or online content related to Windows Server 2008.  We’ll link to you and your content and hopefully give you a few more hits. Maybe you even have a success story that you’d like to share?  If so, jot it down and we’ll be happy to let the world know.

Check out the blog.  We’ll be updating it as often as possible.  Send us an email to ws-ugi<at>live.com if you on that address if you’re interested in doing a little more.

I’ve just posted the first of my whitepapers on Windows Server 2008 on Server Manager:

Windows Server 2008 brings about many changes for administrators to get used to. One of these is Server Manager. Server Manager is exactly what it says on the tin: it allows administrators to configure, monitor and manage their server. We’re going to look at two aspects of Server Manger. The most important aspect is that of Roles and Features. This allows us to add or remove functionality on our Windows 2008 servers. I’ll describe how we can manage Roles and Feature using the MMC console and by using the command line utility SERVERMANAGERCMD.EXE. We’ll then wrap up the document by briefly looking at the tools that are integrated into Server Manger.

One of the first things you notice when you first install Windows Server 2008 is that it is locked down. In fact, it doesn’t do very much because it has almost no functionality. You configure your password, login and if you’re like me you’ve skipped past all those annoying windows that automatically open to get in under the covers to see how this thing ticks. I wanted to add those components that I’m used to playing with in work and in labs. That’s when I originally noticed that things were different … very different. Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Once you start trying things out you soon understand what is going on and why Microsoft has designed it the way they have.

A brief recap on what Microsoft has been doing in previous versions of Windows Server will give us a clue of what is happening. Firstly, Microsoft has been trying to develop a single tool approach to managing our servers. They’ve tried to get us to see servers as having specific functions that would be installed in a modular manner. We were given tools to do this but other than knowing about them for MCP exams we had little use for them. It was just quicker for us to get into Control Panel and install what we wanted plus we had 100% control over the process. The other thing that Microsoft has recently being aiming towards was the locked down initial installation that we had to add functionality to as and when we required it. Windows Server 2003 edged slowly towards this. Windows Server 2008 has firmly achieved this.

The document continues …

I get messages from folks via the MS Live Spaces site every now and then looking to ask me a question or make a request.  I’ve no problem with that, in fact, I welcome it.  However, if you are going to do this then please check your MS Passport/Live settings.

In the last week, 3 people have contacted me and I cannot directly respond to them.  I get the following message when I attempt to do so using Live: "You can’t send or reply to this person because of their communication preference settings".  There’s never any email address included so I have no other way to contact these people.

So, please either correct that in your profile or alternatively, email me on website <at> highwaycsl <dot> com.

By the way, thanks to those folks who’ve sent "thank you" or complimentary messages in the past.  It means a lot that my efforts were useful to someone.

– Aidan.

Windows Server 2008 is nearly here.  I’d already heard RTM would be early February and general availability would be early March.  MSDN, TechNet and Volume License subscribers would all have download access within a couple of weeks of RTM.  Bink has confirmed that W2008’s source code will be frozen in preparation for RTM on January 16th.  You can expect launch parties to be held by Microsoft in your local area in the coming 2 months.

I’ve been asked by a contact in Microsoft to start blogging a bit about Windows Server 2008.  I’m going to try talk about what to look for.  Unlike some of my previous efforts with SCOM 2007, WSUS 3.0 and FCS, I’m not going to be able to spend loads of time getting into deep detail for another couple of months.  I’ve got another project on going that will eat up that time.  But I will talk about what you should be looking forward to and researching, in other words, how to answer that age old question "why should I upgrade?".  There’s plenty of good reasons.  I do have some content already written that appears to be unwanted at the moment.  I’ll see if I can convert that and post it in the next few days.

Also, next week will see me kicking off the work to get the Windows Server 2008 User Group (Ireland) off the ground.  I’ll be meeting our sponsor to get things moving.  Anyone who is interested in attending or contributing should contact me on website <at> highwaycsl <dot> com.