A blog covering Azure, Hyper-V, Windows Server, desktop, systems management, deployment, and so on …
Tim on the Minasi Forum sent me a link to a blog post by Scott Lowe. The creators, Sanbolic, of a cluster file system called Melia FS are claiming that their cluster file system is superior to Microsoft’s new cluster file system in Windows Server 2008 R2. A cluster file system is a requirement for Live Migration or VMotion. Anyone who is beta testing is being offered a free license for the Sanbolic software.
Credit: Tim Berk.
I just got an email from our TAM in Microsoft. It must be important because we don’t normally get mails like this from MS. They’re warning us that a worm called Conficker is rampant at the moment. You are vulnerable if you have not deployed the security update MS08-067. If you do get infected by Conficker or Banload then there is a fix.
That security patch was released in October 2008. See how important it is to perform your updates? Don’t blame MS if you get hit by this one. And yes, Linux and Mac have security updates too!
You’ve probably read this already elsewhere (it was hard to miss!) but here you go anyway:
The next generation of Windows for desktops and servers have been released as public betas. Windows 7 is the successor to Windows Vista. You can download it from here. Windows Vista may not have had the features to make you want to upgrade from XP but Windows 7 might just have them. The really cools ones are when Windows 7 is teamed with Windows Server 2008 R2. These include BranchCache and and DirectAccess. By the way, contrary to rumours spread by the uninformed, Windows 7 is not a new version of Windows XP. It is an evolution of Windows Vista. If your software and devices work on Vista they should work on Windows 7.
Windows Server 2008 R2 brings some new stuff and can be viewed as Windows Server 2008 V1.1. Mark Russinovich talked about the new features of power savings and virtualisation at TechEd EMEA. There are evolutionary improvements all around including web services, virtualisation (Hyper-V will have live migration AKA VMotion thanks to a new cluster file system), power savings and new remote access and branch office/remote computing access. You can download the beta now.
By the way, these betas are very popular right now so the links are being hammered. Downloads might be slow for a few days.
There’s a great deal of IT pro community activity taking place in the next few months in Ireland (thanks to the hard work being done by Enda Flynn).
In February there will be 1 or 2 full day events on Microsoft virtualisation technologies. It looks like that one will be run in Belfast and the other somewhere in the southwest.
In March there will be an event that’s currently being called TechDays. It’s going to be a full day of multiple tracks, e.g. server, desktop, virtualisation, management, etc. It will feature the best material from the recent TechEd as well as material that’s gone public since then, presented by Ireland’s best IT Pro’s.
I’ll definitely be mentioning the events on here once I have firm details. The Windows User Group will also get notified. In the meantime you can keep an eye on the (free) TechNet Ireland newsletter and Enda will give more details to subscribers when he has them.
I normally use Windows Vista but I have an XP VM for doing lots of admin work – this allows me to VPN into the data centre on the VM while I VPN into the office network from the host laptop (or surf the net safely). The idea is to separate my working environment from my surfing/email environment.
I just set up a CentOS VM on Hyper-V. Hey, can you believe I actually know how to install *NIX! I can’t do much more with them but I can get them running 🙂 Anyway, there’s no integration components for CentOS so I couldn’t use a console window via RDP to the host to get the final setup of the VM done, e.g. allow remote telnet/SSH admin (which I’ll have to google). I need mouse access and that requires IC’s using the console via RDP.
The solution? I’m hoping that’ll be get onto the VM console via the web or self-service portal. But there are a few pre-requisites:
I just read an article that says there will be a change in MS’s Product Usage Rights (PUR) document. Right now, if you are using internal licensing (and subject to CAL’s) then you’ve got some complications. The January 2009 defines a scenario where if you have …
… then you must have Windows 2008 CAL’s! The author states that MS are changing the PUR and hope to get something out by the end of January 2009. Hopefully they will because this licensing requirements is just plain silly and wipes out the cost benefits of Hyper-V over any other virtualisation product.
Credit: Data Center Strategies.
Microsoft has released some documentation on two of the killer features in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7:
Tim Sneath has posted a long list of shortcuts to getting things done in Windows 7. I know it’s early days but we’re unfortunately already seeing some of the disconnect from the market. When Vista was in beta we heard lots about "pretty" and "burning photos to DVD". Balmer seemed to focus on the home user market in a recent keynote. Most everything I’m reading about Windows 7 is the same claptrap that businesses don’t care about. Where’s the information and presentations about BranchCache and RemoteAccess? These are the real killer features?
There’s three things in this post that I found interesting:
Oh yeah, WIN+E no longer opens Windows Explorer. Yes, let’s get rid of something that all power users use for absolutely no other reason than to direct you to the latest fan-dabby-doozee piece of multimedia crap that power users have no use for.
Come on MS! Don’t get into the "we are not considered that for this release" mind set that stopped me from actually contributing feedback in previous betas.
Credit: Tim Sneath.
I’m not going to get political (well not too much so) here. If you believe in global warming you’ll stop reading this post and turn off your browser. You are killing the planet 😉
According to some scientists, "20 milligrams of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere for every second that an average web site is viewed". Don’t let your local green (I’m now thinking green means taxation and not environmentalism) party know about this or they’ll introduce web site taxes.
If you are concerned about carbon emissions or saving budget on power then there’s a few ways to reduce the impact:
Whether you believe in global warming or not, there’s no doubting your belief in the bottom line, especially these days. Reducing your power bill by reducing your physical server numbers and using shared services will do that for you.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I don’t really believe surfing the net is killing the planet but I’m pretty sure the taxation party will look on it as an opportunity. Heck, they can’t make up their minds if we have too much water or not enough!
I just read on Ben Armstrong’s blog that both the beta releases of Windows 7 and Windows 7 2008 R2 come with the Hyper-V integration components built in. That means they’ll run as fast as possible (considering they’re betas with un-tuned code and debugging code still in place) on Hyper-V. He also says this is true of Hyper-V on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2.
Sweet! I downloaded them last night so I’ll hopefully get to do some work on them in our virtual lab environment. I’ll happily accept sponsorship if someone can give me hardware to run a Windows 2008 R2 cluster lab 🙂