Windows Server Division WebLog

Hello everyone, Justin Graham here again! We’ve been hard at work here in Redmond on Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. I'm happy to share today the Release Candidate (RC) of SP2 is available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers via the TechNet and MSDN websites! Next week, the RC of SP2 will be made available to the general public via the same web properties next week. I encourage you to download and install the RC build and give us feedback. We want to make sure Windows Server 2008 continues to be the best server operating system for your needs!

The next question is usually "what's in it for me?" We've made some great improvements in SP2, a few are:

· Easier Virtualization: Hyper-V RTM is in the Service Pack. That’s right, you no longer have to download and install it separately

· More Green: increased power efficiency through improved processor power management

· Unified: We will be delivering one package for 32-bit and one package for 64-bit that cover both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Less packages, less testing, easier deployment for IT Administrators

If you want the full list of improvements, please download and read the Notable Changes document

Happy downloading and testing everyone! As you know, changes to our product are based on feedback, so please share your thoughts with us.

Thanks,

Justin Graham

Windows Server Team

You may have heard that earlier today Steve Ballmer referenced we are working on an addition to the Windows server Family named Foundation Server.

While we don’t have any details to share now, we are very excited about the opportunity this entry-level server will bring to our customers and partners. 

Look for more information coming in the next few months!   

Cross your fingers.  Rub your lucky rabbit’s foot.  Pray to the server gods.  It won’t happen to you, right? 

But what if it does happen?  And the servers are down... 

Maybe you can help save your company from some of the heartache and costs of downtime.

Failover Clustering has been around a long time now (since Wolfpack, for those who remember), and, well... maybe it had a reputation for being a bit arcane to set up and configure.  But that’s really ancient history at this point.  With Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (or R2) and a couple of servers you're just seven clicks away from a cluster. 

Don’t worry – you will still have the control of your cluster you expect and require.  We’ve just simplified and automated setup and management – improving the interfaces you can focus on managing your applications, not your cluster.

Certification and support of your cluster are simpler now, too.  Do the hardware components of the cluster have the Certified for Windows Server logo?  (Most server hardware does.)  If so, just run the included validate tool – if it passes, you’re supported.  Or use its extensive reporting to help identify and correct potential problems.

Want to know before you buy that you’ll end up with a supported cluster that works?  You can easily identify pre-tested and certified server configurations on vendor websites through the Failover Clustering Configuration Program. 

Clustering isn’t just for large corporations, high-end servers, or specialists – not any more.  IT professionals in organizations of all sizes who want to avoid the pain of a service disruption can potentially benefit from failover clustering. 

So while you might try the other techniques in this article's title, I'd suggest exploring Windows Server Failover Clustering.

-Dan Reger

Sr. Product Manager

P.S.  Failover clustering is available in the Enterprise, Datacenter, and for Itanium-Based Systems editions of Windows Server 2008 (and, of course, in the R2 beta available now).  To learn more click here.  Looking for introductory technical information?  Try here.  For the cluster team’s blog and more details on clustering features in Windows Server 2008 R2 click here .

You read that right. All MIX09 attendees will receive a fully functional copy (the real deal) of Windows Web Server 2008 at no cost. That’s nearly a $500 value!

Windows Web Server 2008 is a robust and reliable foundation on which to develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications. Designed to be used as an Internet-facing Web server, Windows Web Server 2008 is a great choice for hosting the Microsoft Web Platform and you can be up and running in no time with the latest version of the Web Platform Installer.

Featuring Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0, Windows Web Server 2008 delivers a modular and extensible Web server for developers and designers of innovative Web sites. IIS Extensions bring additional functionality to Windows Web Server 2008 and the Microsoft Web Platform by offering new and more powerful ways to develop, deploy, and manage your Web applications, including ASP.NET and PHP.

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

The old IIS Extensions train keeps on rollin’. Last month we hit RTW with the Web Platform Installer V1.0 (Why do we call it V1.0? Just wait until you see V2.0) and as you know, Web PI is the one-stop shop for discovering, downloading and installing the various components of the Microsoft Web Platform, be they application server modules, drivers, tools or IIS extensions. And while you’re over checking that out, take a look at the new version of Microsoft.com/Web, which provides a lot more detail on why the Microsoft Web Platform is the software of choice for building Web applications and solutions. It also has a pretty flower, which we thought was kinda apt for Valentine’s Day.

And so to today’s news, where two more IIS extension release updates join the fold, to help manage distributed Web server farms and to better protect those servers against unauthorized access or malicious requests: Application Request Router and IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions.

ARR, now reaching it’s RTW milestone, enables Web server administrators and hosting providers to increase Web application scalability and reliability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. With ARR, administrators can optimize resource utilization for application servers, and so reduce management costs for Web server farms and shared hosting environments. Show me the money! The RTW version of ARR is fully supported and production ready, and adds new functionality since the Release Candidate, including:

• An improved way to allocate and identify servers for host name affinity by including 2 providers: one based on round robin and the other based on memory consumption, to more evenly distribute the “load” across shared servers
• Greater integration with IIS Manager, including the ability to manually override health statuses and configure HTTP and HTTPS ports for the application servers
• Performance improvements in least response time load balancing algorithm

The other release we have today is a newcomer to the extensions stable – the beta of IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions. This extension provides IT Professionals and hosting providers with a configurable module that can help mitigate or block Denial of Service attacks or the cracking of passwords through brute-force methods. It does this by temporarily blocking IP addresses of HTTP clients who follow a pattern that could be indicative of such an attack. This module can be configured at the Web Server or the Web Site level for analyzing and blocking potentially malicious requests.

IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions integrates into IIS Manager and extends the existing IP Restrictions functionality, maintaining support for the functionality already provided by IPv4 Address and Domain Restrictions and also adding new support for IPv6 addresses. As a result, IT Administrators can build and use a static list of IP addresses and domain names that are denied or granted access, while still restricting suspicious IP addresses dynamically based on behavior. Learn more about how to use this new extension, try it out, and of course, let us know how you get on.

David Lowe.

Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) is a server management tool included with Windows Server® 2008 R2. BPA can help administrators reduce best practice violations by scanning one or more roles that are installed on Windows Server 2008 R2, and reporting best practice violations to the administrator.  Roles that support BPA scans in Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta include the following:

• Active Directory Certificate Services
• Active Directory Domain Services
• DNS Server
• Web Server (IIS)
• Remote Desktop Services

When scans find aspects of a role that are not compliant with best practices, you can open the noncompliant scan results, read more about what’s not compliant, and click links to open step-by-step guidance on the Web that helps you bring your role into compliance.

The step-by-step guidance for resolving all available BPA rules is now available on the Windows Server 2008 R2 TechCenter. Take a look at some of the best practices for which BPA can scan your roles, or install Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta, scan BPA-supported roles, and access the online resolution content for over 80 best practice violations from within scan results.

Like any topic available on the TechCenter, you can provide feedback and ratings on BPA resolution topics, at the top right side of every topic, on the Library tab. Detailed feedback about what you like and don’t like about the topics helps Microsoft to improve them. You can also discuss your experiences with BPA and the best practice resolution content in the Windows Server Management forum.

Have you already downloaded and started kicking the tires on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta? What, you’re waiting for an engraved invitation?

Here’s your chance to read prerelease documentation about how to configure and use technologies available with Windows Server 2008 R2. Some highlights:

• Get more details about what’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2.
• Run Best Practices Analyzer scans on supported roles, and read about how to resolve scan results.
• Migrate supported server roles, data, shares, and operating system settings to Windows Server 2008 R2 with new prescriptive migration step-by-step guides.
• Find out how to configure and manage your favorite Windows Server technologies.

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta is now available on the Microsoft Download Center.  Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 enables IT pros to manage roles and features that are installed on remote computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (and, for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003) from a remote computer that is running Windows 7. It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system.

This is the next generation of the Admin Pack, aka Windows Server 2003 Administrative Tools Pack and Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Don’t forget, you’ll have to take all the old Admin Tools packs off your computer before you unleash Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 on it. And please, don’t try to run multiple copies of Remote Server Administration Tools on your computer, even if the copies are in different languages.

What’s included in this release? Read on, gentle user…

Server Administration Tools:

• Server Manager (thaaaat’s right! You can use Server Manager to manage Windows Server 2008 R2 computers from a computer that’s running Windows 7. You’re welcome.)

Role Administration Tools:

• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
• DHCP Server Tools
• DNS Server Tools
• File Services Tools
• Hyper-V Tools
• Remote Desktop Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:

• BitLocker AD Password Recovery Viewer
• Failover Clustering Tools
• Group Policy Management Tools
• Network Load Balancing Tools
• SMTP Server Tools
• Storage Explorer Tools
• Storage Manager for SANs Tools
• Windows System Resource Manager Tools

Do you remember the tale of the Windows Server 2008 “Lone Server”? Maybe it was read to you as a bedtime story as a change from “Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?” There he was, this poor Windows Server 2003 server, all alone in a server farm of Windows Server 2008 machines. Out-of-date. Out-of-style. Out-of-touch with the needs of modern Web server administrators.

Well let’s hope the Windows Server 2008 computers didn’t laugh too heartily at his fate, because they’re about to suffer the same. Recently, in a typically convoluted Web 2.0 fashion, I Twittered an Ars Technica article describing how Netcraft noticed that many requests to www.microsoft.com were being handled by a server reporting as “Microsoft-IIS/7.5”. IIS 7.5 is the Web server in Windows Server 2008 R2, now available in Beta, that builds on all the good stuff in IIS 7.0 (that’s right: more reliable, more control, more secure, more choice), and integrates IIS Extensions such as FTP, WebDAV and the IIS Administration Pack. And of course, Windows Server 2008 R2 also provides full ASP.NET support on Server Core installations, and includes a new Web Administration module and IIS cmdlets for Windows PowerShell 2.0.

So what are the details of the Microsoft.com implementation? Well, although many requests are being served by IIS 7.5, we have not updated the entire server farm.  For example, in one cluster of servers we have left a single “Lone Server” running Windows Server 2008 to act as a control and provide side-by-side comparisons (and at weekends to go prop up a bar with Windows Server 2003 where they drown their sorrows together). There are still also full clusters running on Windows Server 2008 so that we can do a cluster-to-cluster comparisons and provide a greater degree of failover, although it is our plan to have Microsoft.com completely migrated to Windows Server 2008 R2 well before RTM.

From a hardware perspective, many of the HP servers on which Microsoft.com is hosted require no updates or reconfiguration, and we expect that customers with supported Windows Server 2008 hardware should find the same. However, we do have some older servers that we are replacing as part of a normal refresh cycle, so we are also looking to move more of the site to newer SAN-attached servers in the coming months.

Beta releases are usually about making sure features are functional, and with Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta, we are feature-complete. This means that our push to RC and RTM is about ensuring quality and improving performance. With that said, we are already seeing some positive indications regarding performance on the new servers thanks to some tweaks we’ve made in request processing and CPU utilization, but it’s too early to share any further details on that just yet. We are already running a sizeable chunk of Microsoft.com on the newer version of Hyper-V that ships in Windows Server 2008 R2, and we even have some of our Web servers running on Server Core installations, but again, we’ll need further analysis and testing before we can get more specific on the reliability and performance improvements you should expect to see from those enhancements.

Are you evaluating IIS 7.5 or thinking of migrating some or part of an existing site to it? Let us know!

David Lowe.

Looks like many of you are saving big money with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. And today we announced that, on average, it's $470,000 per customer per year. Not bad at all and very gratifying to see. Here's just one example provided today:

Saxo Bank had an average physical server utilization of just 20 percent and was deploying nearly 200 new servers per year before using server virtualization. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V allowed the bank to reduce the number of servers needed by 36 percent and realize savings equivalent to $1 million (U.S.), because of lower server hardware costs and associated reductions in space, power and cooling costs

Besides the words and all, another interesting part were the videos seen at the site. You can see/hear from Saxo Bank, Banverket, Rand Morimoto (who wrote a book on Hyper-V), and a video featuring Santa Barbara Web Hosting and Microsoft's Bob Muglia.

Colleagues over at Windows Virtualization team blog have blogged that Microsoft's virt/management stack is about 1/3 the cost of VMware's comparable stack. And who can forget how they let the chips fall in Vegas.

I can't wait to hear more from customers running Windows Server 2008 r2 Hyper-V, and from those using live migration with a free product like the standalone Hyper-V Server 2008 r2.

Here's a video on customers who are saving with virtualization:

Patrick O'Rourke

Supporting Microsoft’s commitment to delivering world-class enterprise capabilities and to help customers take advantage of the latest innovations through Microsoft and SAP development, today Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are certified to fully support SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and the newly released SAP Business Suite 7.

We see immense benefits for our customers to move to our platform with products like virtualization through Hyper-V, and data and backup compression in SQL Server 2008. This level of innovation, combined with the attractive price point, provides great value to our enterprise customers.

A few of our customers, such as Kimball International Inc and SABMiller RUS, are already experiencing the benefits of migrating to Microsoft platforms with SAP. Kimball International recognized up to 50 percent more processing power in using Windows Server and SQL Server over an Oracle/Unix-based environment, seeing a savings of $450K in just one year.  Also, SABMiller RUS found that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V helped to reduce infrastructure costs by almost 50 percent and expects 234 percent ROI.  Two great examples of how Microsoft’s products can help our enterprise customers save money.

Tina Couch

Windows Server Marketing

After months of hard work, the IIS development team has put together a brand new technical reference on IIS 7.0 configuration.

This vast library comprehensively details all IIS 7.0 configuration settings in Windows Server 2008, including configuration collections, elements, and attributes. You can sort the configuration settings alphabetically to easily find what you are looking for or by browsing the schema structure. Each configuration topic provides sections such as an overview, examples of how to configure the configuration, setup instructions, configuration details, and code and script samples – including AppCmd.exe, C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, JavaScript, and VBScript.

This is the only online reference you’ll need for IIS configuration, so  check out the comprehensive documentation at http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference today!

Eric Rezabek
Senior Product Manager
IIS/Web

Hi, I'm Jerry Melnick, chief technology officer at Marathon Technologies. Today we announced an expanded development and marketing agreement with Microsoft that underscores industry recognition of the growing need to eliminate downtime for your most important applications.  Working together, Marathon and Microsoft will bring sophisticated fault tolerant availability technology to Windows Server and Hyper-V.  In a nutshell, this collaboration is all about making it a lot easier for a lot more companies to get cost-effective, easy-to-deploy fault tolerance for their critical Windows applications. I wanted to use this blog post to answer two questions: why this announcement matters and how could it impact your role managing your Windows infrastructure.

There are two key factors that are driving the increased need for Windows-based fault tolerant computing.  First, more customers are relying on Windows Server to run their mission critical applications, and the number of these applications is increasing.  Second, with the growing popularity of server virtualization (where applications are being consolidated onto fewer servers) the impact of downtime is often magnified. Fault tolerant computing is becoming more relevant than ever.

In what ways could this partnership impact you?  Three ways. First, it will give you the ability to extend the HA features of Windows Server 2003 and 2008 to fault tolerant protection in minutes. With automated setup and configuration, you will have the simplicity that are hallmarks of our currently shipping products. And with automated fault and policy management it will literally run by itself. You can use our everRun software that supports Windows Server 2003 today and will support Windows Server 2008 in April-June timeframe.

Second, it will give you the flexibility to select the level of availability, from Microsoft’s failover clustering all the way up to system fault tolerance, for each application. You will be able to add or adjust availability levels dynamically to meet fluctuating demands. And you will be able to optimize application availability for your budget and your system resources.

Third, if you are using or plan to use Hyper-V, this agreement will allow you deploy a future version of Hyper-V with Marathon everRun as the common fault-tolerant virtual infrastructure for both Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. In mixed hypervisor environments you can have one software tool to create and manage a fault tolerant infrastructure.

Please feel free to leave comments with any questions that you have. And check out our Resource Center for webinar recordings, white papers and more.

Jerry Melnick

For homo sapiens, getting older is painful. Take me for example. Nine hours on a plane never bothered me when I was in my 20s with a rubber backbone. But a couple of weeks out from birthday # 43 and one cross-country airplane ride translates into a sudden spinal meltdown that has me lying in bed, rigid as a vampire, popping painkillers like Christmas chocolates.

Fortunately, it's not the same thing for software. In the life of Windows Server, today marks general availability of public beta for the new Windows Server 2008 R2-and, for me personally, I've never had my geeky mitts on a better version. The new release incorporates a host of new features and capabilities that I hope you'll check out; the code is as stable a beta as I've ever seen and combined with the beta of Windows 7 you'll be able to evaluate not just a bevy of new server-side capabilities, but a new level of synergy between server and client operating systems, too.

A quick recap of my favorite highlights:

• While the Windows 7 client is available in both x86 and x64 versions, Windows Server 2008 R2 is Microsoft's first 64-bit only OS. It also supports up to 256 logical processors, which opens up a whole new world of enterprise-class back-end processing power.
• Your existing servers will run faster, too, because Windows Server 2008 R2 takes advantage of the latest CPU architecture enhancements. You'll also get significant power management improvements via features like Core Parking.
• Hyper-V in R2 now has Live Migration, allowing IT admins to move VMs across physical hosts with no interruption of service or network connectivity and significant network performance improvements. VMs in Hyper-V for R2 also get greater access to physical resources, namely support for 32 logical processors. It all adds up to the most flexible virtual data center in Microsoft's history.
• Check out PowerShell 2.0. Next to Live Migration, "more PowerShell" is the most consistent customer request we've had from Windows Server 2008. So, you'll find over 240 new cmdlets out of the box along with new dev tools for building your own cmdlets that are not only more robust, but easier, too. The new PowerShell is so powerful, we're starting to build GUI-based management consoles that are based entirely on PowerShell in the background-check out the new Active Directory Administrative Center for starters.
• RDS is another big-time update. What used to be called Terminal Services has now evolved into Remote Desktop Services with the R2 release. Key in RDS is the new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which allows you to centralize Windows desktops in the data center as virtual machines in addition to the traditional session-based remote desktop model we all know and love from Terminal Services. But VDI is only one new feature in RDS. Others include better end-user fidelity with features like true multiple monitor support and high-end audio and video so you've got more breadth in the kinds of applications you can centralize. And the new RemoteApp and Desktop connections feature integrates tightly enough with Windows 7 that users of the new desktop OS won't need to practically differentiate between what's local and what isn't. It all runs off the Start menu.
• And speaking of Windows 7...Windows Server 2008 R2 is a powerful upgrade to any Windows Server data center all by itself. But in combination with Windows 7 on the client side you'll enter a whole new world of manageability and productivity:
• DirectAccess makes remote access ubiquitous (I'm nuts about this one),
• BranchCache can improve content retrieval at branch offices while simultaneously decreasing WAN bandwidth costs,
• New Group Policy objects allow deeper control of client desktop management, including access, system monitoring and even physical resources like power management,
• You'll be able to manage and keep data safe even on removable drives by using BitLocker to Go.

And those are just my favorite four. This list hardly encompasses all that Windows Server 2008 R2 has to offer. Check out the full kit for yourself at the Windows Server 2008 R2 Web site. And as always, we're looking for feedback so keep those comments coming.

-- Oliver Rist

Technical Product Manager for Windows Server Marketing

Hi all – I’m David Hastie, senior product manager in the Identity and Security Business Group here at Microsoft.  I wanted to flag an announcement Microsoft made today in the area of information protection and data loss prevention.  It involves Rights Management Services in Windows Server 2008. 

In short, Microsoft and EMC’s security division, RSA, have announced a partnership to give companies a better way to protect sensitive information. 

We know customers face a lot of challenges trying to strike the right balance between securing information but also giving the right people access and use of it - both inside and outside the company.  Currently, it is often too difficult and expensive to protect data using multiple solutions and policies that have to be stitched together. So, we’re working together on a new “built in” approach (versus additional, “bolted on” technologies) that implements information protection throughout the infrastructure, based on information content and context, as well as the identity of users. 

With this partnership, Microsoft is building RSA’s data loss prevention (DLP) classification technology into our platform and future information protection products.  The goal is to allow customers to define information security policy centrally, push those policies across the enterprise, identity and classify sensitive data, and use various controls to enforce protection.   

Additionally, as a first step, this month the new 6.5 version of RSA’s DLP Suite will integrate with Active Directory Rights Management Services in Windows Server 2008 (AD RMS.)  This means you can automate the application of RMS protection based on the sensitivity of information identified by RSA DLP.   It will facilitate the roll out of RMS by using content-aware discovery to apply RMS access and usage policies. 

We are very excited about this partnership and our new approach to information protection.  It is a good example of our focus on delivering solutions that address security and identity together, knowing that customers Stay tuned for more updates and I encourage you to consider taking advantage of the new integration between RMS and RSA’s DLP solution.  

David