New IT Trends Bring Change to Mid-Market Product Line

 

Today Microsoft announced that effective June 30, 2010, Microsoft will discontinue future development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS), the infrastructure solution we designed specifically for midsize businesses. This blog post is to specifically answer the question around whether the change affects other Microsoft solution products.

The short answer is, no.

In no way does today's EBS announcement impact Windows Small Business Server, Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2008 and R2. 

Our decision to discontinue future plans for Windows Essential Business Server was based on several factors, but most notably in response to midsize businesses making a rapid shift towards technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.  As it happens, those technologies are offered today through other Microsoft solutions, and midsized customers are adopting them, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Exchange Server, and the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). 

We believe that streamlining our server product portfolio will provide clarity for customers and partners to determine which option might be right for them.

Microsoft remains fully committed to small and medium-sized businesses. EBS customers can look forward to continued support and a number of options for continuing with EBS or transitioning to other technologies.

For more information, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ebs.

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 Available!

The Beta 2 for Windows Server AppFabric is available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric.  We’re encouraging developers and IT professionals working with .NET 4 and Windows Server to download the Beta and provide feedback, as we prepare to release the final version of Windows Server AppFabric to be delivered by Q3 of 2010.

 

First announced at PDC 2009, Windows Server AppFabric is a set of application services focused on improving the speed, scale, and management of Web, Composite, and Enterprise applications.

 

To date, more than 8,000 developers have downloaded the Beta 1 version of Windows Server AppFabric.  Customers, including, Associated Press, Bentley, and Jettainer are already seeing strong benefits that include significantly increased performance, simplified development and management, and improved availability and reliability for their most demanding applications. 

 

Developers and IT Pros using Windows Server AppFabric can expect the following benefits:

 

Faster Web Apps Made Easy

Windows Server AppFabric helps developers improve the speed and availability of web applications through distributed in-memory caching and replication technology that works with current ASP.NET applications.

 

Simplified Composite Apps

Developers can simplify the development of composite applications with the pre-built application services in Windows Server AppFabric, used in conjunction with Visual Studio tools and .NET Framework capabilities (ASP.NET, WCF and WF). IT Pros can also simplify the deployment, monitoring, and management of composite applications with configuration and monitoring capabilities that are integrated with familiar tools (PowerShell, IIS Manager, and System Center).

 

Enterprise Performance and Availability

An enterprise’s most important and demanding applications can achieve elastic scale, performance, availability, and reliability (benefits often associated with the cloud) with the help of Windows Server AppFabric. These and countless other benefits from an unparalleled partner ecosystem utilize familiar skills from the .NET Framework and Windows Server.

 

Complementing these Windows Server AppFabric services for on-premises development, Windows Azure platform AppFabric delivers connectivity services (specifically Service Bus and Access Control, formerly known as “.NET Services”) for composite applications spanning to the cloud. Together, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric provide a comprehensive set of services that help developers rapidly develop new applications spanning Windows Azure and Windows Server, and which also interoperate with other industry platforms such as Java, Ruby, and PHP.

 

Download the Windows Server AppFabric beta 2 today and let us know what you think!

Prevent Loss of Sensitive Information Using the Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure

Today I want to discuss the importance of information classification and how it can be used to prevent data breaches and help organizations with compliance requirements such as PCI, HIIPA, ISO 27001, the Massachusetts Data Protection Law 201 and other similar legislation.

Information classification is the critical first step in managing data based on its business value. When the information’s value is understood, organizations can apply security policies to reduce the risk of information leakage. The new File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 enables organizations to protect data by automatically classifying files and applying policy. FCI includes the ability to define classification properties, automatically classify files based on location and content, and invoke file management tasks such as file expiration and custom commands based on classification.

Once the files have been classified, appropriate security can be applied based on the business value of the information. For example, in a PCI environment, FCI-based classification can be used to identify files that contain sensitive credit card information, and in a health care environment, FCI based classification can identify files with private health information. Once the files have been classified file management tasks can be used to segment sensitive files onto more secure storage devices, to protect files with encryption, and to assign more restrictive permissions to the files. This helps ensure that information stored on file servers is well secured.

Another concern is email. Email messages or email attachments are a security risk as email cannot easily be controlled. One of our FCI partners, Titus Labs has extended classification and information protection to the Microsoft Outlook environment. Titus Labs Message Classification can recognize file attachments that have been classified using FCI.

The Titus Labs solution can examine the FCI classifications of Microsoft Office attachments, and can apply policy that can restrict the distribution of sensitive information. Titus Labs’ Safe Recipient policies can be used to:

• Protect the distribution of email within an organization. By examining all the recipients of an email, the Titus Labs policy can verify via Active Directory whether the recipient is allowed to receive attachments of a given classification. This prevents inadvertent data loss by warning the user that one of the recipients should be removed. For example, in an internal scenario, a financial organization may want to ensure that an employee in corporate finance is restricted from sending files classified as MERGER / ACQUISITION to another employee working as a broker or trader.
• Protect the distribution of email outside the organization. By examining the domain of each of the recipients, the Titus Labs policy can verify that the domain is listed as trusted in the policy and can warn the user of a possible data breach and warn them or force them to change the recipient list. In the following example, the sender has mistakenly selected the wrong Anne Hollingsworth at an external address. The sender receives a warning because the email contains an attachment that has been classified as CONFIDENTIAL / INTERNAL USE.

Invalid recipient is detected based on classification

This is an example of the power of FCI to protect your sensitive information. Click here for more information on FCI.

Sabrinath S. Rao

Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Windows Server Marketing - ISV Ecosystem

Mi-Greatness: Full release version of Windows Server Migration Tools update lets you migrate Hyper-V and RRAS

Remember back in December, when we released the Beta version of the Windows Server Migration Tools update...the one that allows you to migrate Hyper-V and Routing and Remote Access Services to servers running Windows Server 2008 R2...no? OK, you don't. That was three months and a lot of holiday partying ago. We understand.

The full release version of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities is now available. The update allows you to use the Windows Server Migration Tools-a set of Windows PowerShell cmdlets that shipped with Windows Server 2008 R2- to migrate Hyper-V and RRAS. And the detailed guides that take you through Hyper-V and RRAS migration, one step at a time, are now complete and live as well.

Full release versions of other guides (for migrations that do not require the Tools) have also gone live. Check out the Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 Migration Guide, and guides for the other role services of Network Policy and Access Services (NPAS), Health Registration Authority and Network Policy Server.

Your feedback is absolutely welcome, and essential to making the guides the best and most useful that they can be. Take a moment to rate the guide topics as you evaluate them, by using the star rating system in the upper right corner of every TechNet page. Fill the accompanying text box with your comments and suggestions for improving the guides. Visit the Windows Server Migration forum to ask questions, or discuss the guides, the Migration tools, or your migration experiences.

Plenty of other Migration resources are available with the new guides; you'll find everything on the Migration Portal for Windows Server 2008 R2.

-- Cheers from the Windows Server Migration Team!

BIEB Update: Microsoft IT Speaks Out on Today’s IT Trends

BIEB stands for Microsoft’s Because It’s Everybody’s Business campaign. But it’s more than an ad campaign, it’s also a slick Web resource with loads of value-add IT Pro content. Here’s a quick update on some of the latest additions:

Where the folks in my group build the Windows Server products, Microsoft’s CIO, Tony Scott, actually has to use them. And he’s generally deploying new Microsoft technologies a year or more ahead of everyone else on the planet – while simultaneously servicing the IT needs of 85,000+ of the most technology hungry info workers you’d ever want to meet. Not an easy job. So when Tony wants to talk about the trends and innovations he sees coming in IT, my ears perk up.

You can check out Tony’s article here, as an Adobe Acrobat download (it’s right at the top of the page). His views on unified communications and virtualization were inline with my expectations, but I like his attention to cloud and employee productivity. It’s a short article, and well worth the read.

Additionally, Jeff Wettlaufer writes about the availability of System Center Configuration Manager’s Reporting Dashboard beta; Mike Gannotti gives you an inside peek at how SharePoint is powering the U.S. Olympic Committee’s pressbox site; and yours truly has a new post up there on Windows Server 2008 R2’s top benefits, which links to some deeper interviews given to Windows IT Pro magazine by Bill Laing (Windows Server Corporate Vice President) and our own Ward Ralston, my boss in Windows Server Marketing.

If you’re up for more reading, you can also download a new free e-Book (available here) entitled, Understanding Microsoft Virtualization R2 Solutions. Microsoft has been delivering a slew of new innovation around both server and desktop virtualization over the past several years; so folks looking to get a big picture handle on these new products and how to use them, this is the book for you.

There’s a lot more on the BIEB site, so I encourage you to poke around there for a while. And as always, ideas and feedback are much appreciated.

Oliver Rist

Windows Server Marketing

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Intel Slam Dunk iSCSI Performance Benchmark

With the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, the Windows Server platform has evolved into a robust and scalable platform aimed squarely at the heaviest data center loads – and we’re always looking at new ways to prove it. Recently, in conjunction with Intel hardware, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V achieved amazing throughput results over iSCSI.

iSCSI stands for Internet Small Computer System Interface and amounts to a storage networking protocol that can carry SCSI data over TCP/IP networks. Because it allows client initiators to send storage commands to target SCSI-based storage devices on other machines across high-speed Ethernet networks, iSCSI is a popular way to build Storage Area Networks (SANs), as it allows network architects to use generic Ethernet components rather than closed-system SAN products. That means both a cheaper SAN network as well as an easier management stack.

The only trouble with iSCSI over Ethernet has been a nagging perception that this combination is slower than competing systems – and slow is death when you’re talking about storage. But that’s looking like a perception of the past following a fantastic iSCSI benchmarking result done with Intel hardware and Microsoft Windows Server software in January of 2010. Running on server hardware equipped with an Intel Xeon 5580 CPU and an Intel 82599 10GbE network interface card (NIC), Windows Server 2008 R2 achieved 715,000 IOPs. Leveraging new 10GbE network technology from Intel as well as the combination of Intel Virtual Machine Device Queuing (VMDq) matched with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Virtual Machine Queuing (VMQ), the combination achieved a performance result that amounts to line rate 10GbE performance and near-native iSCSI performance across a network!

Results like these prove that combining Windows Server 2008 R2 with high-performance hardware can provide bleeding edge performance without the need to move to closed, proprietary systems –while still providing enough horsepower to tackle heavy data center workloads. Lots of kudos to Intel and the Windows Server Storage Technologies team for some excellent engineering. For some more information on this benchmark result, check this post from the virt team.

Oliver Rist

Windows Server Marketing

Have Virt Questions? Check out the Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010

Virtualization is arguably the hottest IS technology today, crossing from data center to desktop and spawning a wave of innovation across the industry. If all this new technology has you scratching your head, make a point to check out the Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010 coming soon to a city near you. The goal of these events is to provide answers to customer questions about Microsoft's extended virtualization stack. Attend the show to learn how server & desktop virtualization can help you:

• Build a desktop virtualization management strategy that helps you manage your applications, data, mobile workers and multiple physical and virtual form factors.
• Reduce desktop costs.
• Enable flexible and agile IT through virtualization.
• Increase desktop security and compliance.
• Improve business continuity and end user productivity.
• Understand how Microsoft is building a solid foundation for a private cloud.
• Increase end user productivity and streamline your IT management with Windows 7.

Don't miss it!

Oliver Rist

Power Management in Windows Server 2008 R2 – Improving your “gas mileage”

Everybody pays the power bill. 

Well... except maybe the power company.  But who wouldn’t want to reduce that bill?  Not to mention their environmental impact?

The biggest power savings many organizations will probably experience with Windows Server 2008 R2 is through server consolidation with Hyper-V, the built-in Hypervisor.  But we also had several other goals in mind to help people manage power and control costs while we were developing R2.

One of our goals was to improve power efficiency, out-of-the-box, with no manual configuration required on the part of administrators.  This improvement is derived from a variety of features, including an improved processor power management engine, timer coalescing, tick skipping, and R2’s new core parking capabilities.

As you may have already heard, these out-of-the-box improvements can help improve power efficiency by up to 18% over Windows Server 2003 running on the same hardware.

Some have asked, “Will every one of my servers save 18 percent?”  In brief, no.  To be clear, just as a car’s gas mileage depends on many factors - make and model, average speed, city or highway driving, today’s traffic congestion, and how well maintained it is - improvements in power efficiency will vary, as well.  Your specific savings will depend on many factors - on your particular server, your specific hardware configuration, the type of workload that server is running, and the server’s utilization level from moment to moment.  The only way to nail down specific savings is to actually test it.

While working on these power management features during the development of R2 we tested a variety of servers – new and old, large and small, relatively busy and relatively idle, running various workloads – in order to ensure that the changes we were making would help improve power efficiency across a wide variety of environments.  And they do.  But the specific improvement you see will depend on your own particular environment.

Another goal for R2 was to provide new capabilities to help people measure and manage power consumption.  If you walk up to a server running Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and fire up perfmon, for example, you can’t see power consumption, let alone easily collect that data across your environment.

But with Windows Server 2008 R2 and supporting hardware – such as the recent G6 servers from HP which have earned the Enhanced Power Management Additional Qualifier (www.windowsservercatalog.com) – you can monitor power consumption locally or remotely via WMI, change power plan settings, and even do power budgeting.  Of course, these features do require some work on the part of IT administrators to make use of this data – to set goals, make changes, and measure impacts. 

R2 offers the possibility to impact the environment – and costs – in a worthwhile way for organizations large or small.

Dan Reger

Senior Product Manager, Windows Server

 

 

Windows 2000 Server Approaching End of Life

Danger, Will Robinson! If you’ve got machines still running Windows 2000 Server in your enterprise, your robot will be blaring this warning ever more urgently the closer we get to July 13, 2010. That’s the end-of-support date for the Windows 2000 Server platform. Folks still running Windows 2000 after this date will be doing so without security hotfixes, patches or service packs.

Keeping your corporate infrastructure, data and especially customer or partner data safe is a key requirement to stay within regulatory compliance requirements. But it also means:

Staying competitive: Move to the latest business software and the best tools for your workers, and use R2’s in-box virtualization suite to deliver those resources to your users and customers easily and with the ability to quickly respond to changing requirements and workloads.

Saving IT costs: Using in-box virtualization to consolidate server sprawl as well as new power saving features that extend from the server to the desktop, Windows Server 2008 R2 can save you significant power and cooling costs both in the data center and the office.

Easily Manage Your Network: The Windows Server family has significantly decreased the complexity of managing your infrastructure. New console UIs have been coupled with new wizards to give IT generalists the lowest learning curve possible for managing their servers. And new features like PowerShell 2.0 give Windows Server 2008 R2 administrators a simple and powerful toolkit for IT administration building custom management tools.

That said, migrating servers is no one’s idea of a party. If you’re worried about your migration project generating migraines, make sure you leverage all the resources Microsoft is making available to Windows 2000 Server end of lifers:

Your first stop should be the Windows 2000 End-of-Support Solution Center, a new site loaded with migration planning and technical tools. Check out the Windows Server 2008 R2 Upgrade Paths as well as the Windows Server Migration Tools, the Assessment and Planning Toolkit and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. The site also has great guidance on migration planning as well as technical guidance on migrating specific server roles.

Look for more tools and guidance around Windows 2000 Server end of life in the coming months, both here and on www.microsoft.com/windowsserver.

Oliver Rist

 

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Microsoft & HP Announce Landmark Expansion of Technology Alliance

This is fantastic news for customers. Microsoft and HP have had a long-standing technology partnership that's spanned over 25 years. But today, we've announced an expansion of that agreement that likely makes this the deepest and most far-reaching alliance of its kind in the industry.

Today, both companies have agreed to invest $250 million over the next three years aimed at simplifying IT technology environments and driving innovation for the next generation of computing. The idea is to provide a series of new end-to-end solutions tightly integrated from the hardware layer up through applications and services - a concept we're calling the infrastructure-to-application model.

This long-term agreement is huge news for customers across several fronts. First, we'll be collaborating with HP on engineering roadmaps and product development. That means total management control and performance tweaking capabilities across the entire IT technology stack. It also means the ability to much more easily deliver on new technology visions, including on- and off-premise cloud computing. Tight product integration also means new product possibilities, notably pre-configured hardware/software stacks optimized not just for performance and reliability, but also capable of delivering push-button simplicity when it comes to management and monitoring. This will be especially helpful to Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server customers with easy deployment, simple management and lower TCO. Look for these products to be:

• Optimized for virtualization via Hyper-V,
• Offer new management capabilities with the integration of Microsoft's and HP's management software, and
• Leverage these technology combinations to help deliver on on-premise cloud computing in heterogeneous datacenter environments.

These solutions will combine server, storage, networking and application technologies into automated and self-managing product offerings all aimed at redefining what businesses can expect from their IT resources. And that concept will be extended beyond your in-house servers and out to the cloud with Microsoft and HP collaborating on the Windows Azure platform with new tools and services.

What I really like about the agreement is its intention to develop not just for enterprises but for small- and medium-sized businesses as well. The new IT stack that will come out of this alliance will offer tools that let enterprises build the most powerful data centers they've ever had. But it'll also redefine how small- and medium-sized businesses can compete and differentiate themselves using IT. And with both Microsoft and HP's partner networks available and capable of designing customized IT solutions using the fruits of this alliance, the next three years look especially rosy for businesses looking to maximize their IT investment dollars.  

Which also means new opportunities for Microsoft and HP's partner community. The new agreement means shortened sales cycles using new Smart Bundles and all-inclusive product packages that will appeal to many industry segments. Partners will also be able to leverage flexible financing options through HP's Financial Services as well as new sales and lead-generation tools via HP and Microsoft's combined partner resource community.

Check here for some immediately available solutions out of the new alliance. And for more information there's this outline of the new agreement as well as a teleconference of Microsoft and HP executives announcing the agreement available here.

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Symantec solution available for “Network Path Not Found” and other errors.

Many folks have been encountering network connectivity issues and other errors when running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Antivirus. So I’m writing to let you know that a solution has been available for the past year and is highly encouraged as an upgrade.

Context

When a Windows Server is running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 or Symantec Antivirus 10.2, they may experience performance issues for network shares, or intermittent loss of connectivity to SMB shares.  We’re hoping we can help you avoid a costly and time consuming support incident by making this issue more visible to help you plan your deployments. 

Solution

If you are running older versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2 you should get the solution from Symantec. Symantec confirms that this is a known issue and there are updates to resolve the problem.   For more information, please see the Symantec Knowledge Base article about this issue . For information about Symantec support for Endpoint Protection 11, visit the Symantec Support site. (http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index.jsp)

Please note: If you are unable to upgrade promptly or remove the software, Symantec urges you to contact their technical support to determine if there are any workarounds available to you.

Symptoms

The symptoms are varied, but many can be traced to lost connectivity issues to servers running this software.   Here is what we’ve learned about the problem by examining case notes from Microsoft support:  

·        Symantec Endpoint Protection versions prior to 11.0.4202 (MR4-MP2).  Older versions of Symantec Symantec Antivirus (prior to 10.2) can also cause this problem.  The problem occurs when you have the Autoprotect feature enabled in the applications.

·        The problem can affect 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2.

·        The problem is intermittent, can affect client connectivity within hours to up to a week after installing the applications.  Usually a server reboot will restore connectivity for a short period before the problem happens again.  You generally are able to ping and RDP to the server when the issue occurs, but shares are inaccessible using either \\IPADDRESS or \\ServerName\Share operations.

·        The problem results from a deadlock in SRTSP.SYS or SRTSP64.SYS in a push lock operation, which then causes blocked kernel mode server threads handling SMB negotiation requests.  Network traces will show the server not responding to the SMB dialect packet.

Here are the most common symptoms you may experience that may help you diagnose this issue.  Note that if you have this software installed, the easiest troubleshooting step to determine if this is the cause of connectivity issues is to simply remove the software and reboot the server. 

·        Error message: “The network path was not found” or “The specified network name is no longer available” when attempting to open shares, map a drive, run DCDIAG to the to the affected server, use netdom to reset secure channel

·        Error message: “RPC Server is unavailable” when trying to connect via Active Directory Users and Computers

·        Error message: “RPC Server is too busy to process the request” when attempting to join the Windows server domain

·        Error message: “No network provider accepted the given network path” or “File or network path no longer exists” when copying a file over the network to affected servers

·        Printing issues (cannot update printer IP address via DNS)

·        AD replication failures

·        Cluster service fails to start, or inability to access existing File Share resources even if they are online according to the Cluster Administrator snap-in

·        Event log Event ID 4226 and or 2022 may occur frequently (up to every 20 to 30 seconds)

More Information

For more information about specific problems, error messages and troubleshooting for these issues, please visit the Microsoft support site for the following articles. Please note, we are currently in the process of updating these articles, all updates should be in place by next week.

 

KB 961293	Unable to access Shares "The specified network name is no longer available"
KB 961654	A file sharing connection to a Windows Server 2008-based server drops unexpectedly if the server has Symantec Antivirus installed
KB 948732	Network shares become unresponsive on a Windows Server 2003-based computer after some time, and you receive an error message
KB 923360	You may experience various problems when you work with files over the network on a Windows Server 2003-based or Windows 2000 Server-based computer

 

Robert Paige

Senior Program Manager

Windows Partner Application Ecosystem Team

Forget a Wreath, Deck Your Halls with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Poster

If you want to add a little geek to your holiday decorating, check out this free download of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components poster. This is a free 2.5MB PDF download that diagrams all eight of Windows Server 2008 R2’s key new feature areas: BranchCache, DirectAccess, Remote Desktop Services as well as the new enhancements to Active Directory, File Services, Hyper-V, IIS and Management.

The poster has already generated some good responses here and here. Plus, you can see a zoomable preview on Live Lab’s super-cool Seadragon as well as a video with the poster’s creator, Martin McClean.

Happy Holidays and happy poster printing,

Oliver Rist

Sr. Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

Windows Server and Windows Azure come together in a new STB organization: the Server & Cloud Division

Microsoft is announcing today the formation of a new organization within the Server & Tools Business that combines the Windows Server & Solutions group and the Windows Azure group, into a single organization called the Server & Cloud Division (SCD).

 

This change reflects the alignment of our resources with our strategy, and represents a natural evolution for Microsoft as the Windows Azure business moves from an advanced development project to a mainstream business, as we announced last month at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). 

 

SCD will deliver solutions that help our customers realize even greater benefits from Microsoft’s investments in on-premises and cloud technologies.  And the new division will help strengthen an already solid and extensive partner ecosystem. 

 

As the only company in the industry that has the leading server platform complemented by a massive investment in online services, we have the unique ability to offer our customers a choice to tap into one or both approaches simultaneously through one consistent platform. 

 

Together, Windows Server, Windows Azure, SQL Server, SQL Azure, Visual Studio and System Center help customers extend existing investments to include a future that will combine both on-premises and cloud solutions, and SCD is now a key player in that effort.

 

The details of this organizational change are noted below:

1.       The Windows Azure development team, will move from under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie to the Server & Tools Business, led by Bob Muglia, President, Server and Tools Division.  Senior Vice President Amitabh Srivastava will lead the newly formed SCD, reporting to Bob.

2.       The Windows Server and Solutions group, led by Corporate Vice President Bill Laing, will join the Windows Azure team to form the Server & Cloud Division.  Bill will report to Amitabh and will continue his role as a key member of the STB leadership team.  Bill will partner with Amitabh to continue the bilateral sharing of technology between Windows Server and Windows Azure, which has been a key design goal of Microsoft’s software + services strategy.

3.       The Windows Azure business and marketing team, will continue to be led by Doug Hauger.  Doug will join the Server and Tools Marketing Group, led by Corporate Vice President Robert Wahbe, reporting to Corporate Vice President Bob Kelly, who is also responsible for Windows Server, System Center, and Forefront.

 

The Windows Server team is very excited to be part of SCD and to continue our work together with the Windows Azure team to deliver the best of both software + services.

 

 

Wingin' Migration -- Now migrate even MORE server roles to Windows Server 2008 R2!

The Windows Server Migration team's been cooking...no, not cranberry sauce and stuffing, but a new Windows Server Migration Utilities download package that lets you use the Windows Server Migration Tools to migrate Hyper-V and Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS). Brand-spankin'-new beta migration guides are available for both Hyper-V and RRAS, with detailed, step-by-step guidance about how to use the Windows Server Migration Tools (after the Utilities package is installed, of course) to migrate to servers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

Still not feeling the love? We've got new beta migration guides for Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), Health Registration Authority (HRA), Network Policy Server (NPS), and Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 (WSUS). AD CS, HRA, NPS, and WSUS don't even require the Windows Server Migration Tools; you can migrate from prep to production, just by following the guides.

We can't say it enough: your feedback rocks. The Windows Server Migration team is collecting feedback about the beta guides and the Utilities download package through the end of 2009. You can use the following methods to speak your mind about Migration Guides and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta package. Share your migration experiences; they're critical to the quality of the Migration Guides, Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities, and the whole Migration solution for WS08 R2!

• Take the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta Survey. Nothing goes better with a cup of coffee.
• Got an earful about how to improve Migration guides or utilities? Reply to the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities release announcement on the Windows Server Migration forum.
• Found a bug in our migration guides? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), and any workarounds that you used to resolve the problem. Unless the problem defied workarounds, of course; in that case, you can just send us a hard luck story and/or flame mail, we still want to hear from you.
• Found a bug in the tools? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), the steps to reproduce the bug, and the following logs:
  • %windir%\Logs\SmigDeploy.log
  • %windir%\Logs\ServerMigration.log
  • On Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2: %localappdata%\SvrMig\Log
  • On Windows Server 2003: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\SvrMig\Log

Visit the Windows Server Migration Portal on TechCenter to see the complete collection of Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Guides, and a truckload of other migration resources, too.

-- Cheers from the Windows Server Migration team!

Thoughts on the Professional Developers Conference

Greetings!  Chris Steffen here again. You may have read my posts regarding virtualization and green IT in the past.

I had the opportunity to spend the week at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) recently.  While I am not a programmer, as a technical architect, I took away several interesting tidbits from the conference that I thought I would take a moment to share:

1.  Windows Azure is the real deal. Previously, it seemed to be a hodge-podge of somewhat related technologies, with some of them helping customers get into the “cloud” – something elusive and barely defined, but very likely the next cool thing.  PDC 2009 changed that forever.  Now there is a complete roadmap, from application development to system monitoring tools to OS and database support.  Microsoft is the only company out there that has the complete solution—and it is about time someone did.

2.  The “cloud” defined (sort of).  What does it mean to be part of a “cloud”? I have actually had this discussion on multiple occasions, and while two individuals might be able to come up with an acceptable definition, no one has come out and established what it means to be “cloudy.” Finally, Bob Muglia, in his keynote address on Tuesday, has done so. Flexibility, scalability, self service, on-demand provisioning and virtualization are all key components to being part of the cloud.  More importantly, he also made it clear that you don’t need to do all these things to be part of the cloud – covering most of them is acceptable.  Of course, Microsoft has a solution for each of these components, with more tools in development to make it even easier.

3.  Some is better than none.  It was refreshing to hear that Microsoft is not thinking that everyone will migrate everything to the cloud immediately.  In fact, they are taking a very realistic approach to the cloud as a whole, fully expecting that it will be a deliberative process and that it is very likely that some sort of hybrid environment (part public cloud and part private cloud) will always exist.  Some of the other existing cloud providers could stand to learn a thing or two from this approach.

4.  One size does not fit all.  Probably the most interesting thing that I heard (repeatedly, I might add) is the idea that Azure is not a “one size fits all” solution.  Quite the opposite, in fact. Microsoft wants to bring cloud computing to the masses, but is keenly aware that providing for the masses means that there are niche markets for which they will not be able to directly provide, and that their partner hosting providers are expected to fill this space.  They understand that they are going to get the business – either directly through subscriptions to Windows Azure or through hosting partners, using Microsoft’s operating systems and management tools.  Pretty smart long-term thinking…

Overall, the developers that I talked to at the conference were excited about cloud computing.  Much in the same way that virtualization is the “it” technology among systems and operations folks. 

The forecast is cloudy!

 

Chris Steffen

Principal Technical Architect

Kroll Factual Data