Top 10 IT Pro Tasks Made Easier by Windows Server 2008 R2

Top 10 IT Pro Tasks Made Easier by Windows Server 2008 R2

Do more with less. This has been the server manager’s mantra for several years but never moreso than now. Fortunately, Windows Server® 2008 R2 has got your back with numerous and varied features designed specifically to address IT’s current challenges while making day-to-day life a little easier. Here are the top 10:
#1. Migrating VMs Without Service Interruption
Windows Server 2008’s Quick Migration was an adequate feature, allowing administrators to move VMs between physical hosts with only short downtime. Trouble is, even that delay was long enough to drop any currently connected users or applications and that tends to arouse help desk ire. Windows Server 2008 R2 meets this challenge with Live Migration.
Live Migration leverages Windows Clustering Services and the Cluster Shared Volumes technology to transfer VMs in milliseconds. That means no dropped connections and a much more dynamic data center management environment. We’ve also added Live Migration features to System Center Virtual Machine Manager, including the ability to perform migrations based on policy. It’s a brave new virtual world.
#2. Branch File Access Performance Up; WAN Costs Down
Branch offices can be the bane of both server and desktop administrators. Remote workers can’t find files due to lack of access or can’t get them fast enough because of bandwidth constraints. Enter another key Windows Server 2008 R2 feature: BranchCache™.
Administrators can use BranchCache to track file access requests at the branch office, and the files can be cached there. Files can be retrieved from other branch office client PCs (a peer-to-peer caching model, known as distributed mode) or from a dedicated BranchCache™ server at the remote site (also called hosted mode). A central BranchCache™ server keeps track of both existing file requests and file updates to ensure all requests receive only the most current content.
The result is an easy-to-configure and easy-to-maintain caching solution that speeds the servicing of remote client requests and lowers WAN bandwidth utilization at the same time.
#3. Self-adjusting Server and Data Center Power Management
Green IT may be the single hottest mandate from upper-level business management to IT in 2008, and the trend is likely to continue in 2009. To help harried IT managers go green quickly and easily, Microsoft is doing its part with new power management updates in Windows Server 2008 R2.
First, there’s an exciting new feature called Core Parking. When this feature is enabled, Windows Server 2008 R2 will constantly monitor the various workloads running across multi-core server systems. If certain processor cores are under-utilized or unnecessary, Core Parking can set just those cores into sleep mode, thus saving significant power. If workloads suddenly increase, R2 can spin up dormant cores in a matter of milliseconds. So a server with 64 logical cores can drop to just a 4-core machine during low-utilization times and rev back up to full CPU power as soon as workloads increase.
In addition, Windows Server 2008 R2 enables administrators to design active power policies that can cause servers to ‘throttle-down’ during off-hours by using DMTF-compliant remote management interfaces.
#4. Remote Server Management
Doing more with less includes traveling. Managing servers effectively no matter where they are physically located is always a problem. Windows Server 2008 R2 addresses this challenge with a Server Manager that can be installed on workstations and pointed at servers from afar. In addition, Server Manager has new management consoles devoted specifically to remote management tasks across all server roles.
#5. Squeeze the Most From Your Hardware
Virtualization might be a major boon when it comes to server consolidation, but the other half of that equation is squeezing every last drop of performance out of your virtualization hosts. Windows Server 2008 R2 has several new features designed to take full advantage of all any hardware config.
First, because it takes advantage of the last two years of 64-bit server CPU manufacturing, Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Microsoft server operating system to take only the 64-bit road. Your 32-bit applications will continue to run flawlessly on R2, but the 64-bit operating system is much better designed to take advantage of those high-end server CPUs from AMD and Intel.
And more of them, too—with Windows Server 2008 R2 scaling up to address as many as 256 logical processors in a single server, and Hyper-V in R2 is able to use more than 32 logical processors in a single VM. That’s twice the CPU support of Hyper-V 1.0! R2 can also take advantage of advanced CPU features, including Second Level Translation for much-improved memory management. It all adds up to more server muscle for your data center dollar. When combined with the consolidation power of Hyper-V, it means R2 can make a significant dent in your annual IT spend.
#6. Do Better At Managing Virtual Data Centers
Data centers have gone virtual with a speed that’s surprised even the experts. But although the technology’s potential is easily realized, tools to effectively manage large pools of virtualized resources have been slower to emerge. Windows Server 2008 R2 helps fill that void with a slick update to Hyper-V™.
The new Hyper-V™ sports numerous improvements over the old, including support for both 32- and 64-bit VMs, larger memory support (up to 64GB per VM), pass through disk access, and new hardware sharing architectures for resources like disk, networking, and video. But Hyper-V™ hasn’t left managers out in the cold—it includes new consoles for Live Migration and high-availability clusters, support for WMI management extensibility, and day-to-day tools to make life easier such as Virtual Machine snapshots. And last (but definitely not least), Hyper-V™ also sports a host of new support from PowerShell 2.0 with a slew of new dedicated cmdlets.
#7. Create Customized and Automated Management Tools
Canned management tools are great, but in large scenarios and especially vertical environments, being able to build your own management tool box is critical. Microsoft took an exciting step in this direction with the release of PowerShell 1.0 with Windows Server 2008. With Windows Server 2008 R2, we’ve reacted to the hugely positive customer feedback around this feature with a revamped and updated PowerShell version 2.0.
PowerShell v2 carries improvements across the board with improved remote management via WS-Management, better security with features like constrained runspaces, extended scripting functionality, and even improved script portability via XML. You’ll find a new Graphical PowerShell that adds pro developer-class IDE features, including colored syntaxing and better debugging tools for building your own cmdlets. And lets not forget about the over 240 new cmdlets that ship with R2 right out of the box.
#8. Use Virtualization to Ease Desktop Management
The Hyper-V™ server virtualization feature is only half of the virtualization message in Windows Server 2008 R2. Desktop and application management has always been a troublesome task because of the distributed nature of its targets. With R2, however, Microsoft presents a centralized solution to many of these difficulties via presentation virtualization.
The new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) in Windows Server 2008 R2 figures largely in this vision, and builds on the solid presentation virtualization foundation we built into Windows Server 2008’s Terminal Services. With the advent of Window Server 2008 R2, this is now called Remote Desktop Services under which VDI encompases a centralized desktop delivery architecture that allows customers to centralize the storage, execution, and management of a Windows® desktop or application in the data center. This capability gives desktop and application administrators a whole new toolkit for better enablement of flexible work scenarios, including work-from-home and hot-desking as well as increased data security, compliance, and more efficient management of the desktop operating system and applications.
#9. Broaden Remote Access Adoption While Making it Easier to Manage
Green IT, skyrocketing gas prices, a slow economy, and a need to get the job done no matter where it might be—all these factors combine to make remote computing one of the most important and difficult IT management tasks at the moment. Windows Server 2008 R2 addresses this with an exciting new feature that seeks to turn your clunky VPN into something as easy to manage and reliable as a dial tone.
DirectAccess (DA) is a comprehensive anywhere access solution that enables organizations to provide always-on, secure connectivity to on-premise and remote users alike. It improves security and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO). DA eliminates the need to connect explicitly with the corporate network while roaming and provides organizations with the next generation of policy-based, secure connectivity. To end users, the concept of remote computing goes away because DA and Windows 7 combine to present them with an always-on connection to their corporate network whether they’re attached to a local, remote or even public network.
DA uses technologies already included with Windows Server 2008, including IPsec and IPv6, but combines these with an easy wizard-style configuration and management toolkit that enables administrators to build and maintain DA. To maintain reliability and security, DA also takes advantage of many of the innovations found in other Microsoft products and services such as Network Access Protection, Server and Domain Isolation, and Forefront™ Client Security. In addition, the Microsoft Forefront Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) can enhance deployment and management.
#10. Take Your Web and Application Serving To The Next Level
Windows Server 2008 R2 includes many enhancements that make it the best Windows Server for Web applications and services yet, most notable of these: Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5.
Overworked server administrators will appreciate the updated Web server, which includes features that streamline management by extending the functionality of IIS Manager to include new configuration modules, by implementing a new Windows PowerShell Provider and task-based cmdlets for IIS, and by offering support for .NET on Server Core—that means not just more application flexibility with ASP.NET now available on Server Core, but remote administration through IIS Manager and Server Manager as well. IIS 7.5 also integrates new support and troubleshooting features, including configuration logging and a dedicated Best Practice Analyzer, and integrates many of the more popular extensions for IIS, including updated versions of Secure FTP and WebDAV.

Microsoft Virtualization Announces Hyper-Green.com

Microsoft Virtualization Announces Hyper-Green.com
Today Microsoft announced the release of a set of tools available at http://www.hyper-green.com/ designed to help organizations quantify the environmental and cost savings benefits available through virtualization technology. At the site visitors will be able to build a simple environmental savings report for virtualization projects they are considering and access a set of tools, including a deeper scenario-based ROI analysis and infrastructure assessment that can help them get started on realizing that value. On the site Microsoft showcases a number of case studies for customers that have done this such as Banque de Luxembourg and Kentucky Department of Education. Check it out now: http://www.hyper-green.com/

Google unveils new features

Google unveils new features

'We want to help our users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it,' said Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president.

WASHINGTON - GOOGLE rolled out new Web search features on Tuesday and an update to its 'Sky Map' that can allow users of its mobile phones to figure out which constellations they are looking at in the night sky.
Google's new 'Search Options' lets users 'slice and dice' search results, narrowing them down in time to results from the past 24 hours, the past week or the past year, for example.

'Search Options' also allows users to confine their search results to videos, product reviews and forum posts on a particular topic. Search results can also be viewed on a timeline displaying their popularity over time.

'We want to help our users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it,' Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president said in a blog posting about the new features unveiled at Google's California headquarters.

She described 'Search Options' as 'a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier.' Google also previewed a new tool called 'Google Squared' which is to become available later this month.

'Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about your topic - instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet,' Google said.

Google also showed off an update to 'Sky Map,' an application for the T-Mobile G1 phone which uses Google's Android software.

The application uses global positioning system and compass data and the date and time to figure out what celestial objects the device is facing at a given moment.

'If it is pointed towards Venus, for example, users will see a labelled map of the sky with Venus and the objects surrounding it on their screens,' Google said.

'As users move their phones, the map displayed on the screen adjusts accordingly, enabling them to point their phones at the sky and discover what they are seeing (or could be seeing), wherever they may be.' -- AFP

Facebook blocks private messages

Home > Breaking News > Tech and Science > Story
May 8, 2009
Facebook blocks private messages

If links to certain websites are detected in a private message, the user is shown a warning. --PHOTO: AFP

SYDNEY - AN AUSTRALIAN news website reported on Friday that Facebook has begun blocking private messages.
The technology blog written by News Limited journalist Andrew Ramadge stated that Facebook 'has started censoring private messages sent between users to block out internet nasties'.

According to the blog on news.com.au, if links to certain websites are detected in a private message, the user is shown a warning.

The message says 'Warning: This message contains blocked content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.'

The message is then deleted automatically.

Mr Ramadge writes that the first block to be reported was applied to The Pirate Bay; one of the world's largest file-sharing websites. The Pirate Bay recently lost a legal battle against a number of music and film industry groups.

'Links to The Pirate Bay's homepage were reportedly accepted, but links to specific pages within the site were blocked,' wrote Mr Ramadge.

'When we tested it today, that was still happening. However links to other file-sharing sites were fine:

The Pirate Bay - BLOCKED

Mininova - OK

Demonoid - OK

BTJunkie - OK

'Links to at least one major pornography site were also blocked.'

The internet industry website, Wired, also reported that this censorship could lead to Facebook breaching United States wire-tapping laws.

Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said the website had a legal right to censor messages, reported Mr Ramadge.

'Because users had agreed not to send 'spammy, illegal, threatening or harassing' content in accepting the site's terms of use,' wrote Mr Ramadge, quoting Facebook's officer.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software product from Microsoft.

The product is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family, and intended to assist with finance, manufacturing, customer relationship management, supply chains, analytics and electronic commerce for small and medium-sized enterprises. Value-added resellers (VAR)s can have full access to the business logic source code, and it has a reputation as being easy to customize.[1]

Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Features
3 External links
3.1 Press
4 References


History
The company was founded in 1984 in Denmark as PC&C ApS (Personal Computing and Consulting).

In 2000, Navision Software A/S merged with fellow Danish firm Damgaard A/S (founded 1983) to form NavisionDamgard A/S. Later the name was changed to Navision A/S.

On 11 July 2002 Microsoft bought Navision A/S to go with its previous acquisition of Great Plains. The new division in Microsoft was named Microsoft Business Solutions and also included Microsoft CRM.[2][3]

In September 2005 Microsoft rebranded the product and re-released it as Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

The product itself has gone through several name changes as the original Navision company or Microsoft has tried to decide on how it should be marketed. The names "Navision Financials", "Navision Attain", "Microsoft Business Solutions Navision Edition", and the current (2007) "Microsoft Dynamics NAV" have all been used to refer to this product.

In November 2008 Microsoft released Dynamics NAV 2009, with a new role-based GUI. Microsoft originally planned to develop an entirely new ERP system (Project green), but has decided to continue development of all ERP systems (Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL). All four ERP systems will be launched with the same new role based user interface, SQL based reporting and analysis, SharePoint based portal, Pocket PC based mobile clients and integration with Microsoft Office.


Features
As of 2006, NAV is licensed using the "Business Ready License" (BRL) model. The customer purchases user sessions, which have access to certain parts of the system included. There are two types of user - Business Essentials (BE) and Advanced Management (AM); AM provides access to more functionality than BE. Under the previous licensing model, "Module Based License" (MBL), users came with no functionality - this all had to be bought separately. Microsoft offers a path for customers to transition from MBL to BRL licensing.

The product gives administrators the option of using either a native database server (now called 'Classic') or Microsoft SQL Server, as the DBMS. SQL is better able to cope with large database sizes, but requires more maintenance than the classic database. The original database server is often referred to as 'C/SIDE' which refers to Client/Server Integrated Development Environment.

Relative to Microsoft's other 3 ERP products, Dynamics NAV's sector is distribution and manufacturing companies that want more than "out of the box" functionality. Yes the solution has a strong feature set, but more importantly it can be thought of as an "ERP System construction set". The Pascal like development language is easily accessible to appropriate developers and is designed for rapidly customizing the software. There is no need for complex server side Transact SQL stored procedures as the one language manages the application and database. This typically results in new development or modifications that take about 1/2 the time of traditional ERP applications.

On the downside, all changes, even changes as simple as adding a field or modifying an existing report is considered a source code modification. They are also "universal" meaning if you modify a screen it applies to all users. Many competitive systems which may not be as easy to modify the source code, often provide a customization layer above the source code that can easily adapt to basic changes such as moving or hiding fields or adding extra fields.

What's New in Windows 7 for IT Pro

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors,[31][32][33][34] improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center,[35] a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.

Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display.[36] Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.[37] The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons.

Adjacent to the system clock is a small rectangular button for the new feature named Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop.[38] In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs etc, this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger.[39] Clicking this button minimizes all windows.

Additionally, when a user drags a window to the edge of the screen, it will snap in place on that half of the screen. This allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen to compare them. There will also be a feature where when a user pulls a window to the top of the screen, it will automatically maximize. When a user tries to move windows that are maximized, the system will restore them automatically.

This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Holding down the Windows key and pressing the up arrow maximizes; pressing down the down arrow minimizes; pressing the left or right arrows snap the windows to the sides of the screen. Repeating the keyboard shortcuts generally restores the window's previous size.

The 'middle-click' or scroll button on the mouse will be in more use as the middle click will be able to close applications and tabs.

Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead they remain transparent.

For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET based WCF web services),[40] new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages,[41] and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.[42]

At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB.[43][44] Microsoft is also investigating better support for Solid State Drives and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely.

Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7.

Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12. The latest beta of Windows 7 blocks the usage of third party video decoders from Windows Media Player. Microsoft says this restriction will not take place in the final version of Windows 7.[45]

Wikinews has related news: Windows 7 will allow users to disable Internet Explorer

Users will also be able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.[46]

Windows 7 includes 13 additional sound schemes (entitled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky (which is similar to Vista's default sound scheme[citation needed]), Raga, Savanna, and Sonata.[47]

A new version of Virtual PC, Windows Virtual PC Beta is available for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions.[48] It allows multiple Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same machine, requiring the use of Intel VT-x or AMD-V. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7 desktop.[49]