Hyper-V, Microsoft’s newest entry into the virtualization arena, is built on the Windows 2008 Server platform. Hyper-V is installed as an add-on role within the 64-bit version of Windows 2008 Enterprise and Database Center editions. It allows for the creation of multiple child partitions (VM's) to run simultaneously on a single, physical server.  Each child partition is capable of running a different operating system.   Child partitions are given the illusion that they are exclusively sit on-top-of the physical hardware. This is accomplished by taking advantage of hardware assisted virtualization. This hardware assisted virtualization allows the child partition to ...<< MORE >>

I arrived in Philadelphia late Sunday afternoon and departed for home Wednesday morning.  During this time span I managed to get a cumulative total of 12 hours of sleep.  "What accounts for my sleep deprivation" you ask?  "Too much caffeine in my system?"  Well, yes, but the main culprit is our yearly disaster recovery test.

Our test began Monday morning at 8 a.m. and ran for the next 48 hours.  During this time we recovered an ERP system, a database cluster,  a data warehouse, Exchange, and miscellaneous third-party applications.  I'm happy to report we were largely successful with our recovery ...

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Technorati Tags: security,encryption Protecting your customers data against accidental leakage is perhaps one of the most important concerns facing CIOs today.  Almost every week there is a news story concerning some organization who inadvertently lost a laptop containing Social Security numbers, backup tapes containing credit card data, or some other type of personally identifiable information.  When these data leakages occur it not only results in loss of credibility for your corporation but also places you in serious legal jeopardy. I am familiar with this issue firsthand.  About a year ago a customer requested copies of backup tapes for ...<< MORE >>

Windows Server 2008 is perhaps Microsoft's most ambitious release of its server platform yet. Built on the same code base as Vista SP1 and is slated to release to manufacturing on January 16, 2008 with the official launch happening on February 27, 2008. Many new features of this operating system are sure to make it instant hit with enterprise customers.

The list of new features added are too numerous for me to enumerate in this article thus I will focus on what I consider to be the key new areas of improvement. They are as follows: core installations, new features in terminal services, disk management improvements, and Windows Power Shell.

Note: I'm not including virtualization in this list has that feature will not be released until late summer 2008.

Core installations

This is perhaps one of the most fundamental changes Microsoft has made within this release of Windows server. Microsoft is now providing an option to install Windows Server 2008 in a minimal configuration option. The main thing to understand concerning core installations is that most of your server management will now be done via a command prompt or remotely from another computer. The main advantage of this configuration is that it reduces the surface area for possible attacks and reduces the amount of patching required for the server. See my blog at http://windows2008.informedcio.com for more detail on this topic.

Terminal Services

In a move that places Microsoft in territory once solely occupied by Citrix, Windows 2008 now offers the ability to provide remote applications and the ability to access those applications remotely via the Internet without use a VNP. Note: the one key advantage Citrix maintains is that it's still more bandwidth efficient solution then terminal services.

The Terminal Services Remote Programs option allows administrators to make available specific applications remotely to end-users. In previous versions terminal services were given the full desktop of the server. This often lead to confusion concerning whether they were working locally on their client or on servers desktop. I do not believe that there is administrator among us who is not inadvertently shut down the wrong server at some point in his career.

The new Terminal Services Gateway feature allows for connections to your terminal server resources via HTTPS. This will allow remote users to run programs on servers within your data center without having to provide them with a VPN access.

Terminal Services Easy Print solves perhaps one of the largest headaches of server administrators. It allows for the redirection of print traffic back to the remote desktop bypassing the server's print drivers. This means administrators no longer need to load print drivers onto the servers.

Disk Management

In Windows Server 2008 system administrator will now have the ability to be size hard drive partitions on-the-fly. Previously this type of functionality required use of the disk park command and was extremely unintuitive. See my blog at http://windows2008.informedcio.com/categories/Disk%20Management.aspx for more information on this topic.

Other improvements made include shadow copy block level backups, self-healing NTFS, and improvements for Internet storage name server (iSNS). 

See http://windows2008.informedcio.com/categories/Backup%20and%20Recovery.aspx for more on backup and recovery.

Windows PowerShell

PowerShell is Microsoft's new extendable command line shell. It's task-based scripting built on the concepts of object-oriented programming. Microsoft has committed that any new versions of applications it releases will be fully PowerShell compliant. This means anything that can be accomplished with a click of the mouse can be scripted. Between the introduction of PowerShell and core installations UNIX administrators have lost a lot of their bragging rights.

The bottom line is this new functionality introduced in Windows server 2008 combines a compelling reason for the enterprise customer to consider upgrading. I suspect we will see a faster rate of adoption for Windows Server 2008 within the enterprise than we did for Vista.