Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
Category Archives: Windows 2008
Redesigning Active Directory for 2010 and on..
Posted by on October 3, 2009
Active Directory has been implemented as part of Windows since approx 1998 when the betas of the initial Windows 2000 version were circulating. At the time directory services was Microsoft’s answer to all NT4 scalability woes and the superior management that Novell offered in Netware 4.x, that was a radically different IT world {cue [...]
ExPrep – Script to Automate Exchange 2007 Pre-Requisite Installation
Posted by on May 13, 2009
If you have ever had to install Exchange 2007 on a Windows 2008 (and 2003) server you will know that there are a number of pre-requisites that need to be installed from the OS for each role; for example IIS web services and metabase compatibility components. You have two choices, do this via the [...]
How to Administer a Windows 2008 Server from a Vista Client
Posted by on February 11, 2009
This confused me for a while, up until now I’ve been using Windows 2008 inside a VM, so have had little need to remotely administer it other than via the console. As you all know it’s better practice to use the MMC tools to admin remote servers rather than use terminal services to the [...]
Misc bits of Useful, Recent VMWare News
Posted by on May 12, 2008
I’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks and I’ve had to trim down my incoming RSS feeds, as there was too much noise and I was missing important things like the following; Scott Lowe’s summary of sessions from VMWare’s partner Exchange, some useful information on Site Recovery Manger The new VMWare Certified [...]
HP Rapid Deployment Pack – PXE Settings for Deploying Windows OS
Posted by on April 17, 2008
The followign screens show a working configuration from the RDP 3.80 PXE Configuration Manager Have had lots of problems with this deploying Windows OS’es and VMWare ESX 3.5 onto an HP c7000 Blade chassis, still not resolved all the problems, but this definitely works for deploying Windows! The documentation reads like you should always [...]
Hyper V Release Candidate is Available Today
Posted by on March 19, 2008
I’m at the Windows 2008 Launch event in the Birmingham, UK today. It has just been exclusively announced that the Hyper V Release Candidate is available for download from 5pm (UK time) Today, 19th March. Go download and try it out… full RTM is still promised 180 days from the Feb RTM release of [...]
Windows Server 2008 Posters..
Posted by on February 20, 2008
Along the same lines as the handy Exchange 2007 reference posters I blogged about a while ago; there are now similar offerings for Windows Server 2008. These are quite handy, and I’m all for visual aids Download them here. Thanks to Brett for the handy linkage
/CONSOLE switch Goes away in Windows 2008/Vista SP1/XPsp3 versions of MSTSC.EXE
Posted by on February 18, 2008
Post here on the terminal services team blog, about why they’ve changed this switch to /ADMIN in Windows 2008/Vista SP1/XPSP3. This is the first I’ve heard of it, not a huge issue but I can see a potential problem where the /console switch is ignored, again not huge but a bit of an annoyance [...]
Windows Server 2008 RTM’s Also…
Posted by on February 5, 2008
Must be the day for it! I’m looking forward to Server 2008 and have a couple of projects lined up to try and take advantage of the new terminal services functionality. Hyper-V will follow within 180 days… MS have a long way to go to win ground from VMWare but will have the usual [...]
Performance on a cheap ESX PC
Posted by on February 1, 2008
I thought I’d post some performance graphs from my cheap HP D530 ESX server using the Virtual Centre console (which incidentally, is good for getting this info quickly and simply). Screenshot of the UI for querying performance stats. View of currently running VMs – a mix of Windows 2003/2008 VMs Current Overall ESX Host [...]
