Did you know that Microsoft has tons of free virtual labs available, it’s a great way of testing the latest technology. The Labs are available for both IT Pros and Developers. There is already 15+ Labs available for Windows Server 2008.
Come experience the newest release of Windows Server! In these Virtual Labs, you’ll have the opportunity to test-drive new and improved features and functionality in Windows Server 2008, including management, network protection and improvements to Terminal Services.
Direct link to: Microsoft Virtual Labs
My latest article have gone live – I’ve written a new article on www.windowsnetworking.com about the new FTP Publishing Service for IIS 7.0, the article “IIS 7.0 – FTP Publishing Service – Part 1: Installation” is Part 1 in a series about the new FTP Service.
This article will cover the basics of the new FTP Publishing Service for Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7.0), along with a step-by-step guide on how to install the FTP Service.
Read the full article here: IIS 7.0 – FTP Publishing Service – Part 1: Installation.
Let me know what you think, any feedback are welcome.
Steve Schofield have created a new reference website: AppCMD.com. AppCMD.exe is the new single command line management tool for managing IIS 7.0.
I’m not sure if humans are supposed to remember command line syntax. For me, the most frustrating part is remembering the syntax of a certain command line option. To help me remember these for future use, and hopefully share with the community.
Here’s another a great article to get you started with AppCMD: “Getting Started with AppCMD.exe” by Mike Volodarsky at IIS.net.
Find all your AppCMD reference at: www.appcmd.com.
Finally ISA Server 2006 SP1 release is getting near, it’s scheduled for this summer. A really great feature is the support for SAN certificates.
This Service Pack introduces new features and improved functionality for ISA Server 2006 Enterprise and Standard Editions. The new features focus primarily on enhanced troubleshooting mechanisms designed to help you identify and resolve ISA Server configuration issues. Also included in this package are the updates we’ve promised for so long, such as SAN certificate support.
ISA Server 2006 SP1 includes the following new features and improvements:
· Configuration Change Tracking — logs all configuration changes applied to ISA Server configuration to help you backtrack through your change history.
· Web Publishing Rule Test Button — helps you verify that the rule configuration agrees with what is set at the published web server and provides specific suggestions when they disagree.
· Traffic Simulator – simulates network traffic as it would be seen by the ISA rules engine and gives you specific information about traffic processing along the way.
· Diagnostic Logging Query – an extension to the Diagnostic Logging feature provided in the Supportability Pack, this feature makes it much easier to see only the data that is relevant to the current troubleshooting effort.
· Support for Network Load Balancing (NLB) multicast and multicast with IGMP operations (KB 938550)
· Support for certificates with multiple Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries in published web servers
· Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD) authentication supports trusted-domain user accounts (KB 942637 )
Read more details about SP1 and the features at the ISA Server Product Team Blog.
Hyper-V RC1 was released a few days ago. Hyper-V RC1 is an optional upgrade for customers and partners, providing the latest code for those who want to continue testing the technology within their infrastructure environment.
Update for Windows Vista (KB949587)
Install this update to enable remote management of a Windows Server 2008 computer running the Hyper-V RC1 role.
Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950049)
The Release Candidate 1 (RC1) update to the Hyper-V role provides improvements to security, stability, performance, user experience, forward compatibility of configurations, and the programming model.
Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB949587)
Install this update to enable remote management of a Windows Server 2008 computer running the Hyper-V RC1 role.
Read more from the Windows Virtualization Team Blog.
Found this nice mini-article about how to configure SSL on IIS 7.0 on a Windows Server 2008 running ServerCore.
Due to the popularity of Windows 2008 Server Core I have seen frequently questions about how to configure SSL on IIS7 with only command-line. Since I wandered that path few months back I thought of putting this article/guide together.
Read the full blog post here.
Microsoft is really eating their own dogfood. They just annonced the complete migration of both MSDN and TechNet, two of the most popular web sites in the world, are now running on virtual machines (Microsoft Hyper-V).
Microsoft kept the back-end database on physical boxes, but moved 100% of its IIS7 frond-ends on Hyper-V RC0 VMs with 4 virtual CPUs and 10GB RAM.
The virtualization hosts (no mention of the brand obviously) are powered by 2 Intel quad-core CPUs and 32GB RAM (2GB are reserved for the Windows Server 2008 parent partition).
Read more about this interesting case on virtualization.info.
Ever had those drivers or devices that just won’t go away even though you’re sure you’ve uninstalled them. Could be a netword card that was replaced and you keep getting warnings that the system insists there is still an adapter installed with the same IP address.
To get rid of unwanted drivers, devices:
- Open the “Start” menu and choose “Run…”
- Type “cmd” and press enter
- At the command prompt, type:
“set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1”
and press enter (nothing happens here, which is ok. we just set an environment variable, which enables us to see hidden devices in Device Manager)
- In the open “cmd” type “devmgmt.msc” and press enter (This will launch the Device Manager Console)
- In the Device Manager Console, select “Show Hidden Devices” from the “View” menu
- Expand the various branches in the device tree (e.g. Network Adapters) and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers
- To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall
Be careful though, you should note that non-loaded devices and drivers are “grayed” out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should delete all of them. It’s recommended to only remove items you know you don’t need. Be careful that you don’t change too many devices or you might need to re-activate your Windows installation.
If you accidentally exit the Device Manager Console you will need to start over again at the command prompt.
