Monthly Archive for April, 2009

IIS Security

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 29. April, 2009
in IIS
. 3 Comments

Saw this great blog post about IIS Security written by Tobin from the IIS Team. It covers the following topics with IIS Security:

  • Ghosts of IIS Security Past
  • Improvements in IIS 6
  • Improvements in IIS 7.x

It’s a must read for everyone working with IIS.

Read the blog post here.

IIS Media Services 2.0 is RTW

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 27. April, 2009
in IIS
. 0 Comments

The IIS Team released the latest version of IIS Media Services 2.0 last week, it’s available as RTW (Released to Web) and can be downloaded is these versions:

There are two releases available side-by-side on iis.net and through the Web Platform Installer:

  • IIS Media Services 2.0 RTW – the production-ready release announced last week. Includes:
    • Smooth Streaming
    • Bitrate Throttling
    • Web Playlists
  • IIS Media Services 3.0 Beta – a preview of new features in 3.0 made available in March at MIX. Includes:
    • Live Smooth Streaming
    • Advanced Logging

For production deployments, you’ll want to use the 2.0 RTW.

For at demo and more info about Smooth Streaming, check these sites:

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – Beta

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 25. April, 2009
in IIS
. 0 Comments

The IIS Team has released the FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – Beta.

It’s an upgrade of the existing FastCGI Extension 1.0, based on the same technology and this new version adds several important improvements and features.

The FastCGI Extension 1.5 includes these new features:

  • Monitor changes to a file. The extension can be configured to listen for file change notifications on a specific file and when that file changes, the extension will recycle FastCGI processes for the process pool. This feature can be used to recycle PHP processes when changes to php.ini file occur.
  • Real-time tuning of MaxInstances setting. This MaxInstances setting dictates the maximum number of FastCGI processes which can be launched for each application pool. If it is set to 0 then FastCGI extension will automatically adjust the number of instances up or down every few seconds based on the system load and number of requests waiting in the queue. 
  • STDERR stream handling. There are several options of how the extension can handle text sent by FastCGI application on STDERR. The extension can send the error data as a failure response to the HTTP client or it can ignore the error and send whatever was received on STDOUT as a response with 200 status code.
  • Sending a termination signal to FastCGI processes. The extension can be configured to send a termination signal to FastCGI process before terminating it. This enables FastCGI process to do a clean shutdown before getting killed.
  • _FCGI_X_PIPE_ environment variable. This variable is set by FastCGI extension and it contains the name of the named pipe that is used for communication between the extension and FastCGI process.
  • Relaxed enforcement of response headers syntax. The FastCGI extension has less strict enforcements for the correctness of the response headers.

Read more at source.

Exchange 2010 – Public Beta Released

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 16. April, 2009
in Exchange
. 0 Comments

A few days ago Microsoft announced the first Public beta release of Exchange 2010, formerly known as Exchange 14 or E14, since it’s part of the Wave 14 release of products from Microsoft, which also includes SharePoint, Office.

With the beta release, Microsoft has also updated the TechNet site with great info and papers about the upcoming Exchange release.

Here’s some great links about Exchange 2010:

Download it here.

OCS 2007 Document: Edge Server Deployment Guide

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 3. April, 2009
in Communications Server
. 0 Comments

A few months ago Microsoft released an updated version of the Office Communications Server 2007 Edge Server Deployment Guide.

This document guides you through the deployment of edge servers in your Office Communications Server 2007 topology. You typically deploy edge servers after you have deployed Office Communications Server in your internal network.If you need to communicate with users and organizations outside your internal network by using your Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 deployment, you need to deploy one or more edge servers. You install edge servers in your perimeter network (also known as screened subnet) so that users outside your organization’s firewall are authorized before they obtain access to your Office Communications Server deployment.

The information in this document includes the following:

  • Guidelines to help you decide which edge servers you need and which topologies to deploy.
  • Procedures to configure DNS, firewalls, a reverse proxy, and a Director.
  • Steps to deploy and configure a load balancer, individual edge servers, and certificates.
  • Environment configuration settings.
  • Validation of edge server configuration.

Get it here.

OCS 2007 R2 (RTM) Resource Kit Tools

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 2. April, 2009
in Communications Server
. 0 Comments

The Resource Kit Tools for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (version 6907.0) was released in February 2009.

You can use the set of deployment, technical tools and references to complement the product documentation delivered in R2. Supported platforms to run the ResKit Tools are Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008.

Note that the tools should be used exclusively with OCS 2007 R2 (RTM) only. These are essentially the same tools shipped in the updated OCS 2007 R2 Resource Kit.

Download and more information here.

OCS 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 1. April, 2009
in Communications Server
. 0 Comments

Microsoft has released the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool. The Capacity planning and load simulation toolkit is for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and can be using for planning and sizing situations together with the planning guide.

This release of the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Toolkit contains tools and documentation to simplify your hardware planning, provide you with increased knowledge and best practices for performance tuning, and improve your ability to verify the performance of your intended Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployments.

The Capacity Planning Toolkit is intended for use by IT professionals in a test environment prior to production deployment. These tools should never be used against a live production environment.

Download it here.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHDs available

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 1. April, 2009
in Communications Server
. 0 Comments

Microsoft has release Office Communications Server 2007 R2 as downloadable VHDs ready to use with Hyper-V for testing purpose.

Start evaluating Office Communications Server today. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers streamlined communications for your users so they can find and communicate with the right person, right now, from the applications they use most (like Office Outlook).

Note:
1. This trial software is intended for evaluation purposes only.
2. There is no product support for this trial. You are welcome to share your trial experience with others and to ask for advice by participating in the forums.

It is also recommended to ensure that you have a clean install of x64 edition of Windows Server 2008 to be able to use the Hyper-V technology. Prerequisites, installation steps, OS recommendations, and known issues of Hyper-V can be found here

Download the VHDs from here.

Download Size:
664 KB – 8902.6 MB