Dario IT Solutions Blog

Hi guys,

It was very nice meeting you all yesterday at the re-birth of the Infrastructure & Management User Group.

Below is the presentation for the main subject we talked about – “Windows 2008 R2 Overview”.

We will continue next month, on December 17th with the subject “Active Directory improvements in Windows 2008 R2”.

In the meantime, share your thoughts and interesting finds at the group site – http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2389097

Have a great weekend and take care!

I know its a bit late, but here is the presentation I gave on November 3rd at the Microsoft convention – Let’s Talk Business-Tech that was held at Tel Aviv.

During the presentation, my co-presenter Ronen Gabay and myself talked about the new features of Failover Clustering in Windows 2008 R2.

We talked about Geo-Clusters, PowerShell 2.0 extensive support, Cluster Shared Volumes and mainly about how simple it is to create and manage complex cluster (everyone can do it! believe me! ).

We finished the presentation with a nice demo of RDS 7.0 media enhancement when we showed a 1080P HD movie (Terminators 2 Trailer) over RDP 7.0 while doing a Live Migration of the RDS Session Host virtual server that we RDPed into.. very nice!

What do you think, will we start seeing more clusters from now on? or something is still missing?

I’ll love to get your input.

Microsoft has published some very nice eBooks free of charge! enjoy!

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/C/0/5C0BD0AB-040D-4C56-A60B-661001012DDA/Windows_Server_2008_R2_e-book.pdf

Learn about the new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 in the areas of virtualization, management, the Web application platform, scalability and reliability, and interoperability with Windows 7. Download Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2, written by industry experts Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker along with the Windows Server team at Microsoft.

Microsoft Press / Oct. 2009 / Version 1.0 / 200 pages / 11.1 Mo / PDF

Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=ee2a1d38-88a9-43b3-95bc-7e962f0b6030

Microsoft’s eBook Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine combine selected chapters written by industry experts Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson, and the Windows 7 Team with select Windows 7 articles from TechNet Magazine. Sample topics include: Deployment Platform, Planning Deployment, Testing Application Compatability, and 8 Common Issues in Windows 7 Migrations.

Microsoft Press – Microsoft TechNet / Oct. 2009 / Version 1.0 / 332 pages / 6.5 Mo / PDF

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions

http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urmvs17u33

This guide will teach you about the benefits of the latest virtualization technologies and how to plan, implement, and manage virtual infrastructure solutions. The technologies covered include: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, and Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Microsoft Press / Oct. 2008 / 452 pages / 14.4 Mo / PDF

NB : This download requires a Windows Live account

7 Development Projects for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services Version 3.0

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/f/02f0f661-88e1-43c2-b523-88d2e9e6802f/7%20Development%20Projects%20with%20the%202007%20Microsoft%20Office%20System%20and%20Windows%20SharePoint%20Services%202007.pdf

Get a hands-on introduction with seven practical projects. This guide highlights architectural underpinnings, the latest enhancements for developers, and code samples to get you started with building custom applications and solutions with Windows SharePoint Services products and technologies. (Note For developers)

Microsoft Press – Microsoft TechNet / May 2006 / 236 pages / 7.76 Mo / PDF

I wanted to thank the large number of attendees at our open house yesterday. It was a real pleasure for us to spend a morning with you, talk a little about technology but more importantly to laugh and exchange views! the mood was up and we really enjoyed it

I would also like to thank the talented Kobi Akiva, Asaf Nakash & Udi Leutashi for their presentations, the feedback they got from the audience was simply great.

One last thank to Gur Proper, Microsoft Israel’s Windows Server Marketing Manager for organizing this whole event!

And lastly, due to the fact the event registration closed within 2 days and a lot of people were not able to attend, we will held another Open House on October 29th. we will be happy to see any of you that couldn’t attend yesterday.

Hi guys,

I’ll be delivering a session at Intel’s “Life after death using… Intel® vPro™ Technology!” conference held on September 14th 2009 at Air Port City, Israel.

This session will focus on integrating SCCM In-Band management capabilities with vPro Out of Band capabilities.

Out of band management allows an administrator to connect to a computer’s management controller when the computer is turned off, in sleep or hibernate modes, or otherwise unresponsive through the operating system. By way of contrast, in-band management is the classic approach used by Configuration Manager and its predecessors whereby an agent runs in the full operating system on the managed computer and the management controller accomplishes tasks by communicating with the management agent.

Out of band management supplements in-band management. While in-band management supports a wider range of operations because it’s environment is the full operating system, in-band management might not be functional if the operating system is not present or is not operational. In these situations, the supplementary capabilities of out of band management allow administrators to manage these computers without requiring local access to the computer.

Out of band management tasks include the following:

• Powering on one or many computers (for example, for maintenance on computers outside business hours).
• Powering off one or many computers (for example, the operating system stops responding).
• Restarting a nonfunctioning computer or booting from a locally connected device or known good boot image file.
• Re-imaging a computer by booting from a boot image file that is located on the network or by using a PXE server.
• Reconfiguring the BIOS settings on a selected computer (and bypassing the BIOS password if this is supported by the BIOS manufacturer).
• Booting to a command-based operating system to run commands, repair utilities, or diagnostic applications (for example, upgrading the firmware or running a disk repair utility).
• Configuring scheduled software update deployments and advertisements to wake up computers prior to running.

SP2 for SCCM 2007 R2 added some important new features, like:

New Operating System Support
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Windows Vista Sp2

New Features in Out of Band Management
Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 improves on the Intel AMT integration provided in Service Pack 1. SP2 adds full feature support for computers that have the Intel vPro chip set and AMT firmware versions 4 & 5. In addition to providing feature parity with SP1 and AMT firmware versions 3.2.1, 4.0 and 5.0, the following new features are supported:

Wireless Management (mobile only)
• Up to eight (8) wireless profiles per out of band service point
• Profiles support SSID, WAP2-Enterprise or WAP-Enterprise security, AES or TKIP encryption, client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Authenticated Wired 802.1x Management
• Single profile
• Profile supports client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Audit Logging
• Supported on AMT versions 4 and 5
• Select which out of band management features to audit (critical events not supported)
• Enable or disable audit logging per computer after provisioning
• View, clear, and export to file the audit log entries by using the out of band management console

Power State Configuration
• Enable configuration of the power settings to specify whether out of band management activity is supported when the host is on (S0), host is on (S0) or in standby (S3), or always on (S0-S5)

Data Storage
• Save up to 4096 bytes in ASCII characters in the AMT data storage of each computer
• View and save to the data store by using the out of band management console

Lastly, check out this cool integration demo from Intel – a ConfigMgr advertisement is used to remotely and securely wake-up (boot) Intel vPro systems and push an automated BIOS upgrade.

References for additional reading:

vPro ROI Analysis / Benefits of Activating
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-1494/

Case Stories
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2260

vPro / SCCM Check list, Quick start Guide, & Tips & Tricks
http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/vproexpert/microsoft-vpro

ConfigMgr Administrators Checklist and Prerequisites

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161943(TechNet.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161785(TechNet.10).aspx

Self Pace SCCM SP1 / vPro Activation Training

http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/vproexpert/microsoft-vpro/blog/2008/10/24/microsoft-sccm-2007-sp1-intel-vpro-training-videos-now-available

Infrastructure Prep Checklist for Microsoft SCCM

http://communities.intel.com/openport/docs/DOC-2300

The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7 RTM have been released.

Among other things, RSAT include the Hyper-V tools for remote management of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Download

Microsoft announced that the process for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 has reaced the RTM milestone.

check out these videos:

1. Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division, discusses more about RTM of Windows 7 including a short video of the RTM sign-off process.

2. inside peek from Microsoft annual sales kick-off event in Atlanta. Steven Sinofsky joined Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on stage to announce the RTM of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. There’s even a clip of Steve Ballmer signing the gold RTM DVDs.

Read more on the windows 2008 team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/07/22/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm.aspx

Read more on the windows 7 blog:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/22/windows-7-has-been-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Microsoft windows 7 team post a response on their blog regarding the leak of build 7600.16384.090710-1945 who was suspected as the RTM for Windows 7.

According to the team blog “We are close, but have not yet signed off on Windows 7. When we RTM you will most certainly hear it here. As we’ve said all along, we will RTM Windows 7 when it’s ready. As previously stated, we expect Windows 7 to RTM in the 2nd half of July.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when we do a specific build internally of Windows 7 we have an extensive step-by-step validation process to ensure quality. This process takes time. Just because a single build may have “leaked” it does not signal the completion of a milestone such as RTM. As always, don’t believe everything that you read on the Internet” 

Read their full post here: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/13/update-on-windows-7-rtm.aspx

The build (7600.16384.090710-1945) leaked yesterday to the torrents, you can watch some screen shots over this blog post:http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/07/first-screenshots-of-windows-7-build-7600-leak.ars

before you run and download, we just want to remind you that in May, people who downloaded pirated copies of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) just hours before Microsoft released the preview reported that the build was infected with a Trojan horse.

Windows 7 is just around the corner so it just the time to do a little comparison between those 3 OSs:

Microsoft’s Eitan Kirshenboim has kindly provided us more Windows 7 tips, check out this second issue: