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November 20 Windows Server VirtualisationMicrosoft's next gen Virtualisation for Longhorn based on Hypervisor is scheduled to come out 180 days after longhorn RTM. Sadl, the product shown wasn't functional enough to show more than a hot 'add Ram' action. They compensated by giving away an X-box
 Some info from the sheets:
November 17 SC Service Desk public beta in Q1 2007!At IT Forum 2006 Barcelona , Product Manager Ken Van Hyning stated that a public beta of System Center Service Desk will be available around the start of Microsoft Management Summit at the San Diego Convention Center in March 2007. November 16 Longhorn Server Core: naked ain't vulnerable!At IT Forum 2006, Product Manager Andrew Mason did a presentation on Longhorn Server core. Longhorn Server core is, like the name says, a minimalised server installation with only core functionality installed.
When you run your setup, you can select a 'normal' installation or the core installation. The normal installation will give you your GUI with IE, calculator etc. When you select the core installation, you'll end up with a command prompt, so you'll be using "old style" cmd's like netdom and ipconfig to set up your network and domain settings. Commands for adding services will use "Start /w Ocsetup rolepackage" like DHCP, DNS etc. This method wil also be used for optional features like DFS.
Getting this system back to your 'normal' installation wil mean a new, clean install.
"Core installation will decrease patchmanagement back at least 60 %, due to the loss of GUI / supplemental apps weight," Mason stated. For remote management, it is still 'possible to use a MMC on your desktop or management server to manage these server"s "GUI-style", or use WinRM.
November 15 ISA 2006: The giant secure routerDuring the second day of IT forum 2006, Steve Riley gave on his own, enthousiastic way a presentation about the improvements in Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server 2006. In stead of coping with the technical content (which took just a small part of the presentation
 ) Steve delivered his own network-philosophical approach to security. In stead of the current devidence through Vlans and other network security methods, he would like to see ISA used as one giant layer 7 router. His argument was that this solution would really cut back CTO: in stead of putting money in the management of VLAN, VPN solutions etc., ISA would cover all these parts in one single solution. After showing us some possibilities how to manage it, a lot us came out feeling convinced.Hurray for Sensei Steve! System Center and DSI continuedDuring a presentation at IT forum 2006, Kirill Tatarinov elaborated on System Center and the DSI Roadmap. Virtualisation will have a strong focus, as demonstated when a physical machine was being 'virtualised' to it's original physical hardware environment with SC Virtual (Machine) Manager. SCOM information about processortype, RAM etc. was used to re-create this server. 'On-the-fly' adjustment of hardware (added new RAM) is also controlled throught Virtual Manager.
Another demo worth mentioning was a software change request through the currently developed SC Service Desk tool. SD is completely ITIL based and was nice to see: A user requests an app through a website, SD routes the request to the release manager by email with the posibility to authorize the request. After authorization SD creates the advertisement and collection.
A few more thiings that were shown and/or told:
IT forum 2006 keynote by Bob Muglia: Enabling the People-Ready BusinessDuring the keynote at IF Forum 2006, Bob Muglia elaborated on how to create the infrastructure for Microsofts vision of enabling the People Ready Business. Sadly, there were no real new news on that front, except maybe Microsoft's action on the service provider front. Bob explained that Mcrosoft and a few customers were trying out the concept of "Software as a Service". He did made the (under)statement the 'some issues' were noticed.
Of course there was a lot of focus on the new OS'es and the support by the System Center family. Also the new Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 were demoed. One of the 'amazing' things to see was using Excel as a server service to 'un-complicate' queries to a SQL or Access for users. Also Excel could use SQL supporting services to create reports, using calculation power from the server. November 14 IT Forum 2006 Barcelona startedToday IT Forum 2006 at the CCIB in Barcelona started. The event was sold out 6 weeks (!) before today. A starteling 4750 IT pro's are attending. IT Forum is the only big event from Microsoft in Europe after Microsoft announced that TechEd will not be held as a seperate event.
update (15-10-2006)
As enthousiastic as I started, this years IT Forum does have it's other side to it. Just after the keynote it became a little crowdy so to speak:4750 people in one building is too much. What's also disappointing is that a lot of interesting presentations are held in the same timeslot (Today and Thursday i have at least 3 sessions per timeslot...). I'll hope they will find a way to improve that part November 09 "Longhorn" server solution accelerator follows BDD 2007The new Business Desktop Deployment solution accelerator will introduce the BDD Workbench, which integrates scripts, tools and procedures behind a user friendly GUI. BDD 2007 wil be the primary solution method for customers using SMS 2003 to migrate their workstations to MS Vista. The team behind BDD will also be responsible for building a "Longhorn" server deployment solution accelerator.
The new version of BDD will be released at the end of this month. November 08 ITMU updated to R3Microsoft has released a new version of the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates. This latest version of ITMU provides support for a new offline catalog format provided by Microsoft and Windows Update. Size limitations of the current catalog format will result in the loss of older patches in favour of newer ones. It also includes performance improvements and setup changes to create collection memberships that target Windows Vista client computers.
The Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU) was released in August of 2005. ITMU integrates the Windows Server Update Services client software update technology with Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and shares the same security update, update rollup, and service pack data offered by this technology. ITMU enhances software update management by providing automatic command-line parameters at install, full language catalog, and support for the latest Microsoft products including Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista™, as well as a migration path for software updates to the next version of SMS.
November 01 ICP version of OSDFP Update availableThe ICP version for OSDFP Update is now available for download. Customers that want international client language support for languages other the standalone English, German, Japanese, and French Operating System Deployment Feature Pack releases need to install the Operating System Deployment Feature Pack International Client Pack (ICP) release.
This release can be installed on the English, German, Japanese, French, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), or Chinese (Traditional) Systems Management Server 2003 SP1 environment and will support the following Operating System Deployment Feature Pack client languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), (Chinese Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
You can download the ICP at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6edf70da-1733-43a5-9ee4-bc81a2f43016&displaylang=en |
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