IT Forum ’05 highlights: part 1

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Microsoft UK IT Forum Highlights
A few years back, I used to try and persuade my employer to send me to Microsoft TechEd Europe each year, on the basis that lots of 75 minute presentations on a variety of topics provided a better background for me than a few days of in depth product training (I can build experience later as I actually use the technology). The last time I attended TechEd was back in 2001, by which time it had become more developer-focused and the IT Forum was being positioned as the infrastructure conference (replacing the Microsoft Exchange Conference). For the last couple of years, I haven’t been able to attend the IT Forum due to family commitments (first it clashed with my the birth of my son and then subsequently its been in conflict with his birthday, as it is again this year) but luckily, Microsoft UK has been re-presenting the highlights from IT Forum as free-of-charge TechNet events (spread over two days) and I’ve managed to take some time out to attend them.

Yesterday’s event covered a variety of topics. Unfortunately there was no concept of different tracks from which I could attend the most relevant/interesting sessions, so some it went completely over my head. One of those topics was upgrading to SQL Server 2005, so apologies to the presenter – I was the guy nodding off on the front row.

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll highlight some of the key points from the day.

Upgrading to SQL Server 2005
Presented by Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVP and UK SQL Server Community leader, this session gave useful information for those looking at upgrading from SQL Server 2000 (or earlier) to SQL Server 2005. I’ve blogged previously with a SQL Server 2005 overview, why SQL Server 2005 is such a significant new product and on the new management tools but the key points from Tony’s presentation were:

  • Upgrades (in-place upgrades) are supported, preserving user data and maintaining instance names in a largely automated fashion, as are side-by-side migrations (mostly manual, copying data from an old installation to a new and then decommissioning the old servers).
  • SQL Server versions prior to 7.0 cannot be migrated directly and SQL Server 7.0/2000 need to be updated to the latest service pack levels before they can be migrated. For SQL Server 2000 that is SP4, which might break some functionality for SP3A users, so the upgrade needs to be carefully planned.
  • The database engine (including subcomponents like the SQL Agent, tools, etc.), analysis services, reporting services and notification services can all be upgraded, and data transformation services can be migrated to integration services.
  • All product editions can be upgraded/migrated (32/64-bit, desktop, workgroup, personal, standard, developer or enterprise editions), as can all SQL Server 7.0/2000 released languages.
  • A smooth upgrade requires a good plan, breaking tasks into:
    • Pre-upgrade tasks.
    • Upgrade execution tasks.
    • Post-upgrade tasks (day 0, day 30, day 90).
    • Backout plan.
  • Microsoft provides the SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor as a free download to analyse instances of SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 in preparation for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. This can be used repeatedly until all likely issues have been resolved and the upgrade can go ahead.
  • Migration provides for more granular control over the process that an upgrade would and the presence of old and new installations side-by-side can aid with testing and verification; however it does require new hardware (although a major investment in a SQL Server upgrade would probably benefit from new hardware anyway) and applications will need to be directed to the new instance. Because the legacy installation remains online, there is complete flexibility to fail back should things not go to plan.
  • Upgrades will be easier and faster for small systems and require no new hardware or application reconfiguration; however the database instances will remain offline during the upgrade and it’s not best practice to upgrade all components (e.g. analysis services cubes).
  • Upgrade tips and best practices include:
    • Reduce downtime by pre-installing setup pre-requisites (Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, SQL Native Client and setup support files) – some of these are needed for the Upgrade Advisor anyway.
    • If planning a migration using the copy database wizard, place the database in single-user mode (to stop users from modifying the data during the upgrade) and make sure that no applications or services are trying to access the database. Also, do not use read-only mode (this will result in an error) and note that the database cannot be renamed during the operation.
    • Be aware of the reduced surface attack area of SQL Server 2005 – some services and features are disabled for new installations (secure by default) – the surface area configuration tools can be used to enable or disable features and services.

Leveraging your Active Directory for perimeter defence
Presented by Richard Warren, an Internet and security training specialist, I was slightly disappointed with this session, which failed to live up to the promises that its title suggested. After spending way too much time labouring Microsoft’s usual points about a) how packet filtering alone is not enough and ISA Server adds application layer filtering and b) ISA Server 2004 is much better and much easier to use than ISA Server 2000, Richard finally got down to some detail about how to use existing investments in AD and ISA Server to improve security (but I would have liked to have seen more real-world examples of exactly how to implement best practice). Having been quite harsh about the content, I should add that there were some interesting points in his presentation:

  • According to CERT, 95% of [computer security] breaches [were] avoidable with an alternative configuration.
  • According to Gartner Group, approximately 70% of all web attacks occur at the application layer.
  • Very few organisations are likely to deploy ISA Server as a first line of defence. Even though ISA Server 2004 is an extremely secure firewall, it is more common to position a normal layer 3 (packer filtering) firewall at the network edge and then use ISA Server behind this to provide application layer filtering on the remaining traffic.
  • Users who are frightened of IT don’t cause many problems. Users who think they understand computers cause most of the problems. Users who do know what they are doing are few and far between. (Users are a necessary evil for administrators).
  • Not all attacks are malicious and internal users must not be assumed to be “safe”.
  • ISA Server can be configured to write it’s logs to SQL Server for analysis.
  • Active Directory was designed for distributed security (domain logon/authentication and granting access to resources/authorisation) but it can also store and protect identities and plays a key role in Windows managability (facilitating the management of network resources, the delegation of network security and enabling centralised policy control).
  • Using ISA Server to control access to sites (both internal and external), allows monitoring and logging of access by username. If you give users a choice of authenticated access or none at all, they’ll choose authenticated access. If transparent authentication is used with Active Directory credentials, users will never know that they needed a username and password to access a site (this requires the ISA Server to be a member of the domain or a trusted domain, such as a domain which only exists within the DMZ).
  • ISA Server’s firewall engine performs packet filtering and operates in kernel mode. The firewall service performs application layer filtering (extensible via published APIs) and operates in user mode.
  • SSL tunnelling provides a secure tunnel from a client to a server. SSL bridging involves installing the web server’s certificate on the ISA Server, terminating the client connection there and letting ISA server inspect the traffic and handle the ongoing request (e.g. with another SSL connection, or possibly using IPSec). Protocol bridging is similar, but involves ISA server accepting a connection using one protocol (e.g. HTTP) before connecting to the target server with another protocol (e.g. FTP).

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2) technical overview
Presented by Quality Training (Scotland)‘s Andy Malone, this session was another disappointment. Admittedly, a few months back, I was lucky to be present at an all day R2 event, again hosted by Microsoft, but presented by John Craddock and Sally Storey of Kimberry Associates, who went into this in far more detail. Whilst Andy only had around an hour (and was at pains to point out that there was lots more to tell than he had time for), the presentation looked like Microsoft’s standard R2 marketing deck, with some simple demonstrations, poorly executed, and it seemed to me that (like many of the Microsoft Certified Trainers that I’ve met) the presenter had only a passing knowledge of the subject – enough to present, but lacking real world experience.

Key points were:

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 is a release update – approximately half way between Windows Server 2003 and the next Windows Server product (codenamed Longhorn).
  • In common with other recent Windows Server System releases, R2 is optimised for 64-bit platforms.
  • R2 is available in standard, enterprise and datacenter editions (no web edition) consisting of two CDs – the first containing Windows Server 2003 slipstreamed with SP1 and the second holding the additional R2 components. These components are focused around improvements in branch office scenarios, identity management and storage.
  • The new DFSR functionality can provide up to 50% WAN traffic reduction through improved DFS replication (using bandwidth throttling remote differential compression, whereby only file changes are replicated), allowing centralised data copies to be maintained (avoiding the need for local backups, although one has to wonder how restoration might work over low-speed, high latency WAN links). Management is improved with a new MMC 3.0 DFS Management console.
  • There is a 5MB limit on the size of the DFS namespace file, which equates to approximately 5000 folders for a domain namespace and 50,000 folders for a standalone namespace. Further details can be found in Microsoft’s DFS FAQ.
  • Print management is also improved with a new MMC 3.0 Print Management console, which will auto-discover printers on a subnet and also allows deployment of printer connections using group policy (this requires use a utility called pushprinterconnections.exe within a login script, as well as a schema update).
  • Identity and access management is improved with Active Directory federation services (ADFS), Active Directory application mode (ADAM – previously a separate download), WS-Management and Linux/Unix identity management (incorporating Services for Unix, which was previously a separate download).
  • For many organisations, storage management is a major problem with typical storage requirements estimated to be increasing by between 60% and 100% each year. The cost of managing this storage can be 10 times the cost of the disk hardware and Microsoft has improved the storage management functionality within Windows to try and ease the burden.
  • The file server resource manager (FSRM) is a new component to integrate capacity management, policy management and quota management, with quotas now set at folder level (rather than volume) and file screening to avoid storage of certain file types on the server (although the error message if a user tries to do this just warns of a permissions issue and is more likely to confuse users and increase the burden on administrators trying to resolve any resulting issues).
  • Storage manager for SANs allows Windows administrators to manage disk resources on a SAN (although not with the granularity that the SAN administrator would expect to have – I’ve not seen this demonstrated but believe it’s only down to a logical disk level).
  • In conclusion, Windows Server 2003 R2 builds on Windows Server 2003 with new functionality, but with no major changes so as to ensure a non-disruptive upgrade with complete application compatibility, and requiring no new client access licenses (CALs).

Management pack melee: understanding MOM 2005 management packs
Finally, a fired up, knowledgeable presenter! Gordon McKenna, MOM MVP is clearly passionate about his subject and blasted through a whole load of detail on how Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) uses management packs to monitor pretty much anything in a Windows environment (and even on other platforms, using third-party management packs). There was way too much information in his presentation to represent here, but Microsoft’s MOM 2005 for beginners website has loads of information including technical walkthoughs. Gordon did provide some additional information though which is unlikely to appear on a Microsoft website (as well as some that does):

  • MOM v3 is due for release towards the end of this year (I’ve blogged previously about some of the new functionality we might see in the next version of MOM). It will include a lightweight agent, making MOM more suitable for monitoring client computers as well as a Microsoft Office management pack. MOM v3 will also move from a server-centric paradigm to a service-centric health model in support of the dynamic systems initiative and will involve a complete re-write (if you’re going to buy MOM this year, make sure you also purchase software assurance).
  • There are a number of third-party management packs available for managing heterogeneous environments. The MOM management pack catalogue includes details.
  • The operations console notifier is a MOM 2005 resource kit utility which provides pop-up notification of new alerts (in a similar manner to Outlook 2003’s new mail notification).

A technical overview of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
In the last session of the day, Microsoft UK’s James O’Neill presented a technical overview of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. James is another knowledgeable presenter, but the presentation was a updated version of a session that John Howard ran a few months back. That didn’t stop it from being worthwhile – I’m glad I stayed to watch it as it included some useful new information:

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition changes the licensing model for virtual servers in two ways: firstly, by including 4 guest licenses with every server host licence (total 5 copies of R2); secondly by only requiring organisations to be licensed for the number of running virtual machines (currently even stored virtual machine images which are not in regular use each require a Windows licence); finally, in a move which is more of a clarification, server products which are normally licensed per-processor (e.g. SQL Server, BizTalk Server, ISA Server) are only required to be licensed per virtual processor (as Virtual Server does not yet support SMP within the virtual environment).
  • The Datacenter edition of the next Windows Server version (codenamed Longhorn) will allow unlimited virtual guests to be run as part of its licence – effectively mainframe Windows.
  • Microsoft is licensing (or plans to licence) the virtual hard disk format, potentially allowing third parties to develop tools that allow .VHD files to be mounted as drives within Windows. There is a utility to do this currently, but it’s a Microsoft-internal tool (I’m hoping that it will be released soon in a resource kit).
  • As I reported previously, Microsoft is still planning a service pack for Virtual Server 2005 R2 which will go into beta this quarter and to ship in the Autumn of 2006, offering support for Intel virtualization technology (formerly codenamed Vanderpool) and equivalent technology from AMD (codenamed Pacifica) as well as performance improvements for non-Windows guest operating systems.

Overall, I was a little disappointed with yesterday’s event, although part 2 (scheduled for next week) looks to be more relevant to me with sessions on Exchange 12, the Windows Server 2003 security configuration wizard, Monad, Exchange Server 2003 mobility and a Windows Vista overview. Microsoft’s TechNet UK events are normally pretty good – maybe they are just a bit stretched for presenters right now. Let’s just hope that part 2 is better than part 1.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 has gone RTM – and it’s not expensive either

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This week is Microsoft’s IT infrastructure conference for EMEA – the IT Forum. Last year I missed it because my wife was heavily pregnant (and my son was born that week). This year, of course, it was his first birthday, so I’m missing it again. Not to worry, because Paul Thurrott is covering the major stories in the Windows IT Pro magazine network WinInfo Daily Update and John Howard’s blog has much more information.

One of the IT Forum news stories concerns Virtual Server 2005 R2 (formerly SP1). A few weeks back I wrote about Microsoft’s virtualisation roadmap and several news sources are reporting that in his keynote speech, Microsoft’s Bob Muglia announced that Virtual Server 2005 R2 has been released to manufacturing. Furthermore, the new pricing model is just $99 for Standard Edition and $199 for Enterprise Edition – it seems that Microsoft really is serious about competing with VMware. At that price for Virtual Server, and with the VMware Player attacking the low end market (although I’ve heard mixed reports about how good it really is at handling Microsoft VMs), it’s hard to see where Virtual PC fits in all of this.

How to get a free copy of Virtual Server 2005 R2

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I blogged a couple of months back about how Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 service pack 1 (SP1) has been repositioned as Virtual Server 2005 release 2 (R2), effectively meaning that existing users need to re-license to take advantage of the new features. There may, however, be a glint of hope for some of us in that I heard a rumour recently that registered Virtual Server 2005 SP1 beta testers will get a free copy of Virtual Server 2005 R2 when it is released.

You can register (using a Microsoft passport) at Microsoft Beta Place, providing vssp1BetaTester as the guest account (this must be entered exactly as shown) and then self-nominating for the MS Virtual Server 2005 with SP1 program. You should receive an e-mail notice when you’ve been accepted into the program.

Microsoft virtualisation futures

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week, John Howard presented a Microsoft TechNet UK event about virtualisation. I’ve blogged about Virtual Server before and there is a good overview white paper on the Microsoft website. What I found particularly interesting was the insight which John gave into where virtualisation technology is heading (at least in the Microsoft space).

Microsoft are keeping quiet about where Virtual PC is heading (the official answer to various questions that I raised about the future of Virtual PC was “Virtual PC is not going to be quietly killed off – however we have not made any announcements about the Virtual PC roadmap at this stage”) but there is lots happening with Virtual Server.

First of all, we have Virtual Server 2005 release 2 (R2), formerly service pack 1 (SP1), which is expected to provide a number of improvements over the current release, including:

  • A 64-bit port of the Virtual Machine Manager to support Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Editions as hosts.
  • Support for Windows Server 2003 service pack 1 as a guest operating system (currently SP1 is newer than the Virtual Server 2005 virtual machine additions and so does not perform well as a guest – as detailed in Microsoft knowledge base article 900076, although Microsoft product support services will also supply the latest additions on request).
  • Support for non-Microsoft guest operating systems (with rumours of virtual machine additions for SUSE and Red Hat Linux, and a revival of the OS/2 support inherited with the purchase of the original Connectix product which Microsoft developed to become Virtual Server).
  • Improved manageability through pre-boot execution environment (PXE) boot support within the virtual machine BIOS.
  • Bug fixes.
  • Performance improvements (up to a 60% improvement for memory intensive applications and 50% better host CPU utilisation).
  • A SCSI shunt driver (i.e. better support for SCSI mass storage device driver installation at bootup).
  • iSCSI clustering support.
  • Virtual hard disk (.VHD) pre-compaction tool.
  • Saved state (.VSV) hard disk space reservation.

Also, when R2 is released there will be a free download (and supporting white paper) called Virtual Server host clustering. This is Microsoft’s answer to VMware Vmotion, allowing virtual machines to fail over between hosts using shared disk clustering (direct attached storage, SAN, or iSCSI). Virtual Server host clustering will be agnostic of guest operating system and Microsoft see two scenarios where it will add significant value:

  1. Planned downtime – allowing live migration of a virtual machine whilst running (effectively a save and restore state). Initial figures indicate that on an iSCSI disk, a virtual machine using 128MB of RAM would fail over in 10 seconds.
  2. Unplanned downtime – migrating virtual machines to another cluster node in the event of failure, albeit with a restart as the virtual server state would be lost when the original node fails.

Post-Virtual Server R2, a service pack is expected (although the cynic in me asks whether it will be repositioned as a new release…) which will offer support for Intel virtualization technology (formerly codenamed Vanderpool) and equivalent technology from AMD (codenamed Pacifica). These technologies will provide hardware assistance for virtualisation, enabling improved performance for non-Windows operating systems (Windows performance is already improved through the use of virtual machine additions, which will no longer be required). Current milestones (obviously likely to change) are for a public beta in the first quarter of 2006 and release to manufacture (RTM) in the third quarter.

VMM arrangements

Further out, in the Longhorn Server wave will include technology called Windows virtualisation for servers (codenamed Viridian), avoiding the requirement for a host operating system.

Windows Virtualisation Architecture

Windows virtualisation for servers is based on a thin, trusted software layer, sometimes referred to as a hypervisor (although this term actually belongs to IBM, hence the long-winded Microsoft product marketing name) and a separate, small, management partition, designed as a foundation role to reduce the attack surface (sometimes known as “MinWin”). Windows virtualisation for servers does require hardware support (there are no device drivers as such as these would impinge on the trusted status of the hypervisor, although an API for independent software vendors is provided at a higher level) and is supplemented by a virtualisation stack with a WMI provider and virtual machine worker processes as well as a system of virtualisation service providers (VSPs) that provide a hardware sharing architecture (for storage, video, keyboard, mouse, USB devices, etc.) and virtualisation service clients (VSCs) that expose the hardware to the kernel, linked by a high-speed in-memory interconnect called the virtual machine bus. The final element of this technology has been christened “enlightenments” – optimisation technologies possibly best illustrated by way of an example:

  • In today’s virtual environments, guest operating systems are unaware of the fact that they are running on virtual hardware. This means that both the host and the guest operating system(s) perform their own memory management. If the guest were to be enlightened and made aware that virtualisation is in use, then this “doubling-up” could be avoided.

The ring numbers in the diagram refer to the four privilege levels within the Intel x86 processor architecture, with -1 being a new level for the hypervisor layer. Windows currently uses ring 0 (kernel mode) and 3 (user mode), with virtualisation additions running in the rarely-used ring 1 to allow non-trappable instructions to be trapped, thus avoiding negative impacts on the host environment (a technique known as ring compression).

There is no doubt in my mind that virtualisation is becoming ever more important, particularly as an enabler for the dynamic data centre. These enhancements to Microsoft Virtual Server, supported with by the new processor designs from Intel and AMD mean that Microsoft is finally set to become a real player in the enterprise virtualisation market.

Virtual Server guest operating system upgrade requires re-installation of virtual machine additions

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Here’s a tip for Virtual Server administrators: remember to remove the Virtual Server virtual machine (VM) additions before upgrading a guest VM’s operating system version!

I just upgraded a Windows Server 2003 VM from standard to enterprise edition and couldn’t get the mouse to connect (keyboard control was present, but not what you might call responsive). Virtual Server reported that the VM additions were not installed, but the guest still showed them as present in the Add/Remove Programs applet. Once they had been removed and then reinstalled, everything was back to normal.

Migrating physical servers to Microsoft Virtual Server

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve spent most of this evening at a Microsoft TechNet UK event where John Howard presented Microsoft’s Virtual Server and Virtual PC products. I’ve blogged about Virtual Server before but something I’ve never seen before is Microsoft’s Virtual Server Migration Toolkit (VSMT).

Available as a free download (although, for some reason, registration is required) and also included within Microsoft automated deployment services (ADS) v1.1, VSMT can be used to migrate from physical to virtual (P2V) hardware, or indeed between virtual servers (V2V) – although that would be easier to achieve by simply copying the configuration files (I guess VSMT could theoretically be used for migrating from a VMware platform to Virtual Server and hence also Virtual PC) – but not from virtual to physical (V2P) hardware.

VSMT moves the entire operating system and installed applications, retaining all identity (SID, MAC address, etc.) intact. Microsoft stress that it is targeted for use by IT Professionals and/or Microsoft consultants as it requires some scripting knowledge as well as DHCP and ADS infrastructures (that caveat seems a little strange to me as I wouldn’t really expect anyone other than IT professionals to be administering virtual servers!).

The various stages of the migration are:

  1. Execute gatherhw.exe on the source computer.
  2. Move the output XML file to the ADS controller.
  3. Execute vmscript.exe against the output XML on the ADS controller to generate custom scripts.
  4. Execute the auto-generated capture.cmd script.
  5. PXE boot the source computer, causing an image to be captured.
  6. Power off the source computer.
  7. Execute the auto-generated createvm.cmd script.
  8. Execute the auto-generated deployvm.cmd script.
  9. Configure virtual machine settings, network storage configuration and virtual machine additions.

VSMT does have some prerequisites in that it requires ADS and Virtual Server 2005 (not Virtual PC 2004). The source machine also has to meet certain requirements:

  • Only Windows NT 4.0 SP6A, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 are officially supported by the tool (although another attendee at the event indicated that Windows XP can also be migrated).
  • A minimum of 96MB physical memory is required (in order for the ADS deployment agent to be loaded). This rises to 160MB if FAT disks are used.
  • Windows management instrumentation (WMI) is also required in order for VSMT to gather information about the hardware. WMI is pre-installed with Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 but requires a separate download for Windows NT 4.0.
  • The primary NIC must be pre-boot execution environment (PXE) 0.99c compatible (although PXE boot floppies can be used).

VSMT looks to me to be a fantastic tool for administrators who want to consolidate legacy applications (that perhaps very little is known about and which may be running on aging hardware) onto a single modern virtualised platform, or for moving production servers into a virtualised environment for test and development purposes.

Microsoft management technologies – product roadmap

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

My recent post on Microsoft’s dynamic systems initiative (DSI) outlined the various waves of new products which Microsoft is releasing in the management space over the next few years. What follows is a summary of some of the other product roadmap information that I picked up from last Friday’s Best of the Microsoft Management Summit 2005 event:

System Center is Microsoft’s overarching brand for integration of it’s management products, in the same way that Computer Associates (CA) has Unicenter, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has OpenView and IBM has Tivoli.

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 is the first “System Center” branded product – launched last week in New York with an EMEA launch slated for 12 October 2005. The first release provides server backup and recovery for Windows – v2 (as part of the second wave of System Center products) will add support for Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint.

Established products like Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) are also part of the System Center suite and the launch of the SMS 2003 inventory tool for Microsoft updates integrates the Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) scanner into SMS – effectively a locally hosted version of Microsoft Update.

Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2) is due for release later this year and will bring a number of new features to Windows Server 2003:

  • New storage and management capabilities (Simple SAN, virtual disk service v1.1, common log file system, WS-Management, Microsoft Management Console v3.0).
  • Enhancements to Active Directory (AD) (federated services, ADAM in-the-box, AD as a NIS master).
  • .NET Framework enhancements (simplified data access and remoting, advanced transactions, ASP.NET v2.0).
  • Services for Unix (Unix application subsystem and utilities – no longer a separate download, database connectivity).

Microsoft are positioning R2 as a minor release – i.e. it has no kernel changes and will actually ship on two CDs, the first is effectively Windows Server 2003 with SP1 and the second has the extra functionality.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (formerly planned as Virtual Server 2005 service pack 1) is Microsoft’s answer for production virtual environments and will include:

  • Non-Windows guest support.
  • Network installation of guest operating systems.
  • Clustering support.
  • Greater scalability.
  • 64-bit host support.
  • Performance enhancements.
  • MOM management pack.
  • PXE booting.
  • A licensing program for the virtual hard disk (.VHD) file format.

Microsoft System Center Reporting Manager 2005 is due early in 2006 (so I guess the name will change) but is currently expected to include:

  • Integration of data from MOM, SMS and AD.
  • An extensible schema.
  • Facilitation of better business decision making.
  • Offline data warehouse.
  • Consolidated view of a multi-site hierarchy.
  • Streamlined querying.
  • Consolidated management.

Another new System Center product is Microsoft System Center Capacity Manager, a sizing solution (initially for Exchange Server 2003 and MOM 2005) which will provide:

  • Assessment of architecture choices for future deployment.
  • “What-if?” analysis.
  • Performance modelling for current deployments.
  • Identification of future bottlenecks.
  • Prediction of the user experience.
  • Understanding of the impact of changes.
  • Optimised upgrade path.

Further out on the development path are new versions of MOM and SMS. MOM v3 is expected to go into limited beta testing at the end of this year with a public beta early in 2006. SMS v4 is further out in the plan, expected in the first half of 2007 (as part of the Longhorn Server wave) with a limited beta in early 2006 which will be expanded later in the year.

Microsoft’s view is that every vendor’s management product has its agent(s), communications protocol, database and user interface, but MOM’s strength is in its knowledge, with management packs built by the product groups. Their goal is to capitalise on that strength and it is expected that MOM v3 will offer:

  • Model-based operations (more than just today’s management packs).
  • Service-oriented monitoring (using SDM models defined in Visual Studio 2005).
  • Improved task and command support.
  • Extensive software development kit (SDK) and authoring tools (making it easier to produce management packs and import knowledge, e.g. from the Internet).
  • Deep platform integration.
  • Role-based user interface.
  • Probable-cause analysis (a vehicle for managing uptime).

SMS v4 is about building on SMS 2003 (which some might consider to be the first solid SMS release), providing:

  • Model-based operations.
  • Desired configuration management.
  • IT policies and industry compliance.
  • Security interface for both intranet and Internet deployment (i.e. RPC over HTTPS).
  • Integration with Windows network access protection (NAP) to implement quarantine for patching etc.
  • Simple, role-based user interface.
  • Unified operating system deployment, pulling together RIS, ADS and the SMS operating system deployment feature pack.

Of course, much of this is still some way off, and product feature sets are always subject to change, but Microsoft is certainly making moves towards becoming a significant player in the enterprise management space – or at least for the management of their own platform.

Grabbing screenshots using the Microsoft virtual machine remote control client

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I just discovered this and think it’s really useful…

I’m in the process of documenting a client’s server configuration, using a virtual machine with a VPN connection to the client’s network and then a remote desktop protocol (RDP) connection to their servers. Because the VPN is within a virtual machine, I’m constrained by the limitations of the Microsoft virtual machine remote control (VMRC) client and thought I could only take full screen screenshots, using VMRC’s Remote Control | Special Keys | Send Print Screen menu commands. What I found (completely by accident) is that if I use the mouse to send the print screen command, the whole screen is captured; however, if I use the keyboard (Alt+R | right cursor | down cursor | carriage return) it acts like an Alt+PrtSc, and only the contents of the active window are copied to the clipboard.

I’m not sure if this is true for all clients (I haven’t tested further), but my setup was:

  • Windows Server 2003 SP1 host.
  • Virtual Server 2005 (v1.1.465.0 SE).
  • Windows XP SP2 guest (with virtual machine additions 13.206 installed), VPNed into the client’s network using the Cisco Systems VPN client (v4.6.02.0011) and then RDPed into a Windows 2000 SP4 server (RDP client v5.1.2600.2180).

Performance tips for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few days back, I blogged about the performance issues I’d experienced with Microsoft’s virtualisation products. John Howard’s blog reports that Microsoft knowledge base article 903748 was released today, featuring a whole load of performance tips for Virtual Server 2005.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server performance issues

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I used to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 on my work PC (e.g. running my work environment inside a VM so that I can easily resurrect it after a rebuild) but I found that performance was abysmal after I resumed from hibernation. Well, it seems it wasn’t just me having issues and Thomas Lee reports that Microsoft knowledge base article 889677 describes a hotfix for the issue. Nowadays I’m using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 on a Windows Server 2003 SP1 machine and having performance issues when I run more than one VM (each guest is slow to respond to keyboard/mouse actions). In fairness, the host is a notebook PC, and it is running Windows SharePoint Services too, but there are no performance issues on the host – just the guests. It would seem logical to suspect a slow laptop hard disk as the cause, but there are no obvious signs of large amounts of disk activity. John Howard blogged about performance when running Windows Server 2003 SP1 as a guest, but I can’t find anything about poor host performance. I guess I’ll have to wait for Virtual Server 2005 service pack 1.