Susanne Dansey’s Blog

There has been shed loads of information out there regarding this Wednesday’s launch of Windows Server 2008. Here are to name but a few:

• Wayne Small’s Blog (more information on Wayne can be found here)
• Susan Bradley’s Blog (more information on Susan can be found here)
• Windows Server Division Weblog
• David Overton’s Blog
• Matt McSpirit’s Blog (particular focus on virtualisation)

So that’s a few links for you to add to your RSS feeds so you can keep in touch with technical developments. But what about where you can go to train yourself and your staff? Our guys here will be training up on it this week (amidst their MLSS studies) so here are a few links for you to check out and use:

Windows Server 2008 - ‘Learning Snacks’

An ideal place to start if you are short on time. The Learning Snacks site features a number of short, interactive presentations on popular WS2008 topics using various media such as animations and recorded demos.

Click here to visit

Windows Server 2008 Readiness Events

Global Knowledge and Interquad Learning are running a few workshops in March which you may be interested in. Further information and registration can be found here.

Register for the ‘First to Know’ Windows Server 2008 Exam offer - be the first to certify with a 40% discount on the exams. Click here for the discount offer.

Availability of Microsoft Certification exams will closely follow the release of WS2008. There are three Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certifications in development. To achieve any of these certifications, you must successfully complete one exam and demonstrate knowledge and skills in a key area of the technology: Active Directory, Network Infrastructure, or Applications Infrastructure.

Two job-role certifications, Server Administrator and Enterprise Administrator, will require a combination of MCTS and Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) exams. In total, five exams will make up the Windows Server 2008 suite of exams. Learn more about Windows Server 2008 certification.

I’ve put together some facts for you which you might want to pass on to your clients over the next few weeks/months as you begin to talk about the new server technology:

• Just upgrading client PCs to Microsoft Windows Vista can yield throughput and time-to-completion improvements of up to 2.5x over Windows XP. Complete migration of servers to Windows Server 2008 can yield throughput and time-to-completion improvements of up to 3.5x over Windows XP/Windows Server 2003. (The Tolly Group White Paper 2007)
• Windows Server 2008 is ~45 times faster than Windows Server 2003 (source)

If you’re looking to show the customer what the biggest changes to Windows Server 2008 over 2003 are, then you could always start with these:

• Server Core: WS2008 provides a minimal environment for running specific server roles to help reduce the maintenance and management requirements as well as the attack surface for those server roles.
• Windows Powershell: New SMPS with Server 2008 has been specifically designed for IT administration to be used in place of cmd.exe and Windows Script Host.
• Terminal Services: Now supports remote desktop protocol 6.0. Share a single application over a remote desktop connection instead of the entire desktop.
• Hyper V: Includes everything needed to support machine virtualisation. Reduces costs, and creates a more dynamic IT infrastructure.
• Self healing NTFS

There are six versions available: Standard, Enterprise, Data Centre, Web Server, Storage Server, and Small Business Server 2008 (standard and premium editions).

However, if we’re talking solutions to the client, does all of this really matter to them? Probably not, so if I’m a customer and my IT consultant/reseller was recommending a new server infrastructure to me, why am I going to get excited about WS2008?

Self-healing NTFS file system - In Windows Server 2008, a new system service works in the background that can detect a file system error, and perform a healing process without anyone taking the server down. The only effect that an application would see is that files would be unavailable for a period of time that it was trying to access. The system never has to come down, corrupted files are healed automatically and therefore less pain.

Parallel session creation - Bottlenecks on large Terminal Services systems previously experienced by logging into more than one user at the same time have now been removed. Great news for those businesses who have a few hundred people logging on Monday morning to find they twiddle their thumbs whilst their sessions are initialised.

Clean service shutdown - In WS2008, the 20-second countdown you get when the system shutdown procedure is initialised has been been replaced with a service that will keep applications given the signal all the time they need to shut down (as long as they signal back they’re shutting down.) This makes for cleaner overall shutdowns even if there is a chance the new procedure gives too much power to applications.

Kernal Transaction Manager - No, not a character from the latest war film but a feature that developers can take advantage of to help greatly reduce, if not eliminate, one of the most frequent causes of System Registry and file system corruption: multiple threads seeking access to the same resource.

SMB2 network file system - SMB2 replaces SMB which was adopted as the network file system for Windows. SMB2 allows you to deal with media files which have reached sizes so large at times that a new system is needed. SMB2 on media servers delivered 30-40 times faster file system performance than Windows Server 2003 (that’s a 4000% boost).

Address Space Load Randomisation (ASLR) - No matter how many times you repeat this to your customer, they aren’t going to get it, or if they do, then I’m sure they won’t know what to make of it. However, this feature makes sure that no two subsequent instances of an Operating System load the same system drivers in the same place in memory each time. Okay, so this still probably won’t mean a thing, but when you explain that Malware can only work if it knows where the operating system service live then it starts to make a bit more sense. So if Windows occupies one of the 256 randomly selected locations in memory (offset by +/- 16MB of randomised address space) the odds of malware being able to locate a system service on its own have massively decreased.

Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) - Now that there is better standardisation across the hardware ‘ecosystem’, it’s easier to write an application that can report device errors and therefore better diagnostic and management of these errors.

Windows Server Virtualisation - Traditionally, customers have lots of servers for lots of different purposes (SOHO businesses excluded) which can cause constraints on space, power, plus the cost of management. By consolidating, buinesses could save up to 85% of CPU time for their under-utilised servers.

PowerShell - Allows IT professionals to gain better control of the automation of the server system. On the whole, I wouldn’t expect the general end-user to get very excited over this but I reckon if you can find a home for PowerShell on their system and show them how you’ve saved time by creating some scripting that gets the job done faster, then there’s your sales pitch for PowerShell.

Server Core - This feature is probably going to be the one that really starts to make a difference for Microsoft, but how does it help you and your clients? Server Core allows you to install a minimal amount of server options to create a low-maintenance server environment with limited functionality.

So, Windows Server 2008, is more efficient and easier to manage, but whilst many of these make it easier for you as the administrator, this obviously means less downtime for the client and therefore more time for you to focus on helping them grow their businesses.

Hat doft to George too for highlighting a recent post on the ”10 Coolest Features of Windows Server 2008“ (although I’m not sure how many customers will use the word ‘cool‘ in the same sentence as WS2008…

Oh, and one more blog to read: Mark Russinovich

Windows Server 2008 Automation and Alerting Technologies (find out what you can do with Vista and WS2008 straight out of the box)

Effectively selling solutions involving WS2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (Australian Partners only)