Windows Server 2008

The options available for a Group Policy backup to be completed manually.

 

Today Microsoft announced that effective June 30, 2010, Microsoft will discontinue future development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS), the infrastructure solution we designed specifically for midsize businesses. This blog post is to specifically answer the question around whether the change affects other Microsoft solution products.

The short answer is, no.

In no way does today's EBS announcement impact Windows Small Business Server, Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2008 and R2. 

Our decision to discontinue future plans for Windows Essential Business Server was based on several factors, but most notably in response to midsize businesses making a rapid shift towards technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.  As it happens, those technologies are offered today through other Microsoft solutions, and midsized customers are adopting them, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Exchange Server, and the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). 

We believe that streamlining our server product portfolio will provide clarity for customers and partners to determine which option might be right for them.

Microsoft remains fully committed to small and medium-sized businesses. EBS customers can look forward to continued support and a number of options for continuing with EBS or transitioning to other technologies.

For more information, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ebs.

This series of articles on deploying Windows 7 continues examining how to create a script in order to determine the UUID of a computer.

Demonstrating the need for comprehensive compatibility testing prior to a Windows 7 deployment, discussing also the various tools available to help you do so.

The Beta 2 for Windows Server AppFabric is available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric.  We’re encouraging developers and IT professionals working with .NET 4 and Windows Server to download the Beta and provide feedback, as we prepare to release the final version of Windows Server AppFabric to be delivered by Q3 of 2010.

 

First announced at PDC 2009, Windows Server AppFabric is a set of application services focused on improving the speed, scale, and management of Web, Composite, and Enterprise applications.

 

To date, more than 8,000 developers have downloaded the Beta 1 version of Windows Server AppFabric.  Customers, including, Associated Press, Bentley, and Jettainer are already seeing strong benefits that include significantly increased performance, simplified development and management, and improved availability and reliability for their most demanding applications. 

 

Developers and IT Pros using Windows Server AppFabric can expect the following benefits:

 

Faster Web Apps Made Easy

Windows Server AppFabric helps developers improve the speed and availability of web applications through distributed in-memory caching and replication technology that works with current ASP.NET applications.

 

Simplified Composite Apps

Developers can simplify the development of composite applications with the pre-built application services in Windows Server AppFabric, used in conjunction with Visual Studio tools and .NET Framework capabilities (ASP.NET, WCF and WF). IT Pros can also simplify the deployment, monitoring, and management of composite applications with configuration and monitoring capabilities that are integrated with familiar tools (PowerShell, IIS Manager, and System Center).

 

Enterprise Performance and Availability

An enterprise’s most important and demanding applications can achieve elastic scale, performance, availability, and reliability (benefits often associated with the cloud) with the help of Windows Server AppFabric. These and countless other benefits from an unparalleled partner ecosystem utilize familiar skills from the .NET Framework and Windows Server.

 

Complementing these Windows Server AppFabric services for on-premises development, Windows Azure platform AppFabric delivers connectivity services (specifically Service Bus and Access Control, formerly known as “.NET Services”) for composite applications spanning to the cloud. Together, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric provide a comprehensive set of services that help developers rapidly develop new applications spanning Windows Azure and Windows Server, and which also interoperate with other industry platforms such as Java, Ruby, and PHP.

 

Download the Windows Server AppFabric beta 2 today and let us know what you think!

Today I want to discuss the importance of information classification and how it can be used to prevent data breaches and help organizations with compliance requirements such as PCI, HIIPA, ISO 27001, the Massachusetts Data Protection Law 201 and other similar legislation.

Information classification is the critical first step in managing data based on its business value. When the information’s value is understood, organizations can apply security policies to reduce the risk of information leakage. The new File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 enables organizations to protect data by automatically classifying files and applying policy. FCI includes the ability to define classification properties, automatically classify files based on location and content, and invoke file management tasks such as file expiration and custom commands based on classification.

Once the files have been classified, appropriate security can be applied based on the business value of the information. For example, in a PCI environment, FCI-based classification can be used to identify files that contain sensitive credit card information, and in a health care environment, FCI based classification can identify files with private health information. Once the files have been classified file management tasks can be used to segment sensitive files onto more secure storage devices, to protect files with encryption, and to assign more restrictive permissions to the files. This helps ensure that information stored on file servers is well secured.

Another concern is email. Email messages or email attachments are a security risk as email cannot easily be controlled. One of our FCI partners, Titus Labs has extended classification and information protection to the Microsoft Outlook environment. Titus Labs Message Classification can recognize file attachments that have been classified using FCI.

The Titus Labs solution can examine the FCI classifications of Microsoft Office attachments, and can apply policy that can restrict the distribution of sensitive information. Titus Labs’ Safe Recipient policies can be used to:

• Protect the distribution of email within an organization. By examining all the recipients of an email, the Titus Labs policy can verify via Active Directory whether the recipient is allowed to receive attachments of a given classification. This prevents inadvertent data loss by warning the user that one of the recipients should be removed. For example, in an internal scenario, a financial organization may want to ensure that an employee in corporate finance is restricted from sending files classified as MERGER / ACQUISITION to another employee working as a broker or trader.
• Protect the distribution of email outside the organization. By examining the domain of each of the recipients, the Titus Labs policy can verify that the domain is listed as trusted in the policy and can warn the user of a possible data breach and warn them or force them to change the recipient list. In the following example, the sender has mistakenly selected the wrong Anne Hollingsworth at an external address. The sender receives a warning because the email contains an attachment that has been classified as CONFIDENTIAL / INTERNAL USE.

Invalid recipient is detected based on classification

This is an example of the power of FCI to protect your sensitive information. Click here for more information on FCI.

Sabrinath S. Rao

Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Windows Server Marketing - ISV Ecosystem

The 10 core concepts that every Windows network admin must know. These are the things that you not only need to know in your day to day job as a Windows Network Admin but for anyone who is interviewing as a network admin.

Remember back in December, when we released the Beta version of the Windows Server Migration Tools update...the one that allows you to migrate Hyper-V and Routing and Remote Access Services to servers running Windows Server 2008 R2...no? OK, you don't. That was three months and a lot of holiday partying ago. We understand.

The full release version of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities is now available. The update allows you to use the Windows Server Migration Tools-a set of Windows PowerShell cmdlets that shipped with Windows Server 2008 R2- to migrate Hyper-V and RRAS. And the detailed guides that take you through Hyper-V and RRAS migration, one step at a time, are now complete and live as well.

Full release versions of other guides (for migrations that do not require the Tools) have also gone live. Check out the Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 Migration Guide, and guides for the other role services of Network Policy and Access Services (NPAS), Health Registration Authority and Network Policy Server.

Your feedback is absolutely welcome, and essential to making the guides the best and most useful that they can be. Take a moment to rate the guide topics as you evaluate them, by using the star rating system in the upper right corner of every TechNet page. Fill the accompanying text box with your comments and suggestions for improving the guides. Visit the Windows Server Migration forum to ask questions, or discuss the guides, the Migration tools, or your migration experiences.

Plenty of other Migration resources are available with the new guides; you'll find everything on the Migration Portal for Windows Server 2008 R2.

-- Cheers from the Windows Server Migration Team!

BIEB stands for Microsoft’s Because It’s Everybody’s Business campaign. But it’s more than an ad campaign, it’s also a slick Web resource with loads of value-add IT Pro content. Here’s a quick update on some of the latest additions:

Where the folks in my group build the Windows Server products, Microsoft’s CIO, Tony Scott, actually has to use them. And he’s generally deploying new Microsoft technologies a year or more ahead of everyone else on the planet – while simultaneously servicing the IT needs of 85,000+ of the most technology hungry info workers you’d ever want to meet. Not an easy job. So when Tony wants to talk about the trends and innovations he sees coming in IT, my ears perk up.

You can check out Tony’s article here, as an Adobe Acrobat download (it’s right at the top of the page). His views on unified communications and virtualization were inline with my expectations, but I like his attention to cloud and employee productivity. It’s a short article, and well worth the read.

Additionally, Jeff Wettlaufer writes about the availability of System Center Configuration Manager’s Reporting Dashboard beta; Mike Gannotti gives you an inside peek at how SharePoint is powering the U.S. Olympic Committee’s pressbox site; and yours truly has a new post up there on Windows Server 2008 R2’s top benefits, which links to some deeper interviews given to Windows IT Pro magazine by Bill Laing (Windows Server Corporate Vice President) and our own Ward Ralston, my boss in Windows Server Marketing.

If you’re up for more reading, you can also download a new free e-Book (available here) entitled, Understanding Microsoft Virtualization R2 Solutions. Microsoft has been delivering a slew of new innovation around both server and desktop virtualization over the past several years; so folks looking to get a big picture handle on these new products and how to use them, this is the book for you.

There’s a lot more on the BIEB site, so I encourage you to poke around there for a while. And as always, ideas and feedback are much appreciated.

Oliver Rist

Windows Server Marketing

DameWare NT Utilities was selected the winner in the Remote Control category of the WindowsNetworking.com Readers' Choice Awards. VNC Enterprise Edition and Radmin 3 Remote Control Software were runner-up and second runner-up respectively.