Windows Server 2008

This video shows how to use Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to create an data cube for SQL Server Analysis Server 2008. This demo shows how to: use BIDS to create a data model project, create Data Sources, Data Views, Dimenions, and Cubes and how to Deploy the project to SSAS 2208.

Employees' losing mobile devices is a concern for any IT Pro, but with Exchange 2007 and Windows Mobile 6, you remote wipe a lost device and know that the data has been removed. In this video, Gordon Ryan shows you how to do this using Outlook Web Access and the Exchange graphical and Powershell administration tools.

Watch as Mark Russinovich and a panel of subject matter experts discuss what's in store for IT pros with Windows 7. Learn about the evolution of features like Group Policy, BitLocker To Go, DirectAccess, BranchCache, and AppLocker then get tips on troubleshooting, deployment, and application compatibility.

In this video, Kyle Rosenthal discusses some of the drivers and benefits to implementing Windows Vista in a midsize business environment.He discusses the benefits regarding mobility, desktop optimization, search, security, and compliance.

In this video, Kyle Rosenthal discusses some of the benefits of deploying Windows Vista with regard to total cost of ownership (TCO). Topics discussed include the benefits of a single image, the new Windows Vista Backup and Restore Center, and new and improved deployment and management tools.

In this video, Kyle Rosenthal takes you on a journey through the tools that you will use as an administrator on a daily basis to improve your productivity on a Windows Vista machine. Learn about the new integrated search, Windows Aero, sidebar gadgets, Group Policy tools, and more.

In this video, Kyle Rosenthal takes you on a journey through the tools that you will use as an administrator on a daily basis to manage and configure the security of a Windows Vista machine, such as Windows Firewall and Windows Defender.

In this video, Kyle Rosenthal takes you on a journey through the tools that you will use as an administrator on a daily basis to manage a Windows Vista machine. He examines tools such as the new Event Viewer, the Reliability Monitor, and power management tools.

Learn how to use Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) sequencing tools to sequence non-standard applications. In this video, Kyle Rosenthal will demonstrate how to sequence an application that has a hard-coded drive letter and also how to install applications that are "add-ins" for other applications.

The old IIS Extensions train keeps on rollin’. Last month we hit RTW with the Web Platform Installer V1.0 (Why do we call it V1.0? Just wait until you see V2.0) and as you know, Web PI is the one-stop shop for discovering, downloading and installing the various components of the Microsoft Web Platform, be they application server modules, drivers, tools or IIS extensions. And while you’re over checking that out, take a look at the new version of Microsoft.com/Web, which provides a lot more detail on why the Microsoft Web Platform is the software of choice for building Web applications and solutions. It also has a pretty flower, which we thought was kinda apt for Valentine’s Day.

And so to today’s news, where two more IIS extension release updates join the fold, to help manage distributed Web server farms and to better protect those servers against unauthorized access or malicious requests: Application Request Router and IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions.

ARR, now reaching it’s RTW milestone, enables Web server administrators and hosting providers to increase Web application scalability and reliability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. With ARR, administrators can optimize resource utilization for application servers, and so reduce management costs for Web server farms and shared hosting environments. Show me the money! The RTW version of ARR is fully supported and production ready, and adds new functionality since the Release Candidate, including:

• An improved way to allocate and identify servers for host name affinity by including 2 providers: one based on round robin and the other based on memory consumption, to more evenly distribute the “load” across shared servers
• Greater integration with IIS Manager, including the ability to manually override health statuses and configure HTTP and HTTPS ports for the application servers
• Performance improvements in least response time load balancing algorithm

The other release we have today is a newcomer to the extensions stable – the beta of IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions. This extension provides IT Professionals and hosting providers with a configurable module that can help mitigate or block Denial of Service attacks or the cracking of passwords through brute-force methods. It does this by temporarily blocking IP addresses of HTTP clients who follow a pattern that could be indicative of such an attack. This module can be configured at the Web Server or the Web Site level for analyzing and blocking potentially malicious requests.

IIS Dynamic IP Restrictions integrates into IIS Manager and extends the existing IP Restrictions functionality, maintaining support for the functionality already provided by IPv4 Address and Domain Restrictions and also adding new support for IPv6 addresses. As a result, IT Administrators can build and use a static list of IP addresses and domain names that are denied or granted access, while still restricting suspicious IP addresses dynamically based on behavior. Learn more about how to use this new extension, try it out, and of course, let us know how you get on.

David Lowe.