Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2012

Microsoft Press have released a free ebook called Introducing Windows Server 2012, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

There are three versions available, depending on where you want to read it:

Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – PDF ebook
Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – ePub format
Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – MOBI format

I read the version of this book that was based on the beta and found it very informative. It’s now been updated to the RTM version, so there’s no reason not to grab it now.

Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs

When it releases later this year, Windows Server 2012 will bring a stack of exciting new features and enhancements, like the fantastic multi-server management features of the new Server Manager, and of course PowerShell v3.0!

If you want to get ahead of the curve on Server 2012, then there’s no better way that digging in and getting your hands dirty, although not everyone has a whole load of spare hardware to setup a test lab, and even if you do, then it’s sometimes difficult to know where to start, especially since pre-release software tends to be lacking some of the documentation that you might want to really explore a feature in depth.

To that end, Microsoft have produced a load of Windows Server “8” Beta Virtual Labs (put together before the Windows Server 2012 name was announced). These are self-contained modules focusing on the following:

  • Active Directory Deployment and Management Enhancements
  • Configuring a Highly Available iSCSI Target
  • Configuring Hyper-V over Highly Available SMB Storage
  • Implementing Storage Pools and Storage Spaces
  • Introduction to Windows PowerShell Fundamentals
  • What’s New in Windows PowerShell 3.0
  • Managing Branch Offices
  • Managing Network Infrastructure
  • Managing Your Network Infrastructure with IP Address Management
  • Managing Windows Server “8” with Server Manager and Windows PowerShell 3.0
  • Online Backup Service
  • Using Dynamic Addess Control to Automatically and Centrally Secure Data

In addition, you might want to check out some of the Resources for IT Professionals that Microsoft have published in relation to the TechEd conference that will start in a month in Orlando.

(Thanks to my friend @Alexandair for both of those links)

PowerShell On-Ramp

Last week I was up in Edinburgh with Microsoft presenting at their IT Pro Camps. We had multiple mentions how PowerShell can help you with the managment in the three topic areas we were covering: Hyper-V, Private Clouds and Consumerisation (supporting BYOD scenarios). Taking the audiences for those three days as a representative sample, it looks like about half of the Windows-based IT community still hasn’t begun their PowerShell journey.

Now is a great time to get started with PowerShell, especially with its increased prevalence in Windows Server 2012 and some of the great improvements in PowerShell 3.0. For those just getting started, I’m encouraging everyone to get familiar with the following four cmdlets (pronounced “command-lets”) in particular:

Get-Command finds all the commands (including aliases and functions) that are available to you in the current shell.
Get-Member tells you about the objects on the pipeline which the previous cmdlet has output. eg. Get-Process | Get-Member
Get-Help provides help about cmdlets and features of PowerShell (in v1 and 2 this is all in the box; with PowerShell 3.0, you need to Update-Help).
Get-PSDrive tells you about the drives that PowerShell is exposing; not just the file system, but the registry and others.

Given those four cmdlets, you can get a long way by yourself, just through experimenation. Don’t forget to use the -whatif parameter (or -confirm) on any cmdlet that might change something.
eg. Get-Process | Where {$_.name -match “^s”} | Stop-Process -whatif

In PowerShell 3.0, you can benefit a lot from using the Show-Command UI in the PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) to help you with the parameters required to achieve a task. As a beginner to PowerShell, you can also learn a lot by looking at other people’s scripts; the Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell is a useful tool to find scripts and other great resources from online repositories.

There’s no better way to learn PowerShell than to write some scripts that solve real problems, and there are a number of pre-canned problems that you can take a shot at in the Windows PowerShell Scripting Games. You’re too late to enter this year’s competition, but you can still try out the challenges, and once you’ve given it a try, you can see the expert solutions from some of the top members of the PowerShell Community.

I suggest that while you’re getting used to PowerShell, you print a couple of quick reference guides (or cheat sheets) and keep them close to hand, or pinned up beside your monitor. You can also download a great free ebook called Mastering PowerShell from PowerShell.com, where you’ll also find a bunch of other great resources (including another free ebook on PowerShell remoting, for when you’ve got to grips with the basics).

If you like to go and buy a book, then the beginner’s book of choice is Don Jones’ Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches.

‘Windows Server’ 7 aka Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature list

Last week at PDC Microsoft announced that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the server variant of Windows 7.

Here at TechEd we are seeing demonstrations of some of W7/R2’s features. Here is a quick run through. More detail to follow.

  • Live Migration
  • Remote Desktop Services which will supersede Terminal Services.
  • Bitlocker to go
  • Direct access (a possible killer app for Server 2008 R2 and IPv6)
  • BranchCache.
  • SMB enhancements
  • Offline file enhancements including a ‘Usually offline mode.’
  • Wake on Wireless LAN.
  • Improved power management and increased control via Group Policy.
  • Group Policy scripting with Powershell.
  • Programmatic interface in to performance and reliability systems.

Monday II: Keynote

The keynote was given by Brad Anderson the General Manager of Microsoft’s Management and Services division and focused on ‘Dynamic IT.’ One of the main elements was Virtualization and its management. The video of the Keynote will be available online soon if it is not already but here are some notes that I jotted down.

Some interesting figures were mentioned.

  • Most servers across the word are running at less than 10% utilisation
  • ‘In the future’ a predicted 5% of the worlds energy consumption will be by the Datacenter
  • Microsoft’s use of Virtualization has seen energy savings of up to 90%.

We saw a demo if System Center Virtual Machine manager including the live migration feature in Windows Server 2008 R2. Application virtualization was also mentioned and we were told that this will make application compatibility issues a thing of the past. Brad Anderson also said that Microsoft had observed a trend in enterprises towards only running server services on physical machines ‘by exception’.

A demo of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta then followed which supports cross platform extensions and will be able to monitor Solaris, Suze, Redhat, MySQL, Oracle on top of the services it can currently manage.

The keynote then went in to detail on Windows Server 2008 R2 (M3 available for download) but I will post separately on this.

The Keynote finished with an overview of Microsoft Online services focusing on a mixed local and hosted implementation of Microsoft Exchange. The service is due for release in EMEA during spring 2009.

There were also demonstrations of features of the next version of SQL server ‘Kilimanjaro’ and some other areas which Jonathan may like to discuss.

Hyper-V Server 2008: First Impressions

Hyper-V Server 2008 is a free virtual server offering basic of virtualization features, making it ideal for, test, development and basic Server consolidation.

I have been giving Hyper-V Server 2008 a quick run through.

Installation

The installation is built on the PE model just like Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 so working with the disks is very easy.

Setup
Setup

After the installation things will still look familiar.

Setup

User Interface

The User Interface at the on the physical machine is made of of 2 simple command Windows. One for managing the Server and the other, an ordinary command Window.

Setup

All basic operations such as joining the Domain, setting the Computer Name and an update schedule can be called from this menu. At this point you can also enable Remote Desktop.

Creating a Virtual Machine.

Fortunately you do not do this using the Hyper-V Server ‘Interface.’ You need to use the Hyper-V Manager Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. Once connected you can create the First Virtual machine.

Setup
Setup

First Impressions

Hyper-V Server 2008 seems like a simple and efficient way to run Virtual machines. The footprint of the Hypervisor is tiny in terms of RAM and Hard Disk usage and the amount of patching compared to Server 2008 should be greatly reduced which means more uptime.

The downside is that unlike other versions of Server 2008 each Windows guest VM requires it’s own license. You see a feature matrix of the different versions of Hyper-V here.

In summary, this product would be a good choice for departments working with test servers and an good way to get the most out of your older server hardware while making Migration to new hardware easier when the time comes (i.e. put the guest machine on another Hypervisor).