TechVirtuoso

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 RTM

August 27th, 2009 at 9:50 PM No Comments Shane Pitman

Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing, RTM, of its System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, and scheduled general availability via volume licensing for October 1. System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a unified, multi-vendor management solution for the virtualized datacenter that helps enable centralized administration of physical and virtual assets, increases server utilization, and provides dynamic resource optimization of virtual IT infrastructure.

The initial VMM 2008 release entered beta in the second quarter of 2008, roughly 8 months after the release of VMM 2007. The initial release of VMM 2008 introduced support for technologies like Hyper-V and VMware ESX. Now, a little over a year later, VMM 2008 R2 extends these capabilities to include:

Live Migration — for moving virtual machines between hosts with no downtime
Additional enhanced migration support for SAN migration in and out of clusters
Multiple virtual machines per LUN using Clustered Share Volumes
Hot add of virtual machine storage
Functionality to migrate storage for running VMs
iSCSI target and SAN-based migration across clusters
Template-based rapid provisioning
Maintenance mode to automate the evacuation of VMs off host machines,
Live Migration host compatibility checks

A full list of changes can be found on the What’s New in VMM 2008 R2 page. If you would like to learn more on the new features and capabilities of VMM2008 R2, Microsoft TechNet Technical Product Manager, Kenon Owens, will be hosting a session entitled ‘Technical Overview of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2’ on Wednesday, September 9, at 10:00am Pacific.

Microsoft delivers Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2

August 27th, 2009 at 9:13 PM 1 Comment Don Smith

This, more then likely, last major update for Microsoft’s e-mail server comes a week after the final beta on Exchange Server 2010 and is said to provide the foundation for transitioning to the upcoming, final release of the 2010 version.

The Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 can be downloaded from this page for free and includes the following:

Enhanced Auditing – New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository.
Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality – A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool.
Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation – The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.
Public Folder Quota Management – SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
Centralized Organizational Settings – SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Internet Explorer 8 now on Windows Server Update Services

August 27th, 2009 at 12:17 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

Microsoft has begun pushing out Windows Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Server Update Services, as it announced back in June that it would start doing. The package is published as an update rollup, so WSUS administrators who have their systems set to automatically approve such packages will want to be careful after synchronizing if they’re not ready for a full IE8 deployment.

Only systems with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 will be able to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Systems still running Windows 2000 will be stuck on Internet Explorer 6.

Internet Explorer 8 was released to the general public in March 2009.

Apple OS X 10.6 to include anti-malware scanning

August 26th, 2009 at 12:43 PM 2 Comments Michael Stanclift

According to a report from The Mac Security Blog, a previously undocumented feature of Apple OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is that it includes a built-in anti-malware scanner. While there are few details on exactly how this works, ZDNet seems to think that it has entered into some type of agreement with a commercial anti-virus company, as they have confirmed that it is not using the open-source ClamAV engine.

Currently the Security page on the Apple website makes no mention of the feature directly, but it does highlight some of the other security measures in place for Snow Leopard, and anti-phishing technologies built into Safari. At the bottom of the page Apple does acknowledge that “since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection.”

snow_malware_blocker

OS X 10.6 will be shipping this Friday, August 28.

Microsoft highlights PowerPoint 2010 improvements

August 26th, 2009 at 12:28 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

If you thought Office 2010 was more than just ribbon improvements, you’re in for a surprise.

Microsoft has released, through the PowerPoint Team Blog, a new video and some details about some of the updates PowerPoint 2010 will be receiving. The team says this will be the biggest visual update to the product in the last 10 years. PowerPoint’s graphics engine has been rebuilt to take advantage of 3D accelerated graphics cards by using DirectX. Through hardware acceleration, they’re able to add new transition and animation effects. They’ve also added a new timelines UI, animations choreography and painter.

Another feature which was highlighted last week, is a new Protected View, which allows PowerPoint and other Office applications to run in a sandbox when downloading and opening presentations from the Internet. This allows potential malicious code to be isolated and contained within the file. More information on that feature can be found over at the Office 2010 Engineering Blog.

Intel launches pluggable 10GbE NICs

August 26th, 2009 at 12:06 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

X520Images Intel has announced the launch of their new Ethernet Server Adapter X520 family, their first 10 Gigabit (GbE) adapter that support “pluggable” optics. Intel claims the additional configuration options in the X520 give administrators “more flexibility in how they deploy 10GbE in their servers and datacenters.”

Previously 10GbE adapters required the purchase of an additional SR adapter to function, the X520 is compatable with SR, LR or SFP+ direct attach cable all from the same card. This allows administrators to switch back and forth after purchase without buying all new cards, just new optics.

The card is based on the Intel 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller and also has backwards compatible support for 1GbE, which Intel claims is an industry first.

Attend a Microsoft launch event and receive a free copy of Windows 7

August 22nd, 2009 at 6:54 PM No Comments Frank Owen

Microsoft is running a launch campaign for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010. The campaign is called “The New Efficiency” and is focused toward IT Professionals and Developers. There are three different tracks that you can take at this event, Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.

There are 25 events across the country so I am sure there is one near you. Sorry international folks, Microsoft will not be holding similar events abroad.

For more information or to register for an event, visit the Microsoft event home page.

Next version of Microsoft Office for Mac to include Outlook

August 16th, 2009 at 9:42 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

Thursday, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Office suite for Apple OS X would include Outlook, replacing Entourage as the bundled mail client.

“It is an exciting time for the MacBU with updates to our current products and the first public announcement about the next version of Office for Mac. For several years we have focused on providing the best Microsoft Exchange client for the Mac, and the Web Services Edition delivers that today for Entourage users,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager for the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft. (more…)

HP Back to School Giveaway

August 16th, 2009 at 11:54 AM 1 Comment Frank Owen

Do you have kids heading to school and need new equipment for them? Do you just like to win free laptops? Either way HP has the contest for you. You get 25 chances to win a HP DV6, HP Mini 1100 and a couple other cool prizes. Check out the link below!

http://www.backtoschoolgiveaways.com/

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