stuart test blog

Microsoft’s new integrated infrastructure management product, System Center Essentials 2007, has recently been released in NZ. It’s a management solution for small and medium sized businesses that provides similar functionality to Microsoft’s enterprise products like SMS and MOM, with additional features relevant to the smaller businesses. This should turn out to be popular in NZ […]

On the topic of books… The Windows Server Division Weblog has details on the newly released about to be released book called Introducing Windows Server 2008 Here’s the list of chapters: Introduction Usage Scenarios Windows Server Virtualization Managing Windows Server 2008 Managing Server Roles Windows Server Core Active Directory Enhancements Terminal Services Enhancements Clustering Enhancements […]

Time to upgrade WordPress again as Matt tells us that 2.2 (Getz) has just been released. This seems to be more of just a bug fix release with a few minor features included. No built in tagging support yet as that has been moved to the next version, 2.3.

Jeff Jones (Strategy Director in the Microsoft Security Technology Unit) has written a post about Server Core and how its reduced footprint increases security dramatically. The key here is “reduced attack surface area” as all of the most insecure areas of a server have been removed, such as IIS, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc… […]

MiramarMike started work on getting Trademe’s member listings as an RSS feed in Yahoo! Pipes after Rowan’s post about Trademe and APIs. He laid down the challenge to improve on the solution, so I managed to get some more information into the description field of the feed. Here’s the RSS feed for Movieshack’s current listings. […]

Rowan Simpson from Trademe continues the discussion about why Trademe doesn’t have an API. As I mentioned in his original post, I personally don’t have a need for an API but what I would love to see is RSS feeds throughout the site. Trademe already uses an RSS feed for the latest Trademe site announcements. […]

Most people are expecting Longhorn to eventually become officially known as Windows Server 2008, but it looks like Microsoft have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag by posting a link to the “Windows Server 2008 Reviewers Guide” on the WinHEC press site. Eagle-eyed Mary Jo Foley picked up on it and grabbed a […]

Big news this week was that Microsoft have had to drop postpone some key features from their new virtualisation software currently in development. Mike Neill, GM of virtualisation strategy went on the defensive with a lengthy blog post detailing all of the cool things about Microsoft’s new virtualisation platform, codenamed Viridian. But if you kept […]

For the Exchange 2007 architects out there, Microsoft have released a comprehensive (over 500 pages) document detailing the architectural changes from previous versions of Exchange. I’m looking forward to reading through this in a comfy chair, in front of the fireplace… Download link: Technical Architecture of Exchange 2007 Abstract Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 introduces several […]

I’ve mentioned before how I recommend that all infrastructure consultants subscribe the TechNet Blogs feed, and once again I’ve picked up on a gem. This one is courtesy of the “Schweiser” blog in Switzerland and they have provided PowerShell courseware and demos for download. The courseware is an introduction to PowerShell and is in pdf […]