stuart test blog

Virtual PC is infamous for it’s inability to support Linux installations. There are always hacks required to get through the installation, but once installed your Linux machine should work fine. So I wasn’t completely surprised when I ran into issues while trying to install the latest server version of Ubuntu 8.04. A quick Google search […]

Microsoft have just announced that Windows Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing. I’m really looking forward to this product becoming publicly available and my own testing has been very positive so far. I have to correct one point made in Microsoft’s blog announcement, it was stated that Server Core doesn’t install a GUI which […]

Mauricio has just completed the upgrade of the Geekzone site and it is now running on Windows Server 2008 (RC0, I’m assuming.) This is a good showcase for Microsoft as Geekzone is in the top 15 NZ sites for unique visitors, according to Mauricio. Microsoft have already moved 75% of their servers on to Windows […]

This press release just popped up as I was about to sign off the for the night, but I just had to get a quick mention out: "Integrated IT Designed for Midsized Businesses" Microsoft have finally revealed some details about a new server bundle for "midsized" business called Windows Essential Business Server. This has been […]

Now that I have a 64 bit notebook, I get to do fun stuff like install the 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008 (beta 3). I wasn’t too sure how well the experiment would go, but so far it’s been pretty successful. Drivers weren’t such an issue as most of the Vista x64 drivers […]

I’ve been using a lot of evaluation software at home recently to build up a virtual lab that I’ll use for testing and demos. I needed to know when my eval copies of Windows Server 2003 were due to expire but couldn’t figure it out without having to trawl through Google Groups first. Turns out […]

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 […]

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… […]

Now that I have a new Server Core installation ready for setup, I read through the Step by Step guide a bit more and continued on to the initial setup. Change the admin password As I mentioned in a previous post, when you create a new Server Core installation you are greeted with a logon […]

Well this is interesting – my first, first-hand experience with Server Core. There’s only one command prompt window rather than the two that was present in previous betas. There is still a GUI, and you can run several apps such as Notepad, Task Manager, Regedit, which are probably the three most useful GUI apps I […]