MGR IT

For years now it has been common practice for businesses to avoid implementing new Microsoft products until Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been released for the product.  It has certainly been a course I have recommended over the years, as well as waiting at least a month before deploying service packs so that news of any problems with the service pack can filter through before you have to discover them yourself.

However, with the upcoming release of Windows 7, IT research company Gartner have recommended that businesses need not wait for SP1 before deploying the new operating system.

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It was “Patch Tuesday” this week for Microsoft and this month saw some noteworthy fixes released, two of which are rated Important and one Critical.

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The beta release of the next version of Microsoft Windows – Windows 7 – has been out for a while now and has received generally positive reviews, as compared to the generally less than enthusiastic response to Windows Vista.  Having installed it myself and taken it for a test run, it certainly seems to be an improvement on Vista both in terms of useability and resource requirements.

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Anyone who has used Linux will be familiar with the concept of multiple desktops – you can spread your application windows across more than one desktop and just bring up the desktop you want to work with at the time.  (This is different to multiple monitors in that only the desktop you are using is visible at the time, but the applications on the other desktops continue to run.)  It’s a pretty handy feature if you run a lot of programs and your desktop tends to become cluttered. 

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Defragmenting hard drives is one of those tasks that every computer owner knows (or should know) is required, but it tends to be left until fragmentation is causing performance issues, at which point it is often a long and difficult process to effectively defragment.

One of the problems with defragmentation of Windows computers is that the built-in defragmentation tool is fairly limited.  It does a pretty good job with general drive defragmentation, but there are plenty of instances in which it will give up with a drive still heavily fragmented.

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There have been some alarming statistics released by Secunia, a Danish vulnerability intelligence provider, in recent days.  According to figures culled from Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector system, used by 20,000 people worldwide, less than 2% of Windows are fully patched against known security vulnerabilities in the various programs installed.

Given the problems that malware (viruses, trojans, worms, spyware) cause and the detrimental effect that these vulnerabilities have on system performance and uptime, that is a very disappointing and worrying figure.  It’s no wonder that Google has warned of a malware epidemic. 

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In my last post I said I would cover Windows Essential Business Server 2008 in a future post, so here it is!

Essential Business Server 2008 is similar in concept to Small Business Server 2008 and they are both bracketed by Microsoft under the name of Windows Essential Server Solutions.  The difference is the target market.  While SBS 2008 is aimed squarely at the small business market, EBS 2008 is aimed at those organisations who have outgrown SBS 2008 and caters for up to 300 users.  As with SBS 2008, that user limit is a hard limit.

EBS 2008 is a suite of server products in one package, as for SBS 2008, but spread over more servers.  As for SBS 2008, there is a Standard and a Premium edition, with the Standard edition consisting of three servers and the Premium edition adding a fourth server.

The first server in either edition is designated as a Management Server.  This server comprises Windows Server 2008 Standard and System Center Essentials 2007.  It is compatible with SharePoint Services 3.0 and downloading and installing that product is an option during server setup, but SharePoint Services is not shipped with EBS 2008, which seems strange.  This server acts as a domain controller and provides network functions such as DNS, DHCP and WINS.  It is also the logical server to act as a file and print server.

The second server is the Messaging Server.  This server comprises Windows Server 2008 Standard, Exchange Server 2007 and a one-year subscription for Forefront Security for Exchange Server.  As the title implies, this server is pretty much dedicated to Exchange, i.e. e-mail, calendaring, etc.  This server handles the internal messaging requirements, but does not directly face the Internet.

The third server is the Security Server.  This server is Internet-facing and comprises Windows Server 2008 Standard, Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront Threat Management Gateway – Medium Business, including a one-year Web Anti-Malware subscription.  Forefront Threat Management Gateway is the successor to Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server.  This server acts as a firewall and security device for the network.  Exchange is included as a front end server, with all of the mailboxes being stored on the Messaging Server.

As mentioned, the Premium Edition adds a fourth server, which, as for SBS 2008, is a Database Server.  This server comprises Windows Server 2008 Standard and SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition.  This follows the new SBS 2008 practice of moving the resource-intensive SQL Server application to its own server for performance reasons.

Again, the three core servers are 64-bit only, but the Database server can be either 32-bit or 64-bit.  64-bit is becoming the new standard and I would certainly recommend that any business buying a new server from now on go 64-bit.

EBS 2008 has many of the same restrictions that SBS 2008 has - the user limit is a hard limit, the domain must be the root of the network forest, it doesn’t support child domains or Active Directory trusts – but these are unlikely to be of concern to the target market for this product.

EBS 2008 certainly appears to fill a gap.  Previously, businesses that had outgrown Small Business Server had to make the leap to licensing the individual components, but now there is a clear Windows Server pathway for business growth.

As a Microsoft Certified Partner we receive plenty of information from Microsoft about current and future releases of their products.  One that has really captured my attention recently is the upcoming launch of Windows Small Business Server 2008.  We work a lot with Windows Small Business Server 2003 at present, so I was very interested to see what will be included in the release version of SBS 2008.

The official launch date for the product is actually tomorrow (12/11/2008), but we have been looking at the product for a while now, through beta versions to the final release candidate.  SBS2008 continues with the simplified setup and maintenance of previous versions while upgrading the components to the latest versions and adding some new features.

For anyone who is not familiar with previous versions of SBS, it is a single server platform aimed at small businesses that includes the Windows Server operating system, Exchange for e-mail and calendaring and a firewall and database management system in the Premium edition.  All of these components are tied together with simplified administration consoles.  The package is priced at a point much less than the sum of the components, but with a hard limit of 75 users.

The components of SBS 2008 Standard are:

• Windows Server 2008 Standard
• Exchange Server 2007
• SharePoint Services 3.0
• Windows Server Update Services 3.0
• 120-trial versions of Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Windows Live OneCare for Server
• Integration with Office Live Small Business

The Premium edition includes all of the above plus SQL Server Standard 2008 for Small Business and, for the first time, a second copy of Windows Server 2008 Standard, so that the Premium components can be run on a second server.  This is a departure from previous versions that were single-server solutions only, and it is a welcome one in my opinion as running Exchange and SQL Server on the one box is a recipe for performance issues.  The second server can also be used to run Terminal Services, something that was not possible with previous versions.

One important thing to note is that SBS 2008 is a 64-bit system, so in most cases an upgrade to this version will require new hardware.  This is because Exchange 2007 is 64-bit only and fits with Microsoft’s move towards 64-bit architecture across the board.  The second server for the Premium edition can be 32-bit.

Something that has been removed in this version is ISA Server, Microsoft’s software firewall and web proxy, which was included in SBS 2000 and in the Premium edition of SBS 2003.  Most clients that I work with have external firewalls these days and having never been a huge fan of ISA Server, I don’t consider this to be a great loss.

For businesses who have outgrown SBS 2008, Microsoft have now released a new product called Essential Business Server, which is essentially an expanded version of SBS 2008 that runs on three or four servers and caters for up to 300 users.  Both SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 are being branded under the Windows Essential Server Solutions banner.  I will go through EBS 2008 in a future post.

Windows Server 2008 R2 will continue the current Microsoft methodology of releasing minor version upgrades of their server operating systems in between major version upgrades.  Originally scheduled for a 2009 release, it is now scheduled for release in 2010, but some details of what it will include have been released this week.

Probably the biggest thing to note is there will be no 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2.  It is 64-bit all the way for Microsoft from this release on as far as server systems go.

Most of the new features are intertwined with the new features that will be in Windows 7, such as DirectAccess for VPN-like connectivity for remote users and branch caching, which will save bandwidth by checking for local cached versions of data before downloading them from the server.

On the Hyper-V front, this new version will include Live Migration, allowing virtual machines to be moved from one physical host to another without having to be powered down (which VMWare’s VMotion already achieves, of course).

All indications are that the next version of Microsoft Windows, imaginatively titled Windows 7, will be released early in 2010.  While this sounds a way off at the moment, it puts the release time gap between Windows Vista and Windows 7 at around three years, compared to more than five years between Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Microsoft demonstrated a pre-beta version of Windows 7 last week, though it has not received a wider release yet.  As I am not a Microsoft employee and did not attend the Professional Developers’ Conference in Los Angeles last week I have not seen the pre-beta version for myself, but have been scouring the web for information since its debut.

From what I have seen, Windows 7 is less ambitious in the scope of its changes than Windows Vista was, but it addresses many of the issues that have caused a less than positive reaction to Windows Vista in some quarters.  The feature that is most interesting to me is that Windows 7, even in its pre-beta form, reportedly performs much faster than Windows Vista.  This is presumably due to reducing some of the bloat in Windows Vista, resulting in a slimmer and slicker operating system.

Some of the new features in Windows 7 will include:

• DirectAccess – Allowing remote access without a VPN connection
• Improvements to BitLocker drive encryption
• Better battery life for notebooks
• Quicker startup and shutdown
• A new, more intelligent Start Menu
• Simpler and better management of external devices such as Smartphones
• Improved and expanded search capabilities
• File libraries – collections of files in different locations related by theme
• Internet Explorer 8
• A sticky notes application
• More control over the look of the desktop

A beta version of Windows 7 is expected to be released early next year, which I will certainly be reviewing.