Hyper-V R2: Dynamic Storage

This video looks at the new Dynamic Storage capability in Hyper-V R2, which enables the addition or removal of storage (VHD or Pass Through Disk) to/from a running virtual machine, with no downtime.

Duration: 6m 51s

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Hyper-V R2: Initial Installation & Configuration

This video walks through the installation of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, and also looks at some of the key changes in this release, such as Processor Compatibility, Core Parking, and more.

Duration: 17m 37s

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Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Is Available for Download

Microsoft released the SP1 beta at Tech Ed North America in June. Since then, almost 500,000 SP1 mailboxes have gone into production in Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customer environments.

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How to Backup Exchange 2010 for Free

So, more and more companies deploying an Exchange 2010. And as you know, the next step after Exchange Implementation MUST be a backup configuration.

And now is a very surprising point. Many sysadmins are willing to pay over for complex backup solutions which they don't necessarily need.
As "Exchange Dinosaur" (I still remember Exchange 4.0 :))) I would like to say that one of the best backup (and what is more important, restore solution) always was Microsoft NT Backup. Since Windows 2008 Microsoft has removed NT Backup and replaced it with "Windows Server Backup Feature"

First, I need to mention the aspect that Microsoft has enabled Windows Server Backup to take VSS backups of the Exchange databases, so the following can work on Exchange 2010 and Hyper-V, on Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2.

As an additional note, Microsoft has extended Windows Server Backup Feature in Windows 2008 R2, and I really recommend to install Exchange 2010 on Windows 2008 R2 and not on Windows 2008. The reason why I say that is because of a new feature that's come with the Windows Backup Server of Windows 2008 R2. On Windows 2008 R2, backups can be taken from both the Active and the Passive databases of a DAG (Database Availability Group). This is very cool news because, in Windows 2008, backups could only be taken from the Active Node.

Ok, I should stop taking and should start to show you how to implement a FREE Backup of Exchange 2010 :) ...

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Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop Session Host environment

Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop Session Host environment: planning considerations is a technical whitepaper recently released by Microsoft.

Historically, Microsoft Outlook has only been supported in an RDSH environment when it is deployed in Online Mode and connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server. This is still the recommended configuration for Microsoft Outlook 2010 when it is deployed in an RDSH environment. However, customers who deploy Outlook 2010 now have the supported option of enabling Cached Exchange Mode when Outlook 2010 is installed in a Remote Desktop environment. Cached Exchange Mode might be ideal for deployments in which Outlook is connecting over a high latency connection to an Exchange server that is located remotely. For the relatively few users who access Outlook through a remote desktop, this might be the ideal configuration. However, Online Mode against the Exchange server is still the most scalable and optimized configuration for large deployments.

This white paper covers three major areas that you should consider when you deploy Outlook 2010 with Cached Exchange Mode in a Remote Desktop environment:

• Storage footprint
• Performance impact
• Networked Storage

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TechNet Magazine – August 2010

The August 2010 edition of the TechNet Magazine is now available for online reading.

• Editor's Note: Cloudy with a Chance of E-mail

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Fully Unattended Windows 2008 and Windows 7 - 1227 Lines of scripts

Last few months I've been working on a project for one very big Canadian Company.
Now I can say that this project is coming to the end :).

I was concentrated on building a solution for fully unattended deployment procedure of Windows Server 2008 Servers and Windows 7 Workstation.
In total this project covers 200 Servers and about 1000 Workstation. I've used a lot of tricks and tips in this project and built a lot of scripts to automate EVERYTHING :).

Today I asked myself, "How many lines of code you wrote in all scripts for this project?"

So, after very simple maths I can say, all my scripts for FULLY UNATTENDED Windows 2008 and Windows 7 system contain 1227 lines :).

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How to Disable IPv6 via Group Policy (GPO)

I've already mentioned many time that I'm disabling IPv6 almost on all my servers and workstation.
In today days, I really don't see a reason to have it enabled (maybe in next few years, but not now).

If you search my site you will find few ways how is possible to disable IPv6. Personally, I'm preferring to disable it systemwide, it means I disable IPv6 as a component. Here is how I do that.

Let's see today how to disable / enable IPv6 via Group Policy (GPO)...

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