Community Server

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have RTMed. Some new features include (of course) IIS 7.5, new Active Directory functionality (recycle bin), the Live Migration for Hyper-V virtual machines, and direct access/branch cache (for clients)

My work recently gave me a new Latitude E6400 (the E6500 was just a bit too heavy) which is a great machine for running virtual machines out of the office. It has an internal 7200 RPM drive, a modular drive (120GB 1.8" 5400 RPM) and I can connect an external 2.5" 7200 RPM drive via the eSata port. It also supports up to 8GB of RAM, ...

After adding extra disks to the home "data centre" and then getting a new backup device (Dell RD1000), today I took a punt on upgrading the RAM. When I originally bought my Dell PE SC1430 it was rated at a maximum of 8GB RAM. The latest models offer a maximum of 16GB of RAM, and after finding nothing on the interwebs that might ...

This Easter weekend, having a bit of downtime, I decided to convert my virtual infrastructure at home from VMWare Server to Hyper-V. The major blocking issue was a lack of RAID controller drivers from 3Ware for their 9650SE-series cards, but thanks to Justin Ho it seemed like I was good to go. The timely release of Hyper-V RC0 meant that I could ...

Here's a useful little module I didn't know even existed, but it appears to have been added to the Microsoft download site in the past couple of days. It allows for bit rate throttling of common, supported, media files when served by IIS 7.0. IIS first sends the first twenty or so seconds of data at the fastest possible rate, and then ...

Today Microsoft released to the Microsoft download site WebDAV modules for Windows Server 2008 / IIS 7.0 in both x86 and x64 versions. These are also available from the www.iis.net website. Robert McMurray has written a page explaining how to configure the new WebDAV module.

Well, the book is finally a reality. I received my copies today - yay! You can buy a copy from Amazon.com or your favourite bookstore now.

Windows Server 2003 SP1 introduces kernel mode SSL. Windows Server 2008 takes this one step further and introduces kernel mode authentication. This can be utilised by IIS 7.0 applications to improve performance. It also has implications for Kerberos authentication and management of SPNs.Consider the following scenario: Ensuring Kerberos AuthN for ...

In previous versions of IIS, it has sometimes been difficult to isolate web application pools from each other. If multiple web application pools are configured to run as the same identity (e.g. Network Service) then code running inside one web application pool would be able to use File System objects to access configuration files, web pages and ...

Well, I'm writing a blog post on IIS application sandboxing, and this item crosses my inbox. It appears that all the time spent mucking about with Windows Home Server, and Windows Media Centre might now actually result in MCTS certification. So, I can justify the endless hours spent mucking with drivers and backups as a work-related endeavour! ...