Realtime Community | Windows Server

Just for Fun: A Video of the Eruption of Sarychev Volcano ... from the Space Station

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:24:47 -0500

Wow. Life imitates Google Earth. This video was apparently stitched together from a series of still photographs taken from the space station. Did its eruption really push that cloud upwards while pushing the other clouds away from itself?...

VMware Continues Price Escalation. Instructs Partners to Cease Support for Free ESXi Platform.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:30:00 -0500

The plot continues to thicken with VMware's stranglehold on virtualization pricing. This time, they're upping the ante by instructing partners to cease any and all support for VMware's no-cost ESXi platform. Veeam Software released this in a statement today: At the same time, Veeam introduced a new policy with respect to support for the free edition of VMware ESXi. "As a longtime Premier Technology Alliance Partner and supporter of VMware's product strategy, Veeam Software takes great pride in creating innovative software products that enhance the customer value of VMware ESX, ESXi, and ESXi Free," said Ratmir Timashev, Veeam president and...

Pearson VUE to be Exclusive Citrix Exam Provider

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Looks like after Microsoft cuts VUE out of the party, Citrix decides to invite them over. I just got this in my inbox earlier this week: Dear Citrix Learner: We are contacting you to communicate an important change in the delivery of Citrix exams. Effective August 31, 2009, Citrix certification exams will be delivered exclusively through Pearson VUE testing centers and will no longer be available through Prometric testing centers. You may still register for an exam and redeem exam vouchers with Prometric until July 31, 2009; however, scheduled exams must be completed in a Prometric testing center by August...

Greg Receives Microsoft MVP Award for the Second Year.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:00:00 -0500

Year #2, for the recordbooks. Funny, but I've got to remember to add that MVP award's emali address to my Safe Sender's list. Today is my re-up day for the MVP, and by the time 11:00a came around I was starting to wonder if the ol' email would come. It did at exactly 9:26a this morning and was automatically and unceremoneously dropped straight into the Junk Mail folder. Silly, Outlook. Nevertheless, thanks again to all of you who keep reading what I have to write, and coming to see what I've got to say. Whether its Remote Desktop Services, where...

Greg Takes the 70-680 Exam. Passes. You Should Too...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Over at the Concentrated Technology blog, I wrote up my experiences with taking the 70-680 MCTS exam titled "Windows 7, Configuring". In short, I found the exam to be ridiculously easy in its content, structure of questions, and level of knowledge required to be successful. In fact, if you click on over to the landing page, you'll find that I refer to the exam as embarrasingly easy. Its level of maturity in the structure of the quetsions themselves has devolved dramatically from the heydays of the MCSE. I can happily report that I passed the beta exam, which is something...

Microsoft Now Considered a Leader in Security. Yep, You Heard it Right.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

...and knowing that this sentiment is coming from none other than InfoWorld's Roger Grimes gives it even more weight. Grimes writes: Talk about a turnaround. It's always hard to recognize the larger, slow-moving paradigm shifts as they happen. But after a decade of bad press regarding its commitment to software security, Microsoft seems to have turned the tide. Redmond is getting consistent security accolades these days, often from the very critics who used to call it out. Many of the world's most knowledgeable security experts are urging their favorite software vendors to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft. Haters will...

StarWind Software Releases Free V2V Converter

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Another nice freebie out of StarWind Software. The company who brought you the first no-cost software-based iSCSI solution for Windows Failover Clusters, Hyper-V Clusters, and even ESX shared storage upps the ante with another free tool. This tool assists administrators who need to migrate virtual machines between VMware and Microsoft disk formats. StarWind's site reports the tool has a few other goodies as well: StarWind Converter is a downloadable V2V conversion tool for virtual machines. You can use it to convert VMDK to VHD files and VHD to VMDK as well as to IMG file which is a native StarWind...

New E-Book! The Definitive Guide to Application Performance Management

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Finishing off this week of RTP e-book highlights is a brand new e-book that I've been writing titled The Definitive Guide to Application Performance Management. Familiar with PerfMon? Imagine a PerfMon that hooked into every...single...aspect...of your business IT environment -- networks, servers, mainframes, even the users themselves. I talk about that reality in this 10-chapter book. Here's the blurb: If one of your servers went down today, would you know about it? Probably. But if an obscure service on a small server that is part of a much larger solution started transacting at a slower rate than normal, would you?...

New Essentials Series! The Role of Database Activity Monitoring in Database Security

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

No time for a full e-book? That's one reason why RTP develops so many of these easily-approachable Essentials Series. In a few short pages we can bring you a concise view of information that might not ever make its way into a full e-book. In this new Essentials Series, Dan Sullivan presents an interesting look at database security, focusing on the role of database activity monitoring. Here's the details. Network professionals and database administrators both play critical roles in protecting information assets, ensuring a secure environment, and maintaining compliance with regulations. In the past, network and database security practices were...

New Chapter! The Shortcut Guide to Understanding Data Protection from Four Critical Perspectives

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Also new to RTP is Chapter 3 of the e-book Understanding Data Protection from Four Critical Perspectives by Rebecca Herold. This unique e-book looks at the issues surrounding data protection from the perspectives of four different stakeholders. The result is a useful Rosetta Stone between the types of people commonly reponsible for keeping your data safe. Here's Rebecca's synopsis of the entire e-book: Too many times publications about data protection are written in such a way that only readers with a deep understanding of information technology (IT) can get value from reading them. The Shortcut Guide to Understanding Data Protection...

New Essentials Series! Increasing Performance in Enterprise Anti-Malware Software

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Today's Anti-Malware clients have become bloated suites that often have a negative impact on system performance. Yet, ever increasing security threats require that every system within an enterprise must be protected. The Essentials Series: Increasing Performance in Enterprise Anti-Malware Software offers expert insight into the factors most relevant when evaluating anti-malware solutions, as well as a best practices list to optimize both anti-malware and overall system performance. Article 1: Why Is Traditional Anti-Malware Software So Slow? Since the beginning of the Internet, anti-malware software has been an essential component of every business computer. As the Internet continues to grow in...

New E-Book! The Shortcut Guide to Certificates in the Enterprise

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Realtime Publishers just released the final chapter in Don Jones' new e-book, The Shortcut Guide to Certificates in the Enterprise. With a very down-and-dirty technical focus, this e-book is one you should definitely pick up... Do you use digital certificates? Not just utilize SSL certificates for Web servers but really use digital certificates in your enterprise? The many ways in which certificates can be employed to improve security, stability, reliability, and more are amazing--and what's equally amazing is how few businesses really leverage these simple, powerful tools. In The Shortcut Guide to Certificates in the Enterprise, author Don Jones shows...

Next Week: A Week's Worth of Highlights for the RTP E-Books You Might Have Missed

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

Hi all - Next week I'll be out of the office, presenting for the TechMentor conference in sunny Orlando, Florida. If you're also coming, make sure to stop me and say "hello". While I'm out, I want to spend the week presenting you some of the recent Realtime Publishers e-books and Essentials Series that you might have missed. Next week, you'll be getting five views on some new chapters, entire e-books, and Essentials Series that are worth your time. Plus, since they're free, they won't break your training budget. I'll be back in the saddle on the 29th, continuing the...

RD Web Access (formerly TS Web Access) Now Publishes RemoteApps from Multiple Remote Desktop Servers (formerly Terminal Servers)

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

This second new feature represents yet another glaring omission in Windows Server 2008 RTM, and its resolution means that environments of size can begin considering RDS (TS) for large and dissimilar farms. Essentially, with the original version of TS Web Access in Windows Server 2008 RTM, it was only possible to configure a TS Web Access server to gather its icons from a single TS server. This wasn't a problem if your environment leveraged farms of similar TS servers. But many of us create farms of TS servers that aren't similar. They may have different applications installed. You may be...

Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) Allows Assignment of RemoteApps to Users in Web Access

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:30:00 -0500

One of the biggest complaints about the first version of TS Web Access was its inability to assign applications to users based on permissions. With TS Web Access in Windows Server 2008 RTM, any RemoteApp you create is automatically available to all users. That changes with Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft recognized this major omission and built the necessary permissions structures in RD Web Access (remember the name change) to make this happen. Now, with R2, you'll be able to modify the properties of the RemoteApp to identify which users and/or groups should see the icon in their RD Web...