Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager

It have taken some time, but it now looks like the IPD guide for System Center will start to arrive (in beta versions first). First one out are Scvmm (Well the System Center Service Manager have been there for a while)

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides are documents writen by Microsoft to help, like the name says, plan and design implementation of technologies and solutions.

You will fing IPD on the following technologies:

Virtualization Windows Server 2008 System Center Microsoft SQL Server

Windows Optimized Desktop Scenarios Communication & Collaboration Security

The IPD site are located here

Free Windows Server 2012 ebook

The next big thing, now that System Center family are here are without doubt the next version of Windows Server. And with the newly released "Release Candidate" it's coming fast.

So it's time to start learn whats new and why should you care about the next version. Jumping around on the internet and reading differnt blog post are time consuming and you never seems to get the debt of information, just what people think and have heard. Mitch Tulloch have teamed up with Microsofts server team to be able to give us what we need. 



Graphical way of finding Windows 8 information

On Microsoft's msleap365.com learning page there have now been published a very nice page called  "Windows 8 Early Content"

The page are a graphical way of finding information about Windows 8, it's devided into sections:

Introduction
Developing Fundamentals
Developing Metro Applications
Advanced Development of Metro Apps
Hardware
Management
Networking
Security

Will I save disk space with Windows Server 2012 Deduplication?

First thing first, Windows Server 8 beta will change name to Windows Server 2012. This was officially announced at MMS2012 and the release date will be later this year.In juni we will se the next test version, called "release candidate"

One of many new cool features are the disk deduplication, check out my blog post here for more info.

There is a tool to check out how much space you might save by using deduplication, but for now the tool are only available after you have enabled the file server feature on a Windows Server 2012 installation. And that's to bad since you might want to test out how much space you can save with an Windows Server 2012 upgrade.

But luckily there is a way to cheat....

Windows Server 8 Deduplication

The new deduplication in Windows Server 8 looks awesome, and it just might be the "killer app" for many business to start using Windows Server 8.

 The feature will make it possible for companies or servers that don't use SAN/NAS with deduplication to save disk space, alot if disk space.

Windows 8 Seminar in Bergen

Tuesday 20 March I will be holding an Windows 8 seminar for Mtug (www.mtug.no) Bergen.
I am going through what I consider to be the most important things that come in Windows 8 on both server and client side for enterprise usage.
It is a variant of the lecture I gave at NIC in January and UTmessan, Iceland in February, but more informal.

 Lecture will be given in Norwegian andIt will be held at EDB Ergogroup's offices at Bryggen 3-5, Bergen (Norway)  and as with all Mtug talks it's free.
Currently there are vacancies, but it's just posted so it might fill up fast.

Mtug is free to join and no obligations, just fun and Microsoft technology

To register go HERE

Windows Server 8 Beta, how to get started testing it out

The Windows Server 8 Beta are available for download and testing. Downloading it from here and installing it are no problem, but what to do when you have installed it might be harder to know.

There will always be clear visual differences you might want to check out, but sooner or later you just don't know what to test out or how to acctualy test it out.

Or maybe you just want a better structured lab.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview are out

The Windows 8 Comsumer Preview (what the more experienced geek would have called a beta) are now out. To download it and get more information you can go in here, this is the Springboard site, the best place to get all you information on both Windows 8 and Windows 7

And the Technet community at Microsoft are already ready for you questions and input here

If you want to try it out without installing it on your pc?
Try Windows To Go, how to do it you find here

Windows 8 screen shot leak, are the start menu dead?

Looking at the screen shoots published at http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-screenshots-of-build-8820-leak-new-info-surfaces it looks like we are not getting the ordinary start menu back. Wonder what will happen if we try the registry hack I have bloged about previous here?

If you take a look at the picture you see that the start option is missing totaly

Windows 8 To Go, Or how to test Windows 8 without installing it on your PC

29.Feb: Working also with the new Consumer Preview!!!
Lots of new cool features are coming with the new version of  Windows, and it might be interesting to test it out now, even if it’s just an developer preview version that are out now. Of course you can try it out virtual (and if you have Windows 8 installed you can use the Hyper-V role to test out..eh, okay, that’s one of the new features in Windows 8). But it’s always better to test out new operation system on actual hardware. So this would ordinary lead up to dual booting operating systems (Windows 8 are not stable or feature rich enough to be you only operation yet, maybe that will change in the beta release) or changing hard disk. But one new cool feature that you can use without actually installing the operating system is the “Windows 8 To Go”

Windows 8 Beta relase exposed by Microsoft

Finally Microsoft have given away the time for the Beta release of Windows 8.

During a App store session they told late february as dato of the beta release.

If you want to check it your self, just take alook at this video, and if you don't care about the App store just go to 3:23