Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Goes Live

Microsoft has just unleashed the Release Candidate of Server 2012. Release Candidate versions are usually the very last beta versions of a Microsoft server operating system before the launch of the actual release, and this Server 2012 Release Candidate confirms that Microsoft is dedicated to the Metro interface.

Many IT professionals were skeptical about the usefulness of including a consumer-oriented touch UI in a server product, especially one that targets businesses and professional use. However, despite all that, Metro remains in Server with a GUI install option. The Release Candidate edition also has a couple of minor changes over the Server "8" beta, though most of them are purely cosmetic.

The most noticeable change is that the moniker Server 8 Beta has been completely replaced with Server 2012 in the splash screen and installation screens whenever you perform a Server with GIU installation. In addition to that, the background color during installation has been changed as well as in the Metro-style Start screen. The dull green has been replaced by a vivid dark blue, though server administrators have no ability to change this, unlike the screen in the beta release of the Windows 8 client operating system.

An extra setting has been added under the Server 2012's Charms Menu and is known as Tiles. This option doesn't provide any new setting controls over the beta release, though it does launch the settings that allow you to enable and disable administrative tools as well as allow admins to have clear personal info from the tiles. In the beta version, these same options were available directly under Settings; Microsoft has simply added an extra step in order to access them.

The Release Candidate's Start screen has eight tiles by default, which comprise the Start menu, whereas the beta only had seven tiles. These tiles are labeled as Server Manager, Windows PowerShell, Administrative Tools, Computer, Task Manager, Control Panel, IE and Desktop. The final change is that when you right-click on the Start screen, the "All Apps" icon is now on the bottom right-hand side instead of the left.

There also doesn't seem to be any way to disable Metro in the Release Candidate, though it is safe to assume that the user interface will be in the final release product. Server administrators can also choose to bypass the Metro user interface and simply use the Desktop and Server Manager for administration. If that doesn't do it for you then you can also choose to install Server 2012 in command-line Core mode.

This Release Candidate is probably going to be very close to what the final product is going to be like for Server 2012. There weren't a lot of things that were changed from the Beta version to the Release Candidate version and you can expect that any changes made before launch will be mostly under-the-hood.

Source: PC Mag - Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate: Metro Lives!

Find out what is going on in the Tech Army World.

What are the Top 10 Money Making Missions?
What other companies have joined and what do they do?
How do I join the Tech Army Organization ?

Is Too Much Changing with Windows Server 8?

Many tech professionals expect Windows Server 8 to come out sometime this year and, amid many reports, to be a little different from past installments. There are supposed to be a lot of new things that will come with the introduction of Windows Server 8, which leads many to wonder if these changes will boost the sales of Microsoft's Windows Server products or be too much too quickly?

In terms of revenue, Microsoft is the world's largest software maker. The greatest revenue generator by far for Microsoft is its business sector. This portion of Microsoft's business accounts for almost 32% of Microsoft's total revenue with 90% of this coming from Microsoft Office Systems. Microsoft is expecting big things from Windows Server 8.

According to ZDNet reported Jason Perlow, "Server 8 will unleash a massive tsunami of new features." Perlow recently wrote a review of Windows Server 8 after going to a two-day introductory workshop. Perlow also added, "By the end of the second day at the Windows Server 8 Reviewer's Workshop, I was literally ready to pass out from the sheer amount of stuff being shown to us."

One foreseeable problem is that almost half of all PC users on the market these days are still using Windows XP, the Microsoft operating system that is nearly 10 years old. In addition to that, Windows 7 is still fairly new and Windows 8 seems best suited for touchscreen devices, which would leave many users uninterested.

The biggest thing for Windows Server 8 will be whether or not it is easy enough for your average PC user to pick up and learn. Many people wonder if Windows 8 will be more suited for tablet and tablet users and less for computer and technology professionals.

Source: MSNBC - Is Windows Server 8 Too Radical of a Change

Find out what is going on in the Tech Army World.



What are the Top 10 Money Making Missions?

What other companies have joined and what do they do?

How do I join the
Tech Army Organization ?

Windows Server 8 Beta Now Live

Microsoft, right on the heels of its public viewing of Windows 8, has just released a beta version for the company's Windows Server 8 operating system. Windows Server 8, which was officially announced last September, updates the code base for Microsoft's flagship server OS, the current version of which is Windows Server 2008.

The beta version will allow administrators to test the operating system and give feedback to Microsoft who will then use that feedback to finalize the software for commercial release. However, Microsoft did not disclose any information on when the final production ready version of Windows Server 8 would be available for purchase.

Windows Server 8 is a very major update for the operating system and contains a plethora of improvements to virtualization, multi-machine management and application hosting capabilities, according to Corporate Vice President for Server and Cloud at Microsoft Bill Laing.

In terms of virtualization, Windows Server 8 will allow administrators to create virtual networks, allowing different business units or customers to share one physical network while simultaneously maintaining complete independence from the other virtual networks. Another new feature will allow you to move shared files between nodes without ever having to stop the server applications that use these files, which will help greatly in disaster recovery and maintaining continuity in operations.

As far as hosting applications are concerned, Windows Server 8 will also include a copy of .NET Framework 4.5, which also includes new capabilities to run a program concurrently across multiple processor cores. The Web server software Internet Information Server (IIS) has also been upgraded to provide better security isolation as well as manage more sites per server. The PowerShell command line interface has also been increased with the addition of 2,300 commands.

If you want to give the free beta version a run through, then all you need is a 1.4 GHz 64-bit processor, a minimum of 512MB of working memory and 32GB on a disk. In addition to that, users have the ability to upgrade to the new beta operating system from existing versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 though you will be unable to upgrade to subsequent releases from this release. Click here if you want to download the Windows Server 8 beta.

Source: PC World - Microsoft Releases Windows Server 8 Beta

Rack-Mount Server rentals are ideal if your company needs an extra storage unit for company information while you are testing various types of storage solutions.

Whether you need a short-term rental or a long-term lease, we have the right kind of server for your needs.

Red Hat Virtualization No Longer Windows Exclusive

Considering that it's a Linux Vendor, it isn't a surprise that Red Hat obviously wants its customers to run its technologies on Linux. However, when it comes to the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) management system, customers have always been forced to run the system on Microsoft Windows. However, that is all about to change.

According to Navin Thadani, Senior Director of Red Hat's Virtualization Business, "The management system has been re-written as a Java app that runs on top of a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) server. So we've removed the Microsoft Windows server dependency."

Thadani did note that RHEV will still support Active Directory for authentication work. Now the system uses the open source PostgreSQL database as well. The new RHEV update is said to be a zero-downtime upgrade according to Thadani. In addition to that, the new Windows-free management piece will not cost anything extra other than that which Red Hat has previously charged for the RHEV versions that had Windows dependencies.

"The way we price RHEV is that we don't charge for the management system separately," Thadani added. "Ours is a single price for the management system and the hypervisor baked into a dollars-per-socket, per-year price." Thadani also added that enterprises just need to count the number of CPU sockets they will use and that is how much they will pay. Thadani also added that he believes that Red Hat's pricing can be 1/7 the cost of VMware. VMware recently changed its pricing model for vSphere. Pricing is now based on virtual RAM allocations.

In addition to the new management server, the other major change in RHEV 3.0 is a new version of KVM. KVM is the core virtualization hypervisor that powers the solution. According to Thadani, "We've replaced the underlying hypervisor to the new KVM that's going to be shipping in RHEL 6.2. With that, we've picked up performance enhancements, including Transparent Huge Pages for database performance, paravirtualized interrupt controllers, async I/O and an entire rewrite of the networking infrastructure."

Thadani also explained that the networking stack has also been moved from userspace to kernel space to deliver better performance to users. Now, the system can scale up to 128 CPUs with 2TB of RAM at the host level, providing for larger virtual machines.
In addition to that, Red Hat is making it easier to provision and deploy new virtual machines as well as create templates and make virtual machines. There is also a new built-in reporting infrastructure that leverages an embedded Jasper Reports engine.

RHEV is not all about server virtualization exclusively, there is also a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) component as well. "We've made improvements to VDI in the area of WAN optimization," Thadani added. The last major release of RHEV was when version 2.2 was released in 2010. When asked about number of customers, Thadani stated, "We've got many, many customers around the world and across industry segments." RHEV 3.0 is currently in beta testing with general availability slated for the end of this year.

Source: Server Watch - Red Hat Revs up Virtualization, Without Windows

Find out what is going on in the Tech Army World.



What are the Top 10 Money Making Missions?

What other companies have joined and what do they do?

How do I join the
Tech Army Organization ?

Windows Home Server 2011 Officially Released

Microsoft has officially released its new Windows Home Server 2011. Windows Home Server 2011, with this release to manufacturing, is now expected to reach subscribers of MSDN and TechNet in early April at which point they can download the software through their subscriptions. This latest version of Windows Home Server should start to show its face on computers in May according to Microsoft. Microsoft also noted that manufacturers have already been working with the new home operating system. The official version of Windows Home Server 2011, which has been code-named Vail, comes to techies nearly one year after the beta was released and almost two months since the release candidate made its debut. Windows Home Server 2011 uses the same core operating system as Windows Server 2008 R2 but the new version is designed for people who need to balance multiple PCs, home networks and growing amounts of photos, music, videos and other heavy content. Running Windows Home Server on a dedicated PC allows users to set up network shares in order to access all of their data, back up their networked PCs, remotely access their files and stream their music and as well as their videos. The software offers a central dashboard in order for customers to run the various administrative tasks they will be doing. The previous version of Windows Home Server offered a feature known as Drive Extender which received much praise from users. The feature allowed people to extend multiple disk drives into a single large volume as they added new storage. However, Microsoft has claimed that the drive extender technology "was not meeting our customer needs," so they cut it from Windows Home Server 2011. However, Microsoft did add a feature called the Move Folder Wizard in order to move content between different drives. However, the loss of Drive Extender may turn away many potential users of Windows Home Server 2011. Microsoft has also lost one of their key Windows Home Server hardware partners. Late last year Hewlett-Packard, who was known for their robust Media Smart Windows Home Server servers, announced that they would no longer make computers for the Home Server operating system. The loss of HP only leaves a few key manufacturers, like Acer, who will be building dedicated boxes for Windows Home Server 2011. Windows Home Server 2011 will be released in 19 languages, according to Microsoft, including English, French, Chinese, Russian and Korean. Source: cnet - Microsoft releases Windows Home Server 2011

Security Camera Solutions