Virtualization is one of the most exciting technologies in the computer industry at the moment.  The reason for this is quite simple.  Most servers run at a very low level of resource utilization.  Virtualization allows companies to consolidate physical servers into virtual ones thus reducing their overall hardware expenditures and simplifying overall system administration.  This article will focus on one of the aspect of simplifying system administration, that being high-availability.

High-availability is the holy grail for the system ...

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One of the best things about starting Informed CIO is that now I have a legitimate excuse to start playing around with software that typically I would not be touching until at least it’s first service pack is released.  Such is the case with a VMware's newest entry into the virtualization wars, VMware Server 2.0 Beta 1.

The Good…

This new version of VMware, although still in beta, certainly is a ...

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The backup process in Windows 2008 server has taken a significant step forward in terms of usability from the Automated System Recovery (ASR) process of Windows 2003/XP and even more so when compared to the legacy NTbackup.exe process of yesteryear.   The new backup process integrates into the server manager console.  When you first open it up it immediately shows you a listing of all recent backups for the server.  The available actions to perform have also been greatly simplified and streamlined.  You are given the ...

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In Windows Server 2008 you now have the ability to extend and shrink volumes... or so I thought.  When I installed my test lab with RC1 I only created an 8GB boot volume on the VM server.  This proved to be a bit shortsighted...  I quickly ran out of space... When I went to extend it only then did I realize that I had ran into another limitation with this new disk management functionality.  You cannot extend a boot volume across more than one disk.  If you have additional space on that disc you can extend it however you can't make it span discs.   And no, DISKPART ...<< MORE >>

One of the most anticipated features in Windows server 2008 surrounds disk management.  In the Disk Manager you have the ability to create, extend, and shrink simple and spanned volumes.  In prior releases of Windows you have the ability to extend volumes through the rather clunky diskpart command.  In Windows 2008 server this is all done via a graphical, wizard driven interface.  The ability to shrink a volume is completely new with this release.  (But it's not without its bugs, as ...

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Enhanced Internet Security is perhaps one of the most annoying features in Windows.  This feature was introduced in Windows Server 2003 and could be disabled by uninstalling the option via add/remove programs.  Many system administrators, finding the continual pop-up notifications maddening, would immediately remove this feature from the server.  This, of course, left their servers exposed to malware from the internet.

In Windows Server 2008 Microsoft has introduced more granular control for Enhanced Internet Security.  Now, by default, it is enabled for all administrative accounts but disabled for less privileged accounts.  In terms of ...

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