Steve Seguis' Windows Server "Longhorn" Blog

I finally received the bound copy of my book the other day so it should be out in book stores next month. I'm very glad that we really took the time to continually update it as Microsoft released new builds. The book is updated as of Release Candidate 1 of Windows Server 2008 and is as accurate as any book that comes out the same time as the RTM can get.

Well it looks like Microsoft has changed the release date from Windows Server 2008 from the end of 2007 to February 27, 2008 (same time as they will release SQL Server 2007 and Visual Studio Server 2008). February 2008 will be a big launch month for MS.

That will also probably affect the release date of my book. I'm not going to go into details but we're wrapping up with every we need to do in preparation for publication. In fact, you can already preorder it from places like Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Administration-Network-Professionals/dp/0071493263/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9000319-0720920?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186230198&sr=8-1).

*NOTE: The release date of the book is subject to change. Also, the number of actual pages it will be and the description of the book will be finalized once we are ready for publication.

Sorry for not posting in months. I've been so busy working on the book that I haven't had a moment to write. So it's official. Microsoft is now calling Windows Server Codename "Longhorn", Windows Server 2008. Honestly, I am very impressed by the changes I see in the publicly available Beta3.

Beta3 is much more polished and I'd say mostly functionally complete. This is great for everyone but me since Microsoft also moved some stuff around since Beta2 that I've had to go back and rework the entire book. I don't mind though. I want my book to be technically accurate and full of hands-on knowledge. I will try to post more regular updates as I work through the chapters again.

If you thought IE 7 was a big departure from the old IE 6 interface, IIS 7.0 will blow you out of the water. It now has a completely new management interface and a completely modular design so that you can really pick and choose which binaries get installed on your server. This will make securing your IIS server that much easier. For example, if you know that your server is only going to serve static HTML pages, you don't need to (and shouldn't) install any other unneeded component such as ASP, ASP.NET or CGI support.

It is also much easier to find out what you IIS server is doing. You can keep track of worker processes and even requests that each process is handling. There is also a new feature called Automatic Failed Request Tracing that you can configure to automatically trace requests that result in a specific error codes or if the requests are taking too long.

IIS 7 still has a few kinks to iron out but overall it's a great upgrade from IIS 6 and will definitely make IIS Administration that much easier through the use of delegated administration.

Well, I finally figured out how to create the unattend file. You have to download and install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK). It's a collection of tools to help automate the deployment of Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn". The tool of interest in this kit is the Windows System Image Manager (SIM) that provides a ncie graphical user interface for creating and validating answer files for Windows Image (WIM) files. Right now it only supports Windows Vista WIM files but I expect that this tool will also support Windows Server "Longhorn" when it comes out of beta.

So for the past few weeks I've been tinkering with Windows Deployment Services (WDS) which is the RIS replacement. Actually WDS is already available as a hotfix for Windows Server 2003 SP1 and can also be installed on Windows Server 2003 SP2. Once I got over the hurdles of figuring out the differences between boot, capture, discover and install images and how they relate to each other, everything went pretty smoothly...although I must say, booting to Windows PE using PXE boot is like downloading shareware on a 56K modem...slooooooow! I hope it's either just my virtual environment or the fact that product is still in Beta2.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get a fully unattended installation to work. The only documentation out there is for Windows Vista and the Windows System Image Manager (SIM) tool that you're supposed to use to create the unattend file only recognizes Vista WIM files.

Active Directory Domain Services in Window Server "Longhorn" beta 2 is still very much in development. Microsoft has re-introduced the concept of a read-only domain controller similar to the function of the BDC in the NT domain model. To support this, they also have a new read-only DNS mode that can be installed as well.

The Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) mode can be used to deploy domain controllers to less secure locations such as branch offices where the physical security to the DC may not be as stringent as your main datacenter. It also allows applications that want to be installed on a domain controller for either functionality or performance a way to be local to a domain controller without opening up your directory to potential corruption.

Many things aren't working yet such as the ability to add additional domain controllers to an existing domain but I'm sure all that will be resolved once Beta 3 is released to the general public next year.

I was very happy to see a newly improved Windows Server Backup interface for "Longhorn" but that quickly went away when I tried to use it. For some reason, you can only select volumes and not specific files or folders within a volume. Second, it could just backup to a file. Instead, it insisted on having a second drive that it formatted to its own liking and used as a backup device. This is definitely unacceptable! Based on the Windows backup available in Vista, I'm pretty sure this is going to change with Windows Server in a later beta as well.

Microsoft has been selling the Server Manager concept as a one stop shop for managing your server. Although I was bit skeptical at first, I have to admit this new interface is very intuitive and contains most of the tools you will need to use to manage your server on a regular basis. It still needs some find tweaking and I expect to see some more improvements when they release Beta 3 sometime next year but what's there right now looks and feels pretty amazing.

Since server core doesn't have a a real GUI outside of a few simple tools (i.e. the command prompt and notepad), you're forced to run DCPromo with an answer file in order to make it serve as a Domain Controller. It's not as complicated as it sounds once you've figured out which parameters you really need. In order to do that, run:

dcpromo /?:unattend

and dcpromo will gladly spit out a list of parameters for you. All you then need to do is create a plain text file (typically called C:\unattend.txt), and enter the required parameters in the following format:

[DCInstall]
Username=Administrator
Password=mypassword
UserDomain=testdomain
...
...
parameter1=value
parameter2=value
...

and so on. You don't need to use every parameter available to DCPromo, only the minimal required information you need based on what it is you're trying to do (create a new domain, create a DC for an existing domain, or even demoting the DC).

Once you're all set, save your unattend file and run:

dcpromo /unattend:c:\unattend.txt

and hopefully dcpromo will do its thing, otherwise it will return an error which probably means you need to tweak your answer file some more.