Δείτε το βίντεο της ανακοίνωσης του νέου ονόματος των Windows codename: Longhorn στην Atlanta για τους υπαλλήλους πωλήσεων της Microsoft στην Ατλάντα.

http://bink.nu/files/Bink.nu.WindowsVistaAnthem.wm

There has been significant change to Exchange 2003’s recommended Boot.ini configuration settings.  The following change has been made to Microsoft Exchange 2003 Support Policy.

It is recommended and supported to run Exchange 2003 with the PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel on Windows 2003:  Due to the issue ( Hotfix in article 834628 )  found in Windows 2003 RTM running the PAE kernel , the fact that Exchange does not take advantage of more than 4GB of memory and the fact that Exchange running on PAE kernels was not initially tested;  the Exchange Product group originally recommended running the /NOPAE switch in the boot.ini to prevent  the PAE kernel from loading.  This decision has been reversed for the following reasons:

a.       Windows 2003 SP1 was released:   

·         Windows 2003 Sp1 contains the fix for 834628 so Exchange 2003 is stable running on the PAE kernel.

·         Windows 2003 SP1 contains new security features ( Data Execution Prevention (DEP )) which require the PAE kernel.  Exchange 2003 needs to support PAE to take advantage of these new security features.  Windows 2003 SP1 will automatically set DEP specific boot.ini settings to take advantage of DEP capable hardware.

b.      New PCI-Express based server chipsets require PAE to take advantage of all the memory installed on a system (4GB) :

Some of the physical address space on server systems is used to provide memory mapping of IO resources on the system chipset. This memory mapped IO (MMIO) space is typically provided below the 4GB address boundary. In a system with 4GB of physical memory this MMIO space pushes a section of physical memory above the 4GB address boundary. If the software running on the server supports only 32-bit physical addressing, it will not look for memory over the 4GB boundary. This results in the OS not providing access to all 4GB of physical memory. The amount of ‘hidden’ memory is equal to the address space taken up by the MMIO.  PCI Express confounds this problem by providing extended PCI configuration space to support such features as Advanced Error Reporting (AER). This means the size of MMIO space required to map the chipset IO resources gets larger. Some early PCI Express chipsets confound the issue further by providing coarse granularity for this mapping which results in a range of 512MB being carved out for MMIO. This results in customers reporting hidden memory of 512MB to 768MB on servers using such chipsets.

c.    The Exchange Product Group tested Exchange 2003 SP1/SP2 on Windows 2003 (/w 834628 ) with the PAE kernel and on Windows 2003 SP1 with PAE and DEP enabled:

·         The Exchange Product Group did not find any issues relating to running on the PAE kernel nor running with DEP enabled (software and hardware enabled).

Additional Resources/Questions

1. How can the boot.ini configuration be validated in a running environment?   Use the   Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Tool   The tool has been updated to include the support policy change outlined in this Flash.
2. How should Exchange 2003 memory based performance issues be troubleshooted?   Use the Troubleshooting Exchange Server 2003 Performance whitepaper.
3. What is Microsoft’s stance on running Exchange on Windows 2000 with PAE?   It is supported but not recommended.   Hotfix 838647 is required for support.  Windows 2000 does not have the security features that require PAE so the only benefit of running PAE on Windows 2000 for Exchange is to enable all memory access on newer PCI-Express based servers.  It is not a well tested scenario so it is not recommended.

Source:http://blogs.technet.com

Microsoft's Andreas Luther confirmed Microsoft is planning to release a new major release of Windows Server every 4 years with an R2 release in between.

He also revealed some of the new features for Active Directory in Longhorn Server.

1. Read only DC. At first this sounds like the comeback of the BDC. It is indeed a read only copy of a read/write DC that does a one way copy.

The read-only DC is designed with a branch office model in mind. The read only DC will only authenticate clients from its own site and is less vulnerable for a physical attack.

2. DC/Domain Admin seperation. In Longhorn Server there will be a DC Admin and a separate Domain Admin. This means the DC Admin will not automatically have all privileges in the domain.

3. Restartable AD. AD will be implemented as an ordinary service that can be stopped on demand. This simplifies offline actions on the AD database and reduces the need for reboots.

4. DC on Server core. I'm not sure what this means, but we'll find out in the near future.

Additional games and details for its next-gen console's launch across the Pacific are expected at the July 25 event. Since E3 in May, Microsoft has been hinting it will hold an additional event during the summer to outline more details on the console's launch in Japan. Today, the company officially announced Xbox Summit 2005, an event that will be held in Tokyo on July 25.

Yoshihiro Maruyama, general manager of Microsoft Japan's Xbox division, disclosed in a recent interview with Famitsu Xbox that Microsoft is planning to make the event "a rollout equivalent to the scale of E3." The company is expected to disclose a number of additional games from Japanese publishers, including new ones for the console's launch in Japan.

In previous interviews, Maruyama has stated that the Japanese price of the Xbox 360 will be announced in the summer. Today's announcement means the Xbox Summit 2005 will likely be the occasion.

Επιτέλους έρχεται!!!

• With the Office Collaboration Add-in, you can start a Meet Now meeting directly from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, or Project. The document appears in an application sharing session.

• If the recipient also has the Live Meeting Add-in Pack installed, you can start a Live Meeting from Windows Messenger or from MSN Messenger.

allo, allo?

Determined to break into the telecom market, Microsoft announced on Wednesday an agreement with France Telecom to develop products and services. Initially the two companies will work together on two projects, one for VoIP and the other a software project that would combine voice,