The ITidiots Show

Hyper-V is a key feature of Windows Server 2008. Virtual machines now communicate through a thin layer of software called the hypervisor, instead of sitting on top of a full operating systems, as with Virtual Server. Its pretty good, and we get some amazing results from our Dell ?99 server, oh yeah and of course there is plenty of irrelevant banter.

In this episode we get to play with Nicks? new toy, the Asus Eee PC. Its quite amazing really, for around ?200 you get an ultraportable notebook with a 7 inch colour display, ethernet, Wireless LAN, stereo speakers, microphone, webcam, 512Mb of memory, 4GB solid state drive and a full suite of applications on a Linux platform. It can even run Windows XP too! What?s going on here? It just doesn?t make any sense! You couldn?t even buy an iPhone for this kind of money, or even a copy of Vista!

Previously we upgraded our Windows 2003 domain to Windows 2008 and now we add a Windows 2008 core server. Windows 2008 server core is basically a stripped down version of Windows Server 2008, no GUI, no tools, not even solitaire! Core servers can host a number of key services, e.g. DNS, Active Directory or DHCP and when adding these roles only the required files and services are added. Minimal footprint, minimal attack surface, and minimal patching. This 2008 product is looking good!

We continue to look at Windows Server 2008, this time at some of the new features found in Terminal Services. RemoteApp allows an application running on the terminal server to seamlessly integrate with the users desktop (a bit like Citrix). As well as that, we can now easily deploy the RemoteApp shortcuts to the desktop via an .rdp file, an msi file (for deployment via a group policy) or users could simply click on the application from a webpage to start the execution. Just watch and all will become clear....

This week we are back to Exchange 2007. We discuss the availability options across all the roles but not after a bit of a banter so be warned! Anyway when we get back to it we demonstrate SP1?s new mailbox role feature, continuous cluster replication a great way to maintain an offsite replica of your mailbox stores.

Previously we showed the Asus EEE PC, in pretty much an out of the box configuration running Linux. Now Nick, or more specifically his Dad, has got Windows XP running on it, and it continues to amaze us. Despite what you might think it runs rather well, check it out.....

Maintaining a set of standard base applications across your network makes your life so much easier. Whatever the deployment method, System Center, LanDesk or just plain old group policies one of the main things you will need to do is achieve a silent install or at least one that requires no user intervention. In this episode we talk about Windows Installer (MSI) packages and introduce Orca, a tool you can use to customise your installation.

This week we turn our attention to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. in particular its software distribution features. After a gentle introduction to SCCM we attempt to deploy Quicktime player across the ITidiots network. Okay so we got a typo in the command line, but other than that I reckon we do a reasonable job of showing you the deployment mechanism and also troubleshooting techniques by viewing status messages and log files with SCCM Trace.

Network Access Protection can deny or limit your access to the network based upon the health of your system. Is there a virus checker installed? Is the firewall up? If not prepared to be restricted or automatically remediated!. In this episode we take our first look at the new Windows 2008 NAP features, specifically DHCP enforcement. A little shoddy, but hey it gets the message across I recon.

The iPhone is out and it now has a place in the corporate world. In this episode we discuss the Exchange ActiveSync features such as the new autodiscover, remote wipe and enforceable security policies and then take you step by step through the configuration of Exchange 2007, DNS and the iPhone itself. Oh yeah and this feature is provided out of the box, no BlackBerry licenses required!