An ordinary guy trying to make a difference
The face behind the FAQs
I’ve just received word that Hyper-V is going RTM 17.00 BST today which delivers on Microsoft’s promise of launching the Hyper-V between 0 and 180 days of the RTM of Windows Server 2008.
The beta has been downloaded nearly 1.5 million times worldwide and with the RTM today this number will likely increase. Below is the full press release with information on the Hyper-V release.
Microsoft’s Hypervisor Technology Gives Customers Combined Benefits of Windows Server 2008 and Virtualisation
Customers reap the rewards of server consolidation and business continuity projects along with integrated management tools to manage physical and virtual resources.
Reading, UK. – June 26, 2008 – Following the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Corp. reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualisation technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualisation is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.
Virtualisation can help companies maximize the value of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and cost and complexity of managing IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualisation — which span from the desktop to the datacenter — help IT professionals and developers implement Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative, whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.
Hyper-V offers customers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualisation platform that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables them to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Microsoft System Center product family gives customers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, helping customers create a more agile and dynamic datacenter.
“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualisation with Hyper-V,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft.
Customers Going Virtual
More than 250 customers have participated in the early adopter programs for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Land O’Lakes, HotSchedules and The SCOOTER Store were some of the first customers to deploy Hyper-V and experience its benefits firsthand.
Minnesota-based Land O’Lakes suffered from a common IT challenge resulting from tremendous growth through mergers and acquisitions. The agricultural cooperative’s datacenter was packed with a compilation of aging servers running at an average utilisation rate of just 3 percent, putting a considerable strain on IT resources.
IT pros call the condition “server sprawl,” and Land O’Lakes had a bad case of it. “We faced a combination of underutilized and aging hardware, applications running on outdated operating systems, and rising datacenter power and cooling costs,” said Jason Nord, the company’s server administrator.
To counter the problem, Land O’Lakes did what an increasing number of similarly challenged companies are doing: It turned to a virtualisation solution. Specifically, it became an early adopter of Microsoft virtualisation technologies, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
The company’s IT team initially rolled out a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 in its test and development environment, in which four physical servers each hosted 10 to 13 virtual machines, with each virtual machine running one application. During 2008, the team plans to migrate this environment to Hyper-V and to move an additional 10 to 15 new applications directly into virtual machines in the production environment, thus saving the cost of hardware servers.
“Our Microsoft virtualisation solution is a key part of a business strategy we have at Land O’Lakes called Best Cost Initiative,” said Tony Taylor, the company’s director of IT services. “It’s not just about cutting costs, but about looking where our money is being spent and finding ways to leverage our investments across the company. Virtualisation holds a lot of promise in helping us maximize the value of our IT investments.”
The Integrated Approach
To accompany Microsoft virtualisation technologies such as Hyper-V, the System Center family of solutions delivers management tools to configure, operate, deploy and backup physical and virtual servers from the datacenter to the desktop — all from a single pane of glass. With proper management tools and processes, customers can control the power of virtualisation and become agile, while still maintaining control. This can help prevent such issues as “virtual server sprawl” — one of the challenges that can be introduced by the increased use of server virtualisation.
Ironically, this virtual equivalent of physical server sprawl stems from the ease with which virtual machines can be created. Some IT teams have allowed multiple groups within the organisation to create their own virtual machines, only to lose track of them later. This kind of uncontrolled usage can lead to legal and security concerns.
“To truly see the full benefits of virtualisation, it is critical to have the right processes and tools in place,” Hilf said. “That’s why management tools are so important — they are the glue that holds it all together and helps deliver the real benefits of virtualisation.”
The ability to centralise server management was a key factor in The SCOOTER Store’s quest to find the right virtualisation solution. The New Braunfels, Texas-based company is a leading provider of power mobility devices such as power chairs to help people with mobility challenges lead full, self-sufficient lives.
To manage the recent rapid growth and stay in compliance with ever-changing government mandates for documentation, reporting, consumer safety and patient privacy, the company must maintain agile and flexible IT systems.
To that end, The SCOOTER Store is virtualising its server environment and centralizing server management using Virtual Server 2005 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. As part of its overall virtualisation strategy, the company is evaluating Hyper-V to increase the performance of its existing environment.
“Hyper-V is very exciting for us because it is integrated and designed into the operating system,” said Barrett Blake, The SCOOTER Store’s infrastructure architect. “I expect Hyper-V to be even easier to use, faster, and more efficient.”
By year’s end, the IT organisation expects to increase the number of applications by 50 percent compared with its previous infrastructure, while reducing the number of physical servers required to host those applications by about 60 percent.
“We had a vision of a dynamic datacenter, and Microsoft technologies gave us a holistic approach to achieve it,” said Jay Greene, The SCOOTER Store’s senior vice president of IT and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) security officer. “By optimising our environment with virtualisation and centralised management, we deliver more functionality at lower cost, and we make IT a strategic contributor to the growth of the company.”
Scalability, Cost and Performance Benefits
Scalability and cost were prime considerations for Ray Pawlikowski as he sought a virtualisation solution for his rapidly growing company, HotSchedules. The Austin, Texas-based company specialises in online labour scheduling, offering employees of clients such as The Cheesecake Factory, Outback Steakhouse and P.F. Chang’s access to their work schedules on the Web, text messaging, e-mail and the ability to pick up and release shifts, among other benefits.
With nearly a quarter-million users and 4 million logins per month, the 10-year-old business has doubled in size each year for the past couple years and shows no sign of slowing down. Like Land O’Lakes’ IT team, Pawlikowski signed up for the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) to test Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and is glad he did. “By virtualising everything, we have been able to increase our server utilisation by a factor of 10, providing dramatic opportunities in consolidation and power savings,” he said.
Hyper-V’s scalability derives from its support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory limits at the host and guest level within virtual machines. This enables customers to scale their virtualisation environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a given host and to take advantage of quick migration for high availability across multiple hosts.
HotSchedules is running 40 physical servers, and Pawlikowski wants to reduce that number by 50 percent to 75 percent. The IT organisation is also running 14 virtual machines with applications running faster on the virtual servers than they did on the physical servers used previously. This is a critical benefit that keeps the company’s Web-based application responsive.
Customers are not the only ones benefiting from the increasing demand for virtualisation. Microsoft storage partner QLogic today published a benchmark for I/O throughput for storage devices going through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. At 180,000 I/Os per second on a system running Hyper-V, virtual machine connections are just 10 percent shy of native performance. This benchmark demonstrates Hyper-V’s ability to bring the advantages of virtualisation to the most demanding datacenter.
Meanwhile, Microsoft itself has been using Hyper-V in production environments, including heavy-traffic Web properties such as MSDN, TechNet and Microsoft.com. MSDN has more than 3 million average page views per day, TechNet averages more than 1 million per day, and Microsoft.com averages more than 38 million per day. By the end of June, Microsoft.com is targeted to be 50 percent virtualised with Hyper-V.
A Familiar Platform
A major differentiator for Hyper-V is the familiarity of the Windows platform. For example, HotSchedules’ Pawlikowski looked at a number of other virtualisation technologies, including VMware ESX Server, but his company has strong ties with Dell, which made a compelling case for Microsoft’s early-adopter program.
“Not only is Hyper-V faster, it’s also faster to get up to speed with,” Pawlikowski said. “It’s integrated with our existing platform and with the familiar roles in Windows Server 2008, so our knowledge base didn’t have to change too much and I didn’t have to re-tool our IT staff to move forward with virtualisation.”
Microsoft’s Hilf says that’s a particularly compelling reason for customers to choose Hyper-V. “It’s been designed as a Windows feature, which our customers know, so those with Windows Server certification will be familiar with it; the people who have all the in-house skills on Windows Server will know how to use it.”
To help both customers and partners assess whether their existing servers are good candidates for virtualisation using Hyper-V, Microsoft has released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.1 Beta to help accelerate virtualisation planning and deployment. The final release of MAP 3.1 is expected in July and will be available for free at http://www.microsoft.com/MAP. MAP belongs to a family of Microsoft Virtualisation Solution Accelerators including Infrastructure Planning and Design guides and the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool.
In addition, more than 130 independent software vendors (ISVs) have certified a total of 150 applications on Windows Server 2008. Symantec, Diskeeper and IBM are the first three vendors to achieve the new Certified for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V designation. This designation identifies applications that have been independently tested to exploit Hyper-V capabilities and meet mission-critical expectations in a virtualised environment.
We continue to work with our partners to meet customers’ needs for interoperable solutions. The alliance with Citrix Systems in the areas of VDI and virtual machine portability between the Xen Hypervisor and Hyper-V provides customers with broader deployment scenarios. Additionally, the extensive collaboration with Novell enables customers to take advantage of virtualisation in mixed Microsoft and Novell SuSE Linux environments.
Along the same lines, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendors such as Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys are already qualified to ship and create systems with Hyper-V. In all, 250 systems from server and white-box vendors are already logo-qualified for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. More information can be found at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.
The Road Ahead
Customers can now download the final version of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
“There have already been over 1 million evaluations of Hyper-V, and with this release IT organisations everywhere can move it from the lab to production to fully experience the benefits that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 can bring,” Hilf said. He added that customers can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, now in beta, to help them best configure and deploy their hypervisor-based environments.
New customers and partners can download Hyper-V at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V. Customers who have deployed Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update beginning July 8.
· Videos:
– TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Overview with Mike Neil
– TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Program managers interview Part 1
– TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Program managers interview Part 2
· Press Releases:
- Progress Report from Tech•Ed: Dynamic IT Delivering on Promise of Transforming IT – June 10, 2008
· Microsoft Resources:
- Hyper-V Download Web site
- Windows Server 2008 Web site
- Microsoft Virtualisation Web site
· Other Resources:
- Windows Virtualisation Team blog
- Windows Server Division blog
- Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog
Tap tap, is this thing on?
Conundrum time and I need your feedback to make things better for all of us.
I appreciate in an ideal world that those us writing in the Windows Management space would each come up with original content so that we not only covered more topics but we also avoided duplication. In the real world this is never going to happen and to restrict people to only write about specific topics I personally feel would stifle creativity and be a barrier to folks creating content in the first place.
Now the conundrum is this.
Do YOU, yes YOU there sitting reading this thinking it doesn’t apply to you, prefer for us creating content to stick to creating as unique content as possible OR do you want us to regurgitate information on the net that you might not have seen OR do you want a mix of both?
I originally thought the first option. However the stats seem to suggest the second as some of the highest read counts I get are for stuff that is available elsewhere on the web that maybe folks aren’t aware of.
So I’m going to continue with option 3 – a mix.
What I’m keen to avoid is spamming you with the same information you get elsewhere. I know some of the RSS feeds I subscribe to I get the same information over and over again. Why don’t I unsubscribe? Well sometimes I get unique content from each feed which is why I stay tuned.
So what do YOU want?
Discuss..
** Places are limited to 35 so register fast. ** Please visit http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=126 to register We are very fortunate that Michael Rys has decided to come and speak at a UG event whilst he is in the UK for a W3C working group.
If you use XML in SQL Server then this is the one User group meeting you have to come to.
Michael is Program Manager in the SQL Server Engine Team at Microsoft and is responsible for the XML features and other non relation features i.e. Spatial Data in SQL Server.
He is the man that knows XML and XQuery inside and out. On the few occasions I've met him I've always felt humbled by the intellect of this man.
You can find his blog here http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_rys/default.aspx and his old CV can be found here http://infolab.stanford.edu/~rys/cv/ (nice picture)
Registration is at 6.00, evening will commence at 6:30pm and finish 9pm.
6:30pm - 6.45pm - Introduction, news and gossip. Whats going on in the world,
6:45 - 9pm Michael Rys on non-relational data in SQL Server An Introduction to the New Spatial Data Support in SQL Server 2008 Spatial data is fundamental, modeling the locations and shapes of objects in the world to enable visual analysis of data. This session will be an introduction to working with spatial data in SQL Server. We will describe the different types of spatial data, give business examples of the use of spatial data, and provide an overview and demonstration of the new spatial features in SQL Server 2008 such as the spatial types, their methods, how to visualize and how to index it.
As program manager I'm sure Michael will discuss the whole realm of non relational features and will answer any questions you have around it.
Pizza will be served at some point in the evening Michael Rys Michael Rys is principal program manager lead for SQL Server’s Beyond Relational Data team. He was program manager for the XML features in SQL Server 2000 to 2008 such as FOR XML, the XML data type and XQuery and for Spatial Indexing in SQL Server 2008. He also represents Microsoft Corp. in the W3C XML Query working group and the ANSI SQL standardization effort. He joined Microsoft in 1998 after performing research in the areas of object-oriented and semi-structured databases, multi-level transaction management, and distributed heterogeneous information integration at Stanford University (as post-doc) and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where he earned his PhD.
Michael is a senior member of ACM and a member of IEEE and has given many presentations and contributed to several books on XQuery and XML and databases. His weblog can be found at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_rys/default.aspx.
Monday 30th June, 6-9pm
Conchango Offices 36 Southwark Bridge Road London SE1 9EU
I’ve been away from home for a bit and it’s only when you are without something that you realise how much you miss it and how much easier it makes your life. I remember dual monitor support when it first came out many moons ago and my initial reaction was “Who on earth would use it and why?”
Then I had a light bulb moment one day whilst working with my Virtual environment documenting something and I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to have my VM running on one screen and Word on another to save my having to either cram two windows on one screen OR continually ALT+TAB between apps?” So I hastily grabbed an external monitor and my idea was born (it must have been a good one as once my fellow techies saw what I was up to all of the redundant external monitors suddenly came back into use).
Then there’s tea. I’m sorry no other country can make tea like the English. One of the worst I’ve tasted was Air Portugal (TAP). If you ever come to the UK let me know and I’ll make you a cup to show you what you’re missing out on.
And finally, one of the best pieces of SWAG I’ve ever nabbed – my System Center mug from MMS 2007 – it’s HUGE and keeps the tea lovely and toasty (glad I bagged two of them ;-) )
Now time to settle down and start wading through the mountain of emails, RSS feeds, etc.
Internet Explorer 6.0
953031 Error message when you use Internet Explorer 6 on a Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2-based computer to browse a Web page: "Microsoft Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close"
SQL Server 2005
953752 Cumulative update package 9 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2
953496 FIX: CPU utilization is high when you run a trace that contains a text filter in SQL Server 2005
953854 FIX: Error message when you run a DELETE statement from a table that contains a nonclustered primary key in SQL Server 2005: "Internal Query Processor Error: The query processor could not produce a query plan"
934246 FIX: Error message when you run a long stored procedure that is encrypted in SQL Server 2005: "A stack overflow occurred in the server while compiling the query"
System Center Operations Manager 2007
951526 The Root Management Server (RMS) in System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 becomes unstable or unusable after you import Dell Management Pack 3.1
951380 Some computer properties for a cluster node may not be collected by the discovery process in System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1
951527 Modifications that you try to make to a Web application that was created before you upgrade Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 are not saved
Windows Internet Explorer 7
943117 A blank Internet Explorer window does not close automatically as expected after you open an Office document in Internet Explorer 7
952730 When you download a file in Internet Explorer 7, the space character in the file name is changed to a underscore
952729 When you try to open a shortcut in Internet Explorer 7, the target executable file cannot be loaded
950065 The Internet Explorer Maintenance Group Policy settings for the Content Advisor do not work on client computers that have Internet Explorer 7 installed
Windows Server 2003
952679 Stop error message when an application calls the NtGdiBitBlt function on a Windows Server 2003 SP2-based computer: "0x0000008E"
953461 The Certificate Web Enrollment Pages in Windows Server 2008 or the updated Certificate Web Enrollment Pages in Windows Server 2003 do not support Windows Mobile devices
950141 Error message when you try to enable the Volume Shadow Copy Service for a shared folder on a Windows Server 2003-based computer: "STOP: 0x0000007E"
952844 You receive a "STOP: 0x00000050" error message when you start a Windows Server 2003-based computer by using the iSCSI Boot Initiator
949015 Applications that perform KCD delegation may not finish the S4U process on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003
It’s meeting time again (seems like the last one was only yesterday).
This time our meeting will take place on Tuesday 15th July at Microsoft’s office in Cardinal Place, London (near Victoria station).
Rob will be taking you through the Operating System Deployment (OSD), feature of ConfigMgr and Gordon and David Allen will be taking you through System Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) as well as how it integrates with Operations Manager (OpsMgr).
The event is free, open to all, there’s free food and drink and SWAG so come along – we’d LOVE to see you.
For more details and to register simply goto:
http://wmug.co.uk/groups/wmug_event_content/pages/wmug-event-15th-july-2008-cardinal-place-london.aspx
Here’s the latest news from Microsoft at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden Germany. Microsoft is using the event to announce the release candidate version of Windows HPC Server 2008 which will be available in the last week of June plus other news included in the press release below.
Windows HPC Server Debuts in Top 25 of World’s Top 500 Largest Supercomputers
Supercomputers with extraordinary benchmark efficiencies running Microsoft’s new operating system; customers anticipate evaluation of Windows HPC Server 2008 release candidate.
DRESDEN, Germany — June 18, 2008 — Today at the International Supercomputing Conference, Microsoft Corp. debuted in the top 25 of the world’s top 500 largest supercomputers with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which ranked at No. 23 with 68.5 teraflops. The company also announced that the release candidate version of Windows HPC Server 2008 will be available for download in the last week of June.
Key features that enable Windows HPC Server 2008 to efficiently scale to thousands of cores include a new high-speed NetworkDirect RDMA, Microsoft’s new remote direct memory access interface, highly efficient and scalable cluster management tools, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) job scheduler, and cluster interoperability through standards such as the High Performance Computing Basic Profile (HPCBP) specification produced by the Open Grid Forum (OGF). At the show, Mellanox Technologies Inc. will demonstrate its new ConnectX InfiniBand cards achieving 2 µsec latency with 2 GB per second throughput using the new NetworkDirect interface.
As Windows HPC Server 2008 prepares for its launch in the second half of this year, early adopters of the new operating system already are seeing great results. The NCSA used the beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008 to achieve its 68.5 teraflops and 77.7 percent efficiency on 9,472 cores, making this facility one of the most powerful supercomputing systems in the world and the fastest Windows cluster to date.
“Our experience with Windows HPC Server 2008 has been impressive,” said Robert Pennington, deputy director of the NCSA. “Deploying it was much easier than we expected, and the performance results have surpassed our expectations. When we deployed Windows on our cluster, which has more than 1,000 nodes, we went from bare metal to running the LINPACK benchmark programs in just four hours. The performance of Windows HPC Server 2008 has yielded efficiencies that are among the highest we’ve seen for this class of machine.”
Similarly, computer scientists at Umea University in northern Sweden, also working with the beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008 on their supercluster, achieved 46 teraflops and 85.5 percent efficiency on 5,376 cores, making their system the second-largest Windows cluster ever deployed and the fastest academic cluster in Sweden. Umea University will run the new supercomputer at its facility known as HPC2N. The university’s cluster employs 672 IBM blade servers, and also marks the first time that Windows HPC Server 2008 has been run publicly on IBM hardware.
“By working closely together on Windows HPC Server 2008, our customers are already seeing improved efficiency rates,” said Dave Jursik, vice president of supercomputer sales for IBM Corp. “This industry partnership with Microsoft plays a vital role in achieving our goal to create powerful cluster solutions that address the growing needs of researchers such as the scientists at Umea.”
NCSA and Umea University are just two of an increasing number of supercomputing centers using Windows HPC Server 2008 that are on the TOP500 List with strong efficiency benchmarks. This list of the most powerful computer systems in the world is published twice a year by the International Supercomputing Conference. The list can be found at http://www.top500.org.
“The systems at Umea University and NSCA demonstrate that Windows can scale to the rarefied atmosphere of the top 25 supercomputing systems in the world — which up to now have relied on dedicated, specialized hardware and software,” said Kyril Faenov, general manager of HPC at Microsoft.
High-Productivity Supercomputing
Microsoft’s high-performance computing vision goes beyond tackling traditional HPC workloads. Microsoft brings the value of an integrated, turnkey HPC solution and a productive development environment to customers for whom high-performance computing has been out of reach in the past. By focusing on productivity for users, developers and administrators, Microsoft is positioned to lead the growth of HPC. According to IDC, over the next five years the HPC server market is projected to show healthy, steady growth. IDC expects revenue for the total HPC server market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent to reach $18 billion by 2012.
“Microsoft has a history of taking niche technologies available only to a small segment of the computing market and making them accessible and to be used productively by large numbers of users,” Faenov said. “That’s our strategy in the HPC space, where today users have to scour the Internet for disparate technologies or get six or seven vendors to provide the various pieces of a configuration. We have a complete solution for such customers, and we’re working with our ecosystem of partners to create a platform that they can rely on.”
Last fall Microsoft initiated a parallel computing initiative, a program creating a set of common development tools across multicore desktops and clusters with the goal of enabling parallelism for a broad set of commercial applications. In addition, the company and Intel Corporation recently announced a joint investment to create two new Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, aimed at accelerating developments in mainstream parallel computing.
More information on Windows HPC Server 2008 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/hpc.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
950759 MS08-031: Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer
953122 A tape device is not detected by SQL Server Management Studio in SQL Server 2005 or by SQL Server Enterprise Manager in SQL Server 2000
953721 FIX: The performance of a query in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 Cumulative Update 6 is slow
953569 FIX: The compilation time of some queries is very long in an x64-based version of SQL Server 2005
952624 FIX: Error message when you run a query that contains many OR clauses in SQL Server 2005: "There is insufficient system memory to run this query"
953852 FIX: You cannot register a 64-bit local instance by clicking "Update Local Server Registration" in SQL Server Management Studio in SQL Server 2005
953950 FIX: Error message when you run an INSERT statement in SQL Server 2005: "Cannot insert an explicit value into a timestamp column"
953625 FIX: Error message when SQL Server 2005 synchronizes a mirrored database: "Expression: result == LCK_OK"
953739 SQL Server 2005 installers do not update an instance of the SQL Server service that is in a disabled state
953497 FIX: Error message when you call a table valued function that uses a common language runtime (CLR) assembly in SQL Server 2005: "AppDomain is marked for unload due to memory pressure"
953740 SQL Server 2000 installers do not update disabled SQL Server instances
953741 SQL Server 2005 installers stop dependent services
953742 SQL Server 2000 and MSDE 2000 installers stop dependent services
953743 Supported method for applying updates to SQL Server 7.0
951979 Problems occur on a management server that is running System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 when certain management packs are installed
950060 Some Web applications that require a large block of contiguous memory may not run after you install cumulative update 931768 (MS07-027) for Windows Internet Explorer 7
951800 Some customized Internet Explorer settings revert to their default configurations after you install cumulative update 942615 (MS07-069), 944533 (MS08-010), or 947864 (MS08-024) on a Windows Vista-based computer
556086 How to find the current Schema Version
951320 The ntdsutil.exe utility in Windows Server 2003 writes out too many links to .ldf files during an authoritative restore process
953588 Detection and deployment guidance for the June 10, 2008 security release
952206 A printer-driver upgrade operation fails on printer clients that are running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP when multiple printer queues are upgraded at the same time
952909 When you try to print a document to a PostScript printer in an application, the application exits unexpectedly, or you find that an invalid PDF file is created from the incorrect data in the PostScript file
953235 MS08-035: Vulnerability in Active Directory could allow denial of service
950760 MS08-032: Critical security update of ActiveX kill bits
950448 You cannot move cluster resources back to the original node on a Windows Server 2003 cluster node that has hotfix 932755 and the UMPD driver from Unisys installed
951880 Stop error when Windows Server 2003-based server restarts unexpectedly: "Stop 0x00000050"
952630 The "clean all" command in the diskpart.exe utility does not delete all the data on a disk on a Windows Server 2003-based computer
953482 You experience problems when you try to mount VHD files by using the Vhdmount.exe tool after you apply update 948515 in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
953600 Message after multiple unsuccessful calls to certain functions on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Professional x64 Edition: "Running out of physical memory"
951698 MS08-033: Vulnerabilities in DirectX could allow remote code execution
950762 MS08-036: Vulnerabilities in Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) could allow denial of service
952886 The MNS cluster service may not start after you install the update in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 921181 on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1
954311 Stop error message on a Windows Server 2003 computer that is booted to iSCSI disk: "STOP 0xF4"
949014 MS08-035: Description of the security update for Active Directory in Windows Server 2008, in Windows Server 2003, and in Windows 2000 Server (server-side): June 10, 2008
948745 MS08-034: Vulnerability in WINS could allow elevation of privilege
949269 MS08-035: Description of the security update for Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP (client-side): June 10, 2008
951310 Error message when you run a Windows Media Services 9 Series-based application on a Windows Server 2003-based computer: "The process is terminated"
953356 Error message after you upgrade a computer that uses a processor other than an Intel processor to Windows XP Service Pack 2 or to Windows XP Service Pack 3: "STOP: 0x0000007E"
951376 MS08-030: Vulnerability in Bluetooth stack could allow remote code execution
Where can I find out Microsoft's Support Lifecycle for SMS 2003? [12/06/08] Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP ConfigMgr/ SMS] Information relating for the Support Lifecycle of any Microsoft Service Pack can be found...
Following on from my last post about support for SMS 2003 SP2 being retired as of 8th July Wally Mead very kindly sent me this link which summarises the information JUST for SMS 2003 (clever chap our Wally):
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2890
Just a heads up to any of you still running SMS 2003 SP2 – Microsoft support for this officially ends 8th July 2008
Of course you should contact your Microsoft Representative in the first instance to see where you stand on this as I’m guessing in some cases it MIGHT be possible for you to extend this but that’s not a given.
More information on this and the position of Service Pack support on the Lifecycle Support Service Packs site.
For SMS and other server products goto:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=lifesupsps#Servers
FYI below is Microsoft’s Service Pack Support Policy:
This link allows you to subscribe to Microsoft Support Lifecycle Quarterly Update Newsletter but don’t worry I’ll keep you informed of anything announced that I feel will impact you ;-)
Just seen on the Network Monitor blog that the beta of NetMon 3.2 is now available.
It’s available on Connect under the “Network Monitor 3” program (not the easiest to find), but here’s a direct link:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=216
Network Monitor 3.2 Beta
June 11, 2008
What’s New since Network Monitor 3.1
§ Process Tracking: View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.
§ Find conversations: Quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Isolate TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.
§ PCAP capture file support*
§ Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. Network Monitor 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that NM 3.1
§ Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! Parsers for the protocols covered by the Windows Open Protocol Specifications (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517.aspx).
§ NM API: Create your own applications that capture, parser and analyze network traffic!
§ Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by changing the parser search order in Tools>Options>Parser
§ Support for frame truncation. Go to Tools>Options and limit the number of bytes captured per frame to improve performance.
§ More extensive documentation of the NPL which includes documentation on the new NMAPI. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation
§ Enhanced filtering on items within NPL while loops or arrays. You can specify an index into the array or while loop to filter on
§ IA64 version now available.
§ ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings. For example, ContainsBin(FrameData, ASCII, “msn”).
§ More UI indications of conversation status, dropped frames and the number of frames in the capture buffer.
§ … and more. See our Release Notes in the NM3.2 installation directory for a complete list of new features and known issues with the Beta.
Enjoy!
The Network Monitor Team
*This feature includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors. This feature includes software developed by the Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan and its contributors. This feature includes software developed by Yen Yen Lim and North Dakota State University.
SQL Server 2000
953503 The DBCC CHECKDB statement does not raise errors in SQL Server when the DBCC CHECKDB statement detect a consistency error in the database
951935 Query performance is slow when you run a query that contains an ORDER BY clause on a table column of an SQL tertiary collation
953841 FIX: E-mail replies are sent to the sender address instead of to the address that is specified in the database mail profile in SQL Server 2005 after you install the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1
953321 FIX: Error message when you restart the SQL Server service or the SQL Server Agent service in SQL Server 2005: "Unable to start mail session"
953116 FIX: In SQL Server 2005, no databases are selected in the Database(s) list in the "Back Up Database Task" dialog box after you install critical update 933508
952330 FIX: The Replication Log Reader Agent may fail intermittently when a transactional replication synchronizes data in SQL Server 2005
953491 FIX: Duplicate data is written to other flat files in an SSIS package that contains a Foreach Loop container
947691 When you try to install a System Center Operations Manager 2007 agent on a workgroup computer without using a gateway server, Operations Manager 2007 cannot see the workgroup computer
949969 Some data partition tables that exceed the data retention period are not groomed from the Audit Collection Services database in Operations Manager 2007
951497 Error message when you try to install the SMS 2003 Advanced Client package from hotfix 941214 on a 64-bit version of Windows Vista: "Windows requires a digitally signed driver - file: prepdrvAMD64.sys"
942288 Windows Installer 4.5 is available
953844 On a Windows Server 2003 based computer, the upgrade of HP Print Driver hangs
953675 Error message when many users log on to a Windows Server 2003-based terminal server through RDP connections: "Winlogon has encountered a problem and needs to close"
946459 In an Active Directory forest that is running a Windows Server 2008 schema, the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in may crash when you open the Properties dialog box for a user object from a Windows Server 2003 member server
951859 A program that runs under the NT Authority\System account does not recognize environment variable changes on a Windows Server 2003-based computer until you restart the computer
950415 Error message on a computer that is running the Windows operating system: "Stop 0x00000077 KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR"
951323 Error message when you add a group as a member of another group from a different domain in Windows Server 2003 Active Directory: "Directory Service is too busy"
950092 Third-party vendors may be unable to achieve IPv6 Ready Logo Phase-2 certification in Windows Server 2003
952617 Error message when you try to call the "InitializeSecurityContext (Kerberos)" function in Windows Server 2003: "Decrypt call failed with error code: -2146893040 (The message supplied for verification is out of sequence)"
951851 The WebClient service stop responding when you try to map a network drive to a WebDAV shared folder from a Windows Server 2003-based computer
951347 A memory leak occurs when you use the IFaxIncomingMessageIterator interface to query incoming fax messages on a fax server that is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP
7 Patches this month:
More details at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-jun.mspx
Seems that the “List of fixes that are included in System Center Configuration Manager Service Pack 1” KB article is incomplete as there are in fact 21 hotfixes included NOT the 15 currently listed in the article.
Keep an eye out for an updated list soon.