Yearly Archive for 2007

MSCOM – what’s the story

Jeff Alexander has blogged about what kinda technology Microsoft.com uses and how they use it.

If you’ve ever wondered how microsoft.com uses our technology then read on.  I recently came across some good information from the folks over at the Operations team at Microsoft.com.  The thread basically talks about how we use IIS, Firewalls and Windows Server 2008.  I think as we come up to launch next year it’s a really good and quick insight into what they do and how they do it. 

Read this full post here.

Exchange 2007 SP1 Released

Microsoft has released the final version of Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2007.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been designed specifically to help meet the challenges of any business and the needs of all the different groups with a stake in the messaging system. Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is a mission-critical communications tool that enables employees to be more productive and access their information anywhere and anytime while providing a messaging system that enables rich, efficient access to e-mail, calendar items, voice mail, and contacts. For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs.

In Exchange Server 2007 SP1, several new features and improvements will extend the Anywhere Access capabilities of Exchange Server 2007 to help make employees more productive on whatever device they’re using, provide additional Operational Efficiency tools for administrators seeking a streamlined management and deployment experience, and enable advanced Built-in Protection for more robust high availability and compliance scenarios.

Improvements in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 include:
Anywhere Access
• Integrated Exchange Unified Messaging functionality with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
• Outlook Web Access additions, including public folder access, S/MIME support, personal distribution lists, and mailbox rules editor.
• Webready document viewer supports Microsoft Office 2007 documents in addition to Microsoft Office 2003 documents.
• Extended language support in Outlook Web Access with Arabic and Korean spell checking.

Operational Efficiency
• Support for Windows Server 2008 deployments, including benefits in flexible clustering, advanced networking, and simplified management.
• Additional tools in the Exchange Management Console, including public folder management and configuration options for clustering and POP/IMAP access.
• Improvements to the Exchange Management Shell syntax and import-export PST in the move-mailbox command.
• Wider variety of web services for application development, including public folder access, delegate management, and folder level permissions.

Built-in Protection
• Addition of Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) for site resilient high availability deployments.
• Extended Exchange ActiveSync policies for mobile policy enforcement.
• Information rights management pre-licensing by the Hub Transport role.
• Secure Real Time Protocol (SRTP) support in the Unified Messaging role.
• Support for IPv6 when using Windows Server 2008.

Download at source.

FastCGI and PHP

Elizabeth Smith has written an article with a great explanation of FastCGI and the reasons why it makes Windows a better host for PHP applications.

What is FastCGI? I could go on for pages about the technical background, and Microsoft already has some great documentation on the subject, however I’ll put it in layman’s terms for those who aren’t Computer Science majors.

Read the article here

Server Core + IIS7 + PHP + MySQL

Dennis Chung has written a great post on how to get WordPress running on IIS 7.0 (Windows Server 2008) in Server Core mode.

Take Windows Server 2008 Server Core + PHP + IIS7 + MySQL + WordPress, mix them together, will they blend well and work out as a nice concoction?

Read his post here.

Article: Installing IIS 7.0

I�ve written a new article on www.windowsnetworking.com about IIS 7.0. The article is a guide to installing IIS 7.0.

This article will cover the basics of installing Internet Information Services 7.0 and the different installation modes available, when they can be used and what benefits they have.

Read the full article here: Installing IIS 7.0.

FastCGI for IIS 6.0 Released

Microsoft has released the final (RTM) version of FastCGI for IIS 6.0.

FastCGI support on IIS6, which is a free download, opens up the Windows Server 2003 platform for hosting PHP and other FastCGI-compliant application frameworks with substantially improved performance and stability. 

The FastCGI Extension for IIS 6.0 enables popular application frameworks that support FastCGI protocol to be hosted on the IIS web server in a high-performance and reliable way. FastCGI provides a high-performance alternative to the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), a standard way of interfacing external applications with Web servers that has been supported as part of the IIS feature-set since the very first release.

Read more about FastCGI and the release at IIS.net and download it here.

Windows Home Server Launch Day

Microsoft has officially launched Windows Home Server today. Windows Home Server is a new solution from Microsoft, to help families easily protect, connect and share their digital media and documents.

OEM hardware vendors is releasing Home Servers based on Windows Home Server OS, to name a few vendors; HP, Medion, Fujitsu Siemens, Iomega.

A lot of third-party software developers have already created more than 35 innovative add-in programs to run on the Windows Home Server platform. These solutions provide personal blogging and media sharing, home security, home automation, protection against viruses and malware, and more.

Read the full press release from Microsoft.

Other sites about Windows Home Server (WHS):

What’s New in IIS 7.0 for IT Pros

Microsoft released a new level 300 webcast about IIS 7.0 for the IT professionals.

Be one of the first to take a look at all the changes coming in the newly redesigned Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.0. In this webcast, we focus on new troubleshooting features, provide a breakdown of architecture and security improvements, and describe the new IIS 7 configuration system. We walk through demonstrations that showcase IIS delegation administration control to non-administrators and new diagnostics tools. We also discuss the entirely new UI and configuration system.

See the webcast here.