With Windows Server 2008 a number of new features or changes to OS have been made, lots of which are going to be of great use to Administrators and users alike. Of course this is where Hyper-V gets a mention. I have not yet had a chance to install Hyper-V but it is on my list of things to do, so expect a post on that soon.
With the current global financial climate I personally think that all the virtualisation technologies are going to get more attention from small businesses right up to the large corporations. Also now that the options for virtualisation have grown, now you get to pick VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V to name three, the competition between the big players will only benefit us all as customers. Along with server consolidation desktop and application virtualisation are gathering momentum.
One of the areas that has seen some of the improvements is clustering. The links below are all for Clustering:
Windows 2008 Failover Clustering Homepage:
http://www.microsoft.com/Windowsserver2008/en/us/clustering-home.aspx
Windows 2008 Failover Clustering Technet Lab Registration:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032345932&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
I have personally completed this lab, and found it very useful. There are numerous labs available from Technet, the link below is the list:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/SearchDisplay.aspx?culture=en-US&evtTypHero=4#eventType=4;culture=en-US;searchcontrol=yes;advanced=mnp;pageNumber=1;sortKey=;sortOrder=;pageEvent=false
Below is a link to a number of Windows 2008 server Step-bySteps:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=518d870c-fa3e-4f6a-97f5-acaf31de6dce&displaylang=en
Another feature that I really like is the File Screening, the ability to block certain file types from being saved to a file server could be very useful in a tightly controlled environment. See the link below:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754810.aspx
I will be continuing to explore Windows Server 2008 and it's new features, so will post more as I come across it. Also going to start looking at the Windows 7 Beta (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx)
