Tech Ed EMEA 2008 IT – Day 3 (the other things)

calendarNov 6, 2008 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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In addition to the two Steve Riley presentations I saw, there were a few other items that caught my attention on day 3:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 will be 64-bit only. yes, that’s right, there will be no 32-bit version. WoW64 will still be available for those of you needing to run x86 apps on the server, but it’s now an optional component, so no need to install it if you don’t need it for anything.
  • The .NET framework (or at least a part of it) will be available on Server Core in Windows Server 2008 R2. Unfortunately it looks like there won’t be enough of it on Server Core to allow us to run SharePoint (or even say the WFEs only) on it. Hopefully this is something that will happen into the future. As an aside, Rik and I did mention this to someone on the Server 2008 team, and someone from the SharePoint team; hopefully it will make its way up the chain.
  • Hyper-V v2 looks cool.  Many improvements, including support for many more CPUs than v1. The ability to add VHDs to a running system without rebooting was also mentioned; a very useful feature in my estimation.
  • Remote desktop services will support multi monitors in Server 2008 R2 – at last!
  • R2 power management appears to be getting an overhaul as well; core parking (the ability to entirely switch off a processor core, or an entire socket) looks to be something that will help power consumption on systems when they are lightly loaded.
  • R2 will give us an Active directory recycle bin! Hopefully no more ‘oops… oh no!’ moments.
  • Microsoft uses TS Gateway to allow remote users to access systems within the corpnet network. I was very interested to hear how few machines they use (albeit in clusters) to support their users. A reasonably high spec server (dual Xeon, 4Gb memory IIRC) supported 200-300 users simultaneously.
  • TS Gateway in Server 2008 R2 will allow device redirection limitations set from within TS Gateway to be enforced, even for TS clients that typically ignore these settings. In addition, consent messages can be sent to users forcing them to agree to access policies before they can access the remote systems.