It seems as if Microsoft upgraded its Web servers to IIS7. This Netcraft report indicates that they made the upgrade on June 8^th. You can check it out yourself by using an HTTP header viewer. It is interesting to note that they run IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2003. I didn’t even know that there is an IIS 7 version for Win2k3. It is quite courageous to use beta software for Web servers having to cope with such a traffic load. They are not brave enough to run it on Windows Server 2008, though.

Microsoft released an update rollup for the “Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007“. What a product name! BDD 2007 comes with a collection of documentations about Windows deployment. It is also a kind of workbench allowing you to use the most important Microsoft deployment tools and tool sets such as the WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) with one central GUI.

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I don’t have much experience with RODCs yet. However, I already see some of the downsides of this new kind of domain controller:
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Yesterday, I summarized the features of a new type of domain controller in Windows Server 2008, the Read-only Domain Controller (RODC). Today, I will describe how to install and configure an RODC.

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A Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) is a new type of domain controller in Windows Server 2008. Its main purpose is to improve security in office branches. In this post, I summarize the functionality of RODC.

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Microsoft finally released Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2. I agree with Josh that “Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1″ is not really an ideal product name. Considering the new features, Virtual Server 2007 might have been better name.

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Techworld.com has an interesting article about a new test from AV Comparatives. According to this new survey Microsoft OneCare ranks 14th out of 17. Some time ago, I blogged about a report where Microsoft’s scan engine had the poorest detection rate of all tested antivirus tools.

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Microsoft released some new reference guides: Group Policy ADMX Syntax Reference Guide, Windows PowerShell Quick Reference, Windows PowerShell Graphical Help File, VBScript Quick Reference. What I find interesting is that that Microsoft released these guides on the same day. Perhaps, this is just a mere coincidence. But maybe someone at Microsoft wants to remind us that there are quite a few technologies available to automate Windows management.

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On Tuesday, Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 will be available thru Automatic Update. I recommend waiting to deploy it for some time. Recently, we updated a machine running ISA Server 2004 with SP2. This improved significantly the security of Microsoft’s firewall since all traffic was blocked after the update. Okay, the disadvantage was that the computers behind ISA were not able anymore to access the Internet.

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Since yesterday, Microsoft offers a documentation update for the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). The title of this page at the Microsoft Download Center is: “Windows Automated Installation Kit Documentation (Windows Server code named “Longhorn” & Windows Vista SP1 Beta 3)” It seems I missed Beta 1 and Beta 2 of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, somehow.

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