Keith Comb created some great screencasts about Server Core. If you are wondering how one can configure a Windows server without windows, then you should have a look at this nice introduction to Server Core. Actually, it is not really without windows. You’ll see that you can still use graphical tools to manage Sever Core. If you are more of the type who likes to read instead of watching, you might want to check out my post about the essentials of Server Core and my introduction to Server Core.

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Since Vista has been available for about a year now, more and more journalists are trying to figure out if Vista is a success or not. Today, I read a couple of interesting articles about Vista’s adoption pace.

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Microsoft offers an update that allows you to manage WSUS 3.0 SP1 with Server Manager. I think this is the first non-Windows Server 2008 product that can be integrated in Server Manager. It seems that Microsoft is indeed copying the concept of Linux management tools such as SuSE’s yast.

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Microsoft detailed Windows Server 2008 prices. Compared to Windows Server 2003, they increased by 1% only. If you take inflation into account, then one has to admit that Windows Server got cheaper. This is interesting if you relate it to the price raise of Windows Vista.

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Microsoft’s marketing makes a somewhat confused impression to me. Now, that we are already used to “Windows Server Virtualization (WSV)“, they come up with the new product names Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Note that WSV was not a code name; this was Viridian. Most interesting in this announcement certainly is the new product Hyper-V Server.

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I have spent some more time with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsoft’s new Virtual Server2005 management tool. My somewhat positive impression which I expressed in two earlier posts about VMM has been dampened a little since then. This is mostly due to the fact that VMM seems to be a bit unreliable.

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Microsoft Deployment, the next version Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007, is finally available at Microsoft’s Download Center. A description of all new features can be found here. Most noteworthy certainly is the integration in Configuration Manager. I’d say we running out of excuses for not deploying Vista. Yeah okay, you still have Vista SP1. Good that Microsoft will release it only next year.

Nick MacKechnie reports that some Sysinternals tools have been updated. PSExec v1.90 improves handling of arguments, BgInfo v4.12 offers improved reporting, Process Explorer v11.04 fixes a memory leak, ADExplorer v1.01, DebugView v4.72 and Process Monitor v1.26 fix some minor bugs.

Some days ago, I mentioned that IDC numbers indicate that Linux loses market shares to Windows Server. There is an interesting article on Linux.com claiming that the eWEEK article by Petter Galli that I was referring to in my post, is probably incorrect. There is yet another article from Galli where he responds to some of the critics of his earlier assessment.

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Yesterday, I blogged about my favorite four new PowerShell 2.0 features. The one I like most is Graphical PowerShell. Maybe “IDE” (Integrated Development Environment) is an exaggeration. Graphical PowerShell is still a very simple tool. But, I think, it is a good start, and I hope that Microsoft will keep on adding new features. In this post, you’ll find some screenshots and a short description of Graphical PowerShell.

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