• Interview with Mark Russinovich: the future of Sysinternals, Security, Windows
• Windows 7 — Approach to System Performance at the Engineering Windows 7 blog (Microsoft site)
• Xen 3.3 now available. New: Power management (P & C states) in the hypervisor, Shadow3, CPUID feature levelling and more.
• Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is publicly available. Nice new features. But I doubt that they can stop the Firefox growth.
• Microsoft’s plans about virtualization An interview with Microsoft representatives. Interesting!
• Microsoft delays the Hyper-V Integration Components for Linux, removes the RC version. We are already waiting…
• Comprehensive VMware ESX-Microsoft Hyper-V comparison. This article by Clay Shekleton compares architecture and features.
• Small Business Server 2008 has released to manufacturing (RTMed)

3d Traceroute does what its name implies. It displays traceroute responses in a three dimensional representation: X-axis represents the hops (routers); the y-axis, the response time of the routers; and the z-axis stands for successive probes in time.

While this seems to be just some kind of gimmick, it might turn out to be useful, if you have to track down certain kinds of network problems. For example, if you experience erratic network transfer delays, you can find out easily where the bottleneck is. All you have to do is to probe your destination for some time. The router that causes the delays will stand out in the graphic representation sooner or later.

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You might have already heard about the Virtualization Congress in London taking place October 14-16, 2008. I am glad to announce that Alessandro Perilli, founder of virtualization.info and organizer of this event, has offered a 25% discount to all 4sysops readers.

Many important vendors in the virtualization market will be present. In particular, the three major players, i.e. VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix are sending high-profile representatives. You are probably familiar with Mark Russinovich, one of the founders of Sysinternals. I suppose there are not many at Microsoft who have as much detailed technical knowledge about Windows he does. He describes his keynote at the Virtualization Congress in the video below.

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When it comes to cloud computing, most people think about hosted applications running somewhere in a big data center. Only time can tell if this kind of cloud computing will gain acceptance. It seems to me that things develop very slowly here. But what about renting a complete server in the cloud? Meanwhile, most big web hosts also offer dedicated servers. Prices go down almost every month, and the servers they have are becoming more powerful. Since we are about to buy a few new servers, I compared the prices and considered the consequence of moving some of our servers to a third-party data center.

My experiences

I have been working with rented dedicated and virtual servers on my private projects for a couple of years. My overall experience is quite positive. Administering a server in the cloud is not much different from managing a server in our server room. For most tasks, it doesn’t really matter where the server is located. It could be in the room next door or on the other side of the planet.

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Reducing hardware and power consumption costs might be viable in some scenarios with virtualization technology although the possible cost savings are often exaggerated. However, there are other factors to consider here.

Sophisticated virtualization technology does not come for free. Yes, there are a couple of free solutions available. However, they have important downsides. The most prominent solution is probably VMware Server. You could run it on a Linux host without any license costs. But we all know why VMware offers this product for free. It is not just because of Microsoft’s Virtual Server. The main reason is that they want you to buy VMware ESX after you started to like virtualization technology. You will want to have more performance, more redundancy and many other features that VMware Server lacks. Of course, this is an absolutely legitimate strategy. However, for most organizations it will mean they will pay sooner or later for virtualization technology. These costs certainly also have to be taken into account when it comes to the overall costs of server virtualization.

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• GFI study (PDF): 51% of organisations have not implemented email archiving. We belong to them. I plan to change this.
• Portable PowerShell even on Server Core http://is.gd/Ajs http://is.gd/1Q07
• Sysinternals updates: Desktop v1.0 (new virtual desktop tool), Ausruns v9.33 (automatically scans and exports now) http://is.gd/1PZC
• Microsoft is a big Linux vendor. http://is.gd/1PZ3 http://is.gd/1PZm How times change.
• First Look at the New VMware Server 2.0 RC1 (and How it Compares to ESXi) http://is.gd/1PYr A more positive view than mine http://is.gd/1PYA
• Microsoft eases virtualisation licensing. 90-day restriction will be removed on 1 September. http://is.gd/1PY6 http://is.gd/1PYh
• Windows 7 Server to be ‘minor release’ http://is.gd/1Kt0 The name will be Windows Server 2008 R2. How ugly! Why not just Windows Server 6.5?
• A third of new PCs being downgraded to XP, says metrics researcher http://is.gd/1KrF I wonder why those people buy new PCs.

This is my second post in the series about the costs of server virtualization. So, what is it about the “hay argument”: ten horses require ten times more hay than one horse? Do ten servers always consume less energy than one? I don’t think so. How much hay or power is consumed does not depend solely on the number of workers performing a certain task.

I suppose a well-fed sumo wrestler consumes ten times as much food as a ballerina. However, ten ballerinas have a fair chance to floor a sumo wrestler. Power consumption is connected to the amount of work that has to be done. Thus, if a high-end server has to do the work of ten average servers, it obviously needs a lot more power than each of them does.

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Submitted by Josh Stephens – Blog: Geek Speak

Download SolarWinds FREE Real-time NetFlow Analyzer to Get Deep Visibility into Network Traffic & Slowdowns!

Our new free tool unlocks the power of NetFlow on your network: SolarWinds Real-time NetFlow Analyzer! This free desktop tool captures and analyzes NetFlow data in real time to show you exactly what types of traffic are on your network, where that traffic is coming from, and where it is going. With Real-time NetFlow Analyzer, you can take the guesswork out of diagnosing traffic spikes and troubleshooting bandwidth issues.

If you are new to NetFlow, you’re going to love this powerful protocol. If you haven’t already, it is easy to turn on flows on your existing Cisco routers. We even have a free tool – NetFlow Configurator – to help you remotely configure NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco® devices. We’ve bundled this tool with the Real-time NetFlow Analyzer download, so that you can get started with monitoring network traffic immediately.

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A while ago, I discussed the seven disadvantages of server virtualization. Cost was one factor that I did not cover in that post. Questioning whether one can reduce costs with server virtualization sounds a bit like blasphemy these days. You will hardly find an article about server virtualization that does not claim that it is the best way to save costs in the data center. According to this view, server consolidation is the main benefit for virtualizing servers.

The arguments supporting this claim are so obvious that most IT managers do not dare question them. Replacing ten physical servers with just one seems to be the best cost-saving measure one can think of – and since the Green IT hype began, even CEOs talk about power-saving in the data center. The calculation seems to be quite easy, too: ten horses require ten times as much hay as one horse. Every CEO can understand that. So does it really make sense to challenge the costs saving axiom of server virtualization? I think it does.

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The NT EventLog Explorer was developed to simplify manual retrieving and creating of event log related information for Microsoft Operations Manager. However, this tool can also replace Windows Event Viewer in some situations. In particular, if you want to access the event logs of a certain application or service, you will accomplish this faster using NT Event Log Explorer.

The Explorer-like user interface lets you navigate easily to specific sources. In Event Viewer, you would use the filter or the search function to list the event log entries of a certain source. If you don’t know the exact name of the source, this can be difficult. Thus, clicking through the “Event log tree” of NT EventLog Explorer will be faster in many cases.

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• Early Access Program for PacketTrap PerspectiveMSP. http://is.gd/1wgQ It is a new multi-site network management platform. I reviewed pt360, their network engineer’s tool suite, before. http://is.gd/1whe
• Apple now worth more than Google http://is.gd/1wk2 Hard to believe. Microsoft is still number one followed by IBM, Apple, and Google.
• Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides updated http://is.gd/1w8K
• 218,000 Servers in Microsoft Data Centers? http://is.gd/1w72 Are they all running Windows Server? Imagine the license costs
• Microsoft opens two way discussion about Windows 7 in a new blog. It’s your chance to influence the development of Win7. http://is.gd/1soH
• Hyper-V: Creating highly available virtual machines http://is.gd/1vWB Nice step-by-step guide about Hyper-V and Failover Cluster.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 http://is.gd/1vVB

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In former times, making note of passwords was the worst sin for a sys admin. It turned out that many were tempted to use passwords that were easy to remember and therefore often too weak. There are ways to create passwords that are easy to memorize and difficult to crack by brute force attacks. However, the more passwords you have to manage the more difficult it gets to keep track of them. Thus I usually use random passwords and store them in a safe place. Of course, this is not 100% secure either, because if someone gets access to your password store, you will have a serious problem.

The minimum one should do is to encrypt the passwords. There are countless free password management tools for Windows. My favorite is Locknote, because it is allows me to encrypt all kinds of confidential data in a simple text editor. Another way is to store your passwords on your Smartphone or Pocket PC. This way, you will always have your passwords with you. There are many commercial password management tools for Windows Mobile, but I’ve only found one that is free.

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PlacesBar Editor is a simple tool that allows you to add shortcuts to all Windows dialogs. Whenever you open or save a file from a Windows application, you will see these shortcuts on the left side of the dialog box in the so-called dialog places bar. Under Windows XP, the shortcuts for My Recent Documents, My Documents, Desktop, My Computer, and My Network are found in this sidebar by default. You can change the links by hacking the Registry. With PlacesBar Editor, it is easier to customize the dialog places bar. It also allows you to add five additional shortcuts for Microsoft Office.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in my survey! The results were quite interesting. This information is important for me because it helps me to improve 4sysops. Some of you submitted comments about my blog; I am publishing them without names at the end of this article.

Most of your comments were quite positive, which surprised me a little. I think this is due to the fact that only those of you who really like my blog were willing to spend some time answering all the questions. If you didn’t take part in the survey, you still have the chance to tell me your opinion of my blog in the comments section below. Critical responses are welcome too! So, if you think that I am a Microsoft fanboy, just go ahead and say it! But do me favor: watch your language. This is a family program. If you don’t want to comment publicly, you can use my contact form.

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SSH is not really popular in the Windows world. Nevertheless it is a very useful protocol to manage Windows servers remotely. All you have to do is install OpenSSH for Windows on your server. This allows you to remotely connect to a command line interface through a secure connection.

You know me, I am not a CLI fan, but if I have to manage a server using my Windows Mobile toy it is often the easiest way. The small screen of a Pocket PC is big enough for simple commands. It is no secret that most problems under Windows can be solved with a reboot. If you have a problematic server, it can be quite comforting to know that you can restart the server wherever you are.

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