Recent Blog Posts

MCS Talks: Enterprise Architecture (Infrastructure Architecture)

Microsoft is currently running a series of webcasts under the heading of MCS Talks: Enterprise Architecture with topics including: Infrastructure architecture, Core infrastructure, Messaging, Security and PKI, Identity and access management, Desktop deployment, Configuration management, Operations management, SharePoint, and Application virtualisation.

Active Directory UK user group

The number of user groups around Microsoft products seems to be increasing steadily and another group has recently started — the Active Directory UK user group (ADUG) — who aim to build a community of Active Directory users, be they experts or beginners, where they will be able to ask questions, share experiences and learn from each other.

Outlook cached mode is not available on a server with Terminal Services enabled

I was putting together a demo environment earlier today and needed to publish a Terminal Services RemoteApp, so I installed Terminal Services (and IIS) on my Windows Server 2008 notebook. Later on, I noticed that Outlook was not working in cached mode — offline store (.OST) files and features that rely on them are disabled when running on a Terminal Services server.

Core Configurator — download it whilst you can…

A few months ago, I wrote a post on customising Windows Server 2008 Server Core and Michael Armstrong tipped me off about a cool utility, written by former MVP Guy Teverovsky, called Core Configurator. Guy has since joined Microsoft in Israel.

Windows Server User Group UK on LinkedIn

The Windows Server Team was the creation of Scotty McLeod — and Scotty continues to be our group leader. Unfortunately, Scotty had a serious accident several months back and, although he continues to make a steady recovery, no-one else knows how to administer this site. We've created a LinkedIn group in the meantime.

Comparison between Hyper-V and the Xen hypervisor in RHEL

Even though choosing a hypervisor is only a small part of implementing a virtualisation strategy, much has been written about how Microsoft Hyper-V compares to VMware ESX — and there are some fundamental differences between those two products architecturally.

Microsoft's Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool has been released

One of the problems associated with virtualisation is "virtual sprawl" — the proliferation of virtual machines which can negate the idea of server consolidation if not carefully controlled. Microsoft has released an Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool to help manage patching of offline VMs.

Tracking down the Control Panel applet for Mail in 64-bit Windows

At long last, my corporate mail account has just been moved across to an Exchange Server 2007 system with Outlook Anywhere enabled. Here's how to find the Mail control panel applet in 64-bit Windows.

Been a long time & Get well soon Scotty!

Yes, it's been quite a while since I have written on this blog! What kicks starts my post today is very sad news about my good friend Scotty McLeod, who runs the Windows Server Team Blog. He was involved in an accident at a London Train station. We need you well Scotty!!!