Microsoft posted a Step-by-Step Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

"Shows you how to test using Hyper-V and Failover Clustering together to make a virtual machine highly available."

>> Step-by-Step Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

Microsoft released an update for Windows Server 2008 to resolve an issue where in a failover file server, the Shadow Copy creation task does not work after the resource has failed over to another node.

"Install this update to resolve an issue where in a failover file server, the Shadow Copy creation task does not work after the resource has failed over to another node. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Server 2008 License Terms."

>> Download for 32-bit
>> Download for 64-bit
>> Download for Itanium-based Systems

Microsoft released the following updates for Windows Server 2008

Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950917)

"Install this update to resolve an issue where a system running Windows Server 2008 generates a corrupted dump file."

>> Download for 32-bit
>> Download for 64-bit
>> Download for Itanium-based Systems

Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950636)

"Install this update to resolve an issue where SQL Server 2005 installation is not completed successfully on a system running Windows Server 2008."

>> Download for 32-bit
>> Download for 64-bit
>> Download for for Itanium-based Systems

Microsoft published revision 30.0 of their Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides for IT Professionals

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008. These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. "

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 30.0

Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 Multilingual User Interface Language Packs for Arabic, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew, Greek, Thai, Ukrainian, Romanian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian Latin, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian.

"Enable a multilingual user interface in a Windows Server 2008 environment

Multilingual User Interface Language Packs (Windows Server Language Packs) enable a multilingual user interface in a Windows 2008 environment. Adding one or more language packs to a Windows Server 2008 image enables one or more languages in the installed Windows Server operating system, allowing corporations to deploy the same Windows Server 2008 image worldwide while still providing localized user interfaces."

>> Windows Server 2008 Language Packs (Updated)

Microsoft published Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 29.0

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008.

These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. "

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 29.0

Microsoft published revision 28.0 of their Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008.

These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library."

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides

Microsoft released Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows Server 2008

"WinHlp32.exe is required to display 32-bit Help files that have the .hlp file name extension. To view .hlp files on Windows Server 2008, you need to install this application."

>> WinHlp32.exe for Windows Server 2008

Microsoft published Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 27.0

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008. These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. "

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 27.0

Microsoft updated their Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides for IT Professionals to revision 26.0

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008. These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. "

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 26.0

BillS IIS Blog posted a guide how to backup/restore the IIS7 configuration

"Won's recent post on possible configuration corruption caused by OneCare/Forefront reminded me of something that every IIS7 customer should know about: how to backup and restore IIS7 configuration!

No matter whether your configuration file gets corrupted, you make changes you decide to roll-back, you accidentally foo-bar your .config file or some act of terror occurs, some day you'll want to go back to a prior configuration file. Thankfully, IIS7 makes this super easy."

>> How to backup/restore IIS7 configuration

Microsoft published updated language packs for Windows Server 2008. The language packs are now also available in Italian, Russian, Portuguese (Portugal), Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Czech, and Hungarian.

"Each language pack is a .cab file. The language pack .cab files are grouped into .img image download files. Following are the contents of the .img image download files:

- Group 1 (English, German, Japanese, French, Spanish)
- Group 2 (Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil))
- Group 3 (Italian, Russian, Portuguese (Portugal), Dutch, Swedish)
- Group 4 (Polish, Turkish, Czech, Hungarian)"

>> Windows Server 2008 Language Packs Updated

A technical preview of the IIS7 Administration Pack has been released

"This comes with a lot of features which would make life simpler for the web administrators. Below are few of them:

Configuration Editor
This gives you an UI way of directly editing any of your configuration present in your applicationHost.config file; and this is available for administrators only, and you know why!

IIS Reports
It was an UI extension released a while ago, and now a part of the admin pack. An awesome tool which uses LogParser to create charts, diagrams, reports about various data stored in the log files. You need to have LogParser installed to use this one. You can download LogParser from here.

Database Manager
This gives you an UI to manage the existing database connections inside the IIS7 manager itself. you can edit tables, query, et al. The database connections are pulled from those are added through "Connection Strings" UI module under ASP.NET in IIS7 manager.

Request Filtering UI Module
Here comes my most awaited UI module with this admin pack. In fact I started writing one, but stopped after knowing that this one is coming. Pretty easy way to add Request Filtering rules.

FastCGI settings UI Module
Another UI module to change the FastCGI settings.

.NET Error Pages
The UI module which can be used to add .NET error pages directly into the configuration file.

.NET Authorization Rules
Finally one for the ASP.NET Authorization rules."

>> IIS7 - Administration Pack - technical preview released

Microsoft has finished most of the major work on its Hyper-V virtualization technology and expects it will be available Windows Server 2008 on schedule in August, the company said Wednesday.

>> RMicrosoft releases feature-complete code for Hyper-V

Microsoft published a list of all Security audit events for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Vista

>> Security audit events for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista

Microsoft updated their Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides to version 25.0

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008."

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 25.0

Microsoft published Windows Server 2008 Network Shell (Netsh) Technical Reference

"The Windows Server 2008 Network Shell (Netsh) Technical Reference provides a comprehensive command reference for networking technologies such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Network Policy Server (NPS), Network Access Protection (NAP), and Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS), among many other technologies for which there are netsh commands."

>> Windows Server 2008 Network Shell (Netsh) Technical Reference

Microsoft has released Microsoft WebDAV Extension for IIS 7.0 (

"The Microsoft WebDAV Extension for IIS 7.0 helps you enable powerful publishing capabilities for your Web environment.

Integration with IIS 7.0: IIS 7.0 has a brand-new administration interface and configuration store, and the new WebDAV extension module is tightly integrated with this new design. The old IIS 6.0 metabase is gone, and a new configuration store that is based on the .NET XML-based *.config format has taken its place. In addition, IIS 7.0 has a new administration tool, and the new WebDAV extension module plugs seamlessly into that paradigm.
Per-site Configuration: WebDAV in IIS 7.0 can be enabled at the site-level, unlike IIS 6.0 which enabled WebDAV at the server-level through a Web Service Extension.

Per-URL Security Settings: The new WebDAV extension module supports per-URL authoring rules, allowing administrators to specify custom WebDAV security settings on a per-URL basis. These authoring rules are separate from the IIS 7.0 per-URL authorization rules, thereby allowing one set of security settings for normal HTTP requests and a separate set of security settings for WebDAV authoring. "

>> Download for 32-bit
>> Download for 64-bit

Microsoft published Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1

"This spreadsheet lists the policy settings for computer and user configurations included in the Administrative template files (.admx/.adml) delivered with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)."

>> Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows Server 2008

Microsoft updated their Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides to revision 24.0

"These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008. These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. "

>> Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides 24.0