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Free eBook on Microsoft Virtualization Solutions
There is a new book on "Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions" by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Virtualization Teams,available from Microsoft Press as a download. At 400 pages and 15MB,...
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Installing Windows Server 2008 on a headless server from a USB disk
I am installing Windows Server 2008 on a new server that has no video card and no DVD drive. It's an interesting challenge to make that one work and I'm relying on using a bootable USB disk and...
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The Basics of the Windows Server 2008 Distributed File System (DFS)
Overview In this blog post, we’ll cover the basics of the Distributed File System (DFS) in Windows Server 2008, which offers users simplified access to a set of file shares and helps administrators...
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New White Paper on Hyper-V and SQL Server Consolidation at Microsoft
A new white paper on how Microsoft IT is combining Hyper-V and SQL Server has just been published. This comes from a team that provides thousands of SQL Server instances for internal applications. It...
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Understanding Windows Server 2008 DFS-N by analyzing network traces
1 – Overview This blog post details the behavior of Windows Server 2008 DFS-N (Distributed File System - Namespaces) clients by looking at network traces. The main goal here is to show the interaction...
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Using the Windows Server 2008 DFSUTIL.EXE command line to manage DFS-Namespaces
The most common administration activities related to DFS-Namespaces can be performed using the “DFS Management” MMC. This will show up under “Administrative Tools” after you add the DFS role service in...
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Windows Storage Server 2008 and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2
I am glad to share that Windows Storage Server 2008 (WSS 2008) and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 have been released to the Microsoft OEM partners. This is the successor to Windows Storage...
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How many DFS-N namespace servers do you need?
Introduction Whenever you’re deploying Windows Server DFS-Namespaces, you will need to figure out how many servers will be required. Since I moved to the role of DFS-N PM, I noticed that the specific...
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Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit 1.2 available as a free download
Microsoft released the File Server Migration Toolkit version 1.2 (FSMT 1.2), which will help you migrate file shares from computers running Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003...
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File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) Release Candidate available for download
The File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) is a capacity planning software for CIFS/SMB/SMB2 file servers. It’s also useful for identifying performance bottlenecks. FSCT results include the maximum number...
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Five ways to check your DFS-Namespaces (DFS-N) configuration with the...
Introduction The Distributed File System Namespaces (DFS-N) service is a role service of the File Service role for Windows Server.For a basic description of DFS-N, start with...
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Changes in Roles, Role Services and Features from Windows Server 2008 to...
Introduction This blog post covers the changes in the list of Roles, Role Services and Features from Windows Server 2008 (with Service Pack 2) to Windows Server 2008 R2 (used the latest RC build...
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Three ways to design your DFS Namespaces
Introduction In this blog post, we’ll showcase the flexibility you have with DFS-N by showing three distinct ways that you could design a namespace. Note: If you’re not familiar with DFS-N, please read...
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Windows Server DFS-Namespaces Performance and Scalability
The DFS-N test team has completed some extensive Performance and Scalability testing and we wanted to share some of the results. It includes results on standalone namespaces, "2000 mode" domain...
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File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) 1.0 available for download
Version 1.0 of the File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) was announced yesterday during a presentation by Jian Yan and Bartosz Nyczkowski at SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara, CA. The...
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Windows Server DFS Namespaces (DFS-N) Reference
I get a number of questions regarding reference information for DFS Namespaces (also known as DFS-N). I gathered here the main links that can get you started on the subject: Here are my own blog posts...
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Multiple names for one computer - Consolidate your SMB file servers without...
Overview This blog post covers a few different ways to consolidate multiple SMB file servers and keep exposing the consolidated file shares under the old share paths. Scenario Let’s say you currently...
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Using the multiple NICs of your File Server running Windows Server 2008 (and...
1 - Overview When you set up a File Server, there are advantages to configuring multiple Network Interface Cards (NICs). However, there are many options to consider depending on how your network and...
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New five-part blog series on DFS Replication
Ned Pyle, a Senior Escalation Support Engineer with the Directory Services team at Microsoft, has just started a new blog series focusing on DFS Replication. Here’s how he introduces it: Hello...
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What version of SMB2 am I using on my Windows file server?
Note: This post is now obsolete. Please refer to this newer post which includes coverage of SMB...
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