NEBytes September Event: Windows Server 2012

For our free event in Newcastle on the 19th September I'm teaming up with my NEBytes collaborator Ben Lee to cover Microsoft's new Server release.

Windows Server 2012 is a huge release for Microsoft. Almost everything is new or improved, so don’t worry we're not going to try to cram it all into a one hour session; Instead we're giving the whole of September's NEBytes over to it!

Some of the questions thrown up by the new OS we’ll look to help answer are:

• Server 2012 utilises the same new UI as Windows 8 and defaults to a core install, does it matter and do we need the UI anymore?
• Microsoft say that this has been designed as a Cloud OS, what does that actually mean?
• Server Manager is radically different, can you really manage all of your servers with a single pane of glass?
• We've got improvements around continuous availability, Direct Access, VDI, new Dynamic Access Controls and many more features but what do these really mean to me?

In this full length Server 2012 special Ben and Jonathan will take you on a tour of the main highlights from the new OS and share some of their personal favourites. We're going to be talking storage, networking, Hyper-V and as many many more things so bring your curiosity and your propeller hat and we’ll see you there.

If you're going to be attending, please register on Eventbrite so that we can keep track of numbers.

Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2012

Microsoft Press have released a free ebook called Introducing Windows Server 2012, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

There are three versions available, depending on where you want to read it:

Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition - PDF ebook
Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – ePub format
Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – MOBI format

I read the version of this book that was based on the beta and found it very informative. It's now been updated to the RTM version, so there's no reason not to grab it now.

PowerShell 3.0 for Windows 7 and Server 2008

Along with the launch of Windows Server 2012* yesterday, Microsoft released the Windows Management Framework 3.0 for some downlevel clients. In the package you get PowerShell 3.0, and updated versions of WMI and WinRM for Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 SP2. If you were looking for support on XP and Vista you are out of luck.

WMF 3.0 also contains the Server Manager CIM Provider that you're going to need on your 2008 R2 SP1 and 2008 SP2 servers if you want to manage them with the new Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 or Remote Server Admin Tools for Windows 8 (RSAT for Win8 is yet to reach RTM).

Download WMF 3.0 at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34595

* Make sure you click that link to the online launch event; windows-server-launch.com has a load of learning resources for Microsoft's amazing new Server release, especially around management and virtualisation.

Windows 8 Release Preview, PowerShell 3.0 and Windows Server 2012 Release Candidates - All the Links You Need

Yesterday Microsoft posted the Release Preview of Windows 8 for download. You can go and get the setup executable from:

Download Windows 8 Release Preview

If you want ISO images so you can prep some removable media, you need to go to:

Windows 8 Release Preview ISO images

Once you've installed the Windows 8 Release Preview, if you're one of those lucky, lucky people who spends their day managing Windows Server, you'll also want to get these:

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 Release Preview

If you're one of the enlightened people who uses Windows PowerShell, but you can't upgrade to Windows 8 RP just yet, then you can still get the version 3.0 Release Candidate goodness on Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1:

Windows Management Framework 3.0 - RC

If you're looking to try the Release Candidate of Windows Server 2012, then you want to go to:

Download Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC) Datacenter

Lots of new fun things to play with. Thank goodness we have a long holiday weekend in the UK to be able to get all this installed! :-)

PowerShell Web Access on the Windows Server 8 Beta

One of my favourite features of Windows Server 8 is Windows PowerShell Web Access. This essentially presents a basic PowerShell console over HTTPS, hosted by IIS8. When I get an email on my phone saying that a new support ticket has come into my team while I'm on the train commuting to/from the office, in lots of cases I can just launch PSWA on the phone and solve it pretty quickly.

Microsoft have provided some fairly comprehensive documentation on the deployment process for PSWA at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831611.aspx. It has changed significantly between the Developer Preview and the Beta, adding some cmdlets to do the configuration and ensuring that you can more or less deploy PSWA without any knowledge of IIS.

PSWA provides a remote PowerShell session, so the login screen asks for your credentials as well as a computer to connect to. You can supply different credentials to the PSWA server and the remote target, plus you can target specific remote target configurations on the endpoint. That means as an admin, you could setup a limited endpoint and tell a less privaledged user how to connect to it via PSWA, perhaps giving them the ability to explore but not alter some things.

That screenshot is PSWA in the Chrome Beta on Android 4 (ICS) on an Asus Transformer Prime. You can just about see the interface elements along the bottom of the PSWA UI there. There's a Tab button, which lets you do tab-completion on devices like phones and tablets where the virtual keyboard doesn't have a Tab key (clever!). And you've got some up and down arrows to navigate your command history. It's pretty darned good for a v1.0.

I setup a Windows Server 8 Beta machine in my domain with a proper SSL certificate and it all worked like a charm. I'd had some issues earlier with using a test cert created by the Install-PswaWebApplication cmdlet on a standalone server, so I'm going to spend a bit of time later working out what was up there and if I find it wasn't just me, I'll share that info.

It's worth saying that you can't have multiple instances of PSWA running on the same server, so if you don't want to install an application called "pswa" inside the "Default Web Site", then you should specify WebSiteName and WebApplicationName parameters when you're installing first time otherwise you'll have to strip it out and start again.

There are some things that I'd like to see added to PSWA over time. One of them is the addition of more UI buttons like the Tab for commonly used PowerShell characters that aren't so easily accessible on phone virtual keyboards, like | { } ` $_ (if you agree, you can vote up my suggestion on Connect). I'd also like to see support for snippets - this would be particularly useful on devices without a full keyboard.