Web PI Gains XP, Windows 2003 Support

Facing criticism that the beta of its Web Platform Installer didn't support Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Microsoft addressed that complaint with the release candidate made available yesterday.

Web PI is a free tool designed to bring together the latest iteration of Internet Information Server, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer Express, SQL Server and the .NET Framework that Microsoft announced two months ago.

"Web PI offers a simple experience for downloading and installing the entire stack through a single installer to help you obtain the software you need to build and run a complete Web solution on the Microsoft Web platform," wrote Bill Staples General Manager of Microsoft's Web Platform and Tools engineering teams in a blog posting announcing the release.

Among those who criticized the lack of Windows XP support was Scott Hanselman, senior program manager in Microsoft's developer division. In a blog posting yesterday, Hanselman applauded the added platform support.

"How ya like me now, son?," he wrote. "Also works for Server 2003, so that's cool." Hanselman also pointed out Web PI's inclusion of the ASP.NET MVC beta, URL Scan 3.1 and IIS 7.0 Manager, which allows organizations to manage IIS 7 from Windows XP-based machines.

Complimenting the release of Web PI, Microsoft also launched Web App Installer, a free tool that provides a single way for Web developers to gather ASP.NET and PHP-based open source Web apps. Still in beta, Web AI consists of a suite of Web applications that include Drupal, DotNetNuke, Graffiti, Gallery, OS Commerce, Wordpress and PHPBB. Though Microsoft hadn't determined plans for Web AI at the time, the company is now planning a release candidate by mid-2009, according to Lauren Cooney, Microsoft's group product manager, Web Platform and Standards.

The Web PI release candidate can be downloaded here.

Source: rcpmag.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10417

iYogi Announces Launch of Monitoring and Performance Tool For SMBs.

iYogi – a leading provider of technical support services with horizons in the US, UK, Canada and Australia – today announced the launch of its exclusive server monitoring tools for small businesses. The new product offers integrated technology solutions to surmount the users’ unique IT support requirements thereby enabling them to derive and share information, data, enable network performance analysis, and security trends critical to plan and mana ge their set of servers – 24x7.

Uday Challu, iYogi’s CEO commented, “Holding a significant niche for itself in the computer support industry, iYogi has always known to be on the forefront of adapting breakthrough technology to exceed customer service expectations. This time we have developed a tool offering value-add functionality which will help small business customers maximize the business outcomes of IT.”

iYogi’s monitoring tool provides real time observation and monitoring solutions to ensure more robust and reliable IT support and infrastructure for small buinesses. Small Business owners also get a comprehensive assesment of their IT environment to meet technology needs with the scalability for future growth and create preventative measures based on quick analysis of network device alerts, pre-failure indicators, performance benchmark and security issues.

The new Monitoring and performance tool will provide small business with the opportunity to test all technical and non-technical aspects of their servers and help them to strengthen overall IT infrastructure. The array of services will include: Patch Management, Security Auditing, Site Inventory, Real Time Alerting Script Based Management, and Rights Management Services for all critical server issues.

“Irrespective of the business being small or large, when the consumer chooses iYogi, he leverages the potential of an elite taskforce of Microsoft Certified System Engineers and Cisco Certified Network Associates, ready to service their critical assets, using the most advanced network asset tracking and Performance monitoring”, adds Challu.

Another factor where the Company aims to distinguish itself from its competitors is product pricing. Embracing the concept of service quality, iYogi offers competitively priced technical support services at no-haggle, low prices.

As for its small business support, the Company has integrated its exclusive Monitoring and Alerting Services under one price umbrella of just $480 annually. per server i.e. $49.99 per month. The price is certainly hard to find anywhere else.

For more information on iYogi Small Business Support, visit http://www.iyogibusiness.com/

Contact Details:
Company Name: iYogi Technical Services Pvt Ltd
Address: iYogi Inc.
12 Desbrosses Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10013
Toll Free no:1-800-237-3901
Work Number: 1-212-229-0901
Fax Number: 1-888-867-2715

Improvements to the Windows Server Operating System

Windows Server 2003 includes all the functionality customers need today from a Windows Server operating system to do more with less, such as security, reliability, availability, and scalability. In addition, Microsoft has improved and extended the Windows server operating systems to incorporate the benefits of Microsoft .NET for connecting information, people, systems, and devices.

Server Roles

Windows Server 2003 is a multipurpose operating system capable of handling a diverse set of server roles, depending on your needs, in either a centralized or distributed fashion. Some of these server roles include:

File and print server.
Web server and Web application services.
Mail server.
Terminal server.
Remote access and virtual private network (VPN) server.
Directory services, Domain Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, and Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS).
Streaming media server.
This product overview explains the basics of the Windows Server 2003 operating systems and includes links to more detailed information.

Windows Server 2003 the way naming went along

As you know it is some thing microsoft has got a customed to changing the name of the OS from time to time from the phase 1 to the end of product delivery.. Something as such has also been done with Windows Server 2003... Lets revisit them..

The product went through several name changes during the course of development. When first announced in 2000, it was known by its codename, "Whistler Server"; it was then named "Windows 2002 Server" for a brief time in mid-2001, before being renamed "Windows .NET Server" as part of Microsoft's effort to promote its new integrated enterprise and development framework, Microsoft .NET. It was later renamed to "Windows .NET Server 2003". Due to fears of confusing the market about what ".NET" represents and responding to criticism, Microsoft removed .NET from the name during the Release Candidate stage in late-2002. This allowed the name .NET to exclusively apply to the .NET Framework, as previously it had appeared that .NET was just a tag for a generation of Microsoft products.

Problems with Disk Imaging

Deployments based on disk imaging start to get complex when you have a variety of server platforms. Thanks to Plug and Play, Windows Server 2003 can forgive certain differences in peripherals, but surprisingly small deltas in critical system components can cause imaged installations to fail or perform erratically. These differences include the CPU model and stepping, firmware revision, chipset, memory configuration, and ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) version.

If you change out a major subassembly, though, such as a motherboard, or you place an image on another machine, the Plug and Play Manager may become hopelessly lost and could refuse to recognize the drive interfaces or memory. Be sure to test your cloned configuration on every subset of hardware you have to see whether this is going to be a problem for you.

Disk imaging also causes problems if you use retail versions of Windows Server 2003 that require individual product activation. Because the image has the same Product Key as the master, you will not be able to activate the new server. If you are going to clone servers, be sure to purchase your product using Volume Purchase Agreements that have no activation requirement.

Disk Cloning

Of the three deployment methods, disk cloning is the fastest. It is also the most likely method to cause compatibility problems due to hardware differences between the server where you made the image and the server where you place the image.

Cloning makes sense for desktop deployments where you have many iterations of the same hardware. For servers, I prefer a process that tailors the installation more closely to the underlying platform. Disk cloning is handy, though, for taking snapshots of a server prior to making a change. If the change causes the server to go to the rings of Saturn, you can quickly re-image to recover functionality.

Cloning involves using a disk-imaging package (Microsoft does not provide one) that takes a sector-by-sector snapshot of the contents of the system drive and saves it to a file. You can come back to the same machine at a later time, or to another machine, and apply the image. If the underlying hardware is fairly close to the same, you get an identical copy. If there are subtle differences in the hardware, your copies might start to act in strange and gruesome ways. If you've ever seen Michael Keaton in Multiplicity, you have an idea how bad things can get when cloning goes awry.

There are two major disk-imaging products:

• Norton Ghost from Symantec
  

• DriveImage Pro from PowerQuest
  

Both of these products permit you to quickly take an image of a drive, restore the image, and even make changes to parts of the image without disturbing the other parts.