Kent J. Chen's WebLog

For those who like to collect technical posters, here are a list of them from TechNet blog. Worth checking and saving, or even printing out ant putting them on the wall in your office. At least, I had done it before.

• Windows Server 2008 R2: Hyper-V Component Architecture http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5567b22a-8c47-4840-a88d-23146fd93151
• Windows Server 2008 Component Posters. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=64a5cc28-f8a1-4b30-a4a2-455c65bda8d7&displaylang=en
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Transport Server Role Architecture Diagrams:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6EB8C09A-6EA4-442A-9FAA-DE33265CEB84&displaylang=en
• This poster highlights the architecture and feature set of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FDCDF6E5-DE47-4B58-8086-282101BCDDE9&displaylang=en
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Transport Server Role Architecture Diagrams:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=612f811d-2953-4c08-945e-833c17150083&displaylang=en&tm
• SharePoint 2010 Technical Diagrams:http://blogs.technet.com/b/schadinio/archive/2010/08/18/sharepoint-2010-technical-diagrams.aspx

Enjoy.

VPN has been widely used in all kinds organizations since it’s invented. I personally have been using this technology for almost 10 years but to be honest, I still haven’t touched some of areas in this technology. And it seems to get advanced quite a bit as time goes.

Thanks to Technically Personal for coming up an awesome post that not only explains how VPN works in a simple diagram but also lists number of types VPNs existed and what they are.

Here are the 7 types of VPN listed, some of which you may have…

• Microsoft Touts 64-bit Adoption of Windows 7 – almost half of the windows 7 installed are 64-bit. Way to go.
• Windows 7 SP1 beta available, the final release available in 2011 – they are moving too fast.
• 41% of IT pros abusing admin privileges – to bad, that includes me.
• Windows 8 rumors
• Webmatrix beta released for easy building website

• The VMware guy’s guide to Hyper-V
• VMware vSphere’s built-in performance monitoring tools
• Windows 8 release date projected to late 2010
• A first peak of Windows 8
• Top 5 Windows desktop security tips of 2010, so far

We had a couple of power outages lately which finally knocked my Drobo Pro box down badly. When the ESX servers booted up, they didn’t see those target LUNs they used to see. So no VMs that are stored on that box got booted up. More, they didn’t even show up in ESX.

I eventually got the replacement for the dead Drobo from the vendor and successfully brought all data back. But after I connected it back to network and got recognized in ESX, I got warning message telling me it’s going to destroy the storage when I was trying…

• Top 5 Hyper-V Best Practices (registration required)
• From Servers to Services. The Role for the IT Pro in the Cloud – are we ready yet?
• What You Need to Know About New Windows and Exchange Service Packs and More
• IDC: Windows Server still rules the server roost – really, good to hear, as a windows guy.

Also, some Friday fun from IT Interviews.

If in any case you are using Outlook rules to manager your email flows in your organization, you need to be aware of this limitation. I got the following error message when I was configuring the rules for one central mailbox at work the other day.

changes to the rule could not be saved. There is not enough memory or the rules are too complex. Try deleting some rules.

That’s right. There is the maximum number of rules in Outlook. According to this Microsoft KB,

The maximum number of rules depends on the size of the rules

…

I have been using Exchange 2003 for over 7 years now and am finally now thinking of moving over to 2010 in the near future. It seems that the transition from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010 is relatively painless but still requires a great detailed planning. So knowing the limits and tactics will always help you make the plan clearer with less ignorance.

Here is another great 10-things from 10 things that definitely will help me down the road.

1. Reusing your server hardware may not be possible – Exchange 2010 requires a 64-bit Windows OS.…

If you are not aware of how this could be, watch the video below, which may shock you enough with the fact that according to ars technica,

if you photocopy your butt on a modern copier, it’s probably still there, safe on the copier’s hard drive. It exists there along with medical forms, financial documents, and that list of gang members your police department was just about to arrest.

Ouch! Now,

First of all, we know that these big giant machine actually has a hard drive installed inside the machine secretly storing stuff that…

The latest Windows Tips & Tricks newsletter from WindowsITPro has a pretty good Q&A about windows server license for virtual machines, namely running on Hyper-V server. Here is my summarization for future reference and hope you can find helpful too.

• Standard Edition supports one physical OS and one virtual OS (VM), Enterprise Edition supports one physical OS and four virtual OSs, and Datacenter Edition supports one physical OS and an unlimited number of virtual OSs.
• Standard and Enterprise Edition are purchased on a per-server basis while Datacenter Edition is purchased on a per-processor (socket) basis, and at least

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