Category: Microsoft

Windows Server Code Name “Aurora” Public Preview now available

Dashboard3

Today along with the release of the August Preview build of Windows Home Server “Vail”, Microsoft has released the first public preview of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora.”

Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” is what I’m going to call the younger brother of Small Business Server. Aurora is designed to be the “bridge to the cloud,” with on-premise features such as network monitoring, remote access, PC backup, and cloud features, such as e-mail and collaboration through services such as Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services Standard Suite (BPOS).

Aurora is designed for small businesses with less than 25 users and do not have the resources or budget for an SBS or even higher setup.

Aurora and Vail share the same code base so there is some feature overlap, and in the case of Aurora, the “home” features such as media sharing have been removed. Some of the features of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” are listed below.

  • Active Directory integration for enterprise grade user and resource management.
  • Remote Web Access to files, computers, and applications created by third parties
  • Integration with Microsoft’s online service offering, BPOS
  • Client Connector and PC Backup of Mac OS X clients (must be using 10.5 or above)
  • Launchpad for quick access to common tasks
  • Drive Extender storage technology, first introduced with Windows Home Server v1, for easy upgrades and management of server storage

While this release is a public preview, it is not recommended that you use Aurora for production use as there is no support and there are some issues around server storage. I’ve listed those issues below.

  • There is a QFE available along with this build that addresses an issue where saving files to an Aurora server may fail when a large amount of data is present on the server. It is advised that this QFE be installed immediately after installing Aurora.
  • Storage Check and Repair is broken in this release, as under certain conditions, there may be data loss.
  • If a hard drive goes missing from the storage pool and you attempt to remove that missing hard drive from the storage pool, the removal wizard may inadvertently remove the wrong files from your server.

For the build number curious amongst us, this is Build 7657 and is available from Microsoft Connect today. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today’s release:

Volume label: GR0SAAxFRE_EN_DVD
CRC: 0x15C92BAA
SHA1: 0x83D7341DB9916145749A02B010981494227F1166

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

  1. Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to. (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
  2. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
  3. Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
  4. The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
  5. If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO

Full PC Restore from Windows Home Server Vail with a USB Flash Drive

The August Preview of Windows Home Server Vail is the gift that keeps on giving.

In this release, there is now a feature that enables you to plug a USB thumb drive into your server and create a bootable drive that contains the necessary software to perform a full system restore of a client PC.

The nice thing about the process is that the thumb drive is created for both 32 and 64 bit PCs meaning that you only need one thumb drive to restore any PCs in your house.  Steps to perform a restore after the creation of the flash drive are largely unchanged from past releases or even WHS v1.

I performed a test restore of my netbook and I’ve included screenshots below of the restore process and the creation of the restore thumb drive.

Windows Home Server “Vail” August Preview–Screenshot Galleries

 

 

 

Windows Home Server Vail now with Mac OS Support

Screen shot 2010-08-14 at 1.21.21 AMWith the exception of having Windows Media Center on the same PC as Windows Home Server, having Mac OS Support has been a top feature request of mine since the announcement of Windows Home Server back in 2007.

Today, this request has been fulfilled. In the August Preview release of Windows Home Server Vail, the Client Connector for Mac OS has been included.

From what I can tell, there is going to be support for backing up a Mac OS client to Windows Home Server by means of Time Machine. (Backup has not yet been implemented in this release.)

Just like its Windows counterpart, there is a Launchpad component that enables users to manage backups, access Remote Web Access and shared folders on the server.

What’s not clear yet is if there will be any method for accessing the Windows Home Server Vail Dashboard on a Mac OS client. Another thing not yet clear is how restores of Mac clients will work. I’m confident that in time we will find out the answers to these questions.

If you are a Windows Home Server Vail beta user and have Mac clients, I highly encourage you to download the August Preview and test the Mac OS Client Connector.

Windows Home Server “Vail” August Preview now available

GreenVailLogo

Today Microsoft has released an updated preview build of Windows Home Server “Vail.”

This build has some very welcome changes and some cool new features. Among these changes and new features are the following:

  • Ability to enable or disable Add-ins at will from within the Dashboard
  • Improvements to the Getting Started tasks
  • New color scheme for the Dashboard, Remote Web Access, and Connect Computer website
  • Client Connector for Mac OS (Yes, you read that right, Mac OS!)
  • Alert Viewer now allows for alerts to be organized based on computer name or severity
  • Server Folders and Hard Drives now includes a summary tab
  • There is now the ability to create a bootable USB flash drive that can be used to restore a client computer
  • Official support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Betas

However, there are some issues and changes in this build that need to be mentioned up front.

  • For users of a previous release of Vail, you will have to migrate data off of your test server to another PC or external storage device before reinstallation as Drive Extender has undergone more changes making DE drives from previous releases incompatible with the August preview.
  • There is a QFE available along with this build that addresses an issue where saving files to a Vail server may fail when a large amount of data is present on the server. It is advised that this QFE be installed immediately after installing Vail.
  • Storage Check and Repair is broken in this release, as under certain conditions, there may be data loss.
  • If a hard drive goes missing from the storage pool and you attempt to remove that missing hard drive from the storage pool, the removal wizard may inadvertently remove the wrong files from your server.

For the build number curious amongst us, this is build 7657 and is available from Microsoft Connect today. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today’s release:

Volume label: GR0SHSxFRE_EN_DVD

CRC: 0x7D6C61AD

SHA1: 0x051BBC9A1EEF7BEFD9DADD5584EEEB0C81F07AF2

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

  1. Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to. (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
  2. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
  3. Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
  4. The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
  5. If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO

Imagine Cup 2010 Wrap-up

(I totally meant to have this posted right after the Imagine Cup finals, but due to some blog issues, and work, the posting schedule slipped. –Tom)

Wow, what a week! I’ve just finished attending the 2010 Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Warsaw, Poland. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with students from all over the world, meet the top executives for Microsoft worldwide, have lunch with education ministers and dignitaries from all over the world, and see some some incredible projects at this year’s Imagine Cup.

At the World Festival on Thursday evening, Jon Perera announced that the 2011 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals will be held in New York, New York. After Perera’s introduction, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke to this year’s finalists via video, and congratulated them on their accomplishments, and talked about how excited she was that the Imagine Cup will be in the USA.  This is incredibly exciting to see the Imagine Cup travelling to the United States. I highly encourage all tech students to compete in the Imagine Cup competition. I’m not sure when the Imagine Cup website will be updated with information for next year’s competition, but keep checking www.imaginecup.com for updated information.

I want to take a moment to thank the City of Warsaw and the government and country of Poland for their wonderful hospitality. Warsaw is such a beautiful city. Throughout the week there were events at different venues within Warsaw. We were at the Palace of Culture and Science, the Warsaw Opera House, a castle in the beautiful town of Pultusk, and several hotels in the city center. The event concluded with an awesome party at the Platinum Nightclub, and after partying into the wee hours of the morning, I returned to the hotel for a few hours of shut eye before heading off to the airport.

One of the biggest takeaways from the Imagine Cup is that no matter how young or how old, students have the power to create innovative solutions to the world’s problems through software. I was totally blown away by how awesome these projects were. Quite a few of the projects are already being looked at by world governments and the private sector. Most of the teams that made it to the final round of judging said that they are working on plans bring their projects to market, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

I want to thank Jacek Murawski (General Manager Microsoft Poland), Jon Perera (General Manager Microsoft Education), the entire corporate Microsoft Imagine Cup team, and the team in Poland that worked to pull off an incredible event. I also want to thank everyone at Microsoft and Waggener-Edstrom for making this trip possible. I had a great time, and I look forward to the 2011 Imagine Cup.

The 2010 Windows Phone 7 Rockstars

Beastware-01Earlier this year the Windows Phone team along with the Imagine Cup announced the Windows Phone 7 Rockstar award for this year’s Imagine Cup competition. Participants were given one month to design a Windows Phone 7 application either in Silverlight or using the XNA Game Studio.

I’m very excited to be able to announce that the first ever Windows Phone 7 Rockstars hail from my home country, the United States. Eric Lo and Christian Hood, from the Advanced Techology Academy, a public magnet high school in Las Vegas, Nevada, have won the 2010 Imagine Cup Windows Phone 7 Rockstar award.

Their project, Droid Assault, is a two-dimensional Windows Phone 7 game written in XNA using C#, that involves a player controlling a machine that destroys other machines using the accelerometer functionality in Windows Phone 7.

Team Beastware plans to publish their game on the Windows Phone Marketplace in time for the launch of Windows Phone 7 devices. I highly encourage everyone to check out their game, and to give them a huge congratulations in their accomplishments.

You can find Team Beastware on the web at http://beastware.co.cc

Microsoft to give BizSpark to all Imagine Cup Finalists for free!

imageTonight at the finalist presentations at the Warsaw Opera House, Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft International, announced that all of the Imagine Cup 2010 Finalists would receive membership in Microsoft’s BizSpark program for free.

The Microsoft BizSpark program provides members with access to the latest software development tools and platforms, connects members to investors, government agencies, and consultants worldwide. Members are also provided with support from a technical, sales, and marketing perspective. For more information about BizSpark, visit http://www.bizspark.com.

Through the Imagine Cup and the BizSpark programs these students are well prepared to take their games, embedded devices, Windows Phone 7 applications, and other applications to market, and to have the tools and knowledge required to build a successful business to promote and sell their software.

Congratulations to all Imagine Cup finalists and I look forward to seeing your businesses grow!

Imagine Cup 2010: Game Design Finalist Presentations

As I write this post, I’m sitting in the audience for the Game Design Finalist presentations. I must say that there have been some really awesome games presented. I give my congratulations to all the teams that are here in the final round.

All of the finalists here are presenting their games to 5 judges and an audience of a few hundred people, and they are holding up under all the pressure. These teams are truly showing their expertise in software development as well as their passion for helping the world in meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The finalists are Team NomNom Productions from Belgium, Team By Implication from the Philippines, and Team Gears Studio from France. I’ve included trailers of their games below, and I’ll post the announcement of the winner tomorrow night. I’m also working on finding out from the teams if their games will be available for download and / or purchase.

Team By Implication

Introducing Team USA

Here at the Imagine Cup the United States is represented in the Software Design, Embedded Design, Touch and Tablet Accessibility, and Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” competition categories. Here is a short description of each team and their project.

Software Design

Team Name: Team Mobilife

Team Members: Kayvon Ghaffari, Wilson To, Helena Xu

Project Description: Mobilife introduces innovative application technologies into the market of mobile medicine by pairing the Windows Mobile platform with computer-assisted intravital microscopy to provide on-field analysis of the human microcirculation to detect developing microangiopathy in children.

Embedded Design

Team Name: Team Vaccine

Team Members: Patricia Day, Shawn McGhee

Project Description: Project Vaccine Tracker helps children around the world. There is a potential to save tens of thousands (or more) children from preventable diseases by providing a solution to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Kenya Partnership and others to effectively record and track immunizations in remote regions of less developed and developing countries.

Touch and Tablet Accessibility

Team Name: OneView

Team Members: Shaun Kane, Kristen Shinohara

Project Description: OneView is a Tablet PC application that enables blind and sighted students to collaboratively solve problems. It combines a sketching interface with a synchronized audio-based interface to enable students with different abilities to work together effectively.

Team Name: Team Note-Taker

Team Members: David Hayden, Andrew Kelley

Project Description: The Note-Taker Project solves issues that students with visual impairment have by combining a custom-designed pan, tilt and zoom camera, and a Tablet PC that supports both pen and multitouch input. Users simultaneously view live video and take notes on a split-screen interface.

Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar”

Team Name: Beastware

Team Members: Christian Hood, Eric Lo

Project Description: Beastware is a 2-D game that involves the player controlling a machine that destroys other machines by using an accelerometer. The objective of the game is to destroy as many enemies as possible before your health runs out. Players have three actions they can perform: shoot, repair and defend. The shoot action fires bullets in the direction of the machine. The repair action restores a small amount of health instantly. The defend action reduces the amount of damage taken for a short period of time.