Windows Vista Team Blog : Longhorn Server

Microsoft Readying Customers with New Assessment and Deployment Tool for the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 Launch!

Baldwin Ng — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:43:00 GMT

Hello IT Pros!

February 27 is a big day. Windows Server 2008 will be officially launching in Los Angeles with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, kicking off in just a few hours.

In support of this very important technology milestone as well as the Windows Vista SP1 release, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team has just released the third-generation of the agent-less infrastructure assessment platform called Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator 3.0 (or simply MAP). Through the use of remote WMI calls and secure inventory engines, the MAP tool enables you to quickly inventory a wide variety of networks (AD-managed, IP ranges, and workgroups), securely assess IT environments of servers, desktops, applications and devices, and auto-generate specific and actionable reports and proposal documents in a matter of hours.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE BLOG POST...

GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD MICROSOFT ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING (RTM BITS)

Thank you,

Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning)

Announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008

Baldwin Ng — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:12:00 GMT

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0

For those of you who are considering the migration of your desktop and server infrastructure to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, we have good news for you!

As we've announced at TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona last November, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is going to release the expanded version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 called Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 (aka MAP).

In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization's desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

What do I mean by AGENT-LESS inventory? Simply put, it means that you do not need to launch any software agents on any of those machines you want this tool to inventory and query - so no more security concerns and user interruption!

It offers quick network-wide inventory of machines and generate hardware and device compatibility reports with actionable recommendations in the form of auto-generated proposal documents - perfect documentation for your IT project planning in the new fiscal year!

The best part is that you can use this tool to inventory your environments ONCE and get multiple assessments and reports for not just server and desktop migration, but also various virtualization options from Microsoft (see our Virtualization Day Summit blog post here)!

How it Works?

Through the use of a sophisticated, agent-less and network-wide inventory engine, Microsoft Assessment and Planning will be able to discover machines on your network whether they are in workgroups or managed AD environments. By way of WMI, Win32, SNMP and other protocols, we can then securely collect hardware and device attributes of each machine and auto-generate migration readiness reports in Microsoft Word and Excel for the user.

What a great way to help you jump-start your planning process when you know your manager is waiting for your IT project plans for the New Year!

What's New with MAP 3.0?

Full incorporation of the features of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment including the generation of reports and proposals in 7 languages including N. American English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese
Windows Server 2008 migration hardware assessment
Windows server virtualization assessment (supports Virtual Server 2005 R2; will also add Hyper-V assessment in later this year)
Application virtualization infrastructure assessment for Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid)
New Graphical User Interface

Check it Out!

Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh today, give us your feedback, and see how you may get a free copy of Windows Vista software and more!
Visit the MAP Team Blog to learn more or check out other great Solution Accelerators!
Subscribe to the Windows Vista Team Blog & MAP Team Blog RSS feeds to make sure you're the FIRST to know when MAP 3.0 will RTM (target date: February 27, 2008)
Sign up to join our weekly Live Meetings and chat directly with our development team
Download the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment - if you can't wait for MAP RTM version (RTM on Feb 27)

See you next time!

Baldwin Ng - Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning + Virtualization Solution Accelerators

Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Getting A Major Facelift: Tool Expansion Announced at IT Forum 2007

Baldwin Ng — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:37:00 GMT

Hi all! It's been a little bit over 2 months since my last blog on the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 (WVHA) release back in August. You may wonder what our dev team is up to. Well, aside from getting the much needed rest, we have been busy working on the NEXT version of the tool. Yes, we're talking about a major expansion here. For those of you who haven't heard of WVHA, it's basically a network-wide readiness assessment tool that goes out to your network and securely assess each PC for their hardware and device compatibility for Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office migration - click here for my detailed blog post.

Tool Expansion - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator

This expansion will not only retain the original WVHA functionalities and the 7-language localization, but it will also incorporate many elements for the Windows Server 2008 wave and Microsoft Integrated Virtualization initiative. Imagine having the same agent-less inventory capabilities to survey the IT infrastructure of servers, applications and workstations and get back a series of assessment reports in an hour or two!

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator, the new name announced at IT Forum 2007 this week, will be the next-generation WVHA where we will add new assessment scenarios for Windows Server 2008 migration, server virtualization via Hyper-V, application virtualization recommendations using Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid) and more.

Come join our MAP Beta Program today and give us your feedback on the new product/technology scenarios!

http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=297

Cheers and stay tuned for more...

Baldwin (mapsbeta@MICROSOFT.COM)

Flexible Desktop Computing White Paper Released

Dave Kim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:52:00 GMT

Hi folks, for the past couple of months we have been working on a white paper that discusses the variety of both established and emerging desktop deployment technologies in the industry today. For most organizations rich clients have been proven to be the most productive way from a desktop angle and with Windows Vista there are big improvements to make everyone even more productive. Combined with some server based elements, (e.g. Softgrid Application Virtualization, Folder Redirection, etc...) Windows Vista provides key benefits to enhance user productivity while increasing data security and management capabilities. Still, for some organizations, the complexity of their environments have grown as some workers have very limited tasks in their desktop environments yet deal with massive amounts of sensitive data while other workers need full capabilities on their desktops. So the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and a starting point for a discussion on some of the different desktop architectures out there as well as showing how Windows Vista can play an integral part in their deployment.

You can find and download the paper at www.windowsvista.com/flexibledesktop or you can read it right away on this blog if you click here. At both the first site and this blog you will continue to find more and more information on what we are doing at Microsoft to make it easier to manage and customize your IT infrastructure. Happy reading! -Dave Kim

Longhorn Server Beta 3 now available

Nick White — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:51:00 GMT

Windows Longhorn Server Beta 3 has received sign-off from the LHS Team and is now available for download. You can also get LHS Beta 3 from MSDN, Connect, and it might even be distributed at WinHEC -- stay tuned!

So why does this matter to you, a user of the Windows Vista client? Well, if you use Windows Vista in a corporate environment, chances are your IT staff also employs Windows Server as well. The new LHS has been designed to work hand-in-hand with Windows Vista, allowing new generations of applications and solutions to seamlessly integrate into existing server environments.

LHS shifts more of the processing to the client side of the equation, thus enhancing responsiveness throughout the system and allowing individual users (clients) greater span of control. For example, LHS allows clients to render print jobs locally before sending them to print servers in order to reduce the load on the server and thereby increase its availability. Also, server resources are cached locally on the client so that they are available even if the server is not, with those cached copies automatically updating when the client and server are reconnected. Native IPv6 is also supported across all client and server services so as to create a more scalable and reliable network, with the re-written TCP/IP stack making network communication faster and more efficient.

Here're a few examples of what the LHS UI looks like:

The LHS Team is very excited about this release and created a short video starring Server Program Management Director Iain McDonald and members of the dev team to celebrate.