In this post, we are going to dive into a feature in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Storage Spaces are going to dramatically improve how you manage large volumes of storage at home (and work). We’ve all tried the gamut of storage solutions—from JBOD arrays, to RAID boxes, or NAS boxes. Many of us have been using Windows Home Server Drive Extender and have been hoping for an approach architected more closely as part of NTFS and integrated with Windows more directly. In building the Windows 8 storage improvements, we set out to do just that and developed Storage Spaces. Of course, the existing solutions you already use will continue to work fine in Windows 8, but we think you will appreciate this new feature and the flexible architecture.
LATEST ARTICLES
Many consumer electronic devices these days provide a way for customers to get back to some predefined “good” state. This ranges from the hardware reset button on the back of a wireless network router, to the software reset option on a smartphone. We’ve built two new features in Windows 8 that can help you get your PCs back to a “good state” when they’re not working their best, or back to the “factory state” when you’re about to give them to someone else or decommission them.
Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/04/refresh-and-reset-your-pc.aspx
The ultimate goal of virtual reality developers is to recreate the holodeck, first named and shown in Star Trek The Next Generation. In a new video feature on The Verge, the web site is given a tour of Microsoft’s Edison Labs where the goal of the creators is to create truly realistic looking 3D virtual environments without the need for glasses.
Anyone that’s suffered data loss will know how much of a lifesaver backups are. To the average user, backups can get tedious and intrusive, so modern day systems have been geared towards making the process as simple as possible.
Link – http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-is-finally-planning-to-fix-backup-in-windows-phone/
Achievements are the only thing you need to keep a gamer striving towards their next goal. The premise of a few more virtual points for their effort seems to be enough to drive people to do much more. Channel 9 have realised this, and as WPCentral are reporting, are gleefully making the most of the opportunity, with their own achievement system.
Link – http://www.wpcentral.com/visual-studio-achievements-windows-phone-beta-developers
PerfView is a performance analysis tool focusing on ETW information (ETL files) as well as CLR memory information (heap dumps). It can collect and view ETL files as well as XPERF CSV files. Powerful grouping operators allow you to understand performance profiles in ways other tools can’t. PerfView is used internally at Microsoft by a number of teams and is the primary performance investigation tool on the .NET Runtime team. Features include:
- Non-invasive collection – suitable for use in live, production environments
- Xcopy deployment – copy and run
- Memory
- Support for very large heaps (gigabytes)
- Snapshot diffing
- Dump files (.dmp)
- CPU Performance
- Support for managed, native, and mixed code
- Can read XPerf logs
- Profile diffing
Download –
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.
- Flexible and reliable – Exchange Server 2010 SP2 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company’s unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.
- Anywhere access – Exchange Server 2010 SP2 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications – e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more – from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.
- Protection and compliance – Exchange Server 2010 SP2 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company’s communications and meeting regulatory requirements.
Link – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
In a posting on the Windows Live Blog, the team have announced a bumper update to the SkyDrive service that will start to roll out to end-users in the next couple of hours.
One of the new features is adding more options for sharing files. The new SkyDrive allows people to share items simply by putting in a person’s email address from your address book, including your lists from Facebook, LinkedIn and others. You can also create a URL link to your SkyDrive files that could be set to private viewing only, viewing and editing if you want the person to edit that item or a Public link that let’s everyone check out that file.
Microsoft Corp. today announced the first major service update for Microsoft Office 365, the company’s next-generation cloud productivity service for businesses of all sizes. The service will also be available to try in 22 additional markets today, including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan.
Link – http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/nov11/11-29ServicesUpgradePR.mspx
Microsoft has just released its fourth iteration of IE 10 which can be downloaded here. The latest platform preview brings with it even more support for HTML 5 as posted on the IE blog.
Microsoft is fully embracing HTML 5 and it is encouraging developers to start working with the new technology. Microsoft has even put together an IE 10 developers guide which you can read about here.
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RC0 enables a cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization as well as quickly build solutions and extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by capabilities for mission critical confidence.
SQL Server 2012 RC0 enables a cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization as well as quickly build solutions and extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by capabilities for mission critical confidence:
Link – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28145&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
It looks like Microsoft is getting close to releasing a new version of Microsoft Security Essentials, as some Microsoft Connect participants are being invited to join a new Microsoft Security Essentials Public Beta program. Microsoft vaguely state that the newest MSE beta will have “the latest protection features”, and the beta program itself will “start soon” after you accept the invitation.
Quite simply, SQL Server 2012 is going to revolutionize the way we think about availability and recovery. Today, when we think about these concepts, we consider an individual database (log shipping, replication, mirroring) or an entire SQL Server instance (failover clustering). In SQL Server 2012, in addition to Failover Clustering enhancements, we’ll be able to treat a group of databases as an entity – a much more common requirement with today’s complex, multi-database applications. This entity is called an Availability Group.
Ryan Haveson, a group program manager on the User Experience team, wanted to update folks on some progress with Task Manager since the Windows Developer Preview. In this post you’ll find the updated Task Manager tools for managing systems with a large number of logical processors. This is scalability well beyond desktop PCs, and is designed for the server and data center. A big part of Windows development is that the OS scales across a wide range of form factors and CPU architectures.
Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/27/using-task-manager-with-64-logical-processors.aspx
The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 3 (SP3), 32-bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to the 32-bit editions of all of the 2007 Microsoft Office System servers.
The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 3 (SP3), 64-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to the 64-bit editions of
Service Pack 3 for Windows SharePoint Services 2007 (KB2526305), 86-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Windows SharePoint Services 2007, 86-Bit Edition.
Service Pack 3 for Windows SharePoint Services Language Pack 2007 (KB2526305), 86-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Windows SharePoint Services Language Pack 2007, 86-Bit Edition.
Service Pack for SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 (KB2526089)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007.
Service Pack for Windows SharePoint Services Language Pack 2007 (KB2526305), 64-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Windows SharePoint Services Language Pack 2007, 64-Bit Edition.
Service Pack 3 for SharePoint Designer 2007 (KB2526089)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007.
Service Pack for Visio Viewer 2007 (KB2526301)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to the Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007.
Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB2526091)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Project 2007.
Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office Project Language Pack 2007 (KB2526091)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Project Language Pack 2007.
PowerPoint Viewer 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to PowerPoint Viewer 2007.
Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Expression Web 3 Language Pack (KB2575737)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Expression Web 3 Language Pack.
Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Expression Web 3 (KB2575737)
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Expression Web 3.
The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack (SP3), 86-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack.
The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack (SP3), 64-Bit Edition
Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack.
