Is the Xbox 360 the next hot thin client?

Friday, June 11th, 2010

I’m always surprised – not to say, a little saddened – by how hard companies find it to make the whole concept of “thin clients” work.

When you are whiteboarding your company strategy, the pitch which accompanies the thin client concept always sounds attractive. You can deal with 90-plus per cent of most people’s daily grind with a tiny fraction of the horsepower shipped in a netbook, never mind anything in a regular desktop case.

Microsoft clearly has this idea very much in mind because when Bill Laing  demonstrated Windows Server 2008 Remote Desktop VDI (which to you and me, is remote computing with a whole virtual machine to yourself, inside a super-quick server running off the network), he made significant use of a ThinLinx, a little emerald-coloured box that drew only three watts of power.

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Everything that’s wrong with Windows Server 2008

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Trundle over to the Microsoft Download Center and download the Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster.

Now I have the rather lovely Epson 4880 A2 printer. And I really don’t think it’s big enough for this monster.

And if you ever wanted a clearer demonstration of what’s broken with the Microsoft server model for businesses, one glance at this will tell you all you need to know.

Just ask yourself this question – who actually understands this stuff? All of it?

Want to run Exchange Server 2007 SP2 on Windows Server 2008 R2? Forget it

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Sometimes little things just pop out of the page, and hit you round the head. This official Microsoft TechNet forum, for example.

On there, “Zhengwen Zhu MSFT” stated: “There is NO support for any Exchange Server 2007 SP2 components (any roles, including admin tools) installed on Windows Server 2008 R2.

“Exchange Server 2007 SP2 will not even install on it – the pre-req check will fail during installation.”

Not even for admin tools? Something is clearly seriously amiss. I checked this with Microsoft UK, who said that it’s something to do with Server 2008 R2 having a new version of IIS (7.5) and PowerShell (v2).

I have asked for further clarification – clearly this is a barking mad set of dependencies if it has broken Exchange Server, arguably Microsoft’s premier server platform.

It could be that Microsoft simply hasn’t had enough time to test Exchange Server 2007 SP2 on Windows Server 2008 R2, and has decided to skip it – after all, Exchange Server 2010 is apparantly just around the corner.

However, you should be aware of this limitation. And factor it into your deployment plans. I confess I am somewhat shocked at this news, given that deploying R2 of Server is a fairly straightforward decision but moving from Exchange Server 2007 to 2010 will require real planning and consideration.