Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2
by Douglas Whiteley & Micah Howard
Windows 7
• What’s new?
• In short, many many features and additions
• Why should you care?
• Impressive driver support
• Better fit and finish
• Quicker feel & boot times
Editions – User Interface
Editions – Security Features
Editions – Preformance Features
Editions – Reliability Features
Editions – Bundled Applications
Editions – Digital Media & Devices
Editions – Networking Features
Editions – Mobility Features
Editions – Enterprise Features
Windows 7 – User interface
• New task bar
• Pinned Icons
• Re-arrange icons
• Aero Peak
• Mouse Gestures
• Windows button hot-keys
• Win + up, Win + down, Win + left, Win + right
Windows 7 – Disk Management
• Mounting VHD files
• Made from Hyper-V and Disk2VHD (sysinternals)
• Booting from VHD
• Enables multiple OS’s from a single environment
Windows 7 – New Hardware Features
• Solid State drive support with TRIM support
• What is trim? Why is it needed?
• DirectX 11
• Superset of DirectX 10.1
• Hardware icons in new “Device Stage”
Windows 7- Trim??
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The TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no
longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. An OS operation such as delete generally only means the data
blocks involved are flagged as not in use. TRIM allows the OS to pass this information on down to the SSD
controller, which otherwise would not know it could trash those blocks.
The purpose of the instruction is to maintain the speed of the SSD throughout its lifespan, avoiding the slowdown
that early models encountered once all of the cells had been written to once. [1]
Although tools were already available to "reset" some drives to a fresh state, they also delete all data on the drive
which makes it impractical to use as an optimization.
The root cause of the issue is that SSD drives do not know which blocks are truly in use and which are free. While
the file system on the SSD will maintain an in-use list, SSDs don't understand file systems, and cannot access this
list. This causes trouble in two places:
SSDs can write 4KB blocks at a time, but, due to hardware limitations, they must delete larger blocks (e.g., 128KB
- 512KB). Since the drive does not know which 4k blocks are still in use if they have been written to previously,
each write will require a much larger read-erase-modify-write cycle, assuming that no additional free blocks are
available on the SSD (i.e., after all blocks are at least partially filled). The term for this phenomenon is Write
Amplification[2] [3].
Wear levelling allows a drive to rearrange its data so the writes are not confined to one corner of the flash chip.
Flash cells tolerate only a limited number of writes before they fail, so some SSDs will move data around to
exercise all of the blocks in the drive more evenly. Since the drive does not know which blocks are truly in use by
its file system, each block of data written to the drive requires an additional write due to the moved block.
The TRIM command specification[4] is being standardized as part of the AT Attachment (ATA) interface standard,
led by Technical Committee T13 of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards.[5]
Windows 7 – Device Stage
Windows 7- New Software Features
• Windows XP Mode
• Demo
• Built in ISO Burner
• Bitlocker + Bitlocker 2 Go
Windows 7 – XP Mode Demo
• DEMO!
Windows 7 – New Management Tools
• Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT)
• Built with MMC 3.0
• Manage
• Hyper-V
• DHCP / DNS Group Policy
• Remote Desktop Services
Windows Server 2008 R2 Pricing
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Windows Server Standard - $731.50
Windows Server Enterprise - $2,377.03
Windows Server Datacenter - $2,108.57
Windows Web Server - $406.04
• Windows CAL - Device CAL - $29.48
• Windows CAL - User CAL - $29.23
Windows Server 2008 R2
Microsoft only released 64bit version
Topics
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Active Directory Domain Services
Group Policy
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
Failover Clusters
iSCSI Initiator
Networking
IIS 7.5
Powershell
Windows Server Backup
Active Directory Domain
Services
• Active Directory Recycle Bin
• Allows restore of purged AD objects without
requiring an authoritative restore
• Requires full 2008 R2 domain
• Active Directory Powershell module for Active
Directory
• New cmdlets to manage AD via PS Ver. 2
• Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer
• Protect object from accidental deletion
Group Policy
• Preferences
• Power Plan (Windows Vista and later)
preference items
• Scheduled Task (Windows Vista and later)
preference items
• Immediate Task (Windows Vista and later)
preference items
• Internet Explorer 8 preference items
Hyper-V in Windows Server
2008 R2
• Live migration
• Dynamic virtual machine storage
• hot plug-in and hot removal of the storage
• Enhanced processor support
• Save on processor power
• Enhanced networking support
• Support for Jumbo frames in VM
• Processor compatibility
Failover Clusters
• Cluster Shared Volumes
• Additional tests in cluster validation
• HA for Hyper-V
iSCSI Initiator
• Server Core not limited to command based
iSCSI connections/added graphical interface
Networking
• Direct Access
• Requires Windows 7 Enterprise/Ultimate
• VPN replacement
• VPN reconnect
• Requires Windows 7/RRAS
• Automatically reconnects VPN connections
upon connecting to the internet
Networking Cntd.
• BranchCache
• content from Web and file servers on the
enterprise WAN is stored on the local branch
office network to improve response time and
reduce WAN traffic
• Uses hash values to keep track of versioning
IIS 7.5
• Built-in WebDAV and FTP extension (SFTP –
FTP over SSL)
• Best Practice Analyzer
Powershell
• New cmdlets (100)
• Send-MailMessage
• Get-Hotfix
• Remote management
• Run commands on remote computers
• Added cmdlets for Roles and Features
Windows Server Backup
• Ability to back up/exclude individual files!
• Still no tape support!
Questions
• Questions?
• Anything you want to see?