R2FeatureTalk (German): SMTP-Server (#61)

Watch me explain “SMTP-Server” in Video #61.

Watch all videos here.

R2FeatureTalk (German): DHCP-Servertools (#37)

Watch me explain “DHCP-Servertools” in Video #37.

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R2FeatureTalk (German): DNS-Servertools (#38)

Watch me explain “DNS-Servertools” in Video #38.

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Project Parra Tech Preview (to be XenApp vNext) Integrates Policies into GPOs - This Stuff Rocks

When I attended BriForum 2007 in Amsterdam, Juliano Maldaner (XenApp product architect) presented features in future versions of XenApp. He also talked about a very impressive change how XenApp handles policies: the plan was to integrate them into Microsoft group policies.

Two and a half years have passed and - finally - the project Parra tech preview offers a first (public) look at the new policy engine. In this article, I’ll have a closer look at the user interface and the handling of policies.

Why Office 2010 Ribbon Customization Does Not Cut It

In a recent article, I have introduced an extension for Microsoft Office called InstantRibbonChanger. Through a configuration file, this extension is able to modify existing ribbons or add new ribbons to all applications in the suite.

With the dawn of Office 2010, one feature caught my attention: the new version of Microsoft Office (now in beta and available here) is announced to allow for ribbons customization through the user interface.

Let’s have a closer look at this feature and how it compares to the InstantRibbonChanger.

Performance Monitoring Part 9 - EdgeSight vs. Resource Manager for XenApp

After several articles in this series have covered Windows server in general, I’d like to return to the topic of Windows-based terminal servers. But instead of talking about the concepts, the theory and technology of performance monitoring, this article compares two competing tools for monitoring terminal server environments: Citrix Presentation Server Resource Manager and Citrix EdgeSight.

R2FeatureTalk (German): Einfache TCP/IP-Dienste (#10)

Watch me explain “Einfache TCP/IP-Dienste” in Video #10.

Watch all videos here.

Performance Monitoring Part 8 - Analyzing a Performance Monitor Database using Excel

In the last post of this series about performance monitoring, I have described how to use Windows Performance Monitor to log counter values into a SQL database. Now I’ll show you that Excel is a tremendous tool to quickly analyze the collected data.

Performance Monitoring Part 7 - Using Performance Monitor with a Database

After a lot of theory about performance monitoring, this article demonstrates how the Windows Performance Monitor can be used to log to a database - even from multiple machines.

Most of you have probably used Performance Monitor before. It allows you to monitor performance metrics (local and remote) in real-time and to log performance data from multiple machines for later analysis. In this article, I will focus on the latter because collecting and analysing performance data from multiple machines is a time consuming task.

Webcast Series about Installable Feature in Windows Server 2008 R2

My colleague Nicki Wruck (@CommunityGuide) has started a huge series of short videos about the features in Windows Server 2008 R2 - in German.