A number of editors from Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine recently sat down with Ward Ralston, Microsoft Group Product Manager for Windows Server, do discuss the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 release. A transcript of the interview is printed here, and we've also recorded our interview in MP3 format and as an audiocast on ITTV.net:
Jeff James: This is Jeff James with Windows IT Pro magazine, and we're here in Redmond Washington at the Microsoft campus talking to Ward Ralston, the group product manager for Windows Server. We're talking to Ward about some of the cool new stuff that's coming out in Windows Server 2008 release 2.
I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you about was Live Migration, a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 that is comparable to VMware's VMotion product, which lets people basically migrate live VMs from one server to another. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that?
Ward Ralston: Yeah you bet. I guess I'll start out with saying that, with our initial release of Windows Server 2008, we came out with a feature known as Quick Migration, which allows organizations to move workflows from one node of a cluster to another in a few seconds. The reason why we were not able to implement a feature like VMware's VMotion in '08 is because our nodes were clustered and do not have the ability to talk to the same shared storage. So with R2 we implemented a new technology called Cluster Shared Volumes, and what that is it's kind of a logical subsist that lays on NTFS, and what that allows is multiple nodes in the cluster to compensate shared storage. And essentially what this allows us to do now is when we move a virtual workflow from one node in the cluster to another, we can do it instantaneously in milliseconds, rather than seconds, and have feature parody that's on par with VMware. I guess with that comes the significant point that this is all included in the product, this is not expensive add-on that would be associated with VMotion. It's with the product, as is the hypervisor, and it's all included with Windows Server.
Jeff James: Some of the other things we've heard about release 2 is that it's going to have a number of other improvements. One of the ones that I think a lot of IT pros are going to be excited about are the improvements to how they can manage Active Directory, so maybe you can talk a little about that.
Ward Ralston: Yeah, that's actually one of my personal favorite features, and the one that stands out the most is something known as the Active Directory Administrative Center. So in the past, IT pros were probably familiar with the Active Directory, user, computer, sites and services, domains and trusts, we've unified all of those consoles into one, called the Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC), but we've also worked with our PowerShell team and our user experience team to make this a 100% PowerShell-based experience. As I mentioned before, when you're going through the UI, ADAC, configuring user, computer, site setting, it's actually building that PowerShell script in the background, so when you hit OK it actually executes that PowerShell script.
Another personal favorite feature of mine is something known as Active Directory Recycle Bin. So, if you accidentally delete an object in Active Directory, in the past you would've have to reboot it in the safe mode and do an authoritative restore on Active Directory backup, well now we offer, as I mentioned, a recycle bin. So, if you accidentally delete it, you can restore it right there from the console without having to bring a controller down.