Windows Server 2008 Updates Announced

Article
03/21/2009

This past week in LAs Vegas Microsoft held the Mix Conferences and a number of big announcements were made at the event. Mix is for developers and graphical professionals so what possible announcements could come from this conference that impact IT Pro’s you may ask….well remember that every custom application or web site runs on top of infrastructure.

Windows Server 2008 FTP Service 7.5 – now available for download

Microsoft has created a new FTP service that has been completely rewritten for Windows Server 2008. This new FTP service incorporates many new features that enable web authors to publish content better than before, and offers web administrators more security and deployment options. This new FTP service supports a wide range of features and improvements, and the following list contains several of the improvements in this version:

Integration with IIS 7.0: IIS 7.0 has a brand-new administration interface and configuration store, and the new FTP service is tightly integrated with this new design. The old IIS 6 metabase is gone, and a new configuration store that is based on the .NET XML-based *.config format has taken its place. In addition, IIS 7.0 has a new administration tool, and the new FTP server plugs seamlessly into that paradigm.
Support for new Internet standards: One of the most significant features in the new FTP server is support for FTP over SSL. The new FTP server also supports other Internet improvements such as UTF8, IPv6, and adaptive networking bandwidth usage.
Shared hosting improvements: By fully integrating into IIS 7.0, the new FTP server makes it possible to host FTP and Web content from the same site by simply adding an FTP binding to an existing Web site. In addition, the FTP server now has virtual host name support, making it possible to host multiple FTP sites on the same IP address. The new FTP server also has improved user isolation, now making it possible to isolate users through per-user virtual directories.
Extensibility and custom authentication: The new FTP server supports developer extensibility, making it possible for software vendors to write custom providers for FTP authentication. Microsoft is using this extensibility feature to implement two new methods for using non-Windows accounts for FTP authentication for IIS Managers and .NET Membership.
Improved logging support: FTP logging has been enhanced to include all FTP-related traffic, unique tracking for FTP sessions, FTP sub-statuses, additional detail fields in FTP logs, and much more.
New supportability features: IIS 7.0 has a new option to display detailed error messages for local users, and the FTP server supports this by providing detailed error responses when logging on locally to an FTP server. The FTP server also logs detailed information using Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), which provides additional detailed information for troubleshooting.

x64 FTP Service @ https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=ffb7c167-279e-48d3-8169-dea85784c4d1.

x86 FTP Service @ https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b7f5b652-8c5c-447a-88b8-8cfc5c13f571.

Windows Server 2008 IIS 7 Admin Pack – now available

The modules of the Administration Pack are a toolset to help you be more productive when using IIS Manager. Functionality varies from increased configuration editing capabilities to configuring FastCGI settings on your server.

Configuration Editor - The configuration editor module will help you manage your configuration files. This tool is available for server administrators only. It allows you to edit any section, attribute, element or collection in your configuration file. In addition to editing these values you are also able to lock and unlock them. The configuration editor also allows you to generate scripts based on the actions you take as well as search the file to see where values are being used.

UI Extensions - UI Extension modules allow you to manage existing features through IIS Manager.

The FastCGI module allows you to manage your FastCGI settings.
The two ASP.NET modules allow you to manage your authorization and custom errors settings.
Finally the HTTP Request Filtering allows you to setup rules for http request filtering.

x64 Admin Pack @ https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b74e3b35-b77c-4191-9ac4-8307423d09ec

x86 Admin Pack @ https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bc9b9f0f-830e-409c-a211-dcea1b4d9860

Windows Server 2008 PHP Training Kit – now available

The PHP on Windows Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including demos and hands-on labs to help you understand how to build PHP applications using Windows, IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008. The March RC1 release includes the following:

PHP & SQL Server Demos