Week of July 15: Clustering Server Workloads, Updated Windows Server 2012 Rollup, Changes to Group Policy, and Practical Powershell with Windows Server MVPs

Greetings, all,

Welcome to this week’s roundup of blogs from MVPs with expertise areas related to Windows Server.

If you’re interested in how-to articles and background information, this is a good week for you. We’re continuing to see more exploration of PowerShell, with how-tos for using PowerShell to perform tasks such as deleting AD accounts, configuring Live Migration, and enabling jumbo frames on multiple NICs. For those interested in the bigger picture, there’s also some core concepts on Desired State Configuration (new in Windows Server 2012 R2) and how it uses declarative PowerShell. Clustering is also a hot topic, with explanations of how changes to the dynamic witness in Windows Server 2012 R2 should improve uptime in clustered environments and how to set up SQL Server 2014 to use Cluster Shared Volumes. Active Directory Management is also on the list, as well as key new features of Remote Desktop Services and Group Policy caching in Windows Server 2012 R2. This is just a sample--be sure to get the details at the links in this roundup!

MVPs not only provide original writing but can help you find resources created elsewhere. This week includes pointers to the new MAP Toolkit, a free architectural diagram of Hyper-V, and an updated hotfix rollup for Windows Server 2012.  Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about PowerShell, MVPs have pointed you to the free PowerShell Jumpstart on July 18, led by Jeffrey Snover. (Seriously, you don't want to miss this, so check out the links below.)

To close, I’d like to introduce you to a change in the format for this regular roundup. While there’s a lot of overlap in interest between Windows Server and System Center, we’ve decided to split them into separate rollups. I’ll be continuing the Windows Server roundups, and we’ll
also publish a separate one for System Center.

Happy reading!

Christa

Cluster

Allan Hirt

Robert Smit

Directory Services

Jorge de Almeida Pinto

Roberto di Lello

Group Policy

Darren Mar-Elia

Hyper-V

Aidan Finn

Hans Vredevoort

Thomas Maurer

PowerShell

Jeff Wouters 

Ravikanth C

Shay Levy 

Remote Desktop Services

Freek Berson

Setup, Deployment, and Patching

Mikael Nystrom 

Small Business Server

Amy Babinchak

Damir Dizdarevic

Other

Edward Horley

Helge Klein