Some Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Information

Mark Minasi over at Exchange Connections presented on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 and would like to share with you some information he bestowed onto myself and others.  In addition to what I am including below, Aaron Tiensivu will be coming out with quite a bit of information on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 in the coming days.  I’ll update this as he releases some information on his blog that he’s been writing up.

Now keep in mind that Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 information has only just recently been announced to the public.  Some information below may be incorrect and might’ve been interpreted incorrectly.  So I would definitely not take the information below as 100% accurate until you see it in official Microsoft documentation.

• Windows 7 will be released at the same time as Server 2008 R2 which is the next major server release.  Server 2008 R2 will be x64 only.  I am personally glad Server products are moving towards x64 only.
• Aero is being renamed to Aero Shake.
• Microsoft’s goal is that hardware that runs Vista will also run Windows 7
• Vista drivers will also be Windows 7 drivers
• XP has 260 methods to trick applications for application compatibility purposes.  Windows 7 will have 340 methods.
• PowerShell 2.0 remoting will utilize WinRM for security instead of RPC.  The reason for this is WinRM runs on top of port 80 and is more security focused than RPC such as authentication.
• .Net Framework will be installable in Server Core which will allow for Server Core PowerShell.
• In Server 2008, Windows Deployment Services only runs at 1 speed and scales down to the slowest speed it detects on a line and uses that slow speed across the board.  In Server 2008 R2, Windows Deployment Services can run at 3 different speeds and multicast over these 3 different speeds.
• Dynamic Driver provisioning will remove drivers that are not needed.  This allows you to put more images in 1 VHD (read next bullet) without having to worry about so many unneeded drivers being left on a machine.
• VHD is being considered the new container format and is on track to replace CAB, WIM, and “maybe” ZIP in the future.
• User Account Control (UAC) will have a slider (5 settings) to control how intrusive the setting is
• Read only Distributed File System
• Direct Access.  This is an Auto VPN type of functionality that uses IPSEC and SSTP.  This will require a Server 2008 R2 RRAS server.  This will be configured by an intuitive wizard.  One unfortunate thing is this will require IPv6.
• Smarter memory allocation for applications
• Non-miniport printer drivers (fewer but not all) are being moved from kernel mode to user mode to make the operating system more stable (no blue screens from drivers in user mode)
• Microsoft is trying to push Powermanagement features such as making each default setting 10% more efficient.  This is a huge increase taking into account all machines that would run Windows 7.  One such advantage is the ability to move operations from 1 core to another if it will not impact performance and allow 1 core to be shut off to save power.  This is called core parking.
• Branch Cache Lite – Allows to have a machine cache a file and server it out to workstations on its same subnet through Network Discovery Protocol (which replaced Computer Browser in Vista).  This is off by default but can be turned on through GPO.  Caches SMB, HTTP, and HTTPS.
• Branch Cach Enterprise – Same as Lite but is Server Based.
• Active Directory – New Domain Functional Level (no details given)
• Active Directory – New Task Based Administrative Center based off of PowerShell.  All GUI tasks will show their PowerShell code just like the Exchange Management Console does.
• Active Directory – Recycling Bin that will reanimate all attributes.  One of the problems with reanimating tombstones with a tool such as ADrestore is that when an object becomes a tombstone, it loses a lot of attributes but only really important attributes are retained.  With the recycling bin, all attributes that an object previously had would be retained and reanimated.
• Active Directory – Best Practices Analyzer (hooray!)
• Offline domain joining
• Still no GUI for multiple password policies (I’m quite surprised at this although there are several community GUI tools to do this such as PowerGUI.)