Alexander’s Blog

Microsoft has announced that the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Virtual Server 2005 R2 are available as a free download. Although there is no fee for the Virtual Server 2005 R2 software but if you want to order it on a CD you’ll have to pay shipping and handling charges. You can use Virtual Server to create a robust virtualization environment for your production server consolidation, to support disaster recovery and high availability scenarios, and to consolidate mixed workloads including Linux guest operating systems.

The download ranges in size from 28.4 MB to 29.2 MB, depending on the language selected. The approximate download time over a 128K connection is 31 minutes. Click here to download the software.

Here are the requirements for 32-bit version.

Supported Operating Systems
1. Windows Server 2003
2. Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1
3. Windows XP Professional Edition
4. Windows XP Service Pack 2
Requirements for Use
1. Computer with a 550 MHz or faster processor; 1.0 GHz or faster recommended
2. Requires an Intel Celeron, Pentium III, Pentium 4, or Xeon processor; or AMD Opteron, Athlon, Athlon 64, Athlon X2, Sempron, or Duron processor
3. All physical processors supported by the host operating system
4. Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, or Datacenter Edition or later
5. Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition or Premium Edition
6. Windows XP Professional (for non-production use only)
7. 256 MB of RAM minimum (additional memory needed for each guest operating system)
8. 2 GB of available hard-disk space (additional disk space needed for each guest operating system)
9. Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher-resolution monitor recommended

A set of virtual machine add-ins are also available as a free download, and will be supported for an initial set of nine Linux distributions listed below:

Enterprise distributions:
1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 6)
2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (update 6)
3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
4. Novell’s SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Standard distributions:
1. Red Hat Linux 7.3
2. Red Hat Linux 9.0
3. Novell’s SuSE Linux 9.2
4. Novell’s SuSE Linux 9.3
5. Novell’s SuSE Linux 10.0

More info…

By default Outlook blocks several types of attachments for security reasons. There are two levels of attachment security in Microsoft Outlook 2003. Access to Level 1 files is blocked and you can’t changed that. When you receive an attachment with a Level 2 file type, you will be prompted to save the file to your hard disk. There are no Level 2 files by default but you can add or remove Level 2 type files if you are an administrator. There are dozens of Level 1 type files. For a list of Level 1 file types that are blocked by Outlook, click here.

If you wish to allow certain types of attachments in Outlook 2003, e.g. URLs, you can modify the registry as described below.

1. Clik, Start, Run, and type regedit.exe to start the registry editor.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Your Version Number\Outlook\Security. The version number will be something like 10.0 or 11.0, depending on your version.
3. Click Edit, New, String Value.
4. For Value name type Level1Remove and press Enter.
5. Double-click the new entry and set the Value data to a list of extensions seperated by semicolon that you want to allow. For example, if you want to allow URLs, EXE and VBS files, enter url;exe;vbs in lowercase. Do not enter a period before file types.
5. Restart Outlook for the changes to take effect.

Virtual Server is a Microsoft Windows-based server application that is optimized to provide virtualization of Windows Server operating systems concurrently on a single physical server. In combination with the Windows Server 2003 operating system, Virtual Server provides a platform for implementing domain controllers in virtual machines. With this platform, you can install multiple Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server domain controllers in separate virtual machines on a single physical server. In this way, you can host multiple domains, multiple domain controllers for the same domain, or even multiple forests on one physical server that is running a single operating system.

Running domain controllers in virtual machines is best suited for test and pre-production piloting environments. With strict adherence to the requirements described in this document, domain controllers running in virtual machines can also be used in a production environment.

Download this document from Microsoft to learn more about running Domain Controllers in Virtual Server 2005.

To provide enhanced security, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 is designed to prevent you from unblocking attachments.

Because Outlook is so widely used, it has been the target of several virus attacks in the past that have affected millions of people. Microsoft has acted to protect people from files, such as .exe and .bat files, that are often used to run malicious scripts when opened. Unfortunately this makes file sharing less convenient for many people, but security must take precedence.

Microsoft Office 2003 file types most commonly shared between people, such as .doc, .xls, and .ppt files, are not blocked.

If you need to share files that have file types blocked by this feature, you have several options, including the following: