Configure Service Recovery from CMD Prompt

When a windows service unexpectedly exits, it can be nice to have it try to restart itself. You can do this from the CMD prompt instead of wading through the computer management applet with the following command:

sc \\<server_name> failure <service_name> actions= restart/60000/restart/60000/restart/60000 reset= 0

This configures the failure action for the <service_name> service on <server_name> server to restart when it unexpectedly fails on the first failure, the second failure, and all subsequent failures after a 60 second wait (the restart/60000 pairs represent the three recovery stages). It sets the failure counter so it does not reset.

Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Workstation

I'm about to move from XP Professional to Server 2008 R2 for a development workstation. It looks like Hyper-V will be a huge improvement over VirtualPC…

Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V as a Developer Workstation

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V is a great platform for developers who need to work across a wide variety of platforms.   Many developers are already using Microsoft Virtual PC for their development environments but soon this will not be a viable option.  Why?  All future Microsoft server products will only be offered in 64bit versions and Virtual PC only supports 32bit guest operating systems. Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V can solve this issue since it can host both 32bit and 64bit guest operating systems.

I have been running Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta with Hyper-V for a while now and have to say that I am really impressed with the performance and capabilities

Hopefully, I'll realize all the same benefits!

Data Loss

It looks like we're not the only ones whose SAN issues affect production databases…

Microsoft irrecoverably lost customer owned data it was holding for as many as 800,000 of its customers:

"Microsoft said a server failure impacted the main and back-up databases. One theory is that the problems cropped up as Hitachi was doing work on the storage network that manages the Sidekick data."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10372921-56.html?tag=mncol;txt

OUCH!!!