for Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, which curiously doesn’t include every command line tool in Windows.

Network Access Protection is a great new feature of Windows Server 2008 that will help you understand the health of your client machines (Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3) and increase the trust in your network.

With Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 requiring activation for all versions, the days of grabbing the corporate key for home use have gone.

There’s a new JRE for release later this year and there’s a couple of changes to this version that have some bearing on deployment. I can’t imagine there is an enterprise out there that doesn’t have to deal with Java applications.

Microsoft have made available the Group Policy Preferences Client Side Extensions for download and deployment. You’ll need Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1 with the Remote Server Administration Tools (not yet available) to manage these. You do not need to upgrade to a Windows Server 2008 domain to use Group Policy Extensions which is fantastic.

Here’s a nice SoftGrid tip from one of the guys in the team here.

Here’s a great document from the Microsoft writing team on planning and deploying Group Policy for Windows Server 2008. Many of the details in this document do apply to Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server as well. This document is the place to start for anyone dealing with Group Policy, no matter what your experience is.

Network Access Protection is a great new feature of Windows Server 2008 that will help you understand the health of your client machines (Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3) and increase the trust in your network.

Like most IT Pros deploying and managing Windows Server, I’ve avoided the wizard interfaces, like Manage Your Server, in previous versions of Windows. However with Windows Server 2008, Microsoft have actually succeeded in creating a tool that I think people will find indispensable.