1. EDITORS CORNER
* WIRELESS, WHEN?
2. TECH BRIEFING
* WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIRRORING AND REPLICATION?
3. NT RELATED NEWS
* SMS USERS CONFERENCE IN LAS VEGAS MARCH 14-17
* WINDOWS 2000 RELEASE CANDIDATE 3 VERY CLOSE
* HOTFIX POSTED FOR SP6 WINSOCK PROBLEM 
4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS
* USE NT AS A PRINTSERVER? CHECK THIS OUT.
* HOW TO AUDIT COMPANY EMAIL
* LIVE IN THE UK? HERE'S A FREE OFFER.
* FILESCREEN2000 AND QUOTA ADVISOR SPECIAL ANNOUNCED
5. HINTS AND TIPS: WHAT IS THE BUBBLEBOY VIRUS?
6. THE NT STOCK WATCH : LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS ROARING UP!
7. HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off or change your address.

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****************WHAT IS NTOOLS E-NEWS?******************************
Sunbelt Windows NTools E-News is the World's first and largest 
E-Newsletter designed for NT System Managers that have the job to 
get and keep NT up & running in a production environment. Sunbelt 
launched this electronic newsletter early 1996. Every two weeks we
keep the Windows NT community informed and aware of new developments
of NT and 3-rd party NT System Management Tools. You get hints and
tips that will enable you to better utilize and understand Windows 
NT/2000 and help you to pass your certification exams.

Via (separate) NTools E-NewsFlashes we will send you important 
breaking news like new service packs, killer viruses, etc. Sunbelt 
Software is the first and largest provider worldwide of Third 
Party System Management Tools for Windows NT.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

1. "EDITORS CORNER" 

Hi NT-ers,

If this is the first time you receive NTools E-News, welcome! You
are in the good company of 400,000 colleagues that run NT. Treat
this issue as a sample. You can unsub at any time but I suggest
strongly you read a few issues before you decide to leave the list.
Too much exciting news is happening all the time.
----

Perhaps you know the expression: 'It's an almost-planet'. It is
the optimist's version of Murphy's Law which claims that anything
that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong. Thank goodness that's not always 
true. 'It's an almost-planet' signifies that mostly things work, 
but airplanes do fall out of the sky, cars do stop running, and 
Windows blue-screens just a bit too often. Things 'almost' work. 

That is of course not good enough for mission critical setups so
I have gotten myself an ISDN connection in my home office apart
from the 'almost' cable modem I have from GTE. They are still
field testing and have downtime now and then. So I now have a
redundant setup with two separate systems, separate modems, and
two ISP's. (I took the domain name http://www.w2ktools.com/)

Obviously I wanted to share the printer so we decided to create
a little 2-machine LAN. I was once again confronted with the 
insane amount of work needed to get that working. I asked one
of our Tech Wizards (Greg Kras) to come over as I have no tools 
to create cables at home. If you look what we had to do to get 
just two boxes hooked up, the Industry still has a loooong 
way to go.

How about building in some wireless technology in PC's? Just one
Icon on each desktop: 'FIND PEERS'. You bring in a new machine,
click on that icon on both machines, they find each other and
you get two or three questions like:
- You trust this machine? What Password do you want to use?
- What drives do you want to share?
- Which printer do you want to share?
And PRESTO! you have a home LAN in 5 minutes. This is not rocket
science, the technology is here. Why don't we have this already,
Microsoft and Intel, are you listening??

OK, enough of my ranting, let's have a look at the news ;-)

Warm regards,

Stu Sjouwerman
Email me at 
[email protected]


********************************************************************
2. TECH BRIEFING

* WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIRRORING AND REPLICATION?

This is the second part of our Tech Briefing on High Availability.
With Y2K around the corner this is an interesting topic .

A short update on last issue's first part of the Briefing:
It divided System Availability in 5 classes, based on the 'number
of nine's' (see 4-th column), and a downtime cost averaging $80,000 
per hour. The estimates for downtime range between a minimum of 
about $5,000 per hour to a million dollars or more for Wall Street 
companies.

SYSTEM TYPE AVAILABILITY UNAVAILABILITY SYSTEM DOWNTIME
CLASS MINUTES/YEAR AVAILABILITY $ PER/HR 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Unmanaged 1 50,000 90% excessive

Managed 2 5,000 99.0$ 6.7 mil.

Well Managed 3 500 99.9% $670,000

Fault Resilient 4 50 99.99% $67,000

High Availability 5 5 99.999% $ 6,700 
------------------------------------------------------------------

The only way you can get true Class 5 Availability within one machine
architecture is with dedicated and proprietary hardware/software 
combinations like the Endurance configurations built by Marathon 
Technologies. Next option is take two machines and cluster them. The 
NT industry standard is of course Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS)
which is part of NT Enterprise Edition. That gets you in the Class
4 range. The only problem with the two above options is how to get
the data off site (real-time) for Disaster Recovery. (I'll give
you the solution further down).

If these two options are not possible due to budgets and/or hardware 
constraints, there are software-only options. You can take two 
servers and install a product like Vinca or Double-Take. But there
is a CRUCIAL difference between two technologies used to get this 
kind of thing done though. One is Disk Mirroring (Vinca), the other 
is Replication (Double-Take). 

SYNCHRONOUS OR ASYNCHRONOUS?

Disk Mirroring is a so called synchronous technology. It requires 
that all instructions and data transfers be maintained in parallel 
in both primary and secondary locations. Unfortunately, this by 
definition means the primary server must wait for activity to 
finish on the secondary before moving on. In WAN's the wait can 
be devastating unless you have super high speed (and cost) networks.
Mirroring is also slower in fail-overs because the disk must 'mount' 
first with mirroring. You know how much time that can take.

Another approach to replication performance is to make the process
asynchronous. With this technique, commands and data are cached 
in a buffer when the load is high, and sent to the secondary system
when load permits. This keeps the operation at the primary going 
at full speed, and still provides a copy of data at a secondary 
location. The main benefit is that this process also works very 
efficiently over a WAN and does not require any disks to mount.

Double-Take is outstanding in providing disaster tolerance. It 
provides replication of data, server, and application, and is 
transparently asynchronous. Because the remote server is as fully 
functional as the primary, local server, operations can be resumed 
with little delay, if processes are worked out ahead of time. 

Best of all, it works transparently on MSCS so you can get data
off a Microsoft Cluster to another site in real time. It's the
only product that is Microsoft Cluster Certified for this use.
As a conclusion, you can use Double-Take in any configuration 
spanning the Availability Class 2 through 4 in a very cost-
effective way.


********************************************************************
3. "NT RELATED NEWS" 

* SMS USERS CONFERENCE IN LAS VEGAS MARCH 14-17

Elvis Impersonators, Slot Machines and SMS Gurus. What do they all 
have in common? They are all going to be in Las Vegas, March 14-17, 
at the SMS Users Conference 2000.

If you use SMS, you don't want to miss this event. The SMS Users 
Conference 2000 will be bigger & better than ever. This is the best
SMS event of the year, sponsored by Computing Edge & Microsoft. You
can talk with the best SMS gurus around. They have top Microsoft 
Developers & Consultants from around the world lined up as speakers.
These will also be available for the birds-of-a-feather and 
roundtable discussions where they can answer all your questions. 

The focus for the conference is SMS 2.0 & Windows 2000. The conference
will be March 14-17 at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas, Nevada. The
conference fee now includes your hotel stay, all meals, conference
registration, conference materials, free prizes, and evening social 
events ($1049.00). There is also have a family package.

Special note to Alumni: be one of the first 100 people to register 
and receive a very nice commemorative polo shirt. After you register 
you will be in the monthly drawing for many cool prizes. So register 
now. For more information & registration go to
www.computingedge.com/smsconf2000.
--------------------------------

* WINDOWS 2000 RELEASE CANDIDATE 3 VERY CLOSE

Microsoft did not quite make its goal of getting the final big beta
Win2K version to manufacturing, but it's very close or perhaps already
done when you receive this.

They were hoping to complete RC3 last week so MS could use this as
further ammo to show that Win2K was in the home stretch. But they
discovered a security related bug that was "serious enough for us 
to consider stopping the train for," according to an internal
Windows 2000 status update, [email protected] Reseller Magazine reported.

Once RC3 is actually cut, they will send it to an expected 15,000
beta testers. It will include the feedback and then send some more
RC's out to subsets of beta testers that get smaller and smaller.
MS spokespeople at Comdex/Fall insisted that they will get it out
the door this year and general commercial availability of W2K will 
start February 17, 2000.

During a press and analyst briefing at Comdex on Monday, Microsoft 
Senior Vice President Jim Allchin emphasized Microsoft's reliability 
initiatives and the positive impact they will have on W2K quality.
Well, we'll believe it when we see it. 
--------------------------------

* HOTFIX POSTED FOR SP6 WINSOCK PROBLEM 

NTools E-News published a problem with the WinSock just a few days
after SP6 came out based on first user reports. MS indeed has 
looked into it and found a problem with Winsock-based apps. Admin
privilege is required for the application/service to work. If 
you do not have Admin privs, you are not able to perform the 
Winsock functions. Sloppy.

Russ from the NTBUGTRAQ list reported that replacing the AFD.sys 
from SP5 *does* seem to resolve the problem, however, Microsoft 
have released a Post-SP6 HotFix which contains, only, a new 
AFD.sys. The KB article Q245678;

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q245/6/78.asp

provides links to the binaries for the HotFix, and provides very
little insight into what the problem is (other than to acknowledge
there is a problem).

Russ commented that he believes this HotFix is a workaround, not 
a complete fix, although MS does believe the HotFix will prevent 
the reported problems from re-occurring. The reason he thinks 
this is a workaround is because the Post-SP6 HotFix for the TCPIP 
Initial Sequence Numbers has been removed, which makes sense.

********************************************************************

4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS

* USE NT AS A PRINTSERVER? CHECK THIS OUT.

Print Queue Manager for NT and Windows 2000. What are the early 
adopters saying? I asked some of the people that have deployed PQM
how they liked it and that they are using it for. Very interesting
actually.

Print Queue Manager was released to the market about 6 months ago
(and has had one update for SNMP support and other features).
System Admins are telling me it improves their utilization of printer 
hardware, reduces their help-desk calls and the average time it
takes to resolve a technical problem. 

End Users (these include Kennedy Space Center Control Room, CNN 
Newsroom, multinational chain stores) are utilizing PQM?s functions 
for multiple needs. Popular uses include the ability to print 
broadcast (printing one job to multiple printers in various cities 
at the same time), load balancing (keeping a bank of printers all 
in use evenly while printing multiple jobs), and printing jobs to 
holding queues for drag-and-dropping jobs to live printers at the 
discretion of an operator.

Another popular feature of PQM is that it pulls up all printers, 
queues, jobs, and printer status across the enterprise upon 
installation, requires no set-ups (such as installing drivers) 
and requires no training. It's got a pretty good interface and
you don't have to read the manual. 

If your organization uses NT as a printserver (users can print
from any kind of platform) I suggest you download the 30-day 
trial version of PQM. Looks like this puppy will help you reduce 
your workload, get less cranky calls from users that have printer 
problems and get more value out of your printing hardware. It 
only costs $995 for one server and volume discounts kick in 
quickly. Download here:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/pqm.htm
--------------------------------

* HOW TO AUDIT COMPANY EMAIL

Corporate America is getting rapidly into establishing policy for 
acceptable email use. Once the policy is created and issued, how 
to make sure it is complied with? Two methods: a) auditing after 
the fact and b) real-time filtering. This time we'll look at 
CAMEO that does auditing, and the next newsletter we'll discuss 
Mail Essentials that filters email real-time.

If your legal and personnel departments have been after you for 
a solution to e-mail monitoring to help enforce corporate e-mail
policies, or you are trying to get a handle on junk going through 
your systems, you should check CAMEO out. CAMEO was released by 
MicroData at MEC99 earlier this month, and it?s already become 
a hot product.

In a nutshell, CAMEO ?reads? all the mail going in or out through 
the Exchange IMS (log files) looking for matches to specified 
words or phrases ? matched messages (including any attachments) 
are decoded and forwarded for review or action. 

Installation is done on a single workstation - this makes the
deployment super-fast and CAMEO does NOT interfere with your 
Exchange servers. The beauty of the product for system admins 
is that matched messages are decoded and e-mailed off to someone 
else for review ? not to you! If you?re tired of doing the 
Personnel department's job when it comes to e-mail, you?ll 
love this product.

CAMEO scans the To:, From:, Subject:, and Message Body and can 
forward different matches to different addresses. This means 
that if you?re trying to find out which user is sending 30MB .avi 
files through the system, have those matches (?.avi?) forwarded 
to you. Matches to the word ?resume? can be forwarded off to 
personnel.

CAMEO has a powerful engine that can easily scan 30,000 messages 
an hour and at a starting price of $395, even smaller organizations 
can afford content auditing. A 30-day version is downloadable 
(6MB) at http://www.sunbelt-software.com/cameo.htm
--------------------------------

* LIVE IN THE UK? HERE'S A FREE OFFER.

Sunbelt Software has recently been an exhibitor at the NT-Show
in London and since the quality of the attendees was very high,
we decided to make a major commitment to the UK Market. Sunbelt
has made several agreements with NT magazines and if you live 
in the UK, you will see a major wave of Sunbelt activity in quite
a few areas. One of the special offers? NT Explorer Mag gives 
Sunbelt NTools E-News subscribers a three month free trial 
subscription. Not to be sneezed at. Wait for more announcements!
Get your free trail sub here: www.ntexplorer.com/sunbelt
--------------------------------

* INSTALLSHIELD PROFESSIONAL 2000 ANNOUNCED

The developer of NTools E-News Target Award Winner InstallShield
announced the availability of InstallShield Professional 2000.
This tool is a solution for corporate developers and ISVs with 
sophisticated software installation and distribution requirements. 
InstallShield Professional 2000 is composed of two constituents: 
InstallShield Professional 6.0, the newest version the setup 
authoring solution, and the latest version of InstallShield 
for Windows Installer (ISWI), a complete setup authoring 
solution for Windows 2000 logo-compliant applications.

"InstallShield Professional 2000 provides a complete solution 
for developers to easily create custom complex installation 
packages for any Windows platform by combining the new feature-
rich InstallShield Professional 6.0 with InstallShield for 
Windows Installer," said Brian Hall, VP Marketing, InstallShield 
Software Corporation. "Whether targeting existing Windows 
platforms or expanding to Windows 2000, InstallShield Pro 2000 
covers all Windows setup needs."

InstallShield Pro 2000 is available immediately for a suggested 
retail price of $995 per license and includes both InstallShield 
Pro 6.0 and InstallShield for Windows Installer. For a limited 
time, an in-box $200 manufacturer's rebate is available for 
North American customers. www.installshield.com 
--------------------------------

* FILESCREEN2000 AND QUOTA ADVISOR SPECIAL ANNOUNCED

The webpage will be ready in just a day or so, but this news came
in yesterday and I wanted you to know about it right away. W. Quinn 
Associates announced the following:

"FileScreen2000 can help you to stop MOVIE, MUSIC, PICTURES and 
other unwanted files from being stored on your server. You don?t 
want non-business related files being stored on your server, do 
you? Just imagine the liability problems you have to deal with.

Your backup software has no choice between backing up production 
files or the latest download pollution. The next 3 months will 
be used to send electronic cards around with all kinds of ?well 
meant? attachments. These emails and attachments will be stored 
on your system. FileScreen2000 will stop storage pollution. If 
you buy FileScreen2000 before December 25th, 1999, you only pay 
$195 per server". The page will be ready Wednesday Nov 24-th
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/filescreen.htm

W. Quinn also announced an end-of-year special price for their
Quota Advisor. By the way, this is the product that Microsoft 
Redmond chose for their internal disk quota management.
Single License $795.00
5 Pack $3,475.00
10 Pack $6,450.00
25 Pack $14,875.00
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/qa21.htm

********************************************************************

5. "HINTS AND TIPS - TIME SAVERS AND OTHER GOODIES...

"From the Windows NT FAQ, http://www.ntfaq.com. Copyright 1999 
John Savill."

Q. What is the bubbleboy virus?

A. Bubbleboy is not just another virus, its the start of a whole 
new strain of virus. Up till now, to receive a virus from an email 
you have to actually open an attachment. Bubbleboy changes this 
and actually infects by just opening the email or previewing in 
Outlook Express.

Bubbleboy requires Internet Explorer 5 and the Windows Scripting 
Host (which is built into Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and is an 
optional add-on for Windows NT 4.0) and only affects English 
and Spanish installations.

In MS Outlook, this worm requires that you "open" the email. It 
will not run if using "Preview Pane". In MS Outlook Express, the 
worm is activated if "Preview Pane" is used. Setting your security 
level to High in Internet Explorer 5.0 will stop this virus from 
running. Microsoft have a patch available from
http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp.

Bubble boy is actually fairly harmless, its just changes the 
registered user and organization and mails itself to every contact 
in the email address book of MS Outlook. The fear is someone will 
now create other versions will may delete files etc just by 
previewing a message! The actual message looks like:
From: 
Subject: BubbleBoy is back! 
Message Body: The BubbleBoy incident, pictures and sounds 
http://www.towns.com/dorms/tom/bblboy.htm

********************************************************************

6. "THE NT STOCK WATCH" Closing Friday November 19, 1999
Look at these numbers roaring up! The NASDAQ has taken off and is on
a steep rise. This week there is more double-digit growth than ever
before. EMC Corp acquired DataPoint so replaces it in the list.

52 WK 52 WK P/E WEEK
SECURITY CLOSE HIGH LOW RATIO CHNG
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Advanced Micro Devices... 27 1/8 33 14 9/16 +2.1%
BMC Software............. 77 3/16 73 1/8 30 67 +10.4%
Citrix Systems Inc....... 93 3/16 109 5/8 26 1/2 84 +18.8%
Compaq Computer.......... 26 1/4 51 1/4 18 1/4 46 +20.6%
Computer Associates...... 66 3/4 63 7/16 32 1/8 53 +7.9%
Dell Computer............ 41 5/16 55 29 3/4 69 -1.1%
EMC Corp................. 89 3/8 90 3/8 35 1/8 89 +8.0%
Electronic Data Systems C 63 3/16 67 9/16 37 11/16 61 -0.2%
Gateway Inc.............. 79 84 24 5/8 59 -3.0%
Hewlett Packard Co....... 93 1/4 118 7/16 59 28 +21.5%
Intergraph Corp.......... 4 5/8 10 1/4 3 3/16 +10.4%
International Business Ma 104 3/4 139 3/16 80 1/4 25 +9.3%
Legato Systems Inc....... 73 79 1/2 15 1/8 +4.7%
Micron Electronics Inc... 10 15/16 24 9 29 +4.7%
Microsoft Corp........... 86 100 3/4 53 3/4 56 -3.5%
Mission Critical Software 57 11/16 69 1/4 16 +5.8%
NCR Corp................. 33 55 3/4 26 11/16 22 -2.4%
NetIQ Corporation........ 45 54 3/4 14 3/4 -2.1%
Network Associates Inc... 27 7/8 67 11/16 10 1/16 +27.0%
Novell Inc............... 23 3/8 31 3/16 14 5/16 51 +25.5%
Oracle Corp.............. 76 1/4 74 11/16 21 84 +17.1%
Qualcomm Incorporated.... 367 1/16 406 1/8 24 1/2 -2.8%
Seagate Technology....... 38 3/4 44 1/4 25 1/8 8 +4.7%
Silicon Graphics......... 8 9/16 20 7/8 6 7/8 +9.5%
Sun Microsystems Inc..... 129 9/16 131 5/16 28 3/8 74 +8.5%
Sybase Inc............... 17 3/16 17 1/2 5 5/16 69 +6.5%
Symantec Corp............ 45 7/8 51 5/16 12 1/2 36 -4.4%
Unisys Corp.............. 29 1/4 49 11/16 20 15/16 18 +18.1%
Veritas Software Corp.... 145 9/16 138 1/4 24 7/8 +25.4%
Dow Jones 30 Industrials. 11,003.89 +2.1%

********************************************************************
7. "HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST" Instructions on how to subscribe, 
sign off or change your email address

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LIST (Tell your friends!) 
Click: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?join=nt-list
and fill out the form, simple & easy: 1 minute work.

Or by email, send a blank message to the following address:
[email protected]

_____________________________________________________

TO QUIT THE LIST

1) The Web Way:
http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?
choose the NT-List, use your email address that is at 
the bottom of each newsletter and leave the list via 
the web interface.

2) The Email Way: Simply follow the personalized 
instructions at the very end of this newsletter.
_____________________________________________________

TO CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS

First unsubscribe and then resubscribe as per the
procedure above.

********************************************************************

FOR MORE INFORMATION

On the World Wide Web point your browser to:

For the newsletter and our website:
USA: http://www.sunbelt-software.com

For Tech Support on Sunbelt products mentioned:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/rightnow.exe

Email for US sales information to:
[email protected]
Email for US Tech support to:
[email protected]
Email to the US Editor:
[email protected]

Email for European Sales to:
[email protected]
Email for European Tech support to:
[email protected]

At the time of this newsletter's release, all links were 
checked to verify their accuracy and validity. However, 
due to the ever changing pages of various sites, some links 
may later prove to be invalid. We regret any inconvenience 
should you be unable to open any of these links.
********************************************************************

Things Our Lawyers Make Us Say:

This document is provided for informational purposes only. 
The information contained in this document represents the
current view of Sunbelt Software Distribution on the issues
discussed as of the date of publication. Because Sunbelt
must respond to changes in market conditions, it should not
be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Sunbelt
and Sunbelt cannot guarantee the accuracy of any informa-
tion presented after the date of publication.

INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS"
WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT.

The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the
use of this document. This document may be copied and
distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) All text
must be copied without modification and all pages must be
included; 2) All copies must contain Sunbelt's copyright
notice and any other notices provided therein; and 3) This
document may not be distributed for profit. All trademarks
acknowledged. Copyright Sunbelt Software Distribution, Inc.
1996-1999.

(email me with feedback: [email protected])