Vol. 11, #32 - Aug 7, 2006 - Issue #588 Redmond's One Big Vista Mistake EDITORS CORNER Redmond's One Big Vista Mistake Sunbelt August Seminars How Should Archiving For Exchange Really Work? Quote Of The Week ADMIN TOOLBOX Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without TECH BRIEFING August: Another Big Patch Month More Internet Traffic Tools Learning Guide: Managing Virtualized Environments Three Ways To Improve Wireless Network Access For Your Users Why HTTP Can Hurt Exchange ActiveSync Attachments Filemon, Regmon Will Stay Free WINDOWS SERVER NEWS eWEEK Labs Review: From MOM to SCOM? Redmond Management Deck Shuffle Get Yer Red-Hot Compute Cluster Servers Rite Heah! Microsoft Reveals Additions to W2K3 SP2 WINDOWS SERVER THIRD PARTY NEWS Double-Take for Windows Small Business Server Edition WServerNews 'FAVE' LINKS This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. WServerNews - PRODUCT OF THE WEEK What is Your Favorite Firewall? Cut 30% Or More From Your Exchange AV Budget With Ninja A state-of-the-art Attachment Filter for FREE Multiple industrial-strength AV engines for your Exchange server Multiple highly effective antispam engines Powerful, third-generation, all-in-one messaging security with a MMC-based central management console and optimized performance Significantly lower total cost of ownership Highly Responsive 24/7 US-based Technical Support More Plug-ins coming soon! http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Sunbelt_Messaging_Ninja EDITORS CORNER Redmond's One Big Vista Mistake Well, if you believe recently published data from Jupiter Research, about 50 percent of companies either won't deploy Windows Vista at all or will wait at least 13 months after the system's November corporate release to begin installation. Why am I not surprised? There's a lot that stands in the way. First of all hardware. You need some pretty advanced 'schtuff' to run Vista flawlessly. But there are also upgrade issues. For instance W2K users will not be able to upgrade to Vista, but can buy it at a discount (you will need a clean install though). XP Pro users will only be able allowed to upgrade to the Vista Business and Ultimate editions due to complications arising from built-in XP Pro features. And what is Redmond's One Big Vista Mistake? Ballmer admitted recently that one big, wrong decision led to all the Vista delays. They took a "Big Bang" approach and tried to overhaul all of the OS core components at the same time. That strategy eventually led to a fiery development crash. But now they have their act together, and the new OS seems to be a lot more secure than earlier ones. The proof is in the pudding though, so we'll believe it when we see it. Sunbelt August Seminars We'd like to invite you to attend the following seminars that we are hosting in August: "Winning the War on the Spyware Battlefield" - Join renowned spyware researcher and Sunbelt's Director of Malware Research, Eric Howes, for an engaging discussion on the scope of the spyware problem, as well as outline how CounterSpy Enterprise can help better protect your organization from spyware threats. Hosted at the Microsoft office in Issaquah, WA on Thursday, August 24th. Register here: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-CSE_Seminar_WA "What Every IT Manager Should Know About Protecting Microsoft Exchange and Centralized Backup" - Join Sunbelt and Double-Take Software as we discuss strategies for implementing high availability, remote availability and offsite disaster recovery solutions for Exchange and other mission critical applications using Double-Take. Hosted at the Marriott Las Vegas Suites in Las Vegas, NV on Friday, August 25th. Register here: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-DT_Seminar_NV Hosted at the Microsoft office in Boston, MA on Tuesday, August 29th. Register here: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-DT_Seminar_MA How Should Archiving For Exchange Really Work? Sunbelt Messaging Ninja V2.1 will soon come out with a powerful Disclaimer plug-in, based on your input! Content Filtering and Auditing are also underway, and we are now in the phase where we are defining how the archiving needs to work. Please let us know how you would like archiving to really work? This is your chance to influence product features! Here is the survey: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Exchange_Survey Quote Of The Week "Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet." -- Dave Barry Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com ADMIN TOOLBOX Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without MS Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 allows you to run multiple PC-based OSen simultaneously on one workstation, helping migrations: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Virtual_PC_2004 FREE Web Employee Directory + Secure Self Service - rDirectory for Active Directory. http://www.wservernews.com/060807-NameScape UserLock tracks, notifies, and reports the logon/logoff activity, and limits the number of 'same user' simultaneous connections: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-UserLock CounterSpy Enterprise V1.8 Beta is out with LOTS of powerful features in the management console. Want a test drive? Email beta@sunbelt-software.com with "CSE 1.8 Beta" in the subject. TECH BRIEFING August: Another Big Patch Month They will release 12 security bulletins next Tuesday to fix holes in both Windows and Office. Ten patches are for Windows, with at least one rated as "critical". The other two security updates, at least one of which also is rated "critical," affect Office. The patches, some of which will require a restart, will be released on Aug 15. That same day, they will release an updated version of its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. More Internet Traffic Tools Want to know exactly what's happening on the net, without having to launch a browser every time? If so, your dreams have come true - the Internet Traffic Report (ITR) client is now available to grace your Windows computer! So just what exactly will this wondrous program do? Most of the time it will sit happily in your system tray (normally in the lower right of the desktop, where the time is shown). While in the system tray, it will indicate the current ITR rating for network performance. Not in the US? No problem, in the configuration you can specify which region you would like to monitor, and that will be the ITR rating displayed! But the ITR client doesn't stop there, it also includes a super-fast trace route utility to help spot problem areas on the Internet, as well as let you see what other computers you move through when going to other locations on the net. A visual ping utility is included, to help visualize what's happening - while the graphs look cool, the import information is the minimum, maximum and average output displayed at the bottom. It's on their links page. There is a blue sidebar on the right of the page that has their tools on it, where you can download the ITR client. http://www.wservernews.com/060807-ITR Learning Guide: Managing Virtualized Environments This guide explores best practices and pitfalls to avoid when managing virtualized environments. You'll find virtualization performance, security and configuration checklists, tips, white papers and more to help you manage your virtual environment efficiently (free registration required): http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Manage Three Ways To Improve Wireless Network Access For Your Users Wireless networking has been a massive boon for those organizations with employees constantly on the go who need to have network access no matter how far they are from a LAN port. If your company has workers who rely on wireless networking, here are three tips to improve your wireless strategy - especially if the company has it in multiple locations (free registration required): http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Wireless Why HTTP Can Hurt Exchange ActiveSync Attachments Exchange ActiveSync uses certain custom extensions on the HTTP protocol -- called HTTP "verb" commands -- that are sent in the context of an HTTP request to tell the server what the mobile client is trying to accomplish. If one of these "verbs" is blocked by a proxy, firewall or server-side constraint, attachment synchronization to mobile devices will fail. The same issue can create SharePoint errors as well. At SearchExchange: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-HTTP Filemon, Regmon Will Stay Free Sysinternals founder Mark Russinovich says Microsoft's top priority is keeping widely used admin tools like Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer freely available. At SearchWinIT.com http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Sysinternals WINDOWS SERVER NEWS eWEEK Labs Review: From MOM to SCOM? Microsoft SCOM 2007 streamlines a host of operations, but there's no upgrade path. SCOM 2007 Beta 2 System Center Operations Manager 2007 Beta 2 is a big step forward for Microsoft's management platform, although there is no way to upgrade current MOM installations. New user roles, design templates and discovery methods will ease installation and make the product easier to use in audit-conscious organizations. The Lab Review is recommended, it's at the eWEEK site: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-SCOM Redmond Management Deck Shuffle Microsoft announced yesterday that Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), Dave Cutler, a senior technical fellow, and Amitabh Srivastava, corporate vice president of COSD, will leave the Windows team after the completion of Vista to pursue other opportunities within the company. After Vista is released to manufacturing, Cutler and Srivastava will work to develop Microsoft's Live online products and services directly with Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect. Jon DeVaan will serve as senior vice president of engineering and will share co-leadership of COSD with Valentine until his departure. DeVaan will assume full control of the division following Valentine's exit. Get Yer Red-Hot Compute Cluster Servers Rite Heah! As expected, Microsoft announced this week customer availability of its first entry into high-performance computing circles. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 was released to manufacturing (RTM) in July with customer deliveries starting this month. Read more at ENTMag: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Cluster Microsoft Reveals Additions to W2K3 SP2 Redmond revealed more detail about some new features of the coming SP2 for Windows Server 2003. The development team released more data on their Windows Server Division Weblog this week. Instead of repeating everything, you should definitely check out their blog! http://www.wservernews.com/060807-W2K3_SP2 WINDOWS SERVER THIRD PARTY NEWS Double-Take for Windows Small Business Server Edition Double-Take for Windows Small Business Server Edition allows you to quickly restore access to data and applications by continuously capturing changes to data as they happen and replicates those changes to another server at any location, locally or at a recovery site miles away. When disaster strikes, instead of spending days rebuilding a server from backup tapes, you can use the secondary disk-based copy of your data to restore your production server. Plus, Double-Take works over any distance using your existing network connections and our patented replication technology uses the absolute minimum bandwidth required to protect your data. Double-Take for Windows Small Business Server Edition is hardware and application independent - it works with the services you already have. What's more, host-based Double-Take for Windows Small Business Server Edition delivers better protection than many hardware-based solutions, at thousands of dollars less. More than 10,000 companies - including more than half of Fortune 500 corporations - protect their data and applications with Double-Take. When losing data is not an option, your only option is Double-Take. See Demo at (WMV): http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Double-Take WServerNews 'FAVE' LINKS This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. Extreme Coke & Mentos experiments at the Eepybird site. AWESOME VIDEO: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Menthos Here are some safety tips that will help, I especially liked the "How to handle an Alien Abduction" one: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Alien_Abduction Need to develop a new website? Better read this new report first!: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Clickstream Skywalker Jets has devised a rocket pack that weighs about 90 pounds and can propel a 200 pound pilot around the air for what is likely the most invigorating 5 minutes of their life: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Jetpack Vista Speech Recognition demo gone bad. Quite funny video to watch: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Vista_Speech_Recognition The world's top Video Podcast producer: Tikibar TV: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Tikibar Dang, this is purdy cool. Lots of phishing attempts caught!: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Phishing 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes. You can now hear 30 hours of live traffic: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Norad Yahoo - The 9 Beta - Refreshed Daily short Video Show. Kinda cute: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Yahoo Video: Appalachian State University is HOT HOT HOT. Oh Dear... This has become an "internet cult classic video" just this last week: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-ASU Use your mouse to create your own Jackson Pollock painting: http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Pollock Letterman's tribute to Bill Gates and Microsoft: [grin] http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Gates_Tribute You might not know, but psychiatric drug litigation is at an all time high. In the wake of a court Decision against forced drugging, a new "Psychiatric drug adverse reaction report Hot Line" was launched to make it easier for patients to report averse reactions of these drugs. http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Drug Copy HTML Internet weather code for embedding their monitor in your own HTML that puts a variety of visual weather monitors on web pages. http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Weather WServerNews - PRODUCT OF THE WEEK What is Your Favorite Firewall? Self-proclaimed firewall expert David Matoušek is running a poll on his site and has over 6,800 votes. Feel free to vote on your favorite firewall (even if it's not our Kerio!). Link here, on the front page. http://www.wservernews.com/060807-Firewall_Poll