Vol. 12, #46 - Dec 3, 2007 - Issue #652 Move Over OS - VM's Are Now Strategic Choice This issue of WServerNews is sponsored by Editor's Corner Move Over OS - VM's Are Now Strategic Choice CompTIA: "Spyware, Not Virus Or Worm Attacks, Takes Malware Crown" Archiving Seminar This Thursday In NY, NY Quotes Of The Week Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Tech Briefing Vista SP1 No Faster Than Stock OS, Say Testing Experts Windows XP SP3 Boasts Speed Boost, Same Testers Claim What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away Hackers Will Feed On Vista In 2008, Says McAfee Managing Password Security In Windows Networks Tip: Grant Administrator Privileges In Windows With Sudowin Take A Tour Of The New IT Knowledge Exchange! Windows Server News Exchange 2007 SP1 Now Available For Download Microsoft Delays Annual WinHEC Conference WServer Third Party News Instantly Reduce Your Exchange Message Store 80% Get Rid Of Your Old Second Generation Exchange AV WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. WServerNews - Product of the Week rDirectory - All you need to webify your Active Directory rDirectory - All you need to webify your Active Directory A self-edit-able directory, a template driven account creation tool, a way for users to create and self-subscribe to email lists and groups, a self- service password reset utility, a valuable tool for any help desk and more. rDirectory v2 combines an easy to use designer with templates and preconfigured applications for secure solutions that leverage your existing AD. It's the perfect system. Discover the flexibility of rDirectory and new ideas on how to leverage AD will start popping up. See why customers call rDirectory "the most versatile Active Directory tool Available." Happy Holidays! http://www.wservernews.com/071203-rDirectory Editor's Corner Move Over OS - VM's Are Now Strategic Choice This week I read an article by Mitchell Ashley in Network World and said to myself: "Why didn't I think of this myself?" He's got a very good point, and I had an epiphany, cognition, revelation whatever you call it. The OS is no longer the critical choice! It always was that you looked at what application the user needed first, and then chose the right OS to run that app. But now, after that app selection, it's first the virtual environment you need to choose. And once you have done THAT, the OS you run becomes a lot less important actually. Ashley said: "The choice of hypervisor determines the capabilities you'll build your data center, operations center and operating environment around. You're not going to use three of these, so you'll want to standardize. And you are going to need management tools for load balancing, rollover to hot standby virtual instances, spin up new virtual servers to handle increasing loads, and communication protocols for inter-virtual server communications." As a side note, if you are looking at virtualization just to save power and space, you would be shortchanging your organization. The savings realized from consolidation is largely a one-time savings. Ashley continued with: "Selecting a hypervisor of choice means creating processes, laying out operational procedures, building skill sets, and creating IT knowledge about running and operating virtual environments. Doing this for every hypervisor on the market today doesn't make sense. Organizations will standardize just a few hypervisors, not use all of them." So that is why I'm saying move over OS - VM's are now the strategic choice. Obviously Redmond has seen this danger looming and pre-announced Hyper-V so far in advance. CompTIA: "Spyware, Not Virus Or Worm Attacks, Takes Malware Crown" The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) survey found that 55 percent of respondents experienced larger numbers of spyware attacks over the last 12 months as other threats have cooled -- though the organization advised companies against becoming complacent about any types of attack. "Asked to identify the types of security attacks they expect to be most troubled by in three years time, viruses and worms (20 percent) still topped the list, followed by spyware (14%), and wireless threats (9 percent). More of this blog at InfoWorld: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-CompTIA-Survey If you want a detailed study where a lot of these spyware attacks are coming from, check out this PDF Report on the Russian Business Network: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-RBN-Study And if you want to see the occupational hazards that malware researchers are subject to, check out this comic: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Malware-Researchers You know where to find the leading enterprise AntiSpyware application that soon also will have AV functionality built-in, with a single, small footprint agent, and extremely efficient malware management: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-CounterSpy-Enterprise Archiving Seminar This Thursday In NY, NY Just a Reminder for the upcoming Email Archiving Seminar at the Microsoft office in Manhattan on Thurs, Dec. 6, from 9 - 12. Mike Osterman, president and founder of Osterman Research, will present "Implementing an Effective Email Archiving Strategy for Exchange." He will be discussing how an effective email archiving strategy can help you deal with the issues resulting from growth in email storage, new e-discovery, and privacy requirements & explain the need for organizations to automatically archive content & make it readily accessible to anyone in the enterprise that needs it - all while reducing the cost of managing messaging-related storage. Agenda: How to address growing email archiving & storage issues Importance of compliance, eDiscovery & legal readiness Cost-savings benefits to proper archiving, including faster backup/restore time, knowledge management, & disaster recovery Live Demo of Sunbelt Exchange Archiver in action! 80% message store reduction, end-user lost email self-service, improved Exchange performance & much, much more When: Thurs., Dec. 6 - Time: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (Continental Breakfast Included) Cost: None Location: Microsoft 1290 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor New York, NY 10104 To Register: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Archiving-Seminar We look forward to seeing you there. Quotes Of The Week "It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." -- Justice Robert H. Jackson, U. S. Supreme Court "The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." -- P. B. Medawar And thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber. Please tell your friends about us. They can subscribe here: http://www.wservernews.com/subscribe.cfm Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com With 2008 quickly approaching, there's never been a better time to implement or re-asses your disaster recovery plans. The success of your business depends on a comprehensive disaster recovery solution that provides immediate recoverability. In the event of a disaster, don't be caught without a solution to protect and recover your business critical applications. attend this LIVE webinar to learn: The basics of getting started and simplifying the process The largest myths regarding your DR strategy The top mistakes companies make How to develop the right DR Plan for 2008! Register today. Date: December 12th, 2007 Time: 11am - 12pm EST http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Disaster-Recovery-Webinar Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Event Log and System Health Monitoring. Feature Rich, Affordable, Award Winning. FREE Light & Full Featured Trial Version: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-EventSentry Act now, the Community Edition of rDirectory is free. You'll love it. Go download Namescape's rDirectory and webify your Active Directory free: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-NameScape Extend Active Directory to your UNIX, Linux, Mac, web and database platforms. Free authentication guide: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Centrify Reclaim up to 80% of you Exchange Store with ExchangeCompress 2, now in real time! Download today: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-ExchangeCompress-2 How strong is your password? Microsoft has a page where you enter a password to have Password Checker help determine its strength as you type. http://www.wservernews.com/071203-MS-Password-Checker Tech Briefing Vista SP1 No Faster Than Stock OS, Say Testing Experts ComputerWorld reported this 19th that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is not measurably faster than the original stock edition, a Florida-based developer of performance testing and network metrics software said. "Microsoft has hinted that SP1 is faster than Vista RTM," said Craig Barth, the chief technology officer at Devil Mountain Software, referring to the release to manufacturing version of the operating system. "But we found pretty much nothing measurable. It surprised me as much as it surprised everyone else, but the numbers are the numbers." More at: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Vista-SP1 Windows XP SP3 Boasts Speed Boost, Same Testers Claim If Vista had emotions, some days it would probably feel like the less-popular younger sibling of the homecoming queen -- for instance this week, when the same performance testing developer who slammed Vista SP1's performance revealed that XP SP3 includes a remarkable (and unexpected) speed boost. ""We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog on Friday. More at: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-XP-SP3-Speed What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away This, of course, will come as a disappointment for those of us who were hoping for some relief. Exhaustive testing confirms that Windows Vista is at least twice as slow as Windows XP when running on the same hardware. So it's doubly painful to learn that the rumored performance tweaks Microsoft has been hinting at for SP1 simply "never materialized." Bottom Line: Vista's performance is what it is, so "get used to it." http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Vista-Performance Hackers Will Feed On Vista In 2008, Says McAfee Microsoft Corp. will face more than 40 vulnerabilities in Windows Vista next year, as the operating system climbs past the 10% market-share milestone and malware authors really start to find flaws, a McAfee Inc. analyst said today. "Most of the current malware has ignored Vista," said Craig Schmugar, a threat researcher at McAfee's Avert Lab -- but that's not because the operating system has been frustratingly secure against attack. Rather, Schmugar argued, Vista's gotten off easy its first year because hackers didn't think it was a worthwhile target. "These people make their living writing malware or attacking users," he said. "They're driven by financial motivation, and only when market share has an impact will they really work on Vista." More at ComputerWorld: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Vista-Vulnerabilities Managing Password Security In Windows Networks IT managers have the responsibility of protecting data from internal and external intruders alike. Hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of users with access to sensitive data can also provide an equal number of access points for intruders. Password security should strike a balance between the inconvenience it causes users and the need to foil attackers who have nothing better to do than crack passwords. Find out how to achieve this, in this tip! (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Password-Security Tip: Grant Administrator Privileges In Windows With Sudowin For Microsoft Windows administrators, sudowin (0.2.0) is an open-source add-on that gives administrators the power to allow Unix sudo-like functionality to non-administrative users. It allows for simple privilege escalation, which means you can easily run programs with administrator privileges in Windows. Read more in this tip. http://www.wservernews.com/071203-sudowin Take A Tour Of The New IT Knowledge Exchange! Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow tap into the distilled knowledge of your peers and colleagues who have tackled similar Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook problems? SearchExchange.com's redesigned IT Knowledge Exchange gives you instant access to thousands of questions and answers created by your peers. Find the real-world information you need and share your own knowledge! http://www.wservernews.com/071203-SearchExchange-Tour Windows Server News Exchange 2007 SP1 Now Available For Download We have been talking in WSN about SP1 for several months, but now it's been made available for 'broad public consumption'. You probably already have a good idea which goodies to expect: Support for Windows Server 2008 deployments Improved unified communications (UM) and integration with MS Office Communicator 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Public folder access through OWA Public folder management through Exchange Management Console Improvements to Exchange ActiveSync for end users and admins Standby continuous replication (SCR) SP1 includes many other features and fixes as well. You can download it at: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Exchange-2007-SP1 Microsoft Delays Annual WinHEC Conference Surprisingly, Redmond postponed its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2008 from next spring to next fall, leaving many people asking themselves: Why? A Redmond spokesperson said the conference was pushed back due to "industry feedback". They further stated "We are pleased to announce that WinHEC 2008 will be held in the fall of 2008 on the West Coast (location to be determined). No further explanation for the delay was given. The annual conference, which started in 1992, used to be held in the spring. We can only try to guess for reasons, but usually trying to 'fill the vacuum' comes up with much worse assumptions than the truth. I guess it's simple something as prosaic as the fact that Redmond postponed WinHEC because it has little to talk about at the moment. Perhaps they are waiting for the new Hyper-V, (the new 's virtualization code for W2K8) which is due out 180 days after the release of W2K8 server, expected Q1 2008. WServer Third Party News Instantly Reduce Your Exchange Message Store 80% Sunbelt Exchange Archiver (SEA) improves performance, productivity and allows you to comply with legal and regulatory retention requirements, within budget! SEA allows you to handle many email problems in one fell swoop. You are ready for lawsuits, get an 80% smaller message store, faster backups, end-user self- service for lost email, built-in HSM, quicker disaster recovery and much more. Get a quote and compare SEA cost versus Symantec Enterprise Vault. http://www.wservernews.com/071203-SEA-Quote Get Rid Of Your Old Second Generation Exchange AV Yeah, it may work OK. But the yearly maintenance is scandalously high. You can spend your valuable IT budget on something better than that. Get Ninja for your Exchange AV. It is cheaper than Trend, McAfee or Symantec and true third generation, integrated, policy-based antispam, AV, disclaimers and more. It's very little money if you take advantage of the competitive upgrade program. Try Ninja for 30 days. You will be amazed how easy it is to set up and run: 50% less admin time than the others! http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Ninja-Email-Security WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. Are users calling that their PC randomly plays classical music? They are not crazy. Here is the MS Knowledge Base item on this behavior: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Random-Music Dang, they missed my name (again!) from the Genius list: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Genius-List What is so special about Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa to make it the most famous painting in the world? Very interesting 3 minutes you should take: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Mona-Lisa GigaPan allows users to upload, share, and explore brilliant gigapixel+ panoramas from around the globe. http://www.wservernews.com/071203-GigaPan I want to tell this clown what he can do with his IdiotPhone - but the Captain does it even better. He gets on the PA and makes the following announcement : http://www.wservernews.com/071203-IdiotPhone Funny one- if Microsoft had created GMail: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Microsoft-Gmail Humorous CNET video about Microsoft Windows Vista Sales: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Vista-Sales InfoWorld came up with their must-have gadgets for the holidays. Not your usual junk but some pretty cool ideas. I already bought the 'Kindle'. http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Must-Have-Gadgets An Airbus A310 of the Portuguese Airline TAP makes a low pass turn with one wingtip almost touching the ground: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Airbus-A310 If you have not heard about the 'Fake Steve Jobs' blog, you should check this entry, he describes a meeting with http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Fake-Steve-Jobs Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the weak insipid modern (presumably electric) light and switch over the the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Lighthouse In the weird and wacky dept, this man's hands and feet developed tree-like growths... If you are easily grossed out, do not click this link: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Hands-and-Feet World's Most Effective Speed Bump. Made in Germany. We put it up on Flixxy with a translation as the sound track is in German: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Best-Speed-Bump Like the creativity (and money) that goes into Good Advertising? Check the firebrand site: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Firebrand Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, the group that created among others the U-2 and JSF planes, developed a new plane. Or maybe airship is a better name: this huge aircraft is over 60 meters (180ft) long: http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Airship Used to play a lot of video games? Let's see if you recognize the sounds! http://www.wservernews.com/071203-Name-That-Game WServerNews - Product of the Week rDirectory - All you need to webify your Active Directory rDirectory for AD - The most versatile Active Directory tool available now with Presence(r). Tap into Active Directory's potential and save time and money. Easy to use with compose-able web applications you can deploy in minutes. New & expanded rDirectory v2 combines an easy to use designer with templates and preconfigured applications for secure solutions that leverage the existing AD information. It's the perfect system: a self-editable directory, a template driven account creation tool, a way for users to create and self-subscribe to email lists and groups, a self- service password reset utility, a valuable tool for any help desk and more. This is one powerful product. Discover the flexibility of rDirectory and new ideas will start popping up. See why customers call rDirectory the 'the most versatile Active directory tool available." http://www.wservernews.com/071203-rDirectory-for-AD