EnX Blog » Windows Server 2008

Windows 2008 Network Access Protection (NAP)

Mark — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:46:49 +0000

After months of cajoling, Adam was finally able to convince Jeff Sigman from the NAP team and Brent Atkison from MSIT to sit still for 30 minutes to talk about why we created NAP, and how we went about deploying it worldwide at Microsoft. Ah, who am I kidding. Jeff’s been asking me for months to put his blue anime hair up on Channel9. Here you go Jeff. Persistance pays off.
Network Access Protection is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 that allows you to enforce computer health requirements before allowing machines to communicate on the network. It’s the answer to the question “do I trust that this machine is patched and won’t infect other machines on my network?”
These guys have done some pretty impressive stuff. The NAP team worked with a list of partners as long as your arm to make sure NAP will play nicely with whatever switch hardware you’ve invested in. Brent shares some impressive sizing guidelines for implementing NAP: Microsoft turned reporting and deferred enforcement on 120,000 machines worldwide, using a very small number of servers. Very small. Less than 3. Total help desk calls as a result? Also a very small number. Oh, and he did that deployment using beta builds of Longhorn Server 2008.

Check out the video http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=347154

Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

Mark — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:15:52 +0000

With the Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool, you can read your Active Directory structure through Microsoft ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO). The Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool automates Microft Office Visio to draw a diagram of the Active Directory Domain topology, your Active Directory Site topology, your OU structure or your current Exchange 200X Server Organization. With the Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool, you can also draw partial Information from your Active Directory, like only one Domain or one site. The objects are linked together, and arranged in a reasonable layout that you can later interactively work withthe objects in Microsoft Office Visio.

Download Here

Brief Description

The Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer reads an Active Directory configuration using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and then automatically generates a Visio diagram of your Active Directory and /or your Exchange 200x Server topology. The diagramms include domains, sites, servers, administrative groups, routing groups and connectors and can be changed manually in Visio if needed.

Overview

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Longhorn (Windows Code Name) ; Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista; Windows XP; Windows XP 64-bit

Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0
Microsoft Office Visio 2003 or 2007

FTP Server 7.0 (Windows 2008 Server)

Mark — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:58:00 +0000

This new FTP service incorporates many new features that enable web authors to publish content better than before, and offers web administrators more security and deployment options.

Integration with IIS 7.0: IIS 7.0 has a brand-new administration interface and configuration store, and the new FTP service is tightly integrated with this new design. The old IIS 6 metabase is gone, and a new configuration store that is based on the .NET XML-based *.config format has taken its place. In addition, IIS 7.0 has a new administration tool, and the new FTP server plugs seamlessly into that paradigm.
Support for new Internet standards: One of the most significant features in the new FTP server is support for FTP over SSL. The new FTP server also supports other Internet improvements such as UTF8 and IPv6.
Shared hosting improvements: By fully integrating into IIS 7.0, the new FTP server makes it possible to host FTP and Web content from the same site by simply adding an FTP binding to an existing Web site. In addition, the FTP server now has virtual host name support, making it possible to host multiple FTP sites on the same IP address. The new FTP server also has improved user isolation, now making it possible to isolate users through per-user virtual directories.
Extensibility and custom authentication: The new FTP server supports developer extensibility, making it possible for software vendors to write custom providers for FTP authentication. Microsoft is using this extensibility feature to implement two new methods for using non-Windows accounts for FTP authentication for IIS Managers and .NET Membership.
Improved logging support: FTP logging has been enhanced to include all FTP-related traffic, unique tracking for FTP sessions, FTP sub-statuses, additional detail fields in FTP logs, and much more.
New supportability features: IIS 7.0 has a new option to display detailed error messages for local users, and the FTP server supports this by providing detailed error responses when logging on locally to an FTP server. The FTP server also logs detailed information using Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), which provides additional detailed information for troubleshooting.

Windows 2008 How To

Mark — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:04:36 +0000

Lots of guides to check out!

Creating and Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services Templates Step-by-Step Guide.

Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in an Extranet Step-by-Step Guide.

Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-By-Step Guide.

Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server Longhorn Step-By-Step Guide.

Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server Longhorn.

Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node Print Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server Longhorn.

Using Identity Federation with Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.

What’s New in Failover Clusters.

What’s New in Terminal Services for Windows Server 2008.

Windows Server Active Directory Rights Management Services Step-by-Step Guide.

Windows Server Code Name Longhorn Beta 3 Active Directory Certificate Services Step-By-Step Guide.

Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 Release TS Gateway Server Step-By-Step Setup Guide

Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 Release TS Licensing Step-By-Step Setup Guide.

Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 Terminal Services RemoteApp Step-By-Step Guide.

Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3 Windows Deployment Services Step-by-Step Guide.

Download…

Software based iSCSI target software for Windows

Mark — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:29:17 +0000

MySAN™ iSCSI Server
Free vendor-agnostic iSCSI target software for Windows


Turn Windows into an iSCSI Storage Appliance
With MySAN software, anyone can create an IP SAN in seconds using their existing server and storage hardware. MySAN works by turning any Windows partition (such as a hard drive, internal RAID array, external storage system, or even Fibre Channel storage) into an iSCSI target. This storage can then be assigned to any computer on an Ethernet network using iSCSI, giving users a vendor-neutral IP SAN instantly.

MySAN allows you to build an IP SAN using the servers and storage you already have. It works in tandem with Microsoft’s free iSCSI initiator in a traditional client/server fashion, as shown above.

Download…

I’ll be installing it in the next week or so and i’ll post some more info. There is also another solution that I have tried named StarWind.

StarWind is an advanced, full-featured software-only iSCSI Target for Windows that enables anyone to quickly install and configure an IP SAN solution with immediate benefits allowing storage to be virtualized consolidated and centrally managed.

Download…