10 ways to benchmark your Active Directory environment

Active Directory Services is the going standard for account provisioning, basic system management, and DNS authority in most environments. But having some accountability to determine what has changed over time can be a challenge. Here are some strategies for achieving accountability in your Active Directory environment. They’ll help supplement your existing strategies, give you an extra dimension for testing, and provide a strong set of data to determine what has changed when you’re troubleshooting issues.

10 ways to benchmark your Active Directory environment 

Windows 7 “top feature request list” leaked to the public

With Windows still managing to find its way to over 95 percent of the desktop computers sold each year, it’s not surprising that one can find plenty of people interested in giving their feedback about what future versions of Windows should be able to do. A few years ago, before Windows Vista had even shipped, Microsoft sent out a wish list form asking people what features they would like to see in the next version of Windows, currently code-named Windows 7. The top wished-for features in this list were recently leaked to the public and have popped up at various sites (e.g., Neowin). While anonymous sources at Microsoft tell us that they bear no relationship to the actual feature set Microsoft is currently writing for Windows 7, the list does provide interesting insight into what the Windows-using public most wants from Windows.

Read Windows 7 “top feature request list” leaked to the public >

Linux Losing Market Share to Windows Server

An interesting article by eWeek. Here is a sligthly modified version (removed commercials and additional links):

Experts say that migrations from Unix to Linux have slowed down because all the low-hanging fruit has now been picked.

Linux growth in the U.S. x86 server market has, over the past six quarters, started to falter and reverse its positive course relative to Windows Server and the market as a whole.

The annual rate at which Linux is growing in the x86 server space has fallen from around 53 percent in 2003, when Windows Server growth was in the mid-20 percent range, to a negative 4 percent growth in calendar year 2006, IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures show.

Over the same time period, Windows has continued to report positive annual growth, outpacing the total growth rate in the x86 market by more than 4 percent in 2006, indicating that Linux has actually lost market share to Windows Server over this time.

The same holds true for worldwide Linux x86 server shipments, which dropped from the huge annual growth rate of about 45 percent is 2003 to growth of less than 10 percent in 2006, the IDC figures show.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that the migrations from Unix to Linux have slowed down markedly.

“We have seen the rate of migration from Unix slow over the past few quarters,” IDC analyst Matt Eastwood told eWEEK. “In my view this is because much of the low-hanging fruit has been moved and the applications that remain on Unix are stickier because they are seen as business critical and more political candidates for migration overall.”

IDC analyst Al Gillen pointed out that the number of servers shipped does not perfectly equal the number of operating systems in the market. This is particularly the case with Linux where a substantial portion of the overall market opportunity comes from deployments aboard recycled servers, PCs and workstations deployed as servers, and Linux deployed as a guest operating system.

“This does not contradict any trending taking place on server hardware,” Gillen said.

He added: “But we do need to remember that the Linux software ecosystem does not track exactly the same as does x86 hardware shipments.”

Margaret Lewis, the director of commercial solutions for AMD in Austin, Texas, has also noticed the slowdown in Linux growth over the past few quarters.

In 2000, Windows comprised about half of the server operating system market, followed by Unix and Netware at about 17 percent each and Linux reaching towards 10 percent, she said, noting that today Windows owns about 70 percent, Linux about 20 percent, with Unix below 10 percent and Netware barely registering.

“Looking at these large operating system market swings, you could draw the conclusion that Linux has gotten the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of migration,” Lewis said.

“Without the larger pool of Unix and NetWare users who are ripe for migration, there is not quite the level of fuel. You could assume that Linux is now ready to settle down to a more regular growth curve representative of a more mature technology.”

The fact that Windows has maintained a steady growth rate over this same time frame could be the result of companies expanding their Windows-based IT infrastructure to meet the demands of users who always want to be online, she said.

“Windows-based Web hosting sites are experiencing strong growth, the Exchange infrastructure is expanding to offer unified messaging and many small businesses are moving to a real server infrastructure for basic infrastructure instead of a network of desktops,” Lewis said.

Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server marketing and platform strategy at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., has also noticed these trends, and says that increased customer adoption of Windows Server 2003 in a broad range of enterprise scenarios is driving significant growth of that business.

“I spend a lot of time talking with both Linux and Windows customers and partners, and the feedback that I hear is that, in volume, Linux is primarily deployed in two workloads—high-performance computing and as Web servers,” Hilf told eWEEK.

“It appears that Linux server growth is moderating considerably and, while it’s certainly still a player, it’s not being considered across the broad range of workloads that Windows Server is, from ERP to CRM to messaging and collaboration to core infrastructure like file and print,” he said.

Top 10 Overlooked Windows Server 2008 Features

Windows Server 2008 is on its way. With the first release candidate in the pipeline, it shouldn’t be long before release to manufacturing and general availability.

With such a long development time (it’s the first new Windows Server OS since 2003,) the showstopping new features have been well publicized: Most IT pros are familiar with at least some of the details of Server Core, PowerShell and Windows Server Virtualization (codenamed Viridian). But Windows 2008 includes a lot more than those headliners.

To that end, we’re presenting the Top 10 overlooked features of Windows 2008. We spoke with Ward Ralston, senior technical product manager for Windows Server, to help us build our list. These items haven’t garnered the same kind of press attention, hype and word-of-mouth as the others, but they’re nonetheless important – maybe very important – to your network.

Full article here.

Microsoft Takes Step Toward Opening .NET 3.5 Framework

In a surprise move, Microsoft said today it is releasing the reference source code for the .NET Framework libraries, a key step toward opening up the proprietary development platform.

Developers will be able to review and debug .NET source code with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Released under the Microsoft Reference License, developers are able to view, but not modify or distribute, the reference source code.

Read the full  Microsoft Takes Step Toward Opening .NET 3.5 Framework

Seven Patches Coming From Microsoft

Microsoft expects to release seven security patches with four “Critical” and three “Important” bulletins as part of its upcoming Patch Tuesday release.

The critical patches affect Windows Server Service Packs for 2000 and 2003 versions as well as Internet Explorer, versions 5 through 7 and Outlook Express for Windows 2000, 2003 and Windows XP.

The common thread of the four “critical” patches is their remote code execution (RCE) implications, a risk consideration that has been pretty consistent over the last few patch release announcements. Microsoft suggests using Baseline Security Analyzer to flesh out any potential bugs or problems.

Meanwhile, the three “important” issues are more varied in nature, with two bulletins affecting almost all Windows OS and server versions, including multiple service pack releases of Windows 2000 and 2003, XP and Vista. A third patch is related to Windows SharePoint Services.

The first important bulletin, given its breadth in affecting every Windows OS program, bears watching. That bulletin pertains to the prospect of denial of service attacks, which are attempts to make IT resources unavailable, locking users out of programs and applications.

The second important item deals with spoofs, also known in techie world as “masquerade ball” attacks, where a hacker as a user or malicious program passes his/itself off as another user/program using erroneous data and gaining unwarranted Read and/or Write access. This would affect all OSes except XP and Vista.

The last important patch affects all versions of SharePoint services and remedies concerns over potential elevation of privilege attacks, where malicious users can change profile settings, usurp access configurations and gain greater entry into the system than intended.

Of the total seven bulletins, three will require restarts.

As it does most months, Redmond will also release another update to the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal tool and has plans to release three non-security, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services and one non-security, high-priority update for Windows on Windows Update.

Although things can still change, Thursday’s advance notification points to a pretty busy Tuesday.

Vista exams review

70-622 Exam Review

Exam 70-622 PRO: Installing, Maintaining, Supporting, and Troubleshooting Applications on the Windows Vista Client-Enterprise, is a mouthful and it’s also a good test of your ability to roll out applications on this or any Windows-based network. Exam 70-622 is one of two exams that you’ll need to pass (along with completion of a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist exam, such as 70-620: Vista Configuration) in order to obtain a Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Enterprise Support Technician certification.

Read the full 70-622 Exam Review here.

70-623 Exam Review

Exam 70-623 PRO: stands alone as a Microsoft certification. The exam targets IT professionals who work within the consumer market supporting end users. Familiar with The Geek Squad? Well, that’s the target audience. Exam 70-623 gives this group a way to prove their knowledge supporting users with installation, configuration and troubleshooting retail versions of Windows Vista installed on consumers’ machines.

Read the full 70-623 Exam Review here.

Silverlight Vs Flash

Silverlight?

“Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.”

Silverlight Vs Flash discussions are all over the web now. Here is a post with lots of links to some of the decent comments on the subject: Silverlight Vs Flash

Microsoft Website Calls Longhorn “Windows Server 2008”

Microsoft may have slipped up Thursday afternoon and inadvertently posted the official name of its next server operating system, currently codenamed “Longhorn.”

In a list of links on the WinHEC Virtual Pressroom, the second item on the original list said “Windows Server 2008 reviewers[sic] guide”.

Clicking on the link brought up a page titled “Windows Server Code Name ‘Longhorn’ Beta 3 Reviewer’s Guide”; it made no reference to Windows Server 2008.

Read more here.

“Longhorn” Server Public Beta Arrives

 from: http://www.setup32.com/news/2007/05/longhorn-server-public-beta.php

The next generation Windows Server took the biggest step yet on its long and winding road toward commercial availability when Microsoft announced the release of “Longhorn” Beta 3 Wednesday night.

The next generation of Windows Server took the biggest step yet on its long and winding road toward commercial availability when Microsoft announced the release of “Longhorn” beta 3 Wednesday night.

Beta 3 is the first public release of the OS, downloadable at http://www.microsoft.com/getbeta3. Ward Ralston, a senior technical product manager in the Windows Server group, said, “We’re very excited and proud that we’re able to deliver the beta 3 milestone on time and with features we’ve promised our customers. And we’ve introduced new features that weren’t on the radar in beta 2.”

Those features include Windows PowerShell, additional Server Core roles and Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

Windows PowerShell is the new command-line shell that allows, essentially, all tasks to be scripted. It’s a feature that many administrators have clamored for over the years, the kind of functionality that’s always been available on high-end, scalable OSes like Unix.

Beta 3 also has four additional “Server Core” roles, in addition to the four roles found in earlier Longhorn versions. Server Cores are stripped-down versions of servers that are task-specific, and therefore less resource-intensive than full versions. Some of the new cores include a print server, streaming media server and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services.

Server Cores will be set up through the new Server Manager, which Ralston called “our one-stop shop for server configuration. With Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003, there were a lot of opportunities for IT pros to make mistakes.” Server Manager aims to cut down on those mistakes, Ralston said.

Although Windows Firewall with Advanced Security isn’t new in beta 3, the fact that it’s turned on by default is. It’s a feature that further enhances Microsoft’s commitment to security, Ralston said.

“We’ve had thousands of servers [running Longhorn Server], both internally and through our technology adoption program, and have been monitoring them closely. Security’s held up very well. With Longhorn, shields are always up until [administrators] decide which role they want a server to perform,” he said.

Ralston said it’s part of a paradigm shift for how Microsoft views security: “You don’t lock a server down — you unlock a server by deciding on what role you want.”

With the release of Longhorn beta 3, Ralston said Longhorn Server is feature-complete. Microsoft has maintained that Longhorn — likely to be dubbed “Windows Server 2008” upon commercial availability — continues to be on schedule for release to manufacturing (RTM) in the “second half of 2007.” No more precise dates were given for RTM, but Ralston said that at least one Release Candidate (RC) will be forthcoming following the beta period.

“As they take it for a test drive, our customers and partners will find we made some vast improvements in Windows Server ‘Longhorn’ to help them reduce costs and adapt to changing business needs,” said Bill Laing, general manager of the Windows Server Division at Microsoft, in a press release. “Between early adopter customers and Microsoft IT, we have hundreds of servers running in production environments today. If there’s one message we want to send today, it is ‘get ready, download and evaluate.'”

Longhorn also ushers in the end of an era for Microsoft: Ralston confirmed that it’s the last 32-bit OS the company will produce. Much like Microsoft Exchange 2007, future releases will be 64-bit or higher. Asked if Microsoft is worried about future OSes not being able to run on legacy systems, Ralston was confident in the company’s strategy, stating that companies like Dell and HP are not making 32-bit servers anymore.

That’s a bit of hyperbole, as server manufacturers continue to offer 32-bit hardware for current server OSes, but the move toward 64-bit power in the future should continue to trend upward.

Helene Love Snell, a senior product manager in the Windows Server Group, said that Microsoft’s own internal testing – and through testing partners – shows that Longhorn is ready for primetime.

“We’ve got close to 1,000 servers running in a production environment,” she said. “It’s a really good testament to the quality of the beta.”

Although that may be true, public betas tend to uncover many more bugs than private betas, since the test bed is expanded exponentially. So Microsoft’s pronouncements of Longhorn beta 3’s stability might be true in its closed test environment, but could prove substantially less so in the myriad environments into which it’s about to be thrust. Bug reports are sure to be just around the corner.