I really like the Community Solutions articles in the Microsoft KnowledgeBase, written by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP's). They are insightful, at times slightly ironic and sarcastic and sometimes they make me laugh and almost wet my pants. You recognize these articles immediately when you look at the Knowledge Base article number: they all start with 555.
Category: Systems Administration
Systems Administration
Big Drives, Part 2
I can imagine that after reading part 1 of the 'Big Drive Problem" one essential question remained unanswered and haunted your thoughts: How big should I make my C: drive if I move every dynamic, sensitive or performance related piece of data from it? I intend to answer that question in this post.
Big drives, Part 1
It's not uncommon to find big drives in new servers. Some people might suggest to format it with one NTFS based C: drive, but I suggest you don't listen to them. Not placing dynamic data on your C: drive is a best practice. This practice requires you to make other disks, volumes or partitions.
Patch management, a differentiator for small businesses?
Small Novell networks often have a Microsoft Windows server somewhere. This might seem odd, but it actually makes sense when you look at the way businesses tend to cave under the pressure of keeping their networks updated. Most of the times this is why a Windows Server gets introduced and most of the time it's the first of … Continue reading "Patch management, a differentiator for small businesses?"
Deploying and managing FireFox centrally
As an IT Professional you might get the question to deploy Mozilla's FireFox browser on the workstations of your users. I must admin FireFox is a pretty good product and Mozilla does a good job building and promoting it. In fact: In my opinion it's the only company I know that effectively took on a … Continue reading "Deploying and managing FireFox centrally"
Active Directory on separate volumes
I had and have seen numerous discussions with people on the benefits and drawbacks of putting Active Directory files and folders on a separate volume or even on several separate volumes. Time to makes some things clear!
Using Service Pack 1 as a marker
Microsoft today sent an e-mail today to Technology Adaptation Partner (TAP) testers announcing to release ServicePack 1 for Windows Vista in the second half of 2007 (H2 2007) to collide with the launch of Microsoft Windows Server codename "Longhorn". (rumored to be named Windows Server 2007) As Mary Jo Foley pointed out there are still a lot of … Continue reading "Using Service Pack 1 as a marker"
Be prepared! (Windows Server 2003 SP2 coming)
It's been a long time since we've seen fixes-only service packs to Microsoft Windows. After looking at Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 1 (SP2 RC1) it looks to me that this upcoming service pack will be more like Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2. Not necessarily a bad … Continue reading "Be prepared! (Windows Server 2003 SP2 coming)"
Complexity of authentication ("the Password problem")
Many IT people I know require their users to come up with complex passwords and require them to change them often. I guess this gives them a sense of security. It's actually not as secure as they think. Even after implementing a good (Microsoft ISA Server) firewall, implementing IPSec on your network, running NAP or NAC there are … Continue reading "Complexity of authentication ("the Password problem")"
Conserving energy with Active Directory
Treehugger magazine has a very clear statement on Microsoft Windows XP and its "high-performance" yet "energy-consuming" default settings this week. They boldly state Microsoft Windows XP wasted $25 billion of Energy with the help of Foreign Policy.