Busy, Busy, Busy...
I am (very busy)..
I'm still working on my attempt at finding security related content a bit easier. I've found loads of security content - too much if I'm honest. My plan is still to frame it all around Defense in Depth, but now that this has grown into a bigger thing than expected (I'm now re-vamping https://www.microsoft.com/ireland/security - a slightly bigger task than I had planned) I have to get the right content for the right audience. I don't think my Mum will find the "Microsoft Security Assessment Tool (MSAT)" of much use to her - whereas you might (have a look at: https://www.securityguidance.com/). I did find a couple of very good links (in my opinion at least): https://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/learning/default.mspx helps you to find a range of Microsoft training references and resources on security threats and appropriate countermeasures. And https://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/support/computer-security.mspx to find out about the 7 steps to get your small business secure (it's good content even if you haven't got a small business).
Anyway, the security stuff is happening (just a bit slower than I would have liked).
Yesterday I was out on site with one of Ireland's major telcos - setting up a demonstration lab to show off Windows Mobile access to Exchange. I had a bit of a hectic day installing ISA Server, Active Directory and both a Front-End and Back-End Exchange Server. I had to configure a stand alone CA to issue certificates to use for the SSL connection to both the ISA Server and the Front-End Exchange Server and got to spend hours diagnosing why it didn't work! Half of my problem was "user error" (I hadn't typed in the correct IP address on a network interface -just happened to be the one the MX record was pointing to) and the other is yet to be solved (OWA over https works fine inside the firewall but gives an error from the Internet - I connect OK, accept the SSL certificate and then get: "Error Code: 403 Forbidden. The server denied the specified Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Contact the server administrator. (12202)"). MSN Search kind of tells me that this is quite a common problem - So I'm researching the solution today & will be back in to implement the fix on Monday.
I was showing off what I'd installed yesterday evening & they were blown away by how easy all this stuff is nowadays: Configuring ISA Server for Internet Access, Publishing an Exchange Server and enabling OWA and Windows Mobile is as easy as running through a couple of wizards. Getting a Domain Controller, a SharePoint Portal Server and two Exchange Servers (Front-End & Back-End) installed all within a couple of hours using Virtual Server was amazing. I'd bought a long the Virtual Hard Disk (vhd) file of a Sysprep'ed Windows Server 2003 with SP1 and all the updates already applied - all I had to do was copy this file for each server I was creating, boot the virtual machine, give it a machine name & I had the server up and running (5 minutes per server). Then it was just a simple(ish) dcpromo and an two Exchange installs and I was done. Virtual Server really is something else - I don't know how we survived before it.
If you've not experienced the latest version of Virtual Server, go to: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.mspx and download the evaluation kit. For production you need Windows Server 2003 (x64 if you've got one - you'll get twice as many guest machines per server), but for test it runs on Windows XP. One day I intend to setup Virtual Server on a cluster (I have the servers & disk enclosure already to go - hand-me-downs from Microsoft's datacentre in Dublin) - I just need the time..
That's it for now (work to do)..
Dave
Comments
- Anonymous
March 03, 2006
The comment has been removed