December 2005 - Posts
Tonight at
23:59:60 I will have a sip to cheer 2005, a year which definitively deserved an extra second.
So HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!
I was
posting lately about
The Working Network. Today I've updated and added blogs to
OPML-O-Mater for Directory Services and Windows Server technologies.
Presented by NetPro, and sponsored in part by Microsoft and Centrify, the Directory Experts Conference (DEC) is the only international event focused on advancing the skills of the most experienced Active Directory and MIIS administrators.
DEC 2006 will be held March 26-29, 2006, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and will provide advanced education on key Microsoft Identity and Access Management (IAM) technologies. For the first time ever, the conference will also include dedicated “Masters” tracks for highly experienced users.
I will be presenting two sessions: In "Untangling Microsoft's Directory Services" I will provide a full overview over Microsofts Directory Service Products, especially when to use which ones, and in "A Directory Services Geek's view on Access Control Entries" I will cover how access control entries work in Active Directory to delegate control, how to figure out what to delegate and how to implement those delegations.
Thanks to NetPro and especially their CTO Gil Kirkpatrick for founding and organizing this event for the fifth time and for the opportunity to present two of my favorite sessions.
Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 R2 today. I've done a lot of work around R2 and am really excited about this release. Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) will help you to implement single-authentication (or at least single credentials) across companies without opening firewalls or maintaining username and password at partner websites. Other identity managment features allow better UNIX interoparability, to use DCs as NIS-Servers, Password-Sync with UNIX a.s.o. The new Distributed Filesystem (DFS) allows better configuration which DFS-Servers to use by clients, and comes with a new replication engine which finally allows delta replication of file changes. The new Printer Management Console allows centralized management of printers across print servers, as well as "saved queries" and notifications. Printer assignment via GPOs is also supported. SAN-Management allows you to configure compatible SAN-Devices from a single MMC instead of using different proprietary interfaces, commands and dialogs. File Server Resource Manager finally allows to put Quotas on Folders, produce Reports about Fileservers, notify users and administrators, implement Auto-Quotas (every new folder underneath a parent folder will inherit a new quota) and allow File Screens to define which file-types are not allowed on the server (yes - you are finally able to prevent multimedia-files on your servers if you want to).
Great is also the new licencing when it comes to virtualisation: if you get the Enterprise Version of Windows Server 2003 R2 (should be the same price than WS2k3 EE) you can install it on a physical machine and additional you are free to install up to four instances of either Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition (or mixed) in a virtualized environment (such as Virtual Server or VMWare). Additional only running Servers in virtualized environments count against licencing.
There are other features as well, this list was right now out of the top of my head, just want to spread the message that
Windows Server 2003 R2 has been released
and it's a great release with a lot of new features
Here's the announcement from Microsoft:
Here's the Windows Server 2003 (R2) Homepage:
I just got the December-Release of the German magazine
IT-Administrator with my next article about R2. I'm covering some Branch Office Features like the new Distributed Filesystem (DFS), DFS-Replication and Printer Management in this Article. The german Title is
Windows Server 2003 R2: Verteilte Daten für Filialen.
The Evaluation of Virtual Server 2003 R2 is available on Microsoft Downloads now - I really love that product and have dedicated a Barebone-System optimized for virtualization to run all my testing and demo scenarios. Here's the abstract from Microsoft Downloads:
Virtual Server 2005 R2 (x64) EE 180 Day Evaluation
Update: Tomek Onyszko was reading and providing feedback so fast I was wondering if my blog-application notifies him before publishing it on my website ;-). Thanks for the info Tomek, here's his comment:
As a follow-up on
The Working Network I've promised to produce a OPML on Directory Services Blogs (and Windows Server Blogs). For now you can find some Directory Services Blogs on
www.windowsserverfaq.org/MS-Directory-Services.xml, Windows Server Blogs will follow soon and I expect to be able to add the Blogs to
OPML-o-Matter soon. The OPML does not contain that many DS-Blogs right now, however I've got quite some on my radar which I'm evaluating for being worth to be put in there. Let me know - via the contact page - if you have suggestions yourself.