There are certain times when organizations decide not to deploy a software update solution and use Windows native functionality – Microsoft Update, as their main solution. This may be the best approach when organizations have dispersed offices around the globe with a small number of standalone computers. It is simpler to enable automatic updates on these clients' computers rather than implementing a costly patch management solution. The same may apply to organizations with many mobile workers who rarely connect to the organizational network. There are other scenarios where this functionality provided by Microsoft is more feasible. However, relying completely on Microsoft Update has some weaknesses and these are listed below: • Each software update is downloaded separately by each client computer from Microsoft Update servers. This has a significant impact on bandwidth cost and usage. • This method does not allow for testing updates prior to deployment hence, if an end user installs an update and this update conflicts with an installed application then the organization may encounter productivity losses. In particular environments, one person may test the updates on a test computer and then gives the go ahead to other users if no problems were encountered on the test machine! • There is no centralized reporting and monitoring mechanism. System administers or auditors need to scan all computers to determine whether an update has installed correctly.
On July 12th 2011, Citrix announced that it has completed the acquisition of Cloud.com. Cloud.com is a major vendor in software platforms for Cloud computing and their main solution, CloudStack is known to be a simple and a very cost-effective 'open by design' solution. Citrix Systems is a major provider of virtual computing with a large spectrum of products - from Virtual Desktops to Cloud setups. Now, the interesting part is this: Citrix's cloud-optimized virtualized platform is based on XenServer and other networking products such as NetScaler's Cloud Gateway and Cloud Bridge while Cloud.com product line supports leading commercial hypervisors such as Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, as well as open source hypervisors. Citrix intends to continue its support to all products and even more, adding Microsoft's product Hyper-V to the list of supported platforms. If this commitment prospers and contributes to the cloud community then we surely welcome this acquisition, otherwise it would be another big fish small fish story! To read more about Citrix's Acquisition go here.
Troubleshooting network problems can be quite daunting at times and a recommended good practice when troubleshooting Windows Firewalls is to enable the native logs. If you need to verify whether a firewall rule is blocking or allowing traffic, you should enable logging, re-create the problem and then examine the log files. By default, Windows Firewall saves log entries in %SystemRoot%\System32\LogFiles\Firewall\Pfirewall.log. It stores the last 4 KB of data and to enable it follow these steps: Open Network and Sharing Center, click Windows Firewall and then click Advanced settings In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security snap-in, right click Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and select Properties In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security on Local Computer Properties window, select the Domain Profile, Private Profile or Public Profile tab. In the Logging group, click the Customize… button. In the Customize Logging Settings for …. Window, select Yes from the Log dropped packets: and Log successful connections: drop down lists. Click OK Remember, in a production environment this log will be almost constantly written to, which can cause a performance impact. So, I do recommend you to disable logging when you're pleased with information collected and there's no need for further testing.
IRVINE, Calif., July 12, 2011 - Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), a leader in digital storage solutions, announced it will be offering a small-office storage server product and has signed an OEM software agreement with Microsoft Corporation to include the Windows® Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software. WD® will combine its leading storage technologies with Microsoft's operating system to deliver a complete storage solution for the small business market. The result will be a product that simplifies connection, protection and collaboration online for small businesses and the information technology services organizations that support them. Fast, dependable and secure access to data, along with complete backup and recovery capability are becoming as crucial for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as it is for large enterprises. According to Forrester Research, SMBs will outpace the projected IT market growth rate of 7.1%. In terms of infrastructure spending increases, storage and servers top SMBs' hardware budget plans. Fifty-three percent of SMBs indicate that they will increase their storage spend.(1) To serve this market, WD joined with Microsoft to incorporate the most advanced online features so businesses can easily and securely share information with clients, consultants or satellite offices located anywhere in the world. "Small businesses will find great value in the combination of WD's hardware solutions and the recently released Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials solution from Microsoft. I am excited about the opportunity we have with WD and their solutions for helping small businesses run more efficiently," said Nick Parker, VP of Worldwide Marketing for the OEM Division at Microsoft. "By combining Microsoft's platform with WD's strength in the storage market, the two organizations bring extraordinary synergies that boost productivity and efficiency for small business. With this, WD will offer storage solutions for sm
IPv6 Unique Local addresses (ULAs) are equivalent of private addresses in IPv4 that is, 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16. These addresses are routable between subnets on a private network but are not routable on the public Internet. They allow you to create complex internal networks without having public address space assigned. ULAs begin with the prefix "fd" and their structure is as follows: The first seven bits of the address are always 1111 110 (binary) and the eight bit is set to 1 to indicate a local address. Therefore, the address prefix in hex is fd00::/8 for this type of address. The next 40 bits represent the global ID and is a randomly generated value that identifies a specific site within your organization. The next 16 bits represent the subnet ID and can be used for further subdividing the internal network of your site for routing purposes. The last 64 bits are the interface ID and specify a unique interface within each subnet.