WindowsNetworking.com - Monthly Newsletter

WindowsNetworking.com - Monthly Newsletter - May 2013

Welcome to the WindowsNetworking.com newsletter by Debra Littlejohn Shinder, MVP. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on the world of Windows Networking. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: dshinder@windowsnetworking.com

Discover a New Way to Manage Active Directory with SystemTools Software

As your company moves to Windows 7, Windows 8, Server 2008, Server 2012 and beyond you want to make sure your support utilities are capable of moving with you. SystemTools Software strives to stay ahead of current and emerging technologies to make sure our products will continue working the way you expect them to. Get an early preview of our upcoming release. It will incorporate a powerful new method of updating Active Directory. We are really excited about it and think you will be too.

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More Power to You

Henry Kissinger once said "Power is the great aphrodisiac." I don't think he was talking about the electrical kind. But while it might not inspire lust, the subject of power – and more specifically, conserving power – is a big issue in today's datacenters and has been for a while. In fact, the ability to reduce power usage was one of the driving forces behind the virtualization trend. Consolidating multiple logical servers onto fewer physical machines can cut power usage drastically, and there are at least two good reasons to do that.

First is the ecological benefit of energy conservation, but whether or not you care about that, there's also the more immediate benefit of cost reduction. With some experts predicting that the world-wide energy consumption in 2035 will have increased by over 50 percent in comparison to 2008, and at the same time predicting that oil prices will remain high and fossil fuels will continue to dominate (accounting for 78 percent of world-wide energy use in 2035), the need to cut power consumption wherever possible becomes apparent.

At the same time, despite energy savings from virtualization, the demand for more and more network resources keeps growing rapidly. The explosion of mobile devices and the increasing acceptance of and demand for 24/7 connectivity, along with the "big data" phenomenon that necessitates storage of and access to huge amounts of digital information, place a huge workload on servers and services.

Coupled with that are the emerging technologies that make up the "smart office" – an environment, like the smart home, in which it's not just traditional computers or modern smart phones and tablets that are network-connected, but also apparatus such as security alarm and video surveillance systems, TVs, vending machines, manufacturing equipment and much more. It's going to become more important than ever to utilize every power-saving tactic and technology possible in building new datacenters or updating old ones.

Can you depend on the cloud to save you? Probably not. Even as cloud services catch on, most organizations are likely to maintain hybrid network environments in which private clouds and/or traditional on-premises datacenters work in conjunction with public cloud services to provide the resources users need to get their jobs done. For some, this is a transitionary situation but many organizations will never be comfortable migrating all of their applications and data to the public cloud, particularly those that engage in business requiring high levels of security. That means the power consumption issue will still land in your lap for a long time to come.

The good news is that there are many service providers, software vendors and hardware makers who are hard at work to make their products more power-efficient. So-called "green research" is aimed at finding ways for networks to operate on far less power while maintaining performance and reliability. One solution is to make more of the network components "smarter" and more adaptive, enabling them to detect when they aren't being used and shut down or operate on minimal power as computers do when they "sleep."

New power-saving designs are especially important for wireless components, which tend to be the most power-hungry. At the same time, wireless communications are what users want, because it provides easier portability and more flexibility, and does away with some of the mess of tangled cords and cables that detract from both the usability and the aesthetics of computing devices.

You can read more about the industry drive to cut network power consumption by 90 percent by the year 2020 in this article from InfoWorld.

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Quote of the Month - Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. – Nido Quebein
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2. ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide - Order Today!

Dr. Tom Shinder's best selling books on ISA Server 2000 and 2004 were the "ISA Firewall Bibles" for thousands of ISA Firewall administrators. Dr. Tom and his illustrious team of ISA Firewall experts now present to you , ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide. This book leverages the over two years of experience Tom and his team of ISA Firewall experts have had with ISA 2006, from beta to RTM and all the versions and builds in between. They've logged literally 1000's of flight hours with ISA 2006 and they have shared the Good, the Great, the Bad and the Ugly of ISA 2006 with their no holds barred coverage of Microsoft's state of the art stateful packet and application layer inspection firewall..

Order your copy of ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide. You'll be glad you did.

Click here to Order your copy today

Discover a New Way to Manage Active Directory with SystemTools Software

3. WindowsNetworking.com Articles of Interest

Introduction to Identity Management and Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 SP1 (Part 2) 9 May 2013 Scott D. Lowe
Data tiering and service level agreements 7 May 2013 Mitch Tulloch
Tech Security Tips for Small Businesses 2 May 2013 Eric Geier
Windows Server 2012 - The Basics (Part 4) 30 April 2013 Brien M. Posey
Top 5 Tips for Windows 8 Networking 25 April 2013 David Davis

4. Administrator KB Tip of the Month

Use PowerShell to find processes using most virtual memory

Here's a tip from my colleague Ed Wilson (the Microsoft Scripting Guy) on how to use Windows PowerShell to find out which processes are consuming the most virtual memory. Ed is the bestselling author of eight books about Windows Scripting, including Windows PowerShell 3.0 Step by Step, and Windows PowerShell 3.0 First Steps. He writes a daily blog about Windows PowerShell called Hey, Scripting Guy! that is hosted on the Microsoft TechNet Script Center; for more PowerTips check out the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog.

Question: You need to find out which of your running processes are using the most virtual memory. How can you use Windows PowerShell to help you do this?

Answer: Use the Get-Process cmdlet and pipeline the results to the Sort-Object cmdlet. Send those results to the Select-Object cmdlet and choose the last 5 (for the top five processes). This technique appears here (Sort is a short form of Sort-Object and Select is a short form of Select-Object).

Get-Process | sort vm | select name, vm -Last 5

For more great admin tips, check out http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/

5. Windows Networking Tip of the Month

I keep hearing that passwords are going away real soon. However, when I see people using computers and phone and pads, what's the only authentication method I see being used? Yep - user names and passwords. Two factor authentication is coming "someday", but – except among some high-security companies and individuals – today doesn't appear to be that day. For that reason, you'll still want to be smart about passwords. That means enforcing password policies for the service that you're providing. Here are some things you should include in your password policy:

Enforce password history
Set a maximum password age
Set a minimum password age
Enforce a minimum password length
Make sure that passwords meet complexity requirements
Store passwords using reversible encryption for all users

For more information on each of these policies, check out http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff741764.aspx

Discover a New Way to Manage Active Directory with SystemTools Software

6. Windows Networking Links of the Month

7. Ask Sgt. Deb

QUESTION:

Hey Deb,

I was wondering how I can recover a lost administrator's password? I am new to the job and the person who left the company didn't leave this information. Is there any way I can get this information without causing major damage?

Thanks! – Bill.

ANSWER:

Hi Bill,

Unfortunately, that's a pretty common problem, especially when the person previously holding the job was escorted out of the building and there's some ill will between the former administrator and the company. The bad news is that recovering the password can be very difficult to do on modern systems without some specialized tools. There are some password cracking tools based on booting a version of Linux that have NTFS file system drivers that enable them to read the drive. Keep in mind that if you do reset the administrator account password, there might be some things that will be inaccessible, such as EFS encrypted files. While I'm hesitant to recommend any specific solution, a search for "how do I reset a forgotten administrator's password for Windows Server?" will give you a number of links to get you started.