If you want to see a couple of nice videos about Microsoft Windows 2008 and Active Directory check the links below:

Part 1: In this video from TechEd 2008, Microsoft senior technical product manager Justin Graham discusses some of the lesser known improvements made to Active Directory with Windows Server 2008. Here you'll get details on features such as stickiness prevention and fine-grained password policies, plus info on what new auditing enhancements to AD mean to administrators.

Part 2: In part two of our interview on Active Directory from TechEd 2008, Microsoft senior technical product manager Justin Graham explains how the read-only domain controller can help improve branch office security. Graham also provides details on the application compatibility considerations that administrators should be aware of before deploying an RODC with Active Directory in Windows Server 2008.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

From RTFM Education:

"Simon Ruzgar of autonation.com has very kindly sent RTFM a handy little script - based on some post-P2V scripting I did donkey’s years ago - I’m mean back in the ESX2/VC1/P2V2 era. Here’s the problem it fixes: When you P2V you loose your IP settings from your Windows “Local Area Connection”, because Windows hides the old physical NIC, and shows a new vmxnet NIC inside the virtual machine.

Here’s what Simon’s script does: You run it on the physical box prior to conversion, it reads the IP configuration and pipes it to a text file. You then carry out your P2V. Once that’s completed you re-run the script which then reads your “lost” IP configuration from the text file - and puts them back behind you new local area connection."

You can download the script here.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

In what it seems to be the Top 10 things you must read about VMware series, Eric Siebert wrote the top 10 about VMware Networking:

1-VI3 Networking – Concepts and Components: A VMworld 2007 presentation (you will need to sign-in) describing the VI3 network architecture and how to properly configure it.

2-VI3 Networking - Advanced Configurations and Troubleshooting: A VMworld 2007 presentation (you will need to sign-in) on advanced virtual networking topics with tips for troubleshooting problems.

3-VMware ESX Server 3 802.1Q VLAN Solutions: Provides concepts and configuration tips for using 802.1Q VLAN tagging with your vSwitch configurations.

4-Integrating Virtual Machines into the Cisco Data Center Architecture: A white paper written by Cisco on ESX server networking architecture and integration with Cisco network devices.

5-Networking Performance in VMware ESX Server 3.5: A white paper from VMware comparing virtual to physical networking performance.

6-Network Throughput in a Virtual Infrastructure: A white paper from VMware that outlines the considerations that affect network throughput.

7-ESX3 Networking Internals: A VMware TSX 2007 presentation on the internals of how ESX vSwitches function.

8-High Performance ESX Networking: A VMware TSX 2007 presentation on ESX network design considerations.

9-How To Configure Networking from the Service Console Command Line: A VMware KB article on setting up networking via the CLI.

10-Server Virtualization – Network Implications and Best Practices: A presentation from Cisco on network virtualization architecture and design considerations for Cisco networks to support virtual environments.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

And here you have the the best articles for the past week:

1-Significant Networking Problem with Hyper-V via Scottlowe.org

2-The Case For And Against Stretched ESX Clusters via Virtual Geek

3-VMFS Storage Sizing for Maximum Performance via VM /ETC

4-Disaster Recovery in the Datacenter via VMware Podcasts

5-ROI Analysis: Virtualization via InformationWeek

Enjoy!

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

"Embrace your ability to get more for free. VMware Server equips you
with a stable, easy to use, free virtualization platform ideal for
organizations wanting to consolidate multiple servers down to few and
reduce the headaches and expense of server provisioning.

This newest beta version offers the capabilities from before, plus an
array of new features, increased performance and stability—including a
broader range of guest operating system support, direct access to
virtual machine consoles, an intuitive Web-based management interface,
and increased memory for greater scalability. With over 3 million
downloads worldwide, VMware Server continues to innovate to provide
users with a superior introductory experience to virtualization for
free."

Some screen shots can be found here

Download the product here

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

VMware Server Version 1.0.5 (free) / http://www.vmware.com/download/server

• A security vulnerability in OpenSSL 0.9.7j could make it possible to forge a RSA key signature. VMware Server 1.0.5 upgrades OpenSSL to version 0.9.7l to avoid this vulnerability.
• An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could attain and exploit LocalSystem privileges by causing the authd process to connect to a named pipe that is opened and controlled by the
• malicious user. In this situation, the malicious user could successfully impersonate authd and attain privileges under which authd is executing.
• An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could exploit an insecurely created named pipe object to escalate priviliges or create a denial-of-service attack.
• This release updates the libpng library to version 1.2.22 to remove various security vulnerabilities.
• A vulnerability in VMware Workstation running on Windows allowed complete access to the host's file system from a guest machine. This access included the ability to create and modify executable files in
  sensitive locations.
• The authd process read and honored the vmx.fullpath variable in the user-writable file config.ini, creating a security vulnerability.
• The config.ini file could be modified by non-administrator to change the VMX launch path. This created a vulnerability that could be exploited to escalate a user's privileges.

• On Windows hosts, if you have configured and enabled a shared folder, it is possible for an attacker to write arbitrary content from a guest system to arbitrary locations on the host system.
• An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could attain and exploit LocalSystem privileges by causing the authd process to connect to a named pipe that is opened and controlled by the malicious user. In this situation, the malicious user could successfully impersonate authd and attain privileges under which Authd is executing.
• This release updates the libpng library to version 1.2.22 to remove various security vulnerabilities.
• This release updates the OpenSSL library to address various vulnerabilities to denial-of-service attacks and buffer overflows.
• Workstation 6.0.2 allowed anonymous console access to the guest by means of the VIX API. This release, Workstation 6.0.3, disables this feature. This means that the Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger and the Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger will now prompt for user account credentials to access a guest.

• On Windows hosts, if you have configured and enabled a shared folder, it is possible for an attacker to write arbitrary content from a guest system to arbitrary locations on the host system.
• Ubuntu 7.04 virtual machines sometimes power off unexpectedly if paravirtual kernel support is enabled.

• Release Notes: http://www.vmware.com/support/ace2/doc/releasenotes_ace2.html#new_203

• http://www.vmware.com/beta/server

I have been using mRemote for two months now and I mainly like it because:

1) It supports rdp, vnc, ssh, telent, rlogin, raw, http/s and ica, so you can check your web sites, connect to the ESX Server / Unix farm and manage your Microsoft Infrastructure through RDP using only one window





2) It will recognize your Putty sessions

3) mRemote can call external applications and tell them what to do with the use of parameters and variables of the currently selected connection

Give it a try and hopefully you will like it too!

Download mRemote at Sourceforge (1)

(1) Be sure to have the .Net Framework installed in advance

Posted by Gabriel Maciel