This is very, very cool: the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer is a new tool from Microsoft that checks your Exchange infrastructure for good design practices. To be more specific, the tool investigates various parameters (including some from AD, a few perfmon counters, the IIS metabase, and your DNS) to see how well your operational configuration conforms to generally accepted best practices.
Category Archives: Musings
Controlling Always-Up-To-Date timing
I’ve been fiddling with Exchange ActiveSync lately, and I’m actually pretty impressed with it– it’s a neat feature. If you’re not familiar with it, it basically sends periodic notifications of new mail to your Windows Mobile device; when the device receives the AUTD message, it wakes up and pulls new messages from your Exchange server. This gives you more-or-less continuous access to the contents of your mailbox.
Comments Off on Controlling Always-Up-To-Date timing
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide released
At long last, Microsoft’s released a document that describes what you can do to mitigate threats to your network from Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 machines: the Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide.
Comments Off on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 Threat Mitigation Guide released
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Another Exchange SURBL filter
I just got a note from Martijn Jongen mentioning that he has a SURBL filter for Exchange.
Comments Off on Another Exchange SURBL filter
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
New IMF hotfix for 15-character names
This is a pretty rare problem, but still: if you’re running the Exchange IMF on a machine with a 15-character NetBIOS name, the IMF won’t actually filter the inbound messages. This is kind of a silly bug.
Comments Off on New IMF hotfix for 15-character names
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Preset the language for OMA users
Imagine that you have a bunch of OMA users who don’t use English as their native language. Wouldn’t it be nice to set the default OMA language that they see when they log on, without making them learn enough English to navigate OMA’s interface and set it themselves?
Comments Off on Preset the language for OMA users
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Configuring per-server IMF gateway settings
I hate it when this happens! I just sent off a Troubleshooter column question for the December issue on how to create separate settings on separate IMF servers. My answer involved multiple forests and was fairly ugly. I then decided to relax and do a little blog surfing. Lo and behold, It turns out that (courtesy of Evan’s blog) there’s a much more elegant solution to this problem.
Comments Off on Configuring per-server IMF gateway settings
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
The Return of the Ken
The new season of Jeopardy starts Monday, and you know what that means: Ken is coming back. I’m prepared for another wave of comments on my previous post. In the meantime, check out this wiki, which has more than you probably ever wanted to know about his run so far.
What’s in a SID?
Larry Osterman has a terrific post up today on the guts of Windows security identifiers, or SIDs. A small taste:
Comments Off on What’s in a SID?
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Order in the port: Port Reporter Parser released
Port Reporter is a nifty tool from Microsoft that you can use to log TCP and UDP activity on Windows machines; it logs port activity on ports that you specify to a text file. It’s extremely useful for monitoring traffic from specified machines or services, and it has a variety of useful features that I won’t enumerate– go download it already.
Comments Off on Order in the port: Port Reporter Parser released
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
VERITAS buys KVS
Well, this is interesting: VERITAS buys KVS for $225 million in cash. Considering VERITAS’ failure to turn their own archiving product for Windows into a real competitor for KVS, this is an interesting move.
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
E-mail free Fridays
Jeremy Burton has a good idea: declare Friday as an “email-free day” in his department. This story, which I first saw in the WSJ, has grown legs as people debate whether this is a good idea or not. I think the stimulus that led to Burton’s edict is something we can all identify with: he wondered how much time his folks were wasting on email.
Comments Off on E-mail free Fridays
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Hail to the Chief
On Saturday, we loaded up the boys and went across the street to Fort Meigs, where the President had scheduled a campaign rally. Several of our friends parked in our driveway, so we had quite a procession: three couples (plus Mom) with ten children, plus some stragglers (hi Fritz!) who came later. We arrived at the fort about 3:15; the gates were open from 2-4pm, and the President was scheduled to speak at 5:10. It was about 80° and very humid, but we figured we’d have no trouble finding a comfortable spot to stand. Well, not exactly. We found a spot, but it was airless thanks to the crush of people squashing together in an attempt to see the actual stage. (Reported attendance was 15,000, or 12,000 according to the Blade.) After about an hour of feeding the boys cookies and letting them take turns playing games on my phone, we moved to a much better location, with actual Fresh Air™. We then endured several local politicians, including Randy Gardner and Larry Kaczala. Kaczala, who’s running against arcy Kaptur, made several stupid and tasteless jokes about Kerry’s Vietnam service. I don’t think the arguments made by the Swift boat folks can easily be dismissed, but having this bozo make fun of Kerry’s combat experience didn’t sit well with me. (On the other hand, I’m not in his Congressional district, so I don’t get to vote against him).
Fritz had said that he’d heard a “national entertainer” would be appearing; sure enough, after all the politicans departed, we were favored by a few songs from Lee Anne Womack. I don’t remember the first one (might’ve been “Something Worth Leaving Behind”); the second was “I Hope You Dance” (which I liked a lot better live than the saccharine radio version), followed by “This Land is Your Land” and another patriotic song I’d forgotten. The boys were getting restive, so Arlene bought them some hot dogs and lemonade; that kept them entertained until the President made his entrance.
He gave a very energetic speech, almost entirely focused on the positive. There were a few jabs at Kerry’s voting record on the Iraq war (and the follow-on resolution), and an acknowledgment that Ohio’s unemployment rate is still higher than the national average. Since he was preaching to the faithful, I didn’t expect a real barnburner of a speech, but overall I was impressed with his delivery and message. David & Thomas were thrilled to see the President in the flesh, and it’s something I hope they remember.
Comments Off on Hail to the Chief
Filed under Musings
Barracuda Spam Firewall: first look
I’ve been testing the Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall 300 for the last couple of weeks. So far, I’m very pleased with it; it has done an effective job of filtering spam and virus messages. The best thing is that it incorporates rate control along with other more conventional filtering (including Bayesian and header analysis); this saved me from a huge comment-spam attack last week (see the big blue spike on the “daily mail statistics” graph in the picture below). The unit was very easy to set up and install, and it has worked without interruption since I installed it.
Comments Off on Barracuda Spam Firewall: first look
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Interesting tidbit on credit card bills
From this morning’s Al’s Morning Meeting:
But wait a minute. More Americans paid their credit card bills on time in June than they have in four years. Would anybody like to make a guess about why this is so and what it means?
Comments Off on Interesting tidbit on credit card bills
Filed under Musings
Paul's Down-Home Page 