SonicWALL Announces Security Solutions for Windows Essential Business Server

SonicWALL, Inc. a secure network infrastructure company, announced the availability of its Email Security and Network Security Appliance(NSA) Series for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Small Business Sever (SBS) and Windows Essential Business Server (EBS). The SonicWALL technologies, which complement SBS and EBS, deliver a comprehensive security package that ensures SMBs have access to enterprise class-products at affordable prices.

“Microsoft aims to provide its customers a selection of products that offer them the best solutions available in the industry and Windows Essential Server Solutions continues this momentum.” said Russ Madlener, director, Windows Server Group at Microsoft Corp.. “We are pleased SonicWALL is building out additional functionality and ensuring that our mutual customers have a robust IT deployment to meet their specific needs.”

Email Security

SonicWALL’s Email Security offerings help companies of all sizes protect themselves from spam, viruses, phishing and other harmful threats in email attacks by combining the powerful protection of threat management, content filtering, policy management and compliance infrastructure functionality. The new solution brings this high-performance and easy-to-use protection against all forms of email security threats to the millions of SBS users. Available as a hardened appliance or as Windows software, SonicWALL Email Security protects inbound and outbound e-mail for organizations of less than 25 to over 100,000 users. SonicWALL Email Security for Windows Small Business Server is the latest offering in the line, specifically optimized for the Microsoft server environment to meet the needs of small businesses with an easy-to-install, easy-to-manage solution.

Network Security Appliance Series

The SonicWALL Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series applies next-generation Unified Threat Management (UTM) to enable complete protection at the network perimeter without compromising performance levels to SBS and EBS and its users. The NSA appliances incorporate SonicWALL’s patented Reassembly Free Deep Packet Inspection (RFDPI) and multi-core processing to block threats, such as hackers, viruses and spyware as well as controlling user access to the server.

“SonicWALL has worked hard to create a large portfolio of products that protect firms of all sizes from a vast array of security threats.” said Patrick Sweeney, Vice President at SonicWALL. “Taking these technologies and integrating them with Windows Small Business Server and Essential Business Server is key to our SMB customers.”

Source:pcmag-mideast.com/NewsDetail.aspx?id=2321

Microsoft Rolls Out New Small Business Server Options

Microsoft has announced new server software that it said provides small and medium businesses with enterprise-quality capabilities while helping them to save money, increase productivity and grow their businesses.

While designed specifically for small and midsized companies, Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS 2008) include Microsoft's high-end server technologies delivered in a way that smaller companies can make the most of them.

“Around the world, small and midsize businesses are the engine that drives economic growth and opportunity,” Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said in a company statement. “To help these businesses succeed, Microsoft has focused on creating integrated, affordable server solutions that are optimized to meet the needs of companies with limited IT resources. Small Business Server and Essential Business Server deliver a comprehensive set of capabilities that will help small and midsize business thrive and grow.”

Designed for small companies with up to 75 people/computers, SBS 2008 server software integrates a variety of Windows functions to help small businesses better secure data and increase employee productivity regardless of location.

Based on Windows Server 2008 Standard technology, SBS 2008 incorporates:-

• Exchange Server 2007 Standard Edition for messaging and collaboration
• SharePoint Services 3.0 for online collaboration workspace and productivity tools
• Forefront Security for Exchange Server to handle e-mail security
• Windows Server Update Services 3.0 for network updates and protection
• Windows Live OneCare for Server to manage viruses, hackers and other digital threats
• Microsoft Office Live Small Business to help take your business online
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard for Small Business, a database available in the Premium edition

The server software offers a range of features including anytime/anywhere access to your PC and its data, including e-mail, files, business applications, and more. It's also designed to let your employees share Internet access, printers, fax machines and other network resources. Click here for SBS 2008 pricing information.

Microsoft designed EBS 2008 for midsized companies with up to 300 people or computers. It's meant to simplify and automate common IT tasks, and a unified administration console gives IT managers more control over an integrated network infrastructure.

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 also incorporates the applications found in SBS 2008, and Microsoft said it provides the following features:

• Significant costs savings compared to buying stand-alone products.
• Remote access, anti-spam, antivirus protection and improved messaging technologies improve productivity both in and away from the office
• An integrated setup saves time and reduces installation steps from days to hours Simplified licensing with a single server license and Client Access for all included products.

Steven VanRoekel, senior director of the Windows Server product group, noted that both server products help small and mid-sized companies compete in tough economic times.

"Small companies have the same needs and face the same challenges as big business, but they lack the staff, resources and time to manage IT environments," VanRoekel said. "The new EBS 2008 and SBS 2008 products are an integrated, affordable, enterprise-quality solution that can help small and midsized companies become more productive, cut costs and be more competitive." Click here for EBS 2008 pricing information

Via: itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3785346/Microsoft+Rolls+Out+New+Small+Business+Server+Options.htm

Options for passing a driver into the Windows Server 2008 install program

Windows Server 2008 makes this process a little more flexible. Here are various ways that a driver can be passed into the setup program.

• IDE floppy disk: I'm going old school here, but the Windows Server 2008 setup can read from the floppy drive during the installation process.

• USB floppy drive: The Windows setup can read from a USB drive, or the computer's BIOS will enumerate the floppy drive as an A:\ drive. It's somewhat of a cover song of the old school approach.

• USB flash drive: The Windows Server 2008 install will recognise USB storage devices, and you can have the driver located on the removable media.

• Map a network drive: This is a little more advanced, but if you boot the server from a Vista PE bootable environment, map a network drive, and then run the setup.exe program interactively from a network location that you copied from the Windows Server 2008 DVD, you can browse to another network resource for a driver for the mass storage controller. This is especially beneficial if the Vista PE boot environment can be booted from a CD instead of a DVD, which is helpful for servers without a DVD drive. (

• Place the driver on an existing file system: If you can boot the server currently, make a drive partition of NTFS or FAT, you can put the driver on that drive and ensure it is available to the Windows Server 2008 install. Don't make it available on the C:\ drive, but some location at the end of the drive. If you need to resize your drives after installation, no worries -- Windows Server 2008 makes that quite easy as well with new sizing tools .

• Additional optical drives: If your server has a DVD and a CD drive, you can make a simple disk that has the driver files contained there and browse to that location during the Windows Server 2008 install.
  

The list goes on, but this will cover most of the common scenarios for interactive Windows Server 2008 installations.

Source:builderau.com.au/

Four Windows Server 2008 Storage Improvements

With the release of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is making a number of improvements to the server's underlying storage mechanisms.

Here are four of these improvements and what they mean for the typical IT organisation.

SMB 2.0

First shipped with Windows Vista, SMB 2.0, alternatively known as the Common Internet File System (CIFS), is also included in Windows Server 2008 and sports a number of improvements over its predecessor.

To work with older systems, Windows Server 2008 supports both SMB 1.0 and SMB 2.0 and automatically uses the version most appropriate for communication. SMB 2.0 is used only between Windows Server 2008 systems and with Windows Vista systems. SMB communication with all other operating systems uses SMB 1.0.

BitLocker Drive Encryption

Included in Windows Server 2008 is Microsoft's BitLocker Drive Encryption software. BitLocker is also included in Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions but, for Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has made improvements to the technology (which are likely to be extended to Vista when Service Pack 1 is released).

Under Vista, BitLocker can be used to encrypt the contents of the operating system volume. If you have multiple volumes of data on your desktop computer, however, BitLocker — at present — cannot be used to protect anything except the operating system volume. In Windows Server 2008, this limitation has been removed and all server volumes can be protected via BitLocker.

Full-disk encryption is usually considered primarily for mobile computers that can be easily stolen, but this technology should also be considered for use in branch offices or areas in which physical security cannot be guaranteed.

Self-healing NTFS

It's a bad day when you have to reboot a file server just to run chkdsk.exe to correct a minor corruption in NTFS. You have to schedule downtime for a server, maybe come in after hours or, in a worst-case scenario, interrupt your users while you perform this task during the day. But no more: with Windows Server 2008 comes an online NTFS corruption repair tool. While it is not a silver bullet for volume repair, it does correct many problems without having to reboot the server to run chkdsk.exe. Self-healing NTFS is enabled by default in Windows Server 2008 installations.

Symbolic links

Earlier, I mentioned that SMB 2.0 supports symbolic links. The fact that SMB 2.0 has this feature is great but it would be utterly useless without the same feature being included in the operating system. As such, symbolic links have been added to Windows Server 2008 — a feature that is long overdue. A symbolic link is simply an object in the file system that points to another object in the file system. A symbolic link appears as a normal file or directory object and can be used by an application as if it were the actual object.

Unix and Linux users have been able to use symbolic links for a very, very long time, and this feature can make it much easier to administer a system and share data.

Source:resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/0,1000001991,39292799,00.htm