W2Knews[tm] (the original NTools E-News) Electronic Newsletter
Vol. 5, #14- March 27, 2000
Published by sunbelt-software.com since 1996 - ISSN: 1527-3407
'Immediate Notification Of Important Windows NT/2000 Events'
******************* over 600,000 SUBSCRIBERS*****************
This Issue of W2Knews contains:
1. EDITORS CORNER:
2. TECH BRIEFING:
* NT CLUSTER USERS WITHOUT UPGRADE PATH?
* SECURE YOUR IIS 5.0 WITH NEW FREE MS DOWNLOAD.
3. NT RELATED NEWS:
* WINDOWS 2001 IS IN THE WILD!
* FORMER MICROSOFT CRITIC CONFIRMS W2K IS ENTERPRISE READY
4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS:
* NEW STORAGE CENTRAL V4.1 DOES CAPACITY PLANNING
* MASS CREATE NT/2000 ACCOUNTS IN UNDER 30 SECONDS
* REMOTELYANYWHERE V3.0, NOW SUPPORTS W9X
5. HINTS AND TIPS: FileWipes, DLL-trace and Souped up CPU's.
6. THE NT/2000 STOCK WATCH - Friday March 24, 2000
7. HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off or change your address.
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**********************WHAT IS W2Knews?***************************
Sunbelt W2Knews (the original NTools E-News) is the World's first
and largest E-Newsletter designed for NT/2000 System Managers that
have the job to get and keep NT up & running in a production
environment. Sunbelt launched this electronic newsletter early 1996.
Every week we keep the Windows NT/2000 community informed and aware
of new developments of NT and 3-rd party System Management Tools.
You get hints and tips that will enable you to better utilize and
understand Win NT/2000 and help to pass your Certification Exams.
Info and Stu's bio: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/w2knews.htm
Via (separate) NTools E-NewsFlashes we will send you important
breaking news like new service packs, killer viruses, etc. Sunbelt
Software is the first and largest provider worldwide of Third
Party System Management Tools for Windows NT. Tell Your Friends!
All back issues are here, searchable and indexed on key words:
http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=nt-list&text_mode=0
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1. "EDITORS CORNER"
Hi NT/2000 Pro's, here are some various short items:
How is Windows 2001 for consumers going to look? Well if you want
to spend the time, it's out there now for you to play with. In the
mean time, it looks like Microsoft and the US Department of Justice
are around the table to settle the case, spurred on by an impatient
Judge.
In the mean time a LOT of you responded to my question about
renting app-space on an outsourced server. The golden 80-20 rule
was again apparent. 80% of you said 'no way', 20% saw benefits
in the setup. As you may or may not know, when 15% of a market is
interested in a solution, it is usually economically viable. So
I guess MS is investing in that 20%.
And what has Sunbelt been doing? Redesign our website. It's now
easier to navigate and practically everything is now SQL 7.0-driven.
We started October last year to get rid of our old war-horse static
site that was fully written with FrontPage. First we created the
database structure, slowly working from the 'back to the front'.
Well, the 'front' is ready for your inspection.
All download forms and pages are now in ColdFusion, the Alpha-
and Category Searches live in SQL, and we have a high-speed external
FTP site to offload the downloads from our in-house website. The
new site has already been up for a week, and we feel confident
enough to invite you to take a look at our new home. It's not 100%
done but the roof is ready ;-) I'd like you to click on the 'NT/2000
COMMUNITY' tab and check out all the free lists we are running!
New Sunbelt Site: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/index.htm
Warm regards,
Stu.
Email me with feedback at:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*************************SPONSOR********************************
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2000-based servers and applications such as Exchange, IIS and
SQL Server up and running with AppManager. Find out why companies
like Microsoft, NASDAQ and Southern Company choose AppManager to
get a grip on centrally managing their Windows environments. For
more about AppManager and to request your *FREE* Eval kit:
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****************************************************************
2. TECH BRIEFING:
* NT CLUSTER USERS WITHOUT UPGRADE PATH?
You could find yourself without an upgrade path for your NT
Enterprise Edition. Microsoft is getting Windows 2000 Datacenter
Server ready and was planning to only have 4-node cluster support
for W2KDC. But this might change.
"A lot of customers and OEMs wanted to use four-node technology
on lower-end systems," says Michel Gambier, product manager for
W2K enterprise marketing at Microsoft. He added: "We're looking
at bringing down four-node technology into Windows 2000 Advanced
Server."
Currently, WolfPack has two flavors, 2 nodes for W2K Advanced
Server and 4-nodes for Datacenter Server. Having 4 nodes makes
clustering cheaper. Instead of having a standby server waiting
for the failure of just one active box, you could configure that
standby machine to _three_ active servers. Count your profits.
One problem: W2K DC is only sold by OEM's or qualified server
vendors as part of a complete 8-CPU system, _together_ with the
hardware. That is to ensure the reliability as WHOLE systems
can be tested and verified. So, how to get your hands on 4-node
clustering without shelling out big $$$ for an 8-way box??
You could buy IBM's Cornhusker software, which allows up to eight-
node failover clustering by using the Wolfpack API, but that
again would cost more and leave NT EE users in the cold. Analysts
urged Microsoft to hurry its native four-node clustering stuff
into Advanced Server.
"Clearly there's a need even by rank-and-file users to have higher
availability through much more robust clustering," says Laura DiDio,
an analyst with Giga Information Group (www.gigaweb.com).
In the past, Microsoft has responded to customer pressure/requests.
I would urge all of you to talk to your MS-rep and ask them to
include 4-node clustering into W2K Advanced Server.
PS: Patrick Wools sent me the following: I noticed you mentioned
the word WolfPACK but did not tell anyone what it meant. This comes
from a gentleman by the name of Gregory F. Pfister and he explains
the whole deal in his book "In search of clusters". Joke: the
term WolfPACK sounded better than DogPACK. <grin>.
------------------------
* SECURE YOUR IIS 5.0 WITH NEW FREE MS DOWNLOAD.
Microsoft just announced that version 1.0 of the Windows 2000
Internet Server Security Configuration Tool is available for download
and use. The tool makes it easy to secure a web server running IIS
5.0. It conducts an interview to determine what services you want
to provide and the general way that you'd like for the server to
operate, then generates and deploys a policy to configure the server
appropriately.
Download at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools.asp.
Before using the tool, please be sure to read the Readme file
included with it. The tool errs on the side of caution, and locks
down many aspects of the system. It's important that you understand
the effects this can have before deciding whether to lock down
your server.
They will be developing an advanced version of the tool, and also are
deploying more security checklists. All of these can be downloaded
from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools.asp.
****************************************************************
3. "NT RELATED NEWS"
* WINDOWS 2001 IS IN THE WILD!
It almost looks like MS does it on purpose. An early (alpha)
version of the 'Whistler' code which is the so called consumer
version of W2K has found it way in the wild, meaning a pirated
copy is now available on a series of websites. It's not stable
yet, so it really is no more than a curiosity at the moment.
But fun if you want to play with it on a system you don't mind
trashing.
Win2K1 was suddenly spotted by observers last Tuesday and like
other alpha versions of other MS O/S-es it spread like oil on
water through websites and college campuses. The build that
found its way out is number 2211.1 which means it was created
last weekend in one of Microsoft's daily builds.
I do not expect Whistler (which is basically a spruced up
version of W2K with a bunch of HTML add-ons) to be available
until Q2, 2001. More at:
http://betanews.efront.com/article.php3?sid=953595359
-------------------------
* FORMER MICROSOFT CRITIC CONFIRMS W2K IS ENTERPRISE READY
Perhaps you know about Network World's e-zine written by well-
known industry pundit Dave Kearns. It's a regular short column
with very useful items. This time I'm shamelessly stealing most
of his story! <grin>, and suggest you subscribe to his timely
and well written "WINDOWS NETWORKING" yourself.
Here goes:
"Critics of Windows NT networking have been able to count on
data from the Boston Aberdeen Group for ammunition in their fight
to keep the Microsoft operating system away from enterprisewide
usage. But a recent report from the research firm may change
that.
"January's report, "Is Microsoft's Windows NT/Windows 2000
Enterprise-Ready?" reaches some surprising (for Aberdeen)
conclusions. Although it is hemmed in with numerous caveats,
the report concludes that NT/Win 2000 makes an excellent platform
for business-to-business and business-to-consumer Web-based
organizations. Aberdeen suggests three requirements to make
it an enterprise-ready system:
* NT/Win 2000 applications must be properly designed so that
they do not conflict with the operating system.
* The NT/Win 2000 environment must be operated in a datacenter-
like manner - with policies and procedures in place for change
management, software updates, software distribution, backup/
restore and the like.
* In heterogeneous environments, third-party or custom code must
be used to enhance system manageability and security, as well as
to improve cross-operating environment directory services.
There's nothing onerous in that list. These are requirements
most knowledgeable IT managers already have for mission-critical
systems. The report itself is quite long but makes very interesting
reading for those who either have, wish to have, or are about to
have NT/Win 2000 platforms running their enterprise's dot-com
businesses.
Thanks Dave! You can find them at: http://www.nwfusion.com
****************************************************************
4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS
* NEW STORAGE CENTRAL V4.1 DOES CAPACITY PLANNING
W. Quinn Associates, a leading provider of Windows NT/2000 storage
solutions software, announced the upgrade of its StorageCeNTral
product to V4.1. SC4.1 is the only storage management product
that offers *real-time* disk space consumption management on the
market and enables you to quickly estimate your future storage
requirements.
In addition to the StorageCeNTral upgrade, the two suite products,
DiskAdvisor 4.1 and QuotaAdvisor 4.1, have also been upgraded.
Quinn listened carefully to your needs and added a series of new
features to their product. You will have additional capabilities
that automatically push file management to the users via an
Intranet and accurately plan for future storage requirements
and deployment of SAN and backup technologies.
'Active Reporting' provides Web-based access to a collection of
storage management reports via your Intranet. Capacity planning
enables you to estimate your future storage requirements by
recording usage over time, which of course decreases your storage
costs and saves you time. It allows you to accurately plan your
deployment of SAN and backup technologies.
Active Reports give your users the capability to manage their
own files and storage. You no longer have to manage user files,
and frees you up to get your real job done.
Traditional disk reporting systems sent reports directly to users,
but users were unable to take any action on the files directly
from the reports. Instead, a user ran Windows Explorer,
identified the files in question and took the desired actions.
Because this is a multi-step, complex process, many users
simply ignored these reports. Help Desk personnel were then
forced to intervene with users, further complicating the file
management process. Active Reporting solves this problem.
StorageCeNTral is the first complete, scaleable, real-time
storage monitoring, limiting and reporting system for Windows
NT/2000 environments. StorageCeNTral 4.1 features WQuinn's
unique patent-pending filter driver technology. As opposed
to 'first generation' quota tools that change NT security
permissions which only acts 'after-the-fact', StorageCeNTral
is the only NT/2000 tool to examine data in real-time; and
consequently, the only available 'second generation' tool
able to enforce disk space limits before files are written
and before the damage is done. Check this product out at:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/search_category.cfm#5
-------------------------
* MASS CREATE NT/2000 ACCOUNTS IN UNDER 30 SECONDS
We have TEM V3.0 ready for you. If keeping up with the
employee changes from your Human Resource department is
driving you nuts then take a look at the newest version
of TEM 3.0. TEM was created to help automate & manage
your domains fast and efficiently, with capabilities not
found in Windows 2000.
Mass creation and mass imports are no longer the future
but the present. With TEM it is as easy as taking a
template user and copying it a thousand times so everyone
gets the same NT home directory/ share, Windows Terminal
Server (WTS), and Exchange properties.
Building, changing and deleting users, home directories,
home shares exchange mailboxes and WTS properties can all
be done in less than 30 seconds. Complete with real-time,
dynamic reporting features, Directory Shadow Repository
(DSR), following account activities is a snap.
A SQL 7.0 Server database is the power behind the reporting
feature. All user information, Exchange accounts, last
log-on and WTS information are stored on, and powered by,
a SQL 7.0 Server database repository. From this repository,
DSR allows you the ability to print, search, filter sort
and advance sort across domains and Exchange, WTS, NT
and Windows 2000 directories, all without the need for a
database administrator.
Other important features that make this solution really
stand out include enforced auto naming, Task Progress
Notification, drag and drop, and managed delegation.
For consistency in your directories TEM is the only tool
available that uses enforced auto-naming conventions across
NT, Exchange, home directories and home shares.
The Task Progress Notification allows you to see the status
of your changes to users by the utilization of a progress bar.
The administrator can highlight the objects they want to
make changes to (lets say 100 objects at one time) and can
view those changes occurring in real-time for each highlighted
object.
TEM is one of the first products on the market that also
allow you the ease of dragging and dropping users from group
to group and groups to users. The managed delegation feature
gives an administrator the flexibility to assign who controls
what objects and enables him to run reports on these objects.
This eliminates the all or nothing level of control that was
previously found in Windows NT and to see who is actually
making changes to these objects with the reporting feature.
This level of control helps ensures the security and integrity
of the domain.
Pricing starts at $17.36 per managed user for 250 Licenses
and goes down according to the number of licenses needed. Check
out: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/search_category.cfm#4
-------------------
* REMOTELYANYWHERE V3.0, NOW SUPPORTS W9X
3am Laboratories released RemotelyAnywhere, which allows you
to access and control your systems remotely from any other
computer via an Internet connection. Originally developed as
a service for Windows NT Servers or Workstations, the newly
released version 3.0 is now compatible with Windows 95/98
and Windows 2000 machines.
RemotelyAnywhere allows secure access to the computer via
any TCP/IP network, for the purposes of remote administration,
access and control using nothing but a web browser, and most
tasks can be performed without going into a 'remote control'
session. New in V3.0 is system monitoring and alerting.
This allows you to configure RemotelyAnywhere to send out an
e-mail alert, an administrative message, or execute a batch
file or any other program when certain performance, usage or
load levels have been reached.
RemotelyAnywhere includes a Telnet server, with a secure Telnet
client implemented as a Java applet, but you're also able to
use the Telnet client of choice when using RemotelyAnywhere.
A 30-day, full function eval copy of v3.0 can be downloaded
from BRI’s web site at http://www.BinaryResearch.net
********************************************************************
5. HINTS AND TIPS: FileWipes, DLL-trace and Souped up CPU's.
BCwipe (free) deletes your sensitive files and overwrites them
7 times with 1's and 0's to DoD standards and then also "wipes"
the free areas of your swap file.
http://www.jetico.sci.fi/index.htm#/bcwipe.htm
-------------
On the NTSYSADMIN list some one asked: "Can anyone point me to
a tool that can display the loaded dll's?
Some very good suggestions were:
1) Look for WinAnalyst ver 1.0 at http://32bit.bhs.com/
2) Try Dependency Walker. It is on the NT4.0 Resource kit, or
you can download it at: http://www.dependencywalker.com/
3) "PrcView is a freeware process viewer utility that shows
comprehensive information about running processes. This info
includes such details as creation time, version and full path
for each DLL used by a selected process, a list of all threads,
memory blocks and heaps. PrcVIew also allows you to kill and
attach a debugger to a selected process. PrcView runs on both
Windows 95/98 and Windows NT platforms and includes Windows and
command-line version of the program." http://www.teamcti.com
4) Check a couple of utilities at http://www.sysinternals.com
-------------
Looking for a tool or utility that can notify me when a user
or PC connects to a share on a PC or Server? Head over to
http://www.winfiles.com and search for SHARE NOTIFIER
-------------
Quite a few of us have gone from hopping up cars to souping
up our systems. In many cases that means buy the fastest CPU
you can get and overclock it. That in turn can cause some
heat problems. One of our Techs who has built a superfast
system last week told me to hold a 5 mm thick square inch
thingie with two wires sticking out of it. He then threw a
switch. Within 3 seconds one side was cold as ice, the other
side so hot I had to let go!
This is an ingenious cooling device you stick on a hot CPU
to keep the temperatures down, amazing technology. They are
called peltier units and come from an outfit called Melco.
They have nice breakdown about Thermo-electric modules over
here. Recommended: http://www.melcor.com/faq.htm
********************************************************************
6. THE NT STOCK WATCH Closing Date Friday MARCH 24, 2000
(00s)
SYMBL SECURITY CLOSE CHANGE VOL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
AMD Advanced Micro Devices............. 54 -1 3/8 33000
BMCS BMC Software....................... 52 13/16 -1 1/4 21920
BVEW BindView Development Corporation... 37 3/4 - 7/8 3634
CTXS Citrix Systems Inc................. 98 +8 39580
CPQ Compaq Computer.................... 28 9/16 - 13/16 363087
CA Computer Associates................ 66 9/16 +1 3/16 30259
DRTN Data Return Corporation............ 67 -5 9/16 1880
DELL Dell Computer...................... 56 7/16 -1 1/16 212982
EDS Electronic Data Systems Corp....... 72 3/16 + 9/16 28229
GTW Gateway Inc........................ 56 1/4 -2 1/2 32575
HWP Hewlett Packard Co................. 142 3/8 -4 7/8 29047
INTC Intel Corp......................... 139 1/16 -3 9/16 227353
INGR Intergraph Corp.................... 8 33/64 + 23/32 5876
IBM International Business Machines.... 121 3/8 +6 1/8 120298
LGTO Legato Systems Inc................. 37 1/4 + 13/16 26482
MUEI Micron Electronics Inc............. 16 - 1/4 9014
MSFT Microsoft Corp..................... 111 11/16 - 3/16 548876
MCSW Mission Critical Software Inc...... 70 7/8 -1 1/2 2110
NCR NCR Corp........................... 42 7/8 + 3/16 7551
NTIQ NetIQ Corporation.................. 77 - 7/8 3787
NETA Network Associates Inc............. 34 1/2 - 9/16 18143
NOVL Novell Inc......................... 32 7/8 unch 41350
ORCL Oracle Corp........................ 87 + 1/8 259320
QCOM Qualcomm Incorporated.............. 146 +1 7/8 249531
SEG Seagate Technology................. 71 +1 1/8 23800
SGI Silicon Graphics................... 11 13/16 - 1/2 14427
SUNW Sun Microsystems Inc............... 100 1/4 +2 7/16 180467
SYBS Sybase Inc......................... 23 1/2 -1 5/8 9169
SYMC Symantec Corp...................... 73 5/16 + 13/16 3224
UIS Unisys Corp........................ 25 3/8 -1 1/4 17610
VRTS Veritas Software Corp.............. 162 9/16 +3 5/8 36092
DJIA Dow Jones 30 Industrials........... 11,112.72 -7.14
********************************************************************
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sign off or change your email address
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********************************************************************
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