TechNet Magazine August 2007

Windows Server 2008 and the new Windows Server Backup utility bring many changes and welcome enhancements to backing up. Here is an in-depth guide to backing up and restoring Active Directory in the new server OS.

Gil Kirkpatrick

TechNet Magazine May 2008

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SQL Server 2008: What's New

The new version of SQL Server offers a host of new features and enhancements that promise to improve performance, increase security, and make life better for database administrators. Here’s an overview of the key changes and what you can expect from SQL Server 2008.

Randy Dyess

TechNet Magazine April 2008

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Far too often, people who are not trained database administrators somehow end up responsible for a database. They lack the proper training and knowledge to maintain their database, and problems begin to develop. Here’s a primer for all those involuntary DBAs who need a crash course in database maintenance best practices.

Paul S. Randal

TechNet Magazine August 2008

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Shared and privileged account passwords are commonplace, but far too many organizations fail to adequately manage these shared passwords. This creates a serious security issue. Explore the risks involved with shared and privileged accounts, and discover better approaches to managing more secure passwords.

Chris Stoneff

TechNet Magazine September 2008

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Utility Spotlight: SyncToy

Face it, most of the users you support just don't back up there data. SyncToy provides an unintrusive way to ensure your users' files are always backed up and ready to be easily restored.

Jay Munro

TechNet Magazine March 2007

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Our Blog

Field Notes: Community in the workplace

In this month’s TechNet Magazine, you’ll find the second of a series of Field Notes columns written by Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation. As an early innovator in the field of electronic ...

Have various workers in your company been showing up with questions about Macs? The odds of having a homogeneous network today are very unlikely. Macs are becoming increasingly popular and chances are if you don't already have some on your network, soon you will.

Don't consider this a burden. This actually creates a fantastic opportunity for you as an IT professional. Instead of being an administrator who says "I don't ...

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the Microsoft implementation of Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM)—a technology that lets you access information about the objects in your enterprise environment that have to be managed, such as systems, applications, networks, devices, and other managed components. Not surprisingly, the information is accessible via script ...

The complexity of systems today makes troubleshooting more difficult than ever. It’s harder to keep track of what has changed, when, and how that relates to everything else. If something goes wrong, chances are good that users will have a hard time figuring out what has changed on their computers, whether due to updates, new software, ...

Proxy authentication lets users perform a simple bind to an Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance but still have an association to an Active Directory account. This can be very useful: it gives developers full access to a user object without giving them access to the Active Directory account, and it allows products that require the X.500 format to be used with Active Directory. ...

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August 2007

System Center: SMS Evolved: A Powerful New Solution to Manage Your Systems

Systems management is about to get a lot easier. Take a guided tour of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and see how it can simplify key tasks, such as deploying software updates, managing mobile devices, and maintaining system configurations. John Orefice

System Center: Deploy Apps and Updates to Your Branch Offices

Branch distribution points, one of the new features in Configuration Manager 2007, might appear at first to be a fairly minor addition. But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that it offers new, indispensible capabilities for managing software distribution to branch offices. Steve Rachui

System Center: Getting Started with System Center Essentials 2007

Designed specifically for midsized businesses, System Center Essentials offers a unified solution for monitoring, managing, and troubleshooting systems. Here’s a detailed guide to installing and configuring Essentials 2007 for your network. David Mills

System Center: Keep an Eye on Your Servers with Operations Manager 2007

Operations Manager 2007, the newest incarnation of MOM, introduces some major improvements, including new management interfaces, better reporting, support for line-of-business applications, new security options, and more. Pete Zerger

System Center: Migrating from MOM to Operations Manager 2007

Ready to make the switch to Operations Manager 2007? Due to architectural changes, there’s no simple in-place upgrade path from a previous version of MOM. Instead, follow one of the migration plans presented here. Andy Dominey

System Center: Take Your Apps Virtual with Microsoft SoftGrid

Virtualized applications offer numerous benefits, from improved user experience to simplified system administration. Get a detailed overview of how Microsoft SoftGrid delivers virtual applications, how it can fit into your infrastructure, and how it can save your company time and money. Ahmer Sabri and Kedar Shah

Columns

From the Editor: Dynamic and Optimized Joshua Trupin	Toolbox: New Products for IT Pros Greg Steen	SQL Q&A: Finding Locks, Large Queries, I/O Statistics, and More Edited by Nancy Michell
Utility Spotlight: BGInfo Wouldn’t it be great if you could see everything you need to know about a PC—its name, IP address, gateway, free disk space, and so on—in a single place. You can, with this free tool from Sysinternals. Lance Whitney	The Cable Guy: IPv6 Autoconfiguration in Windows Vista There's more to IPv6 than just extending the address space from 32 bits to 128 bits. Here's a look at how IPv6 hosts can automatically configure themselves, even without the use of an address configuration protocol. Joseph Davies	Windows PowerShell: The Power of Filtering The pipeline isn't just for cmdlets. Take a look at how you can use the Windows PowerShell pipeline to add handy filtering capabilities to your scripts. Don Jones
Hey, Scripting Guy!: Who Are You? With Active Directory, users can have a variety of identities, such as givenName, displayName, userPrincipalName, or distinguishedName. As a system administrator, how do you get all this information about a user? With a script, of course. The Microsoft Scripting Guys	Security Watch: PKI Enhancements in Windows In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the Windows PKI platform offers support for advanced algorithms, real time validity checking, and better manageability. Check out the new PKI features and see how they can be used to lower costs while improving security. John Morello	The Desktop Files: Getting to Know RDP The Remote Desktop Protocol, which allows you to access machines remotely, is a useful piece of technology that gets better with every version of Windows. Get an overview of Remote Desktop, looking at many of the benefits and limitations it has to offer. Wes Miller
Field Notes: IM Interviews You have one position to fill and a large stack of resumes from around the globe. How do you quickly narrow your search? The answer may be to do interviews over IM. Here's one developer's success story. Nathan G. Jensen	Windows Confidential: Windows Explorer Doesn't Do Text Why can't you copy a list of files in Windows Explorer and then paste them as text to get their file names? The Windows team tried to include this functionality, but it didn't work as planned. Raymond Chen

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