Common Engineering Criteria for Products shipping in FY2006
(These criteria are in addition to the previous year's criteria.) 
Fast Data Backup and Restore Infrastructure
All Windows Server System products will provide infrastructure built on the Volume Shadow Copy Service to support fast backup and recovery of data. Volume Shadow Copy Service is a framework for facilitating communication among applications, storage subsystems, and storage management applications (including backup applications) to define, persist, and exploit point-in-time copies of storage data.
This infrastructure will provide backup/restore to product solution providers to reduce their cost of product development and enable IT administrators to provide their organizations with fast backup and recovery of data at reduced costs. Product Dependency Check During InstallationTo provide a consistent and predictable product installation experience, all Windows Server System products will check for product dependencies during installation. Products must follow these rules: -
All products must analyze the installation system, detect any missing dependencies or incorrect versions of dependencies, and notify the user. Detection must be run each time the installation utility is run.
- If there are missing or invalid components, the installation utility should offer to download Microsoft components for the user or identify where the components can be obtained.
- If the user chooses not to download the missing or invalid components, the installation must fail and list those components.
- Silent installations should accept Y/N responses for downloading dependent components.
Service Discovery from Active DirectoryMore than 70 percent of enterprise customers in the United States have adopted Microsoft Active Directory directory service as a repository of choice to store user credentials and device information; therefore, all Windows Server System products must write a marker in Active Directory. By querying Active Directory, customers and independent software vendors (ISVs) will be able to find all NT Services running on each of their Windows Servers. This information will enable them to proactively manage NT Services, improving both reliability and security. Best Practice AnalyzerMicrosoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, a free tool available by download, provides customers with the capability to conduct product configuration analysis against a best practices database. This knowledgebase was developed using experiences of Microsoft product and support teams, Microsoft partners, and industry experts. This tool specifically provides the ability to: - Judge the general health of a Microsoft server product deployment
- Generate a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings, options that are not supported or not recommended, and recently changed settings that may render a configuration unstable
- Help troubleshoot specific problems
- Provide detailed online or local documentation about any reported issues, including troubleshooting tips
This criterion will enable customers to reduce the time and resources required to optimize configuration of Windows Server System products in their infrastructure. Customers can download the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer.
Remote Server Software Installation
To improve IT productivity and reduce the cost of managing IT infrastructure at remote locations, customers are centralizing the management of IT infrastructure. To meet this customer need, all Microsoft server products must be capable of being installed and uninstalled using Windows Terminal Services. Windows Terminal Services already provides the capability to remotely manage infrastructure servers, and this requirement further extends this capability.
Product Globalization
Customers expect that all Microsoft products provide the same functionality everywhere, be interoperable across diverse regional scenarios, and be available in their native language. To meet these expectations, all Microsoft server products must integrate globalization processes into their product development cycles to ensure geographical and cultural independence of Microsoft products. This criterion provides customers with products that can be localized independent of modifications to the source code.
Consistency in "End User Licensing Agreements" and “Product Use Rights"
To reduce complexity and improve consistency of end user licensing agreements, all Microsoft server products will use the same terms "End User Licensing Agreements" and "Product Use Rights" . Additionally, all Microsoft server products will enforce processor limitations consistently through the same Windows Server mechanism. | 
