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Is your organization still struggling with PCI compliance? If you process credit cards, you face tremendous pressure to comply with PCI DSS standards. Not only must you embrace new policies and implement changes to network configurations, you must also ensure that the technology is in place to protect card-holder data. What if you could achieve compliance through an automated, on-demand platform? Read this white paper to learn how! Download Whitepaper! | | Featured Resources | | VMworld 2008 - Sign Up Today! Join your peers on September 15-18 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas as VMware hosts VMworld 2008, the leading Virtualization event. Now in its fifth year, VMworld is a must-attend event for all IT professionals looking for actionable ideas, innovative products, and best practices for virtualizing your enterprise--from the desktop to the data center. Register now! Top Tools for Virtualization Disaster Recovery & Replication This August 14 web seminar will cover the challenges of backing up in a virtualized environment and will outline a combined approach that creates an effective disaster recovery solution. Get an overview of two tools that result in faster backup and restore with P2V (physical-to-virtual) disaster recovery and enable companies to leverage virtualization to support high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategies. Register today! | | Announcements | | Master SharePoint with 3 eLearning Seminars hosted by Windows IT Pro
Join MVPs Dan Holme and Michael Noel to learn how to build a better SharePoint infrastructure and enable powerful collaboration. On October 1, 2008, at 11:00 AM EDT, direct from your computer, these SharePoint gurus will guide you through three info-packed sessions: 21st Century File Sharing: Configuring & Managing Document Libraries; Building Code-Free SharePoint Applications and Business Intelligence Lite; and Forms-Based Authentication and Extranet Deployment Options for SharePoint 2007. All for only $99! Seats are limited to allow for lots of live Q&A at the end.
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news, and contacts. Sign up for additional email newsletters today. | This issue sponsored by Windows IT Pro | In-Depth Guide for Customer Premise Equipment
Check out VoIP News' in-depth comparison of leading Enterprise PBX Vendors including Avaya, Cisco and Shoretel covers features, services, pricing, support and more. This guide for customer premise equipment focuses on the needs of medium and large businesses.
Windows IT Pro | Breaking News:
VMware: “All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Microsoft”
by Jeff James Microsoft is a kinder, gentler software giant than it was a few short years ago. Sure, it’s still a haven for the hyper-competitive, but would the Microsoft of old have turned the other cheek—for nearly two years—while Apple gleefully defined Windows Vista as a crash-prone, resource-hogging golden turkey only used by nerds? Pigs also must be flying over Redmond, as earlier this year Microsoft announced cross-platform extensions for Microsoft System Center 2007 that let IT pros more effectively manage Linux, UNIX, and other non-Windows environments existing next to their Windows infrastructures. Microsoft even joined in the media circus surrounding the launch of the iPhone 3G, issuing a news release praising Apple for supporting Exchange ActiveSync in the new device.
Has Microsoft now entered a sentimental period in its corporate life when it wants to apologize for past transgressions, or perhaps grows wistful and teary-eyed when talking about the good old days, when it was squashing companies flat and battling antitrust regulators? Has the Microsoft of today gone soft, grown weary of its dogged pursuit of Google, Apple, and VMware? Microsoft is clearly more eager now to play well with others than it was in the past, a development that's good news for IT professionals, who are often caught in the crossfire of warring vendors as they try to build and maintain a heterogeneous IT infrastructure while dodging shrapnel and minimizing trauma from shots fired between Microsoft and the likes of IBM, Apple, and the Linux distribution vendor du jour.
Yet while Microsoft appears to be going through the equivalent of a sentimental midlife crisis, VMware is obviously taking its cues from the corporate giant's earlier, angrier, it’s-my-ball-and-I’ll-go-home era. Former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz was recently appointed as the president and CEO of VMware after co-founder Diane Greene was shown the door by a nervous EMC board. While Greene’s ouster might have seemed like a reactive move on EMC’s part, there’s no question that putting Maritz in the driver’s seat has some benefits. Maritz was one of the key executives behind Microsoft’s early competitive conquests, helping draft the strategies that led Microsoft to its victories over Novell, IBM, WordPerfect, and Lotus in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Microsoft may have many things on its to-do list at the moment—fighting Google, chasing Yahoo!, clashing with European Union antitrust officials, and searching the employee suggestion box to find out who came up with that doozy of a product name for Microsoft Equipt—but Maritz knows better than anyone that however distracted Microsoft might be, it's still large, dangerous, and well financed.
Anyone remember when Microsoft made Internet Explorer gratis, resulting in Netscape’s business prospects being buried under an avalanche of free IE downloads? VMware and Maritz obviously took a page from that merciless Microsoft playbook when it made its next-generation ESXi hypervisor a free download just weeks after Microsoft finally released Hyper-V. Microsoft will still grow share in the server virtualization garden, but the impact of a free (and superior) ESXi stomping on nascent Hyper-V prospects as they poke up from the soil is pure irony. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow, and now Microsoft is seeing the muddy sole of the shoe.
Using Hyper-V? Tell Us What You Think!
Microsoft Hyper-V has finally arrived, and it promises to heat up the rapidly growing virtualization market. Are you currently using Hyper-V in your work environment, or are you planning to deploy it soon? We’d like to hear about your experiences, so please send your Hyper-V success stories or tales of woe to Jeff James. Be sure to put “Hyper-V Feedback” in your subject line so we can spot your feedback quickly. [Comment On This Article] | How much data loss is acceptable?
It’s 3:00 pm and your Exchange server's hard drive array has failed. You get a call from the president of your company wanting to know where his email regarding a pending major purchase has gone. He and other executives have been working on the project all day, and the deadline is less than 30 minutes away. Download this white paper to learn about continuous data protection (CDP), Exchange 2007's local continuous replication and cluster continuous replication features, and other more robust third-party offerings.
Windows IT Pro | Virtualization News
By Jeff James Virtual Appliance from Secerno Tackles Database Security
Secerno has announced that its Secerno.SQL database security product is now available as a virtual appliance for customers using VMware ESX Server and Virtual Infrastructure 3. The new edition of Secerno.SQL uses patent-pending SynoptiQ technology, which is based on research from the Oxford Computing Laboratory. SynoptiQ analyzes statements made against a database, then compares them to the SQL language. Secerno claims that SynoptiQ "is the only technology available that analyses each statement sent to a database against the SQL language...the true intent of every database request can be understood and then controlled, unlike traditional technology that looks only at specific keywords using pattern matching, regular expression-based approaches." Secerno.SQL for VMware will be available in third quarter 2008. For more information about Secerno.SQL for VMware, visit www.secerno.com. New IT Training and Certification Programs from VMware
VMware sent word that it has launched a new certification program and new online educational offerings for IT professionals interested in building virtual environments. According to VMware, the Live Online and Flex Online courses are available for the “VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure” course, which serves as one of the three course requirements to become a VMware Certified Professional. Two VMware certifications are now available: VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX). The VCP is primarily for partners, consultants, and end users, while VCDX is a new, advanced certification primarily intended for architects responsible for planning and designing VMware deployments. For more information about these VMware certification and training programs, go to www.vmware.com/services. Tips & Tricks:
Hyper-V Deployment Advice
by Michael Otey Running Windows Server 2003 Under Hyper-V
To get Windows Server 2003 to recognize the Hyper-V virtual network, follow these steps:
1. First, install Windows 2003 SP2, which is the required level for running Windows 2003 under Hyper-V.
2. Install the Hyper-V Integration Components (included with Windows Server 2008); they add support for Hyper-V’s synthetic devices, including the Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter, that enable the Windows Server 2003 VM guest to access the network.
Identifying your Hyper-V Version
Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization was officially RTMed on June 26, 2008. However, several early releases of Hyper-V made their way into a number of Windows Server 2008 installations since Server 2008 was released back in February. The original Server 2008 release included a beta version of Hyper-V. Microsoft subsequently released two Hyper-V release candidates (RC0 and RC1) before the RTM.
So how do you know which version of Hyper-V you’re running? The RTM release of Hyper-V is version 6.0.6001.18016. Read the rest of this article here. |
