TechVirtuoso

Google Chrome to include Adobe Flash player

0 Comments March 30, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Software

In a move that is sure to anger those who like total control over the software on their computers, Google has teamed up with Adobe to bundle Flash player with their Chrome browser. From the announcement on the Chromium Blog:

Today, we’re making available an initial integration of Flash Player with Chrome in the developer channel. We plan to bring this functionality to all Chrome users as quickly as we can.

We believe this initiative will help our users in the following ways:

When users download Chrome, they will also receive the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. There will be no need to install Flash Player separately.

Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism. This eliminates the need to manually download separate updates and reduces the security risk of using outdated versions.

With Adobe’s help, we plan to further protect users by extending Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content.

Improving the traditional browser plug-in model will make it possible for plug-ins to be just as fast, stable, and secure as the browser’s HTML and JavaScript engines. Over time this will enable HTML, Flash, and other plug-ins to be used together more seamlessly in rendering and scripting.

Those who were hoping to see HTML5 deal a killshot to Flash, should be very disappointed.

TV Guide for March 30

0 Comments March 30, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : TV Guide

This is the introduction post to the TechVirtuoso Guide, what we hope will become a daily breakdown of important IT tidbits from the previous day, and what we expect to happen that day.

Yet again, someone has come forward with another rumor that a CDMA iPhone is coming this summer. This time, it comes from the Wall Street Journal. The new iPhone would work on Verizon Wireless, as well as Sprint Nextel in the United States and a handful of carriers in other countries including South Korea and Japan. The current iPhone is designed to work on the vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, using a signaling technology called GSM.

It would seem that SSL isn’t as secure as once thought. The problem isn’t the encryption, but the certificate providers. Ars has a breakdown of how governments are working with the CAs to “subvert the entire system to allow them to spy on anyone they wish to keep tabs on.”

Apple has released a major update to OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” — fixes in version 10.6.3 include enhancements to USB, OpenGL, DNS, QuickTime X, AirPort, iCal, Mail, MobileMe, Time Machine, and numerous other areas of the operating system. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to check for the latest Apple software via the Internet, including this update.

Future versions of the Ubuntu Linux operating system will change the way units are measured in the operating system and enforced throughout applications used in the OS. Starting in Ubuntu 10.10, coming this October, SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on. This is similar to the way OS X started measuring data in Snow Leopard. Neowin has a full breakdown of the measuring guidelines.

You will soon be able to jailbreak an iPhone over the air, instead of having it tethered to a computer. Your move Apple.

Need help running Linux as a guest OS in Microsoft Hyper-V? Sounds strange, but Microsoft has released a best practices guide to do just that. Download it off their website. Don’t blame us if you create a black hole in your datacenter though. In related news, Hypervizor.net has a great article on anti-virus exemptions in Hyper-V. Proper configuration of your antivirus can prevent performance issues, but also keep your VMs from being eaten alive by an aggressive scanning engine.

Great overview of VMWare vs Microsoft server virtualization options

0 Comments January 16, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Virtualization

Up until this last year, the virtualization options available from Microsoft lagged woefully behind VMWare. This is led people like me to really ignore Microsoft’s virtual offerings. However, Redmond is quickly playing catchup with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the upgrades to the integrated Hyper-V virtualization options, as well as other platforms such as MED-V, Virtual PC and App-V. This is causing a lot of other administrators to take a second look.

Over at the blog Clustering For Mere Mortals, David Bermingham has a great write up comparing the features, pros and cons of the latest version of Hyper-V vs VMWare vSphere (previously ESX)

How do I recover my virtual machines in the event of a complete site loss? The good news is that virtualization makes this process a whole lot easier since a virtual machine is just a file that can be picked up and moved to another server. While up to this point VMware and Microsoft are pretty similar in their availability features and functionality, but here is where Microsoft really shines. VMware offers Site Recovery Manager which is a fine product, but is limited in support to only SRM-certified array-based replication solutions. Also, the failover and failback process is not trivial and can take the better part of a day to do a complete round trip from the DR site back to the primary data center. It does have some nice features like DR testing, but in my experience with Microsoft’s solution for disaster recovery they have a much better solution when it comes to disaster recovery.

Head on over to his site to get the full rundown.

Why lazy sysadmins and IE 6 make the net unsafe

0 Comments January 16, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Editorial, Featured

The number of businesses still using Internet Explorer 6 is painful to see. Coupled with the fact that all of them are on Windows XP or Windows 2000, it turns from pain into terror, especially when it comes to security.

For a lot of system administrators, the reasons to stay outweigh the reasons to upgrade. Websites that break, plugins that won’t load, old software that isn’t updated anymore. Trust me, I’ve been there. However, a lot of it boils down to lazy and poor practices of system administration.

Yes, you’re lazy and you’re bad at your job. Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. Yes, 2001, most of us don’t even drive cars that old, let alone unleash people on the “information superhighway” with a browser that old. It was designed at a time when security was not the issue it is today. It was designed to work on operating systems like Windows 98 and Windows ME. Would you let people use Windows ME on your network? No! So why are you letting them use a browser that was built for it?! (more…)

Exchange 2010 deployment assistant published

0 Comments January 15, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Windows Server

Looking to upgrade your infrastructure to Exchange 2010, then Microsoft has a tool to help make the process a little smoother. They’ve published an updated version of their Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant, which now supports migration paths from Exchange 2007 as well as help with new 2010 installs. Previously, the assistant would only advise users of Exchange 2003.

The Deployment Assistant allows administrators to create Exchange 2010 deployment instructions that are customized to their environment. The Deployment Assistant asks a small set of questions, and based on your answers, it provides a set of instructions that are designed to get you up and running on Exchange 2010. Instead of reading dozens of topics in the Exchange 2010 library, you simply answer a few questions, and the Deployment Assistant gives you customized content to install Exchange 2010.

The assistant is strictly web based, and does not require you to run anything on your systems. It does require you to have intimate knowledge of your Exchange environment for the results to be very helpful. You can find it over at Technet.

End of life for Windows 2000 is coming sooner then you think

0 Comments January 15, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Windows Server

Just a reminder, Windows 2000 will reach it’s end of life in July. Microsoft has outlined July 13, 2010 as the date Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft. There are already a variety of security threats in the wild where Microsoft has said they will not be releasing updates to protect Windows 2000 because they say it is not feasible. After next July, no support or new updates (except for online self-help) will be available.

In a related bit of news, Microsoft is addressing an issue latest Forefront antimalware client update won’t install on Windows 2000 when the installation is run via Automatic Updates. When this issue occurs, the update uninstalls the previous version of the antimalware client, and then tries to install the new version and fails, leaving the system without the antimalware service. Microsoft’s published workarounds are to decline the updates for Windows 2000 systems (976669 is the FCS slipstream client) and make sure that the previous FCS antimalware updates are approved (971026 and original FCS client), or run the install interactively as a logged on user.

My workaround… stop using a 11 year old operating system and upgrade to at least Windows 2003.

Microsoft and Edmonton focusing on open government

0 Comments January 15, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Databases

Edmonton, Canada has rolled out their open government program using Microsoft’s Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) solution, and is working with them to develop an website that will give citizens and developers easier access to information and suggest ideas that enhance public infrastructure and services. The city’s program uses open source components along with Windows Azure. The use of open standards and application programming interfaces lets local developers and the city’s IT staff easily retrieve data for use in online applications or mashups.

According to Port 25, “Microsoft announced the OGDI initiative in May 2009, with the goal of reducing the cost of publishing government data while simplifying data access by leveraging cloud computing and open standards, which is exactly what has been achieved with Edmonton.”

More information on OGDI can be found here. You can also download the OGDI “starter kit” over at Microsoft Codeplex.

DPM 2010 Release Candidate webcast

0 Comments January 11, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Backup

Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010 is coming soon, and Microsoft is set to release an updated test version even sooner. The beta of 2010 has been out since September and the product team has been taking feedback to make the product even better then the 2007 version.

This Thursday, at 9AM PST, Microsoft will be hosting a 90 minute webcast to cover what has changed in the release candidate and the progress being made towards the final version. Anyone using DPM will want to be sure not to miss this. The team will demonstrate the software that early adopters have been running as well as new Windows client protection capabilities, the new SQL/SharePoint/Exchange protection and recovery features, as well as their enhanced Disaster Recovery scenarios.

There will also be information on the new auto-healing/auto-scaling features (which current DPM administrators like myself will love) — the team also promises a few new surprises that weren’t in the beta.

Microsoft releases MySQL migration assistant

0 Comments January 11, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : Databases, Windows Server

If the pending purchase of Sun (owner of MySQL) by Oracle scares you, and you’re looking to get your data out of MySQL before it gets eaten up by that other evil empire, then Microsoft has a tool for you.

They’ve released a test version of their new migration assistant to help database administrators make the change over. There is a version for both SQL 2005 and for SQL 2008 or SQL Azure. The tool provides an assessment of migration efforts as well as automates schema and data migration from MySQL to SQL Server. The tool will migrate any MySQL 4.1, 5.0 or 5.1 database.

Microsoft makes other migration assistants available for Oracle, Access, and a variety of other database formats, so this new tool is not unprecedented. It is however the first time it has made tools for the open-source MySQL available.

January 'Patch Tuesday' to be very light on security

0 Comments January 7, 2010 : By Michael Stanclift · Category : patch tuesday

This patch Tuesday will be one of the lightest ones for security in recent memory. According to the Security Bulletin Advance Notification for this month, Microsoft will only be releasing one patch for Windows, and none for Internet Explorer or Office. The patch will be issued on Tuesday, January 12, and will be followed on January 13 by a 90 minute webcast at 11:00 AM Pacific. In addition to the one patch for Windows, Microsoft will also release an updated version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

The patch is considered critical for Windows 2000 users, and low for all other versions, and relates to a remote code execution venerability. Effected operating system versions include every currently supported edition both on the client and server side:

Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 [Critical]
Windows XP Service Pack 2 & Service Pack 3
Windows XP x64 Edition Service Pack 2
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (32-bit, 64-bit & Itanium)
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 & Service Pack 2 (32-bit & 64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (32-bit, 64-bit & Itanium – except Server Core installs)
Windows 7 (32-bit & 64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit & Itanium – except Server Core installs)

Microsoft will still be releasing one or more non-security but high-priority update through Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services, but has not yet disclosed details.

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