Microsoft published a new guide about the security settings in Windows Server 2008. This Technet article gives an overview and the guide itself can be downloaded here. What makes this guide so useful is not only the 214 page security guide (plus a 76 page appendix about security related Group Policy settings). Most interesting are the Excel files that come with the guide.

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Aaron has a nice post about the command line interface of Server Manager in Windows Server 2008. I have been blogging about the graphical interface of Server Manager a while back. I somehow forgot to mention that Server Manager has a command line version. So I am taking this chance to make up for my omission, although the main intent of this post is to express my view about the value of these new command line capabilities of Vista and Server 2008 in general.

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So so, Windows Server 2008 is being launched today. I wonder, what exactly could be meant by this? I mean, I have been working with Server 2008 RTM already for some days now and I downloaded it from an official Microsoft website. Note that I don’t belong to those privileged Microsoft customers who have access to their products before the common people. So again, what is Microsoft launching today?

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Josh from the InfiniteAdmin blog has an interesting post about solid state disk (SSD) encryption. He raised doubts that drive encryption tools such as TrueCrypt are secure enough if applied to SSDs. Like memory sticks SSDs are flash drives that usually work with NAND technology. Therefore, these concerns also apply to USB sticks.

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Update: I posted a small guide of how to solve problems with Service Sack 1 for Windows Vista

Vista SP1 is officially only available for enterprise customers, but the reports about problems caused by this service pack are piling up. This post contains a list of all SP1 issues I am aware of.

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Paul Thurrott published a new review about Vista SP1. I covered many of the things he said in several posts here on 4sysops. But his article gives a good overview about the changes in Vista SP1. Actually, it is more of an assessment where Vista stands today. It might be of help for those who are hesitant to deploy Vista or not.

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Windows XP SP3 RC2 is now available as a public download via Windows Update. Even though I know that this SP isn’t really exciting I was curious enough to install it today. As before one has to run a little exe which changes some registry keys. The difference this time was that SP showed up in Windows Update shortly afterwards. Last time, I had to wait a day or so. Download was pretty fast, too. Perhaps that is a sign that nobody is really interested in it?

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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDnet ran a comprehensive performance test comparing Windows Vista SP1 with Windows XP SP2. He only tested file copy related tasks, though. Now, guess which OS is faster? Good guess! Anyway, it is interesting to see the exact difference because it allows you to estimate in what way a move to Vista might affect performance. However, in one sense all these performance tests are pointless.

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At first, I thought, it is some kind of joke. But then I read it on several sites and even on a Microsoft blog. Windows Server 2008 SP1 is released. Yeah right, it was released together with Windows Server 2008 RTM. The good thing is we don’t have to wait so long for this SP as we waited for Vista SP1. The bad thing is I am deeply confused as to what is going on at Microsoft at the moment.

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