MS-Next

“These items haven’t garnered the same kind of press attention, hype and word-of-mouth as the others, but they’re nonetheless important — maybe very important — to your network.”

10. The Print Management Console (PMC). This was originally released with Windows Server 2003 R2. But unlike the R2 release, it’s a native function in Windows 2008, and available to everyone. PMC is a snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), which lets an admin see every printer in an entire organization, from one console. In addition, you can use Group Policy to map printers to specific user groups, so that the Accounting folks won’t be hogging printers that Engineering needs.

9. Auditpol. This is a verbose logging tool that allows you to configure, create, back up and restore audit policies on any computer in your organization. In these days of regulatory compliance, auditing is more important than ever, and Auditpol may eliminate the need for a third-party auditing program. It includes a greatly expanded list of auditing counters from the simple tools available in Windows 2003, and hundreds of different categories that let you “create a paper trail of what’s going on inside your OS,” Ralston says.

8. Windows Remote Shell (WinRS). To connect to a command prompt on a remote computer in Windows 2003, an admin needed to use Terminal Services. TS worked well but wasn’t scalable, requiring a connection to a console on each remote computer. WinRS makes secure connections to as many remote computers as necessary, all from a single console. That could be a significant time-saver for admins.

7. Event forwarding. This benefit is available to organizations that run Vista on their desktops. Event forwarding aggregates and forwards logs of chosen computers back to a central console, making management much more efficient. Say you’re an admin and you start getting calls from users who are seeing the dreaded “Event 51″ pop up on their screens, indicating a logon problem. Instead of employing sneakernet technology — running from machine to machine to comb through security events or other problems — you simply “subscribe” Vista computers through your console, and they send whatever information you ask for right to your door.

6. Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS). In Windows 2003, this was known as Windows Rights Management Services. It was available in Windows 2003, but only as an add-on product for purchase. It’s built into Windows 2008, and includes some upgrades. AD RMS assists in the creation of rights-protected files, licensing rights-protected information, and checking to make sure that only authorized users have access to rights-protected data. Some of the enhancements for Windows 2008 include the ability to administer AD RMS through the MMC, and delegate AD RMS tasks through “administrative roles.”

5. New password policies. In Active Directory (AD), the domain is a security boundary. In the forerunner to Windows 2008, Windows Server 2003, that boundary led to the restriction of one password policy per domain. That is a limiting requirement, one that’s been done away with in Windows 2008. Now you don’t have to create new domains to have a new password policy; just set password policies for specific groups or users. If your C-level execs need more stringent policies than your administrative assistants, it’s easy to do in Windows 2008.

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