Windows Server Security 2008 Support Services

This post provides Windows Server 2008 Security Guide. This guide provides instructions and recommendations to help strengthen the security of computers running Windows Server® 2008 that are members of an Active Directory® domain.

In addition to the guidance that the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide prescribes, this Solution Accelerator provides tools, step-by-step procedures, recommendations, and processes that significantly streamline the deployment process. This guide not only provides you with effective security setting guidance. It also provides you with a reproducible method that you can use to apply the guidance to both test and production environments.

The key tool that this Solution Accelerator provides for you is the GPOAccelerator. The tool enables you to run a script that automatically creates all the Group Policy objects (GPOs) you need to apply this security guidance. The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide Settings workbook that accompanies this guide provides another resource that you can use to compare and evaluate the Group Policy settings.

Microsoft engineering teams, consultants, support engineers, partners, and customers have reviewed and approved this prescriptive guidance to make it:
• Proven. Based on field experience.
• Authoritative. Offers the best advice available.
• Accurate. Technically validated and tested.
• Actionable. Provides the steps to success.
• Relevant. Addresses real-world security concerns.

Microsoft has published security guides for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server. This guide references significant security enhancements in Windows Server 2008. The guide was developed and tested with computers running Windows Server 2008 joined to a domain that uses Active Directory® Domain Services (AD°DS).

Exchange Server Support for Backups and Single Item Recovery

Naturally after understanding the features included in Exchange 2010, a logical follow up question is "Do I still need backups for single item recovery?" The answer depends on your backup requirements and your capacity planning.

Today many customers minimize the deleted item retention window, yet they maintain long backup retention time periods (from 14 days to several months to years).

Let's consider a customer that currently maintains backups for 90 days and only retains deleted items within Exchange for 5 days. This customer is performing backup restores on a weekly basis to recover deleted items for end users. If the customer moved to Exchange 2010 they could move that process into Exchange by simply increasing their mailboxes capacity for dumpster: This post Contain the exchange server support tips to make backups and single Item Recovery.

• Users send/receive 100 messages per work day and have an average message size of 50KB
• Single Item Recovery is enabled and the deleted retention window is configured to be 90 days
• 10% of items are edited
• Mailbox capacity calculations

o 5 work days * 100 emails = 500 emails / week
o For Purges:
+ 500 emails / week * 13 weeks = 6500 emails / retention period
+ 6500 emails * 50KB ? 318MB
o For Versions:
+ 500 emails / week * 13 weeks = 6500 emails / retention period
+ 6500 emails * .1 = 650 emails
+ 650 emails * 50KB ? 32MB
o Total Space Required per mailbox: 350MB

By increasing each mailbox's capacity by a minimum of 350MB, backups are no longer needed for single item recovery. Single item recovery can be maintained and performed within Exchange.

But let's not stop there. What if the requirement is that items must be recoverable for 1 year? Assuming the same assumptions used in the previous example with the exception that deleted item retention is now configured for 365 days, each mailbox needs an additional minimum 1.4GB of space.

Ultimately, if the storage subsystem is planned and designed appropriately and mailbox resiliency features are leveraged, traditional point-in-time backups can be relegated to a disaster recovery mechanism, if they are even needed at all.