Back in April I published a post about the end of support for Windows XP called The Countdown Begins: Support for Windows XP Ends on April 8, 2014. Since then, many of the customers I have talked to have moved, or are in the process of moving, their organizations from Windows XP to modern operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows 8.
There is a sense of urgency because after April 8, Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) customers will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates. This means that any new vulnerabilities discovered in Windows XP after its “end of life” will not be addressed by new security updates from Microsoft. Still, I have talked to some customers who, for one reason or another, will not have completely migrated from Windows XP before April 8. I have even talked to some customers that say they won’t migrate from Windows XP until the hardware it’s running on fails.
What is the risk of continuing to run Windows XP after its end of support date? One risk is that attackers will have the advantage over defenders who choose to run Windows XP because attackers will likely have more information about vulnerabilities in Windows XP than defenders. Let me explain why this will be the case. Read more.
UPDATES: Based on strong feedback from the community, I've made the following updates to this article ...
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There’s been lots of buzz on the enterprise hypervisor front over the past month … In August, Microsoft announced the RTM version of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2, the latest major releases of the Windows Server and System Center families. In addition, at VMworld this year, VMware announced the latest edition of their vSphere hypervisor platform: VMware vSphere 5.5.
IT Pros have been very interested in learning about the pros and cons presented by each offering – particularly because the total cost of Windows Server 2012 R2 + System Center 2012 R2 can be quite attractive in comparison to VMware’s offerings.
With so many features called by differing names in each virtualization platform, comparing Microsoft and VMware solutions can sometimes seem a bit like comparing apples and oranges But, I’ll try to boil things down to a real-world perspective based on my experience implementing both solutions in the field throughout my career. In this article, I’ll provide a summarized comparison of the virtualization and Private Cloud feature sets provided by each of these latest releases using the currently available public information from both Microsoft and VMware as of this article’s publication date ...
Earlier today, my friend and colleague, Harold Wong, did a great job outlining the requirements for installing the various editions of Windows 8 along with noting the additional requirements for key product features.
Be sure to check out Harold’s BLOG ARTICLE for the details.
Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise are both designed for business network environments. However, at many of my events, a common question among IT Pros relates to the specific differences between Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise. Below, I’ve included a chart that summarizes the key differences between the Professional and Enterprise editions for Windows 8.