Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been extremely busy on a really great project. I'll be posting at length on that in the near future. For this post, I just wanted to point you to an article over on the Exchange team's blog about processor an memory considerations for Exchange 2007. I'm currently implementing Beta2 for the project mentioned above so this is very timely information. With all the talk of Vista and Office, Exchange is somewhat under the radar right now but this is a very significant release.
From the Windows Server Division Weblog, the August CTP of Longhorn is available on MSDN. They say the build doesn't include new features over Beta 2 but does include a lot of the core OS fixes, performance, and stability improvements coming from Vista development.
Just logged in to MSDN and saw that Vista has been posted for download. RC1 build 5600 is available for x86 in English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and Arabic. There is an x64 English build as well. Enjoy and please provide feedback if you run into any issues.
Microsoft and Cisco committed to this back in 2004 I believe. NAP and NAC are technologies for ensuring that systems comply with security policies before allowing them to connect to a network. This is one of those areas where integration of the network infrastructure and workstation operating system is critical for a complete solution. The interop architecture was announced here and here. A whitepaper with some of the details can be found here. I believe this technology is going provide a major boost in security when properly implemented. The laptop infected at home and brought to work is one of the most common attck scenarios we come across. NAP and NAC can effectively introduce a brand new security boundary, adding another layer of defense to your network. This is part of the overall trend of applying security at multiple layers, particularly inside the corporate firewall. When you consider host anti-virus/malware, host firewall, NAP/NAC, VLAN/IPSec isolation, etc. you can acheive a very secure environment with a lot of dynamic update capability. I'm currently working on a project for a government agency where we are designing this type of architecture. Today's news will certainly help us acheive those goals.