Danger, USB!

USB has given us fast, easy access to devices and files – but it’s also a security nightmare. How can you lock it down for clients?

Replicating Active Directory

This is one of the easiest systems to add redundancy to. Active Directory contains all the information about your customer’s users and machines. If this fails, and you have no backup, they have a problem.

Getting a SAN certificate for Exchange 2007

Exchange 2007 uses SAN certificates, which allow you to mix several different server names in a single certificate. Generating a certificate can be a problem, as the PowerShell command needed to generate the certificate signing request can be long, and unwieldy – and it’s easy enough to make a mistake when typing in part of a long command.

Managing Customer Relationships with CRM Software

Customer relationships are more important than ever in this business climate, but while even small companies save computerised their order books, far fewer are using the tools available to help manage what they know about their customers.

Application control with Windows Group Policy Preferences

Get total application control with Windows Group Policy Preferences.

Managing and migrating firewalls

Firewalls can provide you with a host of information about what’s going on inside and outside your customer’s network. But that information isn’t necessarily easy to manage and analyse.

Lock down shared PCs with Windows SteadyState

When you’re responsible for the smooth running of computers in a small office, one problem you’ll quickly encounter is that of people making changes that cause problems.

Virtualising SBS in the SME: choosing a hypervisor and planning a virtual infrastructure

Virtualisation is a powerful tool. You can use it to consolidate multiple applications on a single piece of hardware, or use several different operating systems at the same time. Often seen solely as the province of the enterprise data centre or the development lab, virtualisation is rapidly becoming a powerful tool for the SME as well, providing new routes to disaster recovery, and helping future-proof legacy applications.

Building clusters with Windows Server 2008

Microsoft has upgraded the Cluster Service in enhanced-capability editions of Windows Server 2008 and the whole process of creating and managing clusters has been made much simpler.

Controlling anti-social networking – a guide to blocking employees access to Facebook, MySpace and more.

Right now, your customers’ employees are looking at Facebook and surfing MySpace. If that doesn’t worry their employers, it should.

Social networking has only gained popularity in the last three or four years, but it is generating the same concerns that instant messaging did at the start of the decade.