Running Windows 7 RC, Virtual Machine and Penetration Testing tool, BackTrack 4

Today, I finally got hold of Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate for my Netbook HP Pavilion dv2. The plan was to wipe off the 32-bit Beta Release I had orginally installed 2 weeks ago. It took me 30mins to install the new 64-bit RC Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate from start to finish. That is darn impressive!

Running Virtual Machines on Windows 7

Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64 does not work on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation. I tried running the 32bit to no avail either. So I tried to use Virtual PC. This worked well until I noticed that I couldn’t mount ISO images to virtual machines on VPC. I was not impressed! I was then forced to install a VMware Virtual Server. I need virtual machine on this Netbook so that I can use BackTrack. BackTrack is a Debian based Linux Distro, which is used for Penetration Testing. Thi falls nicely in target of breathing and living security.
Windows 7 lasting impression

I’m definitely sold on Windows 7. I was sold from the Beta release, which wasn’t perfect but still let a lasting impression on me and I couldn’t wait for this RC edition. Moreoever, I needed the RC edition because the beta release only came in 32bit flavour and that lead to my machine constantly heating up. The x64 edition, however, feels like a final product. Very stable and my processor is not being over-worked which means less heat. By the time I have this fully configured with BackTrack, I should have a formidable machine ready for the great battles that lie ahead.
Current Project… ISA 2006
I’ve closed off a Mitel 3300 integration with Office Communications Server R2 I had been working on. So I spent the better past of last week working on migration of ISA 2004 to ISA 2006 for a client in Dartmouth, NS. Everything went to plan except creating a rule for OWA. The problem is that my client expects everything to work using the same rules they used in ISA 2004. However, things have actually changed with ISA 2006. For example, cerficates are now very important in 2006 for web listeners using port 443 (SSL). With 2004, you can use any certicates you have, self-signed or imported, and you’d be ok deploying your SSL rules. Things are very different in 2006. I will write more about this in next few updates.

EnergizeIT event – Software plus Services and Windows 7

Yesterday at around 1600hrs, I met up with Rick Claus from Microsoft for a coffee in Downtown Halifax. He was in town for an event as part of roadshow for Windows 7 called EnergizeIT with Pierre Roman and Christian Beauclair. We talked about new trends, projects that I’m working on and Windows 7. He told me of the EnergizeIT event they have going on the same evening and I asked if I could attend uninvited and Rick gave me the green light. So here goes…

The Event…

The main focus of the event itself revolves around Windows 7 and Software plus Services. As you no doubt already know, Windows 7 is the next version of Microsoft’s Operating System for personal computers. Microsoft has struggled to convince users to migrate from Windows XP to Windows Vista due to known and well publicized problems around over-utilization of resources. Microsoft is hoping that Windows 7 will be greated with more optimism. Features such as BitlLocker Drive Encryption ensures that security is greatly enhanced for removable drives with Windows 7.
Software plus Services was the other major talking point. This is basically the movement of Datacentre into the cloud. Services such as Exchange, Sharepoint, CRM and even Active Directories can be more into the cloud while the clients still hold client apps on their machines but use RPC to connect to these service. This ensures that users can keep working even if their Internet link is down. This is a common problem with Software as a Service (SaaS) because users depend on the Internet to do their work. Software plus Services at least ensures that work can still be done if Internet outage is experience.

Need a new Laptop with a different OS


Today, I made up my mind to get myself a new Laptop. I will drop in at Best Buy to pick one of for around $500. I know it will come with Windows Vista but by the time I have it fully setup, I expect that Operating System to have turned into Ubunto 8.10. I was considering Fedora 10 but I actually refer Ubunto’s Graphical User Interface (GUI). Fedora 10 looks more like a MacOS from the screenshoots I’ve checked out. I worked with Fedora 7 and was great from functionality perspective but Ubunto has a friendlier feel to the GUI and doesn’t remind me of a MacOS.

However, I may actually just get the computer and install Windows 7 as the host OS and run a variant of Linux in a virtual mode. But I need to find out the facts about Windows 7 before I can use it as my main OS at home. I will not stand for anything like Windows Vista. NO WAY JOSE!

The reason why I’m seriously considering Linux is that I actually need to start living and breathing security especially now that I plan on becoming a fully focused on becoming Security subject matter expert. Using Linux as my primary computer will be give me good head start. Not because it is inherently secure out of the box because that’s a misconception but because of all the free security tools that comes with the distro. Furthermore, I need to learn more CLI unix/linux command. I am, however, aware of losing some of the applications in Windows that I currently take for granted i.e. Communicator 2007 for VoIP and Zune software for my music sync. Either way, it is time to go Open Source at home!

Windows 7 is Here!

WOW! We now have Windows 7 even though I have never installed the last one (yeah, that one called ‘Vista’) for personal use. I did, however, provide support for it whenever need be. I chose not to use it on my PC or any of  my notebooks because I didn’t see any gain in doing so. It was bloated, slower than XP and required vast resources to run acceptablely. This is why I am somewhat excited to see what Windows 7 is all about. I’ve only seen screenshots so far but I will get a Beta copy installed for my personal use pretty soon. I’m darn sure it will thrive where Vista has failed!

For more info on Windows 7, you can visit Paul Thurrot’s blog here.

Hyper-V is in town!

Finally, Hyper-V version of Windows Server 2008 is here. While Microsoft is not new to the Server Virtualization space, they only competed for very small share of the market with the release Virtual Server 2005. That product competed directly with VMWare GSX Virtual Server which is mainly used in test environment because it virtualizes servers on top of an existing host Operating System. Therefore, the virtual machine could only have access to resources shared out by the host OS but not the the raw kernel of the hardware.

VMWare ESX on the other hand gives direct access to hardware resources to each instance of virtualized machnice. This is exactly what Hyper-V is now going to be offering or at least some of those features.

What is Server Virtualization
Before I go into overdrive on the subject, let’s define what Server Virtualization really means – This technology allows workload to be distributed to across different virtual machines while limiting the hardware used in the process. It enhances full utilization of hardware resources by running several independent operating systems on one physical box.

So, what exactly is this Hyper-V?

“Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.”

- http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx

From that excerpt from Microsoft’s definition
, you can see that Hyper-V is a core component of Windows 2008 architecture and part of the move toward 64bit computing.

Capabilities

New and Improved Architecture – 64-bit archetecture to provide better performance and security

Broad Support for multiple – Supports Windows, Linux, BSD and others
Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP) Support – Support for up to four multi-processors

New Hardware Sharing Architecture –
This is the main benefit of Hyper-V. It provide low level access to the utilization of core resources, such as disk, processors, memory space, networking and video card.

Quick Migration – Minimize downtime by migrating images of Virtual Machines instead of the old fashioned way of reinstallation.

Snapshot – Hyper-V enables you to take snapshot of a running virtual machine and revert to it just like system restore in XP. This again helps with business continuity and disaster recovery process

Consolidation and Scalability – This enables IT departments to drastically consolidate servers without losing productivity and scaling out as needed. This is even better when blade technology is deployed in the data center.

Conclusion
I’m very excited about this product. While VMWare ESX still stands out from functionality perspective, Hyper-V is a solid start and provides a decent alternative for those IT departments in SMB waiting to advantage of virtualization in their data center.

Windows Server 2008 core functions

Earlier in this week, I published my first impression of Windows Server 2008 codenamed Longhorn.

In this entry I will go further to talk about what this new server OS has to offer.

Here are seven core scenario for Windows Server 2008 (TechNet July 2007)

  1. Centralized application access
  2. Security and policy enforcement
  3. Web and applications platform
  4. Server management
  5. High availability
  6. Branch office
  7. Server virtualization

All these core scenarios are very significant improvement from Windows Server 2003. Let’s look at how things have improved by analyzing each scenario.

  1. Centralized application access
    This focuses on the way business applications are delivered to users on the network. It is built on the well known Terminal Services. However, it has been greatly improved by introducing two modes; Terminal Service Gateway (TSG) and Terminal Services Remote Application (TS RemoteApp) technology.

    TSG enables users outside the LAN to connect to applications through firewall without establishing VPN connection with the LAN. This is similar to RPC over HTTP used in Outlook. To use this facility, Remote Desktop Client on Windows XP clients need to be upgraded and can be downloaded for free from Microsoft. This has already been built into Vista.

    TSG RemoteApp technology makes it possible for for network users to run a remote application as though it is on their local machine. This eliminates the need for users to log on to Terminal Server and making the remote application as seamless as possible.

    Further development include Terminal Services Web Access which gives users the ability to run a remote based application via the web. A page is setup to publish applications to authorized users. This can be integrated into SharePoint server site.

  2. Security and policy enforcement
    Network Access Protection (NAP) has now been included in Windows Server 2008. This is a policy based access control system that controls access to the network by allowing only complaint and authorized devices. This enhances security a great deal throughout the network and integrates well into DHCP, VPN, IPsec and 802.1X.

    Network administrator are advised to put careful consideration into design of this technology before implementation it because it could lead to extensive outage otherwise.

  3. Web and application platform
    Windows Server 2008 comes with new version of IIS, ISS 7. This is coupled with a new Management Console MMC. IIS 7 core now has over 40 separate modules that can be added or removed to enhance security and direct reduce surface attacks.

To be continued…