howdy - i am harry brelsford (ceo, smb nation at
www.smbnation.com) and I am the author of the infamous SBS 2003
purple book. I am posting up a few pages per day until the SBS
2008 product ships - so enjoy in good health.
Today we start our journey to look at the famous To Do List in
SBS 2003 and review the Security Best Practices link.
cheers...harrybbbbb
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To Do List:
In Order!
So
with the finer points of Server Management console behind us,
it’s time to get down tonight! Let’s start by
planning the SBS 2003 Methodology ballad. Few things in the
deployment of SBS exemplify the notion that SBS is a ready-made
network in a box (or SMB consulting practice in a box for us
consultants) than the existence and brilliance of the To Do List.
We’ll spend tons of time walking through the To Do List
here.
But
back to the brilliance part. The To Do List has been engineered
to be your deployment approach for all of the SBS servers
you’ll ever install. You start at the top and work your way
to the bottom. This structured approach, whether you install one
or 1000 SBS server machines, should be honored. Don’t be
like a Boeing IT employee here in Seattle who likes to say, while
installing SBS 2003 at her church over a weekend, “I
don’t use the To Do List or the Server Management console
at Boeing, so we’re not going to use it here on this holy
site!” Such pompous thinking is truly short-sighted in
successfully deploying SBS 2003 and can result in an
unsatisfactory outcome. But BY FOLLOWING THE TO DO LIST, you can
be assured of a positive outcome each and every time when you set
up SBS 2003. You heard this breaking news here first!
So
that said, let’s start at the top and work down the To Do
List. You’ll start by noticing the To Do List is divided
into Network Tasks and Management Tasks. That’s because the
SBS development team, in its wisdom, determined that folks wanted
to see it play out that way with task sets divided between
network and management.
BEST
PRACTICE: Note that you and I will indeed complete the To Do List
in order as part of the SPRINGERS methodology. You would expect
this. However, I don’t have to walk through the entire To
Do List in this chapter; instead, I’ll take you through the
first seven links. I leave the Configure Fax, Configure
Monitoring, and Configure Backup links to be completed in order
in later chapters.
Remember the mantra, mates: Always
complete the To Do List in order!
Network Tasks
There are five items under Network Tasks on the To Do
List that we’ll walk through right now.
View Security Best Practices
Talk
about a future book! You could clearly write a thick tome on
security on small business networks, but I’ll leave that
for another day. Rather, I point you to this link as a
“primer” on top-of-mind security best practices to
consider as you move forth in deploying your SBS network. In
fact, it’d be good to visit this link with each SBS server
you deploy so that you don’t overlook a security best
practice. When you select View Security Best Practices,
you’ll read details on the following 16 topics:
1. Protecting
your network from the Internet by using a firewall
2.
Configuring password policies
3.
Configuring secure remote access to the network
4. Renaming
the Administrator account
5.
Implementing an antivirus solution
6. Managing
backups
7. Updating
your software
8. Running
security tools
9. Granting
access permissions
10. Educating
users
11. Not
using your Windows Small Business Server as a workstation
12.
Physically securing the server
13. Limiting
user disk space
14. Keeping
up-to-date on security information
15. Auditing
failed logon events and account lockouts
16. Using
monitoring tools
BEST
PRACTICE: Regarding item #13 above, you would want to know that
SBS 2003 implements a disk quota for users in the Add User
Wizard. Specifically, for a user the disk space is limited to
1024 MB and a warning is sent at 900 MB. This can be manually
modified later.
When you complete
reading this list, please close the Small Business Server Help
and Information screen that is open and return to the To Do List.
Check
Visit www.microsoft.com/technet for the
latest updates for any Microsoft product.
the Done box next to View Security Best
Practices (you check off each To Do List item as its completed,
which is a nice touch!).
