Kirkian Computing

Month: June 2009

  • Microsoft exams

    Last August, I did a beta exam for Microsoft. I didn’t pay for it, but I didn’t get a score either; the idea was just to test out their new software for doing simulations in the exam (rather than multiple choice questions). As a “thank you”, Microsoft then sent me three vouchers, each one corresponding to a free exam. These expire at the end of June, so I’ve finally had to stop procrastinating and start studying.

    Today I did two exams: 70-236 (MCTS: Configuring Exchange Server 2007) and 70-431 (MCTS: SQL Server 2005 – Implementation and Maintenance). According to the booking website, the Exchange exam lasts 4½ hours, and the SQL exam lasts 4 hours, so this looked like quite a long day! Fortunately, I didn’t need all the time that was allocated, so I ended both exams early, and I was at the test centre for about 3 hours altogether.

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  • Exchange 2007 – firewall problems on Windows 2008

    In Windows 2003, the local firewall was turned off by default. You could enable it, but you had to be careful about defining all your exceptions; unlike a PC running Windows XP, you presumably want people to be able to connect to your server! Finding a list of all the relevant ports/protocols could be difficult, and Microsoft sometimes advised people not to enable the firewall at all. SP1 introduced the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW), which helps you to configure the firewall, but you have to specifically install this as an extra component.

    In Windows 2008, this changed: the firewall is turned on by default, and the SCW is installed automatically. You can still turn the firewall off, but that’s not ideal from a security point of view: it’s better to configure it so that only certain traffic can get through.

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