Recent Blog Posts - Page 24 of 28

DST 2007

Are you still dealing with Daylight Savings Time issues? Microsoft yesterday released more information via their website.

According to information released, the DST patch is not marked as a critical update. Since the US government has changed DST, and all of our computers need to be DST compliant, it would seem to me that it is indeed a critical update. The only reason I can see for Microsoft not marking this as critical is to exclude the many, many Windows 2000 Professional and Server systems that are still in use around the world.

Here is a link to a document that states which systems and applications there are patches for.

Also, I've cached a local copy of Microsoft's page that includes links to all of the patches that are available, here.

I hope this helps.

TCEA 2007

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the TCEA conference for a couple of days. I enjoyed seeing what new solutions vendors presented, and networking with many of my customers.

I hope you enjoyed it as well, if you got the chance to go.

One of the neatest things that I saw there was a solution from EqualLogic. They can help you configure a SAN that fits your network perfectly, and supports server virtualization, like VMWare.

I also found a company that sells hardware very much the way Corbey Company used to. All big name products, like Intel motherboards, Seagate drives and Kingston RAM. Furthermore, they offer a five-year warranty by default on their desktop systems. They are also Texas CISV certified and an Intel Premiere Channel Partner. Their website can be found here: ByteSpeed.com.

SPF

In case any of you are dealing with SPF on your Exchange system, here are a few tips.

First, ensure that you are modifying the correct external DNS. I recently was attempting to configure an SPF record for a customer, and we were modifying what we thought was her external DNS, but it wasn't (anymore). Use nslookup or dig (from a Unix machine) from outside the network to verify that you are modifying the correct DNS.

Second, we found a simple SPF record that works. Here it is:
v=spf1 IP4:type.your.ip.address ~all

Of course, you'll have to put in the IP address of the machine your email originates from, but this seems to be the simplest SPF record you can use.

Third, note that your ISP will probably have to enable reverse DNS for you as well.

If you follow these tips, or have some to share, drop me a line. My info is on the Contact page. Thanks!

SofTouch Systems Newsletter.