Mart Muller's Weblog

Having our first Windows based servers in production on Amazon EC2, we are glad to hear that we can also launch them in the EU zone now!

From the AWS newsletter:

“Starting today, you can now launch Amazon EC2 running Windows or SQL Server instances in the the EU Region, enabling you to locate your Windows computing resources close to your European customers/partners, as well as to other AWS computing services (e.g. Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront). Pay-as-you-go pricing for Amazon EC2 running Windows Server in the EU Region begins at $0.135 per compute hour.”

From MS KB:

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) enables web single sign-on, federated identity and access management by securely sharing digital identity and entitlement rights across security and enterprise boundaries. The ADFS functionality becomes available in Windows Server 2003 R2.
SharePoint and ADFS integration is dependent on the ADFS ability to seamlessly convert the ADFS authentication token to a Windows authentication token on the server. SharePoint server side functionality is mostly compatible with ADFS authentication. Limitations on the supported features for SharePoint and ADFS integration are driven by client side incompatibilities.

ADFS is a web-based authentication mechanism which relies on a system of client-side redirects in order to authenticate the end-user. This works well when the client is a Web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, not all client programs support redirects.

When the user is authenticated, client-side redirects are used to obtain an ADFS authentication token, which is saved in a session cookie to authenticate subsequent requests using the same client program. Since session cookies are not shared between programs running in separate processes, Microsoft Office or other programs cannot access the cookie issued for a browser. This requires re-authenticating the user, for which the necessary redirects are not guaranteed to work in non-browser programs. Even if initial authentication succeeds, the resultant authentication cookie has an associated timeout. Thus periodic re-authentication is required, which is not guaranteed to work for all programs.

Several significant ADFS and SharePoint integration problems come from attempting to use client programs that do not work with redirects. For example, the use of SharePoint with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, or the Windows shell commands are either outright broken or have a sub-par experience.

The remainder of this article addresses what is supported and not supported, and how to best mitigate end-user problems that result from the known issues in this configuration.

• The KB article
• Article by SharePoint Team Blog
• Reaction by Patrick Tisseghem
• Overview of ADFS in Windows 2003 R2

Via Bink:

Windows Vista
Rumors are abound that the RTM date has officially been set for July 25th, 2006. Microsoft is pushing hard for this date to prepare OEM's for the Christmas season ramp-up. With all of the new sku's being released, OEM's and Microsoft have been in talks to prepare them for the madness that will follow the release. A Beta 2 of Vista is expected to be in testers hands on December 16th, 2005.

Office 12
Office 12 Beta 1 will be available on MSDN Subscriber downloads within the next few weeks. In a marketing ploy, Microsoft decided to wait in order to build interest up before releasing it to developers.

AntiSpyware Beta 2
With rumors of a merge between Windows OneCare and AntiSpyware, The Hotfix has learned that they will indeed be a Beta 2 of AntiSpyware being released. Although an exact date is not yet know, late November 2005 has been a date that has been heard over and over

There is an update available for web folders on the Microsoft site. So if you use Sharepoint and its webfolders, this might be usefull.

Overview

List of issues that the update fixes

This update fixes the following issues that were not previously documented in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

The names of folders or files are missing characters after you use Web folders to connect to a WebDAV server and move or copy the folders or files to your client computer

You use a network place shortcut to connect to a shared folder on a server that supports WebDAV. The network place shortcut to the shared folder uses a URL that is similar to the following:

You move or copy a folder or file in the shared folder from the server to your client computer. When you view the folder or file on your client computer, the name of the folder of file is missing the first three characters. For example, if the name of the folder on the server is Folder1, the name of the folder after you copy the subfolder to your client computer is Der1.

You receive error messages when you use Web folders to connect to a WebDAV server and try to open a folder or file in a shared folder

You use a network place shortcut to connect to a shared folder on a server that supports WebDAV. The network place shortcut to the shared folder uses a URL that is similar to the following:

You experience the following symptoms when you try to open a folder or file in the shared folder:

•	When you try to open a folder in the shared folder, you receive an error message that is similar to the following: Documents in this folder are not available. The folder may have been moved or deleted, or network problems may be preventing a connection to the server This problem occurs if the name of the subfolder contains one or more high ASCII characters.
•	When you try to open an Office document in the shared folder, the Office program stops responding (hangs). Additionally, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following: The document name or path is not valid. This problem occurs if the name of the document contains one or more high ASCII characters.

Overview
Download

This solution provides guidance that can be used to plan, build, deploy, and operate collaboration services in the medium IT environment. It provides guidance on deploying Windows® SharePoint™ Services-based intranet and extranet Web sites and publishing the Web sites to the Internet. This enables users to remotely access these Web sites over the Internet using a Web browser.