Thanksgiving Holiday Schedule
MCS offices will be closed Thursday November 26th and Friday the 27th for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have technicians on call for any client with an active RightTrack agreement who needs emergency service.
MCS offices will be closed Thursday November 26th and Friday the 27th for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have technicians on call for any client with an active RightTrack agreement who needs emergency service.
Now that Windows 10 is out in the world, should your organization pull the trigger on an upgrade? We recommend not yet. Windows 10 really is a great OS but it is still new and we are seeing issues with some in place upgrades. Microsoft is giving users a whole year to upgrade and given that Windows 10 does not offer any compelling “must have” features over Windows 7, the safe bet for now will be to stick with the good old workhorse that is Windows 7. Although it is looking like Windows 10 will eventually take over as the new standard in Windows computing, that shift will take some time in the business realm.
Windows 10 presents, along with new features, new problems for corporate environments. Group Policy, a tool used to centrally managed options of client PCs, only just last month issued support for new Windows 10 features. Sysadmins need time to get fully familiar with how to appropriately administer this new OS while taking into consideration different security, privacy, and reliability settings. MCS recommends that users wanting to upgrade wait at least until Q1 2016 to make the switch.
What does “End of Life” mean for an OS? Well, as is pertains to Windows Server 2003 it mainly means that Microsoft will no longer push out security updates. Right now, if a new exploit in Windows Server 2003 becomes known, the engineers at Microsoft will create a patch and release it through Windows Update. After July 14th 2015, there will be no more security updates released to all Windows 2003 servers.
In reality though Server 2003 has been an old OS with limited support for several years. The only updates released now are critical security patches and most 3rd party software available now recommends at least Server 2008 R2 or newer.
It is critically important that all of our customers migrate to a supported Server OS very soon. Our engineers have been very busy with migrations the last several months but there is still time to act to ensure your organization is secure, reliable, and complaint.
If you would like to request service to migrate your IT environment, let us know.
We have partnered with the backup software maker, Veeam, to offer cloud disaster recovery services powered by Veeam. This partnership allows MCS to utilize Veeam’s most advanced software and features to backup our customer’s data. These features include, near real time VM replication, WAN Acceleration, virtual labs, point in time recovery, and more.
Of all of the backup software we evaluated, Veeam was a clear winner both in performance and features. What this means for our customers is that they can have peace of mind knowing that their data is safe and secure at our data center. We know a backup is only good when you can actually restore from it in a timely manner. Veeam allows us to bring up your operations at our business continuity center within minutes of an outage.
On Tuesday, November 18, 2014, Microsoft released an out-of-band security update (MS14-068) to address a critical vulnerability in Windows. The update deals with elevation of privileges and affects Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1, as well as Windows Technical Preview and Windows Server Technical Preview.
MCS is currently patching our data center infrastructure and also helping our customers with an active RightTrack service agreement automatically. We strongly encourage customers to apply this update as soon as possible if they do not have an active service agreement with MCS already. The patch does require a reboot so some downtime must be scheduled.
If your organization is running any Linux, Unix, or Mac systems, you are likely vulnerable to the ShellShock attack. The issue is with bash, a very common text shell that runs on these OSs to provide a command line UI.
Our systems have already been patched to the latest available bash package as of this post. There is the possibility for an attacker to gain control of a vulnerable machine. ShellShock is rated a 10 out of 10 on the U.S. National Vulnerability Database’s severity scale.
Please contact MCS if your organization runs any Linux or Unix servers. At this time, there is no patch available for MACs. Most Linux repos have at least a partial fix available now.
MCS is growing and we have immediate positions available for a Web Application Developer and a QA Tester. These positions are needed to supplement our existing in-house development team. Visit our Employment Opportunities page for more information and to apply online.
The Microsoft Windows XP end of life cycle has come and gone. Now, XPs server counterpart, Windows Server 2003 and 2003 R2, will be loosing support as well. According to the Microsoft Support site, Windows Server 2003 will no longer be supported after 7/14/2015. After this date, Microsoft will no longer push out security patches.
MCS recommends that any Server 2003 machine should be migrated to a newer version as soon as possible. The later versions of Windows Server like 2008 R2 and 2012 will still be supported for years to come but in most cases, Server 2012 will be the best path. If you are worried about how long an investment in a new server may last, Microsoft states on their website that:
“Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer.”–http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy
Legacy server managers might see this July 14th, 2015 date as plenty of time to upgrade although that may not be the case. For those servers running Exchange 2003, support has already ended as of 4/8/2014 making a migration even more critical.
Any server currently running Windows Server 2003 has had a long life and the time has come to upgrade. To put its age into perspective, a student going into the 2nd grade at the time of Server 2003s release would now be entering college in 2014. In computer terms, that is an eternity. MCS has been assisting business customers transition to newer server platforms for over 11 years and we can help your organization too. Contact us today for a free evaluation.