Server core is a lightweight, capable edition of Windows Server 2008.  A lot of baggage isn't there, making more resources available for network applications, while reducing the attack surface area.

 Some GUI tools are still available, but one of them that's not is a facility to manage the Windows Update process on the server console.  Arguably a sophisticated infrastructure wouldn't need this, and could use WSUS instead.  However there are those servers that need some administrative looking-after.

 A script to manually drive the windows update process for critical updates is available from Microsoft--follow this link.

 The script is dead easy to use, just copy to a server core machine and run using cscript.

Recently I've been working on deployments of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008.  I thought I'd start to post some of the nuances of these new product editions. 

One of the first things to encounter is, not surprisingly, security.  Security is always loads of fun for deployments (ha ha), but actually I kind of enjoy the challenge of working within the confines of good security practices.

Windows Server 2008 is based on the Vista core, and inherits a lot from it.  One of these is the Windows Firewall.  I think this is a really good thing...having that extra layer of security is definitely wise, and is a nice blanket I actually miss from my Sun/Linux days--so I'm actually glad to have it there.  But, it also means you have to configure security for just about every new application, port, etc.

For SQL Server, this really isn't too difficult.  However since I do so many deployments, I'm always interested in a shortcut...and I like to document changes, get them approved by client syadmin, then apply them by script whenever possible. 

So, below is a sample script I put together for applying firewall changes needed by SQL Server 2008 when running on Windows 2008. This is a work in progress but so far so good. Note that this script opens just about every port SQL Server might use, so make sure to use only those lines that apply to any given server (e.g. don't open HTTP/80 if you're not running anything reporting services, etc.).

Of course, if you're using named instances for SQL Services, those instances by default will have dynamic (i.e. random) ports.  Dynamic ports don't work that well with a server firewall (and neither do they work well for Kerberos delegation configurations--but that's another topic).  So, a best practice is probably to set static ports for each instance and manage them that way.

One thing to make sure to do if using command lines like this is to specify rule names on the command line, then those names show up in the GUI-based firewall control panel (firewall.cpl)--see the screen grab down below. If you don't--then each rule will simply be named "unspecified"...not a nice thing to leave for the sysadmin to figure out later!

@rem firewallconfig.cmd by Rob Kerr 

@echo =========  SQL Server Ports  ===================
@echo Enabling SQLServer default instance port 1433
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1433 "SQLServer"

@echo Enabling Dedicated Admin Connection port 1434
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1434 "SQL Admin Connection"

@echo Enabling conventional SQL Server Service Broker port 4022 
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 4022 "SQL Service Broker"

@echo Enabling Transact-SQL Debugger/RPC port 135
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 135 "SQL Debugger/RPC"

@echo =========  Analysis Services Ports  ==============
@echo Enabling SSAS Default Instance port 2383
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2383 "Analysis Services"

@echo Enabling SQL Server Browser Service port 2382
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2382 "SQL Browser"

@echo =========  Misc Applications  ==============
@echo Enabling HTTP port 80
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 80 "HTTP"

@echo Enabling SSL port 443
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 443 "SSL"

@echo Enabling port for SQL Server Browser Service's 'Browse' Button
netsh firewall set portopening UDP 1434 "SQL Browser"

@echo Allowing multicast broadcast response on UDP (Browser Service Enumerations OK)
netsh firewall set multicastbroadcastresponse ENABLE

In a Microsoft BI environment, we very often want to grant data visibility permissions at the datebase level.  The most common way to accomplish this is to use Kerberos delegation. 

In Active Directory, delegation comes in two flavors: Constrained and Unconstrained. Constrained delegation provides an enhanced level of security for deployments where Kerberos delegation is used to pass end-user credentials to back-end services.

In an unconstrained delegation configuration, servers and service accounts are trusted to send Kerberos tickets to any service on any destination computer. This typically isn’t a problem, since administrators know what their service accounts are used for, and what software is installed on their servers.

However, using constrained delegation provides an additional level of security by restricting which back-end services on which destination server a computer account or service account may pass Kerberos tickets to. Constrained delegation satisfies the “principle of least privilege”, where even trusted principals are granted only the minimum permissions needed to get their job done.

Promoting delegation from unconstrained to constrained delegation is relatively simple. This additional level of security isn't without cost, however.  Following a constrained model will result in additional long-term administration (the addition of a new back-end web server or database will require additional Active Directory configuration). However, if the least privilege principle is the best practice in your company, constrained delegation is for you.

The following process goes through constrained configuration of a typical distributed Microsoft BI environment. This process assumes you’ve already configured an unconstrained Kerberos delegation environment. The following only covers the upgrade to constrained delegation.

In the following scenario, there are:

1. A single database server running SQL Server and Analysis Services (BI-DB).
2. An application server hosting PPS Monitoring Server, ProClarity Analytics Server and Reporting Services (BI-APP)
3. Finally there is a SharePoint server (BI-WEB).

Services on each server are run using the service accounts svc_bi_db, svc_bi_app, and svc_bi_web, respectively.

First the documentation. Don’t skip this step! The key to completing this process successfully is organization, because any mistake may cause integrated authentication to fail and the troubleshooting will be difficult and even more time consuming! You need to know what service accounts are running each service on every server, and use this information to make Active Directory configuration changes.

Documentation is a two-step process: document delegation trusts needed for each server, then the trusts needed for each service account. If you’ve already setup your basic Kerberos delegation using SetSPN or ADSIEdit, you should have this information handy.

The following are the trust requirements for our scenario:

With this information, we’re ready to make the Active Directory changes. These changes are mostly made in the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, however we’ll see that the named instance used for the OLAP server isn’t supported by this snap-in (I don't know whether this is a bug or the intended behavior, but you can read about it in Microsoft knowledge base article 936628). We'll work around this limitation by making the final configurations in the ADSIEdit snap-in.

First let’s take care of the machine account configurations:

1. Launch Active Directory Users and Computers.  Find the PPS server (BI-APP for us) in the list, double-click it.
2. Click on the delegation tab. 
3. Select the third option, Trust this computer for delegation to specified services only
4. Click the Use Kerberos Only radio button
   
5. Click the Add button
6. In the Add Services dialog, click the Users or Computers… button, then enter the service account used to run the database services on the database server (the second column in table #1). 
   
7. In the Add Services dialog, we need to select all the services in the third column of table #1 (MSSQLSvc/BI-DB:1433 and MSOLAPSvc.3/BI-DB:PROD in this example), then click OK.  Note that if your OLAP database is a named instance (as ours is), then only MSSQLSvc is available…this is because this snap-in doesn’t work for named OLAP instances.  We’ll get around this problem later using the ADSIEdit snap-in.
8. With MSSQLSvc added to the Delegation tab of the BI-APP machine account, press OK on this dialog to save the delegation settings.
   
9. Repeat the same sequence for the BI-WEB server, but this time in addition to adding services for the account svc_bi_db, also add services for the svc_bi_app account to allow delegation of security for HTTP services to that machine.  When you’re done, the computer account delegation tab for BI-WEB should look like this:
   
10. Repeat the same sequence for BI-APP’s service account (svc_bi_app) using the values in columns 2 & 3 of table #2, yielding the following configuration when complete:
    
11. Again, the same sequence for BI-WEB’s service account (svc_bi_web), yielding the following configuration:
    
12. If your OLAP database has no instance name (you're using the "default instance"), you’re done!  If not, you’re almost finished, except that the Active Directory Computers and Users snap-in doesn’t support the named instance of the OLAP database.  So, open the ADSIEdit snap-in (adsiedit.msc) instead.
13. Navigate within ADSIEdit to find the computer account for the APP server (BI-APP for us). 
14. Right-click on the computer, choose Properties.
15. In the Attribute Editor, locate the string msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo, and click the Edit button.
16. Add two values for the OLAP database used in your environment (MSOLAPSvc.3/BI-DB.terrafirma.kerr.cc:PROD and MSOLAPSvc.3/BI-DB:PROD for our example).  Note that the two are the same except one has the FQDN and the other has only the NetBIOS name of the server.  Both are required.  When finished, the string editor should look like this:
    
17. Click OK, on the string editor, then OK on the machine properties to save changes.  If you return to this editor in ADSIEdit, you can review and update these chnages.  However, beware that if you review changes in the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, you won't see these named instance entries.
18. Repeat this change for the web server as well (BI-WEB in this example)
19. Repeat this change for the user accounts used on the BI-WEB and BI-APP servers (svc_bi_web and svc_bi_app in this example).

OK, that’s all.  Now the environment is configured for constrained delegation.  From this point on, AD will still allow Kerberos delegation as before, except now it will carefully check not only that service accounts are running on the machine they should, but also that each service account is only passing tickets to servers/services that are pre-authorized.

Microsoft’s security focus over the last few years has brought many improvements in the overall level of security.  Along with this level of security also comes an increasing number of hoops to jump through to accomplish simple tasks.

Recently I found that it became impossible to install software from network shares onto Windows 64-bit servers.  Trying to do so resulted in the error message:

“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”

Searching on the Internet, the most commonly suggested workaround I found was to uninstall the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration from the computer.  This actually does work, but really doesn't sound like a great solution to me. 

As it turns out, the solution is quite simple...but also a bit of a head scratcher.  You wouldn’t think accessing files on your LAN would be controlled by an Internet Explorer setting (well maybe you would, but I wouldn’t!).  Yet, changing IE settings is the easy way to solve this problem.

The solution is to add the LAN server where your install source share is to the Local Intranet zone in Internet Explorer.  I suppose adding to the Trusted Sites would probably work, but since a share location is in the intranet for most of us, I think that’s the more logical place to make this change.

Here’s how I solved it on a 64-bit Windows 2003 R2 server with SP2 and IE7:

1. In Internet explorer, select Tools/Options, then click on the Security tab
2. Select the Local Intranet icon, then press the Sites button
   
   
   
3. In the Add this website to the zone textbox, enter the name of the server in the form file://servername, then click the Add button
   
   
4. Click the Close button on the bottom of the dialog, then OK on the Internet Options dialog

With that change made, your server should now be able to run software from network locations.  No more need to copy them to a local file location first!