Introducing the Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP) Best Practices Analyzer, as well as a rules updates for the Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) Best Practices Analyzer

Last week, the Forefront Server Protection team had two releases of note for our Best Practices Analyzer (BPA). A BPA from Microsoft is generally released alongside server software to help you ensure that you configure the software properly. When we released FPSP earlier this month, we also released a BPA to accompany it. Our BPA needs to be installed on the server that is running FPSP, and then you can access it as a separate program. (The BPA will *never* change configuration on a running server; it is a tool to help you check for specific best practices.) You can grab the new FPSP BPA here.

In our second release, we have also published an updated set of best practices for the FPE 2010 BPA, originally released last December. Our BPA tools have an optional setting that allows them to connect to the Microsoft Download Center in order to download updated sets of best practices. If you had already downloaded the FPE BPA, we recommend that you run a rules update to make sure to get these new best practices rules. Or, you can just download the full installer here. (Currently, the only way to move the new best practices rules to a machine that cannot connect to the internet is to download the .msi installer and reinstall.)

Lastly, a BPA is only as useful as the documentation explaining each best practice, as well as when and how to conform to that best practice. This documentation is included as a help file within each BPA.

Enjoy! And remember – best practices are a living set of rules. We continually take feedback from our support engineers in order to update our best practices. So if you have any questions or complaints, please let us know.

Danny Popper
Program Manager, Forefront Server Protection