Ranking the SMB rules in the File Services Best Practices Analyzer tool (BPA)

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As you probably know, the File Services team provides a Best Practices Analyzer tool (BPA). It includes several rules for the configuration, operation, performance and security of the SMB, NFS, DFS-N, DFS-R and FSRM.

I was recently looking at the pageview statistics for each of the rules for the SMB component and found how how the rules rank in terms of popularity. Here's that list (from most popular to least popular), with the links to TechNet documentation:

  1. SMB: Short file name creation should be disabled
  2. SMB: No registry setting for tuning the TCP window size in TCP/IP should exist
  3. SMB: File and printer sharing ports should be open
  4. SMB: Digitally signed communication should be required or disabled
  5. SMB: No registry setting for tuning the number of TCP table partitions in TCP/IP should exist
  6. SMB: The SMB 2.0 file sharing protocol should be enabled
  7. SMB: Previous Versions support for client computers running Windows 98 should be disabled
  8. SMB: Denial of service detection should be enabled
  9. SMB: No registry setting for tuning the MaxHashTableSize in TCP/IP should exist
  10. SMB: The Server service should be set to start automatically

Download the File Services BPA directly from Windows Update or from the Download Center at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=8f25a157-16f0-47c1-869e-28ce00e6dd71