Securing the Groove Manager Administrative Web Site

Safeguarding Your Groove Relay Password

Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subject to change without notice. Unless otherwise noted, the companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted in examples herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Microsoft, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Vista, Office Excel, Office InfoPath, Office Outlook, Office PowerPoint, Office Word, and Windows SharePoint Services are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

The Private Key File Password that you enter during initial Groove relay configuration, is unique and irreplaceable. If this password is lost or forgotten, and the Unattended Startup option is not enabled for the relay, none of the essential relay key files can be accessed and the relay is rendered inoperable. You must rebuild the relay with a new Fully Qualified Domain Name and re-register all Groove clients that have registered to this relay in order to restore service.

Enabling the Unattended Startup option (the default configuration) securely stores the private key password so that the Relay service can start automatically. This is accomplished through a hash of the relay private key password that is stored in the registry, which should be backed up as recommended below.

To avoid work stoppage and/or data loss, take the following measures before a password loss condition arises:

Record your Private Key File Password in a secure place as soon as you create it during initial relay server configuration.
Ensure that the Unattended Startup option is enabled in the Groove Relay Configuration Control Panel applet, as described in the section 'Identifying the Groove Relay and Generating Groove Relay Key Files' in the Groove Relay 2007 Administrator's Guide and online Help, included with the relay product software.
Backup the relay registry settings, as described in the section 'Backing Up Groove Relay Registry Settings' in the Groove Relay 2007 Administrator's Guide and online Help, included with the relay product software. Do this as soon you finish initial relay configuration. This backup includes the hash of the relay private key password which is stored in the registry if the Unattended Startup option is enabled.
Backup the relay key files, as described in the section, 'Backing Up Groove Relay Key Files' in the Groove Relay 2007 Administrator's Guide and online Help, included with the relay product software.

- 1 -