Network & Server Best Practices and Hardening for Microsoft Products

While researching standards around enterprise-level server hardening and high availability best practices, I came across a couple of good documents/links.

Active Directory to SharePoint to networking best practices and security considerations for a full Microsoft implementation.

Microsoft High Availability Strategy 

Includes SharePoint, Exchange, Windows Server, SQL, Hyper V and clustering. Provides a logical overview of the many high-availability tools, solutions, and programs available from Microsoft.

Best Practices for Securing Active Directory

Contains recommendations to enhance the security of Active Directory installations, discusses common attacks against Active Directory and countermeasures to reduce the attack surface, and offers recommendations for recovery.

Appendix	Description
A: Patch and Vulnerability Management Software	Contains a list of companies that produce patch and vulnerability management software.
B: Privileged Accounts and Groups in Active Directory	Provides background information that helps you to identify the users and groups that are granted elevated privileges in Active Directory and on domain-joined systems. These accounts typically present the greatest risk because they can be leveraged by attackers to compromise and even destroy your Active Directory installation.
C: Protected Accounts and Groups in Active Directory	Contains information about protected groups in Active Directory.
D: Securing Built-in Administrator Accounts in Active Directory	Provides guidelines to secure the built-in Administrator account in each domain in a forest.
E: Securing Enterprise Admins Group in Active Directory	Provides step-by-step instructions to help secure the Enterprise Admins group in an Active Directory forest.
F: Securing Domain Admins Groups in Active Directory	Provides step-by-step instructions to help secure the Domain Admins group in each domain in a forest.
G: Securing Administrator Groups in Active Directory	Provides step-by-step instructions to help secure the built-in Administrators group in each domain in a forest.
H: Securing Local Administrator Accounts and Groups	Provides step-by-step instructions to help secure local Administrator accounts and groups on domain-joined systems.
I: Creating Management Accounts for Protected Accounts and Groups in Active Directory	Provides information and steps to create accounts that have limited privileges and can be stringently controlled, but can be used to populate privileged groups in Active Directory when temporary elevation is required.
J: Third-Party RBAC Vendors	Contains a list of third-party, role-based access control (RBAC) software vendors and their solutions.
K: Third-Party PIM Vendors	Contains a list of third-party privileged identity management (PIM) software vendors and their offerings.
L: Events to Monitor	Lists events for which you should monitor in your environment.
M: Document Links and Recommended Reading	Contains a list of recommended reading. Also contains a list of links to external documents and their URLs so that readers of hard copies of this document can access this information.

Network Management System: Best Practices
ISO Network Management Model - How to increase the overall effectiveness of current netork management tools and practices.

• Fault Management

The goal of fault management is to detect, log, notify users of, and (to the extent possible) automatically fix network problems to keep the network running effectively

• Configuration Management

The goal of configuration management is to monitor network and system configuration information so that the effects on network operation of various versions of hardware and software elements can be tracked and managed.

• Performance Management

The goal of performance management is to ensure system and resource availability through SLA's, monitoring and reporting.

• Security Management

The goal of security management is to control access to network resources according to local guidelines so that the network cannot be sabotaged (intentionally or unintentionally).

• Accounting Management

Accounting management is the process used to measure network utilization parameters so that individual or group users on the network can be regulated appropriately for the purposes of accounting or chargeback.