Windows Vista / Windows 2003 and WebDAV over HTTP (not S)

There's a good article about the problem to do a WebDAV connection without SSL on Vista / Win2003:

SharePint, WebDAV, and http (not https)

Here's the abstract:

1. Fire up regedit.exe (if UAC is enabled you'll have to approve it of course)
2. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
   SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters
3. Change the setting BasicAuthLevel from its current value (default 1) to 2 (0 means disabled, 1 is https only, 2 is both http and https)
4. Enter the following commands:
   1. net stop webclient
   2. net start webclient
   3. net use x: "http://yoursharepointprovider.tld/somesharename" /user:"whateverdomain\yourusername" /persistent:yes
   4. Enter your password when prompted

Update:

For Windows 2003 server the DWORD value you must add to the registry under the Parameters key above is UseBasicAuth and set its value to 1 and you'll also want to update the AcceptOfficeAndTahoeServers key from 0 to 1.  You cannot just net stop/start webclient; instead you must net stop mrxdav then net start webclient.  I found this out from KB841215.

A bit Off Topic: Virtual Tape Driver

Last week I was searching for a solution how to do "Cloud Backup" in a datacenter. This is not directly related to WebDAV, but what other reliable file protocol would anyone use when storing file based data on a remote storage solution - especially if the storage solution is something "in the cloud" like Amazon S3 or similar.

Well, the first question was about how to do a good Windows 2003 / Windows 2008 backup - eventually with Microsoft Data Protection Manager (Microsoft DPM) - when there is no tape infrastructure. All the Microsoft tools want to have some kind of tape. But tapes in datacenter clouds... not good.

Here's what I have found last week, I am now running a test pilot but it looks like a perfect solution: Virtual Tape Driver.

Firestreamer Virtual Tape Driver for Microsoft Data Protection Manager / Microsoft Backup

It supports not only all kind of physical media but also network shares, NAS and.... WebDAV.

Maybe some of you may have the same situation and this information could help.