Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Office 2007 should now be appearing as a category on your WSUS servers.

And to add to the confusion over time zone updates for North American customers, a new replacement rollup update will be released as an "Update Rollup" this Tuesday.

Microsoft has released a troubleshooting guide for the beta release of Forefront Client Security.  It covers the deployment and administration of the product.  Be sure to also check out my whitepaper on Forefront Client Security.

MS has released a VM disk image that contains an laready installed copy of the Exchange Calendar Update Tool.  This tool will be needed by people with North American Exchange servers that are affected the the DST update.  There’s instructions on how to use the VM disk image on the MS site.

Get your test lab ready …. it looks like there’s going to be 12 updates released by Microsoft next Tuesday affecting:

• Windows
• Office
• Visual Studio
• Step-by-Step Interactive Training
• MDAC
• OneCare, Antigen, Defender, Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint

I just saw an article on BetaNews that said Microsoft will launch the next version of their version of Windows for PDA’s and phones, Windows Mobile 6.0, at the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona.  The conference starts on Monday (Feb 12th) and runs through until Thrursday.

It appears that v6.0 will be an incremental upgrade, i.e. the kernal hasn’t changed much if at all.  There will be greater USB support, support for the 2007 product releases (e.g. Exchange 2007) and there will be user optional integration with Microsoft’s Live services.  There’s a pre-release review on Mobile-Review.

Credit: BetaNews & Mobile-Review.

It’s been announced that EMC is to sell 10% of their wholey owned subsidiary, VMware.  Apparently, this announcement has been "welcomed" by EMC shareholders due to disappointment.  There is concern that there is a move by competitors, i.e. Xen and Microsoft, into free virtualisation solutions which has force Vmware to respond and will hit revenue.  VMware will have to focus sales ont heir flagship ESX product and virtualisation management solutions.

Wow!

We’ve seen a boom in the acceptance and deployment of virtualisation in the last year.  On the desktop end, Microsoft woul have the advantage with their free Virtual PC.  At the mid level, it”s fairly even but VMware’s "Server" product has the slightest of edges (due to state saving vs disk ifferencing, IMO).  Certainly, everyone I talk to and deal with still sees VMware as the market leader in the enterprise/high-end market.  Maybe this will change in the future and maybe not.  But VMware ESX was the product of choice for usually conservative CIO’s.  I don’t think that’s going to change very quickly, no matter how good the Microsoft "Longhorn" solution will be (partnered by Xen).

VMware has the technology lead right now, but in the future, we will have closer competition between the alternative players and VMware.   VMware will have to continue to differentiate themselves and compete by increasing integration with other operating systems and ensuring that their accompnaying technologies rovide a superior overall solution than that provided by their copetitors.

An Operations Guide for the IMF that is included in Exchaneg 2003 Service Pack 2 has been released.  You may or may not know, but there is a basic anti-spam defence built into all E2003 servers that have had service pack 2 installed.  Many SOHO’s cannot afford to use a third party solution for a comprehensive defense so this solution can give them the ability to cut out a lot of spam.  I use it myselft and very little spam actually gets through.

I’ve never heard of this tool until I saw it was available this morning.  The blurb is that it will help SOHO’s by saving "time on everyday tasks, work the way they want, and grow their business through online sales, online invoicing, and payment processes".

System Requirements are:

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Vista; Windows XP
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager Update or higher is required to share financial data with the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client.  Third party services, including Credit Card Processing, ADP payroll, eBay Online Sales, Equifax Credit reporting services, Office Live services are available for additional fees
• Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.
• Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 or higher is required to export to Microsoft Office Excel as well as create, email, or print customized invoices, sales orders, quotes, customer credit memos, customer statements, and purchase orders using Microsoft Office Word.

There’s a dedicated website for Office Accounting Express 2007.  You can also download a datasheet.

As you may know, Microsoft is pretty streict about all nodes in a Windows Cluster being identical.  As such, companies such as HP offer "cluster packages" that include 2 identical servers and an MSA 1500.  Without any automation, you are relying on manual checks to verify the servers are identical, from model number right down to service pack and driver version level.

Microsoft released a new wizrd tool last night.  The Cluster Configuration Validation Wizard promises that it:

"… does a complete system inventory and runs focused tests on servers that are configured and ready for Microsoft Server Cluster installation (in other words, before the servers are a cluster). ClusPrep will also run the inventory and many of these same tests after clustering is installed, however, because of their potentially disruptive nature, most storage tests are not run if the servers are already a cluster.

ClusPrep will validate that your system is configured properly by taking inventory of your system configuration and highlighting discrepancies in service pack levels, driver versions, etc.; evaluating and testing your network and storage configuration.

If the results of your ClusPrep execution do not show errors (viewable in detail from the XML report) then you can have a high level of confidence that your subsequent cluster installation and/or operation will be successful.
ClusPrep is a “client/server” tool: you install it on one machine (must be installed on a 32-bit architecture machine), and it drives tests on a collection of server machines (can be any architecture). All drivers and test agents are automatically installed on the servers as part of ClusPrep operation. In other words, the only install you do is on the machine from which you initiate the testing".

Microsoft has released 4 documents that provide descriptions and overviews of features, guidlines for planning and steps for deploying Exchange 2007 organisations for the following:

• A simple organisation: A single Exchange server that provides all Exchange services and stores all Exchange data for the entire organization OR multiple Exchange servers in a topology that includes redundant directory servers and an Edge Transport server in a perimeter network.
• A standard organisation: builds upon the simple Exchange organization by deploying multiple computers running Exchange.
• A large organisation: the large Exchange organization is the largest organization model that can be deployed in a single Active Directory directory service forest environment.
• A complex organisation: includes multiple Active Directory directory service forests or the use of synchronization technology.

You should also check out:

• Planning Your Deployment: A set of checklists and best practices.
• The Exchange Server 2007 Library: A complete set of documentation.