Windows User Group Event: Introducing Exchange 2010

On June 12th the Irish Windows User Group will be running a session on Exchange 2010, also known as Exchange 14. The speaker, Nathan Winters, is an Exchange MVP, consultant and author with huge experience and a growing international reputation. As you can see from the session agenda, the world of email has evolved into a world of communications and collaboration, introducing many new technologies and offering new ways to access existing technologies with solutions for the major corporates and the small businesses. This will be an interesting session that will explain what’s happening now and in the near future.

Agenda

– Introduction: Nathan will discuss the history of email with a particular focus on Exchange, this sets up the rest of the presentation which is about the future of email (Microsoft Style!)
– Software + Services: Whether this is the future or not, what Microsoft is doing, the BPOS suite, limitations, benefits, and customers who have used it. Nathan will also show a demo. He will touch on Exchange Lab@Edu which leads into Exchange 2010 – Approx 20 mins
– Exchange 2010 will be the main section of the presentation: The basics (roles, prerequisites etc). Nathan will take a look at the aims of the product group and dive into depth around the new features related to each of the roles
– A brief intro to Unified Communications: This section will give a very brief intro to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and then end with a demo of some key work scenarios and features
– Summary and Questions

Where and When

June 12th from 09:30 until 12:00.  Registration starting at 09:00.

Microsoft European Development Centre (EDC), South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland, driving directions

Live Webcast

We will be using LiveMeeting to share this presentation live to the world!  You can sign in here using this code: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=46G74S&role=attend

Please use the free installed client instead of the web client.  The web client has issues regarding audio sharing.

About Nathan Winters

Nathan Winters is a Lead Consultant for Dimension Data. He is responsible for the Microsoft Exchange practice in the UK. Nathan has been working in I.T. for six years and specializes in Exchange and Office Communications Server.

Midway through 2006 Nathan founded the Microsoft Messaging and Mobility User Group UK which holds regular meetings in the UK to discuss topics related to Exchange. In April 2007 Nathan was awarded an MVP (Exchange Server) for his work with MMMUG and regular contributions to the Mark Minasi Forum. Nathan is a regular contributor to the MSExchange.org website and Nathan’s other articles have been published by Penton Media (Exchange and Outlook Administrator newsletter), Microsoft (TechNet Industry Insiders) and on the MMMUG website

Registration

Anyone wishing to attend the event should register.  This event is being held in Microsoft so registration is mandatory.  As usual, there is no cost associated with this event.

Back Posting Again

I’m back after a short absence that was work and vacation related.  I’ll be posting but at a smaller rate than before due to a writing project that’s kicked off again.  I’m just back from Wales where I was photographing Red Kites.  Hopefully I’ll return there in the Autumn.

I also need to upgrade my laptop to Windows 7 RC so that will likely impact my uptime for a few nights.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 RTM

OpsMgr 2007 R2 has been released to manufacturing with a GA date of July 1st.  You can download a trial now.  There is an overview of this new production and a what is new document as well.

The big thing in OpsMgr 2007 R2 is the inclusion of Cross Platform Extensions.  This gives you the ability to monitor UNIX and Linux using agents and basic management packs provided by Microsoft as a part of the product.  3rd parties will still continue to offer more complete management packs.

SLA (Service Level Agreement) reporting has also been included as opposed to being a bolt-on in the current 2007 release.

I’m really hoping someone from MS publishes an official guide on how to do an in-place upgrade from 2007 to 2007 R2.

EDIT:

I’ve just found a video on upgrade and deployment best practices.

And documentation can be downloaded from here (including deployment guide).

EDIT #2:

Wow, the upgrade is complex.  Make sure you read all 63 pages of the upgrade guide.  I’ve a funny feeling I’ll be working a long weekend for this “mini” project.

TechNet Webcast: Operations Manager 2007 R2 Deployment and Upgrade Best Practices

“Join us for this informative session on deploying Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007, where you will gain useful insights into what worked, as well as what didn’t, when deploying Operations Manager 2007 into different environments. You will have the opportunity to learn best practices for setup (including recommended approaches for disaster recovery and high availability), running Operations Manager in a virtualized environment, and more.

For more information and to register online visit TechNet Webcast”.

This is a recorded webcast featuring the soon-to-RTM version of OpsMgr 2007 R2 that includes the much anticipated Cross Platform Extensions with support for Linux and UNIX.

TechNet Webcast: Using Windows PowerShell with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager

“Windows PowerShell is likely to become the automation tool of choice. In this webcast, we provide examples of Windows PowerShell being used to perform common administration tasks in Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. We compare the two automation methods in detail, and we discuss some online community-focused PowerShell resources such as http://powershellcommunity.org”.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

For more information and to register online.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Virtualisation Support

Microsoft today announced support for virtualising OCS 2007 R2.  This covers both a “both a fully distributed virtualized topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualized topology”.  They go on to say:

“The following server roles can be deployed:

  • Front-End Servers
  • Back-End SQL Server 2008 64 bits
  • Group Chat Channel Servers
  • Group Chat Compliance Servers
  • Archiving Servers
  • Monitoring (CDR only) Servers
  • Edge Access Servers

The virtual machines must be running on Windows Server 2008 64 bits. Archiving Server and Monitoring Server can be connected to a virtualized Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server.

The fully virtualized distributed topology has been tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 group chat users.

Virtualization of the other workloads is not supported because of possible quality issues with real-time media. Specifically, voice, video, live meeting and desktop sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualized deployment”.

Follow Up on TechEd Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V News

There’s more detail on Hyper-V R2 scalability and processor compatibility mode in this post by the MS virtualisation team.

“You could run:

  1. 384 single virtual processor vms OR
  2. 256 dual virtual processor vms (512 Virtual Processors) OR
  3. 128 quad virtual processor vms (512 Virtual Processors) OR
  4. any combination so long as you’re running up to 384 VMs and up to 512 Virtual Processors”

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They have “a 4 node cluster using 4 generations of Intel Processors with VT all attached to a small iSCSI SAN over 1 Gb/E. We have a script that continuously Live Migrates VMs from one node to the next every 15 seconds. We’ve been running this test for about a week and have successfully completed over 110,000 Live Migrations”.

Windows 7 Road Show (Ireland)

Hot on the heals of TechDays, the MS TechNet Ireland crew are back causing havoc on the roads with a Windows 7 road show.  This will include:

  • Find out what’s new with Windows 7
  • Upgrade path and licensing
  • Deployment
  • Dave Northey vs. Will Craddock – demo shootout (I can’t wait to see this)
  • Public demo contest – prizes at stake for the best Windows 7 three-minute demos!
  • ‘Install Fest’ – Windows 7 Release Candidate provided
  • The cities being visited are:

    I’m not involved – I’ve no free time for it!  I’ll be trying to attend one of the Dublin events.