Exchange Server 2010 available to TechNet subscribers

If you have a TechNet Plus subscriptions, you’ll notice that Exchange Server 2010 is already available to download.

• What's New in Exchange 2010
• Top Reasons to Try Microsoft Exchange Server 2010Reduced deployment cost
  
• Exchange Server 2010 helps you reduce costs by addressing common infrastructure requirements such as backup, e-mail archiving, mobile e-mail access, and voice mail with no need for third-party tools.
• Simplified high availability and disaster recovery
• Exchange Server 2010 introduces a simplified approach to high availability and disaster recovery to help you achieve new levels of reliability and reduce the complexity of delivering business continuity.
• Easier administration and decreased dependence on the help desk
• Exchange Server 2010 provides new self-service capabilities to help users perform common tasks without calling the help desk.
• Greater mobility and flexible access
• Exchange Server 2010 offers an enhanced universal inbox experience, which provides your users with access to all of their business communications from a single location.
• Decreased inbox overload and increased productivity
• Exchange Server 2010 adds new productivity features which help your users organize and prioritize the communications in their inboxes efficiently.
• Transformed voice mail
• With Exchange Server 2010, users can receive their voice mail messages in their inbox with text preview.
• Simplified compliance
• Exchange Server 2010 delivers new integrated archiving functionality to help simplify compliance and discovery.
• Safeguards for sensitive information
• With centrally managed and enforced information protection and control capabilities, Exchange Server 2010 makes it easy to encrypt, control, and moderate your company's communications.
• Reduced risk of malware and spam
• Exchange Server 2010 actively helps protect your communications through built-in defenses against junk e-mail and support for an array of third party security products.
• Watch Exchange 2010 demos from the Exchange Product Team
• Exchange 2010 System Requirements
  
  

More information at:
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx
and
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2010/default.aspx

MS release of Virtual Machine Migration Test Wizard

In Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V R2, when a running or a saved state virtual machine is migrated to another server, the destination server may have a processor with a different set of features. An operating system or application that attempts to execute CPU features discovered when the virtual machine was started on a "source" machine, but not present on the destination (called "destination") machine, will cause a virtual machine migration failure.


The Hyper-V R2 virtualization platform prevents the migration of a virtual machine that will fail in this way because the processors of the "source" and "destination" servers are not compatible. However, this check for compatibility only happens at the time of virtual machine migration, not when the server joins a cluster.

Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a capability called “Processor compatibility mode” so that you can avoid the situation where virtual machines cannot be migrated due to processor incompatibilities. However, if you do not want to turn this capability on for each of your virtual machines, you can use this wizard to identify which machines in your environment are compatible.

READ AND DOWNLOAD IT HERE!!!

Guide for migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7

Do you need help with migrations from Windows XP to Windows 7?

Check Part 1 of 5 blogged by the Windows Team at:
Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 - Guidance for IT pros

Every day this week long-time Springboard technical contributor and Windows deployment insider, Jeremy Chapman, will post a blog about how to think about Windows 7 deployment projects. We debated on making this a whitepaper or a feature article, but to keep things less formal, we went with a multimedia blog series. This series won't just cover steps to publish images in your Windows Deployment Services environments, instead it goes much broader into the major steps of deployment all-up; from figuring out what applications and hardware you have to migrating files, managing applications, building images, incorporating drivers and automating stuff end-to-end. Jeremy has been a veteran member of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit team and while he won't be posting the classic "1500 pages" of how-to content, he will stay on his quest for the elusive and often escalated-for "one-page paper" to migrate enterprise customers from Windows XP to Windows 7. Let's see if he can do it!

Server Core Remote Management How to...

Sander Berkouwer announced a free eBook that was written by himself and Joachim Nässlander, this book will help you with some basics about possible configurations for remote management in Server Core.


GET IT NOW HERE!!!

Sysinternals retired NewSID

Check it out the reasons why the Sysinternals NewSID tool has been retired from sysinternals in Mark’s latest blog which debunks the myth that having duplicate machine SIDs causes problems.

Read more HERE.

Sysinternals Updated Disk2vhd Disk2vhd v1.1 to Disk2vhd v1.3

Back In October SysInternals gave us the Disk2vhd v1.1 (and I already used some times with excellent results) the announcement was made here at ENIACK, now SysInternals is back with the new version of the same tool “v1.3”.

The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).
DOWNLOAD IT NOW HERE!!!

Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

According with MS Exchange Team Blog, Exchange 2007 will be supported on Windows Server 2008 R2.

“We always talk about listening to customers and sometimes this is written off by many as 'marketing speak'. In fact, we do take feedback seriously and no input is more important to our engineering processes than your voice.”
“Earlier this year we made a decision in one direction, and due to the feedback we have received on this blog and elsewhere, we have reconsidered. In the coming calendar year we will issue an update for Exchange 2007 enabling full support of Windows Server 2008 R2. We heard from many customers that this was important for streamlining their operations and reducing administrative challenges, so we have changed course and will add R2 support. We are still working through the specifics and will let you know once we have more to share on the timing of this update.“

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 eBook Free Download

TRUE, Microsoft Learning and MS Press folks have this eBOOK available for download here.

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 will help you to understand the new R2's features, capabilities including the improvements in Hyper-V, RDS virtualization, IIS the Web application platform and other interesting stuff.

GET IT NOW!!!

Active Directory Services KB Articles

Active Directory Services KB Articles

975830
The memory usage of the Dns.exe process keeps increasing after you install hotfix 941672 on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 SP2 and that has the DNS server role installed
972622
The Active Directory Application Mode index may become corrupted if you search the instance by using the LDAP virtual list view control
975792
Numeric host names cannot be resolved on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008
969371
Error message when you run a command at the Command Prompt window in Windows Server 2008 Server Core: "The specified service does not exist as an installed Service"
975943
Error code when an application uses the CredSSP if the authenticated user account is a member of many security groups on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008: "0x80090329"
976921
A DFSR propagation report logs the following error on a Windows Server 2008 domain controller: "Cannot open test file on the member The network path was not found."
976922
The "Run only allowed Windows applications" Group Policy setting displays no entries on a computer that is running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7
968929
Description of the Windows Management Framework on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008
974522
A LDAP simple bind action fails on a domain controller that is running Windows Server 2008 if the distinguished name of the user account exceeds 256 characters
976427
Computers that are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 stop responding at a black screen if a screen saver is enabled
977110
How to select time zone for countries or regions that are not listed in Windows time zone list

Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7 Redux

Check out Mark’s latest Channel 9 interview on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 kernel changes, released today to coincide with Windows 7’s general availability. He talks about memory management, process reflection and more, and shows a couple of demos on a 256-processor system.

"Windows 7 is here, available to all for purchase and ships today with new PCs! To celebrate this momentous occasion for Windows and Microsoft, Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich joins me in a discussion that extends the great conversation we had last year on Windows 7 internals. In his previous C9 interview, Mark told us about many of the new additions to the Windows kernel which enable Windows 7 (and Windows Server R2) to scale to large numbers of processors. Well, removing the kernel dispatcher lock is not all that the great Arun Kishan did. He also developed a new scheduling mechanism known as Distributed Fair Share Scheduling (DFSS). Mark describes what this is and how it works."

Check it here:
Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7 Redux