3 weeks ago we kicked off a blogpost series about top Belgian students in the Microsoft Virtual Academy. In this series, 6 students share their favorite trainings, how the platform helps them to be a better professional and give you some tips to improve your ranking. Samuel Dubrul, Marcelo Estrada Molina and David De Vos already shared their story.

Today it’s time for the 4th episode of the series: Mike Resseler explains how he’s learning about new technologies via the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

First name: Mike Last name: Resseler Description: System Center Enthousiast, Architect, SCDPM MVP, Intune fan and consumerization adept MVA status: Gold

What’s your favorite training on MVA (track or course)? Which one(s) would you recommend?

I like the Enhancing Your Business and Career with the Private Cloud training. It is not a technical track but it gives you some insight on how IT is evolving and what we will need and change to grow in the IT world.  IT Pro’s roles and responsibilities are slowly changing and it never hurts to have a quick start on these changes… And then you follow all the other Private Cloud technical courses .

What’s your advice for ambitious MVA newbies who want to improve their ranking?

Plan a lot of time for this.  Many of these courses are movies and take a while to finish them.  There is also a lot of reading material and additional information to get more knowledge on the different topics.  Spending a lot of time isn’t always the easiest thing to do but when you finish a course and took your time, you’ll see that you learned a lot and that you are ready to start with the technology

…

Next week we’ll be sharing Fabrice Legrand’s view on the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Haven’t signed up for MVA yet? Now is the time to do so! There’s 1 more week left to get a FREE Welcome Pack (including an exclusive T-shirt and laptop sticker). The offer is valid until the 31 May (only for Belgians). Here’s what you need to do:

- Register now on http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- Send the URL of your MVA profile (example) to tnbewm@microsoft.com along with T-Shirt size and shipping info
- Check your mailbox and open your Welcome Pack

Please read the terms and conditions of this promotion.

 


2 weeks ago we kicked off a blogpost series about top Belgian students in the Microsoft Virtual Academy. In this series, 6 students share their favorite trainings, how the platform helps them to be a better professional and give you some tips to improve your ranking. Samuel Dubrul,& Marcelo Estrada Molina already shared their story.

This week David De Vos (number 1 in the Belgian MVA ranking!) shares his experience with the platform.

First name: David   Last name: De Vos Description: My challenging job is to research new technologies and match them to the development of our business. Combell is a hosting provider which focuses on high quality and support. MVA status: Platinum

What’s your experience with the Microsoft Virtual Academy so far? How does it help you to improve your IT skills?
 
The Microsoft Virtual Academy provides really good insight in any given Microsoft technology or product. I’m a research engineer which means that I dive under the hood of technology, get all the bits and bytes out of there and report back to our management. In that way, the virtual academy really helped a lot. Most of the tracks are level 200-300 which means they provide a high-level overview and they offer a great starting point. After following a track the best way to take your knowledge to the next level, is by building a test lab and putting everything you learned to the test. That way you’ll have the perfect balance between the theoretical and practical side of things. Because – in my humble opinion – there is still quite a difference. You get many links to white papers and TechNet articles during the courses. These remain within reach on my laptop and are a great resource to fall back to, whether this is during the building of test labs or later on during solution design.

What’s your favorite training on MVA (track or course)? Which one(s) would you recommend?
 
I really like the System Center tracks with Symon Perriman and Corey Hynes. Those two present really nicely together. They really bring the material in a fluent way and provide a bunch of practical details. They offered insight in System Center products like VMM 2012 when it was only CTP/RC. 

The latest tracks I really like are Mission Critical Confidence using SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012: Scale on demand. I really think SQL 2012 is a brilliant product with amazing capabilities. The track really helps understand the practical challenges you face when designing multi-site solutions. Things like quorum configuration and best practices for client configurations are discussed really clearly. I did a study on SQL Server 2012 “Denali” earlier this year and it’s nice to see a lot of my challenges and findings come back during the tracks.

What’s your advice for ambitious MVA newbies who want to improve their ranking?

This is a rather difficult question as it depends on many different things. Your personal interest and technical profile should determine what tracks you want to follow. A good start is to highlight what topics you’re interested in on your personal profile page. That way you’ll automatically get a list of tracks that match your interest or need. Review the topic list frequently as new topics are added quite often lately. The availability of new tracks became more frequent the last months and the quality of the content keeps increasing. Increasing your rating can only be done by doing as many tracks as possible. From time to time you get the chance to profit from temporary promotions and bonus points, so you might want to follow up on that. Doing all available tracks requires quite some time and dedication, but it definitely worth doing if you’re a geek like me. Personally I consider it more a learning opportunity than a contest for the highest rating.

…

Next week we’ll be sharing Mike Resseler’s view on the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Haven’t signed up for MVA yet? Now is the time to do so! You can get a FREE Welcome Pack (including an exclusive T-shirt and laptop sticker) until the end of May (only for Belgians). Here’s what you need to do:

- Register now on http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- Send the URL of your MVA profile (example) to tnbewm@microsoft.com along with T-Shirt size and shipping info
- Check your mailbox and open your Welcome Pack

Please read the terms and conditions of this promotion.

Last week we kicked off a blogpost series about top Belgian students in the Microsoft Virtual Academy. In this series, 6 students share their favorite trainings, how the platform helps them to be a better professional and give you some tips to improve your ranking.

Last week Samuel Dubrul, a frontend solutions system engineer at RealDolmen shared his story.

This week, Marcelo Estrada Molina shares his passion for the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

First name: Marcelo Last name: Estrada Molina   Description: IT Professional and Technical Specialist currently employed at everis Belgium as Microsoft Technology Expert and Solutions Architect, specialized in Microsoft Servers Technologies and Enterprise Business Applications Platform and Infrastructure. MVA status: Platinum

What’s your experience with the Microsoft Virtual Academy so far? How does it help you to improve your IT skills?

My experience since I belong to the MVA has been awesome! Not only because it allows me to learn and study Microsoft’s next generation products and technologies for free and at my own pace, which is something that I personally highly appreciate, but regarding the content available I must confirm that it’s been done with a remarkable and outstanding quality, for most part it’s been developed and featured by Technical Product Managers or other individuals that have been a key part in the product teams during their conception and development, therefore the content is delivered on a very straight forward manner.

At the end of the day you have the chance to get to know these products not only from a technical perspective but also from a business stand point, which in my experience is really important to understand for which kind of scenarios or for what business requirement a particular technology has been intended for.

Furthermore, you can also test yourself and confirm what you just learned right after finishing every chapter by taking a simple quiz. If you consider that additional practice might be required you can always follow the Virtual Labs where you can work on a virtual environment and further practice your hands on labs skills, with no additional charges whatsoever! In short, the overall learning process becomes very enjoyable, highly effective and most importantly very easy to follow.

What’s your favorite training on MVA (track or course)? Which one(s) would you recommend?
 
Currently I just finished the Private Cloud Specialization and I’m about to start the courses available for SQL Server 2012. That’s another point that makes this platform so attractive: you can learn Microsoft’s latest technologies before the products have been even officially released to the market, which is a huge advantage.

If I have to recommend one I would definitively suggest either Private Cloud, Office 365 or SQL Server 2012. These products and technology trends will assure you a smooth journey to the Cloud, especially if you are an IT Professional who’s looking forward to boot start your career by adding  private or public cloud skills to your toolbox. If you want to be what’s next and be part of an exciting and bright future, this is definitively the best place to start.

What’s your advice for ambitious MVA newbies who want to improve their ranking?

The most important advice that I can give is be passionate and bold, stay strong and perseverant. Every aspect of life requires certain amount of sacrifice and as long as you keep it up the sky is the limit. If you want to have a successful career in IT, one of the key elements is the constant study and ongoing learning, there are no secrets to success rather than effort, true enthusiasm and never-ending passion for technology. Besides learning on the MVA it’s a very enjoyable journey.

…

Next week David De Vos (number 1 in the Belgian MVA ranking) will share his experience with the platform.

Haven’t signed up for MVA yet? Now is the time to do so! You can get a FREE Welcome Pack (including an exclusive T-shirt and laptop sticker) until the end of May (only for Belgians). Here’s what you need to do:

- Register now on http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- Send the URL of your MVA profile (example) to tnbewm@microsoft.com along with T-Shirt size and shipping info
- Check your mailbox and open your Welcome Pack

Please read the terms and conditions of this promotion.

Do you know the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)? The academy was founded in March 2011 and aspires to be a free, easy to access training portal for IT professionals who want to elevate their IT skills and advance their career. You can access a variety of training content online, gain points and become one of the renowned experts in the IT Pro community around the world.



Your learning progress on the platform is measured via points. You can collect points and improve your ranking by completing the different courses, tracks or specializations on offer.

Currently, the academy counts about 2,300 Belgian students (655,000 on a worldwide scale). In the next few weeks 6 top students (all of them part of the top 10) will share their experience on MVA with you. You’ll find out what their favorite trainings are, how the platform helps them to be a better professional and some tips to improve your own ranking.

First up is Samuel Dubrul. 

First name: Samuel Last name: Dubrul Description: I'm a frontend solutions system engineer at RealDolmen. My main focus and interests go out to the System Center products and how they make the private cloud. MVA status: Gold

I first heard about MVA from a colleague and it directly caught my attention. I realized that MVA really consolidates and categorizes a lot of useful resources that are out on the internet.

Starting of with the knowledge I already had I took some tracks. It was fun to do and there were some nice "to know's". Later on I also started some tracks of which I knew I could use a knowledge boost.

I must admit that collecting points is also stimulating and these factors keep me going in the Virtual Academy. Even after completing the tracks, I sometimes go back to certain modules to quickly find and access the resources.

What’s your favorite training on MVA (track or course)? Which one(s) would you recommend?

One of my favorite tracks is "Microsoft Virtualization for VMware professionals - Management". In these tracks IT infrastructure expert Corey Hynes and Microsoft Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman really give a clear view about managing the datacenter and eventually managing a private cloud. Yeah I really spent some online time with those two. It made me realize that I was actually becoming a geek (don't know if that's a good thing :-)).

What’s your advice for ambitious MVA newbies who want to improve their ranking?

Yes, you need a lot of time... I would suggest to start with something you already know. Find out if you get extra's out of it and just take the assessments. For the things you don't know a lot about... Take one module at the time and don't  take the assessments before you have enough knowledge, you'll just become frustrated doing all the questions again and again. Also remember that you get a second shot if you fail an assessment for the first time, but this is only the first time so be aware.

…

Next week Marcelo Estrada Molina (Platinum status) will share his passion for the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Haven’t signed up for MVA yet? Now is the time to do so! You can get a FREE Welcome Pack (including an exclusive T-shirt and laptop sticker) until the end of May (only for Belgians). Here’s what you need to do:

- Register now on http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- Send the URL of your MVA profile (example) to tnbewm@microsoft.com along with T-Shirt size and shipping info
- Check your mailbox and open your Welcome Pack

Please read the terms and conditions of this promotion.

Microsoft’s new certifications help bridge the IT skills gap as new jobs are created by the cloud demand deeper understanding and more rigorous trainings.

As Microsoft technology moves to the cloud, so does its certification program.

The Microsoft Certification Program is raising the bar and validate now a broader and deeper set of skills to build Microsoft technology solutions in the cloud or on-premise, and a more comprehensive approach than certifications about individual components or aspects of a single Microsoft technology. 

The Expert level is Microsoft’s flagship product for those who want to lead their company’s journey to the cloud.   It is the destination for established IT Professionals and Developers who have expertise working with Microsoft technology solutions. 

The Associate level is the prerequisite certification necessary to get your Expert level certification. 

After people have achieved their Expert level certification, The Master level is for the select few who wish to further differentiate themselves from their peers.

Read the whole program here.

This TechNet event is free of charge and we will be giving away one Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone in each location.

Agenda:

We’re looking forward to meet you at one of the Private Cloud Roadshow events!

The Microsoft TechNet team

If you missed TechDays 2012 in Belgium (Braine l’Alleud), there is no way to bring you back the whole 10th anniversary experience. That’s the bad news, the good news however is that we go a long way and bring you a recorded video of each of the sessions so you can learn from the best.

From now on, you can browse all the sessions, view them online or download to your favorite media player and download the slides.

We welcomed many top speakers like Scott Guthrie, Brian Keller, Jeff Prosise, … in the developer track and Ward Ralston, Corey Heynes, John Craddock, … in the IT Pro track.

Happy learning and feel free to share your thoughts about TechDays 2012 via #techdaysbe!

PS. The Microsoft Extended Experts Team (MEET) made this awesome video, interviewing attendees and sharing their thoughts about TechDays 2012.

Join us for the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012, the next release of the Microsoft Cloud-Ready Information Platform that is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2012. During the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012 we'll offer you 12 webcasts over 12 hours starting 12:12 CET on February 24th (too bad February 12th is a Sunday).

Together with our 12 speakers, both local and international, we'll walk you through the all new innovations we're bringing to the platform, or as we call them "The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012". Our speakers will dive into all the new things around Business Intelligence, Tier-1 Performance & Reliability, the Manageability enhancements and of course the Cloud readiness and integration of SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure.

Make sure to Register Today and explore the next release of SQL Server 2012 together with us.

Agenda:

Just 1 more week to benefit from a 15% discount on your ticket for TechDays 2012: the Early Bird pricing ends on December 21. Registrations are coming in strong, so be sure to secure your spot before we sell out!

Top Speakers

Developer Track	Alex Turner	Brian Keller	Jeff Prosise
IT Pro Track	Corey Hynes	John Craddock	Adam Hall

We are happy to confirm speakers like:

- In the Developer track: Alex Turner, Brian Keller, Bart De Smet, Gill Cleeren, Jeff Prosise, Maarten Balliauw, Matt Milner, Ben Riga, Steve Sanderson, Nikhil Kothari, Rob Miles, Tarek Madkour, Wade Wegner

- In the IT Pro track: John Craddock, Kurt Roggen, Ilse Van Criekinge, Adam Hall, Corey Hynes, Kim Oppalfens, Mike Resseler, Dan Holme 

International speakers are teamed up with our local experts to give you a top content mix.

TechDays program: 80% of agenda is finalized

This year promises to bring a lot of new content from Microsoft. Looking at the next versions of tooling, languages, OS and management you know this is not a standard TechDays event. Our content is split into current and upcoming technology.

Deep Dives (February 16)

Peter Himschoot and Jurgen Postelmans (U2U) will be delivering a full day .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio (Dev11) Futures for Web Development Deep Dive covering all the latest and greatest in .NET 4.5, focusing on Web Development with ASP.NET, HTML5 and WCF.

Rhonda Layfield will be delivering a full day deep dive covering all the different tools and techniques to deploy Windows 7, she will also cover the upcoming Windows OS deployment tools.

Mike Resseler & Tom Shinder will deliver a full day covering private cloud topics, including Management and Operations of your private cloud infrastructure.

About TechDays 2012

Join our 10^th anniversary edition in a new location (Kinepolis Imagibraine - Braine l'Alleud) and learn about:
• Windows & Internet Explorer
• Windows Server 8 & Hyper-V
• Windows Phone 7 development
• System Center 2012 & Windows Intune
• Tooling and languages with Visual Studio, C# and VB Futures
• Next generation apps
• Cloud development with Windows Azure Platform
• Web development with HTML5, JavaScript and ASP.NET
• ...

> REGISTER NOW

Hope to see you at the TechDays 2012!

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or simply via e-mail.

 
Below you can find the slides and videos of our MDOP event covering 3 solutions: MBAM, DaRT and AGPM

Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM)

Video: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/microsoft-bitlocker-administration-and-monitoring-mbam

Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART)

Video: http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/edge/Hh706158

 Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)

Video: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/advanced-group-policy-management-agpm

System Center solutions help you manage your physical and virtual IT environments across datacenters, desktops, and devices. Using these integrated and automated management solutions, you can be a more productive service provider for your business. System Center captures and aggregates knowledge about systems, policies, processes, and best practices so that you can optimize your infrastructure to reduce costs, improve application availability, and enhance service delivery.

Available System Center 2012 Products:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RC provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
  
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection RC, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
  
• System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
  
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
  
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
  
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
  
• System Center App Controller 2012 Beta provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
  
• System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
  

We’ve started publishing the confirmed speakers and sessions for TechDays Belgium 2012.

Session listing:

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Sessions.aspx

Speaker Details:

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Home.aspx#p=speakers

In the past I always used slideshare to share some of my slide decks onto my blog or other places. Now I’ve discovered that there is an easy way to do it using the sydrive and web apps service from Microsoft.

How will we use this is in the future? First of all we created a TechNet  skydrive (account) and upload all our livemeeting slide decks onto this. Once this is done we can start sharing not only the plain files but also embedding this into our blogs.

How can you do this?

Step 1 Open your skydrive account upload a deck or select the deck that you want to embed.

Step 2 Embed the slide deck into your blogpost.

Once you selected the slide deck you need to click on Embed (see image on the left)

The following window will then appear. Here you click on generate HTML.

Step 3 Copy the html code into your blogpost.

This will be the result in your blog.

System Center solutions help you manage your physical and virtual IT environments across datacenters, desktops, and devices. Using these integrated and automated management solutions, you can be a more productive service provider for your business. System Center captures and aggregates knowledge about systems, policies, processes, and best practices so that you can optimize your infrastructure to reduce costs, improve application availability, and enhance service delivery.

Available System Center 2012 Products:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RC provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
  
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection RC, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
  
• System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
  
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
  
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
  
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
  
• System Center App Controller 2012 Beta provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
  
• System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
  

Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 7

About this video

While still many people are reluctant to implement Unified Communication solutions, it is already a very mature technology. Find out how Microsoft Unified Communications can bring more value to your communications solutions and why this is something you really want even to replace or surround your existing PBX solution.

Download the slides.

Speaker: Nico Sienaert

Extra resources

About the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset

DaRT Technical Documentation

DaRT in the TechNet Library

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack Blog

Next events

Feel free to have a look at the list of upcoming events run by the Microsoft Community in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Several times a month we organize TechNet Live Meetings: online sessions, lasting typically 1,5h, presented by local tech influencers, broadcast from our Zaventem office (or elsewhere) and free to attend.

Each session is recorded and made available online on our video platform TechNet Edge: http://aka.ms/technetedge.

In the next few weeks the following webcasts are scheduled:  

Lingering objects in Active Directory!
22 November 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
Lingering objects is a problem you do not want to encounter, how to prevent it is important and how to solve it when you do encounter it. In addition, how to distinguish a false positive from a real issue… all of that and more will be addressed in this 400 level session.

Speaker Ward Pauwels

New world of Datacenter: Managing your IAAS Private cloud with System Center
30 November 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
The move to private clouds is part of the evolution of the data center, from a basic warehouse of information to a smarter, more agile delivery of services. Data centers started out as self-contained entities and grew into something complex as you added server after server after server. Virtualization has consolidated the physical server layer, helping companies save on real estate, power and cooling costs. But it creates a new challenge – managing all of the physical and virtual servers. It has become harder to manage what you cannot physically reach out and touch. To help you manage that infrastructure we need to move to the New world of Datacenter and we will explain what it takes to do that.

Speaker Kenny Buntinx

How do you use System Center in the Private Cloud?
01 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
SCOM, SCCM, SCORCH and so on are all products within the System Center suite. In this session, we will have a look on how you can start from the business idea of the Private Cloud and use System Center to manage the Private Cloud.

Speaker Mike Resseler

Integrating AD RMS with Exchange, Exchange Online in Office 365 and Windows Phone 7
06 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract    
Integrating AD RMS with Exchange or Office 365 adds an additional layer of security on top of your data whenever it is shared through email by preventing certain user actions like forwarding, printing, saving attachments etc. In this webcast we will go through the details of the marriage between AD RMS and Exchange 2010 SP1 on-prem, Office 365 and Windows 7. We’ll discuss the limitations or Rights Management and go through the steps needed to setup, configure and integrate AD RMS with both on-prem and cloud deployments.

Speaker Michael Van Horenbeeck

Microsoft technologieën voor consumerization
08 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language Dutch

Abstract
Klanten – zowel interne als externe – worden steeds veeleisender. De IT afdeling dient zich aan te passen aan deze veranderende behoeften. In deze sessie kom je meer te weten over de strategieën en technologieën die aangewend kunnen worden om deze nieuwe manier van werken te omarmen.

Microsoft Technologies for Consumerization explained
08 December 2011
Timing 19:30 – 21:00 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
Customers (internal / external) are getting more and more demanding. IT needs to adapt to these changing needs of our customers. Follow this session to get more information about the strategies and technologies that can be used for embracing this new way of working.

SQL Server 2012 Licensing Update
13 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:00 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

More information on the agenda will follow soon. You may already follow our speaker, Rebekka Van Acker: http://twitter.com/rebekkava

Speaker Rebekka Van Acker

Datacenter & Branch Resiliency in Lync
15 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
​A phone must always have a Dial tone that is something that has been around for a long while. Even Microsoft Lync can give you the very same experience and even do more interesting stuff with resiliency.

Speaker: to be announced soon.

SCSM 2012 Orchestrator / VMM Integration
15 December 2011
Timing 19:00 – 20:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
The upcoming version of Service Manager 2012 will deliver standardized, compliant, and automated IT as a Service. Two aspects where Service Manager has a great added value in the automated IT as a Service is in the CMDB creation/maintenance and the automation through the integration with other System Center products. Service Manager 2012 includes two new connectors to help in this automation, the System Center Virtual Machine connector and Orchestrator connector. This session will run through the configuration of these connectors and will demonstrate where this additional functionality provided by the connectors can be used.

Speaker Kurt Van Hoecke

Kerberos authentication – how it works!
20 December 2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
What interaction is happening when users are authenticating or accessing resources, how does a user get his Kerberos tickets and many more Kerberos related questions will be answered in this 400 level session.

Speaker Ward Pauwels

System Center ConfigMgr 2012 Advanced Infrastructure – The Ins and Outs

Abstract
​ConfigMgr 2012 is a new release, with quite a few changes to the underlying infrastructure. These changes range from items that impact day-to-day operations that will have their consequences for all customers to items, to items that are only relevant in multi-site environment over items that could impact your brand new Configuration manager 2012 design. This sessions will talk about the ins and outs of changes in the infrastructure and their consequence.

Speaker Kim Oppalfens

 

The Microsoft Community in Belgium is also organizing a number of interesting events in the next few months: feel free to have a look at our events page (Dutch | French) to see which events the user groups and other influencers have planned.

Starting today (November 2, 2011) registrations for the Belgian TechDays 2012 are OPEN!

About Microsoft TechDays

Year after year thousands of technology professionals come together to network with peers and experts, while diving deep into Microsoft technologies and learning about the latest products and solutions. Microsoft TechDays is one of the premier technical events in Belgium & Luxembourg and not to be missed.

With more technology areas than ever to explore, TechDays 2012 is the perfect place to get up-to-speed on the latest Microsoft technologies and up-level your skill on the technology you use every day. Content will be delivered by industry experts and Microsoft product team members.

Register now
 
Join our 10^th anniversary edition in a new location (Kinepolis Imagibraine - Braine l'Alleud) and learn about:

• Windows & Internet Explorer
• Windows Server & Hyper-V
• Windows Phone 7 development
• System Center 2012 & Windows Intune
• Tooling and languages with Visual Studio, C# and VB
• Cloud development with Windows Azure Platform
• Web development with HTML5, JavaScript and ASP.NET
• ...

Kinepolis Imagibraine

After 3 great years in Metropolis Antwerp we’re moving TechDays to a new location: Kinepolis Imagibraine in Braine l’Alleud (Eigenbrakel). The movie theatre is easily reachable both by car and via public transportation.

  

If you’re coming by train: the Braine l’Alleud train station is very well connected with major cities in Belgium:

- Antwerp: direct connection from Antwerpen-Centraal taking approx. 1 hour
- Ghent: 1 hour trip from Gent Sint-Pieters, switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Brugge: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Hasselt: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Leuven: 50 min trip switching trains once at Brussel-Noord
- Mons: 1 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Namur: 1 hour trip switching trains once at Charleroi-Sud
- Liège: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Brussels: 15 minutes from Brussel-Zuid

There is a direct bus line (bus 67 from the TEC company) running from the Braine l’Alleud train station to Kinepolis Imagibraine, taking about 10 minutes.

Coming by car? Kinepolis Imagibraine is just 5 minutes from the R0 highway (exit 24). Driving directions are available here.

The SMB MVPs are delighted to bring their International SMB MVP Community Roadshow to Brussels on November 29th 2011.

This is a chance to hear first-hand from your peers in the field how they are implementing the New SMB Stack from Microsoft and see it actually demo’s on current shipping HP Hardware. This is not a canned sales pitch, this is a live demo by some of the SMB MVP's on real world scenarios they are deploying today.

Each stop on the tour will be a little different as the presenters change as the tour progresses and they also have to flexibility to shape the discussion to fit the local audience.

This is a free event, but you must register to attend.
Agenda of the day:

• Windows Multipoint Server
• HP Hardware
• SBS 2011 Standard/Premium and SBS 2011 Essentials
• Swing migration

At the end of the day we will also announce a new Belgian Usergroup focusing onto Small Business server.

Find the full agenda here

Don’t miss this unique opportunity and Register now, it’s Free.

November 29, 2011

Microsoft
Da Vincilaan 3
1935 Zaventem

Register now for the following TechNet Webcasts scheduled in October and November 2011:

Abstract
Microsoft acquired AVIcode at the end of 2010. Starting the day the deal closed Microsoft have been working hard to integrate the AVIcode technologies into Operations Manager 2012 and with the beta release we will show you the first phase of the new .NET Monitoring features that are focused on IIS 7 hosted web applications and services.

Speaker Alexandre Verkinderen

Abstract
BitLocker (To Go) is one of the features that are shipped with Windows 7. First, what is the best approach to deploy this in an enterprise? How does this integrate with OS Deployment? How do you keep control? And how do you recover? Second, Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM). What is this tool? Does it have any added value for you? If you want to have answers on these questions you cannot miss this session!

Speaker Nico Sienaert

 

 

Abstract
With natural disasters like earthquakes and fires in the news so often, and the economy still struggling to stabilize, IT Professionals know that many disasters can shut down a SQL Server. Microsoft has already implemented a lot of high availability solutions in previous editions of SQL Server, like failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping,... But, when it comes to high availability, Denali changes the game for SQL Server deployments by introducing SQL Server AlwaysOn.

Speaker Pieter Vanhove

 

Abstract
In this session we will dive into the differences and similarities when comparing Exchange Online to Exchange On Premises, and things to keep in mind when going for Rich Coexistence.

Speaker Ilse Van Criekinge

Abstract
This session shows off the new features of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services in SQL Server code-named “Denali”. We will highlight the migration process and the benefits of the new SSIS server architecture. We cover the many improvements made to increase developer productivity,as well as the enhancements to the current configuration,deployment,and management experiences.

Speaker Wesley Backelant

Abstract
Virtualization is a hot topic. Each IT Pro is nowadays involved in a project that includes some level of virtualization. As a consequence, the question ‘how to license my virtual environment’ pops up more and more. During this licensing Live Meeting, we will go through the most common virtual scenario’s (VDI, application server virtualization, Windows Server virtualization) and how to license them.

Speaker Rebekka Van Acker

Abstract
The upcoming version of Service Manager 2012 will deliver standardized, compliant, and automated IT as a Service. Different new functionality like the new self-service portal, Release Management and the enhanced reporting functionality are already announced. This session will focus on the new Silverlight based SharePoint self-service portal, service catalog & service requests. How do you prepare your Service Manager environment for the self-service portal and how you can bring this information in the portal are questions that should be answered after attending this session. The session will be nearly all demos, we start with the scenario and run through the configuration of the Service Manager environment.

Speaker Kurt Van Hoecke 

Abstract
While still many people are reluctant to implement Unified Communication solutions, it is already a very mature technology. Find out how Microsoft Unified Communications can bring more value to you communications solutions and why this is something you really want even to replace or surround your existing PBX solution.

Speaker Johan Delimon

Abstract
Join us in this Live Meeting to learn about all the key features of System Center Advisor. We will demonstrate all of them and explain how they can be useful for your environment.

Speaker Arne Peleman

Abstract
Many IT departments take a proactive approach to backing up network data, but tend to be reactive in planning for desktop system failures. The most common solution is to reimage the machine, but that can result in loss of user settings, personalization, and potentially data. Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset can help you save time and reduce the challenges associated with troubleshooting and repairing system failures. Do you want to see the first look-and-feel of this new release, do you want to know what does it offer and can it be used on an enterprise? If you want answers on these questions you need to attend this session.

Speaker Nico Sienaert

Abstract
Lingering objects is a problem you do not want to encounter, how to prevent it is important and how to solve it when you do encounter it. In addition, how to distinguish a false positive from a real issue… all of that and more will be addressed in this 400 level session.

Speaker Ward Pauwels

Abstract
The move to private clouds is part of the evolution of the data center, from a basic warehouse of information to a smarter, more agile delivery of services. Data centers started out as self-contained entities and grew into something complex as you added server after server after server. Virtualization has consolidated the physical server layer, helping companies save on real estate, power and cooling costs. But it creates a new challenge – managing all of the physical and virtual servers. It has become harder to manage what you cannot physically reach out and touch. To help you manage that infrastructure we need to move to the New world of Datacenter and we will explain what it takes to do that.

Speaker Kenny Buntinx 
 

The Microsoft Community in Belgium is also organizing a number of interesting events in the next few months: feel free to have a look at our events page (Dutch | French) to see which events the user groups and other influencers have planned.

Want to build your own Private Cloud Infrastructure? Start with downloading the evaluation software you need:

Download the software*

Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1:  Datacenter or Enterprise to implement Hyper-V

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with SP1:    Free Server just Hyper-V No Windows Server (Free)

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1: VMware , Hyper-V  both be managed by this current product

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta: Next version of VMM where we include the notion of fabric controller and XEN support.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2: SCOM helps you monitor what’s going on real time with your operations

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3: The product that helps you roll out clients or servers and properly configure them and baseline them.

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2: The next version of SCCM which is really a brand new product.

Register now for the following TechNet Webcasts:

Abstract
Prepare your environment for the next version of SCOM (System Center Operations Manager). This session will give you a start point to prepare your environment and yourself when SCOM 2012 is released to migrate to the new version. What are the things to keep in mind to make sure the transition will go as smoothly as possible. We'll go over the different steps of backing up, documenting and checking your environment which is in place today to make sure the transition will go a smooth as possible.

Speaker Dieter Wijckmans

Abstract
Multiple technologies exist to help you to make your legacy applications work on Windows 7. But what about security? Can all of these be used in a secure way or do you have to make a trade-off? If so, what are the risks? In this presentation, we'll go through Application-compatibility best-practices and technologies such as Shimming, XP-mode, MED-V, IE-compatibility mode, EMET and others and look at their impact on the security of the platform.

Speaker Raf Cox

Abstract
Attend this TechNet Live Meeting, presented by Mike Resseler, and learn all about the next version of Windows Intune. 2 timeslots are available for this session (same content): 1 in the afternoon (14:00 - 15:30) and 1 in the evening (19:30 - 21:00).

Speaker Mike Resseler



 

Abstract
With the launch of Office 365, we introduce a new purchase model for Microsoft Office. As an IT Pro, it is important to know the implications of these newly introduced use rights. We go through some popular questions like: 'Do we count the number of devices (as with Office 2010 in Volume Licensing) or per user?' 'Are there still Software Assurance Benefits?' 'Is remote desktop still possible?'... Don't miss this session if your company plans or considers to migrate to Office365 !

Speaker Rebekka Van Acker

Abstract
With different options available for migrating to Office 365, choosing the right migration path might seem a daunting task. This session will cover the different paths, varying from a simple and quick migration from either an on-premise Exchange server or hosted mail service up to a long-term hybrid coexistence scenario with Exchange 2010 SP1 on-premise. We will talk about planning, preparation and execution: how best to do it, discuss the challenges and how to overcome them.

Speaker Michael Van Horenbeeck

The Microsoft Community in Belgium is also organizing a number of interesting events in the next few months. Our selection:

• BIWUG: SQL Server for SharePoint Geeks and Office 365 from a Technical Perspective (08/09/2011)
• First MIC Thursday @ MIC Brussels (15/09/2011)
• Pro-Exchange: Exchange & Lync Hardware Load Balancers // Exchange 2010 SP2: What's new (22/09/2011)
• SCUG: System Center Orchestrator Notes From The Field (29/09/2011)
• AZUG: Developing and deploying Identity-enabled applications for the cloud (29/09/2011)
• Prepare for Microsoft Certifications Exam 70-640: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring (29/09/2011)
• MIC Mons: Windows Azure: Session découverte (03/10/11)

We kicked off the TechNet Summer 3 weeks ago where we invited you to dive into the Microsoft Virtualization Technology (Part 1) and Desktop Deployment.
 

Now it's time for the 3rd topic: Microsoft Virtualization Technology (Part 2)

Microsoft has a virtualization strategy that will help you virtualize your Datacenter & Desktop in the Cloud. Which is why in part 2 we will be talking about:

• Private Cloud Computing
• How to use System Center to manage your private cloud infrastructure

Discover now what we have selected for you as content with the TechNet team.

Microsoft Virtualization Technology (Part 2) is the third topic that we're diving into this summer. You can expect one last topic by mid-August on the 'Best of TechDays 2011'. So keep an eye on your mailbox and dive into TechNet this summer!

Find all the information here !

And of course: enjoy your holiday!

The TechNet Belux Team

PS. Don't forget to take the quiz and win!

We're giving our TechNet newsletters a holiday feeling with four different topics in a bite-size format. The second topic of this summer edition is about Desktop Deployment.
Desktop deployment involves much more than just, say, migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. In fact it's mainly about managing your desktop and application infrastructure effectively. This is where you'll find information about defining an optimized desktop and why a properly managed desktop has a good TCO.
We'll also be looking at the new tools in MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) and, of course, how to use the cloud with Windows Intune.
The following topics are covered:

• Application Compatibility
• Office 2010 Deployment - Office 365
• Desktop Optimization Pack
• Windows 7 Deployment
• Internet Explorer 9
• Windows Intune