Attend a FREE three-day bootcamp for SPLA partners on high availability & disaster recovery (US ONLY)
Join Microsoft and partners by registering today to attend a 3-day boot camp in Chicago, Atlanta, or Redmond (Dallas, Boston & Silicon Valley currently being scheduled), and learn about techniques and best practices for designing high availability and disaster recovery for mission critical systems. HA/DR is an essential requirement faced by companies. Cloud service providers should incorporate these solutions to their offerings to support these needs in today’s market. The 3-day bootcamp will cover capabilities, configuration, and management of using Microsoft Windows, Microsoft System Center, and Microsoft SQL Server to support these scenarios. The bootcamp is at no-charge to SPLA partners.
Who should attend:This course is intended for technology professionals with a working knowledge of Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server administration. Familiarity with general high availability concepts, networking, Windows Failover Clustering would be beneficial.
Location
Dates
Invitation Key
Register
Chicago, IL
November 15th-17th
834561
Register Here
Atlanta, GA
December 6th- 8th
D01173
Redmond, WA
December 13th–15th
ED7A09
What is the News?
On October 13th, Microsoft announced that the /hosting mode option for deploying Exchange for multi-tenant hosting will not be carried forward into the next version of Exchange. Going forward (starting with Exchange 2010 SP2), hosters should use the on-premises configuration of Exchange to run a multi-tenant hosted Exchange infrastructure which will be fully supported by Microsoft and offers a broader set of features to be offered to end customers.
Hosters who have deployed Exchange 2010 SP1 /hosting have the following options:
Microsoft is also actively engaging with several hosting automation software vendors and SIs to ensure there are solutions in market for the on-premises configuration of Exchange Server 2010 SP2.
We want to hear your feedback on this announcement. Please send any questions or comments to: h o s t i n g b l o g [at] m i c r o s o f t [dot] com
Q: Why is Microsoft making this change?
A: We believe, after considering feedback from partners, this is the best, most flexible course of action available to support our hosting partners. This will ensure that hosters are able to offer a broader set of the features available in Exchange, and bring their solutions to market sooner.
Q: What are the hoster benefits of deploying an on-premises configuration of Exchange?
A: Our research tells us that customers are upgrading to Exchange 2010 to access advanced feature like Exchange Unified Messaging. Switching to the on-premises configuration of Exchange will allow hosters to offer many of these advanced features available in Microsoft Exchange in a fully supported model.
Q: Will Microsoft continue to offer bug and security fixes for Exchange 2010 /hosting mode?
A: Yes, Microsoft will continue to offer bug and security fixes for Exchange 2010 /hosting mode as per our standard product support lifecycle. Microsoft will not add new features to the /hosting mode of Exchange.
Q: Will Microsoft add any new features or capabilities to Exchange 2010 /hosting mode?
A: Microsoft will not be adding any new features or capabilities to Exchange 2010 /hosting mode. Microsoft will, however, continue to release bug and security fixes through the standard product support lifecycle.
Q: What new features in Exchange 2010 SP2 make it possible to host the on-premises configuration of Exchange 2010?
A: The key new feature which hosters will take advantage of is known as Address Book Policies (ABP). ABP allows for easy segmentation of the global address list, and will be the prescribed method for achieving this when running a multi-tenant hosting infrastructure. It is important to note that ABPs do not address all the configuration elements required for multi-tenancy; additional configuration guidance will be published by Microsoft later this year.
Q: How do I go about building a multi-tenant environment using Exchange 2010 SP2 on-premises configuration, and what will I have to do to make sure I still get support from Microsoft?
A: Later this year, we will publish hosting guidelines that will outline the challenges hosters will need to address when hosting a multi-tenant infrastructure using the on-premises version of Exchange 2010 SP2. The document will recommend the approach you should use to solve these challenges but will not provide step by step guidance on how to do it. This framework will also help you ensure you solution will be supported by Microsoft.
Q: Will HMC support be extended considering that the recommendation is to use Exchange 2010 SP2 which won’t be available until later this year?
A: HMC 3.5 support ended July 12, 2011. Microsoft will support HMC 4.x through December 12, 2011 as planned. The good news is that the upgrade from Exchange 2007 with HMC to Exchange 2010 SP2 using the on-premises configuration will be significantly more streamlined than an upgrade to Exchange 2010 using /hosting mode.
By Andrew Lund, EMEA Director, B2B Channels, Hosting and Partner Cloud, Microsoft Operator Channels
There are over 23 million small and medium businesses across Europe. In fact, 99 percent of all European businesses are SMBs, making them the backbone of the European economy. However – and unfortunately there’s no way of getting around it – the last few years have been tough, some countries and industries are faring better than others but what most SMBs have in common is that the last few years have left them lean and hungry.
There’s still an appetite for new technology but it’s being fueled from two different perspectives: one, a need to invest in preparation for recovery and growth; and two, a need to cut business costs further. One way to accomplish both those tasks is with cloud computing. According to our study earlier this year, the two key reasons to adopt cloud services are scalability and cost-efficiency. The research showed little difference in adoption rates between SMBs that expect to grow in the next three years and those solely focused on profitability, whereby just over 40 percent of both groups expect to be paying for cloud computing over the next few years. Growth companies seek a scalable environment that can meet their expanding needs, with an affordable, pay-as-you-go pricing model that eliminates the need for over-investment in IT. SMBs that want to maintain their size, but become more profitable, seek cost-effective, efficient solutions that match their needs for predictability and low overhead cost. Cloud services can serve both sets of criteria.
But just how do you reach over 23 million SMB customers? It’s a massive opportunity, but it’s also a massive challenge to reach and service that number of businesses, which is where our partners come into play. Local hosting service providers are useful, if not critical, to most small and medium businesses in terms of providing advice and support. They typically have existing direct relationships with SMBs and the key to removing many of the perceived risks of moving to the cloud and helping SMBs to realise the benefits of the cloud for their business.
Microsoft is currently running a series of marketing campaigns with partners, aimed at making cloud services more accessible to SMBs, allowing them to trial services such as web hosting, virtualized serves, online backup applications and realise the potential benefits of scalability and cost-efficiency. The joint campaigns – with hosters Rise (a division of Fasthosts), UKFast, Host Europe, STRATO, Argeweb and Doruknet – cover the UK and Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey and are designed to help businesses plan, build and deploy private and public cloud solutions based on Microsoft Hyper-V. The campaigns are running now until the end of the year. For more details visit the Microsoft News Center.