Download and examine the FFIEC’s “Pandemic Flu Exercise of 2007 After Action Report” immediately, and disseminate their findings across your organization. \this is the only large-scale testing of business pandemic plans ever conducted.

The recent swine flu outbreaks highlight the need for organizations to have pandemic plans in place. Gartner has comprehensive research related to pandemic planning that can be found here.  Immediate steps for organizations to take include: Monitor...

Spreading in the United States, Canada and Europe, the Swine flu now displays “a significant upward shift in risk for a pandemic,” or global scourge according to WHO. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication...

To ease the application compatibility issues for migrating to Windows 7, Microsoft is going to incorporate the Virtual PC technology in to the Windows 7 operating system. The Windows XP applications will be published and run within the Windows 7 Desktop...

Impressive virtualization case study from Kroll Factual Data. Some highlights: · A ble to develop, test and deploy new products within three days. · A datacenter which has the ability to deploy additional computing resources in less than 15 minutes...

Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental and business benefits of adopting a Green IT environment. This interactive presentation highlights how virtualization facilitates a Green IT environment. It describes the Hyper-V server...

This online course provides IT Professionals the knowledge to implement and manage Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008. Topics covered in the clinic include: · Implementation of Terminal Services · Working with Terminal Services RemoteApp,...

This online course provides IT Professionals the knowledge to implement and manage Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Topics covered in the clinic include: · Features and functionalities of VMM · Implementation and management...

This online course provides IT Professionals the knowledge to implement and manage Microsoft Application Virtualization. Topics covered in the clinic include: · Features and functionalities of Application Virtualization · Deployment and maintenance...

This 2-hour online course provides IT Professionals the knowledge to implement and manage Hyper-V in an IT environment. Topics covered in the course include: · Features of Hyper-V · Features of server consolidation · Hyper-V implementation ...

The latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) has been released. It provides an in-depth perspective on the changing threat landscape including software vulnerability disclosures and exploits, malicious software (malware), and potentially unwanted...

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide...

Collection 6899: Exploring Features of Exchange Server 2010 This two-hour collection provides you with an overview of the new features in Exchange Server 2010. It also describes the enhancements made over Exchange Server 2007. The clinics within this...

Attached is a sample report produced using the MAPS toolkit . The Application Virtualization Assessment report identifies the applications and computers within your environment that are capable of supporting a Microsoft Application Virtualization environment...

For my desktop deployment projects i recommend to use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit that will find computers on a network and perform a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry...

There is a new whitepaper released which discusses the planning and implementation of a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 public key infrastructure (PKI) that utilizes fully Suite B compliant cryptographic algorithms. It describes...

When installed in a supported Linux virtual machine running on Hyper-V, the Linux Integration Components provide. Driver support for synthetic devices: The Linux integration components include support for both the synthetic network controller and...

To draft the desktop SLA's its important you build a service map to identify the service componenets and dependencies. A service map represents a service from the perspective of the business and user. It is divided into the following sections: · Customers...

Attached is a sample desktop services SLA which i refer to my customers when they ask for it. Keep in mind that the SLA is a customer document, and should be kept free of technical jargon.

About 80 percent of server deployments in the Microsoft IT data centers are deployed as virtual servers via Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology. To ensure optimal performance, Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) has developed configuration...

At Microsoft, server virtualization has become a primary way to address data-center power consumption, to address space issues, and to rationalize server utilization. To optimize deployment and management of thousands of virtual machines, Microsoft Information...

Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption (BitLocker) is a data protection feature included with Windows Server 2008. BitLocker is an operating system–based software capability that works with features in server hardware and firmware to provide secure operating...

The same security measures and hardening you would apply to a physical computer should be applied to virtual machines. You should perform hardening steps for the virtual machine's server role as indicated in the “Server Role Security Configuration” section...

The following recommended best practices can help you enhance security when configuring virtual machines on servers running the Hyper-V role: · Configure virtual machines to use fixed-sized virtual hard disks. · Store virtual hard disks and snapshot...

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 implements role-based security to provide finer control over who can do what within the virtualized environment. This new security model supports delegated administration, which was not available in VMM...