Microsoft released a series of virtualization training videos and assessments on the Microsoft Virtual Academy:

www.MicrosoftVirtualAcademy.com.

• Virtualization Overview
• Differentiating Microsoft & VMware
• Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture
• High-Availability & Clustering

The MVA is a free portal for training related to Microsoft’s cloud solutions. 

In the near future Microsoft will be adding tracks about datacenter management (through System Center) and VDI.

The Microsoft Exchange team is enhancing positioning by including additional supported scenarios regarding Exchange Server 2010 running under hardware virtualization software. Now the following support scenarios are being updated, for Exchange 2010 SP1, and later:

• · The Unified Messaging server role is supported in a virtualized environment.
• · Combining Exchange 2010 high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers, is now supported.

Due to improvements Microsoft made in Exchange Server 2010 SP1, along with more comprehensive testing of Exchange 2010 in a virtualized environment, Microsoft provides additional deployment flexibility to customers. The updated support guidance applies to any hardware virtualization vendor participating in the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).

In addition, Microsoft also released the Best Practices for Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V whitepaper. This whitepaper is designed to provide technical guidance on Exchange server roles, capacity planning, sizing and performance, as well as high availability best practices.

Complete system requirements for Exchange Server 2010 running under hardware virtualization software can be found in Exchange 2010 System Requirements.

The Exchange Team announce that in the second half of calendar year 2011 it will be releasing Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) .

With SP2, the following new features and capabilities will be included:

• Outlook Web App (OWA) Mini: A browse-only version of OWA designed for low bandwidth and resolution devices. Based on the existing Exchange 2010 SP1 OWA infrastructure, this feature provides a simple text based interface to navigate the user’s mailbox and access to the global address list from a plurality of mobile devices.
• Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App: With Service Pack 2, you will have the ability to enable silent redirection when CAS must redirect an OWA request to CAS infrastructure located in another Active Directory site.  Silent redirection can also provide a single sign-on experience when Forms-Based Authentication is used.
• Hybrid Configuration Wizard: Organizations can choose to deploy a hybrid scenario where some mailboxes are on-premises and some are in Exchange Online with Microsoft Office 365. Hybrid deployments may be needed for migrations taking place over weeks, months or indefinite timeframes. This wizard helps simplify the configuration of Exchange sharing features, like: calendar and free/busy sharing, secure mailflow, mailbox moves, as well as online archive.
• Address Book Policies: Allows organizations to segment their address books into smaller scoped subsets of users providing a more refined user experience than the previous manual configuration approach.
• Customer Requested Fixes: All fixes contained within update rollups released prior to Service Pack 2 will also be contained within SP2.

Microsoft is continuing to move some of its SQL Server capabilities to the cloud and turn them into services.

The latest to join the coming SQL Azure services line-up — alongside the already announced (but still undelivered) SQL Azure Reporting Services — is complex-event processing. The cloud version of this capability is known as codename “Austin,” according to a couple of new Microsoft blog posts this week.

 Austin will be the service version of the StreamInsight complex-event-processing capabilities that are in SQL Server today. Complex event processing “enables real time insight into vast volumes of streaming data,” according to Microsoft’s explanation, which is distinct from, but related to, business intelligence, which “enables analytics and insight into a set of existing data to inform future decision making.”

Austin is being released in private Community Technology Preview (CTP) form now, but will be available as a public CTP, available from the SQL Azure Labs Site, in the second half of the year. Microsoft isn’t sharing publicly a release target for the final version of Austin.

By hosting StreamInsight on the Windows Azure platform, Microsoft will allow customers and partners “to build event-driven applications where the analysis of the events is performed in the cloud,” explained Zane Adam, a Microsoft General Manager of Azure and Middleware.

Among some of the potential scenarios where Austin could be used, as envisioned by Microsoft:

• Collecting data from manufacturing applications (e.g. real-time events from plant-floor devices and sensors)
• Financial trading applications (e.g. monitoring and capitalizing on current market conditions with very short windows of opportunity)
• Web analytics (e.g. immediate click-stream pattern detection and response with targeted advertising.)
• “Smart grid” management (e.g. infrastructure for managing electric grids and other utilities, such as immediate response to variations in energy to minimize or avoid outages or other disruptions of service).

Austin can help customers from having to implement complex event processing on-premises themselves, “but more importantly, be able to collect and process events from anywhere on the planet and derive trends from a vastly increased series of events since that data is sent to the cloud.”

Microsoft made a CTP for a database import/export capability available this week, as well. This capability is designed to allow SQL Azure database users to more simply archive SQL Azure and SQL Server databases, or to migrate on-premises SQL Server databases to SQL Azure, according to company officials.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-readies-austin-an-azure-hosted-event-processing-service/9494

Microsoft will be launching the Microsoft-hosted version of its Lync unified-communications server, known as Lync Online, alongside the rest of Office 365 this summer.
At the Microsoft TechEd 2011 show, company officials got more granular about what users should expect when, in terms of Lync Online features and functionality.

The on-premises version of Lync includes enterprise instant messaging, audio and video conferencing, support for presence and voice-over-IP (VOIP).

Microsoft has been touting the souped-up VOIP capabilities of Lync Server, such as its integration with e-mail, calendaring, IM and conferencing, calling that integrated functionality “enterprise voice.” Microsoft will be launching the Microsoft-hosted version of Lync as part of Office 365 — the successor to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Office 365 is Microsoft’s Google Apps competitor, consisting of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online — slated to launch in early June, last I heard.

At TechEd last week, Microsoft said there will be a Windows Phone 7 Lync mobile client available around the time that Microsoft’s “Mango” Windows Phone operating system update hits, which many of us Microsoft watchers are expecting to be later this fall. That client will offer business instant-messaging and presence support. But Microsoft officials are not promising — at least not at this point — that it will offer audio/video conferencing or enterprise voice.

Microsoft execs also conceded at TechEd that Lync Online will not support voice until some time after Office 365 launches. And enterprise voice? “Not supported” with no timeframe as to when/if it ever will be, according to this slide from a Microsoft presentation during the conference:

So what can Lync Online users expect, functionality-wise, once voice support is added to the service? According to this slide:

Users will be able to make/receive calls to any number, set incoming calls to ring on one’s mobile number and more.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-lync-online-whats-coming-when/9482

At TechEd North America Microsoft disclosed a lot of information about, and took System Center Orchestrator for a spin in it’s first public outing!

There is an interesting article on the Orchestrator Blog site with the details about the Beta and what to expect.

You can view the article here http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/archive/2011/05/17/what-to-expect-in-the-system-center-orchestrator-beta.aspx

Microsoft be running an Evaluation Program as announced here.

If you fill out the form for the Orchestrator CEP you will not only be part of the program which includes guided tours of the new features, ready made environments and calls with the Product Group, but you will also be notified the minute that the Beta is available to download!

The table below contains detailed information about the system requirements and other features of Orchestrator.