Quickly understand what hardware, architecture, and configuration settings will produce recommended system performance and message throughput results for comprehensive protection of your Exchange Servers. Download the free Forefront Security for Exchange Server SP1 capacity planning tool, an excel spreadsheet with built in workflow, that applies to the Forefront Security for Exchange Server SP1 product. You’ll be able to plan the details for a new deployment or understand the impact of adding security protection to an existing deployment.
More to come,
Mitch
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Microsoft today took the wraps off Bing, the new search (scratch that!) decision engine, which takes a new approach to the user experience by offering intuitive tools to help customers accomplish tasks and make smart decisions. The new service, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on June 3. In the meantime, you can visit http://www.Bing.com and watch the video to get a feel for how Bing facilitates your decision in four key areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.
In addition, the new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:
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Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.
Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. More information coming soon.
Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.
Service Pack 2, the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is now available for public download. SP2 supports new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, and simplifies deployment, for consumers, developers, and IT professionals. For more details, see these TechNet pages:
· Windows Vista SP2 TechNet
· Windows Server 2008 SP2 TechNet
Join the Microsoft Scripting Guys and more than 1,000 beginning and advanced scripters at this year’s Scripting Games. “I’m not good enough, so I shouldn’t participate.” Nonsense! This year’s Scripting Games are focused on learning and not on competition. Come on in, the scripting water’s fine! This year’s theme is the decathlon, so strap on your best scripting shoes and we’ll see you in June. Follow us on Twitter to find out about Scripting Games details as they are announced.
You can now download the evaluation version Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, which delivers end-to-end service management of applications and IT services running across the Windows, UNIX and Linux servers in your datacenter. Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides greater control and insight into the health and performance your Microsoft, UNIX and Linux servers, and the workloads running on them. With Operations Manager 2007 R2 you can reduce the cost of managing your datacenter, and assure delivery of IT services to expected and agreed levels.
The SharePoint team has discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007. During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes.
To work around this issue customers will need to re-enter their Product ID numbers (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. This KB article will be available within the next 48 hours for detailed steps.
For more on this issue, see this posting on the SharePoint Team blog.
The Service Level Dashboard Management Pack 2.0 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 assists you in tracking, managing, and reporting on your line-of-business (LOB) application service levels. It displays a list of applications and their performance and availability against service level goals.
Get it from the Download Center here
Download the step-by-step guide for setting up a test lab to demonstrate DirectAccess with a simulated Internet, intranet, and home network. DirectAccess is a new feature in the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that enables remote users to securely access intranet shares, Web sites, and applications without connecting to a virtual private network (VPN). This paper contains an introduction to DirectAccess and instructions for setting up a test lab to demonstrate DirectAccess using the Release Candidate versions of Windows 7 and Window Server 2008 R2.
Based on Windows Server 2008 R2, the Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is a preliminary release, allowing an early preview of planned functionality for HPC Server 2008 R2. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is an integrated x64-bit environment that helps system administrators quickly deploy a scalable, high-performance computing (HPC) platform that can be managed in a productive manner using familiar tools and technologies. Download the Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 CTP here.
The brand new SharePoint Server 2007 website is now live. First off, the site is powered by MOSS and takes advantage of the publishing feature and list driven content, which allows the SharePoint team to more quickly publish news, events, demos, and webcasts. It also uses Silverlight-enabled Web parts, which keeps the interface simple, elegant and dynamic. From the home page, you can watch customer videos, learn about events, download trial versions of the software and more. Check it out. There’s also a special experience for IT professionals.
Download the new TechNet Widget and you’ll be “in the know” real-time about the latest from Microsoft TechNet - breaking news, videos, webcasts, podcasts and TechNet Magazine highlights.
To get the TechNet Widget for your Blog
1. Embed the following code in your blog.
Code to embed à <script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/49d45d1f88625a2c/49f6001ebeae179b/49d45d1f88625a2c/44401045/widget.js"></script>
2. See sample implementation here
a. Go to http://blogs.technet.com/tnmag/ .
b. Scroll down to find the NEWS section in the right rail.
To get the TechNet Widget for your Desktop
1. Go to http://blogs.technet.com/tnmag/ .
2. Scroll down to find the News section in the right rail.
3. Click Get & Share
4. Click Vista
5. Click Copy link
6. Enter the link in your browser address bar
7. Click Save to save the gadget to your desktop
8. Click Add Gadgets”
9. Click the Microsoft TechNet gadget to add it to your Gadget Gallery
10. The final Widget looks like this
Voting for the contest ends Sunday, May 24, 2009. Go explore orbit via rocketship, escape zombies or launch your boss as you test out the 16 different Silverlight games vying for the $5,000 top prize in Server Quest II.
Microsoft has released Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 and it’s now time for customer feedback. MSDN subscribers can download the Beta today. For the rest of you, the Beta will be publicly available tomorrow. For more on how to get the beta, plus the Visual Studio 2010 datasheet, go to the Visual Studio 2010 product page.
Check out these updated utilities from the Sysinternals team:
· Autoruns v9.5
This update to Autoruns, a powerful autostart manager, adds display of audio and video codecs, which are gaining popularity as an extension mechanism used by malware to gain automatic execution
· PsLoglist v2.7
PsLoglist, a command-line event log display utility, now properly displays event log entries for default event log sources on Windows Vista and higher and accepts wildcard matching for event sources.
Microsoft has release the beta 2 of the claims-based user access platform code named “Geneva.”
“Geneva” includes three components for enabling claims-based access:
· "Geneva" Server security token service (STS) supports the WS-Trust, WS-Federation, and SAML 2.0 protocols to enable secure single sign-on across organizations, platforms, and applications
· Windows CardSpace “Geneva” for helping users navigate access decisions and for developers to build customer authentication experiences for users
· “Geneva” Framework for building .NET applications that use claims to make user access decisions
Download “Geneva” Beta 2 here.
Want a quick way to check if you PC can run Windows 7?
In general, if your PC can run Windows Vista, it can run Windows 7. But if you're not running Windows Vista, or are just not sure if your system is ready to run Windows 7, download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta. The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta is a pre-release version, and is available in U.S. English only.
Check out the hosted virtual machine environment built for you to test drive System Center Service Manager. The version of Service Manager hosted in this virtual environment is the "CTP2" version which has only been released to TAP customers/partners until now. This version is available to the public only in the hosted environment. This is an opportunity to look at all the new features that have been added since the public beta and provide us feedback on the Service Manager Forum.
Check out the digital edition of TechNet Magazine, an exact digital copy of the print edition, but with added features that allow you to click on underlined areas to send an email or visit a website. You can access and search across all available issues.
Windows Server 2008 R2 RC includes several new capabilities, such as File Classification Infrastructure (FCI), a built-in solution for file classification and management. In addition, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V now gives customers the ability to scale up to 64 logical processors, delivers improved Web experiences with Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and offers increased hardware utilization and server availability with built-in Live Migration for virtualization technologies. Download Windows Server 2008 R2 RC here.
Check out the new Windows 7 Learning Portal to get the specific skills and knowledge you need to quickly become an expert on Windows 7. You’ll find a wide variety of Microsoft training, books, and certifications, plus free Learning Snacks videos around key Windows 7 capabilities, and other special offers.
Our popular and free standalone hypervisor, Hyper-V Server 2008, has reached another important milestone. The virtualization team announced the availability of the release candidate for Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Download the RC to experience the key new capabilities such as Live Migration and High Availability.
Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2003, from a remote computer that is running Windows 7 RC. It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system.
Download the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC
Do you frequently open the TechNet Flash newsletter, along with other e-mail, via your mobile phone? Check out our new mobile-friendly format, giving you a cleaner experience on your mobile device. Going forward, just click the TechNet Flash Mobile link on the gray bar at the very top of the newsletter to see the mobile version.
Windows Storage Server 2008 (WSS08), built upon Windows Server 2008, has been released to our OEM partners to build the great new capabilities into their storage appliances. New features include file de-duplication and an iSCSI software target for unified file- and block-based storage.
For more on the new features, check out the Windows Storage Server blog, and on May 7, tune in the webcast “Introducing Windows Storage Server 2008”.