The new edition of TechNet ON is designed to help you keep your Windows servers in top condition and make your job of managing and maintaining Windows servers, well… less of a job. And the first thing that job shouldn’t is a reactive manual exercise in frustration. We’ve collected the management and maintenance tools and the guidance to help you address issues before they become problems.
More to come,
Mitch
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Microsoft has released the latest Security Bulletin for December 2010.
For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.
For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.
Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on December 15, 2010, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the December Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.
You can now register to download the 120-day trial or the virtual hard drive 180-day trial of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1.
You can also review the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 system requirements or Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 VHD system requirements.
Two limited Community Technology Previews will be available before the end of 2010: The SQL Azure Reporting CTP and the SQL Azure Data Sync CTP 2.
SQL Azure Reporting enables developers to enhance their applications by embedding cloud based reports on information stored in a SQL Azure database, and author reports using familiar SQL Server Reporting Services tools and then use these reports in their applications which may be on-premises or in the cloud.
The update to SQL Azure Data Sync enables synchronization between on-premises SQL Server and SQL Azure, giving customers greater flexibility in building solutions that span on-premises and the cloud.
Sign up for the CTPs via Microsoft Connect.
Microsoft yesterday announced Silverlight 5. With beta availability scheduled for the first half of 2011, the next release of Silverlight sports more than 40 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications with desktop features in the browser and dramatic video quality and performance improvements.
Key media and UI improvements include:
Silverlight 5 was announced during a day-long Firestarter event. You can view the Silverlight Firestarter webcast on demand.
For more detail on the upcoming release, see Scott Guthrie’s blog.
For the month of December, Microsoft is offering a free four-day online training program to help you make the transition to the cloud. The program is four hours per day for each of the four days. Find the dates and times for your region and register here.
The sessions are geared for technical decision makers who have at least an intermediate knowledge of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or later and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 or later, along with a basic technical understanding of cloud services. See the Practice Accelerator prerequisites.
For more on the Practice Accelerator for Cloud Services, see the US SMB&D TS2 Team Blog post.