There is lot of information on various Microsoft websites and the Internet on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Technologies. This resource guide is an attempt to build a reference directory of useful links on SharePoint. This post gets updated every 2 months.

Getting Started

Product Homepages

Evaluation Guides

SharePoint 2010 Overview Evaluation Guide: Introduction and overview of SharePoint Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010 Walkthrough Guide: This walkthrough guide is designed to provide a step-by-step overview of Microsoft SharePoint 2010
SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide : Introduction and overview of SharePoint Server 2010 for IT pros
SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs: The SharePoint 2010 developer evaluation guide describes the SharePoint 2010 developer platform, including walkthroughs of some of the new capabilities for developers
Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products: Compares and contrasts search technologies in SharePoint 2010 Products
SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search Evaluation Guide: Describes the enterprise search features provided by Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Evaluation Guide: Describes the enterprise search features provided by Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
Office 2010: Product Guides: The Office 2010 product guides provide an overview of what's new in your favorite Microsoft Office programs and a deeper look at benefits across all Office 2010 programs, as well as Office Web Apps and Office Mobile 2010
Compare Office Professional Plus 2010 and the 2007 suite : Gives you an idea of how Office Professional Plus 2010 compares to Office Professional Plus 2007
Collaboration without compromise - SharePoint and Office 2010: The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of information workers

Getting started with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010; The content in the book covers information about how to get started with the installation, configuration, and upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
The content in this book is a copy of selected content in the SharePoint Server 2010 technical library as of the publication date. For the most current content, see the technical library on the Web.

Introduction Videos

What's New in SharePoint 2010 - learn about all of the new developer features in the SharePoint platform including tools, team sites, UI enhancements and a brief look back to understand how the SharePoint developer story has improved
How SharePoint 2010 Works - covers software and hardware requirements, and the basic concepts of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
What Can SharePoint Do For You? - Hear from SharePoint 2010 customers - Global Crossing, Associated Press, and many more. From ECM and WCM, to Collaboration and Search, SharePoint 2010 is delivering real results to our customers
What Can SharePoint 2010 Do for Me? - introduces Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 capabilities to IT professionals. Concepts covered include document sharing, lists, alerts, team sites, metadata, and more
SharePoint 2010 for Developers - hear how professional developers at Microsoft customers and Partners take advantage of new features in SharePoint 2010. In this segment we hear from Raymond James, Nintex and Intergen. They talk about the new Visual Studio 2010SharePoint developer tools, about business connectivity services for line of business data access and about Silverlight and the Client APIs for rich user interface.
SharePoint 2010 for IT Professionals - SharePoint 2010's new features and flexible deployment help IT Professionals improve productivity. Hear how these improvements benefit Raymond James and HP
SharePoint 2010 Communities: Allow Users to Connect, Innovate and Share - Social computing promotes sharing and openness within communities. Learn from customers how their enhanced people-centric collaboration solutions empowered their users and improved performance within the organization.
Increasing user productivity with SharePoint 2010 Search - General Mills created a state of the art research portal designed to simplify and expedite the researching process. Taking advantage of the conversational, visual and contextual capabilities of search, General Mills employees can make better informed and effective decisions, leading to new revenue opportunities
SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Drives Revenue - See how Seek.com brings job seekers, employers, and advertisers together.
Internet Digital Marketing with SharePoint 2010 - Digital Marketers today need to launch an increasing amount of websites quickly and easily. SharePoint 2010 shows marketers how to be competitive and build their business through digital marketing.

Total Economic Impact (TIE) White Papers

Optimizing your Business Productivity Infrastructure saves you time and money while increasing productivity and growth, ultimately adding more value to your business.

Drive Economic Impact with SharePoint 2010 - SharePoint 2010 enables organizations to drive productivity and create cost efficiencies through a unified collaboration platform. A study by Forrester examines the economic impact of SharePoint 2010.

Forrester Consulting: The TEI of Implementing Microsoft's Productivity Platform - Forrester cites improved productivity and cost savings resulting from the integration of Microsoft's latest Office productivity-related offerings.
Forrester Consulting: The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 - Forrester weighs in on the financial benefits of consolidating collaboration, enterprise content management and enterprise search by implementing SharePoint Server 2010.
Forrester Consulting: The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Office 2010 - Forrester outlines Total Economic Impact of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010.

Customer Success Stories

You can read the Customer success stories here.

Best Practices

Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 - Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 contains guidance documentation, detailed examples, and a reusable class library. These resources are designed to help solution developers and architects make the right decisions and follow proven practices when designing and developing applications for SharePoint 2010. The guidance focuses primarily on the building blocks that every developer needs to understand to become an effective SharePoint developer or architect
SharePoint Server 2010 Usage Best Practices White Paper: In this white paper, you will learn how to manage content effectively, how to choose the best option for displaying content, and the most effective way to find your content later.
Sharepoint Server 2010 Adoption Best Practices White Paper: In this white paper, you will learn how to plan, organize, and create a SharePoint adoption plan
SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning (white paper): this white paper uses a fictitious company named Contoso to provide guidance for the necessary governance planning and implementation of SharePoint Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010 Operations Framework and Checklists (white paper): This document details the operational processes, tasks, and tools that are required to operate and maintain a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment. It explains how the management of SharePoint Server 2010 fits in with the overall Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) model

Help and How-to Links

SharePoint Server Help - Training Courses

This helps you know the SharePoint features from a user perspective.

Make the switch to the new SharePoint 2010 user interface - shows you what to expect in terms of what's changed from previous versions, and how to quickly get up to speed doing the tasks you're used to doing
Share information in a central place - shows you how you can use SharePoint sites as a central place to store and share information with team members
Manage documents and content in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 - provides an overview of the new and updated document management features
Collaborate on documents and projects more efficiently - learn how to make the most out of SharePoint calendars, how to allow multiple people to author a document simultaneously, take your documents offline and then reconnect by using SharePoint Workspace, and how to manage a project in SharePoint and by using Project Task lists
Quickly find the resources you need to get your job done - search has been improved to help you quickly and easily find the documents you need to get your work done faster
SharePoint pages I: An introduction - introduction to the concept of pages on a SharePoint 2010 team site
SharePoint Lists I: An introduction - learn the basics of Lists
SharePoint lists II: Create and work with different lists - learn how to create your own list and how to group list items and set e-mail alerts for a list
SharePoint lists III: Create a list based on a spreadsheet - learn how to take a spreadsheet and make it into a SharePoint list
SharePoint Lists IV: Create a custom list - learn how to create your own custom list, a list with special columns that you define
Introduction to Web Content Management - provides an introduction to designing and authoring structured content pages on a publishing site using an approval workflow
My Sites: Connecting to people and information - shows you how to be more productive by using your My Site, social tagging, and related features
Introduction to Records Management and Compliance - introduces you to some of the new and improved records management and compliance features
Make Better Business Decisions - learn how to use a PerformancePoint dashboard to analyze potential business concerns, such as profitability, and then share information and recommendations with others in order to improve business decision making

Download Office 2010 training - Get free, downloadable versions of the following Office 2010 training courses. They're in PowerPoint 2010 format, so you can customize them for group training or view them on your desktop. SharePoint 2010 presentations available are:

Hardware and Software Requirements

An important note has been added to the guidance in this release - If you contact Microsoft technical support about a production system that does not meet the minimum hardware specifications described in this document, support will be limited until the system is upgraded to the minimum requirements. Click the links below for product wise guidance:

Download Software

Download and Use

Trial Version

Virtual Machine with Pre-configure software

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

Experience Online

Microsoft Office Web Apps - Business customers licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 through a Volume Licensing program can run Office Web Apps on-premises on a server running Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Download Microsoft Office Web Apps from the Volume Licensing Service Center. Office Web Apps are also available on Windows Live.

Language Packs

How to Buy

The following information provides details about buying and licensing SharePoint for your company:

Resource centers

TechNet Resource Centers for SharePoint 2010

Basics	Capabilities
Architecture design Best Practices Capacity management Getting started Governance High availability and disaster recovery Installation and deployment Operations and manageability Security and authentication SQL Server and SharePoint Server 2010 Databases Updates Upgrade and migration Virtualization What's new Windows PowerShell	Best Practices Business Connectivity Services Business intelligence Enterprise collaboration and social computing Enterprise content management Enterprise search Managed metadata and taxonomy Published Intranets (SOLUTION CENTER) Records management Web content management Workflows

MSDN Resource Centers for SharePoint 2010

Application Development

Developer Training Kits

Developer Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, source code, and instructor-led videos that are designed to help you learn how to develop for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. These are a great resource to start learning development.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Kit : Guidance that provides developers with advanced guidance on how to develop for SharePoint
SharePoint and Silverlight Training Kit: Provides developers with advanced guidance on how to develop Silverlight Applications for SharePoint
Office 2010 Developer Training Kit: Training kit that provides developers with collateral to get started quickly developing for Office 2010
SharePoint Server IT Pro Training: Collection of in-depth training presentations for SharePoint Server IT pros
SharePoint Server 2010: Advanced Developer Training Presentations: Collection of in-depth training presentations for SharePoint Server developers
SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure Training Course - The kit contains twelve modules that include PowerPoint decks, hands-on labs and source code that shows how the SharePoint 2010 platform and Windows Azure platform can work together

Besides these 3 new Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility Projects are also available for SharePoint 2010. These project templates will help you automate some common development tasks when creating SharePoint 2010 solutions using Visual Studio 2010:

Quick Notes

Quick Notes are 2-4 page tasks in a single scenario. Combined, they provide an end-to-end solution for a specific scenario. Individually, they are single-page tasks that you can print and use.

Sample Code

SharePoint Server 2010 Code Samples - Use this page to find complete, compilable code samples, often in the form of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 solutions, that demonstrate ways to use the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 object model to create new features and enhance existing features

Downloadable Technet Libraries

Technical diagrams

Many of these resources are visual representations of recommended solutions. They include poster-sized documents available in formats including Microsoft Office Visio 2007 or Microsoft Visio 2010 files (.vsd), PDF files, and XPS files. Homepage URL is here. Given below is the description and a direct link to the Visio (.vsd) file.

Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Classic Authentication: Illustrate a typical corporate deployment, with the most common types of sites represented.
Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Claims-based Authentication: Illustrate a typical corporate deployment, with the most common types of sites represented. The two samples differ only in the mode of authentication that is implemented.
SharePoint 2010 Products Deployment: Presents such deployment-related information as the different deployment stages and environments, plus a flowchart that illustrates the steps for installing and configuring SharePoint 2010 Products.
Services in SharePoint 2010 Products: Describes and illustrates the services architecture, including common ways to deploy services in your overall solution design.
Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products: Illustrates how to deploy services across farms to provide centralized administration of services
Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010: Describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies, including planning which servers to start services on.
Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010 Products: Illustrates the specific extranet topologies that have been tested with SharePoint 2010 Products. Provides a comparison of ISA Server, Forefront TMG, Forefront UAG when used as a firewall or gateway product with SharePoint 2010 Products.
Hosting Environments in SharePoint 2010 Products: Summarizes the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures.
Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products: Compares and contrasts the search technologies that work with SharePoint Products 2010
Search Environment Planning for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010: Walks through primary architecture design decisions for search environments
Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010: Details the physical and logical architecture components that make up a search system and illustrates common search architectures.
Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010: Walks through the initial design steps to determine a basic design for a SharePoint Server 2010 search architecture.
Global Solutions for SharePoint 2010 Products: Illustrates supported architectures for deploying Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products geographically
Business Connectivity Services Model: describes the architecture of Microsoft Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Server 2010 and provides information about how to create solutions that are based on the service.
Content Deployment in SharePoint Server 2010: Describes the content deployment feature in SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning: Covers planning for an upgrade from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Approaches: Helps you understand the in-place, database attach, and hybrid approaches to upgrading from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Test Your Upgrade Process: Explains the methodology for testing the upgrade process before upgrading from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Services Upgrade: Covers upgrading services from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Upgrading Parent and Child Farms: Covers the process for and considerations to keep in mind when you upgrade farms that share services (parent and child farms)
Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010: Covers an overview of business intelligence in SharePoint Server
Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products: Describes the Microsoft SQL Server databases on which SharePoint Server 2010 runs
SharePoint 2010 Products: Virtualization Process: Provides guidance related to virtualization and the various stages of deployment, as well as requirements and examples
Governance for SharePoint Server 2010: Illustrates how to develop a governance plan that includes IT governance, information management governance, and application management governance
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Poster: Illustrates Duet Enterprise architecture for both the SAP and Microsoft environments, with detailed explanations of each area

Video demos and Training

Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010 - Ten modules to get started with development for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010.

SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training - Self-paced modules, presentations, and hosted labs on SharePoint Server 2010 for Developers. In these lessons, you can save video to your desktop

Development Life Cycle for SharePoint 2010

Featured Trainings for IT Professionals

Get started with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 - Use the modules in the Getting Started series to help you learn what Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 can do for you, how it works, how to create a site, and more
Advanced training for SharePoint 2010 - View the advanced modules to learn about topics such as core architecture, security, enterprise search, composite solutions, business intelligence, and more.
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search IT professional training - This series of videos and hands-on labs demonstrates how to enable high-end enterprise search with SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
SharePoint for Internet Sites Implementers' Course - This course describes how to implement and brand a SharePoint-based public web site using SharePoint web content management (WCM).
SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Implementers' Course - Learn how to leverage features in SharePoint Server 2010 to implement an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.
SharePoint Server 2010 Business Composites Training - Learn how you can lay a deep foundation for your SharePoint Server 2010 Business Composites skills in this training course.
SharePoint Server 2010 Business Intelligence Insights Training - Learn how you can lay a deep foundation for your SharePoint Server 2010 Business Intelligence (BI) Insights skills in this training course.

Channel 9 Videos

SharePoint 2010 Development Primer - This video will get you up to speed quickly with the new SharePoint 2010 application development environment using Visual Studio 2010. If you are a new to SharePoint this video will give you a good grounding to get started.
New Developer Tools for SharePoint 2010 - In this video you will see the new development tools that are available to you in SharePoint 2010. These tools include Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010. You will understand how to build applications using the new tools and how they work together.
SharePoint 2010 Integration with PowerShell - In this video you will learn about the new PowerShell integration in SharePoint 2010. PowerShell is a key piece of the SharePoint 2010 platform; bring SharePoint administration in line with the other Server Products such as Exchange. Understanding PowerShell is a must have skill for SharePoint 2010 developers.
Introducing the SharePoint 2010 Developer Roadmap - SharePoint 2010 includes numerous new capabilities and features for professional developers most of which are highlighted in this unit. SharePoint 2010 makes developing those solutions easier, quicker, and more flexible. Much of the work that the developer had to do in the past with earlier versions of SharePoint has been replaced with simple configuration of the SharePoint 2010 platform, use of Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 or with calls to the SharePoint API.
Introduction to VS2010 SharePoint Tools - Visual Studio 2010 contains a new set of tools for developing SharePoint applications built in. These tools make developing SharePoint applications as easy as any other .net applications such as WPF or Asp.net. The tools include project templates for many of the SharePoint application types, such as Web Parts, List definitions, Modules, Application Pages, Workflows, user Controls and others.
SharePoint Tools Project Structure - Visual Studio 2010 includes support out of the box for the most common types of projects that you may want to build with SharePoint 2010 as well as new features for more easily defining features, solutions, and wizards to walk through the most common settings for each project type.
Adding SPIs to a Project - Each project is either C# or VB.NET project that contains particular initial project items. You can add typical C# or VB.NET artifacts as well. In addition Visual Studio 2010 includes additional SharePoint project items as items that you can add to any of your projects
Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint 2010 - This unit will provide you with an overview of SharePoint development with Visual Studio 2010. Specific topics covered will include an overview of the project and item templates, a walkthrough of the designers included, and areas of extensibility within Visual Studio 2010 that can enhance SharePoint development. Visual Studio 2010 includes support out of the box for the most common types of projects that you may want to build with SharePoint 2010 as well as new features for more easily defining features, solutions, and wizards to walk through the most common settings for each project type.
Introducing the Client Object Model - In SharePoint 2010 there are a number of object models that can be used by developers to access the server. The Client Object Model (Client OM) is a unified model which uses the same or similar programming concepts as the Server Object Model (Server OM). The Client OM can be accessed via web services, via a client (JavaScript) API, and via REST.
Silverlight Client Object Model - In this video you will learn how to use the SharePoint client object model to program a Silverlight application against SharePoint data.
ECMAScript Client Object Model - In this video you will learn how to use the SharePoint client object model to program a ECMAScript application against SharePoint data.
Introducing Sandboxed Solutions - Sandboxed Solutions are SharePoint Solution Package files (WSP files) that are limited in what they can do and in the server resources they can use. What they can do is limited using Process Isolation and Code Access Security limited to the SharePoint Site. The resources they can use are limited by process monitoring, logging and log aggregation.
Executing Code in the Sandbox - The Sandboxed Solutions Service provides for a complete isolation system that ensures code running in a sandboxed solution cannot reach out to access information beyond the scope of the deployment. Specifically, sandboxed solutions will not be able to make updates to the SharePoint object model beyond the scope of the SPSite object. Farm level and web application level changes are allowed only for read operations.
Code for the Sandbox
Introducing SharePoint Lists and Schemas - Introducing SharePoint Lists and Schemas
Accessing SharePoint List Data - In this video you will learn how to create strongly typed classes using a tool called SPMetal to do Linq programming against a SharePoint 2010 list.
LINQ Syntax - Getting up to speed on the Linq to SharePoint Syntax
Services Architecture Intro - In this video you will learn about the new SharePoint Services model. You will see how the new service architecture is different from the SSP model in MOSS 2007. You will see how the new model provides for greater flexibility and scalability.

Creating Custom Service Applications - Do you need more than the services provided by SharePoint? In this session you will learn how to create a custom SharePoint service. This is advanced topic targeted at high end developers.

TechNet Radio

User Profiles in SharePoint 2010 - SharePoint Product Manager Bill Baer interviews SharePoint Certified Masters, Ali Mazaheri and Spencer Harbar about user profiles and user profile applications in SharePoint 2010. Listen in as they discuss what user profiles are, their importance, how to manage them and how to configure profile synchronization
Claims-based Identity in SharePoint 2010 - we spend time with Microsoft Certified Master and SharePoint Ranger Bryan Porter to discuss claims-based identity in SharePoint 2010, discussing its benefits, implications, and implementation that can help to drive greater interoperability with SharePoint and other systems
Business Continuity Management with SharePoint 2010 - we spend time with Microsoft Certified Master and SharePoint Ranger Bryan Porter to discuss the improvements in SharePoint 2010 that support business continuity management and discuss both the challenges and opportunities that lead to highly available SharePoint solutions.
Security with SharePoint 2010 - we spend time with Microsoft Certified Master and SharePoint Ranger Bryan Porter to discuss Security with SharePoint 2010, its various implementations, and supporting technologies that help to ensure your data remains secure and protected
Throttling Limits and Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 - SharePoint Product Manager Bill Baer interviews SharePoint Certified Master Tajeshwar Singh about throttling limits in Business Connectivity Services for SharePoint 2010. Listen in as they discuss how throttling limits in BCS vary from normal lists and query throttling and how to configure and crawl large repositories using BCS within those throttling limits.
Deployment and Customization options in SharePoint 2010 - In today’s episode, SharePoint Product Manager Bill Baer interviews SharePoint Certified Master Vesa Juvonen about deployment advancements in SharePoint 2010. Listen in as they discuss key improvements in deployment and customization options such as Multi-Tenancy, PowerShell and Service Applications

TechNet Virtual Labs

TechNet Virtual Lab: Backup and Restore in SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to use farm-level backup and restore features in Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, use granular backup and content recovery tools in SharePoint Server 2010, and use Microsoft Windows® PowerShell^TM to restore sites and lists in SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Business Connectivity Services - After completing this lab, you will be better able to create an External Content Type based on a back end database and view and manipulate backend data in External Lists
TechNet Virtual Lab: Business Continuity Management in SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to configure and use the versioning features in Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, configure and use the SharePoint Server 2010 Recycle Bins, and use Microsoft Windows® PowerShell^TM cmdlets to perform backup and restore operations in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Remote Blob Storage FILESTREAM Provider for SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to enable FILESTREAM on the appropriate SQL Server database, provision the RBS data store, install the Remote Blob Storage (RBS) FILESTREAM Provider, enable the RBS FILESTREAM Provider on the appropriate content database, and configure the RBS FILESTREAM Provider scenario
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Tenant Administration on SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a new Tenant Administration site collection, manage site collections through Tenant Administration, and create a partitioned service application
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring User Profile Synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to configure the User Profile Synchronization Service in Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, start the User Profile Synchronization Service, create a New Profile Synchronization Connection, edit Profile Synchronization Connection Filters, map User Profile Properties, and configure Profile Synchronization Settings
TechNet Virtual Lab: Enterprise Search - After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a new content source for SharePoint to crawl, exclude certain results from being crawled by search, create a Search Center, and customize and extend the user interface
TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade - After completing this lab, you will be better able to verify existing 2007 farm and content upgrade readiness through the use of the 2007 pre-upgrade checker command, verify existing 2010 farm readiness to upgrade specific content databases using the 2010 Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet, initiate upgrade for individual content databases using the 2010 STSADM -o addcontentdb command, review the upgrade session status using the improved Central Administration web site Upgrade Status page, initiate upgrade for multiple individual content databases using multiple PowerShell sessions to trigger parallel upgrade sessions, troubleshoot an upgrade failure due to missing features, and how to restart upgrade for individual content database, and use Visual Upgrade features to switch sites from the 2007 product look and feel to the new 2010 product user interface
TechNet Virtual Lab: New IT Pro Features in SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to find your way around the Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 Central Administration Web site, use basic site management tools in SharePoint Server 2010, describe the health monitoring and Web analytics capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010, provide and consume SharePoint Server 2010 service applications, and use commands from the Microsoft Windows® PowerShell^TM command-line interface in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
TechNet Virtual Lab: Performance Management - After completing this lab, you will be better able to set limitations on the number of list items returned at a time, understand how large list limits affect users, configure Resource Throttling, and understand how Resource Throttling and HTTP Request Monitoring and Throttling affect SharePoint performance and user experience
TechNet Virtual Lab: PowerShell and SharePoint 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to find your way around the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and interact with SharePoint Web applications, site collections, and sites, use Windows PowerShell scripting techniques such as pipes, filters, wildcards, and enumerations for SharePoint Server 2010 administration. You will also be better able to explain how to create and assign variables and use the SharePoint object model from Windows PowerShell
TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Designer for IT Pros - After completing this lab, you will be better able to create and modify lists on the SharePoint site, create and modify workflows, and save SharePoint site as reusable template
TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM - IT PRO - Business Continuity Management - After completing this lab, you will be better able to navigate through an unattached SharePoint Content Database, export content from an unattached SharePoint Content Database, and import previously exported content
TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM - IT PRO - Installing and Configuring - After completing this lab, you will be better able to successfully install and configure SharePoint Server 2010, create a Managed Account in Central Administration, create a Web Application in Central Administration, and also create a Site Collection within the Web Application
TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM - IT PRO - Service Applications - After completing this lab, you will be better able to configure the new Managed Metadata Service Application, associate the Managed Metadata Service Application with a web application, manage the Metadata Service by adding your own custom groups and term sets, import a group into the Enterprise Term Store within the metadata service, utilize the Managed Metadata Service Application within a list, configure My Site settings, and create a My Site
TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM - IT PRO - Upgrade - After completing this lab, you will be better able to verify existing 2007 farm and content upgrade readiness through the use of the 2007 pre-upgrade checker command, verify existing 2010 farm readiness to upgrade specific content databases using the 2010 Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet, initiate upgrade for individual content databases using the 2010 STSADM -o addcontentdb command, review the upgrade session status using the improved Central Administration web site Upgrade Status page, initiate upgrade for multiple individual content databases using multiple PowerShell sessions to trigger parallel upgrade sessions, troubleshoot an upgrade failure due to missing features and know how to restart upgrade for individual content database, and use Visual Upgrade features to switch sites from the 2007 product look and feel to the new 2010 product user interface
TechNet Virtual Lab: Windows PowerShell in SharePoint Server 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to find your way around the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and interact with SharePoint Web applications, site collections, and sites, use Windows PowerShell scripting techniques, such as pipes, filters, wildcards, and enumerations, for SharePoint Server 2010 administration, and explain how to create and assign variables and use the SharePoint object model from Windows PowerShell

SharePoint Server 2010 Virtual Labs

MSDN Virtual Lab: Client Object Model - After completing this lab, you will be better able to retrieve lists, print a list, and use ADO.NET data services
MSDN Virtual Lab: Customizing MySites - In this lab you will work with some of the new events capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010 as well as the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Tools. You will customize public my site by adding new public page, which can host any additional services exposed for my site end users, create stapled features to customize structures created in personal my site using Visual Studio 2010, and also create delegation control to customize top navigation and web parts, which exists by default in the personal my site
MSDN Virtual Lab: Designing Lists and Schemas - In this lab you will work with some of the new events capabilities in Windows SharePoint Services 14 as well as the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Tools. You will create a custom list definition, template and instance using Visual Studio 2010, implement referential integrity between two SharePoint lists so that items in one list cannot be deleted until referenced items in a child list are removed first, and create a synchronous event receiver that is triggered when new task is created
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to build a BCS External content type, create a Business Data Catalog Model project, configure the External Content Type for offline use, and open the list using Outlook
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Sandboxed Solution with Web Parts - In this lab you will construct a basic Web Part that will call into the SharePoint API to retrieve some information. Next it will try and use SPSecurity to try to elevate privileges. The third and last action that is added is an attempt to initiate a HTTP connection to an external site
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Visual Web Part in Visual Studio 2010 - After completing this lab, you will be better able to work with existing Web Parts and Linq and also you will be more familiar with connecting two web parts
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing Business Intelligence Applications - After completing this lab, you will be better able to use the Chart Web Part to create graphical representations of data within SharePoint lists, use Microsoft Excel 2010 to examine and data from SQL Server Analysis Services, and publish an Excel workbook with Excel Services to make it accessible to users using a browser. You will also be able to work with a PerformancePoint Services site and the new Dashboard Designer
MSDN Virtual Lab: Enterprise Content Management - In this lab you will work with some of the new capabilities added to SharePoint Server 2010 in the area of Enterprise Content Management. You will verify the configuration of an Managed Metadata in a SharePoint Web application, customize the Managed Metadata term store and leverage it within an existing SharePoint site, and implement document sets
MSDN Virtual Lab: Getting Started with SharePoint 2010 - In this lab you will begin your work with SharePoint 2010 and become familiar with the Virtual Machine (VM) that you will be using. You will get experience working with the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration site as well as working with a standard team site. This will allow you to experience the new user interface concepts introduced in SharePoint 2010 such as the server-side ribbon and in-place item editing. You will also get a chance to write and test C# code using the SharePoint Foundation 2010 object model
MSDN Virtual Lab: LINQ to SharePoint 2010 - In this lab you will create lists for use with LINQ, and create a web part for accessing the list data using LINQ
MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint 2010 User Interface Advancements - After completing this lab, you will be better able to create and customize SharePoint 2010 lists for storing ideas for new toys, and use various new features of SharePoint, SharePoint Designer and InfoPath
MSDN Virtual Lab: Visual Studio SharePoint Tools - In the lab you will become familiar with the standard project structure used by SharePoint Tools, create and test a project that contains a Feature, a Feature Receiver and a Web Part, configure SharePoint Tools deployment options, and debug a SharePoint Tools project by single-stepping through the code in your solution
MSDN Virtual Lab: Workflow - After completing this lab, you will be better able to use Visio to create the high level process, export the Visio model to SharePoint Designer 2010, and use SharePoint Designer 2010 to complete the detail. You will also be able to export from SharePoint Designer 2010 to a WSP file and import the WSP file into Visual Studio 2010

Enterprise Search Labs

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search training course provides a series of hands-on labs, presentations, and videos that demonstrate how to enable high-end enterprise search with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search Labs: Use these labs to learn about deployment, search administration, monitoring, analytics, defining the end-user experience, federated search, people search, linguistics, and more.
SharePoint 2010 Demos: Enterprise Search Demos & Labs: Learn about crawling and indexing content and defining the end user experience. By completing these modules, you can build most of the Contoso Research Demo and gain a broad understanding of how to apply these design principles to your own site.

Software Development Kit

SharePoint 2010 Reference: Software Development Kit - Contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, samples, and references to guide you in developing solutions based on SharePoint 2010 products and technologies.

Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine

2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM): This download contains a two Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Virtual Machine set for evaluating and demonstrating Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010.

Discussion Forums

FAST University

In case you want structured training to learn FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, you can check out the courses available from the FAST University. Refer to my FAST University - Courses available post for details.

For a similar guide for SharePoint 2007, click here: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Resource Guide

[LAST UPDATE ON: 08 Sep 2011]

Vedant Kulshreshtha

SharePoint 2010 Resource Guide