Have you ever thought about how you would recover if you lost your whole AD forest to some unforeseen replicated corruption? What is the quickest way to restore your CEO's account if it is accidentally deleted? From the administrator who loses sleep thinking about these questions to the administrator who takes AD recovery for granted; there is something for both to learn from this session. It covers disaster recovery scenarios ranging from deleted AD objects to loss of a domain controller, and even loss of an entire Active Directory forest. Lessons learned from the product team, customers and Microsoft Product Support will be presented, as well as Microsoft's latest recommendations for Active Directory disaster recovery planning.

Learn what scenarios Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) supports in the Windows Server 2003 R2 release, as well as how it addresses WebSSO and federation. Learn best practices for deploying ADFS, and what the tradeoffs for each type of deployment and for each type of application. See how it interoperates with other identity management products. This session addresses the business and technical scenarios that ADFS can help you solve and provides you with strategies to integrate it into your organizations identity management infrastructure.

This session begins by exploring the internal workings of the major components in the Active Directory Federation Services. What is the difference between a Federation Service and a Federation Service Proxy? How does the Web server agent translate a SAML security token into an authorization context for applications? We'll trace the flow of claims through the system that enables federated identity and access management. To conclude, we'll explore how ADFS interoperability with other vendor identity management products is achieved by implementation of the WS-Federation Passive Requestor Profile.

The Active Directory Federation Server offers an architecture that enables federation and WebSSO scenarios previously unreachable. A focus on the architecture and Active Directory enhancements will show you how to enable support in new and existing applications for federated identities, federated namespaces, and distributed authorization. Learn about interoperability with numerous identity management vendors; get a demonstration of Microsoft Identity Federation Services in a representative end-to-end line of business application scenario; and learn about Microsoft's roadmap for federation, WebSSO and Web services.

MIIS 2003 Service Pack 1 provides major improvements for managing the lifecycle of identities. There is a wide variety of new functionalities added to MIIS, like the ability for corporate developers and ISVs to create Management Agents, password synchronization from the Windows desktop, a wizard that can be used to configure provisioning, and many more. In the second part of the presentation, we walk through the roadmap of the future releases of MIIS and cover how we will implement new exciting features like full workflow support for provisioning and end user self-service applications.

Account provisioning through Identity management is the proper handling of a user's various identities throughout their life with an organization. Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 has moved beyond synchronizing different directories and data sources into this provisioning arena. This can be automated based on business rules to handle all creates, deletes and updates of accounts (for example, enabling/disabling of resources related to the account). See how to provision/de-provision employees from your HR system to the AD (or target directory). This can include one or more accounts and resources related to the account--for instance a mailbox. We address the hire/fire scenario and the actions associated with this.

When deploying MIIS 2003, there are often many different ways to accomplish the same task. This session reviews deployment best practices for a wide range of topics, including design strategy, coding structure and standards, documentation, server sizing guidelines, operational considerations, and dealing with common MIIS project roadblocks.

88% of Enterprise customers have a distributed infrastructure with many remote/branch office sites. Managing servers in remote locations is a major challenge for these customers. This session provides an overview of current technology that can be used in the Branch Office, as well as detailed review of the new technologies in Windows Server 2003 "R2" that help customers manage their remote Branch Office servers. The key technology being provided in R2 is DFS Replication (a.k.a. FRS2) that enables delta replication via RDC (remote differential compression) and is far more scalable than the original version of FRS. This session discusses these improvements and the new FRS and DFS management tools that will enable customers to get the availability benefits of having local servers in the branch, without the cost of deploying and managing remote fully-fledged servers in all branches.

Businesses are requiring IT to support requirements such as mobility, connectivity, globalization, regulatory compliance, etc. These needs are increasing IT complexity and impacting operational efficiency. As a result IT is spending 70% of its total budget on operations. Microsoft is working to reduce IT Complexity and increase operational efficiency by implementing Common Engineering Criteria (CEC) across Windows Server System. These criteria enable Windows Server System products to be built on a common set of services resulting in more integrated and manageable products. This session provides details of Common Engineering Criteria for 2006 and provides early thoughts on CEC for 2007. It also features a live demonstration of Best Practice Analyzer tool, a criterion for CEC 2006, and Windows Server Resource Manager, a possible criterion for CEC 2007.

The upcoming release of R2 will include new tools that simplify the tasks necessary to set up an efficient storage environment for the Windows platform. Learn how the new quota management tools and SAN management tools are configured. These new tools, coupled with the integration of Windows storage features by Microsoft partners, have made SANs simpler than ever to deploy on Windows for both iSCSI and Fibre Channel. This session describes and demonstrates the new features (including the new iSCSI initiator and VDS1.1) and programs that make SANs accessible to a new class of users outside the data center environments.

This session will give you a detailed understanding of all new features introduced in Service Pack 1. Features which will be covered include Network Access Protection, Remote Differential Copy, Security Configuration Wizard, Windows Firewall and Post Setup Security Update lockdown mode.

Inside the Security Configuration Wizard in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Microsoft shipped the first new security policy tool in six years. This interesting new wizard can help you author, tailor and apply policy. As with any security policy tool it can also completely disable your network. To learn more, come to this session where Jesper Johansson, program manager for security policy discusses the internals of the security configuration wizard and how to make use of it. We cover how it relates to other security policy tools and resources, such as the Security Configuration Editor, Group Policy, and the Security Guides. We also discuss the idea of role-based security policy and how you can best leverage it to protect your Windows network.

Windows servicing is in the final stages of putting into production improvements to two areas noted for customer pain in servicing Windows platforms - reboots and patch size. Reboots reduction on Windows Server 2003 are being addressed through the implementation of Hotpatching in conjunction with Service pack 1 release. Patch size reduction is targeted at reducing download burden for servicing Windows platforms. Recent changes in the Windows Update infrastructure and patch delivery technologies will better allow express delivery to be set up within corporate environments. These changes will allow for reduced burden on data lines to remote offices and servicing mobile environments. This session describes these two technologies, discussing their attributes in sufficient technical detail to allow for IT planning around these changes.

This session explores the details of the architecture and the new features for Windows Storage Server that will be made available with the release of R2. It also describes the roadmap of how the product is evolving and integrates with new block storage to create unified storage with Windows Storage Server. A drill-down on how partners are deploying these solutions and the resulting improved business value coming from efficient storage and server consolidation will round up the session.

This session offers a look at Linux and Open Source Software from the Microsoft Linux/Open Source Technology Analysis Center. Bill Hilf walks through the Open Source stack, including the Linux kernel, and discusses trends in the market place and provides perspective on how Microsoft views Linux and Open Source software.

Potential Sessions (let me know which of these you’d like to see);

Server Performance Advisor (SPA) 2.0 (Level 200)

Diagnosing performance problems is a challenging task; it is often highly complex and time-consuming. Server Performance Advisor (SPA) 1.0 provides a simple but robust solution for diagnosing root causes of performance problems in Windows Server 2003. Since its first release, SPA 1.0 has been widely used to resolve problems particularly for IIS and the Active Directory. In this session, we present the new version, SPA 2.0, which leverages SPA 1.0 significantly for comprehensive diagnosis in Windows Server 2003 SP1. During the session, we discuss common performance problems and how SPA 2.0 helps diagnosis their root causes.

Customers are clamoring for information about inspecting endpoints prior to resources access. A discussion about enabling safe and healthy networks with NAP opens the door to talk about the benefits of existing Microsoft technologies and how these technologies will become more valuable in "Longhorn". These include Identity Management (Active Directory, Group Policy, MIIS, ADAM), IAS, Remote Access VPN (RRAS), ISA and others. Learn also how NAP plans to interoperate well with other solutions in the market today.

Applications and scenarios for HPC are increasing in automation, speed, and ease of use. The future of HPC lies in integrated workflows, where server clusters and desktops will seamlessly process complex parallel, distributed, and data-driven computations across a large network of solutions. Users will be able to utilize best-of-breed computational models to create complex, multi-stage simulations residing anywhere within an enterprise or the Internet. Microsoft will be delivering a new edition of Windows in the second half of 2005, called Windows Server 2003, Compute Cluster Edition. The product is designed to create a "personal supercomputing" solution--a great out-of-the-box experience--surrounded by a wide ecosystem of partners, products, and services to maximize business value. This session discusses product plans and roadmaps, scenarios it is addressing, the competitive landscape and challenges and highlights the value proposition of the solution. The next few years will see strong growth and technological innovations in the HPC industry. Come find out how Microsoft is creating a solid infrastructure and fully integrated solution now that will match the wave of the future.

Windows Server 2003 x64 offers significant scalability benefits to Terminal Server customers. This session covers technical details related to the differences between Terminal Server scalability in 32-bit vs. x64 environments. It also covers general issues related to Terminal Server performance/scalability and recent releases, like: TS on-the-wire performance benchmarking and testing methodologies; fine tuning Windows Server to maximize TS performance and scalability; operational excellence with MOM/TS MOM pack and Windows Server 2003 SP1 Terminal Server improvements.

Attend this session to learn about Microsoft's latest member of the Windows Server System family, Data Protection Server (DPS). DPS enables the best disk-based data protection experience, resulting in improved operational efficiency, faster recovery and lower costs of protecting Windows file data. At the time when we all are experiencing rapid data growth, a comprehensive data protection strategy is a necessity. This session introduces you to the product and its functionality, along with partner solutions and the direction DPS is taking in the future.