If your company recently went through a series of layoffs, you’re probably faced with the problem of how to redistribute the workload to effectively maintain the same quality of work while avoiding stoppages. You need and action play and the

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) team can help. The MOF team has released its first in a new series of MOF Action Plans. The MOF Action Plan- Redistributing the Workload document describes how to consider and reconfigure key responsibilities and work distribution, based on key principles and best practices from MOF 4.0 core content.

More to come,

Mitch

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Windows Server User Research wants to understand how you manage servers and what needs to improve in our software. Help them out and receive a retail Microsoft software or hardware item for participating. If your company has at least 500 PCs and offices in North America, contact us for visit qualification requirements. Email itvisits@microsoft.com.

If you’re a regular user of the Windows Sysinternals system utilities, there is some significant news around Process Monitor. First off, the venerable Filemon and Regmon utilities will be replaced by the more advanced and scalable Process Monitor. They will be removed from the site on September 1, 2009.

The Windows Sysinternals team also recently unveiled Process Monitor v2.5, which adds a number of enhancements, including new by-extension and by-directory views in the File Summary dialog, a new Network Summary view, quick filtering in all the summary views, additional IOCTL and error result decoding, and a number of bug fixes.

More to come,

Mitch

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Want to better understand and use Microsoft security release information, processes, communications, and tools? Download the new Microsoft Security Update Guide for IT professionals, designed to help you manage organizational risk and develop a repeatable, effective deployment mechanism for security updates. In this Guide, you will find a convenient glossary of terms, an overview of the Microsoft Security Bulletin process, and a stage-by-stage review of Microsoft Security Updates.

Also on the security front, you can now download the Microsoft Office Visualization Tool (OffVis), a free tool designed to help combat file format-based software vulnerabilities and exploits. OffVis enables you to better understand and deconstruct Microsoft Office-based attacks. As a result, security vendors can build deeper, more precise malware detection signatures and develop new techniques for analyzing malware.

More to come,

Mitch

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Not to be forgotten in the well-deserved excitement around the RTM milestone for Windows 7, the simultaneous Windows Server 2008 R2 release to manufacturing goes hand-in-hand with Windows 7, especially for IT professionals. Get the skinny on how this is great news for IT pros over on the Windows Server Division blog.

With the Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM comes the Microsoft Hyper V Server 2008 R2. The Virtualization Team blog has the highlights.

If you’re still testing the Windows Server 2008 R2 RC build, you’ll be able to switch over to the RTM build during the second half of August, 2009. For Windows Server 2008 R2, click here for the low-down on system requirements and installation guidelines and IT pro testing guidelines; and for the updated reviewers guide and other technical content be sure to visit the Windows Server 2008 R2 resources page.

For those evaluating Windows Server 2008 R2 for the first time, check out the Resources page for content on R2’s key new features, including Hyper-V with Live Migration, the new File Classification Infrastructure, the updates to IIS 7.5 and the new “better together” features you can access by combining Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows 7.

More to come,

Mitch

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