Digitalfreakz.nl

Today I finally did the OCS 2007 R2 exam (070-638) and passed it with 955 points. I’m a little bit proud of myself . The exam contains 65 questions and some of them are about R2. So what’s next……mmm.

Today I spotted a post on a friends weblog: http://virtualfuture.info.
Mostly when I write about virtualization my posts are about VMware. VMware is still leader in the world of virtualization, but Microsoft doesn’t sit still. The Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V release will be better than the current release. To learn more about Hyper-V, Microsoft released a free training.

The course contains the following modules:

1. An overview of the Hyper-V technology
2. Creating a virtual environment
3. Deploying systems in a virtual environment
4. Configuring high availability in a virtual environment
5. Administering a virtual environment with SCVMM

Register for it here : https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/enterCode.aspx
Use this free code : 9350-Y2W6-3676

If you are an OCS administrator you probably already know there are a lot of server roles. Depending on your company you will implement some or all the server roles. To find out which roles can and can’t be combined, I’ve posted a simple overview table. This speed up your search in the various OCS 2007 R2 whitepapers.

One of the new features that will be included with the next release of Microsoft Exchange Server (2010) is anwsering rules. A mailbox user will be able to create his personal auto attended from within Outlook Web Access (also know as Outlook Live).  With a anwsering rule you can dicate how a call should be handled. The guys from the MS Exchange Team wrote a nice blog post about this new feature.

Click here to read the blog post.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of MS Press, Microsoft will give away free e-books every month. This month they give away two OCS 2007 R2 e-books.

Get the OCS 2007 e-book here: Free e-books: All OCS all the time!
All 2009 free MS Press e-books

VMware has release the evaluation versions of there latest virtualization product vSphere 4. VMware has change the name of VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere. vSphere 4 is the first serious cloud computing OS availible on the market.

VMware ESX 4 Version: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164009 Download

VMware ESXi 4 Versson: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164009 Download

VMware vCenter Server 4 Version: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: Log in for build number. Download

VMware Consolidated Backup Version: 1.5 Update 1 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 150805 Download

VMware Data Recovery Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164675 Download

VMware vShield Zones Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: R1.0G68 Download

Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Ethernet Module Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 27-0.4.2 Download

We are living in a time where virtualization is a hot topic. Many organizations have some or maybe all there servers running in a virtualized environment. So it not strange I receive a lot of questions about running OCS on a hypervisor (ESX/Hyper-V/Xen). Microsoft has finally published a whitepaper which will answer the most common questions about running OCS 2007 R2 in a virtualized environment. As expected, all the server roles that deal with real-time data (audio/video) are not supported in a virtualized environment. It will work perfectly for demo or test purposes but will absolutely not be supported in a production environment. Virtualize audio/video server roles can cause jitters, echo’s and delays.

Download the whitepaper here

Microsoft Press has anounched a new Unified Communications title: “Programming for Unified Communications. This book provides hands-on guidance when planning to integrate OCS 2007 with your enterpirse applications.

Click here for more information.

Rick Varvel has posted a very detailed and helpfull OCS Remote Access configuration guide. This guide will help you to configure your firewall ports, dns records and certificates.

Download the guide

For more information see Rick’s blog

Microsoft has change the name of Exchange 14 to Exchange 2010. The first beta of Exchange 2010 is avaible now. Exchange 2010 is the first beta release of the WAVE14  products like MS Office 2010 and MOSS 2010.

Download: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta
More about Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 visit http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010

Overview

Microsoft Exchange® Server 2010 Beta helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.

• Flexible and reliable – Exchange Server 2010 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company’s unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.
• Anywhere access – Exchange Server 2010 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications – e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more – from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.
• Protection and compliance – Exchange Server 2010 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company’s communications and meeting regulatory requirements.

This software is intended for evaluation purposes only. You must accept the license terms before you are authorized to use this software. There is no product support for this trial software. You are welcome to participate in the forums to share your trial experiences with others and to ask for advice.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista 64-bit Editions Service Pack 1

• Operating System for Installing Management Tools: The 64-bit editions of Microsoft® Windows Vista® SP1 or later, or Windows Server® 2008.
• PC – x64 architecture-based computer with Intel processor that supports Intel 64 architecture (formerly known as Intel EM64T) or AMD processor that supports the AMD64 platform

Additional requirements to run Exchange Server 2010 Beta

• Memory – Minimum of 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM per server plus 5 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended for each mailbox
• Disk space
  • At least 1.2 GB on the drive used for installation
  • An additional 500 MB of available disk space for each Unified Messaging (UM) language pack that you plan to install
  • 200 MB of available disk space on the system drive
• Drive – DVD-ROM drive, local or network accessible
• File format – Disk partitions formatted as NTFS file systems
• Monitor – Screen resolution 800 x 600 pixels or higher

Exchange Server 2010 Beta Prerequisites
If these required prerequisites are not already installed, the Exchange Server 2010 Beta setup process will prompt and provide links to the installation locations; Internet access will be required if the prerequisites are not already installed or available on a local network.

• Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5
• Windows PowerShell v2
• Windows Remote Management

Actual requirements will vary based on system configuration and specific features installed. For more detailed system requirements, please refer to the Exchange Server 2010 Technical Documentation Library.

For a list of Windows Server 2008 requirements, visit http://technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2008.