Events

Exclusive Preview of Techdays 2012 Session on Lync Mobility

TechDays 2012: 80% of agenda online and 1 more week to benefit from 15% discount

Upcomming Technet Webcasts/Livemeetings

TechDays 2012 Unified Communication Sessions

TechDays 2012 Session listing is live

Upcoming TechNet Webcasts & -Events

Meet the Exchange Product Team: 2011 edition

TEC Europe 2011– Day 2

TEC Europe 2011– Pre-Conference & Day 1

Upcoming TechNet Webcasts on SCOM, BitLocker, SQL Server, Active Directory, Exchange, UC and many more

Microsoft Small Business Server Event (November 29th, Brussels)

Last night’s event!

Upcomming Technet Webcasts : Office 365 & Others

Upcoming TechNet Webcasts on Office 365, SCOM 2012, App Compat and Windows Intune

Our Next Event : Exchange & Lync Hardware Load Balancers // Exchange 2010 SP2: What’s new (September 22th 2011)

Quest Day: Pre-conference

TEC Europe - Day 1

Discover how Lync works on your iPhone, Android & other smartphones/tablets

Lync Server Notes from the Field: Options for Deployment

Office 365: Busting the Myths

Office 365: Planning and Automating for Hybrid Identity Scenarios in the Cloud – A Geeks Guide to Dir Sync and ADFS with Tools, Scripts and Deployment Hydration

Panel Discussion

Exchange 2010 SP2 Address Book Policies (Greg Taylor):

Archiving and Discovery with Exchange 2010 and Office 365 (Nathan Winters):

Exchange 2010 Notes from the Field (Frank Carius):

Designing Exchange 2010 for Site Resilience (Nathan Winters):

Lync Server 2010/ What’s new and improved (Lee Mackey):

Virtualizing Exchange 2010: Do’s and Don’ts (Jaap Wesselius):

Lync Server Notes from the field (Ilse Van Crieckinge)

The keynote (Tony Redmond):

OWA Cross Site Silent Redirection in Exchange SP2 (Ross Smith IV):

Curing (some) of your CAS headaches (Greg Taylor):

Designing Exchange 2010 for Failure Domains (Ross Smith IV):

Using the Power of PowerShell to Manage Your Exchange On Premises and Exchange Online Environment (Ilse Van Crieckinge):

Exchange 2010 SP1 Native Data Protection (Ross Smith IV)

Microsoft Product Topics

HP Product Topics

SBSmigration.com Product Topics

Johan Delimon — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:10:00 GMT

Discover how Lync works on your iPhone, Android & other smartphones/tablets

Join us for an exclusive preview for our community of the Techdays 2012 Session on Lync Mobility.

More and more information workers are using the mobile phone as their only phone. Mobile Clients for Microsoft® Lync™ 2010 take the power of unified communications mobile—including rich presence, audio conferencing, and access to multiple communication modes from a single, easy-to-use interface. In this session you will find out how Lync mobile works across various platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Phone 7) and how to setup the new mobility features.

Agenda:

18h30 Reception (there will be sandwiches and drinks)
19h00 Discover how Lync works on your iPhone, Android & other smartphones/tablets
20h30 Closing with Q&A
21h00 Socializing with Drinks

When:

Wednessday 18th of januari 2012 (18h30 - 22h00)

Where:

Ordina Belgium
Blarenberglaan 3b
2800 Mechelen
Belgium

Event Registration Online for Exclusive Preview of Techdays 2012 Session on Lync Mobility powered by Eventbrite

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:35:49 GMT

Just 1 more week to benefit from a 15% discount on your ticket for TechDays 2012: the Early Bird pricing ends on December 21. Registrations are coming in strong, so be sure to secure your spot before we sell out!

This year promises to bring a lot of new content from Microsoft. Looking at the next versions of tooling, languages, OS and management you know this is not a standard TechDays event. Our content is split into current and upcoming technology.
Currently, the TechDays program is finalized for about 80%.

We are happy to announce that Johan Delimon will be delivering a session as well: “Discover how Lync works on your iPhone, Android & other smartphones/tables”

Top Speakers

UC Sessions	Johan Delimon	Ilse Van Criekinge	Jeremy Chapman
Developer Track	Alex Turner	Brian Keller	Jeff Prosise
IT Pro Track	Corey Hynes	John Craddock	Adam Hall

The following speakers have also been confirmed:

- In the IT Pro track: John Craddock, Kurt Roggen, Adam Hall, Corey Hynes, Kim Oppalfens, Mike Resseler, Dan Holme

- In the Developer track: Alex Turner, Brian Keller, Bart De Smet, Gill Cleeren, Jeff Prosise, Maarten Balliauw, Matt Milner, Ben Riga, Steve Sanderson, Nikhil Kothari, Rob Miles, Tarek Madkour, Wade Wegner

International speakers are teamed up with our local experts to give you a top content mix. Our user group we will also be present, most likely in the form of “Ask the Expert”.

Deep Dives (February 16)

Peter Himschoot and Jurgen Postelmans (U2U) will be delivering a full day .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio (Dev11) Futures for Web Development Deep Dive covering all the latest and greatest in .NET 4.5, focusing on Web Development with ASP.NET, HTML5 and WCF.
Rhonda Layfield will be delivering a full day deep dive covering all the different tools and techniques to deploy Windows 7, she will also cover the upcoming Windows OS deployment tools.
Mike Resseler & Tom Shinder will deliver a full day covering private cloud topics, including Management and Operations of your private cloud infrastructure.
About TechDays 2012

Join our 10^th anniversary edition in a new location (Kinepolis Imagibraine - Braine l'Alleud) and learn about:

Windows & Internet Explorer
Windows Server 8 & Hyper-V
Windows Phone 7 development
System Center 2012 & Windows Intune
Tooling and languages with Visual Studio, C# and VB Futures
Next generation apps
Cloud development with Windows Azure Platform
Web development with HTML5, JavaScript and ASP.NET
...

> REGISTER NOW

Hope to see you at the TechDays 2012!

Johan Delimon — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:05:00 GMT

Johan Delimon — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:52:00 GMT

Currently there are 4 Unified Communication Session listed for Techdays (2x Lync, 2x Office 365) more to follow...

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=233

Speaker : Johan Delimon | Level : 300

Date : 15 February 2012 | Timeslot : 16:15 - 17:30

ITPRO , Level 300 , IT PRO, Unified Communications, Lync

Type : IT Pro

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=222

Speaker : Ilse Van Criekinge | Level : 300

Date : 15 February 2012 | Timeslot : 13:00 - 14:15

ITPRO , Level 300 , Unified Communications, Lync

Type : IT Pro

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=216

Speaker : Ilse Van Criekinge | Level : 300

Date : 14 February 2012 | Timeslot : 12:00 - 13:00

Cloud , ITPRO , Level 300 , Lunch session , Office 365 , Unified Communications

Type : IT Pro

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=220

Speaker : Jeremy Chapman | Level : 300

Date : 14 February 2012 | Timeslot : 16:15 - 17:30

AD , Cloud , Cloud Computing , Identity , ITPRO , Level 300 , Office 365

Type : IT Pro

Johan Delimon — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:46:00 GMT

The Session list can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Sessions.aspx

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:06:25 GMT

16
NOV
2011

Introduction into System Center Advisor
Timing 19:30 – 21:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

While still many people are reluctant to implement Unified Communication solutions, it is already a very mature technology. Find out how Microsoft Unified Communications can bring more value to you communications solutions and why this is something you really want even to replace or surround your existing PBX solution.

Speaker

Arne Peleman

17
NOV
2011

Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 7
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Many IT departments take a proactive approach to backing up network data, but tend to be reactive in planning for desktop system failures. The most common solution is to reimage the machine, but that can result in loss of user settings, personalization, and potentially data. Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset can help you save time and reduce the challenges associated with troubleshooting and repairing system failures. Do you want to see the first look-and-feel of this new release, do you want to know what does it offer and can it be used on an enterprise? If you want answers on these questions you need to attend this session.

Speaker

Nico Sienaert

22
NOV
2011

IntelliTrace, Test Impact Analysis and Team Build ... Better together!
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience Developers | Language English

Abstract

As developers work on the code, the application has to remain under constant scrutiny to ensure it still does what it is supposed to do. That is where testing comes into play. Developers run their unit tests to make sure their code still functions as it is intended, while the QA group tests the application to verify the accuracy, reliability and performance of the application. But, it is hard to know which tests are actually needed to be re-verified as a result of a code change, so it is common to test the entire area where the code change occurred. Until now. Test Impact Analysis helps the developer run only the impacted automated tests and enables QA to skip the tests that were not impacted. IntelliTrace has also become a key feature for development teams in troubleshooting automated/manual test failures. Team Build will make sure that you can enable these powerful features in your automated build process.

Speaker

Pieter Gheysens

22
NOV
2011

Lingering objects in Active Directory!
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Lingering objects is a problem you do not want to encounter, how to prevent it is important and how to solve it when you do encounter it. In addition, how to distinguish a false positive from a real issue… all of that and more will be addressed in this 400 level session.

Speaker

Ward Pauwels

30
NOV
2011

New world of Datacenter: Managing your IAAS Private cloud with System Center
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

The move to private clouds is part of the evolution of the data center, from a basic warehouse of information to a smarter, more agile delivery of services. Data centers started out as self-contained entities and grew into something complex as you added server after server after server. Virtualization has consolidated the physical server layer, helping companies save on real estate, power and cooling costs. But it creates a new challenge – managing all of the physical and virtual servers. It has become harder to manage what you cannot physically reach out and touch. To help you manage that infrastructure we need to move to the New world of Datacenter and we will explain what it takes to do that.

Speaker

Kenny Buntinx

01
DEC
2011

How do you use System Center in the Private Cloud?
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

SCOM, SCCM, SCORCH and so on are all products within the System Center suite. In this session, we will have a look on how you can start from the business idea of the Private Cloud and use System Center to manage the Private Cloud.

Speaker

Mike Resseler

02
DEC
2011

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack Event
Timing 13:00 – 19:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English | IN-PERSON EVENT

Abstract

Microsoft welcomes you to learn more about how Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) can help you manage a modernized desktop. It is our pleasure to invite you to a workshop on December 2, 2011 that will go over the powerful new enhancements to MDOP 2011. During the sessions desktop experts will provide practical experiences that can be used right away.

Speaker

Mike Resseler, Nico Sienaert, Kurt Roggen

05
DEC
2011

Web Camp Belgium: Hands-on HTML5 and Web Apps
Timing 09:00 – 17:30 | Audience Developers | Language English | IN-PERSON EVENT

Abstract

Web Camps Belgium are free full day training events where you get to get your hands on the technology and build something. If you are wondering how to take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3, use a free open source app like Umbraco, Orchard, Drupal, or others or simply want to program your own website, then this event is for you.

Speaker

Kris van der Mast

06
DEC
2011

Integrating AD RMS with Exchange, Exchange Online in Office 365 and Windows Phone 7
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Integrating AD RMS with Exchange or Office 365 adds an additional layer of security on top of your data whenever it is shared through email by preventing certain user actions like forwarding, printing, saving attachments etc. In this webcast we will go through the details of the marriage between AD RMS and Exchange 2010 SP1 on-prem, Office 365 and Windows 7. We’ll discuss the limitations or Rights Management and go through the steps needed to setup, configure and integrate AD RMS with both on-prem and cloud deployments.

Speaker

Michael Van Horenbeeck

06
DEC
2011

Let’s explore Silverlight 5!
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience Developers | Language English

Abstract

With Silverlight 4 out for over a year now, some amazing applications have been built with it. It’s time to take a look at the next version, which is due late 2011. In this session, Silverlight MVP Gill Cleeren will take you on a tour of the new features in the platform, including improved data binding, 3D support, better network support, new text features and of course added features to the tooling. Be prepared to see what you’ll be using with Silverlight 5!

Speaker

Gill Cleeren

06
DEC
2011

ISV Café
Timing 15:00 – 18:00 | Audience ISV’s | Language English | IN-PERSON EVENT

Abstract

Join us for a mix of technology, Microsoft business news and show cases by the best of the best, followed by a networking drink.

Speaker

Joe Wilson, David Hernie, Christophe Van Mollekot, Ben Piquard, Jeroen Van Hees

08
DEC
2011

New world of Datacenter: Managing your IAAS Private cloud with System Center
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language Dutch

Abstract

Klanten – zowel interne als externe – worden steeds veeleisender. De IT afdeling dient zich aan te passen aan deze veranderende behoeften. In deze sessie kom je meer te weten over de strategieën en technologieën die aangewend kunnen worden om deze nieuwe manier van werken te omarmen.

Speaker

Mike Resseler

08
DEC
2011

Microsoft Technologies for Consumerization explained
Timing 19:30 – 21:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Customers (internal / external) are getting more and more demanding. IT needs to adapt to these changing needs of our customers. Follow this session to get more information about the strategies and technologies that can be used for embracing this new way of working.

Speaker

Mike Resseler

13
DEC
2011

SQL Server 2012 Licensing Update
Timing 14:00 – 15:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

More information on the agenda will follow soon.

Speaker

Rebekka Van Acker

15
DEC
2011

Datacenter & Branch Resiliency in Lync
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

A phone must always have a Dial tone that is something that has been around for a long while. Even Microsoft Lync can give you the very same experience and even do more interesting stuff with resiliency.

Speaker

TBD

15
DEC
2011

SCSM 2012 Orchestrator / VMM Integration
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

The upcoming version of Service Manager 2012 will deliver standardized, compliant, and automated IT as a Service. Two aspects where Service Manager has a great added value in the automated IT as a Service is in the CMDB creation/maintenance and the automation through the integration with other System Center products. Service Manager 2012 includes two new connectors to help in this automation, the System Center Virtual Machine connector and Orchestrator connector. This session will run through the configuration of these connectors and will demonstrate where this additional functionality provided by the connectors can be used.

Speaker

Kurt Van Hoecke

22
DEC
2011

System Center ConfigMgr 2012 Advanced Infrastructure – The Ins and Outs
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

What interaction is happening when users are authenticating or accessing resources, how does a user get his Kerberos tickets and many more Kerberos related questions will be answered in this 400 level session.

Speaker

Kim Oppalfens

Koen Vermoesen — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:03:00 GMT

Just like last year, I’ve made a little transcript of the Pro-Exchange community meeting with Greg Taylor and Ross Smith IV from the Exchange product team:

The first part of the evening was mainly around Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2010:

Address Book Policies (ABP) aka Gal Segmentation
- Quick presentation on Address Book policies (ref our coverage of TEC Day 2). This is the Exchange 2010 counterpart of the white paper Configuring Virtual Organizations and Address List Segregation in Exchange 2007.
- Next up was a quick demo based on the principal/teacher/student case study most of you have seen by now.
- No ABP in Office 365 yet. Not anytime soon anyway, have patience.
  - Remember: transport role doesn’t care. Invisible (because of ABP) members of a distribution list still receive email sent to this DL. The same goes for delivery receipts etc…)
- ABP do not solve multi-tenancy problem, they are only part of the solution.
- Keep in mind that OAB is set in 4 places (in order of precedence):
  - default oab
  - database
  - abp oab
  - per user
- Store.exe has been updated so that it also works with Outlook 2003
OWA mini
- Meant for Japanese market, they do not have smartphones as we know them
- Looks like OMA, works like OWA.
- OWA mini is a subdir of OWA vDir. It’s rendered differently, the benefit is language support inherited from the top level.
- Separate authentication from OWA; so FBA vs. basic is possible
- Support for tasks, just like mango.
Hybrid config Wizard for Office 365
- Not easy for the moment, 80 pages document to work through
- Down to 6 steps now
- Took a long time because they got to involve “external” teams like FOPE to write some APIs
- Hybrid config wizard under Organization Configuration in EMC
Rollup fixes up to rollup 6; a lot of hotfixes
OWA cross silent redirection
- as discussed during previous community event and TEC Day 1 blog post
- Suggestion from my side; use some flow diagrams to visualize the logic behind the redirection and Single Sign On
- Feature is disabled by default
- Doesn’t work when using preauth ala TMG
- Demo
Schema changes
- Extra attributes on request customers, namely in Belgium (30)
- Multi-valued customextensionattributes
- ref. Exchange Server Active Directory Schema Changes Reference

Afterwards we go the chance to do a little Q&A session:

Public folders
- Q: Ability to configure timeout? A:Specific set of conditions required. Remember outlook connects to service. If that is fine it will not reconnect to the alternate PF
- Recommendation is to reconfigure the default PF store, should go relatively quick.
E2K10 IO stream optimization; exchange product vs. customer optimizations
- We still do random IO, recommendations that take this into consideration still exist
- Do not exclude background database maintenance; 5MB/S per database: critical for larger databases
- Cluster size 256K, up to 384k chunks while writing
Larger DB
- No DAG? Not larger than 200Gb; but you need to take into account backup windows
- Native data protection in E2K10 should enable you to never need a restore; that should at least be your goal.
- Don’t use expensive SAN for exchange, bigger and bigger disks coming up; you’re going to need a purpose for those; exchange 2010 large mailboxes is the answer
Lagged database copies:
- SAN integrator recommended to get rid of lagged copy because it does not help against logical corruption (e.g. corrupted view)
- You don’t now when it went broken > new tools like new-mailboxrepairrequest
- Point in time restore is the same from traditional backup or lagged copy …enter some discussion about using PowerShell to replay log chunks to find the point of corruption
- only difference is that lagged copy can only go 14 days back on the other hand hardware snapshots consume a lot more storage
- start simple first; ad on to that if needed
  - application level HA
  - multi-role servers
    - increase CPU usage of hardware you invested in
    - also CAS is mostly CPU bound, MBX RAM & HD
- servers now are lot more performant than 3 years ago
HP E5000 messaging solution; what’s your position?
- comes preloaded with set of disk + wizard to install windows + exchange
- remember you need to combine a load balancer with it! (Quote Marc Van Hooste)
NLB vs. HLB
- outlook 2K7/2K10 uses about 10 session spread over MAPI & HTTPS
- NLB doesn’t work well with NAT
- rudimentary health check
- pay attention to the way an HLB redistributes the load when a node goes down; some of them dump all connections to the nearest node
- determine what CAS a MAPI use is connected to
- RPCClientAccessLogging: http://www.howexchangeworks.com/2011/09/rpc-client-access-logging-in-exchange.html
Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010, partner recommends 3rd party archiving solution
- Ongoing discussion…
Open Source to Exchange migration
- look at 3rd party if you want something that works
Possible progress in further releases
- reduce IO even further
Windows Phone vs. EAS policy
- it’s a shame WP7 doesn’t support them better
- However competitors (iOS, android) don’t care about them. It's understandable as we're trying to compete with them. Mobile devices focus on usability nowadays, security is not important (based on sales figures).

If the powers that be happen to read this blog post; I’m ready to do a another write up next year. Hopefully I can stay out of trouble then and post my notes in a timely manner.

Regards,

Koen

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:39:03 GMT

The day started with a panel discussion which we found very interesting. Unfortunately, we couldn’t fire all our questions, because we still need to keep some for our Pro-Exchange event, Thursday 20/10 @ MSFT BE.
(BTW: If you realize that you didn’t subscribe yet, but still want to attend, you can still register HERE. After all, having Greg Taylor and Ross Smith IV from the Exchange Product Team over doesn’t happen every day, does it?)

Somehow, Tony Redmond managed to find some time and already blogged about it. You can find his blog post here.

The content of this session leans close to the one given by our own Tonino Bruno at our last event. Although also covered by Tonino, here are some things to remember:

Especially for Greg: Address Book Policies RULE
ABP’s don’t apply whenever the CAS Address Book Service is bypassed like when Exchange is running on a GC (which isn’t recommended anyhow). This is because at that moment the GC will act as the NSPI provider and not the Address Book Service.
If a user expands a distribution list for which he/she doesn’t have the rights to see all recipients (because of an ABP); the full recipient list will be shown anyhow.
Members of a DL might be disclosed because of NDR’s or delivery receipts. They don’t take into account ABP’s.
Outlook for MAC clients don’t use the CAS Address Book Service internally; they connect directly to a GC (LDAP).
ABP’s are bypassed whenever a user uses ECP to manage groups. Disabling group-management in ECP is therefore recommended!

Nathan his session didn’t go deep technical, but rather gave a nice overview of the features in Exchange 2010 that can be used for archiving and discovery like:

Exchange 2010 Personal Archive
Retention Policies (Move- & Deletion policies)
Cloud archiving
Discovery Search

Koen already talked a bit about retention policies in one of his earlier blog post about basic housekeeping and applying retention policies.

Frank talked about some of his experiences with Exchange 2010 in the field and mentioned some interesting thoughts and issues.

Even in low-end deployments (read: as cheap as possible), try to use a DAG (even if that means you will have to run a dual multi-role exchange with a DAG and DNS RR load-balanced CAS Array). *
If you’ve got a little more money to spend, you could install Hyper-V and run 2 or 3 virtualized Exchange Servers in it. Depending on your needs, you could/should add a virtual load balancer.

* Note from Koen and Me: although DNS RR should work, we strongly recommend going for some sort of Hardware/Virtual Load Balancer in such a scenario anyway. More information can be found in our session from our last event.

At the end of the session, he briefly touched on the issue of the AdminSdHolder object. You can find more (German) information on his blog. Basically it comes to this: use separate user/admin accounts (but everybody already does that…don’t we?).

To quote Nathan: “Meet the requirements with the simplest design possible”.

Basically, Nathan went through all the topics that you need to keep in mind when designing Exchange 2010 for Site Resilience:

Ask yourself, do you really need site resilience?
What components are involved?

Infrastructure (AD/DNS/Network/…)
Exchange (DAG, CAS, HUB, PF, …)
Other (Compliance, Blackberry, …)

Remember: it’s not just technology! It’s a lot about having the right people on the right places following the right processes!
Use the FallBackUrl! (see our yesterday’s blog post)
(Re)Think about the namespaces you are going to use
Remember that Lagged copies still need RAID to be protected.
Network sizing is KEY (bandwidth!)
Enable DAC if your DAG stretches across a WAN
Think about using “vote”-servers (servers hosting a mbx-role without mailboxes to count as a vote in a DAG) if you need more votes in a certain site (to maintain quorum if a certain site is lost).

Microsoft’s vision to Site Resiliency is that it is a manual operation. They believe that the decision to fail over to a secondary datacenter has to be made by someone not something.

Apart from highlighting all the new features, Lee gave away some of his tactics on how to get the buy-in of both c-level management and pbx-admins (you know: the guy down in the basement ) on your Lync project.

For instance:

provide them with some devices to play with
use the CDR (Call Detail Records) from the Lync Monitoring server when discussing with PBX-admins

Next to that, he also made a nice quote which I wouldn’t want to withhold from you: “Lync is so much more than only Voice”!!!

Jaap talked about some do’s and don’ts when virtualizing Exchange 2010 with Hyper-V.
Basically, he explained what Hyper-V was and went through some of it’s components and talked about Microsoft’s recommendations on Virtualizing Exchange.

If you’re looking for more information on Exchange 2010 and Hyper-V, make sure to read the whitepaper.

Ilse has put together a slide deck on the questions she’s faced with frequently. Here’s a list of the things that came out:

Lync Online Voice capabilities: Lync Online is not a PBX replacement, voice support is limited. There’s currently only one partner announced (not yet live).
About Skype: no info yet as to what is going to happen in the (near) future.
Because Microsoft uses “optimized” SIP, sometimes even an IP PBX might require a gateway.
Lync Server and Lync Online don’t have a full hybrid scenario like Exchange. They rather use “federation”.
Lync Online is ideal for testing (see Ruben’s blog post about this)
She also briefly talked about the management options of Lync online. (Edit Koen: Actually, the lack of any )
Lync Server On-Prem integrates fine with Exchange- & SharePoint Online
The contents of the File Share (used to store meeting contents) is encrypted.
Use two NICs for the EDGE server
When putting an Edge server behind a NAT-device, the public IP should be configured for the A/V Edge.

Furthermore, she talked about starting small and growing your topology upon demand.

A Gateway is not needed if the telephony provider offers SIP trunking
Exchange UM is required for voice mail (otherwise Lync drops the call)
Exchange uses “standard” SIP. So you can use it as a voice mail repository for every brand of PBX.
Edge server not applicable if you use a VPN or Direct Access

This concludes our view on the second day. Tomorrow there’s half a day of sessions and a workshop around Virtualizing Exchange 2010. We’ll keep you posted!

Koen & Michael

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:48:26 GMT

Koen and I are visiting TEC Europe this year and decided to do some coverage on the different sessions that are held here.

To give you an overview of what to expect: TEC Europe (a.k.a. The Experts Conference) is organized by Quest and is held for the 10th time this year. The conference has four tracks: Exchange, Active Directory, Virtualization and a PowerShell Deep dive. Of course, we're in it for the Exchange-part ;-)

Sunday afternoon, we both attended the Quest Day where Quest talked about their existing and upcoming products. Quest shared their view on the future and they feel the areas that contain the most challenges are around Identity Management, Data Protection and Client Management. Eckhard Voelcker also shared his personal thoughts where he predicted a (huge) shift in the way we will manage data security. Today we manage and protect the systems that contain the data (container based security) whereas the future will rather be about protecting the data/content itself (data-centric security). He announced some new products (to be expected in H1 2012) that will facilitate this "paradigm" shift through features based on adaptive authorization (which will be supported by Windows Server 8 according to Quest) and data classification.

Besides that, Quest also announced "the cloud" as being the 'next big thing' (surprise, surprise!). Dmitry Sotnikov announced some cloud-based tools from Quest in the (near) future that will like:

On-Demand Email Migration
Tools for Azure
Log Management
Recovery for AD
Database tooling (Toad)
...

We're also happy to announce that we (and 2 Dutch colleagues) were able to "win" a special edition "For-Dummies"-book on Identity management and a Amazon Voucher during the Quest Quiz and would hereby like to thank Carsten from Quest again for helping us on a question or two ;-) Unfortunately we failed to get a hold of a piece of Guido Grillenmeier's birthday cake…

Today, we'll cover the first day of the conference that had some very interesting sessions by some world-class speakers like Tony Redmond, Greg Taylor, Ross Smith IV and last but not least our own Ilse Van Crieckinge.

Tony mainly spoke about the challenges of migrating to Office 365. He did not really spare Microsoft's latest cloud offering but he did share an interesting fact: Microsoft spends about 70 to 80% of their engineering effort on Office 365, compared to 20 to 30% on Exchange on-prem.

Furthermore, he focused quite a bit on comparing the costs of an on-prem migration/deployment vs. a cloud migration/deployment and the different factors to keep in mind:

Full Cost
Quality Of Delivery
Needs of the Business
Cost Buckets

People
Networking
Monitoring
Software

By the end of the session, he also shared some of his personal experiences with Office 365 where he pointed out that malformed MAPI objects can be a real "pita"...

Ross elaborated on this new feature to be included in Exchange SP2 (quote:"...which is still expected to be released before the end of the year.")

First, he talked about the different redirect types that are already available in Exchange 2010 SP1 (prior SP2):

Manual: the client gets a web page with an URL to click on after logging in. He then clicks on the link, gets to the CAS server in the other site and needs to re-authenticate.

"Temporary Manual": this will only happen in a scenario where you have just moved back from a failover to a secondary datacenter and during timeframe that the DNS-records have been changed but still cached (wrongly) on the clients. This time, the client will be shown button to click on, to avoid exposing the "temporary" URL that is used.

Legacy Silent: from legacy systems (E2003/E2007). For Exchange 2003; the Exchange2003URL property needs to be set on the Exchange 2010 OWA virtual directory.

It is recommended to switch to an Exchange 2010 CAS server early in a migration, but this possibly leaves users with a poor "experience" when they try to reach their mailbox in a different AD site (if their mailbox has not yet been migrated...)

The key points from this new feature are:

Is disabled by default
Needs to be activated per OWA Virtual Directory
Will only work if there's an external URL set on the OWA virtual directory in the target AD site. Otherwise the request will be proxied.
Only for Intra-Organization OWA redirections. Redirection between 2 different Exchange Organizations is not supported.
Source CAS needs to be Exchange 2010
SSO experience across a TMG is only possible when using the same array. If another TMG array is used (and therefore another web listener), SSO is not possible and the user still has to login a second time.
SSO only works if FBA is enabled on both source and target OWA virtual directories.

The cmdlet that will be used to enable cross site redirection is: Set-OWAVirtualDirectory -CrossSiteRedirectType Manual/Silent. Although the documentation has not been updated yet, you can find more info on the Set-OWAVirtualDirectory cmdlet here.

Although the session only lasted about one and a half our, I’m sure that Greg could’ve easily have spent all day (and more) talking about CAS.

He talked about some of the problems that he encountered during his visits with (un)happy customers and pointed out some key things to remember:

In a migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, the Exchange 2003 Mailbox server(s) should be configured as a back-end server. If this is not the case, the validsportskey on the Exchange 2010 CAS (used for RPC over HTTP traffic) will not have the necessary entries and therefore fail to connect to Exchange 2003.
When installing the first Exchange 2010 CAS into an Exchange 2003 environment, Autodiscover will create a SCP that will also be used by Exchange 2003 mailboxes. To avoid clients connecting to Exchange 2010 when the configuration has not been finished yet, you chould modify the SCP object to prevent Outlook clients finding it. Obviously once the CAS has been setup correctly (config+certificates), the SCP needs to be re-modified so that clients can start using AutoDiscover.
Even if you have a single Client Access Server: create a CAS Array. This will save you some headaches later-on (e.g. when adding a second CAS).
The owa internalurl does not need to be changed. (e.g. url of the CAS array). It's even advised not to do so. Exchange has a "built-in" load balancing for OWA connections between CAS servers.
There has to be an EWS-virtual directory running the same version of Exchange as the mailboxes’ Exchange Server. In other words: if you still have Exchange 2007 mailboxes, keep at least one Exchange 2007 CAS in that site.
In a coexistence scenario between Exchange 2007 en Exchange 2010, clear the ExternalURL value for the Exchange 2007 server and let Exchange 2010 handle the connections. The same goes for Outlook anywhere: disable it on Exchange 2007 as Exchange 2010 CAS will handle OA connections for Exchange 2007 as well.

Ross has already given this session once @ TechEd NA and it has been recorded entirely. You can view the session here.

After having been knocked down by Ross his (math-)session on failure domains, it was quite refreshing to tap into Ilse's lively session about PowerShell in Exchange on-prem and online

Although not deep technical, Ilse covered some interesting stuff about the difficulties when using PowerShell for both worlds:

If using a single PowerShell session to manage both worlds, don't forget to use the prefix-parameter when importing your Office 365 sessions
In order to avoid writing a whole book to connect to Office 365 for every new session, add the code to you PowerShell profile so that you can connect more easily.
Remove your PowerShell session after use:

You can only have 3 simultaneous connections. If you don’t remove your PowerShell Session (Remove-PSSession), it will be kept active for another 15 minutes…
You want to avoid filling your %temp%-directory. (If a session is not removed properly, the logging for that sessions will stay in your temp-directory).

If you want some additional information, take a look at Ilse’s blog. She will be posting some details on her sessions later on.

The last session of the day is (again) presented by Ross. He mainly talked about the different functionalities and features that Exchange 2010 offers and how they can help you protect your data without the need to immediately revert to backups.

Some of the technologies that make this native data protection possible are:

Single Item Recovery
Continuous Replication
Single Page Restore
Recoverable Items Folder (a.k.a. Dumpster 2.0)
Legal Hold (Litigation Hold)
MailboxAssistants (Calendar Repair, Mailbox Repair)
Lagged Database Copies
Database Scoping (against the rogue Administrators ;-) )
...

This session was also given at TechEd Europe last year. The recording can be found here.

As you can see, there's still a lot to cover and we feel some new blog posts coming up over the next few weeks ;-)

Overall today has been very rewarding! The sessions were great and often deep-technical. The fact that the speakers were there all day and attended each other's session allowed them to really tap into the each other’s session(s).

We look forward to the second day and will certainly be blogging about it.

Koen and Michael

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:44:09 GMT

18
OCT
2011

Operations Manager 2010 – Application Monitoring
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Microsoft acquired AVIcode at the end of 2010. Starting the day the deal closed Microsoft have been working hard to integrate the AVIcode technologies into Operations Manager 2012 and with the beta release we will show you the first phase of the new .NET Monitoring features that are focused on IIS 7 hosted web applications and services.

Speaker

Alexandre Verkinderen

20
OCT
2011

BitLocker in the Enterprise
Timing 19:30 – 21:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

BitLocker (To Go) is one of the features that are shipped with Windows 7. First, what is the best approach to deploy this in an enterprise? How does this integrate with OS Deployment? How do you keep control? And how do you recover? Second, Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM). What is this tool? Does it have any added value for you? If you want to have answers on these questions you cannot miss this session!

Speaker

Nico Sienaert

25
OCT
2011

How many nines do we need? Introducing SQL Server Denali AlwaysOn
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

With natural disasters like earthquakes and fires in the news so often, and the economy still struggling to stabilize, IT Professionals know that many disasters can shut down a SQL Server.
Microsoft has already implemented a lot of high availability solutions in previous editions of SQL Server, like failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping,... But,when it comes to high availability, Denali changes the game for SQL Server deployments by introducing SQL Server AlwaysOn. You can increase application availability and get a better return on your hardware investments through a simplified high availability deployment and management experience.
In this session you will see the key capabilities and concepts of Database Availability and Instance Availability, deploying availability groups, configuration Application Failover using a Virtual Name, Initiating a failover to the secondary and possibilities with the active secondary.

Speaker

Pieter Vanhove

27
OCT
2011

Exchange Online vs Exchange On Premises
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

In this session we will dive into the differences and similarities when comparing Exchange Online to Exchange On Premises, and things to keep in mind when going for Rich Coexistence.

Speaker

Ilse Van Crieckinge

03
NOV
2011

What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named Denali for SQL Server Integration Services
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

This session shows off the new features of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services in SQL Server code-named “Denali”. We will highlight the migration process and the benefits of the new SSIS server architecture. We cover the many improvements made to increase developer productivity,as well as the enhancements to the current configuration,deployment,and management experiences.

Speaker

Wesley Backelant

08
NOV
2011

Licensing Microsoft Products in Virtual Environments
Timing 15:00 – 16:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Virtualization is a hot topic. Each IT Pro is nowadays involved in a project that includes some level of virtualization. As a consequence, the question ‘how to license my virtual environment’ pops up more and more. During this licensing Live Meeting, we will go through the most common virtual scenario’s (VDI, application server virtualization, Windows Server virtualization) and how to license them.

Speaker

Rebekka Van Acker

09
NOV
2011

SCSM 2012 Portal & SharePoint Integration
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

The upcoming version of Service Manager 2012 will deliver standardized, compliant, and automated IT as a Service. Different new functionality like the new self-service portal, Release Management and the enhanced reporting functionality are already announced. This session will focus on the new Silverlight based SharePoint self-service portal, service catalog & service requests. How do you prepare your Service Manager environment for the self-service portal and how you can bring this information in the portal are questions that should be answered after attending this session. The session will be nearly all demos, we start with the scenario and run through the configuration of the Service Manager environment.

Speaker

Kurt Van Hoecke

09
NOV
2011

Busting the myths of Microsoft UC
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Speaker

Johan Delimon

16
NOV
2011

Introduction into System Center Advisor
Timing 19:30 – 21:00 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Speaker

Arne Peleman

17
NOV
2011

Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 7
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Speaker

Nico Sienaert

22
NOV
2011

Lingering objects in Active Directory!
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Speaker

Ward Pauwels

30
NOV
2011

New world of Datacenter: Managing your IAAS Private cloud with System Center
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Audience IT professionals | Language English

Abstract

Speaker

Kenny Buntinx

Johan Delimon — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:08:00 GMT

Event Information

The SMB MVPs are delighted to bring their International SMB MVP Community Roadshow to Brussels on November 29th 2011.
This is a chance to hear first-hand from your peers in the field how they are implementing the New SMB Stack from Microsoft and see it actually demo’d on current shipping HP Hardware. This is not a canned sales pitch, this is a live demo by some of the SMB MVP's on real world scenarios they are deploying today.
Each stop on the tour will be a little different as the presenters change as the tour progresses and they also have to flexibility to shape the discussion to fit the local audience.
This is a free event, but you must register to attend.
For more details, review the agenda available below by selecting Additional Information.

SBS 2011 Essentials
SBS 2011 Standard
SBS 2011 Premium
MultiPoint 2011 Server

MicroServer
SMB Entry/Mid-Range Pedestal/Rack Servers

Migrate Anything to Anywhere
Swing Migration Platforms for SBS, Exchange, and Windows or Cloud-integrated deployments

Venue Information

Event Venue: Microsoft BeLux
Address: Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3
Address: Corporate Village
City: B-1935 Zaventem
Country: Belgium

Michael Van Horenbeeck — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:18:01 GMT

First of all we would like to start by thank all of you who were able to make it, yesterday. There were about 50 people and interesting sessions, which made this event a great success. Though the temperature in the room got (literally) quite high at some moment, it couldn’t spoil the fun

The different sessions were given by Koen, Johan, Tonino and myself about various topics like Exchange- and Lync Load Balancing and Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2.

In case you weren’t able to make it, here are some photos of the event so that you can at least get a taste of the atmosphere:

I’ve also included the entire presentation which you can download here.

Don’t forget about our next event on the 20th of October @ Microsoft Diegem, where we will have another ‘Ask the Experts’-session with some members of Microsoft’s Exchange Product team (Ross Smith IV and Greg Taylor). You will shortly receive an invite!

We hope you’ve enjoyed it and look forward seeing you again next time!

Johan Delimon — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:51:00 GMT

28	What's new in the next version of Windows Intune				REGISTER AFTERNOON EVENING
SEP
2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 19:30 – 21:00		Audience IT professionals	Type Live Webcast	Language English
Abstract Learn all about the next version of Windows Intune. 2 timeslots are available for this session (same content): 1 in the afternoon (14:00 - 15:30) and 1 in the evening (19:30 - 21:00). Speaker Mike Resseler


11	Integrating Bing Maps into your Windows Phone 7.5 Application				REGISTER
OCT
2011
Timing 14:00 – 15:30		Audience Developers	Type Live Webcast	Language English
Abstract Including a Bing Maps control inside your Windows Phone application is a first step. Adding extra functionalities generally comes next. The purpose of this session is to demonstrate how to work with Bing Maps, add push pins, calculate and display a route … Speaker Christophe Peerens

Johan Delimon — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:55:00 GMT

Register now for the following TechNet Webcasts:

06
OCT
2011

TechNet Licensing: Office 365 Use Rights and the impact for an IT Pro
Timing 10:30 – 11:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
With the launch of Office 365, we introduce a new purchase model for Microsoft Office. As an IT Pro, it is important to know the implications of these newly introduced use rights. We go through some popular questions like: 'Do we count the number of devices (as with Office 2010 in Volume Licensing) or per user?' 'Are there still Software Assurance Benefits?' 'Is remote desktop still possible?'... Don't miss this session if your company plans or considers to migrate to Office365 !

Speaker Rebekka Van Acker

06
OCT
2011

Migrating emails to Office 365
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
With different options available for migrating to Office 365, choosing the right migration path might seem a daunting task. This session will cover the different paths, varying from a simple and quick migration from either an on-premise Exchange server or hosted mail service up to a long-term hybrid coexistence scenario with Exchange 2010 SP1 on-premise. We will talk about planning, preparation and execution: how best to do it, discuss the challenges and how to overcome them.

Speaker Michael Van Horenbeeck

20
SEP
2011

Prepare yourself to move to SCOM 2012
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
Prepare your environment for the next version of SCOM (System Center Operations Manager). This session will give you a start point to prepare your environment and yourself when SCOM 2012 is released to migrate to the new version. What are the things to keep in mind to make sure the transition will go as smoothly as possible. We'll go over the different steps of backing up, documenting and checking your environment which is in place today to make sure the transition will go a smooth as possible.

Speaker Dieter Wijckmans

27
SEP
2011

Application compatibility or security? A delicate balance
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
Multiple technologies exist to help you to make your legacy applications work on Windows 7. But what about security? Can all of these be used in a secure way or do you have to make a trade-off? If so, what are the risks? In this presentation, we'll go through Application-compatibility best-practices and technologies such as Shimming, XP-mode, MED-V, IE-compatibility mode, EMET and others and look at their impact on the security of the platform.
Speaker Raf Cox

28
SEP
2011

What's New in the Next Version of Windows Intune
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 or 19:30 – 21:00 | Type Live Webcast | Language English

Abstract
Attend this TechNet Live Meeting, presented by Mike Resseler, and learn all about the next version of Windows Intune. 2 timeslots are available for this session (same content): 1 in the afternoon (14:00 - 15:30) and 1 in the evening (19:30 - 21:00).

Speaker Mike Resseler

SQL Server 2012 Licensing Update

Timing 14:00 – 15:00

Audience IT professionals

Type Live Webcast

Language English

Abstract

SQL 2012 is on its way! During this Live Meeting we will discuss SQL 2012 licensing changes, the simplified edition line-up and the virtualisation possibilities offered through Software Assurance.

Speaker

Rebekka Van Acker

Johan Delimon — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:09:00 GMT

Hardware Loadbalancers or Software Loadbalancers are required for both Exchange and Lync when implementing a High Available solution so lets dig deeper in the hows and why's.
Exchange Server 2010 SP2 is just around the corner and will bring some nice new features, we will go over all of them and demo the new stuff.

Agenda:

18h30 Reception (there will be sandwiches and drinks)
19h00 Hardware Load Balancers (Exchange & Lync)
20h00 Exchange Server 2010 SP2 What's new
21h00 Closing with Q&A

When:

Thursday 22nd of september 2011

Where:

Xylos
St-Lendriksborre 8
1120 Brussels
Belgium