Yay! MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010

I got an email through today confirming I have passed the Exchange 2010 PRO exam beta and have now achieved MCITP Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010 certification. :D

The PRO exam is available from today and you can find out about it here, http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-663.

If you haven't taken the TS yet find out about it here, http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-662.

The Exchange 2010 certification hasn't appeared on the MCITP page just yet, http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcitp.aspx#tab2.

Daniel

Whitepaper: Security in BPOS

Found this whitepaper from Microsoft about how they do security in the cloud with BPOS, http://www.slideshare.net/ukdpe/how-microsoft-secures-its-online-services-whitepaper.

It's an interesting read for those new to cloud services, however having worked in a company that has being doing this for 8+ years with Hosted Exchange I know this case well. If you fancy a chat about security and reliability in the cloud it why not visit http://www.cobweb.com or call us on 01329 242500.

Daniel

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 services stuck at 'Starting' with Server 2008

I found this over at Aaron Tiensivu's Blog and found it quite interesting.

"A few months ago I detailed about a problem with OCS services not starting after a reboot, a general loss of network connectivity during boot and the inability to RDP to those servers once this scenario was triggered.

I bumped into a new article from a Paul Adams at MS that has a handyPowerShell script to add in the workaround for the deadlock problem. It is also noted, just from general banter on the Internet, forums and newsgroups, that the OCS servers involved are typically HP servers that used the SmartStart CD for installation. It could be that HP agents, drivers or services added to the base OS are causing this issue to flare up. Any OCS servers I have seen, so far, that had this problem were from HP.

The PowerShell script can be downloaded from here, and it refers to an earlier post by the same author detailing the technical reasons as to why and how it can happen. Ideally, I'm hoping a more generic/official fix for it becomes available from Microsoft at some point for the OS. OCS unfortunately is just a possible trigger for this issue, and the issue comes from the underlying operating system."

Read the post at his blog here, http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1921-Update-on-Office-Communications-Server-2007-R2-services-stuck-at-Starting-with-Server-2008.html.

Daniel

Exchange 2010 Deployment Assitant update

There are some new upgrade scenarios over on the Exchange 2010 Deployment Assitant. It's worth he time running through.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home

GroupWise gets Active Sync

If you use GroupWise there is a beta ActiveSync connector availble.

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/9367/groupwise-activesync-device-support#comment-7119