-
-
Download the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 public beta here. Includes the Standard and Enterprise Editions as well as the Office Communicator 2007 client.
-
-
Many of you that have been working with and paying attention to Exchange 2007 already know this - the new SMTP protocol has been re-written from the ground up as a separate component that is no longer dependent on IIS. Here is some more detail from DepLarge.doc - a guide on deploying Exchange 2007 in a large environment from Microsoft.
In Exchange 2007, the SMTP protocol is provided by the Microsoft Exchange Transport service (MSExchangeTransport.exe). In earlier versions of Exchange, the SMTP protocol service was provided by Internet Information Services (IIS). The SMTP stack is the core infrastructure of Exchange. Without it, you can't send and receive e-mail messages. Exchange 2007 provides a stable transport that addresses the most common security risks. By rewriting the transport stack in managed code and running as the Network Service account, we have reduced the risks that are associated with denial of service attacks. This new SMTP transport stack is a required part of Exchange. It eliminates the dependency on IIS and reduces the work that is required to help secure a server for perimeter network deployment.
The Microsoft Exchange Transport service controls every component of message processing, from SMTP IN to SMTP OUT. A series of configurable SMTP Receive agents are triggered at various SMTP events. The Microsoft Exchange Transport service enables these agents to process messages as they pass through SMTP transport, performing anti-spam, antivirus, and other tasks before messages are submitted to the categorizer. During categorization, name resolution, routing resolution, and content conversion occur. Additional agents are triggered at this point of the transport pipeline. These agents provide the Transport Policy and Compliance features that enable an administrator to determine how a message is handled and archived.
-
-
Download it here.
The list of included fixes is here.
-
-
Those of us that give a lot of presentations whether for a living or for fun can identify with this post. However, I particularly love the post mortem on how to recover and reclaim your presentation mojo!
-
-
As Eileen pointed out, registration is open for the public beta of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. I am looking forward to getting my paws on this beta as I think this new version is going to rock. I haven't seen a lot of information; and that should change soon as the beta goes public and the RTM date nears. Stay tuned.
-
-
Here is a great post from the Virtual PC team (okay, from Ben Armstrong) on how to run a legacy DOS application under Virtual PC without the end user ever knowing they are running it in a virtual environment. Brilliant!
-
-
The Exchange team blog posted a great article on the features available with different versions of Outlook when coupled with different versions of Exchange on the back end. One of the cool features when using Outlook and Exchange 2007 is enhanced Out of Office Assistant. You have the option to customize and turn off or on Out of Office messages for those inside your organization and those outside your organization. Very nice. You also have a number of rich text formatting options available so you can pepper those messages with all kinds of business essential eye candy.
-
-
From Arlindo's blog I found an awesome Longhorn Hypervisor Virtual Server demo given at Microsoft. This is the new Longhorn server running the server core role with 8 cores! They show a few different things in the demo like hot adding a NIC to a running VM with PowerShell.
-
-
I saw this on the Microsoft Download website and had to take a look. It looks to be a virtual machine with all of the Exchange-based DST tools loaded on it. You then join it to the domain and you have a workstation pre-configured to run all the tools for DST adjustments. At least, I think that's what it is for. The description on the website is a little thin IMO and I don't want to download 1.5GB and then hope there is documentation in there! They should include it as a separate readme or be more verbose in describing what this thing actually does! If anyone fools with it, let me know what you find!
-
-
Beta exam 71-237 ITPro: Designing Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been released. With this exam you will earn credit towards the certification for Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Enterprise Messaging Administrator. The exam goes live on March 1st and the beta ends on March 27th. It should go live within 30-60 days of that date if previous beta tests have been any indication. You are allotted four hours for this test.
Find exam preparation information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-237.mspx
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frequently Asked Questions
For Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) help and information, you may log in to the MCP Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/mcp/ or contact your Regional Service Center: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/support/worldsites.asp