Exchange 2010 Beta is available now

The public beta of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, part of Microsoft's unified communications family, is now available. Exchange 2010 is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft server technology designed and developed to work on-premises and as an online service, and introduces a new integrated e-mail archive and features to reduce costs and improve the user experience.
Exchange 2010 Product Home Page
- http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx
Exchange 2010 on TechCenter
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2010/default.aspx

Hyper-V Security Guide

This is a new solution accelerator from Microsoft, good for those of you Hyper-V users. Check it out!!

This guide is designed to provide you with guidance, instructions, and recommendations to help you elevate the security of virtualized Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 environments to address your business-critical needs.
The Hyper-V Security Guide focuses on three key areas and provides the following information:
• Hardening the Hyper-V role. Prescriptive guidance for hardening the Hyper-V role, including several best practices for installing and configuring Hyper-V with a focus on security. These best practices include measures for reducing the attack surface of Hyper-V as well as recommendations for properly configuring secure virtual networks and storage devices. • Delegating virtual machine management. Prescriptive guidance to help you safely and securely delegate administrative access to virtual machine resources within an organization. • Protecting virtual machines. Prescriptive guidance for securing virtual machine resources, including best practices and detailed steps for protecting virtual machines by using a combination of file system permissions, encryption, and auditing.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2220624b-a562-4e79-aa69-a7b3dffdd090&displaylang=en

Deploy Office 2007 Compatibility Pack via Group Policy

For those of you whom supports both Office 2003 and Office 2007, you will frequently be getting calls from users that they have problem opening Office 2007 files. Microsoft releases FileFormatConverters.exe to allow Office 2003 users to open Office 2007 files. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
Let me share with you how to deploy Office 2007 CompatibilityPack to your Office 2003 users via GPO.
First, download fileformatconverters.exe using the link above.
Save the fileformatconverters.exe to a folder, example, C:\office2007convert.
Open command prompt, and execute the command to extract the files.
C:\office2007convert\fileformatconverters.exe /extract:c:\office2007convert\

Copy the files O12Conv.CAB and O12Conv.MSI to a shared folder on your server where you users have read access.

Now, let's create a Group Policy to deploy Office 2007 Compatibility Pack to your users.
Open Group Policy Management Console and create a new policy. Let's call it DeployOffice2007CompatPack.
Expand out the Computers Configuration and select the Software Settings > Software Installation.
Right-click in the right hand pane and select New > Package.
Browse to the package on the file share you are going to use and select the O12Conv.MSI file and choose OPEN.
When prompted choose Assigned (you can also choose Publish but this Publish option will not automatically install the software for your users - it will just make the package available for them to install).
Once you have pressed OK you will find the package in your GPO.

Link this DeployOffice2007CompatPack to your OU where your computers reside and we are done.

Deploying Software via Group Policy is a efficent way to install software to your domain computers.