This guide provides instructions for deploying Group Policy settings to a set of client computers or users by using membership groups rather than account location in the OU hierarchy of a domain.

The method described in this guide shows you how to create a single membership group into which you can add the user or computer accounts that are to receive a configuration through the use of GPOs. Membership in the group, rather than the account location in the OU hierarchy, determines whether the computer receives one of the GPOs associated with the membership group. In addition, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) filters are used to ensure that only the GPO with the settings that correspond to the version of Windows running on the computer is applied.

This is a PDF file of the "Moving Applications to the Cloud, Third Edition" book.
This guide is the third edition of the first volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can adapt an existing on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud by introducing a fictitious company named Adatum that modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, so that it can be deployed to Windows Azure. To illustrate the wide range of options and features in Windows Azure, this guide and the code examples available for it show a step-by-step migration process that includes using Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and SQL Database. Together with useful information on developing, deploying, managing, and costing cloud-hosted applications, this guide provides you with a comprehensive resource for moving your applications to Window Azure.

Moving Apps to the Cloud 3rd Edition.pdf 3.4 MB
Download

This is a PDF file of the "Moving Applications to the Cloud, Third Edition" book.
This guide is the third edition of the first volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can adapt an existing on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud by introducing a fictitious company named Adatum that modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, so that it can be deployed to Windows Azure. To illustrate the wide range of options and features in Windows Azure, this guide and the code examples available for it show a step-by-step migration process that includes using Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and SQL Database. Together with useful information on developing, deploying, managing, and costing cloud-hosted applications, this guide provides you with a comprehensive resource for moving your applications to Window Azure.

Moving Apps to the Cloud 3rd Edition.pdf 3.4 MB
Download

Update Rollup 5v2 is released, v1 was pulled hours after release because of a DAG issue, this is fixed now.

Todays rollups also include security fixes for Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-080. The Exchange team have the strange practice of using the rollups as the only vehicle for Exchange security fixes. This forces customers to deploy a complete rollup to be compliant. This year Exchange rollups were pulled 3 times because of quality issues, so in my opinion security fixes should also be made available as separate installers.

Update Rollup 5-v2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2

Description of Update Rollup 5 version 2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2

Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1

Description of Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1

Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3

Description of Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3

Back in October, we announced that the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build of Exchange Server 2013 was signed off. Since that time, we’ve been focusing our efforts on releasing the next version of Exchange through multiple distribution channels to our business customers.

Today, we’ve reached another important milestone – The Exchange team is excited to announce the general availability of Exchange Server 2013. You can download the bits from TechNet today and evaluate the product for 180 days. You can also sign up for the Office 365 Preview to get the most current Exchange experience in the cloud in just a few minutes.

For those of you who wish to roll out Exchange Server 2013 in greenfield environments, or in labs and test environments to evaluate new features and test with LOB applications, you can start right away. If you are running an Exchange 2010 or 2007 environment, you’ll need Exchange Server 2010 SP3 or 2007 roll up in order to upgrade. We know you are eager to get moving to the new version, so we are hard at work putting the finishing touches on Exchange 2010 SP3 and the roll up, which are on track for release in Q1 of calendar year 2013.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to learn more about Exchange Server 2013 by reviewing TechNet documentation or attending an Ignite training session. It’s a good idea to evaluate prerequisites and system requirements at this time, as well as become familiar with Exchange’s simplified building block architecture, so that you can get a head start on hardware sizing, planning and purchasing.

The EHLO team has been adding more technical content on the new Exchange since the RTM announcement:

• Offline Address Book in Exchange Server 2013 – Bhalchandra Atre
• Managing Federated Sharing with the EAC – Elber Ren and Robert Mazzoli
• Offline Access in Outlook Web App for the New Exchange – Sara Manning
• Public Folders in the New Office – Alfons Staerk and Nikhil Aggarwal
• Publishing Exchange Server 2013 using TMG – Greg Taylor

I have been invited to attend the HP Discover 2012 conference in Frankfurt. So today and tomorrow you can expect HP / Microsoft related news on Bink.nu. Please make sure you also follow Bink.nu on Twitter, because I will be posting there much more often.

http://twitter.com/sbink

Also checkout tag #HPDiscover on twitter for updates for other attendees.

The Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) Product Team announced that they are currently developing Service Pack 3 for UAG 2010 and expect to make it available during the first quarter of calendar year 2013 (Q1 CY2013).

Service Pack 3 will provide support for: 

• Windows 8 with Internet Explorer 10 clients, including DirectAccess
• Office 2013 clients (e.g. Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Publishing Exchange 2013
• Publishing SharePoint 2013
• RDP 8.0 client for Windows 7 SP1 (KB 2592687)

The Remote Desktop Services Management Pack helps you manage your computers that are running Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 by monitoring the health of Remote Desktop Services role services.

The Remote Desktop Services Management Pack helps you manage your computers that are running Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 by monitoring the health of Remote Desktop Services role services.
Feature Summary
This management pack provides monitoring of the following Remote Desktop Services role services:

• RD Session Host
• RD Virtualization Host
• RD Licensing
• RD Gateway
• RD Connection Broker
• RD Web Access

This stencil contains more than 300 icons to help you create visual representations of your Microsoft Office and Exchange Server architecture.

Creating visual representations of your Microsoft Office and Exchange Server architecture is a helpful way to communicate your deployment. This Visio stencil provides more than 300 icons -- many depicting servers, applications, and services -- that you can use in architecture diagrams, charts, and posters. These icons are primarily centered around Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange technologies and features.

Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 is a shared resource computing technology that delivers low cost shared computing primarily for educational environments

Windows® MultiPoint Server 2012 is the third version of a Windows product primarily designed for educational institutions that allows multiple users to simultaneously share one computer. Users have their own independent and familiar Windows computing experience, using their own monitor, keyboard and mouse directly connected to the host computer. Windows MultiPoint Server 2012 enables more users to access technology at a lower total cost of ownership.

Designed for non-technical users, it is simple to manage and use. Based on the latest Windows technology it can run the latest Windows applications. Support can be obtained through Microsoft or an authorized partner, and schools have access to the latest updates with the confidence that they are getting the experience they expect.

Leonardo Amaya has created a Bink.nu news reader for Windows Phone, without me even knowing it! How cool is that.

“This is a simple news reader from Bink.nu. One of the most important news sites about the entire Windows ecosystem.”

Includes my twitter feed too Ver 2.0

-Added the ability to see a preview of the news.
-Added the ability to view on the web, pin to start and share news

Bink.nu Reader  Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

The Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool 2.0 (OCAT ) provides a quick and easy method to analyze your Microsoft Office Outlook profile and mailbox for common configurations that may cause problems in Outlook. This can be very useful for busy Help Desk personnel when end-users call for help with Outlook or when you want to identify possible issues with Outlook proactively.

For any problems that are listed in the report, you are provided a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article that describes a possible fix for the problem. If you are a Help Desk professional, you can also export the report to a file. Then, the report can be viewed in the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool on another client computer where the tool is installed. The Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool 2.0 also includes a command-line version that can be used to collect an OCAT scan without user intervention.

What’s new:

· Automatic downloading of new detection rules

As we create new rules to detect issues or to collect additional information about your Outlook profile, we will post a new updated rule file to the Internet. With the default OCAT version 2 configuration, OCAT will automatically check for a new rule file and provide a mechanism to update OCAT if a new file is found.

· Automatic downloading of OCAT installation files

As we update and fix the core OCAT application, we will post a new Windows Installer package file (.Msi) to the Internet. With the default OCAT version 2 configuration, OCAT will automatically check for a new installer file and provide a mechanism to update OCAT if a new file is found.

· Addition of the CalCheck tool

The Calendar Checking Tool (CalCheck) for Outlook is a command-line program that checks Outlook Calendars for problems. This tool is now included in OCAT to scan for and report on any known problems with items on your primary Calendar.

Please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base for additional information about the CalCheck tool.

2678030 Information about the Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2678030/EN-US

· Addition of new detection rules

To greatly enhance the list of known issues detected by OCAT, approximately 175 new rules were added since the first version shipped.

· Command-line version of OCATcmd.exe

OCAT version 2 includes a command-line version of OCAT (OCATcmd.exe) that administrators can use to scan computers in their organization.

· Office 365 resources added

To help Office 365 customers with Outlook problems, we added a link on the OCAT Welcome page to an article that provides a list of resources to help with top issues and how-to problems in Office 365. We also added detection rules specific to Office 365 issues.

· New modern user interface

The colors, fonts, and icons in OCAT were updated to mirror those found in Windows 8.

Download OCAT.msi