Just as the Chilean miners were rescued from underground this week, Tony Redmond and Paul Robichaux are rescuing a group of stalwart Exchange administrators in Boston from possible problems and mis-steps as they plan their migrations to Exchange Server 2010. The “Essentials Workshop Series: Become and Exchange 2010 Maestro” event kicked off yesterday in Boston and will run again in Anaheim next week. And as with the mine operation rescue, some heavy equipment noises were prevalent during the first day of the workshop as the hotel was undergoing some renovations. (Apparently the sessions were moved away from the chaos for the remainder of the event.)
The event is proving to bring a good mix of nuts-and-bolts training and lively discussion. Tony and Paul worked with Exchange MVP Brian Desmond to build the lab materials for the event, which are delivered on USB SATA drives that contain six virtual machines. About 41 attendees are in the room with the “masters” this week, and Tony reported that they represent a fairly typical mix of Exchange use – about 55 percent currently run Exchange 2003, 35 percent run Exchange 2007, and about 10 percent run Exchange 2010.
The daily agenda is packed, and the discussions are intriguing, so the biggest challenge for Tony, Paul, and the group is staying on schedule to cover the significant amount of material in store over the three-day course. According to Tony, some of the most detailed discussions have focused on:
- · Enterprise CALs, which are confusing for many Exchange admins
- · The need to deploy Outlook 2010 to take advantage of some Exchange 2010 features presents a challenge for some companies
- · Setting the requirement for encrypted RPCs off by default solves one problem—but creates another.
You can follow a blow-by-blow account of the workshop through blogs by Tony and Paul. And if you want to rub elbows with the maestros yourself—and you can get to Anaheim by Monday—slots are still available for next week’s sessions, which kicks off Monday at the Anaheim Sheraton Hotel on South Disneyland Drive.
