My first post, thanks Shijaz for helping me out with setting this up. Thought where else to start than to write about the team wherein I work in Microsoft, that is the Microsoft Premier Services.

Microsoft Premier Services is a highly customizable support offering from Microsoft, encompassing a comprehensive selection of support resources to choose from, including proactive prevention resources, infrastructure support, workshops, problem resolutions, IO capability and IT process maturity assessment and roadmap.

With Premier Support, you gain a dedicated resource who is your eyes, ears and voice within Microsoft; the Technical Account Manager (TAM). Working with you, your TAM will:

• Develop an understanding of your Business and Technology requirements and design a unique service delivery plan.
• Proactively facilitate support services and resources to help mitigate issues in  your unique Business applications and IT Infrastructure.
• Engage appropriate knowledge transfers and workshops by Microsoft resources to increase the skills of your IT staff on the current and upcoming technologies to help them better manage and monitor in your IT infrastructure.
• Assess your IO maturity and help move move up the IT capability ladder.
• Assess the IT process maturity of your organization and plan to improve your processes around ITIL and MOF.

Predominantly the focus of Microsoft Premier Services is to identify and address potential problems before they occur, thus reducing the risk of downtime and interruption to your business.  This in turn benefits you with increased system availability and uptime that keeps you end users productive and make IT a strategic asset to your business than a cost center or liability.

The result? Lower risk to your IT infrastructure, higher productivity and maximum benefits from your existing IT investments and better alignment of IT to business capabilities.

If you or your customers are running Windows Vista RTM version (without any service pack), please note that support for it has ended yesterday, April 13, 2010.

To continue receiving support for Windows Vista, you must install Service Pack 1 or Service Pack2, which is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Follow this link, for information on how to obtain the latest service pack.

In case you didn’t notice, Microsoft will end support for Windows 2000 (Client and Server) and Windows XP SP2 on July 13, 2010. Customers will no longer be able to call Microsoft for support or receive free security updates from Microsoft unless they move to a supported version of the operating system.

For the record, Windows 2000 was released almost 10 years ago, back in February 2000. Windows XP was released more than 8 years ago, in August 2001.

Update (18-Jan-2010): Windows XP SP3 is going into extended support till April 2014 meaning that you can get hotfixes if you enter into a (paid) Extended Hotfix Support agreement, which is not included by default in a Premier Support agreement.

This post (as with all other posts on microsoftnow.com), is provided “as is” and confers no rights.

For a list of Microsoft servers and products that are tested and supported in virtualized environments, see the Microsoft KB article 957006.

Be sure to bookmark this article, as the page is regularly revised as new products are supported. As of writing this post, the page is at Revision 10.0.

January 4, 2009

After having tirelessly served the world for more than eight years, Windows XP is fast being replaced by its younger brother, Windows Vista.

Most of us are curious to know what exactly is the future of Windows XP. Most of us have seen it in retail stores, and even seen it being shipped with new computers even after the launch of Windows Vista.

So what does the future hold for Windows XP? What if you can’t run Vista, and you really must use Windows XP? How long can you use Windows XP? To get an answer to all these questions, and much more – read what Microsoft has to say: Windows XP: The facts about the future.

Mainstream support for Exchange Server 2003 will end on April 14, 2009. This means that you cannot contact PSS for supporting problems on Exchange Server 2003 after this date, unless you sign up for ‘extended’ support at an additional cost.

Maybe this is a good time for organizations to seriously start thinking about upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 and make use of the new, advanced features.

For those who have made it to Exchange Server 2007 SP0, here is a shocker: Mainstream support for Exchange Server 2007 SP0 (i.e. Exchange Server 2007 with NO service pack installed) will end on January 13, 2009. Yes, that’s about two months from now.

For those who are still wary of installing SP1 on Exchange Server 2007, it’s time to take a call on the chicken-and-egg upgrade dilemma between Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2007 SP1.

Some more information:

• Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 will go out of mainstream support on July 2010.
• Windows XP will go out of mainstream support on April 14, 2009.

Microsoft will pull the plug on Exchange Server 2003 support in April 2009.

Unless another service pack is released for Exchange Server 2003 (which is unlikely), the mainstream support for the product will end on 14th April 2009.

If you’re still running Exchange Server 2003, its time to start thinking of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007. One year from today, you will not receive support from Microsoft if you face problems on your Exchange 2003 installation, unless you purchase the ‘extended support’ option, which is available till August 2014.

More information on the Microsoft Support Lifecycle website.

Everybody knows that if you want to manually edit the value for an attribute in Active Directory, you ought to be using ADSIEDIT.

But what if you just realized that you have to modify a particular attribute for a large number of Active Directory users, if not all users? Would this mean opening up each user object in ADSIEDIT and modifying the required attribute?

Thankfully, there is the ADModify tool from Microsoft PSS that lets you bulk-edit Active directory. You simply set the filter on what users should be affected, and then specify the attribute that needs to be changed and the value to which it should be changed. You can even make the values to by typing the word null as the value.

A word of caution here – Bulk edits can be really, really painful if you do it wrong. You can seriously mess up your Active Directory if you’re not careful!

I’ve got bad news for lazy patchers!

As of July 10, Microsoft has stopped supporting Windows Server 2003 installations where at least Service Pack 1 has not been installed.

This is part of Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle policy. However, if you have a Windows Server 2003 installation that you cannot upgrade to SP1 due to technical reasons, they will continue supporting you for some more time if you ‘buy’ extended support.

Microsoft has also stopped supporting SQL Server 2000 SP3a as of July 10. So if you have SQL Server 2000 SP3a on your servers, you will need to upgrade to SP4, if you haven’t already!

ISA Server 2004 Service Pack 1 stopped getting support since April 10, 2007. Hope everybody installed Service Pack 2.

The other day, I found an article on the Microsoft Support KB, that was written for Windows 2.x and 3.x. It’s worthwhile noting that Microsoft supported Windows 3.1 for almost 10 years after its release. True story.

Microsoft has officially announced that it will no longer support SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 from July 10, 2007. Microsoft Customers who are running their systems on SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a or an earlier Service Pack (*yikes!*) should consider upgrading to Service Pack 4 or better still, SQL Server 2005.

“That Microsoft again, forcing customers to buy new software”, I hear you say. Well, there comes a time when you just need to give away with the old, and bring in with the new.

SQL Server 2005 without any Service Pack installed will also be “not supported by Microsoft from July 10, 2007″.

Other products joining the “not supportable” bandwagon include SUS 1.0 and SUS 1.0 Service Pack 1 on July 10, 2007. Microsoft will stop supporting Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains 8 from October 9, 2007.

Microsoft has also announced that Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 support will cease on January 8, 2008. So those of you out there still running Exchange 2003 Service Pack 1 will need to install SP2 to get Microsoft to support you.

Windows XP (Pro, Home, Media Center, Tablet, Pro x64), Office 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 will transition from ‘Mainstream support’ to ‘Extended support’ starting from April 14, 2009, which means you need to pay extra to Microsoft if you want them to continue supporting you past this date. There’s still enough time

Happy upgrading!