I had a privilege of being one of the judges this year and I know I haven’t done it enough justice. I was planning to be a lot more active rating scripts as they rolled in. I have been planning to be a lot more involved in spreading wealth of knowledge, while not as much as the scripting guys do, but as much as I can from what I know. I have been planning to….

And as we all know, life sometimes isn’t what we plan and doesn’t have to cooperate with what we want to do. As long as you enjoy what comes your way which is what I did. No excuses , no regrets.

The only thing I want to mention though is for those scripts that I did rate, I commented every single one of them and hopefully the authors understands why I rated them the way I did. My intention was to be fair, clear and thorough. I hopefully have done it well. Quality over quantity. Always something I have believed in.

I also want to mention the amazing response we have got this year. I wouldn’t quote the number but I know way too many scripts that we expected (or compared to last year) for 20 events (10 beginner and 10 advanced). This is simply great! It shows how valuable scripting is in today’s world and how many people are actively doing something about addressing real world problems by using scripts and automation.

I want to thank The Scripting Guys for amazing work they do and organizing such an event. Doing it every year must take a toll on them and being a judge isn’t even a drop in their bucket. I just hope I have been a little bit of help for all you had to do for this event.

With that, I want to sign off as tomorrow is another day full of challenges as day without challenges would really be boring.

Oh and if I put you in shock with the title of this post, I am going to bed and hopefully there wasn’t anything in this post that would cause you to stay in shock, except the obvious awesomeness of PowerShell, scripting and automation!

Originally posted at http://blogs.technet.com/bshukla

If you are a Microsoft Premier customer and have a dedicated PFE, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you are a Microsoft Premier customer and don’t have a dedicated PFE, you may have come across a PFE once in a while and may know a little about them. If you are not a Microsoft Premier customer and have never heard of a PFE, this post is for you!

There are many times I have met people outside of Microsoft who knows a lot about Microsoft but when I tell them I am a Premier Field Engineer a.k.a. PFE, I lose them. I end up explaining what a PFE is.

I recently ran into Mr. Proactive who with very noble intent started mrproactive.com. In the first post he talks about what a PFE is and what it is all about.

Still with me? So while you may have expected that I will go on and talk about the same details here, it wouldn’t make sense if I did would it? So instead of reinventing what Mr. Proactive already did, I am going to instead ask you to read this article on mrproactive.com.

Questions/Concerns/Comments? Ask Mr. Proactive, that’s what he is there for!

Originally posted at http://blogs.technet.com/bshukla

I appreciate  your patience and hope this will not happen again. I would also like to let you know that I have also created blog at http://blogs.technet.com/bshukla. The content will be cross posted so it will be available to both here and at my technet blog. This way you can continue following my articles either way.

Lastly, I would like to thank you for your patience while I worked on restoring my site from catastrophic failure.

The Release Candidate for Exchange Server 2010 has been announced and is available for download on Technet. You can download it here.

Exchange 2010 brings unparalleled productivity enhancements, availability features and cost savings. You can read more about new features introduced in Exchange Server 2010 here.

Update: The download link is live now. I still could not find it on MSDN subscriber downloads. Download it from link above.

If you would want to script something for your Exchange 2007 environment, what would it be?

I am going to keep comments open on this one so please comment and provide me the list you would like to see scripts on. You can also use contact form if you like.

Quote of the day:
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents. – Nathaniel Borenstein

Who is Rob Brown?

Rob is a seasoned IT professional with expertise in many IT infrastructure related technologies. He has years of experience in Messaging, Directory Services and Virtualization.

Rob is a good friend. We share the passion for technology. Rob will help me make this site better and share his experiences.

Please join me in welcoming Rob.

I decided to tear down old site as it was difficult to manage and I did not find time to keep up with updating it all.

I always wanted a blog that can be hosted on my own server. Call it a personal preference or paranoia, I did not like to host my blog somewhere else!

I found it very easy to install WordPress on my current web host. I also found WordPress to be feature rich and extensible. If I can make effective use of half of the features it has to offer, it would be great!

I plan to make this site a source of information for Microsoft Exchange Server technologies. My goal is to provide content that can help other IT Professionals with focus on Messaging Platform.

Stay tuned.

Quote of the day:
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. – Paul Valery