Since we’ve got such a great team, opportunities to join us don’t come along very often, so you might want to check out this rare chance: C47242A – Systems Administrator (Windows)

You should have experience of recent versions of Windows Server, and systems automation (if you don’t know PowerShell, what have you been doing with yourself?!), and if you’ve got some cloud experience, that’s good too. More than anything, you need to have a desire to continually improve systems and expand your own knowledge. We don’t ever buy in a lot of help here, so you’ve got to be able to learn as you go.

In terms of what you could be working with, there’s a whole range of systems, including (but not restricted to): Active Directory, file store and backup, Office 365, IIS, SQL, Azure, FIM/MIM, VMware, HPC, SharePoint, and more.

Closing date for applications is the 2nd October, so don’t delay.

On Monday 25th November, St James’ Park in Newcastle is the venue for three free events for IT professionals covering a range of Microsoft technologies.

During the day, the MVP Cloud OS Relay and SQL Relay 2012R2 have great line-ups of MVPs and other experts in Windows Server, System Center, Hyper-V, Office 365, Azure, SQL and Business Intelligence.

In the evening, the Windows User Group takes over with an event covering Windows 8.1, deployment, MDOP and Office 2013.

The schedule for the Cloud OS event is at http://www.cloudoscommunity.com/Newcastle and free sign-up is at http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mvp-cloud-os-infrastructure-relay-newcastle-tickets-8456426399

The SQL Relay event has sold out, but if you’re desperately interested in any of the sessions athttp://www.sqlrelay.co.uk/events/2013r2/Newcastle.html you can register for the Cloud OS event and switch tracks throughout the day if there’s capacity in the room.

Sign up for the evening event is at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/windows-and-office-tour-tickets-9107714419

Hopefully I’ll see you there!

After a while of only being available internally, the new Infrastructure Systems Group blog is now available to the world at large on blogs.ncl.ac.uk/isg (if you were using the internal wordpress URL, you might want to update your RSS reader).

If you are just finding this blog for the first time, this is what you can expect…

• Our group manages both Windows and Unix/Linux infrastructure, so we will have cross-platform posts.
• Some of our content will be specific to our systems at Newcastle University, but the majority should be relevant to other organisations.
• We are currently in the process of migrating some services to Office 365 – we’ll be reporting on that progress in quite a bit of detail, to aid others doing the same later.
• There’s a lot of legacy content here that was from the old Windows Infrastructure Team blog. Some of that may have been slightly more partisan, OS-wise – sorry about that 😉
• While we are very serious about the systems we run, we are not without humour, so there may be some of that too!

We hope you find our posts interesting and we look forward to your comments.

Over the coming months, Microsoft are running events for IT professionals across the length and breadth of the UK, including a return to the North East. I went to the Microsoft Campus last week and had a taste of the new format, which is unlike the TechNet presentations of the past. These events are smaller and very interactive – there’s a real opportunity for attendees to shape the topics covered throughout the day.

As I said, these are smaller events, so you need to get registered fast! Here are all the details from Microsoft:

Event: Consumerisation of IT/ Manage consumer devices on a corporate network
Date: 27th March 2012
Location: Novotel Newcastle Airport, Ponteland Road, Kenton, Newcastle upon Tyne
Register: https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&EventID=1032505034&IO=88vhg0ori7Fgb3FFMm3Ftw%3d%3d

This year the UK Tech.Days team have changed the format of our traditional Tech.Days theatre events into a series of ‘Boot Camp’ style seminars. The aim of these is to allow IT Professionals to have more discussion time with evangelists like Andrew Fryer, and each other to share common problems and solutions – and we’re looking for your help to share these with your users.

The Newcastle Event will host approx. 70 people with a mixture of discussions and practical demonstration. Although there will be a loose agenda, it will be PowerPoint-free event, allowing the hosts to focus on the questions that our guests ask.

For the event in Newcastle, we will be focusing on the Consumerisation of IT:
– How key Microsoft technologies such as System Center 2012, SharePoint 2010, Windows Server 2008R2, Exchange 2010 or Office 365 and Windows 7 come together to help you deliver flexibility and support for devices and desktops.
– How to use the latest tools to manage your estate, deliver applications flexibly, manage devices such as iOS and Android as well as Windows, implement IP Sec, reduce anti-malware costs, implement Direct Access and secure remote access.
– We’ll also help you think about what you need to build into a “Bring your own device” or BYOD policy.

Registrations are now open and can be found here

Over the next few months, Microsoft is removing support for the following versions of Windows and Windows Service Packs:

Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server will both go out of support on 13th July 2010.

Windows XP with Service Pack 2 will also go out of support on 13th July. If you wish to keep running Windows XP in a supported mode from that date, you must make sure that you have Service Pack 3 installed.

Windows Vista with no service packs installed will no longer be supported from 13th April. It’s time to install Service Pack 2.

For more information, check out the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Blog.