Well written article on different components of SharePoint 2010 and their capacity planning.

Full Article found here:

A Static State: SharePoint 2010 Capacity Planning.

Really useful to keep with your arsenal for SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Farm Passphrase Recovery – SharePointEduTech.

First hand experience of an IT pro just after this weekends major earthquake down in Christchurch New Zealand.

Christchurch Earthquake « Steve Knutson’s IT Blog.

Had been wondering what this feature means while taking a snapshot of a VM.

Few of the articles and explanation I found

http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/02/27/using-lefthand-snapshot-techniques-within-a-vmware-environment/

Another good article on avoiding Vmware Backup Pitfalls. (Requires free registration to read)

http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid187_gci1338586_mem1,00.html

Hope this helps someone.

The following are the steps that I went through to upgrade the Release Candidate Version of Exchange 2010 to RTM edition of Exchange 2010.

I got my copy from TechNet and the same is available under MSDN as well.

There is also a 120 day evaluation copy available here in couple of different formats:-

1. Virtual Experience that gives you an chance to try Exchange 2010 and OCS 2007 R2
2. Free 120 Day Software Trial
3. Pre-configured VHD
4. Exchange Online

Steps involved:-

1. Backup your server. I use Shadow Protect to backup the VM’s but also equally recommended is DPM 2007 or if you can get your hands on 2010. You can read on Shadow Protect from here
2. Get to your Exchange 2010 RTM Setup folder and double click on setup.exe
3. Choose your language pack

   

4. Click on Install Microsoft Exchange Server Upgrade Option and Setup will start shortly

   

5. Setup will start with the basics

   

6. Followed by a readiness check

   

7. You may get the following message

   

   Which can be resolved by downloading the required file from here and installing it

   

8. With that the Readiness Check should complete successfully
9. The next step the upgrade starts to kick in and will proceed to complete
10. Once the upgrade has been completed open up Exchange Management Console and Click on Server Configuration. In the Actions Window click on Enter Product Key

    Enter the RTM Product key for the edition that has been licensed to your organization

    

11. Restart Exchange Information Store

    

And that’s it, your RC Exchange 2010 is now a fully functional RTM Exchange 2010.