Who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters? Maybe, but what if you need to get clarification or help on something Microsoft related?  If you guessed the IT Pro or Developer Advisors you guessed right.  We are your connection point back into Microsoft.  Now we will never claim to know everything and everything about Microsoft but we do know how to get in contact with the people who do know!  Need an example?

A week or so ago we got an email through the blogs about some confusion over support of NTbackup for Exchange 2007 backups.  There was a local company that had purchased and implemented an Exchange 2007 server on a new 64bit server; however the backup solution that they use does not have an Exchange 2007 agent yet.  The solution that their IT staff developed was to use NTBackup to backup Exchagne 2007 to disk and then backup the BKF file to tape with their data backup.  Sounds good, but a few consultants they spoke to said that this may not be supported, with one even recommending rolling back to Exchange 2003 until their backup vendor could supply an agent for Exchange 2007.

I ended up setting up a conference call with the IT staff and a few members of the executive to assure them they are running a supported scenario, in fact it follows best practices of backup up to disk, then from disk to tape!  During the call I suggested I send an email to one of the internal Exhange 2007 techinal disucussion lists.  These lists are monitored by the dev teams, technical support specialists and other technical people from within Microsoft.  Within a few hours I had confirmation from a Messaging Support Engineer verifying that it was indeed supported and I forwarded this email off to the IT and Excutive staff at the organization.  They were happy to hear that they were on the right track and Microsoft will be there to support them in case of disaster!

So when you have a question, who are you going to call upon?