Top Picks from TechEd 2013: Upgrading Networking Infrastructure and Management

TechEd consistently delivers a wealth of technical information from the best speakers in the world.  We thought it would be a great time to pick some of our favorite sessions from the most highly rated and attended sessions at TechEd North America and TechEd Europe. 

To kick things off, I picked the session “Upgrading the Platform - How to Get There! Part 3: Networking Infrastructure and Management”.  It was one of the top sessions delivered at TechEd North America 2013 and rightfully so. This session is co-delivered by Rick Claus and Andrew McMurray.

You might be wondering why I picked this topic.  The reason is rather simple.  Networking makes the world go around.  Every single service we use runs across a network of hardware and software.  If the network slows down or heaven forbid, goes out, everyone gets frustrated.  Remember your last power outage?  Did your cell phone and its smartphone capabilities still work?  If so, you’ll remember what a relief that was.  If not, you probably remember the feeling of being cut off from the world.  That didn’t feel good to you and it’s no better to the users of the systems and the networks you design, test, deploy and operate.

Rick and Andrew do a great job of telling the story.  They go into detail on many facets of the systems you have today, how to migrate the networking configuration to a modern OS like Windows Server 2012, and what to look out for along the way.  Spend some time listening to this session.  The video is just over an hour long but well worth your time. You can also get hands-on by downloading the preview versions of Windows Server 2012 R2 and other Cloud OS products here.

Written by Keith Combs, Microsoft Server and Tools