The new exciting thing I saw from Microsoft was Data Protection Manager (DPM). This is Microsoft’s answer to backing up their own applications and operating systems. The system does change the way we think backups should be completed. It doesn’t offer continuous protection in addition to traditional tape backups, instead basically it is 'only' continuous protection with some tape backup tacked on the end for archiving. The DPM seems to centre around business questions also, simply what do you want to back up and how many days do you want backup history for. It does implement what we called a disk-to-disk-to-tape type backup method. This means we constantly snap shot applications like SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint for very quick restore, and many restore points. We further increase this protection by making this backup repository sit at an alternate location to provide offsite backups, and then combine with tape for archiving. The smartness of this type of backup removes our traditional overnight backup window, which can often creep into the working day, impacting performance and not providing consistent backups. Definitely starting to be an option for environments with multiple servers or multiple sites where backups could have traditionally taken a long time or environments requiring self service restore or very quick restores.

No Microsoft conference would be complete without security focused sessions. It was very pleasing to see that regardless of the type of product and all the new technology, Microsoft are still trying to apply and teach the same security methods, models and lessons they learnt with previous server and desktop products. Some of these have taken a step further with Server 2008, ultimately making the remotely distributed environment far more accessible, far more securely. We ultimately dispense with added on VPN type connections as we make all connections secure, for example. We don’t care whether you are in the office or on the other side of the world, connectivity can just happen, securely, without you even doing anything, fairly much on existing infrastructure including Windows Server 2008. Makes the end user only have to worry about doing their job, not connecting.

We saw a couple more offerings in the large enterprise space, not really scalable to the small to medium size businesses that typically grace our shores. But we have seen improvements, changes and updates to existing products in response to customer feedback. This year’s Tech Ed did have a very distinct sense of déjà vu for a lot of the products. Last year we thought the idea was good, but what if.... This year a few of the what ifs have turned up. So love them or loathe them it is good to see Microsoft listening and making changes for the market and still taking security pretty seriously.