SharePoint 2010 Beta Available now for download
Body: SharePoint 2010 Beta is now available for download. The pre-release (BETA) version is for evaluation purposes only.  Upgrade from the BETA version to the final release version of SharePoint 2010 is NOT supported by Microsoft. You can view the pre-requisites for installing SharePoint Products on TechNet. The most important one is that you will need Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) 64bit for SharePoint to be deployed with a min of 8GB of memory to test and evaluate the Beta. Read hardware and software requirement article on TechNet

Planning for SharePoint 2010 – Upgrade Planning Part 4 – Using preupgradecheck
Body: Please refer to my previous three posts on Upgrade Planning for SharePoint 2010 – These previous posts outline some important scenarios for your upgrade planning process. SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 1, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 2, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 3. In this post I’ll outline the supported scenarios for your SharePoint 2010 upgrade from Sha

SharePoint Conference 2009 – 19th to 22nd October – I’ll be there!
Body: The conference of the year is SOLD OUT! Unofficial sources say that this year the attendance number is over 7000! This is going to be a huge event. Check out the official web site for details. http://www.mssharepointconference.com/ Follow the twitter channel for announcements an

Planning for SharePoint 2010 – Upgrade Planning Part 3
Body: Please read first two posts in this series. Planning for SharePoint 2010 Part 1, Planning for SharePoint 2010 Part 2. In the last two posts I showed you how to move your data tier to your new 64bit Farm. That is you moved all your databases and tested that you now have a 64bit based database server to host all the content databases. Let’s look at how we can move the application server and the web front end server tiers. In this case you can choose to move both Tiers Tier B and C at the same time or

Planning for SharePoint 2010 – Upgrade Planning Part 2 Moving the Databases
Body: Please read Part 1 of this post series before you continue. In this post I will highlight how to move your (32 bit) SQL Server tier to 64 bit. In the case of moving your data tier there are few prerequisites that you should consider. In this case we have the assumption that your new 64bit SQL server deployment has followed best practice guidelines for SQL server. From a SharePoint point of view you should consider the following to enable effective management of your existing content databases or any new databases you are creating. SQL Server 2008 or 2005 (64bit) are both sup