Customers and partners alike often ask the question, “How does Microsoft manage its vast network of data centers worldwide that power our 200+ cloud services such as  Office 365, Windows Live and Xbox Live, and our cloud platform Windows Azure?”

Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services (GFS) is the team that builds, manages, and secures Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and today we are launching our new external web site on the Windows Azure platform to address these questions and to more broadly share our cloud infrastructure best practices with external audiences!

The GFS team has a newly revamped website that contains content and tools that that addresses the following:

• Customer Priorities that dive deep into infrastructure architecture, operations, reliability, security and compliance, and the sustainability strategies for our data centers and fiber optic network – all top of mind for customers, including:
• 20-30 minute interactive presentations featuring data center subject matter experts addressing some of the top 3-5 customer questions we receive
• Strategy Briefs for downloading and sharing
• Video overviews from strategy leads addressing key priorities
• Related whitepapers, technical content, and slideshows
• Future Insights that explore the forward-looking challenges of providing cloud services at massive scale and the business impact, reliability, security, sustainability opportunities and roadmap
• Blogs with industry relevant discussions on cloud infrastructure issues and best practices
• Video tours of our data center facilities

The resources available via this website have been designed to help customers better understand Microsoft’s data center strategy, and to more broadly share our best practices as we make strides towards more efficient and operationally robust infrastructures.

Check out this great resource if you want a deeper understanding out how Microsoft does what it does in the cloud!

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Over on the SharePoint Team Blog is a good post citing resources related to deployments of MOSS/WSS on Windows Server 2008.  With the pending launch of the next release of Windows Server, it’s important to know the impacts it has on deploying SharePoint Products & Technologies within your organization.  The resources cited in the post cover the following areas:

• WSS deployment on Windows Server 2008
  
• MOSS deployment on Windows Server 2008
  
• Upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 with existing SharePoint deployments
  
• SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint deployments

Check out these resources if you’re planning on deploying MOSS/WSS on Windows Server 2008 or want to understand more about the process.  As we near launch of Windows Server 2008, you’ll start seeing even more resources around this very topic.

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It was announced today on the Windows Server Team Blog that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 will return to being available via a separate download for Windows Server 2008 customers.  In early betas, WSS 3.0 was included as a component in the Windows Server 2008 configuration.  This decision was made to allow more flexibility in the WSS development process, while still allowing customers to conveniently obtain the technology.

WSS will still remain a free component for Windows Server customers.  More coverage on this important announcement in on both the SharePoint Team Blog and Windows Server Team Blog.

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