The World According to Mitch

NOTE: This post was originally posted on the Canadian IT Pros Connection (Double Double for your Trouble).  It is being cross-posted, unedited, here. -M

This is the season of new classes and teachers, of harvest and giving thanks, of ghosts and goblins and witches. The days are getting shorter and your To Do list is getting longer in the lead-up to Christmas. In the midst of all the craziness, I invite you to take a few minutes, have a seat in front of your computer and do something just for you. And because we know it’s a busy time of year, we’ve added an incentive.

Windows Server 2012 represents a significant change in the Windows Server platform and even if your organization isn’t thinking of upgrading yet, chances are they will. It’s worth the time to take a look at it now so that you’re ready to go and can be the IT hero by making recommendations to put your organization in the best possible position to take advantage of the changes that are coming. Some of the Windows Server 2012 goodness includes:

• The ability to live migrate your virtualized servers between hosts that have no shared storage
• Software enabled NIC teaming built right in, allowing network adapters from different manufacturers to be teamed together
• Support for virtual storage through Storage Spaces and storage pools, enabling you to group industry-standard disks into storage pools and then create storage spaces from the available pool capacity
• Dynamic Access Control to define central file access policies at the domain level that apply to every file server in that domain

…and much, much more. But if that isn’t motivation enough to start learning about Windows Server 2012, once you’ve downloaded an evaluation copy, we’d like to send you a $10 Tim Horton’s gift card! Yup, that’s right, not only do you get the benefit of being up on the latest server OS from Microsoft, but you’ll get a coffee to help stimulate more of those smart brain cells as well.

Here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Go to this link and sign in using your Microsoft account/Live ID.

Step 2: Confirm your shipping details (so we can send you the card), plus any other info you want to update.

Step 3:  When the page comes up, download the WS2012 evaluation.

Yes, the offer is valid and available to all Canadian residents, including those in Quebec. So don’t delay, because our Tim’s card stash is limited and once they’re gone, they’re gone!