This is, no doubt, one great link to share with the community. Whenever you are planning to implement any kind of technology or solution on your company regarding to Windows Server, you’ll need to take a look at these documents.

Infrastructure Planning and Design

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides will help and guide you among the design process giving you all the tools and scenarios needed for a correct design.

The new document available is the complete planning and design for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 SP1.

Another interesting thing about it, is that the download also includes for each technology not only the document of IPD but also a great PowerPoint that can help you around with maybe a small presentation for your team or management in your company.

Overview

Infrastructure Planning and Design guides share a common structure, including:

• Definition of the technical decision flow through the planning process.
• Listing of decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
• Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
• Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.

These guides complement product documentation by focusing on infrastructure design options.
Each guide leads the reader through critical infrastructure design decisions, in the appropriate order, evaluating the available options for each decision against its impact on critical characteristics of the infrastructure. The IPD Series highlights when service and infrastructure goals should be validated with the organization and provides additional questions that should be asked of service stakeholders and decision makers.

IPD consists of the following downloadable packages:

• New! Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 with SP1
• Exchange Online—Evaluating Software-plus-Services
• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 with R2
• Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5
• Windows Server 2008 File Services
• Windows Server 2008 Print Services
• Infrastructure Planning and Design Series Introduction
• Internet Information Services 7.0
• Selecting the Right NAP Architecture
• Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
• System Center Operations Manager 2007
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• Windows Deployment Services
• Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services
• Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services
• Windows Server Virtualization (for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1).

Hope you find it useful!

Cheers!