With Exchange 2013 now available, the training industry has started rolling out products to get administrators up to speed on the new software.

TrainSignal, for example, has just released a set of training videos, Exchange Server 2013 Administration Training, by well-known Exchange expert, J. Peter Bruzzese.

“With Exchange 2013 Administration I’ll take you from deployment through Unified Messaging and High Availability,” Bruzzese said in a statement. “By the end of this course you’ll be able to fully administer an Exchange 2013 organization.”

In the videos, Bruzzese runs down best practices for getting the most out of the new Exchange. Topics covered in the training include:

• Deployment decisions and prerequisites.
• Mailbox configuration.
• Mobile device management.
• Unified messaging integration.
• Disaster recovery and high availability.

Because of the drastic differences in architecture in the new Exchange from previous versions, administrators should find the comparisons in the videos between the 2013 and 2010 releases of the program useful.

TrainSignal’s video course, which sells for $397, contains 22 lessons on three DVDs lasting 10 hours. The material is also available online and in a variety of formats — iPod video, MP3 Audio, WMV and high quality AVI — so you can access the material on a variety of platforms. Also complementing the video course material are PDF files with instructor’s notes.

For IT folks with a more traditional bent, there are Exchange Server Bootcamps. Those are being kicked off next month, March 18-24, in Sarasota, Fla. Additional sessions are planned for April 13-21 and May 13-19.

During the seven day boot camp, students take three exams to test and certify for the new Exchange 2013 certification MSCE: Messaging. According to the camps’ operator, Certification Camps, which is a Microsoft Gold Learning-Training & Certification Provider, students will learn how to:

• Plan and perform deployment and management of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013.
• Plan a Mailbox server deployment and configure the Mailbox server role.
• Create and manage various recipient objects in Exchange Server 2013.
• Plan and deploy Client Access servers.
• Plan and configure client connectivity to Exchange Server 2013 Client Access server.
• Plan and configure message transport.
• Plan and implement high availability.
• Plan and implement disaster recovery for Exchange Server 2013.
• Plan and configure message security options.
• Plan and configure administrative security and administrative auditing.
• Monitor and troubleshoot Exchange Server 2013.

The week-long boot camps cost $5595. That includes airfare to Florida, lodging for seven nights, ground transportation, three Microsoft test vouchers, three retake vouchers (if necessary), classroom training and access to an onsite testing center, Microsoft training books and Microsoft study labs and simulations.

Although the new Exchange was formally introduced last September some outfits have been flogging training for it for a lot longer than that. The difference between those training offerings and the ones being offered now is that the current lineup of trainers have an actual product to work with and not the subject of white papers and TechNet articles.

Even at that, the training being offered now will still probably be as incomplee as some critics of the new Exchange find the present release of the server software. That’s because flaws are likely to be discovered as Exchange 2013 is deployed and as Microsoft pushes out fixes for those flaws, trainers will have to adjust their course material accordingly.

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