Our ongoing World Of Servers series hit Las Vegas last week and dosed up on Windows Server knowledge at the Microsoft Management summit. Here are five key lessons to take away from that event.

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The first rule of cloud security club is that you never talk about cloud security club, but we've decided to ignore that rule. Here are ten lesser-known aspects of how Microsoft tries to ensure that its Windows Azure cloud offering stays secure.

Microsoft's System Center platform includes a wide range of options for configuring and managing Unix and Linux systems. However, when it comes to rolling out and managing virtual machines and creating private cloud environments, there's not much room for Unix.

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It's a familiar ritual: if you're going to be absent from the office for a day-long meeting or a week-long holiday, you set up an auto-reply message on your email to let people know you won't be responding straight away. But in an era where email follows us around everywhere, does that really make any sense?

Windows Azure Backup exited its free trial period ahead of its official launch at MMS 2013. Right now, the server backup system is only operating in three of Azure's locations, but that's set to change in the future.

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The introduction of Windows Server 2012 last year saw Microsoft heavily simplify its server licensing. That shift to a per-processor model for servers combined with a per-client access licence remains largely intact, but Microsoft says it is still planning some further refinements to the system.

The Microsoft Management Summit 2013 (MMS 2013) conference commenced in Las Vegas today with a keynote showcasing live demonstrations of how to use Windows Server 2012 for data centre optimisation and BYOD management for the 5000 attendees. But there was one technology that was deliberately nowhere in sight: the promised Windows Blue updates that are expected mid-year.