This week, I have had the opportunity to learn with one of Microsoft's MVPs for Windows Server - Clustering, Russ Kaufmann. Russ is teaching the Windows Server 2008 partner preparation class at Ameriteach in the south denver area.
Having the opportunity to learn from Russ in a highly-lab-oriented environment on Windows Server 2008 has actually been a really valuable opportunity. Oddly, most of the time when I take on new technology, I find that I do it best through building my own home lab and continuing to self-study. With Russ, however, he has been able to provide particular insights into completeing configuration tasks on the new platform with only minimal guidance from the underlying material.
As he is a clustering MVP, his particular insights have a lot to do with the underlying technologies in high availibility scenarios. Apparently he works here full time at Ameriteach and has engineered a custom class on Windows clustering that exclusively he and an associate teach in the US, something like 5 times a year. While I definitely recommend New Horizons as a more general training provide, I figured I would point out for those interested that you may want to give Ameriteach a look for high level windows server instfrastructure courses in the Denver area.
Russ's class:
http://www.ameriteach.com/courses/s_4911.html