This is provided ‘AS IS’ with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included samples are subject to the terms specified at Microsoft
If you were not hooked up to your twitter timeline or Live blogging sites about Microsoft Media Conference at Los Angeles yesterday, You can watch the Keynote session on demand where Microsoft announced Microsoft Surface Tablet devices for Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro.
for more information, please visit http://www.Surface.com and check out the video.
Exciting times ahead..!!
At TechEd North America, which is happing right now in Orlando, Microsoft has demoed some great features of Hyper V in Windows Server 2012.
There are a few demos you’ve got to see:
If you don’t believe these numbers, please go ahead and watch the Day 1 Keynote on Demand
http://northamerica.msteched.com/#fbid=B9yr8ie09NS
Microsoft has just released brand new Windows Server ‘8’ Hyper V Component architecture poster, if you haven't seen it yet, you can download it from following link
DOWNLOAD NOW
Cheers,
Iftekhar
While we are gearing up for General availability of System Center 2012, SC product group is constantly working on new capabilities and features to be included in future releases.
Last Friday, Microsoft announced CTP (Community Technology Preview) version of an update to System Center 2012 which supports “Windows Server 8 Beta”
This update is targeted to Virtual Machine Manager and Data Protection Manager component to support and Manage “Windows Server 8 Beta”
You can get more information from this blog post put up by Vijay Tiwari from VMM Team
This is the time of the year when anybody who works on Microsoft Virtualization and System Center technologies gets excited about Microsoft Management Summit which happens every year where thousands of IT PROs joins to share knowledge, exchange ideas, indulge in networking and get to do some deep dive technical learning on new technologies and make themselves aware about new innovations that are happening around Microsoft Virtualization and System Center Technologies.
Historically MMS has gained its reputation of a platform for major product announcements and launches, Last year at MMS 2011, we announced the availability of System Center 2012 Beta and discussed through our keynotes and sessions how it enables Microsoft Private Cloud Platform. It was really nice speaking and meeting lot of you last year at Mandalay Bay.
I am really excited about our upcoming MMS 2012 which is scheduled to be held from April 16 – 20, 2012 at The Venetian, Last Vegas for so many reasons.
We published the following abstract of Brad Anderson’s Keynote Speech to give you an insight what is stored for you in MMS 2012.
Day 1: Microsoft Private Cloud. Built for the Future. Ready Now. Cloud computing and the delivery of true IT as a Service is one of the most profound industry shifts in decades. Join Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Management and Security Division, as he shares Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing and shows how System ...Center 2012, as part of the Microsoft private cloud, will enable you to deliver the promise of cloud computing in your organization today.
Day 2: A World of Connected Devices Clouds and cloud-connected devices are changing the world of work and our daily interactions. Tech-savvy and always-connected, people want faster, more intuitive technology, uninterrupted services, and the freedom to work anywhere, anytime, on a variety of devices. Join Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Management and Security Division at Microsoft to learn how System Center 2012 and Windows Intune can help IT embrace this new reality today, and in the future, by making the right intelligent infrastructure investments.
I am also excited to present this year about all new capabilities of System Center 2012- Virtual Machine Manager with following objectives in mind.
You can get more information about the session below and if you are a registered attendee you should be able to add it to your Session builder.
In addition to the speaking opportunities, I would also be available to meet you all during "Speaker Q&A" session at the end of the day of the session and also at Microsoft Pavilion.
Since I work very closely with Microsoft partners, I would like to meet few of you and discuss how we can enable you to drive, develop and design System Center and Microsoft Private Cloud solutions for our customers.
Please use the Email Author link to drop me an email if you would like to meet, please mention your partner id so that I can get more information about your organization.
And if you are a twitter enthusiast like me and would like to keep up with the event, follow me at www.twitter.com/iftekharh
See you at Las Vegas.
My colleague Nikunj is delivering an online workshop for our Microsoft partners on Automating Audit of Windows, UNIX and Linux Servers with Operations Manager 2007 R2,
Please feel free to register for the event using the link below if interested.
Presenter Information
First Name: Nikunj
Last Name: Kansara
Email: Nikunj.Kansara@microsoft.com
Topic Information
Primary Track: Systems Management
Additional Track: Monitoring, Windows, Unix and Linux
Session Type: Live meeting Session
Level: 300 – Advanced
Session Title: Automated Audit of Windows, UNIX and Linux Servers with Operations Manager 2007 R2
Description: Most of the organization today want to meet various security standards. But the auditor and IT security professionals struggle to keep the audit data at centralized location for later use. This session describes why security is important to organizations, how we can Meet regulatory compliance and Keep IT environment secure using SCOM 2007 ACS.
Major Products or Technologies Covered: SCOM 2007 R2, Windows 2008 R2, Red hat Linux 5
Audience Category: IT Professional
Audience Type: Infrastructure Architect, IT Manager, Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer
Partner Type : Hosted Services, Independent Software Vendor, Large Account Reseller (LAR), Network Services, Software Asset Management, Systems Integrator/Services, Value Added Reseller (VAR)
Audience Key Learning:
Proposed Demo – How to use Audit Collection Service Management Packs and Usage ACS reports, Example Scenarios for Audit Collection
Date & Time : Sep 27th 2011, 7:00 AM – 8:30 AM Pacific Standard Time
REGISTER NOW
These sessions will be delivered through Microsoft Office Live Meeting with no extra cost, but time will be deducted from your available Partner Advisory Hours (Microsoft Partners are entitled to 10, 20, or 50 hours of Partner Technical Services Advisory Benefits based on your partner level or competencies.)
Please contact me or email askpts@microsoft.com with your Partner ID, and contact number if you need more information.
In case you need further information about the Partner Technical Services benefits,
please visit us at the Partner Technical Services Web site, call us today at 1-800-MPN-SOLVE (1-800-676-7658), or email us to start taking advantage of your benefits.
Latest Information! To stay updated on the latest offerings and Web seminars on new Microsoft technologies and solutions, subscribe to the U.S. Partner Technical Services Newsletter.
Check out PTS Web seminars to view the lists of upcoming live Web seminars. Also, for more information download the PTS Catalog.
Thank you,
If you haven't seen it already, we gave a sneak peak into next release of Hyper V coming with “Windows Server 8” at Worldwide partner conference last week.
We only demonstrated 2 of hundreds of features which is going to be available with next release of Hyper V to help your Private Cloud initiatives.
You can take a look at these cool two features in the video hosted on WPC site
Skip to At 36:50 of this online video to see them in action.
And stay tuned for our BUILD conference in September for more revelation
I am happy to announce my first app for Windows Phone 7 is now available at Marketplace. I am not really a professional developer but I like coding and this time I took the opportunity to brush up some of my programming knowledge from my school and college days.
Please review and provide feedback at Marketplace. App is not perfect and there may be some bugs unhandled, so please report them I promise to work on them in my free time.
Have fun
App Name: Bollywood Bytes
App Description:
Screenshots:
Dear Microsoft Partners,
My team is delivering some great webinars on Microsoft System Center technologies. In our continuous effort to ramp up our Microsoft partners on Microsoft technologies we are bringing some interesting of 1:Many Technical Webinars.
If you are partner company focused on Systems management and networking and would like to learn more about new Management packs for System Center Operations Manager, I would strongly recommend you to attend the following webinar.
Title: Power Start Workshop : Understanding the Latest Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007 R2, SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010.
Description : This session will describe the features and configuration for the latest management packs from Microsoft and how that can be leveraged by IT professionals.
Agenda:
Date & Time : July 8th 2011, 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time
This article is cross posted from my original post on PTS Official Blog
See the first two parts of this series here: Private Cloud Management with VMM 2012 (Part 1): What's new with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Private Cloud Management with VMM 2012 (Part 2): Creation of a Hyper-V Cluster Using VMM 2012
In my last blog post, we saw how to create a Hyper V Cluster using the VMM 2012 cluster creation wizard as a part of preparing a fabric for the cloud.
Virtual Machine Manager 2012 also provides a feature by which you can manage updates for your virtual machine hosts, library servers, PXE servers, the Windows Server Update Management (WSUS) server, and the VMM server itself in the VMM console.
When you perform update remediation on a host cluster, VMM orchestrates the updates, in turn placing each cluster node in maintenance mode, migrating virtual machines off the host by using intelligent placement, and then installing the updates. If the cluster supports live migration of Windows Server-based virtual machines, live migration is used. If the cluster does not support live migration, VMM saves state for the virtual machines and does not migrate them.
To manage updates in VMM 2012, you need a WSUS server
Here are the prerequisites:
Once you have configured the WSUS server, lets add the WSUS server in VMM 2012.
1. Open the Fabric workspace.
2. On the Home tab, in the Add group, click Add Resources, and then click Update Server.
3. My WSUS server name is sccm.dd181028.com, hence I have put SCCM as Computer name with port number and credentials.
4. Once the WSUS server is added, click on Synchronize to sync the WSUS updates with VMM.
5. You will all the update metadata showing on your VMM
Create Baseline
After you enable update management in VMM, you are ready to prepare for patching by configuring update baselines. An update baseline contains a set of required updates. During a compliance scan, computers that are assigned to a baseline are graded for compliance to their assigned baselines. After a computer is found noncompliant, an administrator brings the computer into compliance through update remediation.
6. Provide a Name and Description for your Baseline
7. Add the updates to your baseline against which your Hyper V hosts will be compared.
8. Assign the Baseline to the host groups.
9. Finish the wizard
10. You’ll see your newly created Baseline
To find out the compliance status for each baseline, you must scan the computer for compliance. When a computer is scanned for compliance, WSUS checks each update in the assigned update baselines to determine whether the update is applicable and, if the update is applicable, whether the update has been installed.
After a compliance scan, each update has a compliance status of Compliant, NonCompliant, Error, or Unknown.
To scan computers for compliance
1. In Compliance view of the Fabric workspace, select the computers that you want to scan.
2. On the Home tab, in the Compliance group, click Scan.
While the scan is in progress, the compliance status changes to Unknown. After the compliance scan completes, the computer's compliance status of each update is Compliant, NonCompliant, or Error.
To perform update remediations, the target computers must be noncompliant. To make a compliant computer noncompliant, you might need to use Add and Remove Programs to temporarily uninstall one or more of the updates listed in Compliance view.
On the Home tab, in the Compliance group, click Remediate. (The Remediate task is only available when the selected objects are noncompliant.)
If you select the host cluster by its cluster name, VMM orchestrates remediations of the hosts in the cluster.
VMM rolls through the host cluster, remediating one cluster node at a time. If a cluster node is compliant, VMM bypasses that node.
Before VMM begins remediating a host, it places the host in maintenance mode and migrates all virtual machines to other hosts in the cluster. If the cluster supports live migration, live migrations are performed. If the cluster does not support live migration, VMM saves state before migrating virtual machines.
If you prefer to restart the computers manually after remediation completes if any updates require a restart, select the Do not restart the servers after remediation check box.
Once the remediation is over, you’ll see your Hyper V cluster hosts as Compliant.
Hope this post was helpful for some of you who are evaluating VMM 2012 its update management feature.
In my next post, we’ll configure the rest of the fabric components like Logical Network, Storage and Load Balancers.
Stay tuned.
See part one of this series here: Private Cloud Management with VMM 2012 (Part 1): What's new with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012
Before you start deploying cloud and services, we need to first start prepare the fabric.
A cloud can also host HA applications and services and we need to setup a Hyper V cluster to enable that. VMM 2012 has now introduced inbuilt capability of deploying Hyper V Clusters.
Fabric Prerequisites
Make sure that fabric configuration meets the following prerequisites:
1. Before you deploy Hyper V cluster, you need to add the hosts in the VMM.
Also if you are not using automated storage unmasking, you need to unmask the shared storage on these hosts.
2. Go to Fabric tab and click on Create Clusters
3. Specify the cluster name and provide your domain credentials which has rights to create clusters.
4. Select the host group where your standalone Hyper V hosts are located.
5. Select the hosts which you would like to be part of the cluster and click ADD
6. Ensure that the Network cards are picked up properly.
7. Provide a cluster IP address to the respective network card.
8. Wizard should automatically detect all the unmasked LUNs on the hosts and it will give you options to format the drives as NTFS or leave it unformatted.
9. You can also enable Cluster Shared Volume from here itself.
10. Wizard will automatically configure the volume with lowest capacity as Witness disk.
11. Now you can configure Virtual Network on all the hosts in a cluster from this wizard itself, In order to do that you need to configure Logical Network on the physical network card.
12. This way you can ensure that all the hosts has an identical Virtual Network to support HA VMs
13. Now on the summary page, click on the FINISH button and your cluster is on its way.
During the cluster creation process, VMM does the following:
14. Enabling Cluster Shared Volumes
Now your Hyper V cluster is deployed and you are ready to deploy HA VMs on it.
You can also destroy the cluster using VMM console.
If you choose to destroy cluster using VMM 2012, you need to go to your Active Directory and delete the Cluster object manually.
That’s pretty much for today. In my next post, we’ll talk about update management and how VMM 2012 helps patching clustered nodes in an orchestrated manner.
Cheers
I have been delivering a lot of sessions on the all-new VMM 2012 lately to both external and internal audiences, so I thought of sharing some information with our online community as well.
I am putting together a 3-part series of blog posts to cover all the aspects of VMM 2012 and how it enables Private Cloud Management. If you are new to Private Cloud concepts and its benefits, you may want to read some of my earlier posts on the same topic:
Private Cloud– Part 1
Private Cloud– Part 2
In March at the Microsoft Management Summit 2011 held in Las Vegas, we announced the public availability of VMM 2012 Beta. I know most of you are evaluating VMM 2012 in your environment and may need some guidance—hence this blog series.
When we talk about Private Cloud, we expect following benefits:
1. Reliability and predictability: We would want our application to be highly available and fault-tolerant, the remediation from failure should be simple, and it should be simple to re-start and re-deploy applications.
2. Highly automated: We want our infrastructure to be highly automated to complete tasks like provisioning new systems and configuring storage, networking, and applications on its own without any manual intervention.
3. Agility of speed: We would also expect better responsiveness and turnaround time to meet user needs. We want applications to be deployed faster, and changes to be made much easier and faster—not taking weeks to happen.
4. Focus of Applications and services: Let’s face it, at the end of the day the consumer only cares about applications and services, uptime, and quality of the service as a measure for success of your private cloud. So as a cloud consumer I would want to focus on the application rather than underlying infrastructure.
Today let’s go through a high-level overview of VMM 2012 and what kind of advanced management capabilities it brings to the table to for virtualized infrastructures and the Private Cloud.
Microsoft has made investments in 4 different areas in VMM 2012:
1. Deployment
2. Fabric Management
3. Cloud Management: In VMM 2012, a private cloud provides the following benefits:
4. Services Management: It’s not VM Management anymore. Now with VMM you can deploy and manage multi-tier applications across multiple servers as a single unit. Scale out the service with minimal effort based on demand.
We'll discuss some of these great details in my new few blog posts and will also see how to deploy some of these. Stay tuned!
My HTC Mozart is craving for some Mango..
Coming this Holiday season.
Finally I bought my own domain name which was pending for quite some time now. I was surprised to see even though my name is quite a common name, nobody has acquired it yet and I didn’t want to leave this opportunity to let it go to anybody else.
So I am glad to announce that from today I am a proud owner of www.iftekharhussain.com
Not a bad deal for $12/year and I didn’t even had to compromise on my domain name like accepting iftekharhussy.info or iftekharhussain.mobi or crazyiftekharhussain.br, you get the point.
I do not have my own homepage as of now so for now this will redirect you all to my blog.
but do expect some new content to go to my site.
Stay tuned..
I am really a great fan of DirectAccess and use it all the time to connect back to my corporate network when I am at home, traveling and sometimes even when I am on vacation .
I know being a Infrastructure consultant, I do not cover much on core Windows Server technologies like BranchCache and DirectAccess which are equally interesting as Virtualization. Thankfully I have some great colleagues who are passionate about these core technologies and working really hard to help customers and partners to realize the value of some of these new features which we added in Windows Server 2008 R2 and also enabling them to deploy and configure them effectively.
Manoj Ravikumar Nair has posted a great screencast on Configuring DirectAccess using Forefront UAG 2010 SP1 and I couldn’t resist to share it with you all.
In this video, you would learn the following:
I personally feel this is a great way of learning for someone who is deploying and supporting DirectAccess.
Manoj is also a fellow blogger, you can also check his Blog at http://www.powershell.ms for more information on Windows server Technologies, Virtualization and PowerShell.
And if you have any questions, want to give him feedback or suggestions about the topics you want him to do more screencasts on, contact him using this link
Cheers!
Microsoft Partners, if you have joined our web seminar today for Datacenter Automation using System Center : Part 1, you must have seen some cool demos how you can do an automated provisioning of Virtual Machines by triggering a workflow from System Center Service Manager and using Opalis to initiate a VM creation using VMM 2008 R2.
Part 2 of the series will be webcast live on 27th May 2010, I would strongly recommend you to join the session
Join the PTS team in part two of "Datacenter Automation Using System Center." This session will help IT professionals optimize their technology, investments, and staff and also help them simplify data center management. Customer pain points and automation scenarios will be discussed.
IT is always under constant pressure to contain and in many cases reduce costs. Much of the work performed today in Datacenter is manual involving multiple teams. In addition to the time, risk and latency the manual approach introduces, another huge concern for IT is the inability to scale. This session will help the IT professionals a path to optimize their technology investments, staff and simplify the datacenter management
In this session, you’ll see a automatic consolidation of your physical server into Virtual Machines done by VMM 2008 R2 by triggering a workflow from Service Manager and few other cool demos
If you are a Microsoft Partner, you are entitled to free competitive presales assistance and advisory services each year. Partners have access to 10, 20, or 50 hours of advisory assistance based on their partner level or competencies. Its time to leverage your Partner Advisory Hours to accelerate your business cycle and win at marketplace.
We have limited seating so please register now!!!
REGISTER NOW!
https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_ActDetails.aspx?UserMode=0&ActivityId=736402
Contact me if you have any difficulty in registration.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is getting momentum and more and more organizations are looking at VDI to provide Operating system environment to their users.
One of the challenges that VDI is facing today is to be able to provide the same graphic experience of desktop Operating system as they have today on their physical PC.
E.g:
If you are following this blog and read my previous posts about features like RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory brought in by Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2, you probably already know what is RemoteFX.
Just to recap,
" RemoteFX adds new capabilities to the Remote Desktop Services platform by delivering a full-fidelity Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and high-density, scalable, client-agnostic session virtualization capabilities, shifting delivery intelligence to host-based systems running RemoteFX. Through a new graphics payload purpose-built for RemoteFX and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), the session virtualization platform is tightly integrated with the RDP protocol, which enables shared encryption, authentication, management, and local device support."
In layman’s term, RemoteFX extends the capabilities of GPU on your server hardware into your Virtual Machines running Windows 7 so that you can get rich graphic capabilities which are on par of a physical desktop running Windows 7.
It leverages the power of virtualized graphics resources and advanced codecs to recreate the fidelity of hardware-assisted graphics acceleration, including support for 3D content and Windows Aero, on a remote user’s device. This allows for a local-like, remote experience.
RemoteFX USB Device Redirection
RemoteFX also provides awesome Device Redirection of Virtually any USB devices, some of the features are:
Microsoft has recently released bunch of documents on Remote FX deployment and I would like collate all these documentations right here for you.
Before I take you through the documentations, let me touch briefly on the deployment guidelines of RemoteFX.
·
The RemoteFX encoder is optional and can be installed for additional scalability on the Microsoft® RemoteFX™ server,
Latest Operating systems :
Hyper- V Host
VDI Virtual Machine
Remote Client Device
Now lets review some of the great documentation released couple of weeks back about RemoteFX deployment.
Microsoft RemoteFX for Remote Desktop Virtualization Host Capacity Planning Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1
This white paper is intended as a guide for capacity planning of Microsoft RemoteFX in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment, methodologies to evaluate capacity for specific deployments, and a set of experimental results for different combinations of usage scenarios and hardware configurations.
Download
Deploying Microsoft RemoteFX on a Single Remote Desktop Virtualization Host Server Step-by-Step Guide
This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working virtual desktop that uses RemoteFX and is accessible by using Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a virtual desktop with RemoteFX that can be connected to by using Remote Desktop Connection. You can then test and verify this functionality by connecting to the virtual desktop from a client computer as a standard user.
Deploying Microsoft RemoteFX for Virtual Desktop Pools Step-by-Step Guide.
This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working virtual desktop pool that uses RemoteFX in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a virtual desktop pool with RemoteFX that users can connect to by using RD Web Access.
Deploying Microsoft RemoteFX for Personal Virtual Desktops Step-by-Step Guide
This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working personal virtual desktop that uses RemoteFX in a test environment.Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a personal virtual desktop with RemoteFX assigned to a user account that can connect by using RD Web Access. You can then test and verify this functionality by connecting to the personal virtual desktop from RD Web Access as a standard user.
Configuring-USB-Device-Redirection-with-Microsoft-RemoteFX-Step-by-Step-Guide
This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up USB redirection with RemoteFX in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a personal virtual desktop with RemoteFX assigned to a user account that can connect by using RD Web Access.
Microsoft RemoteFX for Session Virtualization: Architectural Overview
This paper provides an architectural overview of RemoteFX in the context of session virtualization—using a new Windows Server role called the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) designed specifically for modern session virtualization environments using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Deploying Microsoft RemoteFX on a Remote Desktop Session Host Server Step-by-Step Guide
This document walks you through the process of setting up a working Remote Desktop Session Host that uses RemoteFX and is accessible by using Remote Desktop Connection in a test environment.
I believe these documentations provides enough information about best way of deploying RemoteFX, in case you need more information or clarifications, please feel free to reach me.
Cheers.
Hello Everybody,
This is again a part of year where Microsoft reaches out to all its customers, partners, IT Pros and developers through its back to back technical conferences with some great announcements, Technical Sessions and demonstrations of its latest and cutting edge products and solutions.
Year 2011 will start with Microsoft Management Summit 2011 next week in Las Vegas, followed by TechEd North America 2011 in May and then Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 (WPC) in July.
MMS 2011 too expected to be all about Private Cloud, Datacenter Automation and Virtualization Management. The products which I am really looking forward to at MMS this year is VMM 2012, Opalis and Service Manager
I’ll be working at MMS 2011 in Las Vegas next week as a Microsoft Speaker and product specialist for Virtual Machine Manager 2012. All you partners, customers and IT Pros, Virtualization enthusiasts who are interested in Next Gen capabilities of Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and learn how it helps creating and doing end to end management of Private Cloud can meet me at VMM Booth at Microsoft Pavilion.
In addition to my booth duty, I am really looking forward to meet and present to and some of customers, partners whom I work with and discuss their Virtualization and Private Cloud Practice, also hanging out with some old friends and explore Vegas..
Though MMS 2011 is completely sold out for general attendees but here are other options. http://www.mms-2011.com/registrationoverview
For those who are not attending but would like to be updated with what's happening in Vegas, I am planning to do some heavy duty tweeting..
See you in Las Vegas.
This article is cross posted from my post on PTS Official Blog
As you all know that SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 just gone RTM adding two new virtualization capabilities: Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX
Let’s first understand these capabilities in details.
Dynamic Memory: An enhancement to Hyper-V R2, Dynamic Memory pools all the memory available on a physical host. Dynamic Memory then dynamically distributes available memory, as it is needed, to virtual machines running on that host. Then with Dynamic Memory Balancing, virtual machines will be able to receive new memory allocations, based on changes in workload, without a service interruption.
RemoteFX: Microsoft RemoteFX leverages the power of virtualized graphics resources and advanced codecs to recreate the fidelity of hardware-assisted graphics acceleration, including support for 3D content and Windows Aero, on a remote user’s device. This allows for a local-like, remote experience.
In the light of new features, service Pack 1 will also be released for VMM 2008 R2 to manage Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX on multiple Hyper V Servers from a single pane of glass.
Lets understand the requirements on your Hyper V hosts and VMs to be able to manage by VMM 2008 R2.
System Requirement for Manage Dynamic Memory:
RemoteFX Requirements on Hosts
RemoteFX requirements on VMs
VMM 2008 R2 SP1 now has settings to manage Dynamic Memory setting of VMs which are as follows:
To manage the RemoteFX , following settings have been added
Since RemoteFX requires you to have SLAT CPU and specific GPU and available GPU memory, VMM 2008 R2 SP1 will also let you identify the following on the hosts.
1. CPU Supports SLAT
2. GPU and available Memory
3. Intelligent Placement
While creating a new VM or migrating a new VM from one host to another, VMM 2008 R2 SP1 added new check for Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX in the Intelligent placement.
o Use Current Memory footprint for DM VMs on hosts: While doing the migration or creating new VM, VMM will check how much is the current memory the VM is running with, for E.g, you have specified startup memory as 1 GB and max memory as 6 GB but at the time of migration the VM is running at 2 GB memory. In that case, VMM will check if the other host has at least 2 GB free memory to be able to migrate this VM.
o Check for GPU-compatibility when migrating RemoteFX VMs : While migrating a RemoteFX based VM, VMM 2008 R2 checks if identical GPU is available on the other hosts with required memory, Remote FX should be enabled in RDS.
4. Updates to Performance and Resource Optimization
PRO ties specific Operations Manager alerts to remediation actions in VMM, VMM moves a load-balance VMs in a cluster when CPU or Memory exceed a threshold. SP1 update to VMM PRO Pack a consider Current Memory utilization and not the fixed memory for DM VMs and matches it with the memory available on the other nodes.
How do I upgrade from SCVMM 2008 R2 to SP1.
Pretty simple, just 4 steps to upgrade
VMM 2008 R2 SP1 will take the virtualization management to a whole new level and is scheduled to be released within 30 days of SP1 released by the Windows Server Team. So we can expect it sometime next month.
I hope this post was of some help for those who are expecting VMM to be able to manage Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX on multiple hosts from a single console instead of managing it locally using Hyper V manager on each box.
If you have any further queries, please feel free to reach me
Dear Partners,
As you know, the PTS teams are available to help you accelerate your sales cycle, win against the competition, reduce development costs, lessen your time-to-market, and architect and deploy successful solutions.
Partner Technical Services is now offering a workshop on how to deploy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) using Remote Desktop Services (RDS).
Session Content:
Day 1:
Day 2:
Description:
This session is targeted to Microsoft Partners who are selling, designing, and deploying the VDI solution to their customers. This session will cover Microsoft VDI Stack; and provide a step by step guide for deploying Personal Virtual Desktop and Pooled Virtual Desktop. We will use the RDS tool from Windows Server 2008 R2, and APP-V to deploy applications in those Virtual Desktops.
Please contact me or email askpts@microsoft.com with your Partner ID, and contact information. The Event dates and timing will be sent to the registered partners later.
At this time this offering is only available to Microsoft Partners in North America.
Part 2 of the series on Private cloud posted on GPS Blog
In my last blog post, I talked about the how Virtualization plays a vital role in setting up a Cloud infrastructure and enables the kind flexibility, elasticity, and automation which cloud services requires.
I also mentioned about Microsoft Hyper V Cloud offerings which we introduced in Berlin at TechEd Europe 2010.
With Microsoft, partners can participate in the full range of cloud offerings across the public and private spectrum to create new business models and generate new revenue streams. Partners will be able to expand their role as trusted advisors through broader customer engagements. They’ll also be able to deliver increasing business value to customers by offering dramatic improvements in business agility, operational efficiency, and IT maturity—with significant cost savings. And they’ll be able to win more business by closing larger deals and expanding into new markets.
Let’s look into these offerings in details and see what kind of role you as a Microsoft Partner can play and what kind of opportunities exists for you.
READ THE COMPLETE POST ON PTS BLOG
Here is the my blog post which i wrote for PTS blog
Hello Everyone and welcome to the PTS Blog. My name is Iftekhar Hussain, and I am a Partner Technical Consultant here in the Microsoft Partner Technical Services team specializing in Virtualization technologies. Today I would like to talk about how Microsoft Virtualization can fuel private cloud within an organization and how Microsoft partners can tap this opportunity to help customers build their own private clouds.
'Cloud', aren’t we hearing this word a lot these days? In almost every technical conversation, journals and magazines, conferences, everybody is talking about Cloud. Though there are large number of companies, groups, and individuals talking about Cloud, everybody has their own understanding and interpretation of Cloud.
So What Is Cloud Computing??
A very simple way to explain is that the cloud is a service with a certain set of tools and resources on the internet or in-house where you can perform all your computing tasks, save your data, generate and analyze reports, connect with people, or even have fun like playing games or watching TV or movies from any device like PC, TV, phone from any place.
READ THE ENTIRE POST ON PTS BLOG
As most of you know I work for Microsoft Global Partner Services focusing on Microsoft partners helping then design and develop Microsoft Virtualization Solutions for our customers. I am glad to inform that now we have launched our official team blog last week to communicate with our partners in a whole new way.
Most of my team members ( Including me) around the world who are specialized in their own subject matter of technology will put together some really interesting series of blog posts in coming days. Technical topics related to Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Windows Server, Virtualization, SQL, System Center etc will be covered, In addition to this we will also post our schedules of upcoming PTS webcasts, GPS offerings like Practice Accelerator etc and other future announcements.
Access the new blog here : http://blogs.technet.com/ptsblog
And please feel free to post your replies, comments, feedback and suggestions about kind of topics you would like to see on the blog.
Stay tuned for some really interesting posts.
TechEd Europe 2010 is starting next week in Berlin, Germany (Nov 8-12) and there are more than 500 sessions covering the entire breadth of Microsoft Technologies scheduled to be running back to back. Its an great opportunity for attendees to learn cutting edge technologies, network with fellow attendees and meet Microsoft Employees and discuss your business and IT challenges.
This TechEd we have huge numbers of sessions on Virtualization technologies and these are my recommended sessions which you cant afford to miss. Despite my busy schedule in preparing and delivering couple of sessions of my own and meeting attendees in the TLC booth, I would be attending few of these sessions.
If you are attending Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010 next week and you are keen to learn Virtualization technologies, You cant afford to miss these sessions.
Q: I am not attending TechEd Europe and these seems to be all great sessions, how can I watch them? Well, All you folks who wont be able to make it to the TechEd Europe, all the breakout session will be recorded and uploaded on TechEd Online after the event, You can watch them FREE of COST.
In addition to these sessions, You may also want to attend my sessions which are listed below.
If you are interested in any of the topics above, do come to my session and say hi..
You can also catch me at VDI and VMM Booth at Virtualization TLC. For real time updates from TechEd Europe, follow me on Twitter
See you all in Berlin next week.
Yes, I’ve been missing from blogosphere for quite some time now, was busy with lots going on in personal and professional life
If you have been following me on twitter and read my last blog posts, I have been pretty busy with regular engagements with the partners including delivering Practice Accelerator. The other thing which was keeping me busy was preparation for Microsoft Tech-Ed Europe 2010 to be held in Berlin, Germany from 8-12 Nov 2010. After Tech-Ed India 2010 and Tech-Ed North America 2010, this would be the third time I’ll be presenting in Microsoft Tech-Ed Conference, and its always nice to see the enthusiasm among attendees to learn, talk and play with cutting edge Microsoft Technologies.
We all have been pretty busy with the preparation for this event which includes working on the right content so that we can meet the expectations of the attendees, setting up the demo lab, presentation slides, Travel arrangements, Hotel, Visa and flight tickets etc… Phew!!! I am almost there…
I will be presenting two sessions in Tech-Ed Europe this year, they are listed as follows:
If you are planning to attend Tech-Ed Europe this year and Virtualization is the technology you are interested in, add these sessions to your schedule builder and come to say Hi!. You can also catch me at Microsoft Virtualization booth with the entire Microsoft Virtualization Product Team in the TLC Area and we can chat over a coffee.
Registration is still open for the event – join your colleagues and learn more about the newest technology from Microsoft.
I hope to see you in Berlin.