The Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) team is excited to announce the second Jump Start in a three-course virtualization series. This course is designed for VMware professionals looking to get up-to-speed with how Microsoft virtualization and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V works and compares with VMware vSphere...

The Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) brings together the brightest IT professionals from around the world to increase their technical expertise through deep hands-on training, best-practice sharing, and interaction with innovators in desktop, device, and datacenter management, as well as cloud technologies...

When the winds and waves of Hurricane Sandy bore down ferociously on New York City, at least two Microsoft SMB customers were ready. Microsoft partner WorkITsafe had just helped these customers upgrade to the Windows Server 2012 operating system with the new built-in Hyper-V Replica feature. As a result...

Windows Server 2012 is generally available for evaluation and purchase by all customers around the world. Additionally, there is great news for organizations that are looking for a way to migrate virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere to the Hyper-V host in Windows Server 2012.  The production...

The Beta of System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (“SP1”) enables System Center customers to jointly evaluate System Center 2012 with Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. The Beta is for evaluation purposes only and not to be used in production as described in the EULAs associated with the product. No license...

Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 2012 is designed to work with System Center 2012 –Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 SP2. VMST 2012 helps you reduce IT costs by making it easier to update your offline virtual machines...

VM Recovery Tool The stand-alone Virtual Machine Recovery Tool works with System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to temporarily remove a host, cluster, virtual machine, or service from VMM when that object is in a failed or persistent warning state due to environmental conditions, third-party...

The astute TechNet Subscriber might have noticed some new downloads on the download center.  Yep, the RTM binaries are available for download ahead of the coming out party at the Microsoft Management Summit . If you have a subscription, go get em .

Head to the App-V resources download page at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27760 .  And of course the App-V Tech Center at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/bb508934 .

Go get it @ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9796988 . Here’s some bedtime reading while you watch the download, download. ======= A Microsoft private cloud dramatically changes the way your business produces and consumes IT services by creating a layer of abstraction over your pooled IT resources. This...

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and software information...

Looking for some Application Virtualization (App-V) information?  Here’s a nice download page with all of the docs in a nice ordered list.  Go get em @ http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27760 .

This free 3 hour session presents a current look at Virtualization – An update on the technology, overview of certifications, and a discussion of the career opportunities available. Presented by two experts in the field: Symon Perriman and Rick Claus, you won’t want to miss the first in our new series...

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 delivers industry leading fabric management, virtual machine management and services deployment in private cloud environments. VMM offers key new features that include hypervisor creation and management, network management, storage management, private...

Ben “The Virtual PC Guy” Armstrong has been on the leading edge of many of our virtualization developments for years.  Ben joined Microsoft during the CONNECTIX acquisition back in 2003. During his tenure here at Microsoft Ben has helped shape the virtualization offerings with Virtual PC, Virtual...

Dig the cool mini van on this video .  LOL.  Someone had fun making this.

Here’s a not so subtle reminder that the price for the //build conference goes up in a couple of weeks. Be sure and register now if you plan to go.  September in Anaheim should be wonderful.

This morning we’ll be taking questions live from you.  Join us at 9am PST as we host an episode on the topic of Virtualization.  Our guest this morning is Aidan Finn.  Aidan has many years of experience on this topic so please take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to ask a question...

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2 SP1 is a standalone product that provides a reliable and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. With the addition of new features such as live migration and expanded processor and memory support for host...

May 2 – Toronto | May 4 – Detroit | May 6 – Chicago | May 9 – Indianapolis | May 11 – Dallas | May 13 - Columbus The Springboard Series Tour is back! This 6 city tour brings the top product teams from Microsoft to you. We understand the questions and issues that IT pros deal with every day. How do I...

Full details @ http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2011/03/29/mms-2011-labs-powered-by-hyper-v-system-center-amp-hp.aspx .  Fascinating comparison year-to-year.

We are happy to announce that the Windows Thin PC public CTP is now available! Although the final release of Windows Thin PC will be provided as a benefit for Software Assurance customers, we heard feedback that you wanted us to broaden the access of the CTP, so we’re pleased to announce that this CTP...

High end portable workstations are a special class of computer.  The Lenovo ThinkPad W520 belongs to that class and in many ways sets the bar.  As a daily user of a ThinkPad W510, I was certainly interested in seeing and testing the new W520 to see what improvements were made. Keep in mind...

Just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), Microsoft Learning is hosting an exclusive three-day Jump Start class specially tailored for VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology pros. Registration for “ Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals ” is open and will be delivered...

Like a lot of other folks, I’ll be attending the MVP Summit.  I contemplated which laptop to take.  I have a number of options but unfortunately the machine I want to take is my personal ThinkPad T410s.  It’s slightly over three pounds, has a powerful dual core i5 processor, lots of memory...