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Way back in March, I blogged about the 1st beta release of the MAP Toolkit 5.0.  Well, we’ve been through a second beta since then, and finally, a couple of days back, shipped the product, which I’m pleased to say, is available to download here . For those of you not in the know, what does MAP actually...

A couple of weeks back, I blogged about a number of dashboards that have been released, or were due for release soon.  These dashboards focused on providing a more visual reporting experience for products such as System Center Operations Manager, App-V, and System Center Configuration Manager. ...

Sticking with the case study theme, one of Microsoft’s largest IT Consultancy Partners, Avanade, have suffered from an issue which businesses across the globe, big and small, can easily suffer from; server sprawl.  Their datacenter was full, causing energy and management costs to go through to roof...

Just a quick heads up – last week I blogged about the upcoming Microsoft Management Summit UK 2010 , which is being held in London, on the 18th May 2010 . If you’re interested in signing up, and places will be limited I reckon, I would register early to avoid disappointment. It’s free, and you can register...

Way back in December, I blogged about the MAPs 5.0 Community Preview , and what was new to assist you on your infrastructure optimisation journeys.  Fast forward to March 2010, and Beta 1 is now available.  So, for those of you who need a recap… MAP Toolkit 5.0 is an agentless tool designed...

Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SharePoint 2007 & 2010 Presenter by Arno Mihm - Friday March 19th @ 17:00 GMT Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management...

A couple of weeks back, I blogged about the launch of App-V 4.6 , and the large amount of resources that were made available to coincide with that launch.  From documents, through to downloads, there was a huge amount of information, but one particular resource that many have found useful was the...

  If you’re around on the 12th April 2010 , and you’re interested in learning a bit about Microsoft Virtualisation technologies, plus, have a chat over a brew with me, then this could be the “Virtualisation Summit for you!” Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about...

Admittedly, a little late notice, but it’s only just landed in my inbox! The Client Management Bootcamp is a 4-day technical Instructor Led Training designed to enable System Center, Windows Client, MDOP, and Desktop Deployment SI partners to deliver successful POCs based on top customer scenarios...

It’s hard to believe I’ve used the word ‘plethora’ in the title of a post 3 times in the last 3 months!  I need to start broadening my vocabulary! Anyway, I blogged about the RC release of App-V 4.6 way back in November, and have been using it in my demos since then, however as of yesterday, the...

Following on from yesterday, Iftekhar, a fellow Partner Technology Advisor and blogger , got in touch and pointed me to another ‘Optimised Desktop’ resource. This video is 15 minutes long in total, but gives a pretty nice, integrated story across different platforms.  If you...

Anyone who’s seen my present Microsoft’s Virtualisation & Management story, will know I spend quite a bit of time focussing on System Center Operations Manager.  For me, I think it’s the mission control of the System Center Suite, where, typically, IT Admins’ would spend the majority of their...

If I said there was a tool that could accelerate fixed-sized VHD copies by 10 times, would you be interested?  If I said you could instantly provision and boot a new VM from a currently copying VHD file, would you be interested?  Well, if the answer is yes, to either of those questions, then...

Had a few cracking documents sent across to me from Steve Winfield, NetApp Consulting Systems Engineer in the UK, (and member of the Curry Council )   which are particularly useful if you’re scoping out a Hyper-V & NetApp combo, and also if you’re planning on running Exchange, SQL and SharePoint...

Earlier today, I was having a brief conversation over email with one of the chaps over at Intel UK, who had a question around Windows Server 2008 R2’s use of Turbo Boost, which is a capability of the Xeon 5500 (Nehalem), that allows those processors to achieve additional performance when it is most useful...

Some of you may already be aware of this, but for those of you interested in keeping technologies like AD, System Center Operations Manager, and Hyper-V running smoothly, the first in a series of MOF Reliability Workbooks may be of use. If you’re not au-fait with MOF (a bit like me!)… Microsoft...

I’ve seen these events build up and build up in my inbox, and I’ve been desperate to get them onto the web for all to see, so here goes!  Please note, all these sessions are Windows Server 2008 R2 related.  There will be separate posts on System Center management, and also, Virtualisation. ...

A couple of weeks back, I started a series (currently still 1-part long, apologies!) on Site Recovery for Hyper-V, and in that post, I discussed Essentials for Hyper-V 5.5, from Citrix.  Without trying to recreate the wheel from that post, Essentials for Hyper-V is a comprehensive set of advanced...

Sticking with the ‘plethora’ theme of the last post , I was having a chat a few weeks back over email, with Paul from Xtravirt .  If you’ve not heard of these guys, they are a bunch of guys who know there stuff, and I blogged about them ages ago , when they released a whitepaper on how to run VMware...

Anyone who’s deployed Windows Server 2008 (Pre-R2) with the Server Core deployment option will know it requires a slight behavioural change from what most Windows guys will have been used to.  For those of you who need a refresher, the Server Core interface, in all it’s glory, looked like Exhibit...

First thing you’re thinking is, ‘What’s a Community Technical Preview?’  Well, I’m not actually 100% sure to be honest, but I think it’s pre-beta, but not too far off beta, if you know what I mean :-)  As always, I could be wrong! :) Anyway, if you’re not familiar with MAP, in a nutshell, MAP...

System Center Essentials 2010 isn’t even out of beta yet, and already it’s starting to grow in popularity. I’m currently sitting through an installation of it inside a Hyper-V R2 VM as we speak, but whilst it’s working away, I thought I’d give you a couple of useful resources to mull over… Firstly...

One thing that you can’t take away from VMware, is their ecosystem of Virtual Appliances that people can download.  Not quite up to the level of the iPhone/iPod just yet, where ‘there’s an app for that’, but still, a quick scout around on the Virtual Appliance Marketplace, and you’ll find lots of...

Following on from yesterday’s post on App-V , I thought I’d take the chance to provide you with some quick overview videos on some of the other technologies that make up the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack, or for the acronym-fans, MDOP. For those of you not familiar, MDOP is a suite of technologies...

I blogged about App-V 4.6 a while back , around the beta release timeframe, and also recorded (but didn’t get round to editing!) a screencast using App-V 4.6 beta.  Obviously that’s now obsolete, so I’ll have to record it again, but, nonetheless, 4.6 Release Candidate is available, and over on the...