virtualboy blog

I thought I’d seen it all with System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2…

2010-10-28T15:39:31Z

but obviously not! Hat tip to Sean at one of our Partners, Computer2000, who, at a recent event, told me about a Management Pack that had been developed by one of our Gold Certified Partners in Denmark which, wait for it, monitors the health of a coffee pot.

I didn’t believe it either, but it’s true! There’s a video and everything! You have to check out the video – I don’t know how he’s keeping a straight face whilst talking about this :-)

Now, before you rush out and set this up, there are a couple of pre-requisites you’ll need to be aware of, such as you’ll need System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, the .NET Framework 3.5, and a network connected camera to monitor the coffee pot, but most importantly, you’ll need a coffee pot which is transparent. This may upset many of you who have invested in one of the many different coloured coffee pots out there. I’m sure, if you’re more of a tea drinker like me, there’s the potential to adapt this for tea too, although don’t leave the tea-bag in for too long, as you’ll end up with a ‘cuppa’ that can only be described as terrible :-)

Joking aside though, what this shows is the flexibility of something like Operations Manager. Being able to create your own customised Management Packs, tailored to what is important to you, is one of it’s key strengths and really helps you to make management relevant to your specific environment. The guys have even provided the secret sauce, I.e. the content of the management pack, so there’s potential for modification and tailoring to your environment.

New IPD Guide Published: System Center Service Manager 2010 (Beta)

2010-10-28T13:14:26Z

I’ve just received notification that the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Service Manager 2010 has just been published, and anyone who’s weighing up a deployment, or simply wants to know more about it, should find this free guide very useful. As a quick refresher, here’s what an IPD guide actually is:

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides streamline the planning process by:

Defining the technical decision flow through the planning process.
Listing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape

So, in a nutshell, they’re deigned to help you plan the deployment of a technology, in this case, Service Manager 2010, but there are loads of them already published over at http://microsoft.com/ipd so chances are, if you’re weighing up certain Microsoft technologies, there should be a guide to help.

This Service Manager 2010 IPD is currently in beta, so based on feedback, some bits are subject to change, however even in it’s current state, it’ll take the IT architect through an easy-to-follow process for successfully designing the servers and components for a System Center Service Manager implementation, resulting in a design that is sized, configured, and appropriately placed to deliver the stated business benefits, while also considering the performance, capacity, and fault tolerance of the system. For me, that’s the key element. I’m currently planning (I use the term loosely) a rollout of SCSM for my lab, but I’m not quite sure of the best sizing for my small environment, and although the answer is on TechNet, somewhere in the vast library, sometimes it’s tricky to find the definitive sizing guide for my environment. Hopefully this will help!

The guide covers these key steps in the System Center Service Manager infrastructure design process:

Defining the project scope by identifying the necessary System Center Service Manager features, the requirements of the process management packs, and the targeted population of the organization.
Mapping the selected features and scope to determine the required server roles.
Designing the fault tolerance, configuration, and placement of the management servers, portals, and supporting SQL Server databases.

The IPD Guide for System Center Service Manager 2010 can help you reduce planning time and costs, and ensure a successful rollout of System Center Service Manager - helping your organization to more quickly benefit from this platform for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Interested? Follow these steps!

Join the IPD Guide Beta Program

Subscribe to the IPD beta program and we will notify you when new beta guides become available for your review and feedback. These are open beta downloads. If you are not already a member of the IPD Beta Program and would like to join, follow these steps:

Go here to join the IPD beta program
Sign in using a valid Windows Live ID.
Enter your registration information.
Continue to the IPD program beta page, scroll down to Infrastructure Planning and Design, and click the link to join the IPD beta program
Once you’ve joined, go here to get hold of the downloads.

If you’re already a member of the IPD Guide Beta Program, just grab the download from here.

Interested in System Center? Want to reduce costs? This event is for you!

2010-10-27T15:11:00Z

That image won’t make much sense at this stage, but work with me here! On Friday 5th November, one of our key System Center Partners, Inframon, are hosting an event in London focused purely on System Center, and the range of technologies which exist as part of the brand. Whether you’re a ‘Configuration Manager kinda-guy’, or maybe Operations Manager floats your boat, there’s going to be something for everyone. Don’t forget the sparkly new Service Manager, along with the awesome Opalis – these, and more, will all be showcased on the day, and if that’s not enough, Inframon have snagged a speaker list which reads like a ‘who’s who’ in the System Center world….

Oh, and it’s held at the Cabinet War Rooms in London, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War. With a theme like ‘The War on Cost 2010’, where else could you hold it? I presented at the event last year, and it was on HMS Belfast if I recall correctly! I’ll be on my holidays whilst the event is on this year which is a shame for me, as it’s a great opportunity to connect directly with the Product Teams who are working on the technologies over in the US. If you are free on the 5th November, I would strongly recommend going along, but to entice you a little more, here’s the line-up:

0830-0900	Registration
0900-0930	Inframon Keynote - Gordon McKenna, Inframon CEO & MVP System Center
0930-1030	Microsoft Keynote: Datacenter to the Cloud - Ryan O’Hara - Senior Director, System Center Product Management, Microsoft
1030-1050	Break
1050-1150	Microsoft Keynote: Desktop & Security Convergence - Andrew Conway - Senior Director, Identity and Security Business Group, Microsoft Breakout #1: The Microsoft Private Cloud Story: Sean Roberts, Inframon CFO & Simon Skinner, Inframon Technical Architect & MVP System Center
1150-1250	Breakout #2: Operations Manager 2007 R2 & vNext - Justin Incarnato & Daniel Savage, Senior Product Managers, System Center, Microsoft Breakout #3: Managing Mobile Devices with Athena™ for SCCM 2007 - Odyssey Software Breakout #4: Heterogeneous Management With Operations Manager 2007 – Bridgeways
1250-1350	Lunch
1350-1450	Breakout #5: System Center Configuration Manager vNext Highlights - Jeff Wettlaufer, Senior Technical Product Manager, System Center, Microsoft Breakout #6: Service Manager – The Better Together Story – Sean Christensen, Senior Technical Product Manager, System Center, Microsoft
1450-1510	Break
1510-1610	Breakout #7: Intelligent Datacenter Application Protection - Jason Buffington, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Breakout #8: Datacenter IT Process Automation - Adam Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager & Greg Charman, Opalis Technical Specialist, Microsoft
1610-1630	Closing Keynote - Gordon McKenna, Inframon CEO & MVP System Center
1630-1700	Venue Tour

So there you have it – a plethora of System Center knowledge concentrated in one place – definitely worth a day of your time if you can spare it! You can read the whole, detailed agenda over on the War on Cost website.

Don’t forget to Register if you want to attend!

DPM 2010 - Management Pack for Operations Manager Released

2010-10-27T07:56:10Z

Hat tip to Jonathan Almquist for this one – it’s something I’ll be installing ASAP!

For those of you who have rolled out, or are planning to roll out, a combination of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, and System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, this free Management Pack could be of use to you. The management pack monitors the health status of System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 and its components. It alerts the admin on critical health state and it provides certain break fix tasks to take corrective actions. The management pack is targeted to provide central monitoring solution for System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 customers.

Feature Summary

The DPM 2010 Management Pack enables the user to reduce unnecessary alerts appearing on your console by using service level agreement (SLA)-based alerting and duplicate–error suppression.
- Through SLA-based alerting, alerts appear only if a particular job has failed for a certain period.
- Through duplicate-error suppression, the management pack suppresses alerts raised as a reaction to a root-cause event. For example, if a DPM protection agent service is unreachable, or a protected computer is not working, and the backup jobs of all data sources are failing, the management pack updates the state of each affected data source without raising a data source-specific alert.
- If you are using a ticketing system and are using Operations Manager, DPM 2010 Management Pack enables you to use rules instead of the monitors. By default, DPM Management Pack enables monitors. If you want to use rules, you must enable them.

It’s currently available in English only at this time, but will be localised in a few weeks. You can read more about the Management Pack, and download it, here.

Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Available

2010-10-26T19:35:27Z

Hot off the press, the Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 has been released!

You can grab the Release Candidate from here, however there are a couple of things you should know about before you steam right ahead!

In order to download and install the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Release Candidate you must currently have a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 already installed.
If you have previously installed the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta on your machine, you must uninstall the beta before installing the Release Candidate

Go to Windows Update in the Control Panel, uninstall the beta, select Check for Updates, then install the release candidate. You do not need to run the WUSignupTool a second time to be offered the release candidate. You do not need to install any updates before installing the release candidate

There are also a couple of useful resources that you may want to take a look at:

If you’re managing your Hyper-V hosts with SCVMM 2008 R2, you may want to hold off on the SP1 build for your hosts initially (or play with it on an alternative server) as the current release of SCVMM won’t support SP1 of Hyper-V just yet, but I’m sure there will be an accompanying build in the near future.

If all of this is new to you, and you’re not even sure what’s coming with SP1, then this should help you get up to speed:

Remote FX: With Microsoft RemoteFX, users will be able to work remotely in a Windows Aero desktop environment, watch full-motion video, enjoy Silverlight animations, and run 3D applications within a Hyper-V VM – all with the fidelity of a local-like performance.
Hyper-V Dynamic Memory: With Hyper-V Dynamic Memory, Hyper-V will enable greater virtual machine density suitable for servers and VDI deployments.

No more advice from me – again, the download is here!

Interesting read on Citrix’s HDX and VMware’s PCoIP…

2010-10-26T18:37:36Z

As many of your know, one of the key elements of my job is to work with Partners and Customers around our Optimised Desktop story. If you’re not familiar, it’s the idea that actually, believe it or not, VDI isn’t the right solution for everyone and that an optimised desktop, with associated benefits, can be achieved through a variety of ways, VDI being one of them. Terminal Services, now replaced by Remote Desktop Services, RDS, is one area that always sparks a bit of debate. Many people assume session-based computing has been superseded by VDI, and that it’s very much a one or the other type scenario. I wonder who gave them that idea? This couldn’t be further from the truth, with both Microsoft and Citrix still continuing to invest in the platform to provide the highest density, and greatest ROI for a remote working environment, especially suited to the task/knowledge workers. Many of the Partners, and more specifically, the customers that see me demonstrate our RDS solution, typically follow up with ‘So does this mean I don’t need Citrix anymore?’. One of the reasons they are asking this question, is because they’ve just seen me deliver a local, LAN-based RDS demo, utilising RDP 7.0 (soon to be 7.1…) and for all intents and purposes, the user experience is pretty darn good, and naturally, the tendency is to compare it with their, perhaps legacy, Presentation Server deployment that’s due for an upgrade.

It’s when we introduce the unpredictable WAN element that things begin to change.

Don’t get me wrong, RDP is leaps and bounds better than what it was, but it’s still designed primarily for the LAN, and hence the upcoming feature in Service Pack 1; RemoteFX, will only function over the LAN (with RDP anyway). This is where protocols like Citrix HDX (High Definition eXperience), VMware PCoIP (PC over IP), Quest’s EOP Xtream, and Ericom Blaze all claim to streamline and enhance the connection to a remote environment over WAN links, but the claim is, some do it better than others…

This is where the interesting read comes in.

Over on Virtualization.info, Alessandro provides details on what I would describe as a lightweight test performed by Chris Wolf, at Gartner, where, at 200ms latency, in a real-world scenario, Citrix HDX outperforms VMware PCoIP. It was a simple test, and by no means took into account all of the best practices that I’m sure exist for both platforms (as detailed on this blog, talking about the PCoIP performance in the scenario tested by Chris) but still, Citrix won out at 200ms, but both performed well at 120ms latency. How would RDP compare here? I wouldn’t like to say. As the latency starts to creep up, inevitably the user experience will start to deteriorate more so than the other protocols discussed, but just remember what it;s designed for. You can read more about the improvements in RDP 7 here.

So to answer my question from earlier – ‘Does this mean I don’t need Citrix anymore?’ – the answer is, if you’re doing anything over the WAN, with higher latencies, then Citrix, for the session based environment, will certainly provide you with a richer experience. Don’t also forget the other benefits around increased scalability, manageability, USB device support, end-device flexibility (iPhone, iPad, Linux, Mac etc.) and this is just scratching the surface. Citrix, along with Partners such as Quest, Ericom and more, will always offer value-add on top of the Microsoft platform – the key thing is, for many organisations, is working out what’s right for you, what functionality you need, and keeping it within budget!

No benchmark test will allow you to simulate your conditions, and your environment, hence gathering detailed user requirements and delivering a Proof of Concept is essential, but just from reading the article on Virtualization.info, and also across on Chris Wolf’s blog, you’d be inevitably leaning towards Citrix from a protocol perspective, however don’t write off others such as Quest, who with EOP Xtream may just surprise you!

Upcoming Partner Academy Live: Virtualisation Licensing

2010-10-26T17:56:39Z

Judging by the number of questions I receive on licensing, both via this blog, and also face to face, I’ve got a feeling these sessions will be of use to you. If you feel that you don’t quite get our licensing around both Server Virtualisation and Desktop Virtualisation, then these 2 sessions could be for you.

Deciphering Windows Server Licensing w/ a Focus on Server Virtualisation

Confused about the options available to license Windows Server? Interested in virtualising your existing Windows Servers but aren’t sure how this will impact your licensing requirements? This session breaks down the components of Windows Server licensing, especially virtualisation.

Date: 9th November 2010
Time: 1600-1700 GMT
Presenter: Adam Baron, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

How to License Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Technology

Virtual Desktop represents a major opportunity for customers to simplify the management and deployment of technology. This session will provide the basics as well as examples of how to license virtual desktops.

Date: 10th November 2010
Time: 1600-1700 GMT
Presenter: Adam Baron, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

Don’t forget, these sessions are free for Microsoft Partners, and will be recorded, so if you can’t make the actual time, make sure you still register as you’ll then be notified when the recording is available for you to download.

July to November - where did it go?

2010-10-26T17:44:57Z

I’ve been writing this blog for a number of years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such a barren spell of posts. You have to look back to the 15th July for the last real post on Microsoft technology, and frankly, I’m disappointed and embarrassed! So much has happened since July. I flew out to the US right at the end of July for our annual internal technical conference, which effectively involves many Microsoft people from across the globe learning about the latest and greatest Microsoft technologies, both released, and upcoming. The best way to think about it is like an internal TechEd, minus the confidential stuff obviously. I spent a large amount of my time in System Center sessions, as for me, System Center is going to be the key to the Dynamic Datacenter, the Optimised Datacenter, or, the Private Cloud. Some of the things I saw, across products like Opalis and Service Manager, I thought, were absolutely fantastic, yet still to this day I just haven’t had time to get them installed in my lab – shocking! Aside from the absorption of technical information (think plugging into the Matrix) there is inevitably the copious amount of shopping, especially from the UK guys. I’m yet to find anyone who’s actually bought the Abercrombie and Fitch after shave/cologne, but all you see around the office in the weeks after the conference are people in A&F!

Post July, one of the chaps in our team decided to move on to pastures new, and we have literally just hired the new head to replace him, but in the meantime, his workload, and work with his Partners had to be distributed, and because he looked after System Center, and Management & Virtualisation are so inherently linked, it came over to me. Nightmare! Still – that’s what I love about this role – the immersion in technology. I’m one of those people who needs to understand a technology fully before I can talk about and explain it to others. Hyper-V is one of those technologies, however System Center, especially with some of the newer technologies, is a new learning ground for me, so it’s been all hands to the pumps since then both learning, and presenting!

Both VMworld’s came and went, and Citrix Synergy, Microsoft’s TechEd, and more are just around the corner, and you can bet your bottom dollar there will be plenty of announcements coming soon, especially in relation to my newly adopted technologies in the System Center suite. It’s been an incredibly exciting and fast moving couple of months, technology wise, and I’ll certainly be trying to keep up on the blog, fingers crossed!

I’ve got a whopping 99 items in my Newsletter/Blog folder, excluding this one, some of which is so old now, that if I posted it here, you’d start to question my sanity, especially if you keep up with technology news on a daily basis, however there will be instances where I do post some of the older stuff, because chances are, somebody, somewhere, will be looking for that, and in my view, every little helps. Plus, then I can remove it from my Newsletter/Blog folder!

An Education in ICT Efficiencies - 3rd November 2010

2010-09-16T13:15:52Z

So the budget cuts have arrived – and it appears that for the moment, the biggest cuts are in schools’ capital budgets. Firstly we saw the Harnessing Technology Grant cut by £50M, then the BSF programme was cancelled, and on the same day another £50M was cut from the Harnessing Technology Grant – the only dedicated ICT grant for schools.

There have been various doom-laden forecasts of the impact of these cuts, but although the government have cut the specific ring-fenced ICT spend by 50%, schools have always decided how much of their own budget they too will invest in ICT to support teaching and learning. Last year, the Harnessing Technology Grant accounted for around one quarter of all schools ICT spending - so the overwhelming majority of investment came from each school’s individual budget decisions, taken after they’d decided on the relative priority of investing in ICT compared to other resources, and their staffing budgets.

Of course, things are not good. It’s going to be tougher to justify investment in ICT – especially after so many years of plenty. And ICT leaders in schools around the country are going to need to hone their skills to justify the investments they are bidding for.

There are areas where ICT can help you make simple and effective cost savings in your school budget. From the work so far, it’s clear that you could make a big difference in a secondary school by saving up to a staggering £350,000 over 3 years or £90,000 in a Primary School, ensuring that learning in schools is not jeopardised.

If you’re in the education sector, this could be a very valuable session indeed.

Find out how to get started on cost saving with ICT

Through technologies like virtualisation, power management, or embracing unified communications, the savings can soon mount up, and the savings are year on year, every year. It’s time to switch, stop and save. You can see more examples of saving through technology here.

Dimension Data, in partnership with Microsoft want to take you on a journey, to show you the art of the possible, and the real world savings that can be made through technology. You’ll also hear from a real-world educational establishment on their experiences, and the savings they’ve made.

If you’re interested in understanding how Dimension Data and Microsoft can help you, please register here providing your relevant attendee info and we’ll be in touch. The event will be held on the 3^rd November at Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading.

And as a special offer, the first 10 people to register today before 3:00pm (16^th September), and attend, will receive a free Infrastructure Optimisation Assessment, courtesy of a Microsoft-trained consultant from Dimension Data, enabling you to understand how your existing investments, combined with new technologies can help you better address your challenges.

Vizioncore release free VMware Management Pack for OpsMgr…

2010-07-26T20:11:59Z

Vizioncore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest (the vWorkspace guys!), have released a free Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 which enables the monitoring of VMware virtual infrastructures. Now, before I get into the features and capabilities of what the MP gives you, it’s important to point out that this is the first free MP to deliver these capabilities, and may stir things up a little over at both Veeam and Bridgeways, who both have established MP’s for OpsMgr to enable monitoring of VMware environments. It’s important to say, both Veeam and Bridgeways offer trails of their solutions, so it would be important to compare the different MP’s for yourselves, however looking at a high level, one of the key elements that Veeam seems to have today, is that it’s PRO-enabled, thus provides more automated, dynamic and agile responses within the environment based on changing conditions. That’s not to say both Bridgeways and Vizioncore won’t evolve their technologies in the future, and bring in PRO capabilities, however today, you would have to classify it as a differentiator for Veeam. One you have to pay for however.

So, what are the key features of the Vizioncore MP?

Essential alerts from the virtual infrastructure to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) of problems
Integration to System Center Operations Manager to centralize and consolidate monitoring efforts
Low cost and simple to use while allowing administrators to work in their familiar System Center Operations Manager views
Native management pack delivers alert and event management as well as trending inside the SCOM console
Agentless architecture for simple deployment and low overhead
Performance monitoring & availability event monitoring for fast resolution in the virtual environment
Out-of-the-box reports for host and guest metrics provides flexibility and clear communication between stakeholders

There’s even more features here…

What’s nice from my perspective, is the growth of the ecosystem around the Microsoft virtualisation platform, from Partners that have, in the past, been quite VMware focused. That’s more Vizioncore than Quest, but still, it’s moving in the right direction.

If you’re interested, you can get all the info, and download the MP, from here.

Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit 5.0 - Now Released

2010-07-15T14:01:31Z

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 do? Well, from here:

Secure and Agentless Inventory

MAP provides secure, agentless, and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service.

You can use MAP to inventory the following technologies:

Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP Professional
Office 2010 and previous versions
Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
VMware ESX
VMware ESXi
VMware Server
Linux variants
LAMP application stack discovery
SQL Server 2008

Comprehensive Data Analysis

MAP performs a detailed analysis of hardware and device compatibility for migration to Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Office 2010. The hardware assessment looks at the installed hardware and determines if migration is recommended. If it is not recommended, then the reports tell you why it is not.

The device assessment looks at the devices installed on a computer and reports availability of drivers for those devices. Device assessment can be used for migration and consolidation scenarios for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008 R2.

MAP identifies heterogeneous IT environments consisting of Windows Server and Linux operating systems, including those running in a virtual environment, and provides discovery of Linux-powered LAMP application stacks. MAP’s VMware discovery feature identifies already-virtualized servers running under VMware that can be managed with the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager platform, or be migrated to the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.

For customers interested in server consolidation and virtualization through technologies such as Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005 R2, MAP helps to gather performance metrics and generate server consolidation recommendations that identify the candidates for server virtualization and suggests how the physical servers might be placed in a virtualized environment.

In-Depth Readiness Reporting

MAP generates reports containing both summary and detailed assessment results for each migration scenario. The results are provided in Microsoft Excel workbooks and Microsoft Word documents. Reports are generated for the following scenarios:

Identification of currently installed Windows client operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows 7.
Reporting of antivirus and anti-malware programs installed on the desktop and if the Windows Firewall is turned on.
Identification of currently installed Microsoft Office software and recommendations for migration to Microsoft Office 2010.
Identification of currently installed Windows Server operating systems, underlying hardware and devices, as well as recommendations for migration to Windows Server 2008 R2.
Identification of currently installed Linux operating systems and underlying hardware for virtualization on Hyper-V or management by System Center Operations Manager R2.
Detailed assessment and reporting of server utilization, as well as recommendations for server consolidation and virtual machine placement using Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2.
Discovery of Microsoft SQL Server databases, instances, and selected characteristics.
Identification of SQL Server host machines and SQL Server components.
Identification of virtual machines running on both Hyper-V and VMware, their hosts, and details about hosts and guests.
Assessment of Windows 2000 Server environments and inventory.

Software Usage Tracker Feature Overview

The MAP Toolkit’s Software Usage Tracker feature provides Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with consistent software usage reports for key Microsoft server products: Windows Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Configuration Manager, Exchange Server, and SQL Server. MAP’s software usage tracker provides secure, agentless, and network-wide inventory that collects and organizes software usage information and client access history for the following Microsoft servers:

Windows Server
SharePoint Server
Exchange Server
SQL Server
System Center Configuration Manager

With the MAP software usage tracker, you can run updated reports whenever you need to accurately assess current software usage and client access history in your environment. This reduces time and administrative costs for managing your server and client access licenses (CALs) and helps you to streamline the management of your software assets.

Not bad for a free tool, right?

The biggest question I get back from people when I talk about MAP is along the lines of ‘this sounds great, but how do we use it?’

Thankfully, there’s a couple of ‘getting started guides’, dedicated to both general usage, and the Software Usage Tracker, but on top of that, Matt Hester, from the US IT Pro Evangelist team, has released a series of 6 videos showcasing MAP 5.0. So far, he’s published the following:

In the meantime, if you’re desperate to see the remaining 3 videos, you can grab them on TechNet Edge:

Part 4 - Database Discovery for SQL
Part 5 - Heterogeneous Server Environment Inventory
Part 6 - Software Usage Tracker

If you’re interested, you can download the tool here.

Brian Madden on RemoteFX and just what are the minimum specs?

2010-07-13T20:24:15Z

That rhyme/rap was not intentional. Even in this day and age, I doubt a song about virtualisation technologies could get in the charts, although you never know…

Anyway, back to the real world…

Following up from yesterday’s post on the SP1 announcements, the interest in RemoteFX is already growing, with people wanting to get their hands on it, try it out, see how it behaves, how it scales, how it integrates, and more. Before any of that though, isn’t it a good idea to know how it all works? Well, there are lots of blog posts out there from both Microsoft, and Partners like Dell, Nvidia, and AMD to name but a few, but in terms of depth, you’d do well to find a more comprehensive, honest overview of the technology. I’ll warn you though, it’s quite deep!

Read it here…

So, on to the specs. I’ve already downloaded SP1, and installed it on my whitebox Shuttle PC, which has an Nvidia 8500 GT GPU (I’m not sure on the Video RAM – I haven’t checked, it was 1am!). I’ve enabled the Remote FX bits (under Add Roles –> Remote Desktop Services) and Hyper-V, and I’m good to go, right? No. Not on my box :-(

According to this TechNet library page, the minimum specs for RemoteFX are as follows:

RemoteFX server hardware requirements

There are several hardware requirements that must be met when deploying a RemoteFX server:

SLAT-enabled processor – The processor in the RemoteFX server must support Second-Level Address Translation (SLAT). In virtualization scenarios, hardware-based SLAT support improves performance. On Intel-based processors, this is called Extended Page Tables (EPT), and on AMD-based processors, it is called Nested Page Tables (NPT).
GPU - At least one graphics processing unit (GPU) is required on the RemoteFX server. The GPU driver must support DirectX 9.0c and DirectX 10.0. If more than one GPU is installed in the RemoteFX server, the GPUs must be identical. The GPU must have sufficient dedicated video memory that is separate from system memory.
RemoteFX encoder - The RemoteFX encoder is optional and can be installed for additional scalability on the RemoteFX server. The hardware encoder card must be installed in an x4 speed PCI-express slot or greater.
Hyper-V – The Hyper-V hardware requirements must be supported on the server. The Hyper-V hardware requirements for Windows Server 2008 R2 are available on the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=180919).
Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE2) processor – If you are using RemoteFX on an RD Session Host server, the processor on the RD Session Host server must support SSE2.

In my case, I’m let down by 2 factors here. Firstly, I don’t have a CPU which has EPT or NPT, although it is a Core 2 Quad Extreme, but not quite extreme enough obviously. Secondly, I don’t think my GPU has a huge amount of video RAM, but I think it has DirectX 10 support – time will tell on that one, when I get round to testing it! I don’t need the RemoteFX Encoder in my test environment, so we can ignore that hardware-based addition for now. Hyper-V runs fine on my box, so no issues there, and the final point is relevant to Session Hosts specifically, which isn’t on my agenda right now. So, SLAT and GPU – not sure how I’m going to get round the SLAT one, but buying a new GPU with plenty of GPU Video RAM shouldn’t cost the earth.

How do you know how much video RAM is required? Well, it depends:

As you can see from the table, as the resolution increases, the amount of video RAM required (per VM) increases. As you increase the number of monitors, the same thing occurs. It’s important to note that this solution is inevitably going to affect density, quite considerably, as you simply can’t get that many GPU’s into servers today but this will change, with GPUs of different shapes, sizes, and chassis creeping out over the coming months and years. Watch this space I’d say…

Much to like in Quest vWorkspace 7.1…Part 2!

2010-07-12T17:17:19Z

I didn’t intend for the original post on Quest’s excellent vWorkspace technology to lead to a ‘Part 2’ but it seems only fitting, with a raft of useful information that has become available to add to that of the original post! It was Brian Madden’s post that triggered me into posting, as he showcased a video detailing some of the capabilities of EOP Xtream, but not just on it’s own. Oh no. This was in conjunction with RemoteFX. The same RemoteFX that just became available to everyone, as part of the SP1 beta bits we just announced.

One of the common misconceptions with RemoteFX is that it’s a replacement for RDP. Wrong. The best way to think of RemoteFX is it’s a capability. RDP is a transport, just like EOP Xtream, ICA HDX, Ericom Blaze etc. So, RemoteFX enhances the actual graphical capabilities of the VM itself, with host-side rendering, and whichever transport you’re using, is what gets the user to their virtual desktop, and what presents that desktop back to the user. RemoteFX is aimed at LAN scenarios, ideally with latency less than 20ms, but as soon as you go beyond that, especially in WAN scenarios, this is where RemoteFX + RDP starts to suffer. RemoteFX + EOP Xtream, or ICA HDX is a different story however…

Rather than embed the video, you’ll have to head on over to Brian Madden’s blog post to see it for yourself! You may have to hold back the giggling when the alarm, followed by country and western music comes on. You’ll know what I mean when you watch it…If only that music was always available when difficult questions were asked!

Brian certainly thinks it’s cool, and gives his own views on how he thinks EOP Xtream works (seeing as the guys are a bit tight-lipped on the intricacies of it!), which makes for an interesting read.

What about customers running this in real life?

It’s all well and good hearing about features, and capabilities from different companies, but what about those people actually running it, in production? Wouldn’t it be great to hear from them? Well, on the 14th July, between 10-11am GMT, you can attend a live webcast where you can hear how Lancashire Police, partnered with Quest, to deliver and manage a virtualised desktop environment with vWorkspace and Hyper-V. You’ll learn about how the solution enables mobile officers to communicate in real time with the the station’s core systems, without having to return to complete paperwork. This helps improve the officers visibility in the community, and because no data is stored on individual laptops, sensitive information stays secure in a central location.

If you’re interested in attending, you can register here.

SP1 (Beta) Now Available for Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2…

2010-07-12T16:30:35Z

Downloading as we speak!

Just over a month ago, straight from TechEd North America, we announced SP1 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and stated, at the time, the beta would be available before the end of July. Well, it’s available now, from here.

What’s in there?

Well, Dynamic Memory for one, which I provided some useful resources for a few weeks back, along with RemoteFX, which has plenty of useful background reading here. As a recap, what are Dynamic Memory and Remote FX?

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V introduces a new feature, called Dynamic Memory, in the Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta releases. It allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability. With Dynamic Memory, IT administrators are able to pool available memory on a physical host and then dynamically dole that memory out to virtual machines running on the host, based on current workload needs. For a technical overview of the new Dynamic Memory feature, download the Dynamic Memory Technical Overview whitepaper.

RemoteFX, a key feature of Remote Desktop Services (RDS) lets IT administrators deliver a rich graphics experience to end-users through virtualized desktops. Using new protocol enhancements between Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, end users can now access virtual machines on a wide variety of target devices and still get a rich graphics experience with server-side graphics processing. Learn more about RemoteFX and download the Remote Desktop Services Datasheet.

There is a load of reading to be done here too, which will keep you busy while you’re downloading the SP1 bits:

Once I’ve finished the download, and had some time to play around with it, I’ll make sure I report back with any useful information, but also, perhaps a cheeky video if I get the chance…

Once again, you can download the SP1 bits from here.

UK Partner Training Course (29th June) - Desktop Optimisation: Implementing a VDI Infrastructure with Microsoft & Citrix

2010-06-24T15:48:33Z

Short notice I know, but a number of places have come available on this VDI course which may be of interest to some of you in the UK.

44CO181 - Desktop Optimisation: Implementing a VDI Infrastructure with Microsoft & Citrix
Summary:

Join us for this 2 Day VDI Instructor led course with supporting Hands on Labs.

Prerequisites:

IT Professionals who have experience in virtualization technologies, but are not familiar with the construction of VDI based solutions

Objectives:

Understand the business case for VDI
Understanding VDA licensing models
Understand the key components of the Microsoft/Citrix VDI offering
Deploy and configure a Hyper-V virtualization platform managed through System Center
Deliver and manage virtual desktops with XenDesktop
Deliver applications for virtual desktops using Remote Desktop Services and App-V
Deploy applications for virtual desktops using XenApp
Deploy virtual desktops using Windows Server 2008 R2

Agenda:

Building a Virtualisation Platform

Setup & Configuration of Hyper-V
Enterprise Management with SCVMM 2008 R2

Implementing Desktop Virtualisation

VDI with XenDesktop

Delivering Applications to Virtual Desktops

Overview of Application Delivery
Presentation Virtualisation with XenApp & RDS
Application Virtualisation

The course if set to run over 2 days, is instructor led, and includes hands on labs. It’s in Wokingham, near Reading, and is priced at £400 for the 2 days. Not bad, considering you’ll get exposure to both Microsoft stuff, and Citrix stuff, and understand how they all fit together.

If you’re interested, you can register here.

Upcoming Partner Academy Live Sessions

2010-06-24T08:23:21Z

Firstly, apologies for the short notice on some of these sessions – the email with their details literally landed in my inbox this morning! Here’s everything you need in terms of information, and don’t forget, if you can’t make the session, register anyway, and you’ll be made aware of when the recording is online so you can watch it at a later date.

MGT80PAL: Implementing System Center Essentials 2010
Presented by: Prajyot Saran
24th June 2010 – 6pm GMT
Level: 200

This session will provide the sales positioning of System Center Essentials 2010, as well as demonstrate setup of the SCE 2010 server and initial configuration of the software updates, agent monitoring, and reporting functionality. This is a recommended pre-requisite for selling SCE 2010.

Topics Include:

Installation
Configuration
Administration
Reporting
Notification

For me personally, if you’ve never seen SCE in action, and are just keen to understand the end to end story, understand the key functionality it provides, and see some of it in action, this could be a very valuable hour of your time.

If you are interested, you can register here.

MGT81PAL: How to Manage Servers in Midsized Businesses
Presented by: Birojit Nath; Vikas Madan
29th June 2010 – 6pm GMT
Level: 200

Whether those servers are physical or virtual, midsized businesses need similar capabilities as enterprise management but in an easy-to-use, unified toolset. System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 brings together monitoring, deployment and virtual management technologies from the System Center enterprise products into a single console that is designed for midsized businesses with 50-500 PCs and up to 50 servers. In this session, we will look at monitoring those physical and virtual servers for health, deploying new servers and even migrating older physical servers to virtual for easier management.

Topics include:

Managing Datacenter Application Workloads (MOSS /Exchange)
Importing Management Packs
Overrides
Managing Virtual Machines Using SCE 2010
Distributed Applications
Synthetic Transactions.

I’m almost tempted to treat this like a part 2, following on from the introductory session on the 24th June, as this particular session goes that little bit deeper, into the specifics of managing key workloads like Exchange, SharePoint, and Virtual Machines. It’s also starting to introduce you to concepts like overrides, which can be very useful, trust me! Distributed Applications are also a very cool way of visualising a set of key related pieces of an infrastructure, and allow you to roll up monitoring to a more relevant, simplified level.

If you’re interested, you can register here.

MGT88PAL: Understanding How Citrix Extends the Microsoft System Center Desktop Management Solution
Presented by: Sean Donahue, Barry Flanagan
29th June 2010 – 8pm GMT
Level: 200

This session will guide the attendees through the new integration features that are being developed by Citrix on top of multiple System Center products including the XenApp Connector for Configuration Manager that allows the System Center Admin to deliver and manage applications to the XenApp farm. Barry will also demonstrate the integration work of XenApp delivering App-V packages through Receiver and Self Service provisioning with Dazzle.

We’re seeing more and more integration with Citrix technologies now, with improvements made on almost a daily basis., which is great to see as it really does help to centralise different parts of the infrastructure. XenApp now integrates with System Center Configuration Manager, which means the SCCM, who’s in change of delivery of OS’s, patches, applications and more, can now better integrate with the Citrix technologies, which may have been, traditionally, the ‘Citrix guy’s’ remit. They’ll also talk about the inclusion of App-V components within the Citrix receiver, enabling App-V applications to be deployed more effectively with XenApp, and thus benefit from some of the ways users can access applications with Citrix, through interfaces like Dazzle.

If you’re interested, you can register here.

RD Virtualisation Host Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2

2010-06-23T18:47:46Z

Hat-tip to Clive for spotting this one.

A few months back, I blogged about the release of a number of RDS related resources, whether it’s the improvements in RDP7, or sizing guidance for your session hosts, but what about sizing VDI deployments? How do we accurately capacity plan for the hosts to hold virtual desktops? Well, this guide is something you may just find useful.

For those of you not in the know…

The Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host) role service lets multiple concurrent users run Windows-based applications on a remote virtual machine running Windows client operating systems. This white paper is intended as a guide for capacity planning of RD Virtualization Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. 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

As you can see from the table of contents below, there are a number of aspects covered, in a good amount of detail, and should give you more than enough information to get going:

Introduction 4
Capacity planning goals and approaches 5

Testing methodology 6

Test bed configuration 6
Load generation 8
Response time measurement 9
Scenarios 11

Examples of test results for different scenarios 13

Tuning Your Server to Maximize Capacity 14

Memory 15
Storage 15
CPU 17

Conclusions 19
Appendix A: Test Hardware Details 21
Appendix B: Testing Tools 22

Test control infrastructure 22
Scenario execution tools 22

Appendix C: Test Scenario Definitions and Workflow 24

Knowledge Worker v2.1 24

Appendix D: Remote Desktop Virtualization Host Settings 27
Appendix E: Connection Broker Settings 28
Appendix F: Guest Virtual Machine Settings 29

Lots of bedtime reading there!

Hyper-V Clustering Limits Increased

2010-06-23T18:07:34Z

As hardware increases in scale, and new capabilities, such as Dynamic Memory, are introduced into Hyper-V R2 SP1, more and more customers are going to start to encroach on the supported limits of Hyper-V cluster nodes. As of May 2010, those supported limits stood at 64 VMs per cluster node, up to a total of 15+1 nodes, giving a total of 960 VMs. This contrasts considerably with the 384 VMs per non-clustered host, yet will still be more than enough headroom for most customers, however, in a recent announcement at TechEd 2010, we’ve decided to increase the limits on the cluster nodes. The increase is actually pretty considerable too, helping customers to scale to much greater levels, especially on smaller clusters, assuming they have resource in their underlying hardware!

So, in a nutshell, we now support 1000 VMs per cluster, providing you don’t exceed the 384 VMs per node limit, which which will still be enforced. In tabular form:

Number of Nodes in Cluster	Max Number of VMs per Node	Max # VMs in Cluster
2 Nodes (1 active + 1 failover)	384	384
3 Nodes (2 active + 1 failover)	384	768
4 Nodes (3 active + 1 failover)	333	1000
5 Nodes (4 active + 1 failover)	250	1000
6 Nodes (5 active + 1 failover)	200	1000
7 Nodes (6 active + 1 failover)	166	1000
8 Nodes (7 active + 1 failover)	142	1000
9 Nodes (8 active + 1 failover)	125	1000
10 Nodes (9 active + 1 failover)	111	1000
11 Nodes (10 active + 1 failover)	100	1000
12 Nodes (11 active + 1 failover)	90	1000
13 Nodes (12 active + 1 failover)	83	1000
14 Nodes (13 active + 1 failover)	76	1000
15 Nodes (14 active + 1 failover)	71	1000
16 Nodes (15 active + 1 failover)	66	1000

and from TechNet:

Component	Maximum	Notes
Nodes per cluster	16	Consider the number of nodes you want to reserve for failover, as well as maintenance tasks such as applying updates. We recommend that you plan for enough resources to allow for 1 node to be reserved for failover, which means it remains idle until another node is failed over to it. (This is sometimes referred to as a passive node.) You can increase this number if you want to reserve additional nodes. There is no recommended ratio or multiplier of reserved nodes to active nodes; the only specific requirement is that the total number of nodes in a cluster cannot exceed the maximum of 16.

Running virtual machines per cluster and per node	1,000 per cluster, with a maximum of 384 on any one node	Several factors can affect the real number of virtual machines that can be run at the same time on one node, such as: · Amount of physical memory being used by each virtual machine. · Networking and storage bandwidth. · Number of disk spindles, which affects disk I/O performance.

Obviously many of you will look at that and say “We don’t leave 1 node free for ‘failover’'” whereas some of you will always do this, to ensure there’s enough resource for failing over VMs in the event of an issue. Now, I’m not going to say that you absolutely have to have a +1 node, but it is best practice nonetheless and something that should be considered in mission-critical deployments. So, looking at the table, even on a 4 node cluster (3+1), you can hit the big 1000, which shows huge scalability and consolidation. If you went from 1000 servers, down to 4, that would be a % saving of over 99% (assuming my aging maths is correct there). I’m going to say something now, and you should listen carefully.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

If you’re going to run that many eggs, on so few baskets, you’re going to have to ensure that the underlying infrastructure is rock solid and extremely well capacity planned/architected. From networking requirements (a LOT of NICs would be needed in those hosts I imagine!) through to storage (how much I/O!?), and memory (DM will help!) through to CPU (8-12 core will help!), every little decision could be amplified up to 333 times, so you have to nail it with detailed and thorough planning and comprehensive testing,

Perhaps an area where you’re more likely to hit this limit, is when virtualising desktops, rather than servers. In most organisations, the number of desktops typically outweighs the number of servers, so hitting the previous limits was much more achievable, so this gives the organisation who happened to be creeping closer, a bit of breathing room.

Partner Academy Live Sessions: SCDPM 2010 and SCE 2010

2010-06-11T14:17:34Z

If you’re a Microsoft Partner, and you’re interested in learning more about the recently released System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, or System Center Essentials 2010, here’s a couple of webcasts that you may want to check out:

MGT77PAL: Technical Introduction to System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
Presented by: Rahul Jacob
15th June 2010 – 6pm GMT
System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 provides new backup and recovery capabilities at a low cost. Because of the significant new capabilities in DPM, it is highly important that the field, partners and customers are aware of the various solutions and opportunities we have with DPM 2010. This session will help you get started with easy setup and configuration.

Register Here

MGT78PAL: Application Workloads and DPM - Better Together
Presented by: Rahul Jacob
17th June 2010 – 6pm GMT
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is designed for IT generalists and uses wizards and workflows to help ensure that you can protect your Exchange, SQL and SharePoint data without any advanced degree of storage and backup knowledge. This session will help small and medium business IT administrators plan backups, recoveries and plan for further Disaster Recoveries. The solutions will enable you to take advantage of Exchange 2010 and DPM 2010.

MGT79PAL: Technical Introduction to System Center Essentials 2010
Presented by: Ashok Kumar G
22nd June 2010 – 6pm GMT
System Center Essentials 2010 has now hit RTM, so it is important that the Microsoft field and our partners who focus on midsized businesses with less than 50 Servers and 500 clients, learn about the value of this new offering for physical and virtualization management. This session will help you get started with easy setup and configuration. Come see it first, and get ready when your customers ask you about it. Topics include: SCE 2010 Overview, Architecture, Demo, Market challenges, Solution, Licensing

Desktop Virtualisation for Dummies

2010-06-11T14:05:24Z

If you’re interested in understanding more about the sheer choice you have in front of you for the future of desktops, this handy guide could come in useful. It covers a variety of topics, from ‘What is Desktop Virtualisation’, through to ‘Thinking about your Organisation’s requirements’, and also helps you to ‘choose between the options’. You can use the controls in the bottom-right corner of the screen to create a PDF if you want to take the content offline.

Grab the document, here.

TechEd Online: Hyper-V and Dynamic Memory in Depth

2010-06-10T18:58:37Z

For those of you who caught my Dynamic Memory post a couple of days back, and are desperate for more information, you can actually watch, online, the session delivered by Ben Armstrong, Senior Program Manager Lead (and Dynamic Memory owner!), focusing on explaining Dynamic Memory in depth.

The session, which runs for just under 80 minutes, delves into a number of different areas of Dynamic Memory, from why’s it required, to how it works, so if you’re curious about it, it’s definitely worth a watch. If you head on over to the TechEd Online page, you can actually download it, for offline usage.

TechEd Day 1: Keynote now available on demand…

2010-06-09T10:14:52Z

For those of you, like me, who aren’t lucky enough to travel over to New Orleans for TechEd, you’re pretty much restricted to catching up on the gossip via blogs, and news feeds. Whilst this is fine for some, there’s nothing quite like seeing the technology for yourself. It’s good news therefore, that the keynotes are being made available, on the web, on Demand, for you to stream, or download so you can hear first hand, Bob Muglia, the President of our Server & Tools business, talk about Dynamic IT, Cloud and more. If that’s not enough, you’ll also see a selection of speakers from Microsoft show you, live, some of the currently available, and future technologies, that can help you to transform your infrastructure. For those of you who don’t want to watch it, or perhaps don’t have time to watch it all, here’s my highlights…

3m 50s to 10m 30s – Visual Studio Lab Management & System Center Integration

I’m not a dev. Far from it! Sure I know the odd bit of PowerShell (Get-VM) but for those of you who do work in that world, having process around the development, testing, and rollout of an application or workload can be difficult, and expensive. Having watched this demo in action, I have to say, I’m impressed. I’ll reiterate, I’m not a developer, but I could see how the combination of these technologies could easily benefit that type of environment, and leverage tools, like System Center, that can also benefit other areas of the infrastructure. Stephanie Cuthbertson, a Group Program Manager in the Visual Studio TFS team, explains how easy it can be, with the right technologies, to, for example, update troublesome applications that are live in production. Using recording capabilities, IntelliTrace, and more, I was actually blown away with what it gives you. I used to code Java whilst at Uni, ad it was very different then! (it wasn’t that long ago, for those of you thinking the worst!)

Once the application has been fixed, it needs to b deployed into production, and that’s where System Center, in particular, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Opalis comes in. Opalis, for those not familiar, is an orchestration engine, helping you to build out workflow with little or no scripting involved, saving time, effort, and grey hairs. It really does enable some compelling scenarios, and, like many of the System Center technologies, the framework they provide means the more you put in, the more you get out.

15m 55s to 23m 10s – System Center Virtual Machine Manager vNext

For me, this is a big one. Anders Vinberg, Technical Fellow in the Management and Security Division, shows us that firstly, the interface has been overhauled, to bring it in line with Office. It’s going to manage the fabric of your infrastructure, as oppose to just the VMs that run on it. It’s going to transform the way you deliver a virtual infrastructure, through integration with things like Server App-V, DAC Packages (Data Tier Applications), and MSDeploy Packages. This separation of these intelligent components, combined with the Service Model wizard, enables construction of tiered applications very quickly, in a very powerful manner. Core Elasticity is how Bob describes the system – a good term to slip into presentations me thinks ;-)

The demo then moves on to servicing of applications. The demo shows Anders scanning images in the library, offline, comparing the images with patching baselines that have been defined, and deploying those patches into the offline images on the fly. Subsequently, we can now show that the production systems, which also need to be updated, are being highlighted. How do we update these production systems? Well, the system can effectively use Server App-V, to lift the application off the OS, service the image, and drop the application back down on top. If Microsoft pulls this off, this will be a big thing, and I look forward to getting my hands on it!

26m 10s – 36m 45s - Building Cloud Applications and Integration with On-Premise Technologies

As I said earlier, I’m not a dev, so anything that’s development related, usually goes over my head, but this demo, very much like the first one, just makes sense. Doug Purdy, CTO in the Data and Modeling group, shows us things like extending your identity up to the cloud from AD make it seamless for the user to utilise cloud services, but also, how this can integrate into on-premise platforms like CRM. Very cool. Doug also announces that as of now, you can start to construct applications on Azure utilising .NET 4. The key thing that is apparent to me, is the deep (and getting deeper) integration from Visual Studio up to Azure, whether it’s looking deeper inside the databases on SQL Azure, or actually deploying applications straight to Azure, utilising tools that were highlighted in the first demo of the keynote. We’ve also released AppFabric to RTM, so you can really start to connect pieces of your infrastructure to the cloud.

The final part of the demo, and my favourite bit of Doug’s section, was the extension of Azure to enable monitoring, side by side with your on-premise elements, with System Center Operations Manager. Very cool indeed.

40m 55s – 43m 15s - Chicago Tribune and it’s use of Azure

OK, not a demo as such, but a useful insight into how a real-world customer is benefiting from Windows Azure to run their business, scaling on demand, and reducing their 32 datacenters, 75000 square feet of raised floor, and 4000 different servers running a variety of different applications. The result was 2 datacenters, and 1 Azure based platform. Massive savings!

46m 28s – 57m 14s Microsoft Unified Communications – Wave 14

Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President of the Office Communications Group, walks us through a number of the capabilities of the next wave of OCS. I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to heavily rely on OCS, as a way to quickly communicate and collaborate with my colleagues, and Partners, through the mediums of Instant Messaging, Voice, or Video. It’s fundamental to my productivity at home too, seeing as my mobile phone signal is so bad, OCS is the only reliable (and cost effective!) way of communicating. One of the big changes in Communicator, is its personalisation. It’s much more of a ‘Corporate Windows Live Messenger’, with a very social experience, with photos, activities and more. The big thing, I guess for many organisations, is cost savings associated with going to a soft-phone based VOIP infrastructure, and to give you an idea of Microsoft saving’s, we’re actually saving over $1million per month using this technology versus our prior phone-based solutions. Impressive stuff. Gurdeep also talks about the integration with SharePoint, and the intelligence around searching for people based on different pieces of information. I have to admit, the high-def video stuff was awesome. I’d like to see how it behaves on my pitiful internet connection in Chorley, Lancashire, but still, it’s extremely promising, and will work perfectly with my LifeCam Cinema!

59m 25s – 1h 5m 28s - Windows Phone 7

I’m excited about Windows Phone 7, as it looks incredibly slick, and as long as someone converts all the iPhone Apps across to Windows Phone, it stands a great chance of having a good crack at the Smartphone market. If that doesn’t happen, and the applications aren’t produced, to the standard, and price that people expect, it could be a long hard slog for Windows Phone to make a breakthrough. Augusto Valdez, Senior Product Manager for Mobile, walks us through a number of capabilities of the new platform. As I said earlier, I’m excited about this. The interface inevitably, will be compared to other touch-screen devices, yet there are both similarities, and differences. Overall though, the general look and feel, the quality of the experience, and the integration with Exchange, Office, and SharePoint is first class, which for businesses, is very important. The use of the Live Tiles is very neat, although I’d be interested to know the effect it has on the battery! I’d like to change the colours of the different tiles if possible – time will tell if that can be done. I’m sure it can be!

Opening of things like Excel, and PowerPoint retain the level of fidelity you expect from a PC-based device, and sure, not every command will be available, but it’s certainly a great way of interacting with data, in a rich manner, whilst on the move. It’s this kind of functionality which will ensure that I wait for WM7, instead of jumping on the iPhone bandwagon…

1h 10m 22s to 1h 19m 35s – Combining Business Intelligence and the Cloud

Amir Netz, Distinguished Engineer in the Microsoft BI Team, showcases the power of Excel 2010 to present rich views of information. What impresses me here, not being a BI specialist, is it’s done without the need for coding, making it instantly more accessible to a greater number of users.

What’s perhaps more impressive in this example, is the sheer volume of data that’s behind these graphs and pie charts. The sales data alone is over 100 million rows, and the fact that this is running on a laptop, locally, is phenomenal. The demo then goes on to discuss interaction with different backend platforms, including the cloud, with services like Project ‘Dallas’, built on SQL Azure. The integration with SharePoint is also very slick. I certainly wish I could build stuff like that into my demo environment! More grey hair on the way I think!

1h 21m 28s to 1h 24m 5s – The use of Windows Server & SQL Server in Avatar

Now, before anyone jumps in and says ‘I didn’t see Windows Server or SQL in Avatar’ – you obviously weren’t paying attention in the film! Just kidding. Product placement in films is common place, but seeing WS & SQL isn’t something I expect to ever see! Unless it’s a film about databases, in which case, I still don’t expect it’s something I’ll go to see with my own free will!

It’s not often you think of technologies like Windows Server or SQL being involved with something like Avatar, but in this short video, you’ll learn about Gaia, and how that, along with Microsoft technologies, was fundamental to the movie. Very impressive stuff indeed.

Summary

I wish I could have gone to TechEd. We have our internal equivalent in the next few months, where' I’ll get immersed in new and upcoming technologies, which is something I’m really excited about so it’s not all bad. What’s clear to me is, Microsoft is innovating on multiple fronts. The stuff that’s here with BI, and Visual Studio, along with Azure, and it’s integration into System Center is really starting to take shape, and I cannot wait for future releases of System Center, as, release on release, things are getting stronger, and more relevant for customers’ infrastructures. Windows Phone 7, from a personal usage perspective, is high on my agenda as my current phone, whilst functional, isn’t giving me the experience I’m looking for in a phone anymore. Times have changed, across both desktop, datacenter, cloud and mobile, trends are changing, technologies are moving, and the keynote gives just a small glimpse into what’s possible.

If you want to watch the keynote for yourself, or download it, you can get it from here.

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V): The Movie

2010-06-07T18:35:45Z

If you know, or have heard of App-V, chances are, you’ll know it exists as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack, usually abbreviated to MDOP. If this is the first time you’ve heard of MDOP, it’s a Software Assurance benefit, and is effectively suite of technologies designed to help you optimise the desktop, and contains the following:

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) turns applications into centrally managed services that are never installed, never conflict, and are streamed on demand to end users.
Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) provides deployment and management of virtual PC images to enable key enterprise scenarios, primarily resolving application compatibility with a new version of Windows.
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) enhances governance and control over Group Policy through robust change management, versioning, and role-based administration.
Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) is a hosted service that collects software inventory data and translates it into actionable business intelligence.
Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) reduces downtime by accelerating troubleshooting, repair, and data recovery of unbootable Windows-based desktops.
Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) provides insights into application and operating system failures, allowing helpdesk to be more proactive in managing PC problems, without installing an agent to the endpoint.

If at this point, you’re intrigued about some of the technologies within MDOP, you can read more about them, and see some of them in action here!

Anyway, the point of the post. MED-V: The Movie? Really? Well, not really a movie, but more of a 8-part series dissecting the different areas of MED-V, so you can learn more about each different area of the product. If you’ve never heard of MED-V before, the aim of the product is to smooth the transition to a newer OS, by providing an application-to-OS compatibility solution, which is seamless to the end user, but centrally managed and configured by the IT Admin. The 8-part series, courtesy of the MED-V blog, highlights the following key sections:

Preparing a MED-V Image - Learn how to prepare a virtual PC image for use with MED-V.
Testing, Packing, and Uploading a MED-V Image - After completing the preparation, an image will be tested, then packaged, and finally uploaded to the MED-V Server for distribution.
MED-V Workspace Walkthrough - See how to configure a MED-V workspace (policies for the virtual machine) and watch a demonstration of the key features so that you can evaluate and learn the key capabilities of MED-V
Publishing Different Applications to Different Users of the Same MED-V Image - This demonstration will show you how to use a common MED-V image to serve multiple users or groups while presenting different applications.
Creating a MED-V Installation Package - Deploying MED-V packages can be streamlined by creating an installation package that includes all of the prerequisite technologies (Virtual PC, VM Additions update, and MED-V client) as well as a MED-V Workspace.
MED-V First Time Setup with Domain Join - Taking workspace images and configuring them to join the organization Active Directory domain is a critical part of managing, controlling and updating the virtual machines deployed, and is easy with MED-V first time setup.
Monitoring and Troubleshooting Tools in MED-V - Having the right tools to gain status, detect errors, and analyze problems is important when planning a MED-V infrastructure.
Updating a MED-V Image - MED-V workspaces will require updates as any other machine on the network, this walkthrough of updating the master image and distributing to users can be used if machines are not joined to the domain and managed by typical system management tools.

You can grab all the videos from here.

NetApp Release: Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit 1.0

2010-06-07T18:11:48Z

If you’re a bit of a PowerShell guru, and have NetApp filer’s within your environment, the release of the Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit could be something you find very useful. The toolkit provides a collection of PowerShell cmdlets to facilitate integration of Data ONTAP into Microsoft Windows environments, by providing easy-to-use cmdlets that map to low-level Data ONTAP operations (i.e. ZAPIs).

The toolkit has been released via the NetApp Community, and is available free of charge to NetApp partners & customers (NOW login required to download). The Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit Community site has been set up under "NetApp Community > Developer Tools" (or here) for discussions, feedback and sharing scripts that use the toolkit.

If you’re interested, and want to learn more, make sure you head on over to the Developer Tools section on the NetApp Community site.

Free Microsoft eBooks all over the place!

2010-06-07T16:49:28Z

Love reading? Love technology? Like money?

If the answer to those questions is Yes, then these eBook links are for you. Covering a wide spectrum of technologies, from Office through to Virtualisation, and Windows Phone through to Visual Studio, this array of free eBooks should keep you going for a while…