VIRTUALBOY BLOG
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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.
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:
You can grab all the videos from here.
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.
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…
Hot on the heels of the announcements around the beta of SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, 2 new videos have been published to TechNet Edge, showcasing firstly, the upcoming Dynamic Memory, and secondly, RemoteFX.
And the second video…
Looking forward to getting my hands on the beta! Less than 2 months to go! All I have to do now is hope it plays nicely with other other technologies around it… ;-)
Straight from the keynote at TechEd North America (I’m not there!) comes this press release…
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/jun10/06-07TechEd2010PR.mspx
“Public beta of service pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 coming by end of July. The new virtualization tools in SP1 will help Windows Server 2008 R2 users prepare for cloud computing, Remote FX provides rich 3-D graphical experience for remote users, and Dynamic Memory enables more control to adjust memory usage without sacrificing performance. The service pack also will include a series of incremental updates, previously delivered through Windows Update, for both Windows Server and Windows 7 users.”
So, we knew it was coming, but didn’t know when. At least we now know when the beta will ship…
I’m sure this won’t be the last of the announcements this week from TechEd…Stay tuned!
I’ve had the pleasure to know the Orinoko chaps for some time now. Heck, we’ve even chatted virtualisation over Peri-Peri chicken! One thing I’ve learnt about these guys very quickly, is how well they know the desktop. Whether it’s upgrading or deploying it, with technologies like System Center Configuration Manager, streaming applications to it, with technologies like App-V, or more recently, virtualising it, with technologies like Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services, and Citrix XenDesktop. Whichever scenario comes about from a desktop perspective, chances are, these guys have seen it.
Recently, as some of you may know, we held a ‘Best of MMS 2010’ event, in (downtown ;-)) London, focusing on the System Center suite of technologies, and surrounding ecosystem. At the event, Jeff Wettlaufer, Senior Technical Product Manager in the System Center team, blogger, and all round good-egg, sat down with John and Carl from Orinoko to chat ‘desktops’ - what exactly the optimised desktop meant to the guys, and how, among other things, they were seeing Windows 7 adoption. You can check out the video, below:
So, onto the second half of the post title - If any of you out there are using SCCM, or are thinking about using it, one of the nifty things I found out it could do (via John’s blog) was take an export of your Microsoft license statement, from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site, and compare this with the results of the Asset Intelligence check and start to see where you’re perhaps over-licensed, or, worse, under-licensed! I’ve pinched a screengrab from John’s blog to illustrate what I’m on about:
I’d check out John’s blog if you get stuck, as it is possible to go wrong, particularly when you’re cleaning up the Excel spreadsheet ready for conversion to XML.
Hot on the heels of Thursday’s post on the virtualising of SharePoint 2010, I thought I’d share with you, some useful resources around the virtualising of SQL 2008 R2, on Hyper-V R2, and the kind of performance you can expect from this combination of technologies.
High Performance SQL Server Workloads on Hyper-V White Paper
This whitepaper focuses on the advantages of deploying Microsoft SQL Server database application workloads to a virtualisation environment using Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. It demonstrates that Hyper-V provides the performance and scalability needed to run complex SQL Server workloads in certain scenarios. It also shows how Hyper-V can improve performance when used in conjunction with advanced processor technologies. This paper assumes that the reader has a working knowledge of virtualisation, Windows Server Hyper-V, SQL Server, Microsoft System Center concepts and features.
The whitepaper discusses a number of different tests that were performed, in some detail, yet also, from page 30, you can also start to read about the best practices for running workloads like SQL on Hyper-V. The best practices section provides guidance around configuration for the parent OS, networking, VHD considerations, and more.
If you supplement the information in this whitepaper, with some of these other resources below, you should be in a good position to optimise the performance of SQL in a virtual environment.
SQL Server 2008 Virtualization
SQL Server Analysis Services Virtualization
If you’re thinking about virtualising SharePoint 2010, whether it’s on Hyper-V, or otherwise, Microsoft have released a number of useful pieces of documentation to aid you through the process. Whether it’s support and licensing information you need, or more technical planning of the virtualisation architectures, this TechNet library should give you plenty to get started with.
SharePoint 2010 – Virtualisation Planning
It covers a number of key sections:
If that isn’t enough, there’s a webcast coming soon, delivered by the TechNet team, on the same topics, so if you’d rather hear/see it, than read it, here are all the details:
Language(s): English. Product(s): Hyper-V. Audience(s): IT Generalist. Duration: 60 Minutes Start Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 7:00 PM GMT Event Overview: Virtualising business-critical applications can deliver significant customer benefits, including cost savings, enhanced business continuity, and an agile and efficient management solution. In this webcast, we discuss virtualising Microsoft SharePoint 2010 using Microsoft solutions. We present the benefits of Microsoft virtualization technologies over key competitors such as VMware, and we provide guidance for virtualising SharePoint 2010 for production and test/development scenarios, focusing on scale, load balancing, dynamic provisioning, and high availability. Other topics we cover include Microsoft virtualization technical details with best practices and customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests. Presenters: Arno Mihm, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation and Bill Baer, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
If you’re interested, and you’re free at that time, you can register here.