Here's a tidbit I learned about from Dave Kowalsky. Thanks Dave! http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=164300985 Summary: At its annual conference in SanJose, the PCI Special Interest Group detailed updates and extensions...

The Branch Office Infrastructure Solution has been published on TechEd. It uses virtualization technologies and includes tools for automating the creation of virtual machines, among lots of other good stuff. Go take a look! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads...

From ComputerWorld, "Q&A: Microsoft's Bob Muglia discusses virtualization plans" - http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,102332,00.html Also from ComputerWorld, "Sidebar: Under the Hood: The Soul of a Virtual Machine...

Jeff Woolsey has written this article to help you optimize the performance of your virtual machines - http://blogs.technet.com/megand/articles/406145.aspx . Thanks Jeff! PS: I'm back from my vacation (which was grand!).

The virtual machine team is "pedal to the metal" developing and testing an update for Virtual Machine Additions. This update will make Windows Server 2003 SP1 run better in virtual machines running under the release version of Virtual Server 2005. As...

Did you know that you can display your virtual machine from within a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation? Here's how: On a computer with Virtual Server installed, open Microsoft Powerpoint. On a PowerPoint slide, click "Insert," and then click ...

This whitepaper is now available on Microsoft.com at http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/4/d/14d17804-1659-435d-bc11-657a6da308c0/VSvsVPC.doc . Thanks to those of you who gave me comments on the draft. Abstract: Microsoft® Virtual PC 2004 is a...

Q: Rod has this question: "I recently made the switch over to Virtual Server 2005 from VMware. I love the web based interface but am having troubles with enabling SSL. Can I use SelfSSL from the IIS6 Reskit? Could I set up a CA in a virtual machine to...

If you want to use Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit (VSMT) to migrate a computer running Windows Server 2003 SP1 to a virtual machine, you'll need to copy some system files from your installation of Windows Server 2003 SP1 to the computer running...

Q: Lach writes with this question: "I have 2 virtual machines installed, and had them set up as dynamic hard drives [dynamically expanding VHDs]. One has gotten to 16 gb, and has all but filled up my hard drive. I would like to make it smaller, as the...

Q: Haileyesus asks, "How do you increase the size of a virtual hard disk?" A: Unfortunately, Haileyesus, there's no way to increase the size of a virtual hard disk (VHD) once it's been created. VHDs are just like physical disks in this respect (and...

If you have a virtual machine configured on one computer and want to access a resource (such as an ISO or a VHD) on a different physical computer via a UNC path, you have three choices, listed below. The first two are covered in the documentation. The...

This is not related to Virtual Server, so skip this unless you're looking for my STC slides. Below is a link to the presentation slides for my STC talk on using newsgroups to improve the customer experience. At the bottom of each slide are my detailed...

Many of you would like to know how Virtual Server is being used at Microsoft. Here's a response from Jeff Woolsey, Lead Program Manager for virtualization. Thanks Jeff! Virtual Server is being used in a variety of ways at Microsoft, including for test...

If you're connected to Virtual Server over a Terminal Services or Remote Desktop connection, you'll get a "Page cannot be displayed" error if you try to launch the Administration Website from the shortcut on the Start menu. Instead, you can provide this...

If you want to turn off the beep that sounds when you turn on a virtual machine, you can run the following two commands. The first stops the BEEP service and the second disables it on subsequent reboots. net stop beep sc config beep start= disabled...

If you want your applications to install more quickly in a virtual machine, do this: After you install the guest operating system, install Virtual Machine Additions, restart the virtual machine, and then install the applications.

Here's a tip from Paul Adare (author of Paul's Digital Lounge and Cigar Bar ). If you want an application to discover it's running in a virtual machine, you can do the following: You could query the registry for the existence of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft...

You can easily change your virtual hard disk (VHD) attachment from IDE to SCSI: Shut down the guest operating system. Add a SCSI adapter to the virtual machine, if one isn't already available (under "Virtual Machine" Configuration, click SCSI...

In his keynote address this morning at Microsoft Management Summit 2005, Steve Ballmer reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), of which virtualization is a key component. Ballmer explained that Microsoft is increasing...

This morning at Microsoft Management Summit 2005, Steve Ballmer announced the availability of Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta. To view an on-demand Web cast of Steve's talk (including Jeff Woolsey's demonstration of Virtual Server 2005 SP1...

Platespin CEO, Stephen Pollack, talked to VirtualStrategy Magazine about PowerRecon, Platespin's new tool for consolidation planning. Read all about it at http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/778/1/2/ .

Finally, this very cool tool created by Nelson Araujo is available as a free download from Microsoft (it was demo'd last year at TechEd in WINIL401). VSDM manages a virtual library of templates and ISO images and provides a streamlined way to manage and...

Chong Lee and Thomas Mathew -- Technology Specialists here at Microsoft -- are developing a report that you can load into Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) to monitor the performance of physical computers that are candidates for virtualization....

Title: Course 2288: Using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 Course Type: Self-paced course Available Offline: Yes Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours Description: This course prepares students to migrate legacy applications and consolidate server functions...