Here are some guidelines for optimizing the performance of your virtual machines from Jeff Woolsey, Lead Program Manager for virtual machine technologies here at Microsoft. Thanks Jeff! ---------------------------------- Hardware virtualization is an extremely powerful tool. When wielded properly...

Below is a link to the presentation slides for my Society for Technical Communications talk on using newsgroups to improve the customer experience. At the bottom of each slide are my detailed notes. To view them more easily, you can drag the divider bar upwards. Happy posting! Megan http://megandavis...

In his keynote address this morning at Microsoft Management Summit 2005, Steve Ballmer talked about Microsoft's virtualization strategy. The following is excerpted from the transcript of this address. To read the complete transcript, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/04-20ManagementSummit...

Here's another script from John Kelbley, written in VBScript. It shows the current state of all virtual machines on the current instance of Virtual Server. Remember that this script is provided as-is, with no warranties, and is not supported by Microsoft. VMStateCodes = Array("Invalid", "Turned...

These two scripts from John Kelbley, written in VBScript, list the virtual machines that are currently registered on a given instance of Virtual Server. Remember that these scripts are provided as-is, with no warranties, and are not supported by Microsoft. This script shows the virtual machines registered...

Here's an example of a script written in VBScript that you can use to make a warm backup of a virtual machine using UNC paths. It was written by John Kelbley. He says using this script that relies on UNC paths is faster than using the other script with the same title, so I added "faster" to the title...

Here's an example of a script written in VBScript that you can write to perform a warm backup of a virtual machine. It was written by John Kelbley, who's a technology specialist for Microsoft. Please pay attention to the warnings and caveats given in the script. Thanks John! ' READ THIS LINE!!...

Update: This whitepaper is now available on Microsot.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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a...

I've gotten a number of queries about estimating how many virtual machines can be run on a given host computer. In order to provide a general answer from which you can extrapolate for your own situation, I'm going to approach this issue from the other side -- estimating the host system capacity required...

I learned how to do this at TechEd 2004 in a lab led by Robert Larson, one of our resident Virtual Server gurus. You can create a “base” virtual machine with the operating system and applications you want, and then copy its .vhd file to use for other virtual machines. When you do this, it’s important...

Using virtual machines for software development, software testing, and patch testing is really catching on at Microsoft – and for good reason: Hardware goes farther: Using virtual machines instead of physical hardware allows you to do more testing with fewer resources. Note that this isn’t a universal...

I just listened in on a conference call between Ben Armstrong ( http://blogs.msdn.com/Virtual_PC_Guy ) and Barbara, an IT manager who’s considering deploying Virtual Server in her enterprise. I thought you all might be interested in the questions and answers, so here are my notes: Barbara: What’s the...

This article tells you how to set up a self-contained domain on a single computer under Virtual Server. Ed Reed, a virtualization developer here at Microsoft helped me out with it. Thanks Ed! Although you can set up a production domain controller on Virtual Server with lots of caveats (see Notes), the...

This article is contributed by Jeff Woolsey, our Virtual Server 2005 Program Manager. Thanks Jeff! To increase the performance of the OS install (F6 option) when using emulated SCSI disks you can create a diskette to load the faster SCSI drivers that are included with the Virtual Machine Additions. To...

Althea wants to know what the difference is between Virtual PC and Virtual Server, and when she would use one versus the other. The fundamental difference between Virtual PC and Virtual Server is that Virtual PC is designed for desktop (or "client" or "PC") operating systems and Virtual Server is designed...