Hello again from Berlin. As many of you probably saw on TV (or in the streets), it was an amazing celebration for the fall of the Berlin Wall. As for TechEd, day 2 has been amazing. I think that the thing everyone I’ve spoken to at the show is how friendly everyone is at the show. TechEd EMEA has always been one more of most community friendly shows and this years show really feels like friends and colleagues getting together, not just a show where you see others who might use the same technology.
I think the decision to move the show to Berlin really worked out. The weather is a little cold for most people (though not me, growing up in Minnesota) but everyone has been very positive and it makes the show not just enjoyable but really fun (and I’m sure the beer availability helps out too :) ).
Today, I had my session with Jeff Woolsey of Hyper-V, doing Hyper-V R2 and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 overview. It was a packed crowd, with literally every seat in the room taken. Like I do for most of my session, Jeff and I asked the crowd, before we started, how many people run VMware and how many people run Hyper-V. The number of hands raised were very close, almost identical. This is a dramatic difference from two years ago, especially from my first TechEd EMEA where literally everyone used VMware and I could count the number of Hyper-V users on my finger (out of an audience of 400+). It really made my proud of the work everyone at Microsoft Virtualization has done over the last three years.
For those who are at the show and want to learn more about Virtual Machine Manager, I’ll be doing an Interactive Session on Thursday, 1330 in Interactive Theater 4 – Green. I’ll be doing more demos from my demo rack and going into details on advanced VMM features.
I’ll write my wrap-up of TechEd EMEA on Thursday. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show.
Also, we are still running two promotions now, one for TechEd attendees and one that is open for everyone. The TechEd attendee contest is our twitter promotion for our resident SMB Expert, David Mills. Just sign up to follow David (@dmills_ms) and all new followers are entered to win a Archos 5 Media Player. We’ve already given two players away and there are still two more players to give away. For more information, see the details here and here.
The other promotion is our blogging contest. Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic. Not part of the System Center Influencers program? Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join. More details for this contest here.
That’s all from Berlin today! I hope to actually get to see more of the city before I leave and I look forward to talking to everyone at the show.
Hello again. Right now, I’m in Berlin for TechEd EMEA 2009, which is really exciting as Monday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also Day 1 of TechEd EMEA. Despite a down economy, it’s a sold out show with over 7,000 people. If you want to follow the show, you can do so virtually at the TechEd EMEA website.
Today, I did some interesting press interviews and spent most of the rest of the day talking to other attendees. If you are actually at the show, come check out my session, SVR205, on Tuesday at 1330. Jeff Woolsey and I will be covering Hyper-V and VMM overview. Plus, I would love to get a chance to meet some people.
The keynote for the show was in the afternoon and it had two killer demos. The first, was an incredible demo of Exchange 2010, which hit General Availability today and is ready for download. Even though I’ve been on EX2010 and Outlook 2010 for a while, I learned several things from the keynote. Plus, I can’t stop raving about the new Ignore thread features, which once and for all gets rid of the “Please don’t reply all or please remove me from this thread” e-mail threads we get this time of year. The other demo was a great System Center demo by Jeff Wettlaufer, which really seamlessly brought together what the suite of System Center applications can do.
On the downside, yes, I didn’t really get the IT dream videos either. And yes, there probably should have been more developer content. Still, overall, I think the keynote (especially the demos) set a good tone for the show.
A couple more things from Berlin. First, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show. Second, we have another twitter contest. This time, if you are a TechEd EMEA 2009 attendee, all you have to do is start following my close friend David Mills (@dmills_ms). We will be giving away an Archos 5 PMP each day, winners coming from all of David’s new followers. You can get more details on the contest here and here. Finally, we have a new blogging contest with System Center. Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic. Not part of the System Center Influencers program? Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join. More details for this contest here.
That’s all from today! I’ll write more tomorrow and if you are in Berlin, make sure to stop me if you see me for a chat!!
I’m back with another great case study. This time, it’s Fpweb.net, a Sharepoint hosting provider. Fpweb.net switched from VMware ESX to Microsoft Virtualization, resulting in so many benefits by using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager that I can’t list them all.
But I do want to highlight some of the cost savings and competitive advantages Fpweb.net has gained:
- Saved $100,800 in licensing costs over the VMware solution
- By virtualizing 115 servers, it avoided an increase in data center rental costs of $180,000 a year
- FPweb.net provisions virtual machines 60% faster—which is key to getting new customers up and running quickly
Without a doubt, it’s probably best to hear it directly from the customer:
“There’s no question that consolidating servers and making more efficient use of resources is a win-win situation. Hyper-V gets us there more cost effectively than any other virtualization technology.”
“Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is primed for large-scale data centers like ours. The Datacenter license includes unlimited virtualization rights. Compared to VMware, which requires a license for each virtualized operating system, we are able to scale our virtualization solution at no extra cost.”
“In hosting, the biggest obstacle to customer service is time: customers want us to stand up their solutions and perform migrations, upgrades, and other services right away. Using Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to automate server management, we gain time in the data center to hit the ground running and wow customers from the outset.”
Like I’ve written before, we have a great repository of case studies covering all the different Microsoft Virtualization technologies, not just Hyper-V. If you are interested in Virtualization, I strongly suggest you take a look.
Hi, I’m Jim Schwartz, Director of Virtualization Solutions at Microsoft and I’m writing as a guest on Edwin’s blog today.
Despite tough times, an Enterprise Strategy Group study shows that 31% of businesses surveyed said DR will be their main driver for Virtualization in 2009. This shows a continued shift as IT Pros who look beyond test/dev and basic server consolidation scenarios in deploying virtualization technologies.
Having a plan to deal with worst case scenarios like disasters and widespread system outages presents technical and business challenges--application and data availability need to be maintained; however, deployment and operational costs are always an issue. Virtualization has been a game changer for many companies seeking to mitigate impact to critical applications and data. Businesses previously unable to justify end-to-end site recovery are finding solutions now within reach.
This week Microsoft is launching a comprehensive solution to help customers implement cost effective, end-to-end site recovery programs. Built on proven capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 and the System Center management suite, Microsoft is helping IT Professionals leverage Windows Server Hyper-V and Failover Clustering along with tools like Virtual Machine Manager to deliver cost effective site recovery.
The Microsoft Site Recovery Solution ecosystem is ramping with a broad range of storage replication partners like Double-Take Software, EMC, HDS, HP delivering solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft Cluster Resource DLL. With cluster integration IT Professionals can deploy streamlined and operationally effective site recovery.
You can learn more about the Microsoft Site Recovery Solution by joining the Microsoft team and Enterprise Strategy Group on Thursday, November 5th at 10:30am Pacific for a webcast Building Effective and Highly Available Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft Virtualization This webcast looks at key drivers for site recovery solutions and reviews practical deployment considerations (you can view the recorded version of the webcast after the 5th). Microsoft and select partners will also be demonstrating Site Recovery Solutions at TechEd, so if you plan to be in Berlin during the week of November 9th, make sure to stop by the Virtualization Solutions kiosk in the Technical Learning Center.
Jim Schwartz Director Virtualization Solutions, Microsoft Corporation