April, 2008

Hi, my name is Manlio Vecchiet, and I am a group product manager in the Windows Server marketing group at Microsoft. I am on my way back from Interop where I participated in an industry panel about Virtual Desktop Architecture. I was joined by VMware...

I am Gavriella Schuster and I am responsible for the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) within the Windows team. This week I was fortunate enough to participate in a panel discussion at Interop with my peers at Symantec, Citrix, and VMWare discussing...

Hi - this is Hector Linares, I am a Program Manager on the team that built System Center Virtual Machine Manager. I'm happy to report that we released the feature complete public beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly known as vNext) today! We've heard a lot of great feedback from customers and partners since SCVMM 2007 was released last September which we took into account for this beta release. Let's just say, the product has come a long way. With this release, Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 supports managing Virtual Server 2005 R2, Hyper-V and VMware ESX from a single console. Rakesh hit on a few other features and key themes for VMM 2008 here. ...

I arrived into Vegas (baby!) today for 3 days spread across Microsoft Management Summit and Interop Las Vegas 2008. And the conferences couldn't have been timed better as it was pooring rain when I left SeaTac and sunny and hot (for me) upon arrival in Vegas. The highlight so far (the night is young as they say) was the show floor in which I ran into a couple guys from Kidaro working in the Microsoft booth. That's a good sign and hope the acquisition will close soon. I really think Microsoft's desktop presence and understanding, along with SoftGrid, TS with Calista Technologies' built in and the Kidaro technology will really help reshape the desktop virtualization landscape. It'll be interesting to see how it develops. Anyway, here's a shot of the two gents from Kidaro. Welcome aboard! Also on the show floor, and I think this is a first, I saw VMware. I don't recall ever seeing them at a Microsoft show. I'll have to stop by tomorrow as I'm interested to hear more about the Thinstall acquisition and Lifecycle Manager. I didn't have a chance today. Here's a photo. ...

Virtualization Nation, In the last two blogs, I discussed the importance of HA for unplanned host downtime. Today, let’s talk about planned downtime, Quick Migration and Live Migration. Let’s start by understanding the primary usage scenario. Specifically...

This week, Microsoft hosted 1,800 tech professionals here in Redmond for the annual MVP Global Summit , and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to chat with a number of Virtualization MVPs from the community. Since you might not be familiar...

Virtualization Nation, Last week, I blogged about the importance of HA for unplanned host downtime. By the number of responses, this is clearly a hot topic. Today, I was going to discuss planned downtime, specifically, the differences between Quick...

Virtualization Nation, Generally speaking, I like to focus my blogs on what we’re doing at Microsoft regarding Hyper-V virtualization and pretend the rest of the Internet doesn't exist. However, there’s some buzz on the web about a topic that I feel...

Our resident VM security dev lead, Brandon Baker, posted a blog today about isolation of VMs. Brandon shares his thoughts on VM security, many of which he also shared to attendees of the BlackHat security conferences in U.S. and Japan last year. Brandon...

Hello all, my name is Chris Steffen and I am the Principal Technical Architect at Kroll Factual Data. Kroll Factual Data is a company that provides business information to mortgage lenders, consumer lenders, property management firms and other businesses...

Virtualization Nation, The virtualization team is pleased to announce the release of the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V RC! These components provide compatibility with the recent Hyper-V RC release. You can obtain the Linux Integration Components...