Virtualization Nation, In my last blog post, I started an in depth analysis tackling VMware’s claims head on that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. I read some posts...

Ordinarily it'd be great news that we RTM'd System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 ahead of schedule, so close to the RTM of WS08 R2 Hyper-V and one week before VMworld conference. You can't beat the timing of it all. And the ~10,000 beta testers of SCVMM08 R2 are a big part of why we were able to deliver a high-quality release in the time we did. Some of the early adopters included Continetal Airlines, Lionbridge Techologies, Sporton, Indiana University Auxilary IT and MaximumASP. Thanks to all! But unfortunately, next week at VMworld 2009 we can't show SCVMM 2008 R2, or any other products, in our booth. You've probably read about it. In short, it's their show and they set the rules. So we'll make the best of it; always lots of Microsoft customers and partners on the floor. Zane summarizes his thoughts about the RTM here. Kerim blogged about upgrade path to R2 from SCVMM 2008. See here. On May 11, Vishhwa provided some details on features of SCVMM 2008 R2 here. As Cheng wrote in his blog (I can't say it any better) Go download a trial and give it a try, go get it now, and unleash the virtualization power that Microsoft brings to you. Patrick ...

It's been a while since I've posted a blog ... but that one really caused a stir in the Virt circles in the Bay Area. Hopefully it doesn't mean I can't hit up those people for Sharks tickets. I've stumbled across some interesting items that I wanted to share with you. Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 is now available. The big thing is support for Windows 7. Read the blog here. Here's an excerpt: On the server side, the latest is from Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Gartner announced their top 10 strategic technologies for 2010. Not surprisingly, virtualization is named or underlying several of the strategic technologies. And speaking of, Gartner also shared data on server virtualization adoption today and forecasted through 2012. Read this article. Here's an excerpt: Along those lines, I had a great email exchange a couple weeks ago with Steve at PoundHost in Maidenhead, UK. I was giving a presentation at IP Expo / VM Expo conference in London, and wanted to highlight PoundHost's business results since switching to Hyper-V and System Center away from VMware tools, and since PoundHost has deployed the Dynamic Datacenter Tookit for hosters. PoundHost has a very compelling story of how technology can really help a business transform itself and create new opportunities. The Microsoft case study doesn't really do it justice. Here's some of what Steve shared with me:...

Hi, I’m Lalithra Fernando, a program manager on the Hyper-V team, working in various areas including clustering and authorization, as well as with our Hyper-V MVPs. In this post, I’ll be talking about resource metering, a new feature in Hyper...

Hey, it's Lalithra again. In the last part , we talked about what resource metering is. Now, we’ll get into how to use it with PowerShell. A quick note: if this is your first foray into PowerShell, here are some resources you may find helpful...

We have had a number of queries on how to enable replication using certificates created from makecert. Though the Understanding and Troubleshooting guide for Hyper-V Replica discusses this aspect, I am posting a separate article on this. The below steps...

We’ve been talking to a lot of people about deploying integration services (integration components) lately. As it turns out, they’re pretty easy to patch offline with existing Hyper-V tools. First, why would you update integration services...

In the first two parts of this 3-part series, you learnt about Test Failover (TFO) and Planned Failover (PFO). In this closing part of the series, I will talk about unplanned failover and summarize the differences of these 3. 1. What is Unplanned Failover...

Virtualization Nation, In part 1 of this series , I started an in depth analysis tackling VMware’s claims head on that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. The Thin Hypervisor...

As an alternative, I would recommend Virtual Iron customers try Microsoft solutions. Our Hyper-V solutions are low cost, easy to use, and work well with Xen-based solutions like Virtual Iron. In fact, many Virtual Iron users are already running their VMs in the VHD format that’s used with Hyper-V. If Virtual Iron customers are running Windows Server 2008 in their VMs, they can leverage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. For those customers running non-Windows VMs or do not own Windows Server 2008, you can use the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 hypervisor. This is our free, standalone hypervisor, which now includes both high availability cluster and live migration at no cost. Both are available for download, a trial for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and a full download for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. ...

Virtualization Nation, Today is a really big day at Microsoft and more importantly for our customers . Both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (our FREE standalone Hyper-V Server) have both been Released To Manufacturing (RTM...

Hyper-V Replica reduces the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) providing the ability to configure the static IP address of the Replica VM before it is failed over. This IP address setting is injected into the failed over VM. This post written by Vinod Atal...

Note: Update on 8th July 2012: This cmdlets and UI used in this article is applicable only for Windows Server "8" Beta. For Windows Server 2012 RC and beyond, see the updated post @ http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2012/07/08/hyper-v...

In an earlier post , we discussed the steps required to get a certificate from a Standalone CA or from a third party CA. For an Enterprise CA , the INF file needs to be modified and suitable templates need to be available to honor the certificate request...

Wow, 11,000 attendees, press, analysts and speakers here at TechEd. That’s a testimony to the passion, and excitement that this generates amongst our customers and partners. Day 1 got off to a flying start with Bob Muglia and his...

Virtualization Nation, With Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, we focused Hyper-V development on enhancing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) scenarios, which resulted in the introduction of Dynamic Memory...

In part 1 we went over some basic scripts and tools for gathering information about running virtual machines. In part 2 I am going to cover two things, first basic VHD creation and second determining if Hyper-V WMI methods are succeeding or failing and...

I am taking a quick break from the WMI PowerShell scripts while I take a short Mothers Day vacation, more WMI scripts when I get back! Unattended Hyper-V installation has been one of the most read TechNet forum posts I wrote and it also seems that a lot...

The Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of Hyper-V is now available as a optional update on Windows Update. Optional updates are not installed automatically by default. To install the update open the Windows Update control panel and click “ View available updates...

As many of you know, the much-anticipated Hyper-V hypervisor feature was just released last week. Many of the IT professionals like you have now began to use Hyper-V server virtualization technology to take back the control of your datacenter. With energy...

Hi, my name is Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer at MaximumASP, which is a web hosting and IT services provider that sells/markets/services Microsoft technologies to the SMB business market. A core element of the MaximumASP business model is...

Quick note: The update will be classified as a "recommended update", which means it will flow down automatically according to the settings you’ve selected if you’re running Windows Server 2008. It’s also being released to Windows Server Update Services. ...

The Microsoft WinHEC 2006 presentation slides are now available to view online under the WHDC (Windows Hardware Developer Central) area on microsoft.com. The Windows Virtualization related sessions are near the bottom of the page and are listed below...

Hello, this is Bryon Surace. I’m a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team at Microsoft. The recent announcement by AMD regarding the 6-core AMD Opteron processor (codenamed ‘Istanbul’) marks another milestone in AMD’s continued mission to create processors designed to provide performance, efficiency, and value. The newly announced 6-core AMD Opteron processor will provide a total of 24 logical processors (cores) on a 4-socket system and 48 logical processors (cores) on an 8-socket system. In a non-virtualized IT environment, there aren’t many apps/services that are designed to utilize these large system resources. However, with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, it’s a natural fit. WS08 R2 Hyper-V provides support for these new processors allowing large resources to be used to consolidate potentially hundreds of virtual machines on a single host. ...

Given the rather compressed schedule of Windows Server 2008 R2, we did not have time to get too ambitious with the UI. However, the UI has been modeled to enable the following 3 scenarios: 1. Export VMs with data 2. Import VMs with data 3. Export...