Hi Isaac Roybal here. I’m a technical product manager on the Windows Server team covering Hyper-V. It’s been over two weeks since the release of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and we’re seeing great adoption. From a Hyper-V point of view, we’re excited because the final Hyper-V release is an integrated feature in SP2 making it easier and faster to deploy Hyper-V. If you recall, when Windows Server 2008 was released, Hyper-V Beta was included. This meant to get the final Hyper-V release, you needed to go to Windows Update, download and go through the update process. With Windows Server 2008 SP2, Hyper-V final bits are included so there’s no need to pull down individual downloads which speeds up deployments. There are also some notable updates in SP2, including scalability enhancements for running on systems with up to 24 logical processors which enables support for up to 192 running virtual machines, update for Hyper-V when managed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and updates for backup/restore of virtual machines with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). ...

Virtualization Nation, For those of you who have been following the "VMware FUD Fiasco" blog thread ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 & Part 4 ), it's been an unfortunate incident that has gone on far too long. However, I'm pleased to report that we've finally...

Many of you will be interested to learn more about forthcoming lab management capabilities in Visual Studio Team System 2010. Or you may have lunch or meetings with a dev who you want to know more about VSTS 2010 Lab Management. That last part if a nod to "that darn reality" post at SharkTank. So check the VSTS Lab Management team blog. Recent posts include: Creating and working in virtual environments Application build, deploy and test automation in Lab Management Enable lab management features for existing team projects VSTS 2010 beta 1 is released Patrick ...

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. ...

Virtualization Nation, If you've been following the VMware FUD fiasco, I just wanted to provide a quick update. In the last post, we finally reached a point where VMware provided some basic information about their configuration and we immediately...

Hello - I’m Zane Adam, senior director of System Center and Virtualization marketing at Microsoft. I wanted to share some exciting news related to Microsoft’s virtualization and System Center offerings and HP’s Insight Control Suite for System Center...

There have been multiple customers who have voiced concern that the Configuration-only export feature is gone. It has not. Configuration-only export is still very much present in Hyper-V in R2. It just so happens that we have taken the option out from...

In the following sample, we do a basic import of a VM using the new Import API. This script essentially does what the import UI does; it assumes all the necessary files are present in the import folder and imports from that directory. In a later blog...

In the following sample, we do a basic export of a VM using the new Export API. Here we export a VM with all the data associated with it. In a later blog, I will cover configuration-only export. Many thanks to Madhan Gajendran and Dinesh Kumar Govindasamy...

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...

To enable the new functionality of Import/Export we now have new ‘Ex’ versions of the Import/Export APIs along with settings data objects that allow the user to tweak the necessary parameters upon export or import: Export: Before you run an export...

This is the first blog entry of a multi-part series of blogs that addresses Import/Export in Windows Server 2008 R2. This blog talks about the scenarios enabled by the changes made to import/export in R2. Ben Armstrong had blogged earlier about the...

Virtualization Nation, We were very busy last week with numerous virtualization announcements from TechEd. If you missed them, you should check them out here , here and here . In addition, some of the early reviews of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Release...

This blog entry describes the support in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for creating and managing Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files as a native format, and booting a physical machine from a VHD file. Native VHD support helps our enterprise customers...

Virtualization Nation, Greetings from Tech Ed in Los Angeles! It's been a busy couple of days and you've probably heard the big news by now, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be shipping for the holidays! On the Hyper-V R2 front, we're pleased...

You'll want to read Isaac's blog post about the RC milestone of Windows Server 2008 R2. His post focuses on 64 LP support and processor compatibility mode for live migration. Read the post here . Here's an excerpt: 64LP Support We have seen...

Virtualization Nation, I thought we were done with this topic yesterday. I really did. If you missed my last article and aren't sure what I'm talking about, it's here . Scott Drummonds, VMware Product Marketing, apparently saw my response and attempted...

Virtualization Nation, I prefer to spend my time talking about the great things we're doing with Hyper-V and Microsoft virtualization. We have a lot of very happy customers today with Hyper-V R1 and the upcoming R2 release delivers even more in terms...

Virtualization Nation, The Virtualization team is pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate for download. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, our free standalone hypervisor, represents our continued commitment...

Admittedly this post is a stew and not a meal (if that metaphor works). But you might be interested in the following items. I'll keep it short: John Kelbley will host a webcast on Friday, May 8 at 8:00am PDT titled, "Running Linux on Hyper-V." The session will discuss install, configure, run, backup and monitor non-Windows systems. See here. On May 14, 8am-noon PDT, Edwin Yuen will host a live chat on TechTarget. He'll answer questions about our virt products, be it datacenter, desktop or managemment. See more here. Wondering what to read when you're flying to TechEd, or your next trip? The Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit book is it. One of the authors, Robert Larson, architect in MS Services and TechNet blogger, told me that the book is in final formatting and some sample chapters are available to download (here). The book will be available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble in June. Read more from one of the authors here. Enjoy. ...

Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. This past week, there were two key announcements made, one by Microsoft and one by VMware, that have an impact on how we compare Microsoft and VMware...

I'm a bit behind is sharing the following demo video. On Tuesday at Microsoft Management Summit, we did a demo of application virtualization for servers. Both Mary Jo and Alessandro predicted this demo a couple weeks ago - so not a real surprised. The demo was described as a technology preview, meaning there's no plan of record for beta testing, etc. So what did Bill Morein demo? As you'll see, Bill's demo was setup by talk about administering the compute fabric and managing deployment of a tightly bound OS can create challenges. By applying application virtualization to this challenge, we can separate apps from the server. This should mean a more simplified, and accelerated, approach to deploying those virtualized apps and patching. Bill pointed out that this leads to reduce image libraries, and accelerated migration. Check out the demo - it's less than 6 minutes. ...

As the president and COO of a datacenter-based managed server provider, I’m constantly on the hunt for leading edge technology. I peruse every new IT technology announcement for the next cost-effective solution, for both internal needs, and for hosted solutions we can use to help customers. In my previous blog, I talked about how cool Microsoft’s virtualization turned out to be, saving SBWH, and therefore our customers, time and money. I started my virtualization research with VMware, but quickly became a fan of Hyper-V, ultimately deploying it in many production systems. As a result of my experience, I get asked by industry analysts, press, and investors, “Why not VMware?” With Palo Alto’s latest announcement that I can buy an “Internal Cloud” for only $3,495 per CPU, I figured I’d share my thoughts about the real vs. perceived benefits of this new private compute cloud idea. Let me say that the private cloud concept seems to be more marketing than architecture. The private cloud has many of the same load balancing, storage management, and provisioning that virtualization already offers. Based on how the private cloud has been described so far, I have to say that the emperor, although not totally naked, seems somewhat thinly attired. ...

Hi, I’m David Greschler, Director of Microsoft virtualization and management. Today VMware announced their new “Cloud OS,” called vSphere. It’s an interesting announcement in that it points out more clearly than ever that VMware adds an extra layer to the computing stack. This extra layer, a virtualization “substrate” (VMware CEO Paul Maritz’s words), is inserted by VMware between hardware and the OS. But is it really necessary to add an extra layer just to do virtualization and the cloud? Do we really need another operating system to effectively just host other operating systems? I can see how initially this made sense when the industry was first experimenting with virtualization. But virtualization has now become mainstream, and as such it’s just another feature we should have as part of our computing process. As a result, Microsoft chose to take a more streamlined approach to virtualization. Instead of adding an additional layer of complexity, we’ve put the virtualization component inside the OS. We think this is a better approach as it means you have one less layer to manage, secure and pay for. (And at the cost of $3,495 per processor for vSphere Enterprise Plus, that’s a pretty expensive layer!). ...

I’m Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization and System Center. It’s been a while since my last post, and wanted to update you on our standalone hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Last Fall we released Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a standalone hypervisor-based virtualization product that is available for free. We continue to add more features and value to this product in the upcoming release, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Our core strategy is to ensure that our customers can virtualize their IT environment in the most cost effective manner, and at the same time, have access to enterprise features like live migration and clustering features for high availability. So in addition to scalability and performance improvements in this version, customers can get live migration and host clustering capabilities and high availability (up to 16 nodes) at no charge. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 will continue to be free, and now will include live migration and host clustering capabilities. Customers won’t need to pay thousands of dollars for alternate virtualization platforms to get these features. With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, customers have a solution for both planned and unplanned downtime and can use it for scenarios like server consolidation, branch server consolidation, high availability, and VDI. ...