November, 2006

For ISVs and developers who want to build parallel apps for Windows CCS, you should try to attend one the upcoming lab in Redmond or the labs next year in Redmond, Copenhagen or Munich. Following is a quick description and check out the agenda. ...

Iomega today announced their new StorCenter network attached storage products for small and medium business, powered by Windows Storage Server 2003 R2. Iomega does a good job building (and pricing) storage products that make file and print painless for...

During this Webcast, David Lowe and David Zipkin will look deeper into the technologies that make the combination of Windows Server "Longhorn" and Windows Vista a compelling solution for enterprise organizations. They'll explore features that help you manage offline files, Group Policy, networking, quality of service, security and deployment. Thursday, December 07, 2006 at 1:00 PM Pacific Time ...

The team has noticed a few press stories and blog postings speculating about an upcoming product based on Windows Server "Longhorn" called "Fresno." We're not sure where the idea originated, but to set the record straight there is in fact no such Windows Server product in development. For now, Fresno will simply remain the "raisin capital of the world." ...

I am happy to announce that Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate is available for public review. You can find more information about this release here. Here is the list of what is currently available for public download: Update Package in English and German for 32-bit x86 and Itanium-Based Systems Update Package in German for x64 Editions SP2 ISO-9660 image in English for 32-bit x86 ...

Last Tuesday in front of over 4000 attendees, Jeffrey Snover and Bob Muglia announced the release of Windows PowerShell 1.0 RTW at IT Forum. Windows PowerShell is the new command-line shell and scripting language for Windows system administration. You...

While David Lowe and folks are getting mid-60s in Barcelona at IT Forum, there's a bunch of us enjoying the sun (through the convention center windows) and heavy-number crunching computing in Tampa. You can see video highlights of the conference at WinHPC.org. Others from the HPC community who are commenting from the show include Dan, Joe and Doug....

As Patrick mentioned, many of the Windows Server team are here in Barcelona for TechEd: IT Forum this week and we're gearing up for a great set of breakout sessions, lightning demos, hands-on lab and chalk-talks around Windows Server "Longhorn" and Virtualization...

Virtual Strategy magazine posted an audio interview with Mike Neil, who's senior director of virtualization strategy. The interview is nearly 17 mins, and here's an outline of the discussion:...

Several of us will be on airplanes this weekend, some headed to Barcelona for IT Forum, and others headed to Tampa for Supercomputing 2006. For those who want to follow the news and happenings from Barcelona, you can visit the VirtualSide. You'll hear and read about virtualization, systems management, access and security, Windows Server (including Longhorn). For those who want to follow the high-performance computing happenings at SC06, you can visit WinHPC. Ken will be posting videos from the show, and updating the news sections....

I wrapped up my stint at VMworld 2006 with some good interactions with partners, bloggers and reporters. There were a range of topics discussed, from VDI and appliances to virtualization formats and the MS/Novell agreement. Like last year's VMworld, we still got a few raised eyebrows about Microsoft's booth and sponsorship at VMworld. But the thinking is pretty simple: most VMware customers are virtualizing Windows Server images. So people walking the halls of the LA Convention Center are just as likely to be Microsoft customers, too. ...

The show floor proved to be really busy this morning. One piece of evidence: we distributed 1,500 shirts in 2.5 hours. The orange shirts say "Virtualize World Peace" and the crowd was 2-deep at demos for Virtual Machine Manager (in beta now), SoftGrid and Windows Server virtualization (the hypervisor-based architecture for Longhorn)....

It's great to be in LA right now because it's mid-80s and sunny here versus flooding rain back home in Redmond. But even the sunny skies of LA couldn't liven up the audience sitting through the opening keynote this morning at VMworld. ...

The VHD Test Drive Program is now live. If you've heard of VMware's appliances, then you get the idea behind this program. We're making the Windows Server OS and a number of Microsoft server-based apps available for evaluation via a single virtual hard disk (VHD) file. So it's all pre-built and pre-configured for you to run within Virtual Server 2005. And within 60 days, a number of other ISVs, including BEA Systems, Citrix, Quest Software, Platespin, Dell and HP will make their apps available via this program, too. Read more in a Q&A with Mike Neil....

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows and Linux. ...