Every now and again we'll use this blog to correct errors in the public domain, mainly by journalists or analyst trying to do a good job but who come up short on fact checking due to time constraints. Of course some of these errors are more obvious than others. The latest form of error pertains to Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008. Somehow both Greg in Australia and Mario in New York believe that Hyper-V is built on Xen [cough]. Hyper-V, the new beta feature in Windows Server 2008 RC1, running on top of Xen [cough-cough].
Maybe they're confused over our July 2006 interop announcement with XenSource? Or maybe they take too serious the work MS Research did during the development of Xen 1.x by developing a port of Windows XP to Xen? Or maybe they're working with Oliver Stone, who is exposing yet another cover-up?
Can you imagine GPL code running in the Windows kernal (hypervisor layer) ... now that'd be something. I think Jim Allchin would come out of retirement for that one ;-)
Mario and Greg - a picture is worth a thousand words. I hope the following two diagrams help you and your sources.
Patrick
With a tip of the cap to Francis Church’s famous 1897 editorial, I’m very proud that the team has come through just like St. Nick. Today we announced the public availability of a beta of Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization feature in Windows Server 2008. You can download it today with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (x64) edition and let us know what you think of it.
Before I get into some of the new features in Hyper-V beta, I first want to talk about what I see coming in 2008. I always want to make sure customers and partners know what’s important with our virtualization plans. And hopefully what you’ll read isn't too different than what I wrote in February.
· Platform: virtualization is becoming a feature of the server OS across the industry and this is the path to mainstream adoption. There’s really only one dissenting opinion in the industry to this premise. Microsoft Hyper-V will provide our customers and partners a great platform on which to build their virtualization solutions, and will provide the best value in the industry. One area I expect to see much more activity in 2008 around virtualized and centralized business desktops as employers aim to better manage employee computing. The datacenter won’t necessarily become the home for all desktops, but more mainstream server virtualization technology and management tools will lead to more trials of virtualized desktops.
· Management: I spend much of my time nowadays thinking about better management for virtualized computing. Customers want a single pane of glass for servers and desktops, physical and virtual, configuration and backup, OS and applications, security and compliance. We’re heads-down working on the next version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager. We’re aiming for deep management functionality for both Hyper-V and also VMware ESX/VI3. The new version looks really exciting. But before that, in early January, mid-market customers should look for the availability of SCVMM 2007 Workgroup edition. You can manage up to 5 physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines. Along with Virtual Server 2005 R2, it’s a great way to start consolidating servers and provides an easy migration to Hyper-V.
· Applications: The adoption of SoftGrid, and new functionality scheduled for Application Virtualization 4.5 [the new name of SoftGrid], has been tremendous. Customers have acquired 2.7 million seats of SoftGrid so far, and I hear new deployment scenarios from customers and partners on a regular basis. Application virtualization is complementary to virtualized desktops as IT professionals still struggle with application deployment in a virtual machine. Using our Application Virtualization technology, administrators can have a single application delivery solution for physical machines, Terminal Server environments and virtualized desktops.
· Interoperability: In my eyes, interop is as important as the management aspect of virtualization. From technical collaboration with Novell, Xen and Sun, to open virtualization and management specifications. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. We’ll add a new wrinkle next year with technical support, when the Server Virtualization Validation Program launches in June. This program announcement got lost amongst the busy virtualization news in November, but given the proliferation of virtualization software across the industry, this program may well prove to be unique. It represents an industry leading step by Microsoft to provide customers validation of 3rd party virtualization solutions running the Windows OS. This program is a major forward step when others in industry are taking a step back.
· Licensing: this area continues to be a big challenge across the industry. And it’s not just customers, but also partners. To which, at a recent Gartner conference, a Gartner analyst made the following points when we were talking about licensing for virtualization:
o Most ISVs do not have virtualization licensing policies; Microsoft does and is an industry leader in this area
o More inquiries are with ISVs, not end customers, to help them understand the impact of virtualization
o Lack of monitoring tools necessary to track usage of virtualized software, which is needed for new licensing models
We’ll continue to evaluate virtualization licensing in the year ahead. Customer feedback to the Windows Server OS licensing has been very positive. So much so that a Windows Server 2008 Standard license will grant one virtual instance (this isn’t the case with WS 2K3 standard). And in short time, the System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise is proving to be the type of progressive licensing that customers want when managing an ever-expanding virtualized infrastructure. SQL also provides an unlimited virtualization license with SQL Server 2005 Enterprise and customers have been very happy with it. During 2008, we’ll continue to work with customers to refine our polices and also work more closely with the ISV community to help provide leadership and direction for the industry.
With that said, below is a partial list of some of the cool stuff inside Hyper-V beta. And I recommend you register and attend a webcast with me on Dec. 18 at 12:30pm PST [3:30pm EST] about Hyper-V beta. I’ll discuss technical information and answer your questions.
· Quick Migration and cluster high availability - for migration of VMs for planned and unplanned downtime. BTW, don’t forget that Windows Server 2008 now includes support for up to 16 nodes! (up from 8 in WS 2k3)
· Hyper-V is now included by default in Windows Server manager, which means enabling virtualization is as easy as installing any other role.
· Support for running Hyper-V with Server Core in the parent partition
· Volume Shadow Services support
· VHD Tools support (compaction, expansion and inspection)
· Hyper-V MMC only installation. The Hyper-V MMC can be installed on Windows Server 2008 without installing the complete Hyper-V role enabling remote management of Hyper-V servers
· Support for up to 4 virtual SCSI controllers per VM, with 255 VHDs per controller; see demo
· Support for multiple network adapters per VM; see demo
· Support for up to 64 GB of memory per VM
· Note that Hyper-V beta is an English-US only release. The first localized releases will be available prior to RTM.
· We have made numerous performance, scalability and stability enhancements since the CTP release. We are quite proud of the quality of this beta release, but it is beta, so please send any issues you might find.
Hyper-V beta includes integration components for the following (guest) operating systems:
· Windows Server 2003 x86
· Windows Server 2003 x64
· Windows Server 2008 x86
· Windows Server 2008 x64
Integration components for other operating systems will come in future updates to Hyper-V before RTM. And integration components for Linux are available in beta form today. Once you log-in, enroll in the Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V program.
Finally, you can move VMs (i.e., VHDs) from to Hyper-V beta from the September 2007 “Viridian” community technology preview.
1. Perform complete reinstall of Windows Server 2008 to get the latest version of Hyper-V (upgrades not supported from CTP to beta)
2. Install Hyper-V Role in Server Manager
3. Re-create configuration files for each virtual machine (assign memory, assign procs, assign NICs, attach VHDs, etc.) Note: Good idea to record the down configuration information before you reinstall…
4. Virtual hard disks (VHDs), including all data inside, do not need to be re-created. Integration Components (ICs) must be upgraded. This is an in-place upgrade and does not require uninstall/reinstall
Happy holidays,
Mike Neil, GM of virtualization strategy
One of the things we sometimes struggle with is getting quality feedback from our customers directly to the developers..... and even more importantly figuring out how to incorporate that feedback into our product planning. So in Windows Server 2008 Server Manager (main page and for every role) you will see a link to allow you to “Send feedback to Microsoft” in the “Resources and Support” section of the page.
This link will take you directly from server manager to a web page on connect.microsoft.com where you can provide feedback on Windows Server. This feedback can be pretty much anything ranging from a concrete suggestion to a general feature request. Once you provide your feedback it will be visible to other users who visit this site and available for everyone to vote on. The expectation is that items that are most popular will get the most votes. Items that cross a pre-defined threshold of votes (we are still experimenting with what this should be) will automatically be forwarded to the development team. For those who are curious, the mechanism for this is a home grown app called “Product Studio” which the developers use as the central part of their development process and where they track all their work items. The feedback items automatically show up in Product Studio, “in the face” of the developers.
The development teams will consider these suggestions and their voting weight as part of their future planning and will use the input as they design new features and evolve existing features. Hopefully you can see how this little feature in Server Manager can help you can directly influence how Windows Server evolves and you can have an impact on the OS that you use.
Cheers,
Ward Ralston
Hi, for those of you that don’t know me, I’m Tina Couch and I’m the newest member to the Windows Server team. I wanted to share that today we made available the Windows Server 2008 release candidate one (RC1) for customers to download and evaluate. We’re encouraging customers to download the evaluation code here. (For what’s new in RC1 – scroll down.) So far, more than 1.8 million customers have checked out Windows Server 2008 evaluation code - WOW. RC1 is a significant milestone in the development of Windows Server 2008, and is one of the last opportunities for customers and partners to evaluate and provide feedback before our release to manufacturing (RTM), which will happen by the time of our February 27 Heroes Happen Here launch event in Los Angeles. The launch features Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 and the theme is focused on celebrating the incredible work that IT Professionals & Developers do to deliver heroic results to their organizations, colleagues and customers.
For those of you following the company’s largest enterprise launch in history, a whopping $150 million+ worldwide for outreach and demand generation to IT Pros and developers, we’ve had thousands of partners working with us on product testing and evaluation, and are currently developing new applications, device drivers, services and solutions. And if you read the press release - Partners are also participating in training activities and working to train customers in preparation for launch. Already, more than 37 hardware and software partners have committed to supporting and participating in hundreds of events worldwide and ten partners in particular, AMD, Citrix, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Intel, Quest, Computer Associates and Unisys have already invested significant time and resources to be platinum sponsors for the launch. It’s also worth mentioning that - to date – more than 140,000 IT professionals and developers have been trained on Windows Server 2008 & Visual Studio 2008 and over 3,000 have been certified on Windows Server 2008.
What’s new in RC1 you ask?
Microsoft is enhancing Group Policy with Group Policy Preferences, formerly known as PolicyMaker Standard Edition and Policy Share Manager. Group Policy Preferences will be available to Microsoft customers in two ways:
1. Integrated into the Group Policy management tools in Windows Server 2008
2. Integrated into the forthcoming Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows Vista, which will be available as a separate download in the Windows Server 2008 timeframe and will work in a Windows Server 2003 environment.
The Client-Side Extensions for GP Preferences are included in Windows Server 2008, and down level versions will be available as a separate download for:
1. Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above
2. Windows Vista RTM and above
3. Windows Server 2003 SP1 and above
Group Policy Preferences provides three major benefits in increasing the manageability of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008:
1. Further reduces the TCO of your Windows PCs by extending the reach of Group Policy manageability
o Windows Settings
o Control Panel Settings
o Flexibility with how preferences get applied – administrator can initially set the preference and allow the end user to change the setting
o Reduce images by providing richer configuration within an image
2. Provides simpler configuration via common user interfaces and reduce the need to create complex configuration scripts
3. Item-level targeting gives the IT Pro more precise control over the application of preferences
Together with the additional Group Policy management features available in Windows Server 2008, Starter GPOs and search/comment capabilities within the Group Policy Management Console, customers will have a greatly enhanced platform to manage their desktops and servers.
Hopefully this gives you a good overview of what we announced today as well as some insight into the upcoming launch event on February 27th that we hope you’re eagerly anticipating. If you want more details, check out the website.
Tina Couch
Dan Harman, one of the program managers in the Server Manager team will be hosting a webcast next tuesday on Server MAnager (focusing on the changes introduced in the RC1 release) as well was Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT), which had its Beta released last week. Below are the details of his webcast
Summary: Windows Server 2008 has significant improvements in server manageability with a one-stop administrative solution called Server Manager. This streamlined management tool enables IT administrators to complete setup of Windows Server using the Initial Configuration Tasks page, and configure and manage server roles and features with prescriptive wizards, a unified management console, and a command-line interface. In this session, we present and demonstrate the configuration and management capabilities of Server Manager and introduce some new features of Server Manager in Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1), including integration of the virtualization role and remote server administration tools.
To register: http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032358383%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e