John (Baker), a good friend and a colleague of mine in the Microsoft US East Evangelist team, and I both attended TechEd 2009 in L.A. and the first thing that Monday we did was to walk in a little onsite studio and record a TechTalk session. Since we needed to get it done in our time slot which was 30 minutes including getting in and out, mingling with the crew, getting John off email (that was a tough one, if you know what I mean), and finding the right angle for me (which was the most important thing as far as I was concerned for the whole recording), etc. Everything happened real fast and basically we sit down, put on the microphones, smiled, talked, thanked you, then got up and left, so the crew could start recording the next session. And yes, we did it in one take. It was a little bit intense and stressful, yet I had a lot of fun doing it. John is fun to work with and we always have a good time hanging out. Not to mention I got to talk about Self-Service Portal, something I consider one of the key objectives for implementing a virtual machine manager infrastructure.

Take a look. It’s a 10-minute fame of me and Sir Baker in TechEd 2009. Maybe we will do it more on other interesting and frequently asked topics like Direst Access, Windows XP Mode, boot with VHD, Bitlocker to go, and many more.

Two sessions in the upcoming TechEd 2009, I will be presenting. One is on prototyping Groove solution with a laptop and the other is a TechTalk recording on System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal. Here’s some information:

OFC309
Prototyping Microsoft Office Groove Collaboration Solutions with a Laptop
5/15/2009 2:45PM-4:00PM
Room 150

TTK60
Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal: What, Why, and How

For those who are not going, look for my screencasts on these topics in upcoming weeks. Else have a great trip and look forward to meeting you all in the city of angels next week.

Windows XP Mode includes a pre-packaged virtual Windows XP environment and Windows Virtual PC to run the virtual Windows XP environment. Applications installed in Windows XP Mode are automatically available on the Windows 7 Start Menu or Task Bar and can be launched just like any Windows 7 program. Further Windows XP Mode is pre-configured with the Windows XP firewall and to apply updates automatically from Windows Update.

You may find that Windows XP Mode is a bit similar to the seamless integration in MED-V by making applications installed in the Virtual PC of a MED-V workspace available in the All Programs menu of the hosting OS as shown in my Screencast: Mad About MED-V Part 2 of 4, User Experience. Still notice Windows XP Mode is developed with small business in mind and in a standalone setting. While MED-V is part of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) available to only Software Assurance (or SA) customers at this time and offers an enterprise virtual machines lifecycle management capability. In essence, Windows XP Mode does not replace MED-V.

Either Windows XP Mode or MED-V, since a hosting OS will need to run a session of Virtual PC the resource requirements for RAM and disk space are higher. When it comes to virtualization, 2GB of memory in current PC computing environment should be considered as an entry point. Additionally, Windows Virtual PC requires a PC with Intel-VT or AMD-V enabled in the CPU, as it takes advantage of the latest advancements in hardware virtualization.

Here are two selected readings:

• Helping Small Businesses With Windows 7 Professional and Windows XP Mode 
• Windows XP Mode in Windows 7: How it relates to future versions of MED-V

and also Windows 7 RC is now available from TechNet/MSDN subscription sites.