Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant : Virtual Server

Kicking the tyres

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:44:00 GMT

Want to try out Windows Server 2008? Or perhaps Exchange Server 2007? You can download complete virtual machine environments for a whole list of Microsoft products, free of charge. Check out the Test Drive program here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb738372.aspx for more information and the download links.

The best thing about it is that you can download an entire virtual machine with the software pre-configured and running correctly – so you don’t need to complete any additional tasks in order to start playing/testing/evaluating the products immediately in your own virtual environment.

Enjoy!

Project Highlander

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:28:00 GMT

Having better ‘green credentials’ than your competitor seems to be the in thing at the moment. You’ll often see a company saying that they will plant X number of trees for each purchase you make, etc. Of course, this is always a good thing and anything that is done, no matter how small, to improve the environment benefits everyone.

Another hot topic at the moment is that of server virtualisation. Since Microsoft released Hyper-V, and since the Hyper-V/VMWare debate/war has been raging, I am nearly always asked about it when visiting clients. The questions always revolve around the same topics: what is needed to be able to start virtualising servers?, how reliable it is?, will users be able to detect a difference when using a virtual server?, by how much can the costs actually be reduced?, etc.

With regards to the last question above about calculating the cost-saving (and linking to the first paragraph), I was sent an email recently from a friend with a link for a website where you could ‘instantly calculate’ the cost-saving benefits you could achieve if you used virtualisation technologies. Admittedly I was pretty dubious at first as I believed that being able to put a number to this had to be rather tricky because there are, in my opinion, too many immeasurable factors to consider. However, after going through the site and reading about the calculations and how they are made, I have to say that it is pretty impressive. They take into account not just the monetary savings of not running the physical hardware when you virtualise a server, but also things like the reduction in energy usage, support requirements, downtime, air conditioning, CO2 output, etc.

www.hyper-green.com

The above screenshots I took from the site itself, you can see it here if you want to calculate your own cost-savings, and you really should go through regardless of whether you believe or not the results. Before dismissing the site as mere marketing propaganda by Microsoft, I should point out that although it is a Microsoft site, most of the information (including the calculations of cost-saving) has been provided by an independent body (Alinean) rather than Microsoft.

Oh, and why is this post titled “Project Highlander”? Well, quite a while ago I was working at a bank in London that was seriously investigating how many servers could be virtualised in order to save IT expenditure. Management wanted us to reduce the number of physical servers to an absolute minimum as the bank was going through rather a bad time financially and they needed to make massive expenditure cuts. During one of the kick-off meetings the managers asked for a name for the project (perhaps more important than the actual project…?) to which a colleague of mine quipped “That’s easy, ‘Project Highlander’; because ‘there can be only one’! ”. Although he said it jokingly, the name was approved immediately! However, we never actually got the number of physical servers down to 1, as it was deemed a little too risky.

P.S. Unless you’ve seen the excellent film “Highlander” you won’t understand the previous paragraph…

P.P.S For my Spanish readers, the film was called “Los Imortales”, rather than “Highlander” in Spain.

Hyper-V - Hooray!

Daniel Oxley — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:36:33 GMT

I am sure that this has been blogged about at least a trillion times, so I am going to make it a trillion and 1.

I have been running Windows Server 2008 64bit Enterprise Edition RTM on my company laptop (a 64bit dual core with 4GB of RAM) for about a week now and I think that it is fantastic; my single most favourite feature is without a doubt, Hyper-V. I ~~have~~ had been a long time user/fan of Virtual Server 2005 so I was looking forward to switching over to Hyper-V to see what it was like; well, it is worth the change! It has all the features that I need from VS2005 plus plenty more, and best of all, it does not seem to drag down the overall performance of my machine too much when I have a couple of VM's running at once, like VS2005 used to.

But, what do I miss from VS2005? Well, erm, nothing! The only negative point about Hyper-V is that I won't like going back to using VS2005 when I am working with a Windows Server 2003 in a client office. I will not be going back to Windows Vista on my laptop though because the advantages of having Hyper-V are just too great.

Just in case anyone has not seen the Hyper-V console window, here is a screenshot of it along with a view of the configuration settings for a VM. Not too much to see really, but then there is not too much that I need to configure!

Also, here is an interesting article about the increasing frequency with which VMWare are releasing patches for ESX Server. http://www.virtualization.info/2007/12/patch-tuesday-for-vmware.html Now, before anyone tries to flame me then try to shot holes in Hyper-V, me or anything else; read the next sentence. I am not commenting on the article whatsoever other than saying that it is interesting. So please, no more Micro$oft comments or emails as it gets rather boring.

Fallout from Virtual Server vs VMware

Daniel Oxley — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:06:41 GMT

Wow. It seems my previous post about Virtual Server vs VMware caused quite a stir. I got gazillions of comments (which I still need to go through) regarding this topic. A lot of the comments were the usual "Micro$oft" nonsense (putting a dollar sign in the name is so boring now, but that's another story) although some have raised some very interesting points which I would like to deal with.

Firstly, I want to point out a few things. I am a Microsoft Consultant therefore I am not an expert like some of you will be in VMware but I am in Virtual Server. Yes, I have used VMware plenty (especially in my pre-Microsoft days), but not to the depth of many others. And being a Microsoft employee is bound to make me favour them slightly!

Secondly, I guess that posting a nice pretty table fresh from the marketing department was not such a wise idea as it was bound to ruffle a few feathers, especially with the anti-Microsoft group. It would have been better to post the table and then back it up with as many real-world consulting examples as possible; lesson learnt. The advantage I have is that I have had access to the beta and RC builds longer than the public which is why I have been able to test and comment on it.

A lot of people were telling me that they doubted that Hyper-V would ever ship. Well, good news, because we are now one step closer to the RTM version. Windows Server 2008 RC1 with Hyper-V Beta is publicly available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8F22F69E-D1AF-49F0-8236-2B742B354919&displaylang=en

In my opinion, again influenced by being an MS employee, I think Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V absolutely rocks. Rather than speculate further, I think I'll wait until it is in RTM and we have a few consulting stories to share. When I do, I'll post here. Perhaps we can then revisit this subject along with any of your personal experiences with the system in order to try and make the post a little more neutral...?