Plumbing & Wiring in a Microsoft World : Virtualisation

Hyper-V Server Consolidation Assessment Tool

infoz — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:51:07 GMT

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) toolkit version 3.1 has now been released and can be downloaded from here. This updated version includes reporting on how to consolidate Windows workloads using Hyper-V, our new virtualisation platform. We even offer guidance on how to best place your virtual machines in your shiny new Hyper-V environment! [RH]

Hyper-V goes RTM!

infoz — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:36:00 GMT

Well, we've been waiting for this one for a little while, and here it is...KB950050. Get the details from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx

and download from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED&displaylang=en

[RH]

Which way to go with Windows Server 2008? Use the MAP!

infoz — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:03:45 GMT

Just a quick note to highlight some of the great work done by the Solution Accelerator team, with the delivery of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit. This free of charge, downloadable utility provides customers and partners with a quick and easy way to assess their existing IT assets and advises on their suitability for a range of potential infrastructure upgrades including:

Upgrade to Windows Server 2008 - reports detailing hardware suitability and main server roles
Server utilisation reports with advice on how to consolidate and place workloads with our server technologies (Virtual Server 2005 R2 with Hyper-V to follow)
Assessment of the technology environment for the implementation of Microsoft Application Virtualisation (SoftGrid)
Upgrade of desktop systems to Windows Vista SP1 and / or Office 2007

The three phase process involves a hardware inventory, compatibility analysis and readiness reporting, delivering a series of business-ready proposals as well as more comprehensive reports should you wish to dig a little deeper into the underlying data.

So, to find out more, download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit today and get stared by analysing the suitability of your environment for upgrade to the latest and greatest server, desktop and virtualisation technologies.

NB - please note that this tool will not run on an X64 instance of Windows, as I have found out to my cost :-( ...but hey, that's what x86 VMs are for, no? [RH]

Planning and Design Guidance for Microsoft Virtualisation

infoz — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 03:01:00 GMT

The recently published Infrastructure Planning and Design Solution Accelerator is a great place to start when considering the practical implications of deploying Microsoft's broad range of virtualisation technologies. I've just worked through the 'Windows Server Virtualization' paper, and it looks like this offers the kind of guidance my partners and customers are frequently asking for....scoping the hardware resources to meet the needs of your virtual environment - right down to which perfmon counters are key for analysing disk, memory, CPU and network requirements. There's also a scattering of handy snippets on validating your technical decisions agaist the needs of the business - just in case you're getting carried away with the technology and forgettintg about the business reasons behind the push to a virtual world. No doubt I'll get round to working my way through the 'Application Virtualization' paper sometime over the festive period! [RH]

Partner Business Briefings on Microsoft Virtualisation

infoz — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:35:53 GMT

Running across cities in 5 Australian states, these briefings are designed to help Microsoft Partners understand the business opportunity that the new wave of server technologies will present. The first ones are running in November and December and will cover Microsoft Virtualisation and Management [RH]

REGISTER NOW:

· Brisbane November 30^th: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359092&Culture=en-AU

· Sydney December 6^th : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359090&Culture=en-AU

· Melbourne December 7^th : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359091&Culture=en-AU

· Adelaide December 14^th: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359093&Culture=en-AU

· Perth December 13^th: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359094&Culture=en-AU

Virtual Server Cookbooks - now available

infoz — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:46:54 GMT

Some great new Virtual Server resources have just gone live and are available for download. There are 10 cookbooks covering a range of topics that are designed to help customers and partners build solutions on the Virtual Server platform. Some interesting potential scenarios and possible service offerings.....[RH]

Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager	Steps and guidance for you to successfully install and configure Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You may then create and manage virtual machines, and perform P2V migration.
Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1, and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager	The scenario presented in this cookbook will take you through the steps necessary to install Virtual Server and SCVMM, and then convert a workload to a virtual machine. This cookbook also includes the steps necessary to install DPM and to back up a running virtual machine, as well as information about monitoring and reporting using DPM.
Quick Migration with Virtual Server Host Clustering Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition & Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1	This cookbook describes a simple configuration in which you use Virtual Server 2005 R2 to configure one guest operating system, and configure a server cluster that has two servers (nodes). With this configuration, you can migrate workloads easily from one node to the other
Mobile User Access of Applications. Terminal Server running on virtual machines using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1	Install Terminal Server on a virtual machine and access the terminal server remotely. We will also show how to install Remote Desktop Web Connection and how to configure Windows® Firewall to allow remote clients to access the terminal server.
Hosted Backup and Recovery Solutions for Service Providers using DPM and VS	This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience providing data backup and recovery to customers as a hosted solution using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
Simple Offsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS	This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring virtual machines running in an offsite location using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
Simple Onsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS	This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring running virtual machines using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
High Availability with VS and WS03R2 Enterprise Server Clustering	This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for implementing high availability of server workloads using Windows Server 2003 Server Clustering and Virtual Server using Intel-based hardware.
Backup and Recovery using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 and Acronis® True Image 9.1 Enterprise Edition	The goal of this cookbook is to guide you through installing Acronis server imaging solutions for workgroups and installing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. The cookbook covers creating a virtual machine (to serve as a standby for recovery) and restoring the contents of a server representing your production workload to the waiting virtual machine.
Application Isolation and Operation in Branch Offices Using VS	This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for isolating and operating applications on separate virtual machines in branch offices using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, in an Intel-based hardware environment for regulatory compliance and improved legacy workload performance.

Virtual Machine Manager 'R2'?

infoz — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:59:07 GMT

Looks like the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) team have built up a fair head of steam. With SCVMM2007 now RTM (see previous post for details), there are already whispers of an R2 version being under development - most likely for release in the second half of 2008. Early suggestions are that this R2 version will look to deliver a holistic management capability for VMs running on VMware and Xen as well as Microsoft virtualisation technologies. Should be interesting, especially when coupled with V2V migrations. Commoditisation of the virtualisation layer anyone? [RH]

Another Piece in the Virtualisation Jigsaw

infoz — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:47:15 GMT

With System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) now RTM, we've moved a step closer to delivering a truly compelling virtualisation story to our customers and partners - something that will really come to life when Windows Server Virtualisation becomes a reality in 2008 (adding x64 and multi-proc guest support).

As an integrated component of our System Center family of management technologies, SCVMM takes a slightly different approach to VM management than our main competitors....and this is where we have a significant advantage: System Center can manage both physical and virtual systems as well as their associated workloads from a single management platform.

So what's SCVMM got to offer? Here's what I think are the main highlights:

A centralised console to view all physical and virtual resources and associated tasks - based on the standard 'Outlook style' System Center look. Everything in the console is built on Powershell, so its all scriptable (great for command line gurus and ISVs)
Tight integration with Operations Manager 2007, delivered via the VMM Management Pack, allowing you to surface up VM specific data, tasks and reports in your main Operations Manager console
P2V conversions, including VSS-based conversions of Windows 2003 with no downtime.
V2V conversions of existing VMware VMs - now this should come in handy ;-)
End user self provisioning of VMs and intelligent placement to ensure VMs are created on the most appropriate physical host

If this sound interesting, I'd strongly recommend you take a look at Edwin Yuen's recently released Managing Virtualization with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Webcast - it provides an overview of our virtualisation strategy and then dives a little deeper into SCVMM and integration with Operations Manager. There's also a trial VM of SCVMM that you can download here, drop into your environment and begin testing SCVMM straight away. Licensing and R2 snippets to follow shortly. [RH]

Virtual Server 2005 R2 - Service Pack 1 now available

infoz — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:36:00 GMT

Service Pack 1 is now available for download from the recently revamped Virtual Server site. The focus of SP1 is clearly to improve manageability of existing deployments of Virtual Server in the run up to Windows Server Virtualisation and the full release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (currently in Beta 2). Important new functionality in this Service Pack includes:

Support for VSS snapshots (great for backup and an enabler for P2V and V2V conversions)
Support for hardware virtualisation (IVT and AMD-V)
Offline VHD mounting
Novell SLES 10 and Solaris 10 now supported as guests (taking non-MS guest support up to 11 OS variants)

(RH)

Viridian (Windows Server Virtualisation) and Virtual Server Timing Updates

infoz — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:21:00 GMT

The Windows Server team recently announced some updated timings for the forthcoming releases of Windows Server Virtualisation and Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 - get the details of what, where and when (RH)

System Center Virtual Machine Manager hits Beta 2

infoz — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 05:34:00 GMT

SCVMM Beta 2 has been released, offering IT administrators a fully featured and easy to use suite of management tools. Enhancements in Beta 2 package include: P2V and V2V conversions, 64-bit server support, remote installation options and a vastly improved UI.

Windows Server Longhorn & Virtualisation - Video

infoz — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:28:00 GMT

This 5 minute video provides a sneak preview of Windows Server Virtualisation - a hypervisor-based virtualisation platform being developed as an integrated part of Windows Server Longhorn and due for release within 180 days of Longhorn RTM.

The video shows you how Windows Server Virtualisation and System Center (Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager) will be able to help you optimise your infrastructure and manage your physical and virtual resources more effectively. (RH)