John Howard - Senior Program Manager in the Hyper-V team at Microsoft : Discussions

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 19:59:00 GMT

Although on the Windows virtualization team here, it's heads down working on the next generation of virtual machine support to be built into Windows Longhorn server with a "hypervisor" architecture, we're absolutely not sitting still on the Virtual Server 2005 R2 product which became free a couple of weeks back.

There will be a couple of beta releases of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - today we are announcing the availabilty of beta 1. You can download it by applying through Microsoft Connect. You'll need a passport account to log on to that site. Scroll down to the bottom and click Apply. It could take up to 24 hours to get an email back with the link for download.

So what's in Beta 1? Functionally, the main change is the support for Intels VT processors which provides hardware assistance for virtualization support. What does that mean? If you're running on a VT enhanced processor, NON-Windows guests will run much faster as we're no longer performing ring compression as part of the emulated environment (note you can choose to turn VT support off). However, Windows guests will run at parity in terms of performance as we already performing optimal tuning through the use of VM Additions. Windows guests will get a significant boost during the install process though, the time before you have an opportunity to install the VM Additions. The host clustering white paper and the associated VB Script I blogged about back in November last year, this is now included in the box.

Moving forward to what's going to be included in Beta 2, we'll add support for hardware assistance in the AMD chipset (aka Pacifica), integration with Active Directory to allow you to identify VM Host machines in a consistent manner, plus one killer feature (IMHO) - VSS support. This will allow you to take a snapshot of a running VM for backup - something I've had so much feedback from people to put into the product. More details to follow on that closer to the time.

Timewise, current schedule dates for Beta2 and released product are last quarter 2006 and first quarter of 2007 respectively.

Once again - the registration link is here.

Any questions, let me know.
Cheers,
John.

Generic scripted weekly backup solution - your feedback results

jhoward — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 11:00:00 GMT

Following last weeks post regarding the script I used to back up my home Exchange 2003 SP1 Server running under Virtual Server 2005 on a weekly full backup with daily differential backup, I've received upwards of 30 emails, all positive, thankfully!!! I'm overwhelmed, so a big thanks to everyone who responded and I'm glad you found the script useful. The good news is that other people have discovered (as I already had) that it is not just useful for backing up Exchange, but for just about any generic backup including data folders or even system state. That only requires a change to the backup selection file. With only a few lines change in the code, I've also had people say they are using it for a monthly schedule - if you're interested in seeing these modifications, let me know and I'll post them up - it's trivial, trust me!

Most interestingly for me, most people's comments were along the lines of asking why this sort of functionality isn't directly in ntbackup. Well, you'll find it in commercial backup solutions for sure, but they cost money which was absolutely against my requirements when there's perfectly good free software out of the box. My response has to be to use http://www.windowsserverfeedback.com. If there's enough demand and justifcation, the Longhorn Server team will recognise it and maybe it'll be there in 2007....

The one thing I will urge you to do, though, is remember to burn the backup files to DVD/CD/Tape and store them remotely. I use a combination of garage and a friends house just in case, but for an industrial strength solution, use appropriate storage facilities with firesafe and secured access etc.

VMRC - simultaneous sessions

jhoward — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 18:32:00 GMT

This is fantastic. I love using the Virtual Machine Remote Console for accessing VMs running under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, but it never dawned on me until I saw this blog entry by Peter Provost, that you could run up two instances of the VMRC client from two different machines to connect to one Virtual Machine "guest". This is great for true remote desktop sharing, which is absolutely not easy to do when connecting through NAT/firewalls/routers etc. And yes, before you ask, I have attempted this with Messenger (and failed).

Makes me wish I was doing Extreme/Pair Programming (XP) - this capability is a great enabler. Combine it with IM, VOIP, a WebCam and VPN, you truly can collaborate very effectively from anywhere.

The other things I particular like about VMRC (apart from being able to access the BIOS space which I blogged about a few days ago) is that it's light-weight in terms of screen "real-estate". I find the client in the web-based admin console a bit bloated due to the space taken up by the browser itself. VMRC is minimalist in this respect. Don't forget, you can also maximise the screen with the Host-Key+Enter sequence, so the experience ends up just like a maximised RDP session - except that multiple users can join the party.

Next stop is to find some sort of analysis comparing the merits of the VMRC, RDP and "Messenger" protocols, all of which provide very similar functionality. Is one any more efficient than the other in terms of compression/throughput? If anyone has any links or info on this, please let me know.

Blogcasts - surely a typo I hear you say.

jhoward — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:23:00 GMT

No, it's not a typo! A "blogcast" is probably a new term to you as it's been made up by the IT Pro Evangelism team in the UK (not quite true, but it's nice to think we got there first). A blogcast in this context is a webcast delivered through blogs. So what's new about that I hear you ask? The answer to that is the way most of you tell me you view webcasts. How many of you can relate to one of the following statements?

I skip through webcasts to the bit I'm interested in
I pop the kettle on at the start of a webcast
I have the TV on while listening to a webcast, muting it when the presenter gets to the interesting slide

To solve this, a blogcast is a mini webcast (certainly under 10 minutes) delivered through a blog, concentrating on a very specific topic. No frills added. By building a series of these, we hope to be able to take you through a "journey".

Now over to you... We're busy trying to build a list of possible topics, so if you have any specific to the Windows or Virtual Server track, please let me know.

Eileen has already posted a blogcast here to give you a flavour.