João Fonseca - Microsoft Services Technical Account Manager : Virtualization

Microsoft virtualization case studies

jfonseca — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:48:00 GMT

Hyper-V case studies can be found here.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 Now Available

jfonseca — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:32:00 GMT

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agentless toolkit that finds computers on a network and performs a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and the Remote Registry Service. The data and analysis provided by this toolkit can significantly simplify the planning process for migrating to Windows® 7, Windows Vista®, Microsoft Office 2007, Windows Server® 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Forefront® Client Security and Network Access Protection. Assessments for Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Vista include device driver availability as well as recommendations for hardware upgrades.

If you are interested in server virtualization planning, MAP provides the ability to gather performance metrics from computers you are considering for virtualization and a feature to model a library of potential host hardware and storage configurations. This information can be used to quickly perform "what-if" analysis using Hyper-V and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 as virtualization platforms.

Get it here.

Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V RTM

jfonseca — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:07:00 GMT

Just noticed on connect that the Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V are available again - but now on RTM !

Get them here: https://connect.microsoft.com/default.aspx

MS Hyper-V Server: in 30 days for $0

jfonseca — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:25:00 GMT

These a great news !

The show begins in 10 hours, but the news it out:

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a new hypervisor-based server virtualization product (like ESXi), will be released within 30 days and be available at no cost via the Web
Microsoft will demonstrate live migration feature of Windows Server 2008 R2. And the next version of Microsoft Hyper-V Server (the one after 2008) will have live migration capabilities.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will be released within 30 days [not a surprise], which will manage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 or VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3
Microsoft’s global server OEM partners ... report that nearly 100% of their customers who order Windows Server 2008 with hardware are also choosing to have Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V included with their order.
Dedicated virtualization lab established within the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx

Pre-configured VHD's available

jfonseca — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:16:00 GMT

Just came across this in Download Center: pre-configured VHD images allowing you to quickly evaluate/demo/test Windows Server 2003 R2, Exchange Server 2007, Live Communications Server 2005, ISA Server 2006 and SQL Server 2005.

Get them here:

Windows Server 2003 R2 VHD

Exchange 2007 VHD

ISA Server 2006 VHD

SQL Server 2005 VHD

These are all evaluation versions that will expire in 30 days. Full catalog is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/try/vhd/default.mspx

You need Virtual Server 2005 R2 to test these. Get it here

Virtual Hard Disk format becomes open

jfonseca — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 02:31:00 GMT

The Virtual Hard Disk Format (VHD) is now avaiable under the Open Specification Promise. Read more on the Windows Server Division Blog.