Yesterday I was in our Las Colinas office, we got some of the new Microsoft Roundtable Cameras in our conference rooms. I did some training with some of our internal people on how to use this great device. We sell them for $3K. They have a 360 degree camera, 6 mics, it's a speaker phone, all just connects to your laptop with USB 2.0. It works great with Livemeeting or with Office Communication Server 2007.
Check out the short demo here:
Get more info on the roundtable here:http://www.microsoft.com/uc/products/roundtable.mspx
DPM you say? Data Protection Manager 2007 is what DPM is.
Support includes:
· Able to run DPM2007 server on Windows Server 2008 platform
· Protect Windows Server 2008 Server
· Protect Windows Server 2008 Core
· Protect Windows Server 2008 System State
· Ability to shrink DPM replica volumes – because of WS08 VSS enhancements
Also enables:
· Protection of SQL Server 2008
· Protection of clustered Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosts
· New Tape Media Sharing and Tape Library Sharing capabilities.
More info:
http://blogs.technet.com/WINDOWSSERVER/archive/2008/06/30/Data-Protection-Manager-2007-now-backing-up-Windows-Server-2008.aspx
This is really cool. My dad has been the TV commercial spokesperson for The Scooter Store for years.
Today we announced Scooter Store as one of the earlier adopters of Hyper-V, check out this video of the Scooterstore.
VIDEO LINK
Microsoft’s Hypervisor Technology Gives Customers Combined Benefits of Windows Server 2008 and Virtualization
Customers reap the rewards of server consolidation and business continuity projects along with integrated management tools to manage physical and virtual resources.
Related Links
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Windows Server 2008 Web site
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Microsoft Virtualization Web site
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Microsoft Servers Newsroom
Other Resources:
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Windows Virtualization Team blog
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Windows Server Division blog
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Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog
REDMOND, Wash. – June 26, 2008 – Following the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualization is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.
Virtualization can help companies maximize the value of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and cost and complexity of managing IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization — which span from the desktop to the datacenter — help IT professionals and developers implement Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative, whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V supports virtual machines with up to four virtual cores, 32-bit as well as 64-bit operating systems, and up to 64 GB of RAM.
Click for high-res version.
Hyper-V offers customers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualization platform that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables them to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Microsoft System Center product family gives customers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, helping customers create a more agile and dynamic datacenter.
“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualization with Hyper-V,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft.
Customers Going Virtual
More than 250 customers have participated in the early adopter programs for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Land O’Lakes, HotSchedules and The SCOOTER Store were some of the first customers to deploy Hyper-V and experience its benefits firsthand.
Minnesota-based Land O’Lakes suffered from a common IT challenge resulting from tremendous growth through mergers and acquisitions. The agricultural cooperative’s datacenter was packed with a compilation of aging servers running at an average utilization rate of just 3 percent, putting a considerable strain on IT resources.
IT pros call the condition “server sprawl,” and Land O’Lakes had a bad case of it. “We faced a combination of underutilized and aging hardware, applications running on outdated operating systems, and rising datacenter power and cooling costs,” said Jason Nord, the company’s server administrator.
To counter the problem, Land O’Lakes did what an increasing number of similarly challenged companies are doing: It turned to a virtualization solution. Specifically, it became an early adopter of Microsoft virtualization technologies, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
The company’s IT team initially rolled out a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 in its test and development environment, in which four physical servers each hosted 10 to 13 virtual machines, with each virtual machine running one application. During 2008, the team plans to migrate this environment to Hyper-V and to move an additional 10 to 15 new applications directly into virtual machines in the production environment, thus saving the cost of hardware servers.
“Our Microsoft virtualization solution is a key part of a business strategy we have at Land O’Lakes called Best Cost Initiative,” said Tony Taylor, the company’s director of IT services. “It’s not just about cutting costs, but about looking where our money is being spent and finding ways to leverage our investments across the company. Virtualization holds a lot of promise in helping us maximize the value of our IT investments.”
The Integrated Approach
To accompany Microsoft virtualization technologies such as Hyper-V, the System Center family of solutions delivers management tools to configure, operate, deploy and backup physical and virtual servers from the datacenter to the desktop — all from a single pane of glass. With proper management tools and processes, customers can control the power of virtualization and become agile, while still maintaining control. This can help prevent such issues as “virtual server sprawl” — one of the challenges that can be introduced by the increased use of server virtualization.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V’s easy-to-use Virtual Machine Creation wizard allows administrators to quickly create and provision new virtual machines.
Click for high-res version.
Ironically, this virtual equivalent of physical server sprawl stems from the ease with which virtual machines can be created. Some IT teams have allowed multiple groups within the organization to create their own virtual machines, only to lose track of them later. This kind of uncontrolled usage can lead to legal and security concerns.
“To truly see the full benefits of virtualization, it is critical to have the right processes and tools in place,” Hilf said. “That’s why management tools are so important — they are the glue that holds it all together and helps deliver the real benefits of virtualization.”
The ability to centralize server management was a key factor in The SCOOTER Store’s quest to find the right virtualization solution. The New Braunfels, Texas-based company is a leading provider of power mobility devices such as power chairs to help people with mobility challenges lead full, self-sufficient lives.
To manage the recent rapid growth and stay in compliance with ever-changing government mandates for documentation, reporting, consumer safety and patient privacy, the company must maintain agile and flexible IT systems.
To that end, The SCOOTER Store is virtualizing its server environment and centralizing server management using Virtual Server 2005 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. As part of its overall virtualization strategy, the company is evaluating Hyper-V to increase the performance of its existing environment.
“Hyper-V is very exciting for us because it is integrated and designed into the operating system,” said Barrett Blake, The SCOOTER Store’s infrastructure architect. “I expect Hyper-V to be even easier to use, faster, and more efficient.”
By year’s end, the IT organization expects to increase the number of applications by 50 percent compared with its previous infrastructure, while reducing the number of physical servers required to host those applications by about 60 percent.
“We had a vision of a dynamic datacenter, and Microsoft technologies gave us a holistic approach to achieve it,” said Jay Greene, The SCOOTER Store’s senior vice president of IT and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) security officer. “By optimizing our environment with virtualization and centralized management, we deliver more functionality at lower cost, and we make IT a strategic contributor to the growth of the company.”
Scalability, Cost and Performance Benefits
Scalability and cost were prime considerations for Ray Pawlikowski as he sought a virtualization solution for his rapidly growing company, HotSchedules. The Austin, Texas-based company specializes in online labor scheduling, offering employees of clients such as The Cheesecake Factory, Outback Steakhouse and P.F. Chang’s access to their work schedules on the Web, text messaging, e-mail and the ability to pick up and release shifts, among other benefits.
With nearly a quarter-million users and 4 million logins per month, the 10-year-old business has doubled in size each year for the past couple years and shows no sign of slowing down. Like Land O’Lakes’ IT team, Pawlikowski signed up for the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) to test Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and is glad he did. “By virtualizing everything, we have been able to increase our server utilization by a factor of 10, providing dramatic opportunities in consolidation and power savings,” he said.
Hyper-V’s scalability derives from its support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory limits at the host and guest level within virtual machines. This enables customers to scale their virtualization environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a given host and to take advantage of quick migration for high availability across multiple hosts.
HotSchedules is running 40 physical servers, and Pawlikowski wants to reduce that number by 50 percent to 75 percent. The IT organization is also running 14 virtual machines with applications running faster on the virtual servers than they did on the physical servers used previously. This is a critical benefit that keeps the company’s Web-based application responsive.
Customers are not the only ones benefiting from the increasing demand for virtualization. Microsoft storage partner QLogic today published a benchmark for I/O throughput for storage devices going through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. At 180,000 I/Os per second on a system running Hyper-V, virtual machine connections are just 10 percent shy of native performance. This benchmark demonstrates Hyper-V’s ability to bring the advantages of virtualization to the most demanding datacenter.
Meanwhile, Microsoft itself has been using Hyper-V in production environments, including heavy-traffic Web properties such as MSDN, TechNet and Microsoft.com. MSDN has more than 3 million average page views per day, TechNet averages more than 1 million per day, and Microsoft.com averages more than 38 million per day. By the end of June, Microsoft.com is targeted to be 50 percent virtualized with Hyper-V.
A Familiar Platform
A major differentiator for Hyper-V is the familiarity of the Windows platform. For example, HotSchedules’ Pawlikowski looked at a number of other virtualization technologies, including VMware ESX Server, but his company has strong ties with Dell, which made a compelling case for Microsoft’s early-adopter program.
“Not only is Hyper-V faster, it’s also faster to get up to speed with,” Pawlikowski said. “It’s integrated with our existing platform and with the familiar roles in Windows Server 2008, so our knowledge base didn’t have to change too much and I didn’t have to re-tool our IT staff to move forward with virtualization.”
Microsoft’s Hilf says that’s a particularly compelling reason for customers to choose Hyper-V. “It’s been designed as a Windows feature, which our customers know, so those with Windows Server certification will be familiar with it; the people who have all the in-house skills on Windows Server will know how to use it.”
To help both customers and partners assess whether their existing servers are good candidates for virtualization using Hyper-V, Microsoft has released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.1 Beta to help accelerate virtualization planning and deployment. The final release of MAP 3.1 is expected in July and will be available for free at http://www.microsoft.com/MAP. MAP belongs to a family of Microsoft Virtualization Solution Accelerators including Infrastructure Planning and Design guides and the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool.
In addition, more than 130 independent software vendors (ISVs) have certified a total of 150 applications on Windows Server 2008. Symantec, Diskeeper and IBM are the first three vendors to achieve the new Certified for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V designation. This designation identifies applications that have been independently tested to exploit Hyper-V capabilities and meet mission-critical expectations in a virtualized environment.
Microsoft continues to work with its partners to meet customers’ needs for interoperable solutions. The alliance with Citrix Systems in the areas of VDI and virtual machine portability between the Xen Hypervisor and Hyper-V provides customers with broader deployment scenarios. Additionally, the extensive collaboration with Novell enables customers to take advantage of virtualization in mixed Microsoft and SuSE Linux environments.
Along the same lines, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendors such as Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys are already qualified to ship and create systems with Hyper-V. In all, 250 systems from server and white-box vendors are already logo-qualified for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. More information can be found at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.
The Road Ahead
Customers can now download the final version of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
“There have already been over 1 million evaluations of Hyper-V, and with this release IT organizations everywhere can move it from the lab to production to fully experience the benefits that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 can bring,” Hilf said. He added that customers can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, now in beta, to help them best configure and deploy their hypervisor-based environments.
New customers and partners can download Hyper-V at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V. Customers who have deployed Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update beginning July 8.
Full info here:
You have heard about UC, but what is it really? Well I want to start to show you. I plan a series of show videos. I am working on Silverlight to stream them on this blog. But I have run into a couple of "Technical hurdles" But for now. Here is my first entry. Thanks to Blain, Keith, Kevin for helping show the world what we do everyday with this amazing tool, known as Unified communications.
Take a look here:
What are these? These are the terms for a great solution from Microsoft, bringing together voice, video and computer networks, to work better together for the end user. Here at Microsoft we call it UC enabled. I have been. The way I work with others has changed forever. The came in and pulled out my desk phone. My laptop is now my desk phone. I can also use cheap webcams on my laptop and use video conferencing with my co-workers. All of this is part of a great corporate (yes auditible) Instant Message client.
In our lifetime there are very few things that totally change the world. I believe this is one of them. Yes it is early in the game, but I truly see the potential.
One great feature is that you can use the OCS client, or you can use the Web base Communicator Web Access or (CWA) both offer similar great experience.
Start checking this stuff out. Here are three great resources for more information.
Resources:
#1 resource is:http://communicationsserverteam.com/
#2 UC forum OCS 2007 deployment http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1927&SiteID=17
and #3 for now....http://www.microsoft.com/uc/default.mspx
You don't believe me, well go watch this video from Bill Gates: Play Video
I am just overwhelmed with Web 2.0 What's gonna win? Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Second Life, now this. I can't update them all all they time. I know some will stop over time.
We have a new website: http://technetbookmarks.com
I joined it today. I started keeping my IE bookmarks there. YOU can see them publicly on this site.
We will announce this at TechED, but I wanted you to get the jump on it.
What do you think? Is Social Bookmarking the wave of the future? Do you care what I bookmark?
Let me know. I like the idea, we will see if it catches on.
If so.... then you need to know about the next meeting of CTSMUG Central Texas Systems Management User Group. They are meeting June 6th at the Microsoft Technology center in Austin.
Click HERE to find out more.
What does John do when he isn't working on computers? Anything Sailboats! Teaching kids how to sail. The last couple of years this has also included restoring old sailboats. Boy did we find a big project for this past winter. We picked up a 1978 E-scow. Yep 30 years old fiberglass with 7 layers of bad paint on it. Here is what it looked like when we got it:
We flipped it over, painted it, then flipped it back, here is one of the flipping photos:
Then we painted the top, put hundreds of pulleys and cleats back on. All of the ropes(lines to us sailors) were rotten from being outside for years. So 1200 feet of new ropes added, and we finished the project in under 6 months!
This Saturday we took it out for the first time.
Yes this is a 30 year old boat, 32 year old sails. We had a blast. With everyone's help, we had probably over 300 hours of work on it.
The kids want to go fast on the new/old toy. There is a national association of this kind of boat www.e-scow.org and teenagers do what teenagers do on these things. Go check out this video, yep my kids want to do that next on ours.
I know most of you that are reading this never meet Robbie (Rob) Westover. He was not only a peer and co-worker of mine here at Microsoft, he was a very true close friend to me. Yep and I even hired him at Microsoft more than 5 years ago.
I really wish you could have meet Rob. He was an amazing person. In a few short interactions with him you became best friends. Rob was there when ever you needed help, asking nothing in return. Rob was always up for adventure, he loved trying new things, and teaching others many things including how to play craps.
What can I do for you?, We live great lives!, How are your kids?, Hey Beautiful! are all ways Rob would greet you.
See my last post for a video I did. Most of that is from the last 5 years and work pictures I could find, and I put it to the Jimmy Buffett because he and I love that music.
Jamie Westover, Rob's love of his life and wife has graciously sent me a copy of the DVD that Rob's family friends put together for his memorial service. Jamie wants to make sure everyone has access to the video that couldn't make it to the memorial service. It is an exceptional video. I hope you enjoy, and for those of you that had the pleasure of knowing Robbie, I hope it makes the smiling Robbie memory last forever!
CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO
That is a quote from Rob Westover a co worker of mine here at Microsoft. He passed away on April 29th. I have been up in Redmond this week for the services. I built a video as a tribute to Rob, it was my way of trying to deal with it. You have to understand some of the context. Rob and I both love Jimmy Buffet, do you know how hard it is to pick just 3 out of 500 of his songs? The first set of pictures are out-takes from a photo shoot that Rob did for our team called Microsoft Across America. A poster was made from the pictures, but the out-takes really show his true character. In the middle section are memories of some great times we had on team outings and team events. The last section was sent to me by others, The ones were Rob is at the one year old's birthday party were only taken a couple of weeks ago.
HERE is the video.
Rob would not want us to morn for him at all. He would have wanted a big party, tell stories and remember all the fun and crazy times we have had together.
Yesterday at the reception after his service, the toasting and stories when on for hours. Everyone in the room claimed to be his "best" friend. He just made you feel that way, it was so special to find out that it wasn't just me that he did that for, he did that for everyone he meet.
We will all miss Rob!
I am attending the MVP summit here in Redmond this week. What is the MVP Summit?
1,800 Tech Professionals Gather for Microsoft 2008 MVP Global Summit
Tech leaders contribute to the next generation of Microsoft technology innovation.
Related Links
Microsoft Resources:
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Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Web site
•
Microsoft Technical Communities
•
Microsoft 2008 MVP Global Summit Virtual Pressroom
REDMOND, Wash. — April 14, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. honors its 2008 Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), a highly select group of experts who represent the best and brightest in technical communities, at the 2008 MVP Global Summit April 14–17 in Seattle at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond. MVPs are recognized by Microsoft as outstanding leaders who voluntarily share their expertise in technical communities worldwide. MVPs also provide invaluable feedback to Microsoft by serving as early adopters of new technology and assisting in the product design and development processes.
More than 4,000 MVPs worldwide cover 90 different Microsoft technologies in 94 countries. Mirroring the wide range of real-world challenges and applications that MVPs represent, the summit will feature more than 600 technical sessions on topics ranging from enterprise security and virtualization to gaming and digital media.
This year’s summit also marks new leadership for the MVP program, as Toby Richards takes on the role of general manager of Community Support Services for Microsoft. The MVP Global Summit will conclude with closing remarks by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer, and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect.
“Microsoft MVPs are an amazing group of individuals,” Richards said. “By sharing their knowledge and experiences and providing objective feedback, MVPs play an integral role in the improvement of Microsoft products, while also helping people solve problems and discover new capabilities. It gives us great pleasure to recognize and thank MVPs for their demonstrated commitment to helping others.”
MVPs drive customer satisfaction through direct interaction with Microsoft users, answering more than 1 million user-group questions annually. They can also directly affect the quality of Microsoft technology and processes through early testing and feedback. MVPs have contributed to the development of almost every recent Microsoft release including Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista. One MVP’s feedback drove substantial performance improvements to Windows Mobile 6.1 and enhancements in the improvement and re-release of the Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Tool. In addition, 268 MVPs participated in Windows Home Server Connect programs worldwide.
“The worldwide technical community is growing at such a rapid pace,” Richards said. “Microsoft is privileged to collaborate with exceptional leaders in the world of technology through the MVP program. At this year’s summit we hope to energize these leaders as well as use their independent, objective feedback for the betterment of Microsoft’s products and services.”
About the Microsoft MVP Program
Microsoft began the MVP Awards as a way to recognize members of the general public who devoted their time and technical expertise to helping users in various online technical forums. Over time, the program evolved, and awards are given to members of technical communities worldwide for their contributions to communities including third-party Web sites, user groups, blogs and wikis.
More information about the MVP Award and the 2008 MVPs can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/mvp. More information on Microsoft technical communities can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/communities.
Well I have a solution for you. We will be doing the Windows Server 2008 Heroes Happen Here launch on April 30th in Hawaii. Registration is low, really low. So we need you to come to the launch, find an excuse to get your boss to let you fly out there for the event. Hey I will even be the presenter!! I know a couple of you have been to multiple of my launches in Dallas and Houston. So why know come on out to the islands. Go sign up www.microsoft.com/hhh
Zain on our team is leading up an effort over on second life. He is going to do a HHH launch there next Saturday April 26th. Go check out his blog about it.
http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2008/04/13/heroes-happen-here-launch-in-second-life-april-26th-2008.aspx
You can find the complete article here: http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA041308.1R.MIcrosoftData.21a662b.html
Model of efficiency
Web Posted: 04/12/2008 09:00 AM CDT
L.A. Lorek
Express-News Business Writer
A lone oak in front of Microsoft's massive new data center in Westover Hills symbolizes the technology company's efforts at green business practices.
It's called the "Manos" tree, named for Mike Manos, Microsoft's senior director of data center services. He ordered Turner Construction, the facility's builders, to save it.
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"Microsoft made a commitment to save and preserve the old-growth live oak trees," Manos said. "For the most part, in the area where we constructed the data center, there wasn't any old-growth oaks except for one — dead center in the middle of the construction project."
So Turner's workers built the building around the tree, which covers about as much ground as a sandbox, even putting up concrete barriers at times to save it. They also successfully saved dozens of old oak trees on the perimeter of the 44-acre site. Those trees will help shade the 470,000-square-foot building and reduce cooling costs.
In just a few months, Microsoft's new data center will go live. Turner and its subcontractor are on track to finish the first phase by July 31 and complete the entire building by Nov. 30, said Steven Ford, senior program manager for Microsoft's data center services. As the construction project comes to an end, Microsoft is halfway through hiring its 75 employees.
Microsoft's data center is one of the biggest construction projects to come to San Antonio in recent years. The entire project costs $550 million and has created more than 1,500 construction jobs. Most of the subcontractors came from Texas companies including 40 San Antonio businesses and 78 others statewide. San Antonio officials also granted the company $32.6 million in tax abatements and other local incentives to locate here.
Even while work comes to completion on one-half of the building, the site bustles with construction activity with bulldozers moving mounds of dirt and rock to create parking lots and the driveway. Altogether, construction workers moved 300,000 cubic yards of limestone during the entire construction process, Ford said. Because of the site's terrain, they had to raise the center's south wall 28 feet and the north wall almost 42 feet, he said.
San Antonio's inexpensive power, excellent telecommunications infrastructure, recycled water program and a stable environment appeals to Microsoft and other technology companies, said Mario Hernandez, president of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.
Since Microsoft announced its project in January 2007, four other data center projects have announced projects, and Hernandez expects more announcements shortly. He is working with eight more data center prospects.
"When you're touted as one of the premier sites for data centers, it sends a message to other companies," Hernandez said. He just got back from meeting with high-tech companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco that wanted to know more about San Antonio's data center industry.
"It's doing wonders for us around the country as far as our profile goes," Hernandez said.
Robert Peché, the city's economic development director, echoed that sentiment.
"When you can talk about companies like Microsoft, AT&T and Valero being in your community, that just sends a wonderful message," Peché said. "It's an endorsement of San Antonio as a good place to do business."
Microsoft's mammoth building looks like a mirror image of its first built-to-suit data center in Quincy, Wash., but it has a lot of incremental improvements over that facility simply because Microsoft has learned through the process how to design the center more efficiently, Manos said. Those improvements include the ways the servers are laid out in the rooms, the lighting in the building and other materials used for construction.
From the outside, though, it looks similar. It resembles a giant warehouse with 600,000-gallon water storage tanks on either side.
In addition to the conservation of trees, Microsoft has other green initiatives under way, such as plans to use an estimated 6 million to 8 million gallons a month of gray water or recycled water from the San Antonio Water System.
Inside, the data center contains a labyrinth of corridors leading to the brains of Microsoft's Internet operations. That's a series of five secure rooms containing thousands of computer servers that deliver up Web pages, photos, videos, instant messages, e-mails and software programs.
