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Hi all,

I recently had a chat with the TechNet web site team and they make me aware of a very cool Social Bookmarking site (on preview).  What is social bookmarking?  It's quite simple - think of it as a way to share your Internet Explorer favorites via the "cloud" with your friends and colleagues around the world.

For example, you can tag sites like my blog here (Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Team Blog) or the Virtualization TechNet Solution Center site with the tag "hyperv" or "virtualization."  Other viewers may do the same tagging on the same.

What a great way to share, right?  Give it a try now!  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/

Baldwin

 
Hi,

If you haven't heard about the Microsoft Virtualization Global Launch Event, it's not too late.  Check out this Virtualization Launch Registration link and sign up today.  This event is scheduled for September 8, 2008 in Bellevue, Washington (near Redmond).

Don't miss this opportunity to hear from the virtualization experts from Microsoft product teams (Hyper-V, App-V, TS, SCVMM, etc) and Microsoft's partners.  Register now!  Our Virtualization Solution Accelerators team will also be hosting a booth in the Pavillion area.  We look forward to meeting you and show you the power of virtualization! 

Baldwin 

Check out this new OS from Microsoft called Mojave!  Once you like Mojave, use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit to check if your company's PCs are ready to make the move.

Trust me on this - you'll be pleasantly surprised!  :-)

Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft)

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. are announcing an incremental investment in their relationship to meet accelerating customer demand for their business model solution, which is designed to build a bridge between open source and proprietary software to deliver interoperability and intellectual property (IP) peace of mind for organizations operating mixed-source IT environments.

The investment focuses on enhanced programs from Novell to provide tools, support, training and resources for customers seeking an enterprise-class Linux* platform and specifically, the optimal interoperability solution between Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server from Novell®. It also includes Microsoft’s commitment to purchase up to $100 million in certificates that those customers can redeem for expanded support from Novell that includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support and support for moving toward an enterprise-class Linux platform. The investments will take effect Nov. 1, 2008, and between now and then Microsoft and Novell will solicit customer input and identify aspects of the support programs that will be most useful to organizations running mixed-source environments.

Cheers,

Baldwin

 

Not too long ago, I caught up with Fergus Stewart, Sr. Program Manager from the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides Team, and talked about his IT background and his latest project called Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for SCVMM 2008 (System Center Virtual Machine Manager).  Here's our conversation...

MAP Team:   Fergus, where are you from?
Fergus:         I am originally from the UK - Northwest England to be specific.  The weather there is very much like Seattle and we often needed to wear a sweater during the summer days.  I subsequently moved to Hong Kong and grew up there.

MAP Team:   Interesting.  So, tell us more about your background?  How did you get involved with IT?
Fergus:         I started my career at IBM in the UK working with enterprise customers from the insurance and manufacturing sectors.  Later on, I moved to the US on assignment to work in  IBM’s Redbooks group, where I developed a lot of guidance for IT professionals.  Before joining Microsoft, I also worked at Tivoli as a Technical Evangelist and Product Manager for System Management solutions for 7 years.

MAP Team:   What brought you to Microsoft then?
Fergus:         About 2 years ago, I had an opportunity to join the System Center product team as a Product Manager and a year later, I moved to the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team to develop guidance documentation called Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides. 

MAP Team:   I see.  For our reader's benefit, can you give us a quick summary on what the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides project is about?  How does it benefit an IT professional?
Fergus:         Sure. The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides project is designed to accelerate the successful deployment of infrastructure solutions - mostly importantly, we want to help you do it quickly and successfully - i.e. get it right the first time!  Each IPD guide takes the reader through a set of infrastructure planning steps for technologies like Hyper-V and App-V.

MAP Team:  Can you tell us what the main goals of the IPD guides are?
Fergus:         As you know, IT professionals like your team blog's readers here are very busy people who often have to fight "fire drills" on a daily basis.  It is very important to help them plan quickly and effectively before implementing Microsoft infrastructure, so that they can get it done right first time, and not have to spend precious time changing things or fighting fires once it’s up and running. Unfortunately, in many cases, IT planning approaches are typically not found in software/product manuals.  A typical product manual or book often takes you straight to something like "Let's get started with installation of Product X" - well, assuming that you've already done your part - the planning piece.  What if you need guidance to PLAN?  That's where the IPD guides come into play.


MAP Team:   I see.  Can you give me more concrete details about the IPD guides approach?  What can we find inside a typical IPD guide?
Fergus:          Well, first, we start off the guide with definition of Business and IT Goals.  You must go through these goals and define them before implementation.  Also, each guide has a Requirements section - i.e. find out what does your IT customers need.  After the requirements collection phase, the guide covers what servers you may need, and how to size them. Let me walk you through a customer scenario to illustrate how the recently released IPD Guide for SCVMM 2008 would help speed up the planning process.

As you may know, with Hyper-V virtualization entering the virtualization market, more and more, our customers want to consolidate multiple servers onto fewer host machines.  Interestingly, before virtualization/consolidation, individual servers were managed and owned by individual business group within the organization. 

Now, using Hyper-V consolidation, different business groups (say Accounting and Finance) may co-own the same physical machines (as hosts).  So how do you ensure solid performance and manage these virtual machines effortlessly?  The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) and System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Ops Manager) products provide the answer. 

However, very importantly, if they want to manage their virtual machines with an integrated Operations Manager and SCVMM experience, you will need to carefully plan how you deploy Operations Manager Management Groups and SCVMM instances for each VM host. This kind of planning guidance is the added value that you’ll find only in an IPD guide. 
We lay out the planning steps in the form of a Decision Flowchart (see picture below from the server virtualization planning guide).
 

MAP Team:  That's great.  These IPD guides sound to me are essential to any IT planning!  So where can our readers get a FREE copy of the IPD Guide for SCVMM 2008?
Fergus:        Well, you can check out this IPD Guide for SCVMM 2008 web site and learn more.

MAP Team:  Thanks Fergus.  Congratulations again to your recent release of the IPD Guide for SCVMM 2008!  It's a great addition to the Virtualization Solution Accelerators family of guidance and tools.

This topic provides the Microsoft support policies for running currently supported versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment. This topic also provides recommendations for running Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment.

Hardware virtualization software enables you to run multiple, separate operating systems concurrently on a single physical machine. Microsoft has the following three software offerings that provide hardware virtualization functionality:

  • Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technology/Microsoft Hyper-V Server: Windows Server 2008 provides 64-bit virtualization technology called Hyper-V. Hyper-V is a hypervisor: a layer of software that sits just above the hardware and beneath one or more operating systems. For more information about Hyper-V, see Virtualization and Consolidation with Hyper-V.
  • Microsoft Virtual Server: Virtual Server is software that provides server virtualization technology that was engineered for the Windows Server System platform (Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2). For more information about Microsoft Virtual Server, see the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Product Overview.
  • Microsoft Virtual PC: Virtual PC is software that lets you create separate virtual machines on your Microsoft Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a physical computer. For more information about Virtual PC, see Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Product Information.

Click here to read the full guidance on how to virtualize Exchange!

 

If you have not heard, the Microsoft Licensing team has announced new ways for you to take advantage of virtualization technologies by reassigning licenses across servers within a server farm. This applies to software licenses for certain server applications and all external connector licenses.

To learn more, download this Application Server License Mobility document that includes virtualization or visit our Microsoft Volume Licensing site today!

Baldwin

SQL Server 2008 is here!  View the short video below to see how you can quickly find all of your SQL servers and identify good candidates for migration to SQL Server 2008.

Thanks,
Baldwin Ng

PS: This is the screen-shot of the auto-generated SQL server roles report by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1.

SQL Server 2008 has just been released to manufacturing! And with the SQL Server 2000 already going out of mainstream support, it is now time to start planning for migrating your older SQL servers to SQL Server 2008!

To help you get started more quickly, Microsoft's Solution Accelerators team has developed a network-wide assessment tool called Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 (MAP Toolkit).  In short, the MAP Toolkit gives you a way to quickly discover all of your servers across your data centers and/or branch offices.  In addition, it offers you to ability to identify which ones are good candidates for SQL Server 2008 migration - e.g. which of the SQL servers are installed with older versions (e.g. SQL Server 2000 or older).  This toolkit is an agent-less tool that does not require installation of agents on each of your servers and typically you will get the assessment results in just an hour or less!

Enjoy the short MAP Toolkit video demo below and learn how to use this for SQL Server 2008 migration!  And don't forget to download the MAP Toolkit right away for free and give it a try:

Thanks,
Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators)

PS: Below is a screen-shot of the auto-generated Microsoft Excel spreadsheet showing the SQL servers discovered and the different versions of SQL server software that were installed.

To all of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit users out there, you must be wondering about this...

Since MAP Toolkit is a database-driven tool, if the MAP Toolkit auto-generated reports and proposal documents do not provide the specific data I am looking for, can I create my own custom reports?  The answer is YES.  Today, we will give you some insights on how to create your own SQL queries and help you unleash the power of MAP!  Before you get started though, please make sure you have completed these pre-requisites:

  1. You must complete a run on a network with MAP Toolkit (so you will have a database to query!)
  2. You must use the MAP Toolkit instance called MAPS to do the following query using SQL Server 2005

You can create simple to very complex queries to learn all there is about each desktop, server or other devices that the MAP Toolkit has inventoried.  Here are a few of the sample queries. 

/*
*****************************************************************************************
   What MAP 3.1 inventory databases exist in this instance of SQL Server?
*****************************************************************************************
*/
 
 SELECT [name] as Database_Name
 FROM [master].[dbo].[sysdatabases]
 WHERE [dbid] > 4 and [name] <> 'SystemInfo'
 GO
 

 /*
******************************************************************************
   This is the simplest query to get all the information stored in the
   device table.  As you can see, there is lots of great information
   just in the [devices] table.
******************************************************************************
*/
 USE LUCERNE -- Or whatever database you have inventoried
 GO
 SELECT * FROM [devices]
 GO

If you're interested in finding machines that run on a specific OS, you can do this:

 SELECT [dns_host_name] AS Computer_Name,
    [operating_system] AS Operating_System,
 COALESCE([wmi_os_version], [ad_os_version],
    [net_server_enum_os_version] ) AS OS_Version,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[os_architecture] IS NULL THEN '32 bit'
    ELSE
  d.[os_architecture]
 END AS OS_Architecture
 FROM [devices] d
 WHERE [operating_system] like '%SERVER%'
 ORDER BY [operating_system], [os_architecture],[computer_system_name]
 GO

Here is a more complicated queries to get more machine-level information including BIOS, memory, service pack, etc:

 SELECT
 COALESCE([dns_host_name],[computer_system_name],
  [ad_dns_host_name], [server_name]) AS Computer_Name,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[enclosure_manufacturer] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [enclosure_manufacturer]
 END AS Manufacturer,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[model] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [model]
 END AS Model,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[operating_system] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [operating_system]
 END AS Operating_System,
 COALESCE([wmi_os_version], [ad_os_version], [net_server_enum_os_version] ) AS OS_Version,
 CASE
  WHEN [operating_system_service_pack] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [operating_system_service_pack]
 END AS Service_Pack,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[os_architecture] IS NULL THEN '32 bit'
    ELSE
  d.[os_architecture]
 END AS OS_Architecture,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[number_of_processors] IS NULL THEN '32 bit'
    ELSE
  d.[number_of_processors]
 END AS Processors,
 CASE
  WHEN d.[total_physical_memory] IS NULL THEN '32 bit'
    ELSE
  d.[total_physical_memory]
 END AS Memory,
 CASE
  WHEN [smbios_ASset_tag] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [smbios_ASset_tag]
 END AS Asset_Tag,
 CASE
  WHEN [bios_manufacturer] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [bios_manufacturer]
 END AS BIOS_Manufacturer,
 CASE
  WHEN [bios_serial_number] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [bios_serial_number]
 END AS Bios_Serial_Number,
 CASE
  WHEN [bios_version] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [bios_version]
 END AS BIOS_Version,
 CASE
  WHEN [roles] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
 ELSE
  [roles]
 END AS Roles
 FROM [devices] d
 ORDER BY [operating_system], 1
 GO

Here are a few more advanced SQL queries:

/*
********************************************************************************
   Installed Software - Here is a query to summarize what is installed
********************************************************************************
*/
 SELECT [vendor] AS Vendor,[name] as Software,[version],
    COUNT(name) AS Quantity
 FROM [products]
 GROUP BY [vendor],[name],[version]
 ORDER BY [vendor],[name],[version], Quantity

/*
******************************************************************************************
   Installed Services - Here is a query to summarize what services are running
******************************************************************************************
*/
 SELECT [caption] AS Service, [description] AS Description,
    [name] AS [Name], COUNT(state) AS Quantity
 FROM [services]
 WHERE [state] = 'Running'
 GROUP BY [caption],[description],[name]
 ORDER BY [caption],[description],[name]

/*
***********************************************************************************
   Find Machines Running Any Service
   Here is a query to find the machines that run a particular service like
   SMS or the computer browser
***********************************************************************************
*/
 SELECT
 COALESCE(d.[dns_host_name],d.[computer_system_name],
  d.[ad_dns_host_name], d.[server_name]) AS Computer_Name
 FROM [devices] d
 INNER JOIN [services] s ON d.[device_number] = s.[device_number]
 WHERE s.[name] = 'CcmExec' -- SMS Agent Name
-- **********************************************************************************************************
 SELECT
 COALESCE(d.[dns_host_name],d.[computer_system_name],
  d.[ad_dns_host_name], d.[server_name]) AS Computer_Name,
 s.[name] as Name, s.[description] AS [Description]
 FROM [devices] d
 INNER JOIN [services] s ON d.[device_number] = s.[device_number]
 WHERE s.[name] = 'Browser' -- Windows Browser

Lastly, you can also create a custom security assessment report on inventoried desktop machines, for example, using this SQL query - it's slightly more complicated.  :-)

/*
**************************************************************************
   Custom Security Reporting
   Here is a little more complicated query that gives you a custom
   security report
**************************************************************************
*/
  DECLARE @unknown nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @ComputerName nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @SecurityCenterAssessment nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @WMIStatus nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @CurrentOperatingSystem nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @ServicePackLevel nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @MachineType nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @Virtual nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @Physical nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @ScNotRunning nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @AvNotFound nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @AvNotEnabled nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @AspyNotFound nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @AspyNotEnabled nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @FwNotFound nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @FwNotEnabled nvarchar(max)
  DECLARE @culture_info nvarchar(max)
  SET @culture_info = 'US-en'
  SET @unknown = dbo.get_str(2003, @culture_info)
  SET @ComputerName = dbo.get_str(2068, @culture_info)
  SET @SecurityCenterAssessment = dbo.get_str(3700, @culture_info)
  SET @WMIStatus = dbo.get_str(2069, @culture_info)
  SET @CurrentOperatingSystem = dbo.get_str(2072, @culture_info)
  SET @ServicePackLevel = dbo.get_str(2073, @culture_info)
  SET @ScNotRunning = dbo.get_str(3701, @culture_info)
  SET @AvNotFound = dbo.get_str(3702, @culture_info)
  SET @AvNotEnabled = dbo.get_str(3703, @culture_info)
  SET @AspyNotFound = dbo.get_str(3704, @culture_info)
  SET @AspyNotEnabled = dbo.get_str(3705, @culture_info)
  SET @FwNotFound = dbo.get_str(3706, @culture_info)
  SET @FwNotEnabled = dbo.get_str(3707, @culture_info)
  SET @MachineType = dbo.get_str(3708, @culture_info)
  SET @Virtual = dbo.get_str(3710, @culture_info)
  SET @Physical = dbo.get_str(3709, @culture_info)
  CREATE TABLE #TempCustomSecurity
  (
    computer_name    nvarchar(255) NULL,
    manufacturer     nvarchar(255) NULL,
    model      nvarchar(255) NULL,
    operating_system    nvarchar(255) NULL,
    os_version     nvarchar(255) NULL,
    device_number       uniqueidentifier NOT NULL,
    security_assessment nvarchar(255) NULL,
    machine_type     tinyint
  )
  INSERT INTO #TempCustomSecurity (
   computer_name,
   manufacturer,
   model,
   operating_system,
   os_version,
   device_number,
   security_assessment,
   machine_type
  )
  SELECT
  COALESCE(d.[dns_host_name],d.[computer_system_name],
   d.[ad_dns_host_name], d.[server_name]) AS Computer_Name,
  CASE
   WHEN d.[enclosure_manufacturer] IS NULL THEN 'Unknown'
  ELSE
   d.[enclosure_manufacturer]
  END AS Manufacturer,
  d.[model] as Model,
  d.[operating_system] AS Operating_System,
  COALESCE([wmi_os_version], [ad_os_version], [net_server_enum_os_version] ) AS OS_Version,
     d.device_number,
     CASE
    WHEN COALESCE(d.wmi_scan_result, 1) != 0
      /* WMI scan failed so we don't have sufficient data for assessment */
      THEN @unknown + CHAR(10)
    ELSE
      (CASE
      /* Security Center Service isn't running */
      WHEN svc1.device_number IS NULL OR
        svc1.state != 'Running' OR
        svc1.status != 'OK'
     THEN @ScNotRunning + CHAR(10)
      ELSE
     /*
      * Security Center Service is running, so now we check AV, AS, and
      * firewall individually.
      *
      * Antivirus
      */
     (CASE
        WHEN avs.instance_guid IS NULL
       THEN @AvNotFound + CHAR(10)
        WHEN COALESCE(avs.on_access_scanning_enabled, 0) = 0
       THEN @AvNotEnabled + CHAR(10)
        ELSE ''
      END) +
     /* Antispyware */
     (CASE
        /* XP >= SP2 */
        WHEN dbo.IsDeviceRunningXP(d.device_number) = 1 AND
       COALESCE(d.service_pack_major_version, 0) >= 2
       THEN
         (CASE
         WHEN svc3.device_number IS NULL
        THEN @AspyNotFound + CHAR(10)
         WHEN COALESCE(svc3.state, '') != 'Running' OR
           COALESCE(svc3.status, '') != 'OK'
        THEN @AspyNotEnabled + CHAR(10)
         ELSE ''
       END)
        /* Vista >= SP1 */
        WHEN dbo.IsDeviceRunningVista(d.device_number) = 1 AND
       COALESCE(d.service_pack_major_version, 0) >= 1
       THEN
         (CASE
         WHEN aspys.instance_guid IS NULL
        THEN @AspyNotFound + CHAR(10)
         WHEN (COALESCE(aspys.product_state, 0) & 61440 /* 0xF000 */) = 0
        THEN @AspyNotEnabled + CHAR(10)
         ELSE ''
       END)
        /*
      * All other client platforms.  Note that anything below XP SP2
      * will fall under the Security Center Service not running case,
      * so this case should only apply to Vista RTM.
      */
        ELSE
       (CASE
       WHEN aspys.instance_guid IS NULL
         THEN @AspyNotFound + CHAR(10)
       WHEN COALESCE(aspys.product_enabled, 0) = 0
         THEN @AspyNotEnabled + CHAR(10)
       ELSE ''
        END)
      END) +
     /* Windows Firewall */
     (CASE
        WHEN fws.instance_guid IS NULL AND
       svc2.device_number IS NULL
       THEN @FwNotFound + CHAR(10)
        WHEN COALESCE(fws.enabled, 0) = 0 AND
       (COALESCE(svc2.state, '') != 'Running' OR
        COALESCE(svc2.status, '') != 'OK')
       THEN @FwNotEnabled + CHAR(10)
        ELSE ''
      END)
    END)
     END,
     h.[machine_type]
   FROM
     dbo.devices d
    INNER JOIN
     dbo.hardware_assessment_clients_include_vm h
    ON d.device_number = h.device_number
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.services svc1
    ON d.device_number = svc1.device_number AND
    LOWER(svc1.name) = 'wscsvc'   /* Windows Security Center Service */
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.services svc2
    ON d.device_number = svc2.device_number AND
    LOWER(svc2.name) = 'mpssvc'   /* Windows Firewall Service */
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.services svc3
    ON d.device_number = svc3.device_number AND
    LOWER(svc3.name) = 'windefend'/* Windows Defender */
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.antivirus_settings avs
    ON d.device_number = avs.device_number
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.antispyware_settings aspys
    ON d.device_number = aspys.device_number
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
     dbo.firewall_settings fws
    ON d.device_number = fws.device_number

 SELECT [computer_name] AS Computer_Name,
   [manufacturer] AS Manufacturer,
   [model] AS Model,
   [operating_system] AS Operating_System,
   [os_version] AS OS_Version,
   [security_assessment] AS Security_Information,
   CASE
  WHEN [machine_type] = 0 THEN 'Physical Machine'
  WHEN [machine_type] = 1 THEN 'Virtual Machine'
   ELSE
  'Unknown'
   END AS Machine_Type
 FROM #TempCustomSecurity tcs
 ORDER BY Computer_Name
 DROP TABLE #TempCustomSecurity

 To learn more about MAP Toolkit, please check out these links or take a test drive of MAP yourself:

Cheers,
Baldwin

Want to learn how to determine if your networked PCs are ready for Windows Vista?  Need to know if your PCs are secured (e.g. Are their Windows Firewall turned off? Is anti-virus software not installed?)

Check out this short video to see how the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 (MAP) can help you save time in OS migration planning and get secured! 

Baldwin

Hi,

Reporting live from the Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 (Houston, Texas) - I am pleased to announce the launch of 3 brand new Virtualization Solution Accelerators from Microsoft.  Solution Accelerators are free tools and technical guidance that are made available to Microsoft partners and customers to help accelerate IT planning, delivery, and on-going operations.

What's New?

Check out LIVE Video Interview (courtesy of VARVID.com) below:

Thanks,
Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit + Virtualization Solution Accelerators)

 

A few weeks ago at TechEd North America, Kevin Remde, IT Pro Evangelist from Microsoft, got together with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit team (Jay Sauls and myself) to discuss the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 program and how the MAP Toolkit helps IT professionals and consultants accelerate their IT planning process for Virtualization (e.g. Hyper-V) and OS migration projects (e.g. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008).

Enjoy the video!  You can either view it on this page or click here: http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_ITP_techtalk_107_low.asx )

Cheers,

Baldwin Ng

PS: To view the interview on this page, you need to click the "Start" button, wait for a few seconds, click "Start" again and then the small "Play" button below.

The wait is over!  The much-anticipated Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 (MAP) has now been released to the web.  Formerly known as Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, this new release is now packed with many new features such as:

  • Hyper-V virtualization candidates assessment (+ improved virtual machines inventory)
  • SQL server discovery and assessment
  • 64-bit installation support
  • Desktop Windows Security Center assessment

For those of you who are new to the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP), in a nutshell, MAP is basically a network-wide agent-less tool that can help you quickly find out where your desktops and servers are and then it would auto-generate upgrade recommendations for multiple products and technologies including server, desktop and virtualizatoin migration scenarios covering:

  • Windows Vista hardware and device compatibility assessment
  • Office 2007 hardware compatibility assessment
  • Windows Server 2008 hardware and device compatibility assessment
  • Microsoft Application Virtualization hardware compatibility assessment
  • SNMP inventory reporting
  • And the MAP 3.1 feature list above including Hyper-V and SQL Server

Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 RTM version now at:

Or learn more about the MAP Toolkit by visiting our other resources:

Thank you,

Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Solution Accelerators Team)

Are you thinking about virtualizing your datacenter but don't know where to start when it comes to infrastructure design?  The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides (IPD) are designed to make the IT guidance easily consumable.  Each guide will walk you through a series of key design decision trees around implementation server and virtualization implementations.  They are not long at all and it's well worth the time.

So, why wait?  Grab a nice cup of coffee and get started.  You'll definitely enjoy the brand new Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for SCVMM 2008 and other guides on Hyper-V and Terminal Services!

Download IPD Guides now!

Cheers!
Baldwin

PS: As a bonus, I'm including the IPD Guide webcast where my colleague Fergus Stewart will walk you through the IPD guides for both Hyper-V and TS scenarios.

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