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April 2005 - Posts

Friday, April 29, 2005 2:03 PM

How Microsoft is using Virtual Server

Many of you would like to know how Virtual Server is being used at Microsoft. Here's a response from Jeff Woolsey, Lead Program Manager for virtualization. Thanks Jeff! Virtual Server is being used in a variety of ways at Microsoft, including for test
Posted by megand | 379 Comments
Friday, April 29, 2005 11:46 AM

Tip: Opening the Administration Website over a remote connection

If you're connected to Virtual Server over a Terminal Services or Remote Desktop connection, you'll get a "Page cannot be displayed" error if you try to launch the Administration Website from the shortcut on the Start menu. Instead, you can provide this
Posted by megand | 4 Comments
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Friday, April 29, 2005 10:55 AM

Tip: Turning off the virtual machine beep

If you want to turn off the beep that sounds when you turn on a virtual machine, you can run the following two commands. The first stops the BEEP service and the second disables it on subsequent reboots. net stop beep sc config beep start= disabled (Be
Posted by megand | 4 Comments
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Friday, April 29, 2005 9:04 AM

Tip: Speeding up application installation

If you want your applications to install more quickly in a virtual machine, do this: After you install the guest operating system, install Virtual Machine Additions, restart the virtual machine, and then install the applications.
Posted by megand | 183 Comments
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Thursday, April 28, 2005 7:21 PM

Tip: How an app can discover it's running in a virtual machine

Here's a tip from Paul Adare (author of Paul's Digital Lounge and Cigar Bar ). If you want an application to discover it's running in a virtual machine, you can do the following: You could query the registry for the existence of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Virtual
Posted by megand | 532 Comments
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Thursday, April 28, 2005 7:09 PM

Tip: Changing a VHD from IDE to SCSI

You can easily change your virtual hard disk (VHD) attachment from IDE to SCSI: Shut down the guest operating system. Add a SCSI adapter to the virtual machine, if one isn't already available (under "Virtual Machine" Configuration, click SCSI adapters
Posted by megand | 5 Comments
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:52 PM

Steve Ballmer on Microsoft's virtualization strategy

In his keynote address this morning at Microsoft Management Summit 2005, Steve Ballmer reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), of which virtualization is a key component. Ballmer explained that Microsoft is increasing
Posted by megand | 1 Comments
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 11:46 AM

Announcing Virtual Server 2005 SP1 Beta

This morning at Microsoft Management Summit 2005, Steve Ballmer announced the availability of Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta. To view an on-demand Web cast of Steve's talk (including Jeff Woolsey's demonstration of Virtual Server 2005 SP1),
Posted by megand | 41 Comments
Friday, April 15, 2005 6:08 PM

VirtualStrategy Magazine interview: PowerRecon

Platespin CEO, Stephen Pollack, talked to VirtualStrategy Magazine about PowerRecon, Platespin's new tool for consolidation planning. Read all about it at http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/778/1/2/ .
Posted by megand | 3 Comments
Friday, April 15, 2005 11:32 AM

Announcing Virtual Server Deployment Manager (VSDM) 1.3.0

Finally, this very cool tool created by Nelson Araujo is available as a free download from Microsoft (it was demo'd last year at TechEd in WINIL401). VSDM manages a virtual library of templates and ISO images and provides a streamlined way to manage and
Posted by megand | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 14, 2005 7:15 PM

MOM report for evaluating virtualization candidates

Chong Lee and Thomas Mathew -- Technology Specialists here at Microsoft -- are developing a report that you can load into Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) to monitor the performance of physical computers that are candidates for virtualization.
Posted by megand | 2 Comments
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 4:07 PM

New e-learning course on Virtual Server 2005

Title: Course 2288: Using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 Course Type: Self-paced course Available Offline: Yes Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours Description: This course prepares students to migrate legacy applications and consolidate server functions
Posted by megand | (Comments Off)
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 2:07 PM

New e-learning course on Virtual Server 2005

Title: Course 2288: Using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 Course Type: Self-paced course Available Offline: Yes Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours Description: This course prepares students to migrate legacy applications and consolidate server functions
Posted by megand | 23 Comments
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005 4:07 PM

New e-learning course on Virtual Server 2005

Title: Course 2288: Using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 Course Type: Self-paced course Available Offline: Yes Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours Description: This course prepares students to migrate legacy applications and consolidate server functions
Posted by megand | (Comments Off)
Tuesday, April 12, 2005 8:21 PM

Warm backup and restore scripts

I just posted two scripts from John Kelbley, a technical specialist at Microsoft. They are examples of scripts you can write to perform a warm backup of your virtual machines and restore them to a different instance of Virtual Server. You'll find them
Posted by megand | 127 Comments
Tuesday, April 12, 2005 1:43 PM

Read my draft whitepaper on Virtual Server versus Virtual PC

I just posted a new article: a draft whitepaper that I'm writing to compare Virtual Server and Virtual PC ( http://blogs.technet.com/megand/articles/category/8232.aspx ). If you read it, I'd appreciate hearing your comments and suggestions. Update: This
Posted by megand | 2 Comments
Thursday, April 07, 2005 4:26 PM

Just released: Virtual Server Management Pack for MOM 2005

This Management Pack is an add-on for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005. It monitors the health, availability, and performance of Virtual Server. You can download it from the Microsoft Web site at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B8BBF08F-134A-46CE-9D63-FB7EF5258059&displaylang=en
Posted by megand | 1 Comments
Wednesday, April 06, 2005 8:05 PM

New article on estimating system capacity

I just posted an article on figuring out how much system capacity a host computer will need in order to run a given set of virtual machines. You can find it in the Deployment section ( http://blogs.technet.com/megand/articles/category/8299.aspx ). Happy
Posted by megand | 5 Comments
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005 2:08 PM

Learn about Virtual Server at TechEd 2005

TechEd 2005 is coming right up, from June 5 - 10 in Orlando, FL, US. Register before April 15 to save $300. The following are some breakout sessions and hands-on labs where you can learn more about using Virtual Server and Virtual PC: Consolidating and
Posted by megand | 2 Comments
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Monday, April 04, 2005 8:18 PM

Windows Server 2003 SP1 as a guest operating system

As you may know, Windows Server 2003 SP1 has been released, and a lot of people will be rushing to upgrade their virtual machines. If you're thinking about doing this, though, plan on postponing it for a bit. Virtual Server 2005 was released many months
Posted by megand | 5 Comments
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Monday, April 04, 2005 8:04 PM

Backing up your virtual machines

Mikko wants to know about best practices for backing up virtual machines. Well Mikko, according to Jeff Woolsey, a Virtual Server Program Manager, there are two ways to backup a virtual machine. Both have pros and cons, so you'll need to determine which
Posted by megand | 13 Comments
Friday, April 01, 2005 1:13 PM

A few technical glitches

You may have noticed that this blog is now published on TechNet rather than MSDN. It has been moved so it will be more discoverable by IT Pro readers. You may also have noticed that there have been a few minor glitches in the transition. The biggest one
Posted by megand | 19 Comments
 
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