From the Server App-V Product Team:

I’d like to announce that we now have a Server App-V Community Recipe Forum on TechNet. As you know, most applications can be sequenced using the Server App-V Sequencer without requiring any special steps. However, there are some third-party and Microsoft applications that require special steps in order to be properly sequenced and work with Server App-V. Recently we have been receiving requests from our customers to have one common community forum for sharing information.

We’re listening and we are glad that you are talking!  We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a new community driven Recipe Forum on Microsoft TechNet. This forum is intended for Server App-V IT Pros within the Server App-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager community to share their best practice application recipes in an effort to grow everyone’s knowledge, expertise and save each other time by learning together.

You can now view prescriptive sequencing recipes for applications that have been provided by the Server App-V community. The Community is only successful if all members are contributing. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE YOUR RECIPES TO THE COMMUNITY! We hope that even more Server App-V users will contribute and use the content on the forum to sequence more applications!

VM Recovery Tool
The stand-alone Virtual Machine Recovery Tool works with System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to temporarily remove a host, cluster, virtual machine, or service from VMM when that object is in a failed or persistent warning state due to environmental conditions, third-party applications, or other causes. After resetting the state of the object, once VMM refreshes, the object will appear as healthy in VMM. This tool does not repair a damaged or incorrectly created virtual machine or corrupt .vhd file. It deals with state information stored in the VMM database. For additional details about the tool, see Using the Virtual Machine Recovery Tool for System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

Important
This program is not a supported part of the VMM product. This program is offered “as-is”.

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA)
The VMMCA is your first line of defense in troubleshooting an issue in the System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager environment. VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that are either running VMM server roles or are acting as virtual machine hosts. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal.

Microsoft Product Support Reporting Tool (MPSRPT)
You can use the Virtual Machine Manager MPS Reporting Tool for System Center 2012 to gather detailed system status and configuration information from the VMM management server as well as all managed virtual machine hosts and VMM server roles.
The tool offers the ability to select the particular scenarios for which system configuration data will be gathered.
The Virtual Machine Manager MPS Reporting Tool for System Center 2012 gathers the following diagnostic data for the VMM management server, the virtual machine hosts and library servers that the VMM management server manages, and physical to virtual conversion (P2V) source computers:

• Virtual Machine Manager traces
• Virtual Machine Manager database
• Windows event logs and virtual server event logs
• IP address
• Virtual Machine Manager setup logs
• SQL Server setup logs
• Registry information
• Open ports information
• System Information (msinfo)

OVF Import/Export
The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a packaging standard from Distributed Management Task Force, Inc., for portability and deployment of virtual appliances. The OVF Import/Export tool consists of cmdlets that enable VMM users to import and export single virtual machines that are packaged in an OVF 1.1 complaint format. You can use the OVF Import/Export tool to import a virtual machine from other virtualization platforms (currently VMware vCenter and Citrix XenServer) or to export a virtual machine from VMM for use on another platform.

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Be sure to read the disclaimers and other notes in the download area.  Some of the programs are not a supported part of the VMM product. They are offered “as-is”.

Go get them at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29309.

The Infrastructure Planning and Design team is pleased to announce that the System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager guide is now available for download.

Download the guide now: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=245473

This guide outlines the elements that are crucial to an optimized design of Virtual Machine Manager. It leads you through a process of identifying the business and technical requirements for managing virtualization, designing integration with Operations Manager if required, and then determining the number, size, and placement of the VMM servers. This guide helps you to confidently plan for the centralized administration of physical and virtual machines.

Infrastructure Planning and Design streamlines the planning process by:

• Defining the technical decision flow through the planning process.
• Listing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
• Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
• Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.

Tell your peers about IPD guides! Please forward this mail to anyone who wants to learn more about Infrastructure Planning and Design guides.

Download the guide now: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=245473

Join the IPD Beta Program
Subscribe to the IPD beta program and we will notify you when new beta guides become available for your review and feedback. These are open beta downloads. If you are not already a member of the IPD Beta Program and would like to join, follow these steps:

1. Go here to join the IPD beta program:
   https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1587&InvitationID=IPDM-QX6H-7TTV&SiteID=14
   If the link does not work for you, copy and paste it into the web browser address bar.
2. Sign in using a valid Windows Live® ID.
3. Enter your registration information.
4. Continue to the IPD program beta page, scroll down to Infrastructure Planning and Design, and click the link to join the IPD beta program.

Stay tuned for other System Center 2012 guides releasing for beta feedback!

Already a member of the IPD beta program? Go here to get the latest IPD beta downloads:https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=6556&SiteID=14

Related Resources
Check out all the Infrastructure Planning and Design team has to offer! Visit the IPD page on TechNet,http://www.microsoft.com/ipd, for additional information, including our most recent guides.

The Microsoft® Private Cloud Fast Track Program is a joint effort between Microsoft and its hardware partners. The goal of the program is to help organizations decrease the time, complexity, and risk of implementing private clouds. The program provides:

1. Reference implementation guidance: Lab-tested and validated guidance for implementing multiple Microsoft products and technologies with hardware that meets specific, minimum, hardware vendor-agnostic requirements. Customers can use this guidance to implement a private cloud solution with hardware they already own or purchase. The guidance set consists of the following downloadable documents:
   • Reference Architecture Guide: This guide details a reference architecture that incorporates many Microsoft product and consulting team best practices. The architecture is the foundation for a highly available, scalable, secure, and manageable private cloud with high performance. While all organizations will find it of value, it will prove most useful to medium through large enterprise environments.
   • Reference Deployment Guide: This guide provides detailed installation and configuration steps to deploy the physical architecture detailed in the reference architecture guide.
   • Reference Operations Guide: This guide includes many of the operational tasks that are often executed in a private cloud environment.
2. Reference implementations: Microsoft hardware partners define physical architectures with computing, network, storage, and value-added software components that meet (or exceed) the minimum hardware requirements defined in the reference implementation guidance. Each implementation is then validated with Microsoft and made available for purchase to customers. Further details can be found by reading the information at Private Cloud How To Buy.

The customer has the choice of building the solution by using the reference implementation guidance or purchasing a reference implementation from a Microsoft hardware partner that couples the guidance with optimized hardware configurations. Although both options decrease the time, cost, and risk in implementing private clouds, purchasing a reference implementation from a Microsoft hardware partner will result in the fastest, lowest-risk solution. This is because in this option, all of the hardware and software best practice implementation choices have been determined by Microsoft and its hardware partners’ engineering teams. As a result, this will often also prove to be the most inexpensive option.

The private cloud model provides much of the efficiency and agility of cloud computing in addition to the increased control and customization that is achieved through dedicated private resources. With the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track Program, Microsoft and its hardware partners can help provide organizations with the control and flexibility required to reap the potential benefits of the private cloud.

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/jj572811

If you didn’t get a chance to attend TechEd this year…or you made it and want to review a session or grab the deck…check it out here:

 

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012