Click on a link below to launch an interactive guided lab that will help you evaluate the Microsoft private cloud core capabilities of Infrastructure Management, Service Delivery & Automation, and Application Management.

The following guided labs require Silverlight.

Guided Labs

Lab 1: Provide Resources through self-service requests

This demo addresses creating and publishing new requests for cloud capacity resources in a service catalog and requesting new cloud resources with the service request form.
View Lab 1 as .wmv | View Lab 1 script as .pdf

Lab 2: Drive consistent service delivery

This demo addresses showing a request being routed to the Virtual Machine Manager administrator for fulfillment, demonstrating integration to drive systems automation, and showing process management for delivery of service.
View Lab 2 as .wmv | View Lab 2 script as .pdf

Lab 3: Provision additional cloud infrastructure

This demo addresses performing a bare-metal deployment of a Microsoft Hyper-V host, creating a new logical network and IP pool, and adding a new host to an existing cluster.
View Lab 3: as .wmv | View Lab 3: script as .pdf

Lab 4: Delegate cloud resources

This demo addresses creating private cloud resources and creating and modifying a user role.
View Lab 4 as .wmv | View Lab 4 script as .pdf

Lab 5: Create consistency through service templates

This demo addresses creating a virtual machine template, adding an application, and creating a service template with Service Designer, a component of Microsoft System Center 2012.
View Lab 5 as .wmv | View Lab 5 script as .pdf

Lab 6: Perform a standardized application deployment to test

This demo addresses configuring a service deployment and deploying the service.
View Lab 6 as .wmv | View Lab 6 script as .pdf

Lab 7: Stage application resources

This demo addresses using the App Controller component of Microsoft System Center 2012 to manage application resources.
View Lab 7 as .wmv | View Lab 7 script as .pdf

Lab 8: Self-service deployment of an application to a production environment

This demo addresses deploying a new application and exploring dynamic, on-demand configuration options.
View Lab 8 as .wmv | View Lab 8 script as .pdf

Lab 9: Gain insight and visibility through reporting

This demo addresses accessing reports in Service Manager and creating and sharing reports.
View Lab 9 as .wmv | View Lab 9 script as .pdf

Lab 10: Monitor infrastructure

This demo addresses network monitoring and visualization and reporting.
View Lab 10 as .wmv | View Lab 10 script as .pdf

Lab 11: Taking corrective actions in the infrastructure

This demo addresses seeing a holistic view of cloud and network health and performing an automated remediation.
View Lab 11 as .wmv | View Lab 11 script as .pdf

Lab 12: Reduce time to resolution with application performance monitoring

This demo addresses configuring application performance monitoring, creating a dashboard, and gaining deeper application insight.
View Lab 12 as .wmv | View Lab 12 script as .pdf

Lab 13: Deploy an update to service instance

This demo addresses modifying a service template and applying an in-place update.
View Lab 13 as .wmv | View Lab 13 script as .pdf

Lab 14: Explore creating dashboards

This demo addresses creating private cloud resources and creating and modifying a user role.
View Lab 14 as .wmv | View Lab 14 script as .pdf

Next Steps

Build a Microsoft private cloud using free trial software

Review licensing and purchasing options

How to buy a Microsoft private cloud

Hello Partners!

Make sure that you check out the Partner Learning Plans site and register for all the Server 2012 on-demand training for Windows Server 2012.

http://www.microsoftlearningplans.com/

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

The Infrastructure Planning and Design team is working on a new guide:System Center 2012 - Operations Manager. Get the beta by visiting the Connect website athttps://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1587&InvitationID=IPDM-QX6H-7TTV&SiteID=14.

This guide outlines the infrastructure design elements that are crucial to a successful implementation of Operations Manager. It guides you through the process of designing components, layout, and connectivity in a logical, sequential order. You’ll find easy-to-follow steps on identification and design of the required management groups, helping you to optimize the management infrastructure.

Download the Beta!Get theInfrastructure Planning and Design Guide for System Center 2012 - Operations Managerby visiting the Microsoft Connect website athttps://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1587&InvitationID=IPDM-QX6H-7TTV&SiteID=14.

Tell us what you think! Download and review the beta guide and then send your feedback toIPDfdbk@microsoft.com byAugust 29th, 2012. We would especially appreciate feedback in the following areas:

• Usefulness– Is the technical depth of this guide sufficient for the topics covered? Will this guide be useful to you on a day-to-day basis? What portions of the guide are the most useful to your organization?
• Usability– Is the structure or flow of this guide effective? Is the information presented in a clear and logical manner? Can you easily find key content?
• Impact– Do you anticipate that this guide will save you time and accelerate deployment of Microsoft products in your organization? Has this guide had a positive influence on your opinion of the Microsoft technologies it addresses?

Benefits for participation:

• You get an early look at the guide.
• You will be listed on the acknowledgments page for providing usable feedback.

We look forward to hearing from you! Your input helps to make each guide as useful as possible. Thanks in advance for taking the time to review theInfrastructure Planning and Design Guide for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager.

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.

Join the 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.

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 that the Infrastructure Planning and Design team has to offer! Visit the IPD page on TechNet,www.microsoft.com/ipd, for additional information, including our most recent guides.

One of the great new features in Windows Server 2012 is Data Deduplication.   There’s a cool tool that allows you to see what kind of savings you’d get on a particular volume.  You can see more details on dedup, including this feature here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831700.aspx

When the deduplication feature is installed, the DDPEval.exe tool is automatically installed to the \Windows\System32\ directory. This tool can be copied from any Windows Server® 2012 installation and then run on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 systems to determine the expected savings that you would get if deduplication was enabled on a particular volume.

DDPEval.exe can be run using the following command syntax for any given folder. DDPEval.exe supports local drives and also supports evaluating mapped or unmapped remote shares.

One folder that you’d want to try this one for sure is your VMM Library.  Here’s what happened with mine.  Definitely something to think about as you start installing Server 2012 and System Center 2012.  Since VMM 2012 SP1 requires installation on Server 2012, you might want to consider a dedicated volume for the VMM library (if you don’t do that already) and enable dedup.

In my case, I have almost 100GB in my library.  Dedup optimized that to around 16GB at a 82% space savings!