In my post yesterday I spoke about virtualisation candidates (amongst other things) and how we now know what loads and systems are viable.  Have a look at the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) tool.  Its the tool for identifying candidates.  There is also a nice video demo from Baldwin Ng, showing the tool in action.  The tool will remotely gather information regarding your enterprise without installing agents.  The MAP tool then generates a candidacy report(s) that can be used to justify the investment including the hardware requirements for your virtualisation environment. 

Note: The RTM version of MAP v3.0 only includes Virtual Server 2005.  You will need MAP v3.1 Beta for Hyper-V.  Check out this posting for details on joining the beta.  It is still worth running the MAP v3.0 against your environments as virtualisation candidates should be the same regardless.

I recently gave an overview of NAP at a Windows Server 2008 event.  For the purposes of the event I focused and demo’d DHCP enforcement.  From some customers DHCP enforcement was not enough.  What about 802.1x enforcement ?  Our pals on the NAP team have already blogged this (quite sometime back) as an introduction to what the real world options are.  Check it out : NAP 802.1x enforcement.  I’d also point you in the direction of the Step by Step lab guide.

For a real world view of NAP in action with Cisco switches check out Michael Kleefs blog here.  When I asked about real world implementations Michael's demos where recommended.

While on the topic of NAP…. I was also asked about how much traffic does it generate.  Yet again Michael Kleef had the answers.

Update:  No sooner had I posted this (7 minutes after to be exact) Jeff Sigman (NAP guru) commented that he setup a rack with 10+ switches.  Check out his posting http://blogs.technet.com/nap/archive/2008/04/15/video-nap-world-tour-rsa-2008-san-francisco.aspx.  How is that for fast information update! :)

Since Vista RTM’d people have complained to me about UAC (User Account Control) and how often they get warnings and popup’s.  They just never seemed to get the point of it.  I leave it on for all my Vista machines, even the VMs and even during demos to customers.  Why?  Easy.  It protects my system from drive by style installations or modifications to my Vista machines.  Its never really proven to be a hindrance to me, even during demos.

A colleague of mine tipped me off to the following articles.

PCWorld

Reading them was quite interesting.  Tests showed that with UAC on, root kits couldn’t install themselves on Vista without alerting the user.  No silently slipping onto the OS.  However, its the comments at the end of each article that really intrigue me.  Some people think Microsoft use UAC as a way of avoiding responsibility.  Others, and rightly so in my mind, point out that the best you can do is warn/alert a user that something is attempting to modify their system … but if they don’t take the time to even read what’s on screen malware will always find its way onto a system.  Software will always have its flaws.

UAC isn’t just about stopping malware … its about protecting users from themselves.  It would appear that you can lead a horse to water but you cant’ stop it clicking continue, ok, yes I’m sure, no problem and diving right in.

I’ve had a lot of interest in Hyper-V from customers and quite a few questions too.  One of the most common being, “Who is using it in a production environment?”.  Up until now I didn't have an answer. … but now I do.

Microsoft are now running the MSDN and TechNet sites on Hyper-V.  So, putting that in context, that’s over 4 million hits a day (1 million for TechNet and 3 million for MSDN).  This implementation also puts in context what sort of work loads Hyper-V can support.  Granted there was a performance overhead for running in a virtual environment when compared with the loads the physical boxes could handle but that’s part of parcel of virtualisation.

More info can be found on Virtualization.info or indeed on our Virtualisation blog here.

Check out the posting on the Windows Virtualization Team blog here for more details.

As usual its a one way upgrade process.  Once you go forward there is no coming back! :)

Hyper-V RC0 to RC1 Upgrade Considerations
*Saved-state files are not supported between RC0 and RC1 releases of Hyper-V.  All virtual machine saved states should be discarded before upgrading to RC1, or prior to resuming virtual machines after upgrading to Hyper-V RC1. 

*Online snapshots contain virtual machine save-states and thus online snapshots taken with Hyper-V RC0 are not supported after updating to Hyper-V to RC1.  Either apply any online snapshots and shut down the VM or discard the virtual machine save state associated with the snapshot before or after the update to Hyper-V RC1.

*System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta does not support Hyper-V RC1.

*New Integration Components (ICs) must be installed for your supported guest operating systems.  Integration Components are specific to the build of Hyper-V.  RC1 Integration Components for all supported Windows Operating Systems are provided using the ‘Action’ -> ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’ action.

RC1 Integration Components for all supported Windows Operating Systems are now part of the IC Setup Disk.  This now includes Windows Server 2008!  Simply install the Hyper-V RC1 Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 the same way you do all other Windows ICs (‘Action’ -> ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’). 
Note You need to close the found new hardware wizard before setup will begin on all Windows Operating Systems.

Improvements Over Hyper-V RC0
In addition to bug fixes and stability improvements we also made some additional changes largely based on feedback from customers, I might have missed a few I’ll add to this list if so…
   *Integration Components For Windows Server 2008 guest’s included in Integration Services Setup Disk
   *New Graphics for Hyper-V Manager and Virtual Machine Connection – including a “Now” icon in the snapshot pane
   *IPv4 Address Migration - when creating a new Virtual Network bound to an adapter with a static IPv4 address the IPv4 settings are migrated to the new virtual adapter

I'm just about to update my own Hyper-V installation so fingers crossed.