- Guest Blog: How AMD and Microsoft Help Redefine “Efficiency”
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In late September I was lucky enough to get a chance to attend Microsoft’s “New Efficiency” event in San Francisco to talk about the importance of the new products they are bringing to market – including Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. Each of these solutions brings an exciting new experience to the end user, and helps not only enhance the way they connect with their PCs, but also to target what’s most important in today’s enterprise environment: efficient computing.
As AMD’s director of commercial software, I’ve had a front row seat to the kinds of new efficiency AMD and Microsoft have been driving in the industry for years now. And, quite simply, it just keeps getting better. I was able to sit down with Vineet Thuvara, the Worldwide Launch Leader for Windows Server, to talk about just that. Check it out:
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
- Guest Blog: SQL Server Consolidation with Microsoft Virtualization
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Hello, my name is Vipul Shah and I’m a Senior Product Manager with the Virtualization Team.
Due to its ability to drive down costs and drive up resource usage, Microsoft SQL Server consolidation is top of mind for our customers these days. Microsoft virtualization, which includes Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center, is one of the well known mechanisms to enable this. Today, Ted Kummert, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Business Platform Division, released a video (click here) that outlines how virtualization enables consolidation.
So the natural question is – can we achieve higher amounts of throughput as we consolidate? Can we improve the throughput with recent advances in hardware and the recent release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V?
To address this, we recently performed tests that are discussed in the Best Practices for SQL Server Virtualization webcast (click here) and in the SQL Server Consolidation Guidance (click here).
In our tests, we ran a complex stock trading application workload on servers with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). In physical environments, the operating system translates virtual memory addresses to physical addresses. However with virtualization, we have an additional translation (the second level address translation) because you are running operating systems within virtual machines. This means additional CPU cycles are spent doing this translation. The SLAT enabled processors complete this translation within the silicon, leading to performance advantage compared with non-SLAT enabled CPUs. You get these processors from both Intel and AMD.
We chose a 16-core HP DL585 server with SLAT-enabled AMD processors with HP EVA 8000 storage running Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. We created virtual machines (VM) each with 4 virtual processors and 7 GB RAM using a fixed-sized VHD format. We started to run our workload with one VM and gradually increased the load, adding more VMs as we went along. We found that we were able to increase the throughput with consolidation. The workload scaled near-linearly up to 4 VMs consuming all of the physical cores on the server (16 cores total). Then we added even more VMs, consolidating up to 8 VMs. We over-committed virtual-processors to physical-cores ratio by 2:1. We were able to run heavy load (3000 batch requests per second), consuming about 70% CPU on the server. The tests also found that Windows Server 2008 R2 offered improved performance than the prior release as shown by the dotted red-line in the graph.
Microsoft virtualization (Hyper-V and System Center) combined with advances in hardware technology (such as SLAT-enabled technology) can provide a solid consolidation platform for production workloads using SQL Server.
Microsoft continues to work with partners to offer solutions that help our customers realize the benefits of virtualization (click here). Further guidance from our partners will be forthcoming. For more resources on virtualizing Microsoft server applications, click here.
Vipul Shah
Microsoft Virtualization Team, Senior Product Manager
- How the Microsoft and HP Agreement Impacts Virtualization
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If you haven’t heard by now, today, Microsoft and HP announced a three-year, $250 Million agreement to build a strategic partnership to simplify technology for our customers. This agreement between Microsoft and HP will result in collaborations in engineering roadmaps, prepackaged application solutions, and comprehensive virtualization offerings and integrated management tools.
To get more information on the actual announcement itself, the press releases, videos, and other details, click here.
One the key areas for the agreement is Virtualization. By working on integrating the technologies from both companies, Microsoft and HP can provide customers with a management solution that goes from Infrastructure to Application, from Cloud to Desktop. I think it’s clear that the future of IT it’s not just a discussion of physical and virtual management but how to manage IT holistically, which includes both physical and virtual infrastructure.
In the near term, the technical result of this partnership is that we’ll see data center management solutions based on both the System Center family of tools and HP’s Insight Software. This allows for heterogeneous management of data centers, integrating not just monitoring but also provisioning and maintenance of both physical and virtual systems.
Second, there are new “Smart Bundles” that bring Virtualization solutions to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), using HP Servers, Storage, and Networking along with Windows Server and Insight software, all managed with System Center Essentials (SCE) and HP Operations Center. SMBs can really benefit from virtualization and these new Smart Bundles provide a single, cost effective package for virtualization.
Over the next three years, customers can expect to see deeper integration of Insight Software and System Center, interoperability between Business Technology Optimization software with the System Center, increased collaboration on run book automation, HP and Microsoft services integrating their expertise on virtualization and cloud based implementations, and much more.
How this impacts virtualization is that the focus of this partnership is in the area I have repeatedly highlighted as the key to virtualization, management. I’m sure many have heard the phrase that virtualization without good management is worse no virtualization in the first place. This statement becomes more and more true as everyone deploys more virtualization.
Like I’ve posted many times, management of virtualization and the integration of virtualization management into the rest of IT is what should be the focus of customers. Too much focus is spent on technologies & features and too little is focused on implementation and management. In the lifecycle of your systems, you will spend more time, energy, and money on management of the systems than on the initial implementation. Great management capabilities reap benefits on a daily basis. That’s why I’m so excited about this announcement and why I think the people who benefit the most from it are customers who are implementing and will continue to implement virtualization.
Edwin Yuen
Senior Technical Product Manager – Virtualization
- Looking Back at Some Key News and Two New Whitepapers
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Hello Virtualization Planet followers! I’m back for a quick update on a couple of items from the past month a couple new ones.
First, I made what I considered a really important post right before the holidays. The post, Cutting through the FUD: Facts you should know about Hyper-V and System Center, really is a response to some of the negative attacks that I saw late last year. Now, I want to stress again that this isn’t all the articles out there (it’s really in the minority), but I felt compelled to respond. Still, I think that 2010 is going to be a good year for everyone.
Second, I think that I forgot to highlight the release of the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1. The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool provides tested guidance and automated tools to help keep virtualized machines updated, without introducing vulnerabilities into the existing IT infrastructure. The tool combines the Windows Workflow programming model with the Windows PowerShell™ interface to automatically bring groups of virtual machines online, service them with the latest security updates, and return them to an offline state. This latest version supports all our latest R2 releases and is available for download at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc501231.aspx.
Finally, I wanted to highlight two new whitepapers that have been released. They are
How Customers Are Cutting Costs and Building Value with Microsoft Virtualization: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0/2/6025DD0C-CC79-4D06-B4F6-EDAF5993CE86/HyperV-VMware-Cost-Comparison-Jan2010.pdf
In-Guest Monitoring with Microsoft System Center: http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/7/7/A77AB5C5-8ABA-4C3F-B0DB-12F51D789775/In-Guest-Monitoring-with-SC-Jan2010.pdf
You can find these two whitepapers and more like them at the Microsoft Virtualization Compare site.
Edwin Yuen
Senior Technical Product Manager – Virtualization
- More Case Studies: Companies in Norway and Switzerland Choose Microsoft Over VMware, Saving Money and Improving Efficiencies
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Happy New Year to all my readers. In keeper with the positive tone I’ve been on recently, I wanted to again highlight more case studies about Microsoft Virtualization. We recently published two case studies that exemplify the cost savings, scalability, and flexibility benefits that customers consistently realize with Microsoft virtualization. Both highlight the capabilities of Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
OTRUM is a Norwegian company that provides interactive television solutions to the hospitality industry. Although it had been using VMware, it needed a virtualization solution that was more affordable, easy to set up and scale, and simple to manage. After learning that Hyper-V was included in OTRUM’s licenses for Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, it implemented the technology, along with System Center products. By switching from VMware, OTRUM immediately saved more than NOK 50,000 (U.S.$8,775) in license fees, and will save another U.S.$20,000 over three years on VMware support costs. And, by managing its data centers from a central console, the company simplified administration of its physical and virtual server environments, saving about 20 hours per month in management time.
“Hyper-V works better than VMware. It’s easier to set up and, with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, I have a single console for managing the whole virtual environment, including one remaining VMware host… Running several servers on the same physical machine is more cost-effective. But having Hyper-V virtualization software included with our Windows Server licenses meant even greater savings.”
Mercuri Urval, a Switzerland-based international personnel and management consultancy, realized similar benefits. While the company was using virtualization technologies from VMware and Citrix, it needed to develop a new server infrastructure that would provide better performance, flexibility, and ease of use, while being cost-effective. With Windows Server 2008 Datacenter and Hyper-V, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, it can now add new virtual servers or migrate existing ones in just minutes, and activate test environments easily to test updates or new software installations.
Because Windows Server 2008 Datacenter can accommodate an unlimited number of virtual servers on each physical server, Mercuri Urval saved U.S.$48,000 on Citrix licenses, and saw an additional 35 percent cost reduction by eliminating VMware licenses and its external terminal solution.
“With Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, we developed a simple, clear, cost-effective, and scalable solution that provides our employees access to information regardless of place and time. And with the flexibility provided by Hyper-V, we can develop our IT gradually, without disrupting daily business.”
Edwin Yuen
Senior Technical Product Manager – Virtualization
- Cutting through the FUD: Facts you should know about Hyper-V and System Center
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For those who follow this blog, you have noticed that the blog is much more about Microsoft Virtualization and why you should use it and less about what is negative with the competition. While I do write and make comparisons with VMware, my goal is to promote Microsoft Virtualization.
Still, when I meet users and customers, especially at shows like TechEd EMEA and VMworld, I often get asked "why do comparison to VMware at all?" The honest answer is that we get asked for comparisons against VMware and often, we have to respond to negative attacks on Hyper-V. While it’s within anyone’s right to post their opinions on Hyper-V, lately, there has been a lot of comparisons and opinions that I feel fall into the FUD category. That’s why I felt compelled to write up something to respond.
What is FUD? I think a lot of people forget what FUD really stands for. FUD is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. FUD is when people make assertions or statements that simply are trying to scare people away from what they are attacking. FUD is not simply an argument that you don’t agree with.
I do want to make clear that not everyone is pushing FUD. There are many articles and bloggers out there, including Pro-VMware ones, that are not pushing FUD. I read many of them regularly and I respect and appreciate what they write (even if I don’t always agree :) ). Unfortunately, lately, there still seems to be articles and posts, that people keep highlighting due to their provocative titles, that are more FUD than fact.
The issue is that the FUD being spread about Hyper-V is for one purpose, to get you not to try Hyper-V and System Center. Very few of the FUD articles say something like “Try both solutions out and compare". They all basically say “It’s not worth your time to try it, trust me” or “You might try it a little but don’t deploy it as it’s very risky and your business might suffer because of it.” This goes against the most basic point that I make on my site, which is to try Microsoft Virtualization , evaluate it, deploy it for workloads, ask others who have deployed it, and see for yourself.
What I want to do today is not address specific articles on Hyper-V. I want to address a couple of key facts to help sort through the FUD that is being posted. So let’s start:
- You do not need to remove or replace your existing VMware installation to deploy Hyper-V
This is probably the most important fact that seems to be missing when reading the FUD articles. Those articles work on the premise that you have to dump your VMware investment, that the Microsoft solution requires you to remove your VMware systems.
At the most basic level, you can deploy Hyper-V and Microsoft Virtualization side by side with any VMware installation. Virtualization is a growing technology and there are plenty of opportunities in most businesses to deploy both hypervisors. It is NOT an all or nothing proposition.
More importantly, the management stack for Microsoft Virtualization supports managing VMware systems also. Virtual Machine Manager supports managing VMware servers and the integration points to the rest of System Center allow you to take advantage of the features of Microsoft Virtualization Management, even if you only have VMware and do not deploy Hyper-V. And it’s not just about managing and integrating VMware with System Center, but also providing key Microsoft unique features such as In-Guest Monitoring, End to End, Physical to Virtual to Application Level management, and advanced features such as Performance Resource Optimization (PRO). In a VMware environment, Microsoft System Center is a compliment to the existing VMware infrastructure, not a replacement for the VMware tools.
In fact, if your organization already uses Windows Server or System Center, you may already have the infrastructure to deploy and manage Hyper-V. Microsoft Virtualization is built so that it doesn’t require you to build an entire new IT infrastructure to support it. Rather, it leverages as much of your existing IT infrastructures as possible, whether it be physical or virtual, Microsoft or VMware, or even Desktop or Server. Trying out Hyper-V and Microsoft Virtualization is easy to do.
- Hyper-V is Enterprise Ready
There seem to be a lot of people out there that have what I call checkbox-itis. Checkbox-itis is the tendency to focus on feature checkboxes rather than on features and business cases that apply to real deployments. Checkbox-itis often is used by those who try to tell you what is “Enterprise-ready” based on feature sets they feel are important.
Hyper-V and the rest of Microsoft Virtualization is “Enterprise ready” for hundreds of companies today. You can read the case studies on our site for some great examples of that. The features and capabilities of Microsoft Virtualization provide benefit to all those customers.
The truth is that “Enterprise ready” is only applicable to YOUR Enterprise and YOUR requirements. Simply attempting to look for features in software and NOT mapping them to your requirements needs is the wrong way to evaluate if a software meets your needs.
Many of the FUD articles keep citing features that VMware has that Hyper-V does not as an example of what is required for Enterprise readiness. In this worst case of checkbox-itis, they don’t even discuss what the applicability of those features are or even the limitations. They just simply tell what the features are, that Hyper-V doesn’t have it, and because of that, Hyper-V isn’t “Enterprise Ready”.
The truth of the matter is that some of features are new to VMware also. If those features are truly required to be “Enterprise Ready”, does that mean that older versions of VMware like ESX 3.5 are not “Enterprise Ready” any longer? Should people be worried that their existing installations are somehow in danger? Of course not.
That gets right back at the FUD issue. Trying to scare people with checkbox-itis to not trying Hyper-V. The importance of features is based on each company’s requirements, not someone’s list of features. Try out Hyper-V, look at its feature set, and try it. If it doesn’t meet your requirements for certain workloads, deploy VMware for those workloads. But for the majority of workloads, I believe that Hyper-V will meet the requirements. And don’t forget, either way, you can manage both the VMware servers and Microsoft servers using the Microsoft management stack.
- Virtual Machine Manager is not a replacement for vCenter
Whenever the FUD articles actually acknowledge that Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) manages VMware, they always cite specific features that VMM doesn’t do to VMware environments. The simply answer to this is that VMM wasn’t designed to replace vCenter. It’s designed to be the centralized, day to day virtualization management tool for multiple hypervisors, such as creating VMs, moving VMs, configuring VMs, and optimizing the placement of VMs.
More importantly, many of the features that people cite as missing in VMM are found in the other System Center tools. Why is that? That is because the Microsoft philosophy is that one tool set, one management infrastructure, should be used to manage both physical and virtual. We believe it doesn’t make much sense to have both a physical AND virtual monitoring tool, a physical AND virtual backup utility, a physical AND virtual update and software deployment tool. In the end, tt’s not really about Physical OR Virtual management or even Physical AND Virtual management. It’s about IT management as a whole and if virtualization is to become a core feature capability of everyday IT, the management of virtualization needs from a specialization to a model like System Center has adopted.
Finally, as with Hyper-V and the rest of System Center, VMM is not an either/or implementation. VMM integrates with vCenter with existing WebAPIs. In fact, when you initiate an action in VMM against a VMware server, VMM tells vCenter to perform the action. Thus, work done in VMM against a VMware server is shown in vCenter because vCenter does the work and work done in vCenter shows up in VMM via the APIs. You do not need to stop using vCenter to use VMM. The systems are not mutually exclusive. Even some past behavior in VMM 2008, such as creating new port groups in vCenter, have been changed in VMM 2008 R2.
- Hyper-V is a mature, safe, secure hypervisor
This is probably most cited point by the FUD articles that have been written. They claim Hyper-V is somehow unsecure, unreliable, immature compared to VMware. Most of those articles never actually cite specific instances, issues, or problems that would confirm those points. The true test is to try Hyper-V and perform the necessary test and evaluations against both it and the competition. While no software is infallible, the growing track record of Hyper-V and the rest of the Microsoft Virtualization solutions speak for themselves.
My final point is one that based on my conversations over the years, that many of you agree with me on. Virtualization and Hypervisor choice is not like going to war. You don’t have to pick one side only and you don’t have to destroy the other side to successful. People take it way too seriously. Virtualization is a great technology but it’s simply that, a technology. Something we use to make our lives easier and better.
As I have stated throughout this post and in most of my posts, try Hyper-V and the Microsoft Virtualization products for yourself. That is the only way to determine what Microsoft Virtualization can do for you.
Edwin Yuen
Senior Technical Product Manager – Virtualization
- Great Technical Resources for Hyper-V: How to get started and find advanced configurations
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I wanted to highlight a couple new resources that are available for Hyper-V. The first is an amazing update to the Hyper-V Technical Information and Resources page on TechNet. There is great information for Hyper-V including:
- Installation Guides
- Deployment and Performance Guidance
- Deployment Guides
- Planning and Pre-deployment Tools
- Management Tools
- Workload Specific Guides, including Sharepoint, SQL, and Exchange whitepapers
This is definitely a site to bookmark as a Hyper-V technical reference.
Another nice resource for all the IT Pros out there is a new reference poster available for download, which covers Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components architecture. Here is the Hyper-V Architecture.
The full poster includes not only the Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V architecture, but other Windows Server 2008 R2 features such as
- Active Directory Domain Services
- File Services
- Internet Information Services
- Remote Desktop Services
- BranchCache
- Management Interfaces
- DirectAccess
This is a nice poster to have around to review what’s in Windows Server 2008 R2.
-Edwin
- Hyper-V R2 Case Study - Podravka
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Hello again! I’m back with another Microsoft Virtualization case study. Here is another great real-world example of how much impact Microsoft virtualization can have on your business. This time, it’s Podravka, a Croatian food company competes with global giants like Kraft and Nestlé. Competing in this space means Podravka must be incredibly agile and lean. But, because every time Podravka rolled out a new product it needed additional infrastructure, its IT staff had a hard time keeping pace with business needs.
Its growing servers were gobbling up energy and cooling resources, floor space, and management time, and it was very close to filling its data center space. And the more dependent Podravka became on its servers, the more management worried what would happen if they failed.
Podravka had used VMware GSX in its test environment, but VMware ESX Server was too expensive for a large-scale production environment. Instead, it deployed Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center. The benefits are pretty impressive: IT staff respond quickly to business needs by deploying virtual machines in hours instead of weeks. It created a low-cost disaster-recovery facility, and reduced its data center footprint by 93 percent, which opens up growing room and eliminates the need for an expensive new data center.
I think these two quotes really sum up the impact of Microsoft Virtualization.
“We were able to reduce our server holdings by 76 percent and our energy costs by 78 percent. We can funnel this $2 million savings into other areas of the business, such as new product development, that will make us more competitive.”
“Our staff is 20 to 40 percent more efficient. Only six people manage our infrastructure, and we will be able to accommodate more growth without increasing our headcount.”
- Hyper-V Case Study – PEAB
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I’ve been highlighting Microsoft case studies recently because they do such a great job of showcasing tangible benefits from using Microsoft virtualization. Highlighting more real-world examples is something that a lot of you have been asking for when I meet you at shows and meeting. I just saw another one that is definitely worth a read: PEAB is a fast-growing Swedish construction and civil engineering firm that—like many companies—was grappling with server sprawl and all the IT management and financial challenges that come with it.
PEAB found that using Windows Server 2008 Datacenter with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager provided all the capabilities they needed at less cost than VMware. It cut server deployment time by 87 percent, reduced costs for licensing and energy consumption, and expects to trim hardware purchases by 40 servers annually and staff management time by 280 hours annually.
Here’s what PEAB had to say:
“Microsoft had a very promising evolution path for Hyper-V, and it was much less expensive than VMware. With Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, we would obtain unlimited virtual-machine licensing, which represented a big savings.”
“With Hyper-V, we have much greater flexibility in responding immediately to business needs. The business is not waiting on IT. Our staff can now spend more time proactively helping business users, enhancing our network, and devising more effective disaster recovery responses.”
- Updates, SCE 2010, and Virtualization Tours
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Well, I’m back after some time off for the holidays and recovering from TechEd EMEA. I wanted to start off the week with a couple of quick notes. I wanted to remind everyone that you can follow me on my Twitter account (@edwinyuen) and also on the Because it’s Everybody’s Business blog that I contribute to.
While I was back, I filmed a video on System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010, covering why small and medium businesses would use virtualization and how SCE 2010 can help them. For more information on SCE 2010, take a look at the SCE website.
Finally, I want to point out a new webcast, called Thrive Live! IT Professional Virtualization Tour. It’s a TechNet webcast that talks about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, VHD Native Boot, Windows XP Mode, and Virtual Machine Manager. The webcast is Thursday, December 10th at 8am Pacific time. To register, use the following link:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9697801
Look out for a couple more posts this week, as I have some new case studies on Microsoft Virtualization.
- TechEd EMEA Day 2
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Hello again from Berlin. As many of you probably saw on TV (or in the streets), it was an amazing celebration for the fall of the Berlin Wall. As for TechEd, day 2 has been amazing. I think that the thing everyone I’ve spoken to at the show is how friendly everyone is at the show. TechEd EMEA has always been one more of most community friendly shows and this years show really feels like friends and colleagues getting together, not just a show where you see others who might use the same technology.
I think the decision to move the show to Berlin really worked out. The weather is a little cold for most people (though not me, growing up in Minnesota) but everyone has been very positive and it makes the show not just enjoyable but really fun (and I’m sure the beer availability helps out too :) ).
Today, I had my session with Jeff Woolsey of Hyper-V, doing Hyper-V R2 and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 overview. It was a packed crowd, with literally every seat in the room taken. Like I do for most of my session, Jeff and I asked the crowd, before we started, how many people run VMware and how many people run Hyper-V. The number of hands raised were very close, almost identical. This is a dramatic difference from two years ago, especially from my first TechEd EMEA where literally everyone used VMware and I could count the number of Hyper-V users on my finger (out of an audience of 400+). It really made my proud of the work everyone at Microsoft Virtualization has done over the last three years.
For those who are at the show and want to learn more about Virtual Machine Manager, I’ll be doing an Interactive Session on Thursday, 1330 in Interactive Theater 4 – Green. I’ll be doing more demos from my demo rack and going into details on advanced VMM features.
I’ll write my wrap-up of TechEd EMEA on Thursday. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show.
Also, we are still running two promotions now, one for TechEd attendees and one that is open for everyone. The TechEd attendee contest is our twitter promotion for our resident SMB Expert, David Mills. Just sign up to follow David (@dmills_ms) and all new followers are entered to win a Archos 5 Media Player. We’ve already given two players away and there are still two more players to give away. For more information, see the details here and here.
The other promotion is our blogging contest. Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic. Not part of the System Center Influencers program? Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join. More details for this contest here.
That’s all from Berlin today! I hope to actually get to see more of the city before I leave and I look forward to talking to everyone at the show.
- Greetings from Berlin
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Hello again. Right now, I’m in Berlin for TechEd EMEA 2009, which is really exciting as Monday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also Day 1 of TechEd EMEA. Despite a down economy, it’s a sold out show with over 7,000 people. If you want to follow the show, you can do so virtually at the TechEd EMEA website.
Today, I did some interesting press interviews and spent most of the rest of the day talking to other attendees. If you are actually at the show, come check out my session, SVR205, on Tuesday at 1330. Jeff Woolsey and I will be covering Hyper-V and VMM overview. Plus, I would love to get a chance to meet some people.
The keynote for the show was in the afternoon and it had two killer demos. The first, was an incredible demo of Exchange 2010, which hit General Availability today and is ready for download. Even though I’ve been on EX2010 and Outlook 2010 for a while, I learned several things from the keynote. Plus, I can’t stop raving about the new Ignore thread features, which once and for all gets rid of the “Please don’t reply all or please remove me from this thread” e-mail threads we get this time of year. The other demo was a great System Center demo by Jeff Wettlaufer, which really seamlessly brought together what the suite of System Center applications can do.
On the downside, yes, I didn’t really get the IT dream videos either. And yes, there probably should have been more developer content. Still, overall, I think the keynote (especially the demos) set a good tone for the show.
A couple more things from Berlin. First, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show. Second, we have another twitter contest. This time, if you are a TechEd EMEA 2009 attendee, all you have to do is start following my close friend David Mills (@dmills_ms). We will be giving away an Archos 5 PMP each day, winners coming from all of David’s new followers. You can get more details on the contest here and here. Finally, we have a new blogging contest with System Center. Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic. Not part of the System Center Influencers program? Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join. More details for this contest here.
That’s all from today! I’ll write more tomorrow and if you are in Berlin, make sure to stop me if you see me for a chat!!
- FPWEB.net Case Study
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I’m back with another great case study. This time, it’s Fpweb.net, a Sharepoint hosting provider. Fpweb.net switched from VMware ESX to Microsoft Virtualization, resulting in so many benefits by using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager that I can’t list them all.
But I do want to highlight some of the cost savings and competitive advantages Fpweb.net has gained:
- Saved $100,800 in licensing costs over the VMware solution
- By virtualizing 115 servers, it avoided an increase in data center rental costs of $180,000 a year
- FPweb.net provisions virtual machines 60% faster—which is key to getting new customers up and running quickly
Without a doubt, it’s probably best to hear it directly from the customer:
“There’s no question that consolidating servers and making more efficient use of resources is a win-win situation. Hyper-V gets us there more cost effectively than any other virtualization technology.”
“Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is primed for large-scale data centers like ours. The Datacenter license includes unlimited virtualization rights. Compared to VMware, which requires a license for each virtualized operating system, we are able to scale our virtualization solution at no extra cost.”
“In hosting, the biggest obstacle to customer service is time: customers want us to stand up their solutions and perform migrations, upgrades, and other services right away. Using Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to automate server management, we gain time in the data center to hit the ground running and wow customers from the outset.”
Like I’ve written before, we have a great repository of case studies covering all the different Microsoft Virtualization technologies, not just Hyper-V. If you are interested in Virtualization, I strongly suggest you take a look.
- Microsoft Site Recovery Solution Launch
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Hi, I’m Jim Schwartz, Director of Virtualization Solutions at Microsoft and I’m writing as a guest on Edwin’s blog today.
Despite tough times, an Enterprise Strategy Group study shows that 31% of businesses surveyed said DR will be their main driver for Virtualization in 2009. This shows a continued shift as IT Pros who look beyond test/dev and basic server consolidation scenarios in deploying virtualization technologies.
Having a plan to deal with worst case scenarios like disasters and widespread system outages presents technical and business challenges--application and data availability need to be maintained; however, deployment and operational costs are always an issue. Virtualization has been a game changer for many companies seeking to mitigate impact to critical applications and data. Businesses previously unable to justify end-to-end site recovery are finding solutions now within reach.
This week Microsoft is launching a comprehensive solution to help customers implement cost effective, end-to-end site recovery programs. Built on proven capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 and the System Center management suite, Microsoft is helping IT Professionals leverage Windows Server Hyper-V and Failover Clustering along with tools like Virtual Machine Manager to deliver cost effective site recovery.
The Microsoft Site Recovery Solution ecosystem is ramping with a broad range of storage replication partners like Double-Take Software, EMC, HDS, HP delivering solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft Cluster Resource DLL. With cluster integration IT Professionals can deploy streamlined and operationally effective site recovery.
You can learn more about the Microsoft Site Recovery Solution by joining the Microsoft team and Enterprise Strategy Group on Thursday, November 5th at 10:30am Pacific for a webcast Building Effective and Highly Available Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft Virtualization This webcast looks at key drivers for site recovery solutions and reviews practical deployment considerations (you can view the recorded version of the webcast after the 5th). Microsoft and select partners will also be demonstrating Site Recovery Solutions at TechEd, so if you plan to be in Berlin during the week of November 9th, make sure to stop by the Virtualization Solutions kiosk in the Technical Learning Center.
Jim Schwartz
Director Virtualization Solutions, Microsoft Corporation
- System Center Essentials 2010 Beta Preview Video
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Just a quick blog post for now. The TechNet Edge video site just posted a video blog that David Mills and I did, with a preview of the new System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 Beta. What’s really exciting about SCE 2010 is that in addition to the existing great Small and Medium Business (SMB) systems management capabilities of SCE, SCE 2010 now includes the virtualization management capabilities of Virtual Machine Manager.
That means that SMB customers and can soon buy one product that has software deployment, systems updates, monitoring and virtualization management, all in one tool designed for mid-sized businesses. For more information on SCE 2010, check out the SCE website.
