Virtualization Planet

TechEd EMEA Day 2

2009-11-10T21:45:00Z

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....(read more)

Greetings from Berlin

2009-11-09T22:39:00Z

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...(read more)

FPWEB.net Case Study

2009-11-07T14:26:00Z

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...(read more)

Microsoft Site Recovery Solution Launch

2009-11-03T20:06:00Z

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...(read more)

System Center Essentials 2010 Beta Preview Video

2009-10-30T18:27:00Z

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...(read more)

Lab Validation Report for Hyper-V

2009-10-30T16:09:00Z

We just published a Lab Validation Report for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which was written by Enterprise Strategy Group. This report goes over the installation and configuration of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and management of those servers with Virtual Machine Manager 2008. More importantly, the report reviews the performance of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in comparison with physical systems, so you can compare how applications might run in a virtualized environment. If you are interested in some...(read more)

Virtualization Case Study of Jefferson County Schools

2009-10-29T19:55:00Z

Hello Virt Planet! When I meet with customers and partners about Microsoft Virtualization, I often get asked about similar companies or case studies. We have a great resource of case studies on Microsoft Virtualization but I am going to start highlighting some of the new ones, as they come out. The first one I wanted to highlight is for Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky. The Jefferson County Public Schools wanted to contain server sprawl and centralize an IT infrastructure that was spread...(read more)

Webcasts on Virtualizing SQL and other MS Applications

2009-10-28T05:04:00Z

Just a quick post today (there are more coming I assure you!). We have a series of webcasts coming up on best practices on virtualizing Microsoft applications. Check out this blog entry on the list of webcasts http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/10/22/upcoming-webcasts-on-virtualization-best-practices.aspx On Thursday, the first webcast is on virtualizing SQL Server. If you want to virtualize SQL Server, this is a can’t miss webcast....(read more)

News: Pricing Comparisons, Red Hat, and More

2009-10-12T22:11:00Z

Hello everyone! It’s been a little bit of time since I last posted but I promise to post more regularly, as soon as I get back from my vacation in Hawaii :). This week, I wanted to cover some new news and some items I tweeted about but didn’t blog. I wrote a new post, Virtualization Reality: Why Microsoft® Virtualization Solutions Deliver Value When Compared to VMware® on my other blog , from the Because It’s Everybody’s Business site. It covers how the Microsoft cost comparisons are done and a view...(read more)

How does VDI impact the responsibilities of Server/Desktop teams?

2009-09-22T20:55:00Z

I saw another article from Brian Madden site’s (which I saw via Twitter) which asks the question that many VDI adopters forget, which is Who controls the new virtual desktops? Is it the Server team or the Desktop team? Traditional IT has been very easy to delineate in terms of responsibility, usually by function or hardware. VDI (and virtualization in general) really blurs those lines of responsibility. A Brianmadden.com user quoted in the post sums up the issue pretty well "Desktop people don't...(read more)

New IBM tools for Microsoft Virtualization

2009-09-22T00:59:00Z

For those who use IBM hardware, there is some great news today. IBM has released the Microsoft Assessment Planning Tool for IBM, which is based on the existing Microsoft Assessment Planning Tool. This tools provides specific guidance on how to consolidate and virtualize workloads on IBM System x and BladeCenter servers. If you use IBM systems, you should check this out. You can get the tool from http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/docdisplay?lndocid=SYST-MANAGE&brandind=5000016...(read more)

When and how should SMBs Virtualize?

2009-09-21T19:07:00Z

First off, I wanted to apologize for the lack of postings to my blog. I’ve been a little under the weather of late. Still, I saw this article and thought that it brought up some important points about virtualization and small and medium businesses (SMBs). While the article headline is a little over the top, the actual post and the reference document it links to brings up important themes. This line in the article sums things up well. In fact, if there’s such a thing as “over-virtualization,” an SMB...(read more)

VMworld Day 3 Recap: End of line for me

2009-09-03T09:31:00Z

Day 3 is my last day at VMworld 2009. This day went really well but somehow, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed when compared to previous VMworlds, but more on that later. First, there was Stephen Herrod’s keynote today. Certainly, Stephen is a great speaker and it was interesting than the previous keynote. Still, it had the same issues as Paul’s keynote, which is that much of the content was shown before or not really new. They talked about PCoIP, with the Teradici protocol in software...(read more)

VMworld Day 2 wrap-up

2009-09-02T09:13:00Z

So we’ve just wrapped up day 2 at VMworld. I certainly have to say that day 2 went much better than day 1. I met so many great people down on the show floor. Since I’ve been to the last four VMworlds (US and Europe), I’m not surprised that so many at the show don’t know that much about Microsoft Virtualization. It’s great to just talk with people, no demos, no slides, just techies talking shop so to speak. I was able to attend two sessions today. First, I went to EA3605 - Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications....(read more)

VMworld Day 2 Start – Keynote Thoughts

2009-09-01T20:45:00Z

Well, just finished up with the opening keynote by Paul Maritz at VMworld 2009. They had a similar theme to VMworld Europe 2009 from last February. Lots of Hello and Goodbye phrases. My favorites: Goodbye Commodore 64, Goodbye Dial-up, Hello Kitty, Hello Microsoft (okay, I made the last one up but a lot of the phrases seemed the results of a meeting in a conference room for keywords). :) Still, for me, the keynote was only fair. The primary reason for this is that a good portion of the keynote were...(read more)