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Upcoming Webcasts on Best Practices for Virtualizing MS Server Applications: We’ve got some great webcasts coming up in the next few weeks to discuss recommendations for virtualizing MS server applications and the benefits of choosing hyper-V + System Center as your virtualization solution. Each technical webcast will focus on Read More...
Posted 27 October 09 11:25 by porourke | 0 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, Windows Server 2008, High Availability, Live Migration, volume snapshot, Windows Server 2008 R2
Microsoft Virtualization: Best Choice for MS Server Applications: Hello, I’m Zane Adam, general manager of Virtualization and Systems Management. As more and more customers are looking at virtualization to help reduce cost and decrease complexity in their infrastructure, we are seeing lots of questions around virtualizing MS server applications such as Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. What benefits should I expect to see? What do I need to consider when virtualizing these mission critical business application? Should I virtualize all roles within a server application? We have worked across MS application groups to test our products with hyper-v and we believe that MS virtualization is the best choice for MS server applications. First, MS server applications are built for Windows Server, and because hyper-v is part of the operating system, there is no need to add complexity of support and interoperability by adding a 3rd party virtualization layer. This means there is just one stop for all of your support needs and also assurance that the stack of applications and hypervisor works well together. Second, to help ensure optimal performance Microsoft has specific deployment guidance for virtualizing MS server applications which results in a mixed physical and virtual environment. System Center is the management solution that allows you to view both physical and virtual instances from one console. Third, as you know MS virtualization is up to six times less expensive than other virtualization solutions in the market, which makes running your server applications even that more affordable. Read More...
Posted 02 September 09 05:21 by porourke | 1 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtualization management, Management tools, integrated virtualization, Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2008 R2 Core: Introducing SCONFIG.: Virtualization Nation, It's been very busy in the world of Windows Server. With the launch of Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate, Tech Ed and the announcement of several new Hyper-V R2 capabilities such as 64 logical processor support and processor Read More...
Posted 07 July 09 06:27 by WSV_GUY | 6 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
Live Migration and Host Clustering available at no charge in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2: I’m Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization and System Center. It’s been a while since my last post, and wanted to update you on our standalone hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Last Fall we released Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a standalone hypervisor-based virtualization product that is available for free. We continue to add more features and value to this product in the upcoming release, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Our core strategy is to ensure that our customers can virtualize their IT environment in the most cost effective manner, and at the same time, have access to enterprise features like live migration and clustering features for high availability. So in addition to scalability and performance improvements in this version, customers can get live migration and host clustering capabilities and high availability (up to 16 nodes) at no charge. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 will continue to be free, and now will include live migration and host clustering capabilities. Customers won’t need to pay thousands of dollars for alternate virtualization platforms to get these features. With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, customers have a solution for both planned and unplanned downtime and can use it for scenarios like server consolidation, branch server consolidation, high availability, and VDI. Read More...
Posted 20 April 09 11:13 by porourke | 20 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, Disaster Recovery, virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, High Availability, Live Migration
March 31 live web chat: On Tuesday, March 31, Microsoft's Edwin Yuen will be hosting a live web chat 11am-3pm EST. Edwin is a sr. technical product manager. Edwin came to Microsoft with the acquisition of Softricity (and the SoftGrid application virtualization technology). He now also covers Hyper-V and System Center VMM. Sign up here. Read More...
Posted 28 March 09 05:24 by porourke | 0 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, SoftGrid, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, VDI, Calista Technologies, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, High Availability, Live Migration
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 beta available: Exciting news for Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center, and VMWare customers. The beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is now available on the Microsoft Connect site for download . If you don't already have access to VMM on the Connect Read More...
Posted 16 March 09 03:44 by porourke | 5 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, MMS, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Quick Migration, Live Migration
Microsoft customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009: This week at VMworld Europe 2009 we're showcasing a number of European customers who have deployed Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center and App-v 4.5. You can watch two videos below. One is of Bouygues Construction based in France. Bouygues does civil engineering, electrical contracting, and maintenance, employs 51,100 people and operates in more than 80 countries. This video is in French with English subtitles, and includes discussion of their Hyper-V and SCVMM deployment on Dell servers with EMC storage. Read More...
Posted 23 February 09 12:09 by porourke | 1 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMWare, SoftGrid, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Dell, High Availability, Quick Migration
The Virtualization Essentials from Citrix: Bonjour from Cannes. This is just a quick post about Citrix making public the Essentials for Hyper-V news. It's been talked about already by Alessandro and others. Read More...
Posted 20 February 09 05:10 by porourke | 0 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, SoftGrid, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, Citrix, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
Microsoft and Red Hat Cooperative Technical Support: Hi, I’m Mike Neil, general manager of virtualization at Microsoft. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, but today’s post is worth a read. Ever since we released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Terminal Services, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft App-V 4.5 last year, customers and partners have been getting huge value from server consolidation projects, have been able to increase business continuity at much lower costs than with VMware, and have decreased the time and cost required to deliver applications to end users. And while doing this, they’ve been able to use a familiar set of system management tools for both their virtualized and non-virtualized systems and applications across the datacenter and desktops. In fact, Chris from Kroll Factual Data wrote about his DR project on this blog last year. So in many ways I’m pleased that we’ve been able to help so many customers and partners break down the barriers to enterprise-wide virtualization. But until today there’s been one barrier, not product related, that we haven’t been able to overcome to meet customer and partner demand: the ability to run and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux within a guest VM on WS08 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008. For all of those who have emailed me, my colleagues and your Microsoft account teams and partners, I’m pleased to say that today is the first big step to delivering that support. Microsoft and Red Hat recently signed agreements to test and validate our server operating systems running on each other’s hypervisors. Customers with valid support agreements will be able to run these validated configurations and receive joint technical support for running Windows Server on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Hyper-V Server 2008. You can see Red Hat’s news release here, and watch a public webcast [live and archived] discussing this news. Read More...
Posted 15 February 09 09:00 by porourke | 31 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, Kroll, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, SoftGrid, Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, cross-platform management, Management tools, Interop Vendor Alliance, Novell, Windows Server 2008, Red Hat, SVVP
Videos to watch: Mark Russinovich; Virt and cloud computing panel: Before I start hunkering down for what's supposed to be a snowy weekend without college football, I wanted to pass along a couple videos that are worth a watch. First, TechTarget interviewed Mark Russinovich, technical follow, about Windows 7, WS08 R2, virtualization and Vista. It's about 8 minutes long. You can watch Mark's interview here. Second, this week Mike Neil, GM of virtualization, hosted a live meeting to discuss virtualization and cloud computing. Joining Mike was Dominic Foster, CTO of web hoster MaximumASP, and Deepak Patil, GM within Microsoft Global Foundation Services, which hosts the Windows Azure Services platform. You'll see slides and hear them talk and answer some Q&As in 45 minutes. You can access the playback here (log-in required). And if online videos aren't of interest, I'll point out that Mike Neil recently submitted his 2009 predictions to David Marshall over at VMblog.com. Patrick Read More...
Posted 10 December 08 10:00 by porourke | 0 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, VDI, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Cloud Computing
Guest post: Moving VM automation and inventory beyond Excel files: Hi, I’m John Suit, CTO and principal founder of Fortisphere, which is a member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. In this tough economy, the cost savings of virtualization are driving faster adoption – and the introduction of Microsoft Hyper-V is exposing more companies, large and small, to the benefits of this deceptively simple technology. In fact, from what we’ve seen, the scale of deployments has grown tremendously in the past year. When we did market research a year ago, people were calling their 90-VM environments “large.” Today, similar-sized deployments are “really, not very big.” Today, 300-400 VMs are commonplace, with a mix of Microsoft Hyper-V and others platforms running together. So, the deployment of VMs has become nearly routine. But, with scale, another problem has emerged: management of the environments. Today, we mostly see folks provisioning VMs and mostly ignoring them until someone calls with a problem, at which point they scramble to prove that the virtual infrastructure is not to blame. Inventories of VM are either kept in Excel files or outsourced to teams of inventory-keepers. Change alerting, reclamation of idle VMs, and a whole bunch of other functions are untouched, as most folks are too busy with provisioning and troubleshooting. Read More...
Posted 19 November 08 07:28 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, cross-platform management, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
New VDI, Management Technology Announced: A few items to call out. First up is Manlio's post about the renaming of Terminal Services - it'll be known as Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 -- and the new VDI features. Second, over at the System Center team blog, Paul announced the beta of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Check out the video with Barry Shilmover. Last item is a recent CRN magazine interview with Microsoft GM Mike Neil (who's blogged here before). It's about 6 minutes long. Read More...
Posted 04 November 08 06:17 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, cross-platform management, Virtual Desktop Architecture, VDI, Management tools
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 RTMs and what I’m hearing from customers and partners about Microsoft’s virtualization solutions: I’m Zane Adam, sr. director of virtualization strategy here in Redmond at Microsoft. I’m writing today to announce the exciting news that we’ve released to manufacturing (RTM’d) System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and to talk a bit about its critical Read More...
Posted 21 October 08 08:52 by porourke | 17 Comments
Filed under Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMWare, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
Guest post: IU Hoosier virtualizes 75% of workloads - saving time and money with System Center, PowerShell, and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Hi, I’m Janssen Jones, and I’m the Associate Director of Auxiliary IT Infrastructure at Indiana University. Since April, my team has been evaluating the beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) as part of the SCVMM Technology Adoption Read More...
Posted 21 October 08 08:50 by porourke | 3 Comments
Filed under Virtual Server, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
Guest post: Hyper-V Performance Scales Well in 24-Core Dell Server: My name is Todd Muirhead and I’m one of the engineers behind Dell’s online community for IT professionals – DellTechCenter. This means that I get to work with all of the latest Dell servers and storage and provide technical guidance and assistance to customers. The goal is to help people understand how they can use our products to create solutions. From my techno-geek perspective the cool part is getting to test out all kinds of new stuff. The most recent example was getting one of our PowerEdge R900 (4-socket, 4U) servers with Intel’s new 6-core E7450 Xeon (aka Dunnington) processors. That totals up to 24-cores in a single server. I got them about 3 weeks before launch and did some performance testing with Windows Server 08 Hyper-V. The design of the tests was to see how much additional performance could be gained with the 6-core processors when moving from 4-core processors. I also measured the power consumption as well to be able to report the results in terms of efficiency with performance per watt. The complete details are in the whitepaper that was published, but a quick summary is that Hyper-V was able to take advantage of the additional processing cores. The R900 with 16 cores was able to support 30 VMs while the R900 with 24 cores was able to support 40 VMs with an increase in performance of 18%. Perhaps most interesting is that power consumption of the R900 actually decreased by 11% when using the 6-core processors, which resulted in a 33% improvement in performance per watt. Read More...
Posted 15 October 08 09:33 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Dell

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