Windows Virtualization Team Blog

Browse by Tags

Announcing the availability of the updated Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Virtualization and System Center: Microsoft has a comprehensive portfolio of technologies when it comes to Virtualization ranging from Presentation Virtualization with Remote Desktop Services to Server Virtualization using Hyper-V with many more in between as below. · Server Hardware Read More...
Posted 24 September 09 03:03 by vtango | 0 Comments
Filed under Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, Virtual Desktop Architecture, VDI, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Virtuallization Solution Accelerators, Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Tool, Windows Server 2008, Live Migration, Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server
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
HP releases Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center: Hello - I’m Zane Adam, senior director of System Center and Virtualization marketing at Microsoft. I wanted to share some exciting news related to Microsoft’s virtualization and System Center offerings and HP’s Insight Control Suite for System Center. Read More...
Posted 02 June 09 10:00 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, MMS, VMM 2008, HP
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
System Center Ops Manager management pack for Hyper-V: A quick note that a beta of the Hyper-V management pack for System Center Operations Manager (2007, 2007 R2) is available. In combination with SCVMM (for advanced monitoring of VMs across your Hyper-V, ESX and Virtual Server environments), this SCOM management pack enables health/perf monitoring of the Hyper-V host. The management pack includes health diagram view of virtual machines, virtual components roll-up per host, critical Hyper-V Service monitoring, disk space threshold monitoring. This beta management pack supports the following OS only (for now): § Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (Full Installation with Hyper-V Role enabled) § Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (Full Installation with Hyper-V Role enabled) § Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (Full Installation with Hyper-V Role enabled) To request an invitation to access this beta, you can send a message to the following address: MPCC@microsoft.com Read More...
Posted 13 March 09 07:43 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
SCVMM and VMware ESX management: The threat of virtualization sprawl. That was a theme my colleagues heard last week at IDC's "Directions" conference in San Jose. And true to IDC's form, they backed up their predictions with some numbers. Here's an excerpt from one article: Virtualization has often been seen as something of a magic bullet to this problem, promising to consolidate a number of low-utilization servers onto a single piece of hardware. But the average number of virtual machines per server is only five, Bailey noted, with that number going to eight by 2012. So much for the vision of consolidating dozens of servers onto one machine. More important, though, was that IDC found that just going from five virtual machines to eight means there will be 100 million new servers by 2012, and "all of them still need to be managed." That's a problem, she said, since the tools to do this are not keeping pace. Our customers have referred to this issue as "islands," referring to the need for different management tools, interfaces, etc. to manage their heterogeneous environment. After all, customers and partners tell us, they're trying to manage services, no matter if the applications run on Windows or non-Windows, physical or virtualized. For those of you in that last camp, like Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mamut and Maxol, you know that Microsoft and some other systems management vendors are creating tools to keep pace with heterogeneous hypervisors and VMs, and as well traditional physical systems and non-virtualized applications. System Center is one such management tool; VMware vCenter isn't (yet, according to Alessandro). To elaborate on this point, check out RakeshM's latest blog post here. Read More...
Posted 10 March 09 03:43 by porourke | 5 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, cross-platform management, Management tools, VMM 2008, IBM WebSphere, HP
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
DPM for data backup/recovery of virtualized apps and environments: We want to congratulate the Microsoft Storage Solutions team for releasing Service Pack 1 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. SP1 for DPM 2007 brings some great new capabilities for protecting Hyper-V environments (as well as ESX Server). Most notably, of course, is the ability to protect guests within Hyper-V environments, often without downtime (for those guests running a Windows operating system that supports VSS). Also new for DPM with SP1 is the ability to run the DPM server on the Hyper-V host itself, so that the DPM server can protect the guests from the host viewpoint, within the same physical server - to disk, to tape and even to the cloud. And unlike other (shall-not-be-named) virtualization platforms’ backup mechanisms, DPM does not require a SAN and does not require 3rd party backup software or add-ons. It’s an all Microsoft backup and recovery solution for Microsoft’s virtualization platform. For more details on the SP1 release for DPM 2007, check out: · Bala’s executive viewpoint on DPM 2007 sp1 Read More...
Posted 13 January 09 05:47 by porourke | 1 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, Disaster Recovery, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, cross-platform management, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Cloud Computing
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
Visual Studio 2010 lab management uses virtualization: There are 4 million .NET developers in the world, so I figure one or two might read this blog, or you might know someone. A couple weeks ago at the Professional Developers Conference, we began discussing, and announced a CTP, of Visual Studio 10. One of the many features of VS10 is lab management, which leverages virtualization to enable software development and test teams to build higer quality apps. Lab management accelerates setup/tear down time and elimiates no-repro bugs by creating better integration across dev and test teams throughout the application lifecycle. Read More...
Posted 12 November 08 09:10 by porourke | 3 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, Community, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, Management tools, VMM 2008, .NET, Visual Studio
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: virtualization requires the proper perspective: In the past few weeks following the Microsoft virtualization launch event in Bellevue the virtualization buzz keeps growing louder and louder. We keep hearing more and more from customers that virtualization is a key component of their IT infrastructure strategy. IT organizations fall across a wide spectrum of virtualization implementation and sophistication. Some have been doing it for quite some time, while others are just starting or even just starting to think about it. One thing that keeps coming up over and over, however, is the notion of using virtualization as an enabling technology, rather than an end in itself. This means aligning your IT strategies to your business strategies. Ultimately it’s not about how many virtual guests you can run on a physical host, or how cool your underlying infrastructure is – it’s about using these technologies to achieve better business outcomes. Whether the specific goal is to use virtualization to save money, reduce data center footprint, gain competitive edge, drive business continuity and availability, or go green by reducing power and cooling, it all comes down to using virtualization as a means to reach these goals. OK, so that makes sense – so how do I do that? One of the key things that HP and Microsoft recognize is that it is the management tools that really enable you to take advantage of the underlying virtualization technologies. Microsoft System Center, especially with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, will provide easy to use tools that will allow you to manage your physical and virtual environments from a single pane of glass. This means customers won’t have to use one set of tools to manage their physical infrastructure and another set to manage their virtual environment. Read More...
Posted 10 October 08 06:09 by porourke | 5 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtualization management, VDI, Citrix, Management tools, integrated virtualization, VMM 2008, HP

Windows Virtualization Team Blog

Browse by Tags

Search

This Blog

Tags

Archives

Disclaimer

Related websites

Virtualization product links

VM Blogs

Syndication