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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...
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...
The Virtualization platform vs. the Operating System
Day 1 at VMworld was mostly about Labs and content which builds up to the main event starting with the keynote on Tuesday morning. Looking forward to today. In the meanwhile I have been hearing about a concept being put forth that the virtualization platform Read More...
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...
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 - Quick Storage Migration
Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. In today's blog, I'd like to discuss another type of migration being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Quick Storage Migration. Read More...
Guest post: Hyper-V gives every Windows shop a free pass into “innovation”
Hi, my name is Matt Lavallee and I am the Director of Technology at MLS Property Information Network, Inc., based in Massachusetts. Although you may not recognize the company name, we are one of the 700+ multiple listing service (MLS) companies that provide data warehousing for the Real Estate industry in the U.S. As my company took the early step to virtualizing our environment on Hyper-V last year, Microsoft asked me to share my opinion on the results of its recent survey on the state of IT infrastructure investments, conducted by Harris Interactive. One point that stands out on the survey — and should surprise no one — is the shift to belt-tightening in IT: 84% of US respondents cited improving business efficiency (51%) and reducing IT costs (33%) as their priorities in light of the economic downturn. However, I personally disagree that this new mindset is a direct reaction to the economy or that the decreased allocation of IT budget to innovation (29% in the US) are necessarily bad things. First, let us consider that the IT budget is a relatively fixed value year over year — while it may respond to inflation and some cyclical purchases, the vast majority of budget is spent on payroll, annualized licensing, backups, ISP costs, and the regular refresh of equipment. To me, this eliminates a significant stratum of budget from consideration for “innovation” unless you just built your environment last year on five-year-old technology. Second, the actual varying allocation of budget goes to “special projects”, which, for lack of a better term, includes “innovation”. Here is where the survey findings drew too many conclusions and where I feel the indication is astray from real trends. Read More...
Re: Windows Server 2008 SP2 Hyper-V
Hi Isaac Roybal here. I’m a technical product manager on the Windows Server team covering Hyper-V. It’s been over two weeks since the release of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and we’re seeing great adoption. From a Hyper-V point of view, we’re excited because the final Hyper-V release is an integrated feature in SP2 making it easier and faster to deploy Hyper-V. If you recall, when Windows Server 2008 was released, Hyper-V Beta was included. This meant to get the final Hyper-V release, you needed to go to Windows Update, download and go through the update process. With Windows Server 2008 SP2, Hyper-V final bits are included so there’s no need to pull down individual downloads which speeds up deployments. There are also some notable updates in SP2, including scalability enhancements for running on systems with up to 24 logical processors which enables support for up to 192 running virtual machines, update for Hyper-V when managed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and updates for backup/restore of virtual machines with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Read More...
Online sessions, book and more
Admittedly this post is a stew and not a meal (if that metaphor works). But you might be interested in the following items. I'll keep it short: John Kelbley will host a webcast on Friday, May 8 at 8:00am PDT titled, "Running Linux on Hyper-V." The session will discuss install, configure, run, backup and monitor non-Windows systems. See here. On May 14, 8am-noon PDT, Edwin Yuen will host a live chat on TechTarget. He'll answer questions about our virt products, be it datacenter, desktop or managemment. See more here. Wondering what to read when you're flying to TechEd, or your next trip? The Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit book is it. One of the authors, Robert Larson, architect in MS Services and TechNet blogger, told me that the book is in final formatting and some sample chapters are available to download (here). The book will be available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble in June. Read more from one of the authors here. Enjoy. Read More...
VMware vSphere pricing - Meet the new price; same as the old price, only more
Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. This past week, there were two key announcements made, one by Microsoft and one by VMware, that have an impact on how we compare Microsoft and VMware Read More...
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...
Series on virtualizing SharePoint
The Microsoft-UK services team recently posted an in-depth virtualizing SharePoint series. It is a culmination of their experiences over the last couple years helping customers successfully host SharePoint in virtualized environments. · Introduction · Optimizing the performance of a virtualized SharePoint environment · SharePoint server role recommendations in the virtualized SharePoint environment · Monitoring and managing a virtualized SharePoint environment · High availability and disaster recovery, deployment best practices, common mistakes and summary This is fantastic guidance for those organisations currently running, or thinking of running SharePoint in virtualized environments. Enjoy! Read More...
Top 10 VMWare myths video
Edwin and David recently sat down in front of a video camera to talk about the top 10 myths from VMWare. Here's a quick outline of the topics discussed during the 11 minute video: Live migration clustered shared volumes Hyper-V scalability Hyper-V performance Hyper-V footprint Hardware support Memory overcommit End-to-end management Value Why pay VMWare's virtualization tax? See the video below, or the other 22 videos here. Read More...
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...
Guest post: Moving Virtualization into the Mainstream
I’d like to start this post by saying thank you to our friends at Microsoft for running my blog post here. As we’re mid-way through Virtualization Ecosystem Month (VEM), it has been exciting to see the partner support around the topic of virtualization and I encourage you to check out Microsoft’s guest post on my blog. Both AMD and Microsoft are continually asked if virtualization can really become a sustainable technology in the mainstream computing market. Skeptics are quick to point out that the technology world is littered with products that have never made it beyond the early adopter edge of the market. Names like Apple Newton, Betamax, Sega Dreamcast, and OS/2 come up in various articles and discussions about technologies that didn’t become widespread market successes. Will virtualization suffer this same fate? Is it destined to stay on the fringe? In my opinion, all indications are that virtualization is jumping the technology chasm between early adopters and the mainstream market. Recent survey results from Forrester demonstrate that firms (both large and small) are in the midst of rethinking and overhauling IT infrastructure and client systems. Virtualization is one of technologies at the center of these efforts with Forrester reporting that 54% of the enterprises and 53% of the SMBs surveyed have either implemented x86 server virtualization or plan to do so within the next 12 months—which is significant in today’s current economy. Read More...
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...
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