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Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites: Hi, my name is Manlio Vecchiet, and I am a director of product management on the Windows Server marketing team. I'm in New Orleans right now attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) , and wanted to update you on new licenses we’ll offer Read More...
Posted 13 July 09 10:48 by porourke | 15 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMWare, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, virtualization management, Virtual Desktop Architecture, VDI, Citrix, Windows Server 2008, Live Migration, events
Virtualization Review's hypervisor test: The other day, Virtualization Review published a comparative performance test of three hypervisors: VMware ESX 3.5, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. You can see it here. NOTE - there are few independent, published performance reviews of hypervisors because including ESX in the review without VMware's permission violates the VMware EULA about posting benchmarks. Amongst reviewers, this EULA restriction is well-known as serves as a deterrent. Rick Vanover and his editor, Keith Ward, deserve kudos for securing VMware approval for the performance comparison without jeopardizing journalistic integrity. Way to go! OK, back to Rick Vanover's test. His test objectives: All the hypervisors offer essentially the same base functionality. In this series of tests, the objective was to put the same workloads on each one and see how they stack up. The types of workloads tested varied, to simulate a typical environment in which some virtual machines (VMs) are stressed, and some aren't. Each platform was subjected to the same test plan parameters, to give a fair accounting of their performance. Read about the comparison parameters, test environment and caveats. The results will be surprising (in a "man bites dog" sort of way) to many. Read More...
Posted 09 March 09 09:09 by porourke | 5 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, ESX, VMWare, Citrix, XenServer, Windows Server 2008
Microsoft at VMworld Europe 2009: VMworld Europe's tagline this year is "virtually anything is possible". Kinda reminds me of Mike's blog post on Monday about Red Hat. And for many IT pros, "virtually anything is possible" might apply to the fact that Microsoft is exhibiting at, and sponsoring, VMworld Europe for the second year in a row. Tres bien, as they say in Cannes. So if you're one of the 3,000 paid attendees expected at VMworld Europe 2009, below's a sneak peak at what you'll find inside booth #133. If you're not attending, I'm going to attempt to post some pix ... maybe video if I'm lucky ... from the booth so you can see the action. No doubt there will be plenty of other blogs coming from VMworld Europe. You can see most of them at the Virt blog aggregator. So what am I expecting to see in Cannes? Outside of the Microsoft booth, I'd expect to see early versions of client hypervisors, interop announcements, new product packaging, cloud computing announcements, and likely an update about VMsafe. Should be a busy week. Read More...
Posted 21 February 09 06:30 by porourke | 4 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, Management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, Interop, virtualization management, VDI, Citrix, Management tools, XenServer, Windows Server 2008, Cloud Computing, Visual Studio, Live Migration, Red Hat, XenApp
Before we get to VMworld Vegas: My ears are still ringing from Monday's virtualization event in Bellevue. Not necessarily from the keynotes or demos, but mainly from being 10 feet away from the stage as the band Live played a 60+ minute set during the party. Here's a photo I snapped Read More...
Posted 10 September 08 05:26 by porourke | 1 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, Application Virtualization, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, virtualization management, VDI, Citrix, Management tools, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008
The Validated Hypervisor: By now you might have seen that VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 has passed the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program. They announced it here. today announced it has qualified its industry-leading VMware ESX hypervisor under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) is the first hypervisor to be listed under the program, providing VMware customers who run Windows Server and Microsoft applications with access to cooperative support from Microsoft and VMware. Of course we all read that VMware only agreed to participate in SVVP a couple weeks ago, around the time we announced expanded technical support for 31 server applications running on validated hypervisors. Congrats to them for achieving a validated configuration so quickly. ESX 3.5 update 2 now joins Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V as being validated to run Windows Server and associated Microsoft server applications. And now that ESX 3.5 has passed SVVP, VMware customers will join Novell customers as receiving cooperative technical support (if there's a support policy in place, and the customer is running the validated configuration) for Microsoft software running in/on their virtualization software. I'd expect to see other hypervisors pass the SVVP soon. There are 7 vendors now committed to participate in SVVP, the newest addition being Unisys. Patrick Read More...
Posted 03 September 08 03:00 by porourke | 5 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, ESX, VMWare, Interop, Citrix, XenServer, Sun, Windows Server 2008
VM standards, offline patching tools: Quick post here on two items. Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool can be downloaded here. As blogged about at by the System Center team blog, Virtualization.info, and InfoWorld blog. This product allows the update of large-scale deployments of virtual machines, leveraging PowerShell, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2007 and WSUS 3.0 (or Configuration Manager 2007). As Alessandro pointed out, "It just automates the VM power-on, updates deploying through virtual network access, and VM shutdown." You can use this Solution Accelerator to help you with business scenarios such as these: Your IT organization is converting physical servers to virtual machines to reduce costs, including administrative overhead. How can you regularly update offline virtual machines while minimizing administrative costs? Your IT organization has thousands of virtual machines stored for months at a time in a number of libraries. How do you keep the virtual machines reliably up to date? Second, today Citrix issued an announcement about "Project Kensho", which is described as: Read More...
Posted 16 July 08 06:58 by porourke | 3 Comments
Filed under Hyper-V, virtual machine, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, Interop, virtualization management, Citrix, Management tools, VMM 2008, Virtuallization Solution Accelerators, Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Tool, Windows Server 2008

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