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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...
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...
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...
MMS 2009: Application Virt for Servers
I'm a bit behind is sharing the following demo video. On Tuesday at Microsoft Management Summit, we did a demo of application virtualization for servers. Both Mary Jo and Alessandro predicted this demo a couple weeks ago - so not a real surprised. The demo was described as a technology preview, meaning there's no plan of record for beta testing, etc. So what did Bill Morein demo? As you'll see, Bill's demo was setup by talk about administering the compute fabric and managing deployment of a tightly bound OS can create challenges. By applying application virtualization to this challenge, we can separate apps from the server. This should mean a more simplified, and accelerated, approach to deploying those virtualized apps and patching. Bill pointed out that this leads to reduce image libraries, and accelerated migration. Check out the demo - it's less than 6 minutes. 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...
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...
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...
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...
For $50,000, I could pay someone to move my virtual machines for me
The subject line will make sense in a moment. It's a quote from a customer in Australia ... and pretty funny, too. But before that, a few items crossed my inbox that I thought I'd share: Software vendor AspenTech has a process engineering/manufacturing application called aspenONE. Today they announced that their customer BASF deployed aspenONE using Microsoft App-V. I found this interesting for a few reasons. One, I've participated in conversations about whether enterprise customers would deploy 3rd-party apps running on App-V/SoftGrid without some sort of application certification program/logo for App-V. Second, BASF runs large, complex chemical process simulations - and now they're doing so as a network service. I know these sorts of computer-aided engineering apps often times get computed on HPC clusters; but never did I think they'd then get streamed at sufficient speed to the desktop using application virtualization. Along the lines of App-V, J.C. over at the App-V blog noted some new downloads. Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 security configuration wizard. Download here. Microsoft Application Virtualization best practices anayzer. Download here. J.C. wrote last week that App-V 4.5 for Terminal Services license will be available Nov. 1. Read more here. Adam over at TechNet Edge just posted a video interview with the authors of "Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Unleashed." I mentioned Rand's and Jeff's book a couple weeks ago. I had the opportunity to meet Rand/Jeff last week while they were up here in Redmond. Rand spoke to a bunch of us about Convergent's business, and set us straight that applications (Exchange, Sharepoint) and solutions such as disaster recovery and compliance are driving his customers' infrastructure purchases (e.g., Windows Server, Hyper-V, System Center) ... not the other way around. Here's a link to Jeff's blog. Read More...
Guest Post: Virtualization and Cloud Computing
Hello, my name is Karl Schulmeisters, director of alliance technology and architecture for the Microsoft Global Alliance at Unisys. We are a global systems integrator that focuses on large scale-up solutions particularly in the public sector, financial services, federal government and pharmaceuticals industries. I watched Monday’s mid-day keynote at the Virtualization Launch in Bellevue, in which Senior VP of Server and Tools, Bob Muglia, spoke and brought a Gartner analyst on stage for an industry view. The traditional viewpoint of virtualization is that it is driven by cost savings, Green IT and operational efficiency. But according to Gartner, those are tactical considerations. Gartner believes that virtualization unlocks Cloud Computing, which in turn fundamentally transforms how IT is run. I’m not sure that virtualization itself unlocks Cloud Computing. Pervasive connectivity and standardized data protocols, like XML, are more crucial to this. What virtualization lets you do though is to get rid of the issues of app conflicts that have grown out of the PC industry’s history of using dedicated machines for a particular server type. Essentially it lets you isolate the various application servers as though they were on a separate physical box without having to assume the cost of that separation. Read More...
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...
Thoughts on today's virtualization licensing and support news
Today we announced some changes to server application licensing and support policies related to running MS server apps on top of anyone's hypervisor. Several folks have written or blogged about it, here are some: Chris Wolf (Burton Group) Virtualization.info NetworkWorld Windows IT Pro Thoughts on application mobility licensing Read More...
Top 5 things to know about Hyper-V
My name is Ronald Beekelaar. I'm a Microsoft MVP of Virtual Machine Technology, based in Amsterdam. I have my own consultancy firm, and since 2002 I focus on virtualization. At first, this was strictly VMware-oriented, but a few years later this included Microsoft's virtualization products as well. Since the first public beta of Hyper-V more than a year ago, I have done many presentations about Hyper-V at various events, and talked to a lot of customers about transitioning to Hyper-V. The people I talk to can be divided into two groups: they either have experience with Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server, or they only know the VMware products and are just now looking into Hyper-V. However, for both groups, and despite very different opinions, there are five topics that always come up in discussions. Below is my list of the top-5 things you should know and understand about Hyper-V. Read More...

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