Windows Virtualization Team Blog

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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...
Posted 24 September 09 03:03 by vtango | 1 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
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
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
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...
Posted 20 March 09 09:41 by porourke | 0 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center, virtualization management, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Virtualization AMD, Dell, 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
Guest post: Virtualization drives $250,000 in real savings: I’m David Straede, president of SBWH.com, a Windows managed server provider. Virtualization using Hyper-V and System Center is the most exciting thing SBWH has been a part of since we started beta testing IIS 4.0 in 1997. SBWH in 1999 Twelve years ago Read More...
Posted 09 February 09 06:00 by porourke | 2 Comments
Filed under Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, virtual machine, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, ESX, VMWare, System Center, virtualization management, VMM 2008, Windows Server 2008, Quick Migration, Live Migration
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
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
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

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