Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Application Virtualization

Virtualization: desktop to datacenter

porourke — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:54:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted a blog ... but that one really caused a stir in the Virt circles in the Bay Area. Hopefully it doesn't mean I can't hit up those people for Sharks tickets.

I've stumbled across some interesting items that I wanted to share with you.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 is now available. The big thing is support for Windows 7. Read the blog here. Here's an excerpt:

If you are an MDOP customer, you can download MDOP 2009 R2 through Microsoft Volume Licensing Site (MVLS). For others who wish to evaluate MDOP products, the MDOP software is available at MSDN and TechNet (in accordance with your MSDN or TechNet agreements, except for AIS).

MDOP has been licensed for over 21 million desktops worldwide! In a recent survey completed for Microsoft by Answers Research, and including 1000 IT professionals across five countries, we learned several interesting facts:

66% of MDOP customers deployed three or more of the MDOP products

52% of them deployed MDOP across more than half of their PCs

94% of MDOP customers said they would recommend MDOP to a colleague

When comparing MDOP and non-MDOP customers, customer satisfaction with Software Assurance increases by 25%

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) V 1.0 SP1 - This updated tool will support Windows 7 and enable enterprise deployment of virtual Windows XP environments to support incompatible applications. A Beta version of MED-V 1.0 SP1 will be available by the end of 2009 and final release is scheduled for the first quarter of calendar year 2010.

On the server side, the latest is from Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Gartner announced their top 10 strategic technologies for 2010. Not surprisingly, virtualization is named or underlying several of the strategic technologies. And speaking of, Gartner also shared data on server virtualization adoption today and forecasted through 2012. Read this article. Here's an excerpt:

According to Gartner, 18% of server workloads this year run on virtualized servers; that share will grow to 28% next year and reach almost half by 2012. But growth is anticipated among the small-to-midsize businesses (SMB), and it's in this segment that Microsoft has a good chance to build a customer base. By 2012, VMware's share is expected to shrink to 65% but the base of VMs will have grown to 58 million, a 10-fold leap. By that time, Gartner believes, Microsoft will hold 27% share, Citrix 6%, Red Hat 2% and others about 1%.

Along those lines, I had a great email exchange a couple weeks ago with Steve at PoundHost in Maidenhead, UK. I was giving a presentation at IP Expo / VM Expo conference in London, and wanted to highlight PoundHost's business results since switching to Hyper-V and System Center away from VMware tools, and since PoundHost has deployed the Dynamic Datacenter Tookit for hosters. PoundHost has a very compelling story of how technology can really help a business transform itself and create new opportunities. The Microsoft case study doesn't really do it justice. Here's some of what Steve shared with me:

Cost. "It meant we could offer Linux and Windows at the same price (when we went live with the beta of R2 we had Linux guests but we don’t now). It means we can offer low cost VMs on high quality (and cost!) host servers which ultimately give the end user a better experience. [It] works out about £1.00 per guest assuming 60 guests per host."
Common management tools. "We were also very impressed with a demo we had seen of System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Ops Manager so we now use both in our infrastructure."
Choice. "I’m a VCP and have a lot of experience with ESX but I’d never use it again now I’ve used Hyper-V under R2"
Grow business. "[We've] expanded our Hyper-V/System Center offerings into our managed services company Server Arcade "
Grow business: profitability boost by 55%
Customer service. "We’re also doing the customer control panel now for Poundhost which is based on the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit."

Check out more about the Dynamic Datacenter toolkits and partner alliance at their blog.

Patrick O'Rourke

Announcing the availability of the updated Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Virtualization and System Center

vtango — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:03:00 GMT

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 Virtualization. Also known as a hypervisor, Server Hardware Virtualization runs a very lightweight core operating system. The hypervisor can host independent virtual machines (VMs). This form of virtualization requires hardware that has embedded virtualization awareness capabilities. Since the hypervisor is very lightweight, there is little overhead in the system, which allows for more scalability in the virtual machines.

· Server Software Virtualization. An operating system, such as Windows Server® 2003 or Windows Server 2008, runs an application that is able to host virtual machines. Each virtual machine runs a completely separate operating system and application set.

· Presentation Virtualization. Centralized systems host multiple user sessions, and all processing is done on those host systems. The user sessions are isolated from each other. Only the presentation information, such as keyboard and mouse inputs, and video updates are sent between the client and the host system. The client can be a full Windows-based workstation or a Windows-based terminal device.

· Application Virtualization. An application is isolated from the underlying operating system by means of wrapper software that encapsulates it. This allows multiple applications that may have conflicting dynamic link libraries (DLLs) or other incompatibilities to run on the same machine without affecting each other.

· Desktop Virtualization. This is similar to Server Software Virtualization, but it runs on client systems such as Windows Vista®. The client operating system runs a virtualization application that hosts virtual machines. This is often used when a specific person needs to run one or a limited number of legacy applications on a legacy operating system.

With the richness and breadth of these technologies, customers should evaluate their needs against the capabilities and solutions that each of the technologies is targeted at. The Solution Accelerators team has been working furiously to create guides for customers and we are really excited to announce the availability of the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Virtualization updated for Windows Server 2008 R2, which can help customers start their planning and deployment process for Virtualization using the Microsoft portfolio. With detailed documentation and simple flowcharts customers now have a powerful tool in their hands as they plan their deployments. Once the decision to go with a particular technology has been made, detailed guides are available for each of the technologies as well giving business decision makers, infrastructure stakeholders, and the organization as a whole a comprehensive tool for designing their virtual deployments.

As Tom Bittman from Gartner had said “Virtualization without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the first place”. Our System Center suite of products provide a full suite of management solutions for this environment and the Infrastructure and Planning Guides for System Center have been updated for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

Strong end to end management required for Virtualization to be successful (VMworld day 2)

vtango — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:39:00 GMT

I am pleased that it is being acknowledged by VMware (evidenced by their keynote announcements yesterday on the vCenter additions) that for a strong virtualization platform a complete end-to-end solution is required. We agree completely!! We at Microsoft provide solutions for configuration/change management, operational/health monitoring, virtual machine management and data protection and have been doing so for a while now. Just to get some perspective I dug up the release dates for our management software (I have trimmed the list a bit for readabilityJ). From the table below its clear that our management lifecycle experience goes back many many years. It is great to see VMware finally acknowledge this and is attempting to now build a solution that spans some aspects of this end-to-end management. We welcome this.

Products	Date
Operations Manager 2000 Enterprise Edition	3/1/2001
Operations Manager (MOM) 2005	11/24/2004
System Center Operations Manager 2007	6/23/2007
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007	11/29/2007
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008	1/29/2009
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2	8/2009
System Center Data Protection Manager	10/22/2005
System Center Data Protection Manager 2006	10/22/2005
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007	12/15/2007
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Service Pack 1	12/19/2008
Systems Management Server 1.2 Standard Edition	10/23/1996
Systems Management Server 2.0 Service Pack 3	2/13/2001
Systems Management Server 2.0 Standard Edition	4/1/1999
Systems Management Server 2003	1/20/2004
Systems Management Server 2003 R2	8/25/2006
Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 3	4/27/2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007	11/29/2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2	11/29/2008
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1	5/21/2008

Over the past two days I have had the opportunity to interact with large number of customers and partners (so much so that I could barely make it to one of my sessions yesterday). Universally, I have heard that customers are looking to have a solution that provides them end-to-end visibility/monitoring and control over their infrastructure spanning all layers from the hardware, virtualization, OS and applications. The depth and breadth of our experience and products provided by us and our partners provides customers with the tools that they need for a responsive and effective IT infrastructure.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites

porourke — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:48:00 GMT

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 for hosted virtual desktops, or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

When deciding whether to implement or even pilot VDI, most customers look for technical integration of the key VDI building blocks:

· the hypervisor,

· management of the virtual machines and the (physical) VDI host,

· a brokering and remoting infrastructure, and

· an application delivery technology for dynamic provisioning of applications to virtual desktops.

But customers also look for a simple and cost-effective way to license this scenario, as they will compare the technical and business benefits of VDI with more traditional desktop deployment options, such as session-based desktops and rich clients. Today we introduced two new licenses for VDI – the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite and the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premium Suite. These licenses make it simple for customers to purchase the comprehensive Microsoft VDI technologies while providing excellent value compared with competing VDI offerings. The new VDI suite licenses will be available via Microsoft volume licensing in calendar Q4.

This is a pretty big deal, so let me explain what we mean by comprehensive, simple and excellent value. First, both new offerings include licenses for all the key technology components mentioned above when used in a VDI scenario: Hyper-V Server, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager, Remote Desktop Services (CAL) and MDOP. The Premium VDI Suite even includes additional use rights for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as well as App-V for RDS, to enable mixed environments with not only VM-based remote desktops, but also session-based desktops and applications. With these two new offerings, the only additional license you will need to correctly license a VDI environment from Microsoft is Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop or VECD (you will need VECD even to deploy VDI on a non-Microsoft platform)

By now, you are probably wondering how the licensing of these new VDI Suites will work given their standalone components have very different license schemes. The two new VDI Suites are designed to match the VECD license (which is a device subscription), so the math has become very simple now: As with VECD, the number of VDI Suite licenses equals the total number of client devices that accesses the VDI environment. The subscription-based license will ensure that customers always have access to the latest versions of the software.

But now comes actually the best part. At only $21 per year per device, the VDI Standard Suite is about one-third the cost of a corresponding VMware View edition (the comparison is based on the cost of licenses and software maintenance over a five-year period, which many customers tell me that’s what they base their desktop infrastructure investments on). Similarly, our VDI Premium Suite is about half the price of the premier VMware VDI offering, and it also offers the capability to deploy session-based desktops and applications, in addition to VM-based desktops. And for those customers who are still missing a feature or need an enterprise-ready solution, you can add a 3^rd party connection broker for Hyper-V such as Citrix XenDesktop - and most likely still pay less than if you chose to deploy VMware. In fact, Citrix today announced continued alliance in the area of desktop virtualization.

If you would like to see a demo of Microsoft VDI solution running on Windows Server 2008 R2, please come to the Microsoft booth at WPC if you’re attending the conference. For all others, please post your comments in the section below.

Manlio

UPDATE: to answer morriswj's question. I'm excited, too, about this new single licensing for VDI’s server infrastructure, which will complement VECD for a VDI deployment. Regarding High Availability, it is included in MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (the no-cost, standalone hypervisor) and will therefore be available as part of the VDI Suite offering. No other license other than VDI Suite (Standard or Premium) and VECD will be required for a highly available VDI deployment.

UPDATE 2: I'm responding to the question from cstalhood, and the similar question in Brian Madden's post today. For session virtualization using WS08 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS), you don’t need the VECD license. The Premium VDI Suite license includes full rights of the RDS CAL, in addition to the other components for a VDI solution. The Premium VDI Suite license, when available in Q4, will be available as a device subscription, while RDS CAL (the new name for TS CAL) is available as a perpetual user or device license. After all, some customers don’t want to buy on a subscription basis.

Online sessions, book and more

porourke — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:56:00 GMT

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.
Finally

Enjoy.

Patrick

MMS 2009: Application Virt for Servers

porourke — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:50:00 GMT

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 surprise. The demo was described as a technology preview, meaning there's no plan of record for beta testing date. 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.

Patrick

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization now available via MDOP

porourke — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:36:00 GMT

It's great to see that MED-V is now available to customers with the new version of MS Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for customers with Software Assurance.

See Ran's post here. Following are excerpts from Ran's post:

MED-V provides deployment and management of virtual Windows desktops to enable key enterprise scenarios. MED-V 1.0 helps enterprises upgrade to the latest version of Windows even when some applications are not yet compatible. MED-V builds on top of Microsoft Virtual PC to run two operating systems on one device, adding virtual image delivery, policy-based provisioning and centralized management.

A recent brief by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) emphasized some of the customer benefits of using MED-V: "We found that MED-V really solved our application compatibility problems. It allowed us to deploy the applications that we were having difficulty with, where third party vendors were not providing a supported version. Where we used to have hundreds of images, we were able to move to one [Windows] Vista image, and use MED-V to deploy [legacy] applications on top of that," said IT Deployment Manger at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, an organization of 22,000 staff members.

"We are really happy with MED-V. We can virtualize the applications that are made only for XP, and they work fine, with all the functionality intact," said a large European telecommunications company with almost 80,000 employees.

For a look-back at Kidaro's perspective prior to acquisition being completed, watch this interview with Kidaro CEO from May 2008, or listen to this podcast from February 2008. We announced the acquisition in March 2008, about 18 months after Kidaro announced their first desktop virtualization product.

Two other items caught my eye.

Ran's post said there are 14.4 million MDOP customers. There were 4.5 million seats in March 2008 according to my blog post. Wow, that's something. Wonder what the SA haters will say about that?
The new version of MDOP includes the update to App-V 4.5, which adds support for Windows 7 beta. See Karri's post here.

Patrick

March 31 live web chat

porourke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:24:00 GMT

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.

Patrick

Microsoft at VMworld Europe 2009

porourke — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:30:00 GMT

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.

As for Microsoft, of course we'll be showcasing our server virtualization platform - Hyper-V. (Citrix might do a little bit of that, too). We'll have a total of 4 demos in the booth:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V running Live Migration
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 showing management of VMware ESX Server and a Citrix PRO pack demo. Not sure if this will be a sneak peak of the next version or not of SCVMM.
Desktop virtualization with App-V 4.5 and beta of MED-V 1.0.
a VDI demo with Citrix XenApp and WS08 r2 remote desktop services.

I was hoping we'd be demoing the lab manager functions in Visual Studio 10, or the integration to System Center DPM 2007 sp1 and Iron Mountain cloud backup. Oh well, maybe next show. I know we will be there to answer all your licensing questions about the above scenarios. I do recall about 33%-50% of all the people I met in the booth last year had licensing questions. Thankfully Chris Wolf (Burton Group analyst) will have a session on that topic Feb. 24 at 3:15pm. Check it out.

The Microsoft-presented session (comes with the sponsorship) is Feb. 25 at 2pm in Les Ambassadors 2/3. I know Jeff and Edwin have some good demos for this session.

This will also be the first time Paul Maritz takes the stage in front of his European customers and partners. Let's just hope he can pronounce Cannes better than Diane did last year [hint: it's not pronounced like "canz"].

Now it's off to Cannes, and the beautiful promenade with lots of well-dressed locals walking their tiny little dogs. A memory I won't forget. No doubt the poodles will offer a better welcome than we did in Vegas ;-).

Patrick

The Virtualization Essentials from Citrix

porourke — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:10:00 GMT

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.

There's lots of opinions of what this means for the virtualization software vendor landscape. But that's less important really than what it means for IT pros and developers. They're now getting much broader access to the benefits of a hypervisor platform, one that's interoperable with other hypervisors, and one that will have a common management interface. It's a reminder that virtualization is just another means to an end (obviously a great one, otherwise I wouldn't blog here). The value has become management, automation, processes, and the like.

That's enough from me. Here's a video with Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix, and Mike Neil, GM of virtualization, talking about Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V. Enjoy,

Patrick

[update: Two items. First, the real-world clock on our blog is out of sorts. I hit publish on this blog on Feb. 23, not Feb. 20. Just in case someone out there was wondering. I'll try to fix this issue. Second, Barry at Citrix blogged about Essentials for Hyper-V, too, and included demo. Check it out].

Microsoft and Red Hat Cooperative Technical Support

porourke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

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 discussing this news.

So how are we doing this? Red Hat has joined Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, and Microsoft is now a Red Hat partner for virtualization interoperability and support. Microsoft will be listed in the Red Hat Hardware Certification List once we’ve completed the Red Hat certification process in H2. In addition to the agreements, Microsoft will publish Linux Integration Components for RHEL when the testing and validation is complete. The folks at Red Hat tell me that they’ll provide WHQL [Windows Hardware Quality Labs] drivers for a variety of Windows Server versions. So not only will you get cooperative technical support, you’ll also get high-performing enlightened VMs.

You might also be wondering – when can I get this? I don’t have a calendar date for you just yet, but I know that validations are now underway and will be as comprehensive as possible. Each company is doing its respective validations separately with the first validated configurations available at different times later this year.

And I’m sure you’re wondering about tools to manage those RHEL guests running on Hyper-V? Good news there. We know virtualization projects aren’t successful unless the right management tools are in place to manage both the virtual and physical. System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, which will be released in calendar Q2 2009, includes cross platform monitoring and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux server versions 4 and 5 so that you can manage the applications and OS in the guest VM. Other Linux distros will be supported, too. This will allow you to monitor end-to-end data center applications that are distributed across both Windows Server and RHEL, whether these servers are physical or virtual.

I suspect that you’re now as excited as me about these agreements. But maybe you’re wondering … what took so long? That’s a fair question given the number of customers and partners that have been asking for this result.

Let me say that I’m sure everyone reading this can appreciate the distance between Microsoft and Red Hat is measured in more than just the 2,900 miles between Redmond, WA and Raleigh, NC. Microsoft and Red Hat have competed for customers and partners for some time now and as platform vendors continue to compete in the marketplace. Yet, our customers have told us that technical support for server virtualization is an area we must work together. And that’s certainly understandable when you consider the fact that roughly 80% of the primary guest (in a VM) operating systems on x86 servers today come from Microsoft or Red Hat. Indeed, customer demand is the main driver behind these agreements with our competitor.

One thing I’d like to point out: since these agreements are focused on joint technical support for Microsoft and Red Hat’s mutual customers using server virtualization, the activities included in these agreements do not require the sharing of IP. Therefore, these agreements do not include any patent or other IP licensing rights.

I want to leave you with the point that Microsoft is pragmatically focused on helping customers and partners be successful in a heterogeneous IT world. We’re committed to enable and support interoperability with non-Windows OSes. As a result we take a multifaceted approach to interoperability, be it customer-driven industry collaborations, such as this Server Virtualization Validation Program, be it standards that promote common technologies (e.g., device virtualization through the PCI-SIG), or proactive licensing of IP (e.g., Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk format, Microsoft’s Hypercall APIs), or the creation of technologies that bridge different systems (e.g., protocol licensing and documentation, Integration Components for Linux). In the end, customers with mixed IT environments expect it all to work together and today’s announcement is one way of making that happen.

Below you can read an FAQ that is also on Red Hat's website.

Mike

FAQ

Q1: Is this a joint agreement between Red Hat and Microsoft?

A1: It’s not a joint agreement. Red Hat has signed an agreement to join Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, while Microsoft has joined Red Hat’s Virtualization Certification Program . Microsoft will be listed in the Red Hat Hardware Certification List once it has completed the Red Hat certification process.

Q2: It seems like customers should have had this type of support some time ago. What took so long to provide customers with technical support?

A2: Microsoft and Red Hat started hearing requests for bilateral validation soon after Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program went live in June 2008. Both companies quickly agreed to work together; finalizing the details around comprehensive, coordinated technical support has taken some time. As a result, customers will be able to confidently deploy Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, virtualized on Microsoft and Red Hat hypervisors, knowing that the solutions will be supported by both companies.

Q3: Are there other components of the deal that have not been disclosed yet?

A3: No. The agreements are specific to establishing coordinated technical support for our mutual customers using server virtualization. The agreements have nothing to do with patents, and there are no patent rights or other open source licensing rights implications provided under these agreements. The agreements contain no financial clauses other than test fees for industry-standard certification and validation.

While Microsoft and Red Hat continue to compete in the marketplace, customers have told us that technical support for server virtualization is an area where we must work together. Now we have agreements to test and coordinate technical support and provide customers with a new level of mutual support between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server for their heterogeneous IT environments.

Q4: What versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization will be validated, to what versions of Windows and Hyper-V?

A4: Validations are now getting underway, and are planned to be comprehensive. Each company is doing its respective validations separately, with the first results expected later this year.

As a participant in Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, once Red Hat submits test logs indicating that Windows Server 2008 runs properly on the Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, the specific version of Red Hat used in the tests along with parameters of the virtual machine tested will be posted on Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program website. At that point customers can confidently deploy Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP2, or Windows 2000 Server SP4 and later and receive coordinated technical support from both vendors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux SVVP completion is planned for calendar H2 2009.

Microsoft currently plans to validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as a guest on Windows Server Hyper-V. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 will now support uni-processor virtual machines running:

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (x86)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (x64)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (x86)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (x64)

Q5: How do customers get support for the validated solutions? Who do they call?

A5: Customers with valid support agreements with both companies call either Microsoft or Red Hat to have their issues resolved. If the first vendor contacted cannot resolve the issue they will work with the other vendor to come to a resolution for the mutual customer.

Q6: What level of support agreement is required from Red Hat and Microsoft for a customer to receive support when running RHEL on Windows or Windows on RHEL?

A6: Customers with current Microsoft support agreements for Windows Server 2008 will be entitled to obtain support under this agreement. Where an existing agreement is not in place, customers can identify their willingness to purchase ‘per-call’ support.

Any customer with a valid Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, and using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 or 5.3 guests will be entitled to support under this agreement.

Q7: How do these agreements compare to agreements you both have with VMware and/or Citrix?

A7: There is no change in Microsoft's or Red Hat's relationship with VMware. Note that both Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be deployed on VMware ESX. Red Hat doesn’t have any virtualization agreements with Citrix at this time. Both VMware and Citrix have product configurations that have been validated through the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program.

Q8: How do I find out what validations have been completed?

A8: Validations will be posted to the respective Microsoft and Red Hat web sites:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compatibility/hardware/

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx

Q9: Who will be the primary beneficiary of this agreement?

A9: The primary beneficiary of this agreement will be Microsoft and Red Hat customers. Of course, a secondary beneficiary will be the virtualization ecosystem because it will be more useful to customers, leading to wider deployments and faster technology development.

For $50,000, I could pay someone to move my virtual machines for me

porourke — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:47:00 GMT

The title of this post will make sense in a moment. It's a quote from a customer in Australia ... and pretty funny one, 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. I'll be interested to see/read about more ISVs packaging their apps this way for enterprise customer deployments.
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.

Finally, the headline to this Australian article caught my eye over the weekend: "PacLib performs VMware analysis but chooses Microsoft." The money quote, which I already alluded to, comes from IT manager David Furey when discussing VMware's proposal:

“They came back with a proposal of about $25,000 in installation costs and another $25,000 in software costs,” Furey told iTnews. “You’ve got to question whether it’s worth paying $50,000 for that. I know the VMware camp go on about features like VMotion, but for $50,000 I could pay someone to move my virtual machines for me.”

Hmm, sounds eerily similar to something I read at VMworld 2008. ;-)

In a couple weeks I'll be attending Gartner's Data Centre conference in Amsterdam and plan to blog about some of the sessions. Let me know if you'll be there so we can compare notes and share an adult beverage.

Patrick

Guest Post: Virtualization and Cloud Computing

porourke — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:54:00 GMT

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.

Where I agree with Gartner is their somewhat radical notion that Cloud Computing is the future of INTERNAL IT!! Because it moves IT operations from managing components in silos to managing pools of resources in clouds. Gartner identified the four key hallmarks of Cloud Computing as Services Orientation, Utility Pricing, Massive Elasticity, and Delivered over the Internet. And the only difference with the modern IT approach is the delivery over the Internet. IT delivers over the Intranet.

The Gartner analyst did a nice job of categorizing the big change issue that virtualization brings to the puzzle – the decoupling of components previously locked together (Hardware, OS, Apps) that enables a new set of solution categories:

· Infrastructure As A Service: hardware pooling, dynamic hardware provisioning, Pay for usage, etc. which are built on virtualized hardware

· Grid Computing, which is essentially a service that delivers virtualized Hardware PLUS OS but not much more.

· Software Appliances – which is a service that delivers virtualized OS plus Application, and can run independently of the particular OS environment. JavaVM apps fit this profile

· Application Streaming – which is a service that delivers virtualized applications

This differentiates nicely the distinctions between different Cloud Computing directions. Amazon’s ESS online storage is Infrastructure As a Service. Grid Computing, ala Google Gears, is really a Software Appliance – Google Gear Apps target the Google Gears runtime (OS) environment. Facebook is pure application streaming – all Facebook Apps are thin browser apps that connect to other types of back end services

So where does Microsoft fit in this? Kevin Turner comes out to tell us. Software plus Services is one of the four pillars of innovation that he cites and Kevin differentiates between MS Online, which is targeting Commercial customers, and MS Live services, which is targeting the consumer world. In particular he points out that unlike the other players in the S+S field, Microsoft offers the ability to have the commercial services operate either as locally installed solutions, partner hosted solutions or Microsoft generically hosted solutions (i.e., App Streamed, Software Appliance Mode or Infrastructure As a Service)

Seems to me this approach is a much stronger way to bridge to this coming world. Rather than via 100% commitment to one or another mechanism in a world that is not yet tried and true.

I am very pleased to see that Microsoft is not limiting its view of virtualization simply as a means of offering Infrastructure as a Service. And I am looking forwards to PDC 2008 this October to see what cool things are in store (Kevin Turner closed by throwing up a teaser slide about the new things that will be released at the PDC).

Karl Schulmeisters

Unisys

Before we get to VMworld Vegas

porourke — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:26:00 GMT

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 with my T-Mobile Dash.

I was fortunate enough to meet and speak with several customers and partners (and the members of Live). It was great to meet Matt at MLS Network of New England (who requested greater coordination with OEMs around NIC teaming for Hyper-V), Michael from Heidelberg in Germany (who's using Windows mobile phones and MS Dynamics to provide mobile access to internal data), and Howard from Heidelberg ... who has more PIMs than goals in his adult hockey league ;-)

Next week many of us will be in Vegas. I'm looking forward to my 4th straight year attending VMworld (despite having to go to Vegas). It appears this year's conference will be much larger than last year, and I'm looking forward to hear Paul Maritiz speak. Who knows, maybe Paul will mention Microsoft in his keynote and create greater interest to visit our booth.

For those of you who will be there, stop by our booth (#1120) to see demos of WS08 Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008, Windows Server terminal services, MS Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (from the Kidaro acquisition) and VDI using Vista/Citrix XenDesktop. And I think there's a customized laptop and "Gears of War 2" XBox giveaway.

You might also be interested to know that Microsoft is participating in a couple sessions. On Thursday (9/18) at 9am, we'll co-present a breakout session (EA4460) with VMware on Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). On the same day, but at 2pm, several folks will present our strategy and demo Microsoft's desktop and server products.

A few other things to know:

Read Mike Sterling's post about the Linux ICs for WS08 Hyper-V. They're now available on MS Connect [note: you may need to browse the Connection directory, then log in to Connect and then find the Linux Integration Components program.
For those readers in Western Europe, you should consider attending the Virtualization Congress in mid-October in London. Alessandro has assembled quite a lineup of speakers from around the industry, to include our own Mark Russinovich. The coolest thing ... no slides from them, just technology. And several noteworthy bloggers and independent voices will attend.
Rand Morimoto and Jeff Guillet, consultants with Convergent Computing, just published a book titled, "Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Unleashed." List price is $39.99 for 430 pages. You can see the Table of Contents at the link provided. They also cover SCVMM 2008.

Hope to see you next week at Microsoft's booth at VMworld.

Patrick

Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Application Virtualization

Virtualization: desktop to datacenter

Announcing the availability of the updated Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Virtualization and System Center

Strong end to end management required for Virtualization to be successful (VMworld day 2)

Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites

Online sessions, book and more

MMS 2009: Application Virt for Servers

Top 10 VMWare myths video

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization now available via MDOP

March 31 live web chat

Microsoft at VMworld Europe 2009

The Virtualization Essentials from Citrix

Microsoft and Red Hat Cooperative Technical Support

For $50,000, I could pay someone to move my virtual machines for me

Guest Post: Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Before we get to VMworld Vegas