Windows Virtualization Team Blog : HP

Windows 7: Windows XP Mode Release Candidate Now Available

WSV_GUY — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:59:34 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

Just a quick blog in case you missed the big news for Windows 7. Windows XP Mode has hit Release Candidate. Here are some highlights of the new Release Candidate:

New Features in Windows XP Mode RC

Based on feedback from the Windows XP Mode beta, we've made several improvements to the usability of Windows XP Mode for small and medium-sized business users:

You can now attach USB devices to Windows XP Mode applications directly from the Windows 7 task-bar. This means your USB devices, such as printers and flash drives, are available to applications running in Windows XP Mode, without the need to go into full screen mode.
You can now access Windows XP Mode applications with a "jump-list". Right click on the Windows XP Mode applications from the Windows 7 task bar to select and open most recently used files.
You now have the flexibility of customizing where Windows XP Mode differencing disk files are stored.
You can now disable drive sharing between Windows XP Mode and Windows 7 if you do not need that feature.
The initial setup now includes a new user tutorial about how to use Windows XP Mode.

Personally, all the apps I use work just fine with Windows 7 (zero app compatibility issues), but I've found one killer reason for Windows XP Mode. At home, we have an HP Photosmart printer that prints great photos. It's really a great printer, but unfortunately, HP never updated the drivers for this printer beyond XP. I haven't had the heart to recycle it just yet and now I don't need to. I setup Windows XP Mode on my system at home, hooked up this USB device to my Windows XP Mode virtual machine, setup printer sharing within XP, and voila we can use this printer again. Very cool. :-)

For more on Windows XP Mode and download location, check out this blog post from the Windows Client Team.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

Beware The VMware Core Tax & More

WSV_GUY — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:18:00 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

We'd like to again offer congratulations to AMD on the release of their new 6-core Opteron ("Istanbul") processors. As Bryon mentioned, Hyper-V R2 goes hand in hand with these new processors with support for AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing, advanced power savings with Core Parking and, of course, more cores means compute resources to run more virtual machines. In fact, two factors that have fueled virtualization have been the rise of 64-bit (x64) computing and the rapid growth of multi-core processors.

Bring On The Cores

Even an entry level laptop these days is dual-core. On desktops, the news is even better. I saw an ad in the paper a few days ago for a very powerful HP desktop system with an AMD quad-core processor and 8 GB of memory that runs Hyper-V like a champ for $600. Well, the news is only getting better. Our partners at AMD and Intel are continuing to ratchet up the core counts and if you've been reading any of the popular tech sites around the web you may have read that we'll soon be seeing processors with 8+ cores per processor. That's a tremendous amount of compute power. In fact, with all this compute power, you're going to be more inclined to virtualize than ever. This is great news for our customers who are trying to lower cost.

However, one question that has hit our inboxes recently has been, "Does Hyper-V have a core tax?"

Huh?

Core Tax? What's that?

At Microsoft, we don't license per core, generally, we license per server or per processor. In this case of Windows Server:

Windows Server 2008 Standard is licensed per physical server and supports up to 4 physical processors whether there are 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8+ cores per processor
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is licensed per physical server up to 8 physical processors whether there are 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8+ cores per processor
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition is licensed per processor whether there are 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8+ cores per processor

This is great for our customers. As they invest in newer hardware with greater capabilities, performance, scalability there's no penalty for moving to the latest cutting edge systems with ever increasing core counts. After being questioned about a "core tax," I looked into why this was being asked.

Now I know.

VMware & The Core Tax

With VSphere, VMware only supports 6 cores per processor for most of their versions. If you want support for more than 6 cores per processor you have to upgrade from:

Standard ($795 per processor) to Advanced ($2245 per processor) a 282% increase (no, that's not a typo) OR
Enterprise ($2875 per processor) to Enterprise Plus ($3495 per processor) a 22% increase

Ouch.

From their website:

What do Analysts Think?

In a recent blog, Scott Lowe (virtualization analyst) wrote:

What's up with Advanced having a 12-core limit, but Enterprise having a 6-core limit? Because existing VI3 Enterprise customers will be grandfathered into vSphere 4 Enterprise if they have an active SnS [VMware Support and Subscription], this strikes me as nothing more than an attempt to extort more licensing fees.

Extort? Ouch.

How The Enterprise Plus SKU Affects Enterprise Customers

With vSphere, VMware created a new, higher end tier, Enterprise Plus, so that Enterprise customers, who used to be the top tier customers and paid for a VMware Support and Subscription (SnS) contract to be eligible for free major and minor version upgrades, are finding that they will have to pay for an upgrade to Enterprise Plus when they decide to move to newer more powerful hardware with more cores. Thus, the Core Tax for VMware users.

What Do VMware Customers Think?

From HERE.

The enforced SnS renewal is particularly galling for companies that just recently renewed their contracts, said Andrew Storrs, and independent consultant in Vancouver, Canada. "It's not so bad if you only have six months left [on SnS], but what if you have 2.5 years left?" To take advantage of the upgrade promotion, IT managers are in the awkward position of having to ask to for more money for their SnS, "just for the privilege of using a normal [VMware] edition next year."
"A lot of people are pretty p@#$%d about it," he added.

What about VMware "Standard" Customers?

In addition, VMware has very quietly removed some features (such hot add virtual disks) that used to be in VMware Standard and pushed those up to Advanced. So, VMware Standard customers are LOSING FUNCTIONALITY "upgrading" to VSphere. If you want those hot add capabilities back, VMware Standard Customers will need to pay for an upgrade from VSphere Standard ($795 per processor) to Advanced ($2245 per processor).

A 282% increase.

Think that's bad? VMware didn't stop there.

The News Gets Worse (Hope You're Sitting Down)

Two things that are interesting:

It's odd that Enterprise Edition supports fewer cores per processor than Advanced. Paying more and getting less isn't exactly customer friendly. To add insult to injury, VMware is dropping the Enterprise SKU altogether this year to force customers to purchase an upgrade to Enterprise Plus. (HERE & HERE) Double ouch.
It's also interesting that VMware caps the number of cores per processor at 12. What happens when a processor comes out that includes more than 12 cores? 16? 24? 32? More? Will that require an upgrade to Enterprise Super Plus?

I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but VMware's track record speaks for itself.

CUSTOMERS: FIRST & FOREMOST

No Core Tax. At Microsoft, we don't license per core, generally, we license per server or per processor. When we do license per processor, it's per processor regardless of how many cores are present. I should also point out that the FREE standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 supports up 8 physical processors whether there are 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8+ cores per processor as well.

Read that last sentence again.

Microsoft Enterprise Customers with Software Assurance: For our valued customers that purchased Windows Server 2008 with their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement & Software Assurance, here's just a fraction of the new Hyper-V R2 capabilities you'll be receiving with your upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2 included as part of your agreement:

Live Migration
Major Scalability Boosts
Green IT Enhancements
10 Gb/E Ready
Cluster Shared Volumes
Hot Add Virtual Disks
and this is just for starters

In addition, I haven't even started discussing the new capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 outside of Hyper-V such as:

Powerful Hardware and Scaling Capabilities
Reduced Power Consumption
Connection Broker for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Ubiquitous Remote Access
Improved Branch Office Performance and Management
Simplified Management for SMBs
Remote Application and Desktop Access
and much, much more

included as part of your agreement. That's taking care of your customers.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

Guest post: Hyper-V gives every Windows shop a free pass into “innovation”

porourke — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:39:00 GMT

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.

Consider my environment: We recently made the switch to virtualization and the broad deployment of Hyper-V. This included a change in direction for our hardware refresh (bigger servers), incremental SAN purchases, and some new investment in networking (10GbE)… perhaps enough to reflect the 25% investment in “innovation”, per the survey. A balance sheet, however, would not reflect that we redesigned the entire infrastructure and now run up to 60% more efficiently: all you will see is a marked decrease in operational overhead at the end of the year (i.e., improved business efficiency and reduced IT costs, as the survey reflected).

So why is there no correlation between advancing the infrastructure and innovation spending? I believe that the technology ecosystem has afforded smarter IT spending, particularly with the (dramatic) rise in computing density, the problems it has solved and challenges it introduced, and the tools that were created (or improved) to meet those challenges. PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and “green” concepts were alien just five years ago, but now dominate most datacenter conversations. Virtualization via Hyper-V gives every Windows shop a free pass into “innovation” and grants us many new opportunities that were previously out of budgetary reach.

Some question whether this change indicates that IT is no longer aligned with business goals and driving success… I offer that our current focus clearly demonstrates that we are doing exactly what the business needs us to do.

Matt

HP releases Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center

porourke — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:00:00 GMT

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. With the official release today of Insight Control Suite for System Center, HP has taken a significant step in advancing the dynamic datacenter for customers with HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem platforms by enabling HP Insight Control capabilities to be invoked directly from the Microsoft System Center consoles.

We believe the combination of the System Center suite, Microsoft’s virtualization offerings and Insight Control suite for System Center will help further ease the customer experience by reducing complexity and the requirements on administrator’s time, delivering integrated management of virtual machines, the underlying host systems and optimizing the utilization of resources, power and space. Today’s release of ICE-SC includes a combination of functionality delivered seamlessly through System Center and HP Systems Insight Manager. At a high level, the fully integrated components include:

} Bare Metal deployment – delivered via an Operating System Deployment (OSD) toolkit that plugs directly into System Center Configuration Manager

} PRO pack integration – the ability to manage virtual machines running on ProLiant host systems through System Center consoles

} Lights out remote management – via an iLO Advanced license

} Enhanced configuration and inventory information for ProLiant systems surfaced in the System Center Configuration Manager console

} ProLiant system health monitoring from the System Center Operations Manager console

} All backed by the power of the HP Services organization with 30,000 Microsoft-trained professionals

Congratulations to HP on bringing this offering to market and providing these powerful capabilities to our mutual customers. Be sure to check out the guest blog post on the System Center blog from Scott Farrand of HP.

Thanks - Zane

SCVMM and VMware ESX management

porourke — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:43:00 GMT

The threat of virtualization sprawl. That was a theme my colleagues heard last week at IDC's "Directions" conference in San Jose. And true to IDC's form, they backed up their predictions with some numbers. Here's an excerpt from one article:

Virtualization has often been seen as something of a magic bullet to this problem, promising to consolidate a number of low-utilization servers onto a single piece of hardware. But the average number of virtual machines per server is only five, Bailey noted, with that number going to eight by 2012. So much for the vision of consolidating dozens of servers onto one machine. More important, though, was that IDC found that just going from five virtual machines to eight means there will be 100 million new servers by 2012, and "all of them still need to be managed." That's a problem, she said, since the tools to do this are not keeping pace.

Our customers have referred to this issue as "islands," referring to the need for different management tools, interfaces, etc. to manage their heterogeneous environment. After all, customers and partners tell us, they're trying to manage services, no matter if the applications run on Windows or non-Windows, physical or virtualized.

For those of you in that last camp, like Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mamut and Maxol, you know that Microsoft and some other systems management vendors are creating tools to keep pace with heterogeneous hypervisors and VMs, and as well traditional physical systems and non-virtualized applications. System Center is one such management tool; VMware vCenter isn't (yet, according to Alessandro). To elaborate on this point, check out RakeshM's latest blog post here. Here's an excerpt from his intro:

Put simply, people want to use a single primary console for day to day management of virtual machines across multiple hypervisors so we went after this problem. As a result, multi-hypervisor management via SCVMM 2008 has proven to be enormously popular with customers and partners alike.

Rakesh sheds light on VMware's concocted "demos" (nice touch using Microsoft exec names "muglia" and "ballmer" as host names) and conjecture. Rakesh summarizes his post with the following:

If you are thinking of using SCVMM 2008 to manage VMware because you have a mixed environment (and we have many many customers who are doing just that), keep in mind that SCVMM does not require you to uninstall or remove VMware Virtual Center from your environment. In fact, you have to keep Virtual Center around because VMware does not expose some APIs (like Vmotion) through ESX. We’re a manager of managers so it is nearly risk free to try it out and make up your own mind about how effective we are.

Oh, and by the way, Rakesh also says that the beta of SCVMM 2008 r2 will be coming this month.

I can't wait to see what demos VMware concocts next to counter the physical/virtual management sales and marketing by HP, IBM, CA and BMC. HP's Peter Spielvogel tips his hand here with HP's reaction. I'm sure this reaction will become stronger once VMware crosses the line to be more competitor than partner.

Patrick

HP whitepapers on NIC Teaming for Hyper-V

porourke — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:30:00 GMT

HP has published 2 white papers describing their NIC teaming support for Hyper-V.

First is a 5-page "how to" document specific to HP ProLiant. Here's the abstract:

HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software allows ProLiant systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to take advantage of network controller teaming technology. This paper describes, for system administrators and technicians, the method of software installation for implementing network controller teaming and it identifies known issues with teaming and Hyper-V software.

Second is a 59-page whitepaper that:

provides a high- and low-level discussion of the technology behind HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming for HP ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming is software-based technology used by server administrators and network administrators to increase a server’s network availability and performance. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming provides network adapter,
network port, network cable, switch, and communication path fault recovery technology, in addition to, transmit and receive load balancing technology.

Patrick

Guest post: virtualization requires the proper perspective

porourke — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:09:00 GMT

Hi, I’m Doug de Werd, technical marketing manager for Windows Virtualization at Hewlett-Packard.

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.

HP has also recognized that management of virtual environments is quickly becoming a customer top priority, and is working to integrate HP management tools to both extend and complement the functionality of System Center.

HP is taking a two-fold approach to this. First, our HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers are management enabled for System Center. HP provides Management Packs that integrate with System Center Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, as well as an upcoming HP PRO Pack for Virtual Machine Manager. These HP Management Packs enhance the customer experience by providing detailed HP-specific information to System Center. The PRO Pack will enable dynamic allocation of virtualized compute resources based on predefined set of rules and policies. This means that predictive hardware alerts can be used to migrate virtual machines to alternate hosts before a failure causes downtime.

The second is that HP Insight Software complements Microsoft System Center to provide comprehensive physical and virtual systems management. HP management tools such as Systems Insight Manager and Insight Control Environment will comprehend virtualized environments using Hyper-V in the same manner and console as non-virtualized physical host environments. HP Insight Dynamics – VSE enables administrators to manage physical and virtual resources in the same way and includes a foundation for management of virtual machines, capacity planning, virtual machine migration, and remote control.

Microsoft and HP are also working closely with Citrix in the area of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. VDI is a flexible desktop replacement solution that increases security, decreases cost and delivers higher availability for the desktop while continuing to provide end-users with the functionality of a standalone desktop. The VDI stack incorporates Microsoft components such as Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, along with Citrix XenDesktop, all running on Hyper-V and managed by System Center. HP Consulting and Integration Services provides the end-to-end solution, including servers, storage, access devices, networking devices and printers as well as the software and services to bring it all together.

HP and Microsoft have been closely collaborating for over 20 years as part of the HP-Microsoft Frontline Partnership. The strength of this work is evident in the strong management tool integration that both extends and complements Microsoft System Center. Working together, HP and Microsoft can help customers realize the tangible benefits of virtualization today.

Doug de Werd

Oct. 16, 2008 update: Here's Doug's response to JRedmond's comment/queston.

There's really 2 parts to the HP integration with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The first is that HP will be providing support for Hyper-V in the HP management tools that address virtualization. So things like Insight Dynamics - VSE, HP Insight Control Environment, HP Server Migration Pack, and HP Virtual Machine Manager will all support Hyper-V hosts and guests. For example, in HP Systems Insight Manager, you will be able to see physical Hyper-V hosts as well as the virtual machines running on them.

From the System Center side, HP already provides management packs that integrate with SC Operations Manager and SC Configuration Manager. These management packs push HP ProLiant and BladeSystem specific information into SCOM and SCCM to provide more detail about what is being managed. To further extend the functionality of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, HP will provide a PRO Pack. This works in conjunction with the HP management packs to send HP server management agent information to SCOM. The PRO Pack provides additional HP information and suggestions, allowing SCOM to make recommendations via SCVMM. As an example, a server could experience a high rate of correctable memory errors. Once a threshold has been reached, an alert is sent through the HP management pack to SCOM. OM then works with the HP PRO Pack and SCVMM to make a recommendation as to where to proactively move the virtual machines from the affected system. Using SCVMM and Quick Migration, you can then quickly move the affected VMs to other servers and diagnose and fix the original server, preventing downtime.