Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Microsoft 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

Update: What you won't see at VMworld 2009

porourke — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:30:00 GMT

This post is for the readers out there that will be attending VMworld, or have colleagues attending VMworld.

There’s been some speculative statements made in the press and blogs in the past 24 hours, so I want to try to set the record straight:

1. Microsoft will be exhibiting at VMworld 2009. Can't wait! We have a 10x10 booth, #2422. If you have a chance, please stop by booth. It's right next to the Blogger lounge. See more below.

2. Unlike prior VMworld conferences, we’re no longer allowed to sponsor the event. We can only be an exhibitor. Why? Let's look at excerpts from VMworld’s rules (my highlights):

VMworld 2009 Sponsor and Exhibitor Rules and Regulations

Booth/Session Demonstrations (pg. 2)

Sponsors and exhibitors must market or demonstrate products on the exhibition floor and in the sessions

which are complementary to VMware products and technologies. Complementary products and services are

defined as products/services that do not overlap/substitute with VMware’s products/capabilities, and help

expand the reach and solution scope of VMware’s capabilities solely as deemed by VMware. All sponsors

and exhibitors must adhere to following guidelines in regards to booth demonstrations (please also review

the “Promotion, Giveaways, Contests” section below):

Eligibility (pg. 4)

To sponsor or exhibit at VMworld a company must be a VMware partner in good standing in our TAP,

Strategic Global Partner or VIP Partner Programs. Companies that are not VMware partners may be allowed

to exhibit at VMworld under exception by VMware.

Both sides (us and VMware) agreed that, apart from the features in System Center Virtual Machine Manager that manage ESX, Microsoft products aren’t complementary to VMware’s products. We discussed and confirmed their intent of these clauses in early August, and had a follow-up Aug. 11 email from VMware, that reads in part:

As I mentioned, the rules require all exhibitors to market and demonstrate products that are complimentary to VMware products and technologies. We are open to reviewing any proposals for complimentary positioning of Microsoft products and demos at the show…

As a result, based on the clause above, phone/email with VMware employees, we don't believe we have the right to demo our products in the booth. This decision runs counter to Microsoft’s geek culture, as you can imagine, but we've also become more pragmatic over the years :-).

So what is Microsoft doing at VMworld?

We’ve learned over the course of 4 years attending VMworld (first was Vegas 2005) that there are many attendees who use, admin, manage, sell, support Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Windows XP/Vista, System Center, etc. They want the opportunity to engage and receive information from Microsoft virtualization experts. So we’ll have Microsoft virtualization experts in the booth. These experts will be there to answer your questions. They’ll also be Tweeting about their experiences and impressions as they talk to customers and attend sessions. I encourage you to follow them on Twitter - see the table below for their usernames.

Expert in	Name	Twitter Username
Disaster Recovery, Backup	Allen Stewart	dynamic_dc
Desktop Virtualization	Ben Armstrong	virtualpcguy
App & Desktop Virtualization	Jeff Johnson	JJ_VDI
Virtualization Management	Stuart Schaefer	Sshaffer_MS
Cloud	Isaac Roybal	DDACloudGuy
Business value	Edwin Yuen	edwinyuen
Workloads, partners, licensing	Kenon Owen	MS_Int_Virt
Server Virtualization	Vijay Tewari	vtango

We’ll also have two customers in the booth at different times. I’ll be there. See you there!

Patrick O’Rourke

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

VMware vSphere pricing - Meet the new price; same as the old price, only more

WSV_GUY — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. This past week, there were two key announcements made, one by Microsoft and one by VMware, that have an impact on how we compare Microsoft and VMware pricing.

The first announcement was actually off this blog, made by Zane Adam, announcing that with the upcoming release of our free, standalone hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, features like clustering, high availability (HA), and live migration would be included. This was a very important announcement, as many customers are currently paying a significant amount of money for those features, and as we'll see below, will potentially continue to pay for them. With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, you can now implement HA and live migration without having to buy a premium management SKU, which could save you thousands of dollars.

The second announcement was VMware's announcement of vSphere, the next version of VMware's hypervisor. I spend a lot of time working and speaking with customers, both Microsoft and VMware users. The one theme repeated in those conversations is that everyone understands VMware is not a low cost solution and many have been re-evaluating how much they spend to implement virtualization. I think that everyone, including those of us at Microsoft, were wondering if VMware would drop their prices in the new version of vSphere. When the announcement came out, it had a bullet point on reduced costs and new SKUs for customers. When I sat down to actually figure out the pricing, it was pretty clear that the pricing really didn't change for many customers and the prices still don't compare to the offerings from Microsoft.

One of the key things I noticed is that for the SKU that most people bought, VI Enterprise or vSphere Enterprise, the price didn't actually change. It went from $5,750 for a two processors host to $2,875 per processor, which is the same thing. Thus, for many VMware customers, there is no cost savings in vSphere. Another interesting issue about vSphere can be seen on the version comparisons page off VMware's website. Many of the touted new features of vSphere, such as 8-way vSMP, >256GB of memory on the host, the vNetwork Switch, and Host Profiles, are only available if you buy new Enterprise Plus SKU, which is 18% more expensive than Enterprise and a cost increase for existing customers. This means, for those customers who want these new vSphere features, there is a net increase in their cost. Even when we compare just vSphere Enterprise SKU, the cost of vSphere Enterprise is five times that of buying the Microsoft solution with the Server Manage Suite Enterprise.

On the small and medium business side, VMware changed the name of their VI Foundation SKU to vSphere Essentials and added a new vSphere Essentials Plus SKU. Essentials is just like VI Foundation, but without consolidated backup. Essentials Plus is like Foundation, but with HA added. Essentials is priced at $995 for three two processors hosts and Essentials Plus is priced at $2995 for three two processor hosts. In contrast, a customer using Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) Workgroup Edition (WGE) will only have to pay $499 for five hosts. Thus, the Essentials SKU is four times more expensive compared to the Microsoft Solution, which also includes HA, clustering, and live migration. The Essentials Plus SKU is 12 times more expensive than the Microsoft solution, while still missing live migration. In fact, for customers who need live migration, they must purchase the vSphere Advanced SKU, which starts at $4490 for a single, two processor host. When we look at the chart below, we can easily how the costs add up on the VMware side.

Finally, VMware has also argued on evaluating price per VM, based on a white paper and calculator they published recently. We recently published a white paper that reviews why this model and the cost calculator associated with it are not applicable to most customers. One of the key issues to the price per VM model, especially with how VMware has been promoting it, is that it doesn't take into account the applications being run. The number of VMs that can be run on a host depends on how the applications inside the VMs run. Don't believe VMware marketing about low consolidation ratios on Hyper-V. For example, this case study about Kroll Factual Data shows them running 30 VMs on a single Hyper-V host.

The consolidation ratio can vary depending on what you are running and how you run them. Because of this, you can't just plug consolidation ratios into a calculator and try to apply this across your entire deployment. The best way to compare Hypervisors is to compare Hypervisors, running your applications and VMs. When you do that, it will be easy to see why Microsoft is still less expensive then VMware. You can read about other companies that have made the switch to Microsoft here.

Still, in the end, the big question to ask yourself is the following: Is it worth all this expense for VMware, when the Microsoft solution offers a comparable or even better feature set for much less cost? Is it worth the extra line item on the invoice, the extra line in the budget, to use VMware virtualization when it's built into Windows? That is a question I think many customers will be asking themselves in the coming months and that is just another reason that you should start using Microsoft Virtualization solutions.

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 customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009

porourke — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:09:00 GMT

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.

The second is Saxo Bank of Denmark. They’re an investment bank, and they used a Web-based trading platform and excellent customer service to drive rapid growth over 10 years, which in turn has led to a rapid expansion in the number of servers required to handle the bank’s data-intensive operations. Saxo Bank has deployed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to consolidate servers in the datacenter. Saxo plans to virtualize nearly all applications over the next few years, with the project expected to produce a 3-year internal rate of return of 150% and a net present value of 5.8 million Danish kroner (~U.S.$1.2 million).

Enjoy. A bientot.

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].

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 RTMs and what I’m hearing from customers and partners about Microsoft’s virtualization solutions

porourke — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:52:00 GMT

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 role in the broad set of virtualization offerings from Microsoft.

Recently, I returned from a trip abroad where I attended some of our international getVirtualnow launch events which initially kicked off with our September launch event in Bellevue. During this world tour I had the opportunity to visit with customers and partners from a variety of countries, having some great discussions with them. As I talked to representatives from large and small companies, I heard a consistent theme that all these groups are looking to aggressively manage costs and improve operational efficiency, and partners are also looking for ways of helping customers do so. The timing of these conversations couldn’t have come at a better time as I was able to share with them how the broad set of Microsoft virtualization software addresses these areas. First, I was able to talk to these customers about the fact that they can acquire our virtualization offerings for about 1/3 the cost of what a comparable VMware installation would cost, helping them realize immediate cost reduction benefits. The portfolio of technologies we offer spans the entire IT infrastructure from the desktop to the datacenter, while providing the tools for managing a customer’s infrastructure and apps regardless of whether it’s their physical or virtual assets. Additionally, because the solutions we’re delivering are based on Windows, customer and partners can take advantage of the skills and knowledge they already have when implementing, developing to, or managing our virtualization offerings helping to save them both money and time.

As I mentioned, our virtualization solutions span the desktop to the data center including the management tools required to ensure that virtualization remains an asset and doesn’t become an unwieldy burden. On the server we have Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and also Hyper-V Server, our standalone hypervisor, we recently released in September. We’re seeing rapid adoption of Microsoft server virtualization solutions and IDC recently released findings showing Microsoft's Hyper-V delivering a strong showing, and when combined with Virtual Server 2005, helped Microsoft to capture 23% of new license shipments in 2Q 2008. On the desktop we have application, desktop and presentation solutions enabling customers to choose the level of desktop virtualization. The recently released Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 helps IT support large-scale virtualization implementations across many sites with various delivery options including over the Internet. Last, but certainly not least, is System Center suite of management tools, which provide not only the tools for managing traditional physical IT infrastructure and apps but also virtualized environments. Whether it’s deploying and managing virtualized desktops and servers with Configuration Manager, monitoring apps and systems across the IT environment and into virtual machines with Operations Manager, or backing up and protecting both physical and virtualized data or apps with Data Protection Manager, System Center provides the broad set of tools to address these needs for IT. Of course today’s announcement of the RTM of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 extends the management benefits of System Center even further by enabling not only the management of Microsoft virtualized environments, but also VMware ESX as well.

We’re already hearing of great results from customers broadly implementing our virtualization solutions like some at Indiana University, who has been consolidating their physical servers onto virtual machines rapidly using these technologies, freeing up hardware, lessening space requirements and reducing electrical and cooling costs. Janssen Jones, Associate Director of Auxiliary IT Infrastructure at Indiana University has provided a guest blog post here with information on his group’s experience and the results they’re seeing where their workloads are now 75% virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with plans to be 90% by the end of this year. Janssen talks about how they’re consolidating virtual machines at a ratio of about 10-1 and how they’ve been able to remove about 40 of their existing physical servers. There are already a slew of other customers, including names such as Costco, Land O’ Lakes, or Saxo Bank, that are already talking about the benefits they’re experiencing by deploying Microsoft virtualization solutions, which can be found in our case study library.

The response from our partners has been gratifying as well, including the participation in our September launch event where broad offerings and support were announced. To mention just a few, we’ve seen Citrix, Dell, HP, SAP and Symantec demonstrating their support for our virtualization offerings from the desktop through the data center as well for our management offerings. More directly related to today’s news of the RTM of SCVMM 2008, I’m excited to say that we are already are seeing support for SCVMM 2008 from our OEM partners. Fujitsu and Hitachi participated in our virtualization launch event in Japan last week and both publicly stated that they intend to make bundles of their hardware and SCVMM 2008 available in the coming months.

We’re excited to see the partner and customer adoption of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. We’ve already seen hundreds of our early deployment customers use either the beta or release candidate version of VMM to manage their Hyper-V deployments. They are seeing the many cost reduction and management simplification benefits of Hyper-V and the SCVMM 2008 integration with the rest of System Center. Now that RTM is official, I fully expect the rate of Hyper-V deployments to further accelerate. Through the SCVMM 2008 console, administrators can see the entirety of their data center infrastructure – physical or virtual. SCVMM 2008 facilitates key functions like P2V (physical to virtual) migration, Intelligent Placement (selecting the best virtual host for a VM), and managing Hyper-V host clusters, to name just a few. SCVMM 2008 works closely with its siblings – particularly SC Ops Mgr – in identifying consolidation candidates and in Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), a new feature in which SCVMM 2008 can alert and recommend solutions to administrators about failing virtual machines or hardware. As I mentioned above, this comprehensive view extends throughout the data center as SCVMM 2008 is capable of seeing and managing VMware ESX infrastructure through Virtual Center. I hope you download SCVMM 2008 today and give it a try. Additional information, including a link to download an evaluation version is available here and it will be generally available for purchase as of November 1.

Thanks for your time and sharing in the excitement we’re seeing around Microsoft’s virtualization solutions.

-- Zane

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

Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Microsoft Application Virtualization

Virtualization: desktop to datacenter

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

Update: What you won't see at VMworld 2009

Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites

Online sessions, book and more

VMware vSphere pricing - Meet the new price; same as the old price, only 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 customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009

Microsoft at VMworld Europe 2009

The Virtualization Essentials from Citrix

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 RTMs and what I’m hearing from customers and partners about Microsoft’s virtualization solutions

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