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

Application Virtualization and Streaming

porourke — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:15:00 GMT

I am Gavriella Schuster and I am responsible for the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) within the Windows team. This week I was fortunate enough to participate in a panel discussion at Interop with my peers at Symantec, Citrix, and VMWare discussing the benefits to be gained and pitfalls to be avoided with application virtualization and streaming.

It was great to have the opportunity to speak with our industry peers about the technology and to get to know each of them better on a more personal level. The discussion was focused on driving category awareness to the customers. Application Virtualization is a fairly new concept and many of the customers came just to understand what it is. By the show of hands in the audience, about 40% of the customers had plans to do some application virtualization within their environments but only three actually had any level of deployment already.

What was apparent in that session is that our technologies have more similarities than differences - and the approaches are converging. I think the panel was a more effective way to highlight the primary uses for application virtualization within an organization and where the customers might find the most benefits of the technology than if we had each given an hour long presentation on our own technologies. That might be a controversial thing to say – but I think when we each reinforced each others answers it provided a higher level of comfort to our customers that this was not a sales pitch – that it was just a great new technology that solves some of their most common and potentially hairy problems.

That said, I do think Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid) stands out from the crowd because it offers a full solution. Our advantage lies in the breadth of the offering we have available. As part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and as part of the System Center family, it offers both the application virtualization, multiple application delivery options inclusive of on-demand delivery via application streaming and a level of integration that makes this experience both seamless to the user and easier for the administrator. Microsoft Application Virtualization is a clear part of the desktop management story overall within MDOP and it is part of the broader infrastructure optimization solution that Microsoft provides.

Microsoft Application Virtualization offers customers the potential for complete application isolation from both other applications and from the OS, and then through dynamic suite composition also enables the administrator to configure some intercommunications between applications offering the administrator the best of both worlds. It also offers multiple delivery methods of which application streaming is a component of that capability. Administrators can choose to distribute the application via application streaming which provides dynamic, on demand delivery in a fraction of the time that it might take to download or even start, in many cases, a traditional application. Microsoft Application Virtualization also enables a distributed application delivery model that provides both centralized management and policy control as well as local distribution points to stream the applications to the desktops so that it minimizes the user impact in a distributed or branch office architecture. In addition to streaming delivery Microsoft Application Virtualization also offers the opportunity for the administrator to wrap the virtual application package within an MSI and pre-cache it onto the desktop. This enables either standalone delivery or delivery through a traditional software distribution (ESD) system. For customers that are using System Center Configuration Manager for delivery of their physical applications, Microsoft has also enabled the administrator to replace the Microsoft Application Virtualization server with Config Manager and enabled the same level of management and control to deliver an MSI or deliver the application on demand through streaming to the desktops.

Many of our Microsoft customers such as Swedish Medical Center, State of Indiana, Clarian Health Partners, BASF and others have realized the value of this technology in their increased agility, enhanced responsiveness to business needs, enhanced user experience and lower cost of ownership in delivering applications. Microsoft Application Virtualization is delivered as an integral component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, which delivers dynamic desktop solutions: Microsoft® Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset provides tools that help administrators recover PCs that have become unusable and easily identify root causes of system and network issues; Microsoft Asset Inventory Service, translates software inventory into business intelligence; Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management, enhances Group Policy through governance and change management tools; and Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring enables proactive problem management by analyzing and reporting on application and system crashes.

After this experience, I will seek out more opportunities to continue this type of discussion because I think it provides a lot of value to our customers and is more effective at building our credibility with them when we all sit down together in an open, unscripted discussion.

Gavriella Schuster, senior director, Windows Product Management Group

Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Microsoft Asset Inventory Service

Virtualization: desktop to datacenter

Application Virtualization and Streaming