What you won't see at VMworld 2009 - a demo of SCVMM 2008 R2

porourke — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:32:00 GMT

Ordinarily it'd be great news that we RTM'd System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 ahead of schedule, so close to the RTM of WS08 R2 Hyper-V and one week before VMworld conference. You can't beat the timing of it all. And the ~10,000 beta testers of SCVMM08 R2 are a big part of why we were able to deliver a high-quality release in the time we did. Some of the early adopters included Continental Airlines, Lionbridge Techologies, Sporton, Indiana University Auxilary IT and MaximumASP. Thanks to all!

But unfortunately, next week at VMworld 2009 we can't show SCVMM 2008 R2, or any other products, in our booth. You've probably read about it. In short, it's their show, it's not an industry show, and they set the rules. So we'll make the best of it; always lots of Microsoft customers and partners on the floor. Stop by the booth to meet some of the best/brightest minds at Microsoft.

As for the RTM of SCVMM 2008 R2, Zane summarizes his thoughts here. Kerim blogged about upgrade path to R2 from SCVMM 2008. See here. And on May 11, Vishhwa provided some details on features of SCVMM 2008 R2 here.

As Cheng wrote in his blog (I can't say it any better)

Go download a trial and give it a try, go get it now, and unleash the virtualization power that Microsoft brings to you.

Patrick

Hyper-V Deployment Case Study – Sporton International

porourke — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Managing 60 servers is no small feat when it comes to midsize company, Sporton International in Taiwan. With limited IT resources, Sporton decided to turn to Systex Corporation (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner) to explore options to virtualize their physical servers in an effort to reduce operation cost while improving the agility and manageability of their server assets. Here're the case study highlights:

1) What was deployed?

35 physical production servers were virtualized with Hyper-V Release Candidate into on three physical servers (that's 12:1 consolidation ratio).
10 virtual machines were configured with Hyper-V clustering to support Sporton's business continuity and disaster recovery needs.
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Tool was used to collect the performance metrics of every server in the data center and to identify which servers were good candidates. The MAP tool saved a substantial amount (60%) of inventory and planning time – which otherwise would have to be done manually.

2) Why deployed with Hyper-V?

Optimizing Hardware Assets to Cut Costs: Saved on 70% of hardware costs & increased server utilization from 10-15% to about 70%
Streamlining Provisioning to Boost Responsive IT Service: Cut the time it takes for our IT staff to provision a server by up to 70 percent, which is critical to the productivity of the development and IT departments
Improving Availability for Better Business Continuity: Provided better continuity of IT service to internal users through quick migration and clustering technology from Microsoft
Hyper-V offers better and more familiar user interface as well as lower cost of ownership than VMware

3) In the customer’s own words....

"Hyper-V in Release Candidate 0 was so reliable that we deployed VMs into the production environment serving all Internet guests and customers, and our subsidiaries in Taiwan, China, and Korea" - Kathy Lin, IT Manager of Sporton International.
"Hyper-V is the best virtualization solution running on Windows Server 2008, with enhanced performance and stability for Sporton at a fraction of the cost of VMware’s hypervisor-based offering." - David Feng, Technical Services Director of Systex Corp.

4) Where to find the tools mentioned in this case study and other key virtualization resources?

Hyper-V Release Candidate and Hyper-V Demo Video
Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Tool (to identify server machines suitable for virtualization) & MAP Tool demo video
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Team Blog
Virtualization Solution Accelerators
TechNet Virtualization TechCenter

If you want to learn more please CLICK HERE for the entire case study.

Cheers,

Baldwin Ng

Sr. Product Manager, Virtualization Solution Accelerators + Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tool

Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Sporton International

What you won't see at VMworld 2009 - a demo of SCVMM 2008 R2

Hyper-V Deployment Case Study – Sporton International