Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Virtual PC

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

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

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

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

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

Virtualization Feed for Your RSS Reader

porourke — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:06:00 GMT

With a "tip of the cap" to creators of Planet V12n blog, we've just launched a blog and Twitter aggregator for virtualization. It's called VirtualizationFeed. Like Planet V12n, this site aggregates virtualization blogs from lots of sources. In this case, 18 independent bloggers and 14 Microsoft bloggers on either TechNet or MSDN. I'm sure you'll recognize many of the names/blogs ... and maybe you'll discover new ones. For example:

Tarry Singh (Netherlands)
Andrew Dudgell (Australia)
Kevin Fogarty (CIO.com)
Alessandro Perilli (Italy)
David Marshall (U.S.)
Mark Bowker (ESG - analyst firm)
Ben Armstrong (aka, Virtual PC Guy)
Rakesh Malhotra (VM management blog)
The App-V team blog
Tony Soper's blog

The blog aggregator will show a short (200-character) excerpt from the blog and point you to the blogger's site for the full post.

In addition to blogs, you'll see a tab for Tweets. VirtualizationFeed.com is also a Twitter aggregator (supplements the use of Twitter's useful search tool) that pulls all virtualization-related tweets.

I'm told that someone is working on a Vista gadget so that you can view the blog aggregator's RSS feed from your desktop. I'll post the download link once the gadget is available. Otherwise it's self explanatory. Check it out.

Patrick

Kidaro to be added to Microsoft's desktop virtualization products

porourke — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:18:00 GMT

So we just announced the intent to acquire Kidaro, a desktop virtualization vendor based in Silicon Valley and with R&D in Israel. Kidaro entered the desktop virtualization management market nearly 17 months ago with their Kidaro Managed Workspace product. With this acquisition, Kidaro's product will lead to new capabilities within Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for customers with Software Assurance. We'll be shipping this solution under the name Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization within MDOP - the timing wasn't disclosed.

Kidaro's Managed Workspace product allows enterprise data and applicatiosn to run within a "transparent virtual machine wrapper." Kidaro's product is built upon Microsoft Virtual PC, and the wrapper provides "enterprise class" management, deployment and a clean user experience. You can read more on Kidaro's site. With this acquisition, the wrapper becomes Microsoft Virtual PC. I know ... it's been a while since we've blogged about Virtual PC on this site - but Ben is the definitive source for Virtual PC blogs.

I'm told that the three founders of Kidaro will be joining Microsoft and play similar roles here, and that the plan is to keep Kidaro's R&D team in Israel. That makes sense since Microsoft already has an R&D center in Israel.

So if you're keeping track, this acquisition is roughly 45 days after we announced the acquisition of Calista Technologies. Here's how Neal explained Calista's software:

I am sure by now, you are wondering, “who is Calista Technologies, and what exactly do they do?” Well, think of us as the people that have set out to create technology which, when IT departments deploy centralized desktops and applications, ensures that users will enjoy the same rich user experience as with a locally executing desktop: Full 3D graphics with support for DirectX, Vista Aero and WPF applications, full frame rate video with 100% coverage for all media types, and fully synchronized audio. Except that “their” desktop is actually running in the data center, and they are accessing it remotely using Microsoft’s remote desktop protocol (RDP).

We haven't said how Calista's software will be packaged, but there's expectations for improvements to Terminal Services and presentation virtualization capabilities in Windows Server. But no word yet. And roughly 20 months ago we acquired Softricity, which has resulted in somewhere around 4.5 million seats of SoftGrid application virtualization being adopted by customers. Added together (and reading tea leaves) we're seeing changes to how customers want to adopt/deploy client apps and client computing, and virtualization will play a key role. See Shanen's post from Jan. 22 for more perspective.

Patrick O'Rourke

Virtualization: Big Opportunities

WSV_GUY — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:33:00 GMT

Hello, I’m Larry Orecklin, general manager at Microsoft focused on the System Center family of management products and Virtualization. If you picked up a newspaper in the last few weeks, you are more than likely aware that the virtualization industry is moving into the limelight. And while the market is still nascent, with only about 5 percent of servers virtualized today, the technology is poised for strong growth, creating great opportunities for customers and partners.

I’m here today to share how Microsoft views this technology, the market it fuels and how that approach compares to some competitors.

The virtualization market is emerging and therefore very dynamic with significant opportunities to reduce costs and complexity across the IT infrastructure; from the desktop to the datacenter. From a solution perspective, and in order to truly help reduce that cost and complexity, our strategy and investments are anchored on three areas:

1. Virtualization is a key feature of the operating system, and as such, a technology for which you shouldn’t have to pay significantly more to utilize.

2. Virtualization will span from the desktop to the data center, and the broad array of technologies and applications in between that help to solve critical customer needs.

3. Management of the technologies is critical, and our unique approach is to enable the management of both virtual and physical assets from a single platform.

We believe that Microsoft and its large partner ecosystem will help accelerate this market bringing low-cost, high-value, high-volume virtualization products to mainstream customers. It is important to look beyond machine virtualization, enabling customers to take advantage of their existing platform investments, while at the same time utilizing their existing support skills and infrastructure to reduce costs associated with implementing virtualized environments.

Today you can take advantage of Virtual Server for server virtualization needs, Softgrid for application virtualization and System Center for managing your physical and virtual environments. Many customers are already testing and/or using these products. After the release of VS SP1, for example, we now have over 840k downloads of Virtual Server, while in the Application Virtualization space, we just passed 2M devices sold in just 2 quarters. Recently, we also passed 2.5 million downloads of Virtual PC 2007 and we’re expecting the RTM of our Virtual Machine Manager at the end of the month. And that’s just the beginning; you will see additional product news from us as the quarter progresses.

And remember, as you’re following the increased news coverage and buzz around virtualization – talk to your Microsoft channel partner about your infrastructure and needs, look at resources (linked below) and consider the benefits of going with a solution that equips you to manage your environment and spans beyond the server. To learn more about Microsoft’s virtualization efforts, please go to: www.microsoft.com\virtualization.

Resource Links:

· Find out and evaluate a host of partner solutions through pre-configured Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualization/default.mspx

· Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is the server virtualization technology engineered for the Windows Server platform. Familiarize yourself with the product, and download Virtual Server 2005 R2 for free: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/

· System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides centralized administration of virtual machine infrastructure and enables increased physical server utilization and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and authorized end users. Download beta 2: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/scvmm/default.mspx

· Microsoft SoftGrid^® Application Virtualization is the only virtualization solution on the market to deliver applications that are never installed, yet securely follow users anywhere, on demand. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx

Windows Server Virtualization Security Discussion at Black Hat

WSV_GUY — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 05:01:00 GMT

Greetings! An important heads up about Black Hat next week in Las Vegas. For those of you who don’t know what Black Hat is, Black Hat bills itself as a security convention that puts you face to face with people on the cutting edge of network security. Microsoft is an active sponsor in this event and we’re sending one of our lead security developers in the Windows kernel, Brandon Baker, to Black Hat to discuss on Windows Server virtualization security.

The abstract to Brandon’s presentation is here: http://blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-07/bh-usa-07-speakers.html#Baker and in summary, Brandon will discuss:

· Windows Server virtualization and Windows Server 2008 architecture and components

· How Windows Server virtualization virtualizes the CPU and enforces virtual machine isolation

· Best practices for Windows Server virtualization deployment

· Hardware futures [e.g., TXP from Intel, SVM from AMD, IOMMU]

· And more…

I got a chance to see what Brandon is presenting and for folks in the security field (who will undoubtedly be at Black Hat) this is a session you don’t want to miss!

Cheers,

-Jeff

Virtual Server or Virtual PC?

WSV_GUY — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:18:00 GMT

In my first couple of blogs, I wanted to remind everyone of the recent release of Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. I received feedback asking about some of the differences between the two and compatibility of virtual machines between the two. So, here are the answers…

Q: I’m interested in evaluating Microsoft virtualization, which should I use, Virtual PC or Virtual Server?

A: The answer to this question really depends on your application and usage. Both Virtual PC and Virtual Server are powerful, easy to use products that offer unique features and functionality. For example:

Virtual PC offers an intuitive, local UI designed for a single user while Virtual Server offers a Web Administration application allowing multiple users to administer Virtual Servers remotely.
Virtual Server is designed with extensibility in mind and includes a fully documented COM interface in the Virtual Server Programmer’s Guide. So, if you’re interested in developing your own scripts to configure, create virtual machines, Virtual Server is the way to go.
Virtual Server is heavily threaded and designed to take advantage and scale on multi-processor computers with large amounts of memory. In fact, Virtual Server can use up to 256 GB of physical memory with the latest version.

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Q: From a virtual machine perspective, what are the differences between a Virtual PC virtual machine and a Virtual Server virtual machine? Are they compatible?

A: Yes, virtual machines with either product are compatible, but when using Virtual Server and Virtual PC together, there are several points to consider:

Sound cards: Virtual Server does not include an emulated sound card in its virtual machines, while Virtual PC does. If you plan on using a virtual machine with both Virtual Server and Virtual PC, you should disable the emulated sound card in Virtual PC. This will prevent the sound card's Plug and Play capability from causing errors on the virtual machine that you created with Virtual Server.

SCSI support: Virtual Server provides SCSI support while Virtual PC does not. If you create a virtual machine with virtual SCSI disks on Virtual Server, the SCSI disks will be ignored if you move the virtual machine to Virtual PC. This can lead to negative consequences in many situations, for example if the virtual machine page file is on the SCSI disk or if you are trying to use a SCSI disk as the startup disk. If you plan to regularly move virtual hard disks between machines created with Virtual PC and Virtual Server, we recommend that you attach the virtual hard disks only to a virtual IDE bus in Virtual Server.

CD-ROM drives: Although Virtual Server allows for virtual machines with multiple CD-ROM drives, Virtual PC supports virtual machines with only one CD-ROM drive. If you are moving virtual machines between the two products, you should use the default setting which is a single CD-ROM drive on the virtual machine attached to secondary channel 0.

Saved States: Save-state (.vsv) files between Virtual PC and Virtual Server are incompatible. When moving a virtual machine between products, be sure to completely shut down the guest operating system.

Networking: When moving virtual machines between Virtual PC and Virtual Server, the virtual machine’s network will be disconnected. You will need to configure the virtual machine’s network connectivity appropriately.

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If after reading everything above you still don’t know which product to use, start with Virtual PC because of its local interface. As a reminder,

Virtual PC 2007 can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Virtual Server R2 SP1 can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/eval/virtualserver/default.mspx

Cheers,

-Jeff

Microsoft Virtualization and Virtual PC 2007

WSV_GUY — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:18:00 GMT

Greetings!

I’m Jeff Woolsey, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft focused on Microsoft Virtualization. I’ve worked on virtualization technology for over ten years such as Virtual PC for Mac, Virtual PC for Windows and Virtual Server. These days I spend most of my time on Virtual Server and our new hypervisor based virtualization (codename “Viridian”) which will be a key technology of Windows Server 2008.

I have the pleasure of regularly meeting with customers and partners and one bit of feedback I receive often is that folks want to hear more about what we’re doing in terms of virtualization. With this in mind, I thought I’d take some time to start blogging about Microsoft virtualization. The focus of my blogs will be Virtual Server and our new hypervisor based virtualization in Windows Server 2008, but for this first article I thought I’d remind folks about one of our hottest downloads, Virtual PC 2007. Virtual PC 2007 was released in February 2007 and within the first 60 days had over 1.8 million downloads. We’ve hit well over 2 million downloads now and still climbing…

Virtual PC 2007 can be freely downloaded from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Here’s a list of some of the new features:

1. Support for hardware-assisted virtualization. Virtual PC 2007 includes support for virtualization technology from Intel and AMD. By default, hardware-assisted virtualization is enabled if the feature is enabled on the physical computer. You can turn this assistance on or off for each virtual machine by modifying the virtual machine settings.

2. Support for Windows Vista. Virtual PC 2007 includes support for Windows Vista as a host and guest operating system within Virtual PC.

3. Support for 64-bit host operating systems. This release of Virtual PC 2007 supports 64-bit host operating systems. However, there is no support for 64-bit guest operating systems.

4. Network-based installation of a guest operating system. The virtual machine network adapter includes support for performing a PXE boot. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system without using a PXE boot floppy disk.

5. Running virtual machines on multiple monitors. Virtual PC 2007 includes support for viewing virtual machines on multiple monitors of a physical computer. If you have more than one monitor attached to your physical computer, you can view a virtual machine on one of the monitors, in either window mode or full-screen mode.

6. For more details, check out the release notes…

Generally, I’m going to focus on server virtualization so I’ll be discussing Virtual Server and Windows Server virtualization. I may touch on Virtual PC now and then, but Ben Armstrong (VPC GUY) has done such a great job blogging on Virtual PC, that I’d rather point you to his excellent blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/default.aspx

Finally, to our millions of customers who have downloaded Virtual PC, a huge THANKS. It’s your feedback that drove this release.

Cheers,

-Jeff