Windows Virtualization Team Blog : integrated virtualization

LiveMeeting on Microsoft’s Integrated Virtualization Strategy: Thursday, Nov. 19, 8:00 AM PST

SystemCenterTeam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:44:48 GMT

Join us Thursday, November 19, 8:00 AM PST for a LiveMeeting session on “Microsoft’s Integrated Virtualization Strategy, Products and Solutions” presented by Kenon Owens, Technical Product Manager.

This LiveMeeting is exclusive to members of the System Center Influencers Program (which is also open to virtualization enthusiasts). Not a member? Visit the program overview on TechNet to learn more about the program and how to join.

Join Information Available on Influencer Portal. Members of the program will need to log into the Connect site to access the LiveMeeting join information.

Abstract: Through this 200 Level presentation, learn about the Microsoft virtualization strategy from the client, to the datacenter, to the cloud--and how it will help you cut costs and build value. In this session we review Microsoft virtualization products and discuss how you can use them to solve today's IT issues (cost cutting, consolidation, business continuity, green IT), develop new computing solutions (VDI) and build a foundation for a more dynamic IT environment, including cloud computing. This session reviews all of the latest Microsoft virtualization products, including Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server, as well as the System Center management platform (including Virtual Machine Manager 2008). Learn about the innovative pricing and licensing structure that allows further savings to lower both acquisition and ongoing ownership costs. Learn how you can enable IT to become a cost cutting mechanism with Microsoft virtualization and management technologies.

- dave //

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

Microsoft Virtualization: Best Choice for MS Server Applications

porourke — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:21:00 GMT

Hello, I’m Zane Adam, general manager of Virtualization and Systems Management. As more and more customers are looking at virtualization to help reduce cost and decrease complexity in their infrastructure, we are seeing lots of questions around virtualizing MS server applications such as Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. What benefits should I expect to see? What do I need to consider when virtualizing these mission critical business application? Should I virtualize all roles within a server application?

We have worked across MS application groups to test our products with hyper-v and we believe that MS virtualization is the best choice for MS server applications. First, MS server applications are built for Windows Server, and because hyper-v is part of the operating system, there is no need to add complexity of support and interoperability by adding a 3rd party virtualization layer. This means there is just one stop for all of your support needs and also assurance that the stack of applications and hypervisor works well together. Second, to help ensure optimal performance Microsoft has specific deployment guidance for virtualizing MS server applications which results in a mixed physical and virtual environment. System Center is the management solution that allows you to view both physical and virtual instances from one console. Third, as you know MS virtualization is up to six times less expensive than other virtualization solutions in the market, which makes running your server applications even that more affordable.

The folks who developed the MS server applications have developed specific guidance on virtualizing individual applications based on deployment scenarios. You can hear more thoughts from them on the following blogs:

Exchange Server: http://msexchangeteam.com/

SQL Server: http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/default.aspx

SharePoint: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint

Also, for more information please visit www.microsoft.com/virtualization/solutions/business-critical-applications .

Thanks-

Zane

Strong end to end management required for Virtualization to be successful (VMworld day 2)

vtango — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:39:00 GMT

I am pleased that it is being acknowledged by VMware (evidenced by their keynote announcements yesterday on the vCenter additions) that for a strong virtualization platform a complete end-to-end solution is required. We agree completely!! We at Microsoft provide solutions for configuration/change management, operational/health monitoring, virtual machine management and data protection and have been doing so for a while now. Just to get some perspective I dug up the release dates for our management software (I have trimmed the list a bit for readabilityJ). From the table below its clear that our management lifecycle experience goes back many many years. It is great to see VMware finally acknowledge this and is attempting to now build a solution that spans some aspects of this end-to-end management. We welcome this.

Products	Date
Operations Manager 2000 Enterprise Edition	3/1/2001
Operations Manager (MOM) 2005	11/24/2004
System Center Operations Manager 2007	6/23/2007
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007	11/29/2007
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008	1/29/2009
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2	8/2009
System Center Data Protection Manager	10/22/2005
System Center Data Protection Manager 2006	10/22/2005
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007	12/15/2007
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Service Pack 1	12/19/2008
Systems Management Server 1.2 Standard Edition	10/23/1996
Systems Management Server 2.0 Service Pack 3	2/13/2001
Systems Management Server 2.0 Standard Edition	4/1/1999
Systems Management Server 2003	1/20/2004
Systems Management Server 2003 R2	8/25/2006
Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 3	4/27/2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007	11/29/2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2	11/29/2008
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1	5/21/2008

Over the past two days I have had the opportunity to interact with large number of customers and partners (so much so that I could barely make it to one of my sessions yesterday). Universally, I have heard that customers are looking to have a solution that provides them end-to-end visibility/monitoring and control over their infrastructure spanning all layers from the hardware, virtualization, OS and applications. The depth and breadth of our experience and products provided by us and our partners provides customers with the tools that they need for a responsive and effective IT infrastructure.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

The Virtualization platform vs. the Operating System

vtango — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:01:00 GMT

Day 1 at VMworld was mostly about Labs and content which builds up to the main event starting with the keynote on Tuesday morning. Looking forward to today.

In the meanwhile I have been hearing about a concept being put forth that the virtualization platform is it and the OS is but relegated to the consigns of history. That’s an interesting argument, one that in my opinion is built around the myth that somehow the interface exposed by the virtualization platform is what applications are written to. The fact of the matter is that the “Virtual Machine” as exposed by the virtualization platform mimics the underlying hardware with all its diversity. An entity is still required to manage the hardware resources and provide the software abstractions to interact with incredibly diverse hardware. That is the operating system and that’s what applications are developed for.

Back in time such as of the Manchester Mark 1 application programs were self-contained which were loaded into the memory of the machine and then executed from there. Overtime developers realized the value of re-use and rather than build in everything into the application program, re-use and common abstractions became prevalent. As the diversity of hardware and peripherals increased in complexity, the operating system is what provided the abstractions which provided a common mechanism for all applications to interact with and utilize the machine effectively. That is what gave rise to the operating system. What befuddles me is the argument that somehow the emergence of the virtualization platform minimizes the tasks as performed by the operating system. There are some who will argue that the emergence of application frameworks such as .net and Java take on this role, but in the end below them they still require the abstractions offered by an OSJ. What do people think?

An interesting debate but mostly put out to confuse our customers who are fundamentally interested in running an efficient IT infrastructure that provides them the flexibility and ability to meet the business goals and be a strategic asset to their organizations. Customers are running a multitude of applications such as SQL, Sharepoint, Exchange, CRM, home grown line of business applications etc. Our partners and us are committed and focused to make sure that it happens.

By the way talking of partners, it was great to our partner Leostream announce their connection broker for Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center Virtual machine Manager 2008 R2. In talking to our partner here at VMworld, it’s been wonderful to see the incredible innovation on their part based on the Microsoft platform. Thanks, this is what the Microsoft platform the best for our customers with its breadth and partner solutions.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (Free live migration anyone!) available for download

vtango — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:05:00 GMT

We are really excited to announce that Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is available for download here. It’s been a long an exciting journey bringing this product to our customers.

The chart below tells it all, we have listened to our customers and have designed the product to meet their needs. This is a robust virtualization platform with live migration built in at no extra charge.

Comparing Hyper-V Server V1 vs. V2

	Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008	Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
Physical processor support	Up to 4 processors	Up to 8 processors
Logical processor support	Up to 16	Up to 64
Physical memory support	Up to 32 GB	Up to 1 TB
Live migration	No	Yes
High availability	No	Yes
Management options	Hyper-V MMC, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008/R2	Remote Server Administration Tool (Free), Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

And don’t forget that Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 also supports boot from flash for our OEM partners.

Just to recap this release has the following features

(a) High availability and live migration for managing a dynamic IT infrastructure

(b) Support for 64 logical processors future proofing our customers to scale up with the hardware

(d) Processor compatibility mode for live migration across different processor SKU’s from the same vendor

(e) Hot add/remove virtual storage

(f) Networking enhancements (VMQ, Chimney, support for Jumbo Frames)

(g) Simplified management using sconfig

(h) Boot from flash

We will be at VMworld to meet customers and share this news with them. Stop by our booth (#2422) and follow us as we blog and tweet.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Virtualization Team

VMworld 2009 an oppurtunity to meet our customers

vtango — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Hi, I am Vijay Tewari a program manager with the Virtualization team here at Microsoft. Having spent the last 15 months or so deeply involved in the development of Hyper-V I am really looking forward to meeting customers and partners at VMworld 2009.

Much is being made about the fact that we are not showing Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager at this event due to the show policies. I will stay away from that debate although coming on the heels of our RTM I would have loved to show the product. However, a lot of us will be there at the event and are really looking forward to interacting with customers. At the end of the day the product is only useful if it meets our customers’ demands and there is nothing like having a face to face interaction with our customers to hear firsthand what they like and hate about the product.

Below is my tentative schedule for VMworld. As you can see a lot of wait lists, but I am hoping that I can squeeze in. Would like your feedback if there are sessions you would like to see covered.

We will be tweeting (follow vtango on Twitter) and blogging all through the event, so follow along.

Looking forward to seeing you!!

Vijay

Vijay Tewari, Principal Program Manager, Virtualization

Personal Schedule for Vijay Tewari

Monday


7:30 AM-9:30 AM (Waiting List)	LAB01	VMware vSphere™ 4 - New Features, Best of, Advanced Topics

10:00 AM-11:00 AM (Waiting List)	V13100	The VMware Competitive Advantage - A Comparison of Server Virtualization Offerings

11:30 AM-12:30 PM (Waiting List)	V13229	Introduction to VMware vSphere

1:30 PM-2:30 PM (Waiting List)	V11721	Best Practices for Successful VI Design

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	V13478	Executing Enterprise Virtualization - Continuing Case Study with USMC

4:00 PM-5:00 PM	V12226	Building a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution with VMware

Tuesday


9:30 AM-10:30 AM	SS5160	Stop Virtualizing Servers, Start Virtualizing Infrastructure

11:30 AM-12:30 PM	VM3142	Large Scale Virtualization

1:00 PM-2:00 PM	VM3235	Introducing VMware vCenter Product Family: Managing Service Levels Across Dynamic IT Infrastructure

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	VM1960	Datacenter Consolidation and Migration with VMware Site Recovery Manager

4:30 PM-5:30 PM (Waiting List)	BC2761	ESX Networking for High Availability and Disaster Recovery

5:30 PM-7:00 PM	TA2544	A Comprehensive Look at the Security and Compliance of vSphere 4

Wednesday


9:00 AM-10:00 AM (Waiting List)	BOF105	Technology and Architecture -- Virtual Networking

10:00 AM-11:00 AM	TA3220	VMware vStorage VMFS-3: Architectural Advances since ESX 3.0

11:00 AM-12:00 PM (Waiting List)	BOF104	Cloud Computing

12:00 PM-1:30 PM (Waiting List)	VM1700	vApps and advanced VM templates in vSphere 4

2:00 PM-3:30 PM	TA3880	Head-To-Head Comparison: VMware vSphere and ESX vs. Hyper-V and XenServer

4:30 PM-6:00 PM	BC3301	DR Architecture Design Workshop with SRM

Thursday


9:30 AM-10:30 AM (Waiting List)	BC2961	VMware Fault Tolerance Architecture and Performance

11:00 AM-12:00 PM	BC3387	Advanced Data Protection for Microsoft SQL and Exchange Server in a VMware Environment

12:30 PM-2:30 PM	LAB07	VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	BC3421	SRM Architecture & Features: The Road Ahead

4:00 PM-5:30 PM	TA2525	VMware vSphere 4 Networking Deep Dive

Linux ICs for Hyper-V and GPLv2

porourke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:06:00 GMT

A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning ... the Hyper-V Linux integration components (ICs) appeared in Greg Kroah-Hartman's tree (aka, the Linux Driver Project) of the Linux community. This is the first time Microsoft is contributing code to the Linux kernel; see the Q&A announcement here. The Hyper-V Linux device drivers will be licensed under GPLv2. That's 20,000 lines of code that provide the synthetic device drivers and VM bus implementation needed for a Linux guest OS to run "enlightened" on either Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.

Greg's tree is for all Linux device drivers being contributed to the community. I'm told that within 24-48 hours it will begin to be picked up by other developers in the community, and that it won't land in the mainline tree (Torvald's tree) until it has been generally accepted in other trees along the way.

So what does this mean? Here are a few thoughts:

I'll be waiting to see the reaction from the Linux community and commercial Linux companies. There should be some positive comments in there along with the expected conspiracy theories ;-)
there's a mutual benefit for Linux distis who want to broaden their work with Windows Server, and for customers to broaden the opportunity for Linux as a guest OS running on Hyper-V
Customers will have another cost-cutting tool because Linux OS will run as a first-class citizen on Hyper-V, and they be able to manage Windows and non-Windows applications and hypervisors using System Center. IT system consolidation, reduce heat in the data center, optimize power draw.
Two Microsoft employees are listed as the maintainers of the Linux ICs, and will continue to enhance the ICs and contribute to the code. I'm sure SMP support will be high on the list.
Microsoft currently distirbutes ICs for SLES 10 sp2. With the release of WS08 R2 version of the ICs, we'll also add support for SLES 11 and RHEL 5.2 and 5.3. A list of suppoted products (via SVVP) can be seen here.

You can watch/listen to Sam and Tom discuss today's news on Channel 9 here.

Patrick

Guest Blog: The Role of IT in an Economic Downturn: Spend Smarter, Not Smaller

porourke — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:30:00 GMT

Hello everyone, Richard Campbell here from Campbell & Associates based in Vancouver, BC. I am not only the host of RunAs Radio (www.runasradio.com) but also a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP.

It’s fun being an IT consultant during boom times – my clients are only focused on getting more customers, expanding territories and getting new products to market. There’s no time to worry about costs, it’s time to spend and grow. Speed to market is key and building in lots of capacity so that you can keep serving your new markets is essential.

Looks like that fun is over for the moment, and I’m back in a role I’m comfortable with also: Focusing on return on investment. When the boom times end, it’s time to get back to efficiency and profitability. And there’s lots to do. Whether my clients are technology centric (a company with a retail web site) or technology supported, IT can play a huge role in making the business more profitable and more efficient. Apparently I’m not alone, according to a survey commissioned by Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business (www.microsoft.com/infrastructure) the majority of IT professionals recognize that improving end-user productivity is a key reason for innovation in IT.

Ultimately, information technology can benefit a business two ways: It can improve the performance of the business by making it possible for more revenue to be generated for the same cost or the same revenue for less cost. A new order entry system might allow sales clerks to process two hundred orders in a day where they used to only process one hundred – that’s a great boost in efficiency and profitability. The other benefit technology can bring to a company is better instrumentation: Allowing the management of the business to see more clearly where revenue is made and expenses are incurred. This information then is turned into changes of behavior that increase the profitability of the business.

In an economic downturn, the challenge for the IT Pro is getting back to the concepts of return on investment for technology. This involves studying in detail how the business makes money and where the expenses are incurred. Once those facts are known, then the next step is to find opportunities to improve. It’s really as simple as that. However, the challenge is gathering those core facts – perhaps a better instrumentation system is needed to be able to find opportunities to improve. Maybe that means you need a consultant to help guide the way, or you have the skills in-house, either way the job is clear: spend smarter, not smaller. Don’t focus only on reducing your spend, but on spending on the things that makes your company more profitable and more efficient.

-Richard

Server & Tools Business Exec to discuss state of IT, answer your questions on June 23

porourke — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:27:00 GMT

Do you have questions about Microsoft’s efforts to deliver new server infra (Windows Server, virt, System Center, Forefront security) to customers and partners?

What is Microsoft doing about enterprise security?

Are you interested in hearing how other IT pros are reacting to economic conditions and where they’re investing?

On Tuesday, June 23rd from 10:30am – 11:00am (PDT), you're invited to join a teleconference with Bob Kelly, corporate VP of Infrastructure Server Marketing. Bob will talk about the state of IT within the context of results from a new Harris Interactive study. The study, of 1,200 IT professionals from the U.S., United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, was commissioned by Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business.

There will be time for your questions following the brief presentation. Submit questions over the phone or you can submit them at any time leading up to, or during, the teleconference by tweeting with the Twitter hashtag, #qs4ms. If you are interested in attending, please REGISTER NOW. Once you open the invite box, you can save and close to your calendar.

Patrick

Re: Windows Server 2008 SP2 Hyper-V

porourke — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:51:00 GMT

Hi Isaac Roybal here. I’m a technical product manager on the Windows Server team covering Hyper-V.

It’s been 3 weeks since the release of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and we’re seeing great adoption. From a Hyper-V point of view, we’re excited because the final Hyper-V release is an integrated feature in SP2 making it easier and faster to deploy Hyper-V. If you recall, when Windows Server 2008 was released, Hyper-V Beta was included. This meant to get the final Hyper-V release, you needed to go to Windows Update, download and go through the update process.

With Windows Server 2008 SP2, Hyper-V final bits are included so there’s no need to pull down individual downloads which speeds up deployments. There are also some notable updates in SP2, including scalability enhancements for running on systems with up to 24 logical processors which enables support for up to 192 running virtual machines, update for Hyper-V when managed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and updates for backup/restore of virtual machines with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

For those of you who have already deployed Hyper-V, SP2 is a simple upgrade. Here are a couple of top-of-mind things to think about when you’re planning your upgrade or fresh install of SP2:

· In-place upgrades of Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 SP2 is supported for both the parent partition and child VMs.

o If the Hyper-V role was enabled on the parent partition prior to the upgrade to SP2, it will be automatically enabled once the upgrade is completed.

o Uninstall any prerelease versions of SP2 that might be installed.

· If a fresh SP2 install is being done and you’d like to move VMs to it, export the VMs from the originating Windows Server 2008 host and import them on the SP2 host.

· Integration Components (ICs) for the child virtual machines must be updated to the SP2 version.

o If you’re doing a fresh install or an upgrade of SP2 on the parent partition, it does not update the integration components inside the virtual machine. Be sure to update the VM ICs after SP2 is installed.

o If you have virtual machines created on the Beta version of the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V role, and you installed the Beta version of the integration components on those machines, you must uninstall the integration components and reinstall the latest SP2 integration components.

o When upgrading to SP2 inside a Windows Server 2008 child VM the ICs are automatically upgraded.

o If you are running a supported Windows operating system other than Windows Server 2008 as a VM, you need to use vmguest.iso to upgrade the integration components

Isaac

UPDATE. Responding to question by Ed051042

Yes, your assertion is correct. Follow these steps when upgrading a cluster to SP2:

1. Evacuate the cluster node of VMs via quick migration (assuming you’ve extra capacity) to other nodes in the cluster.

2. Upgrade the node to SP2 while it is still part of the cluster

3. Once the SP2 install is complete, quick migrate those VMs back to node and update VMs’ ICs. The last bit is important.

4. Follow the same process starting step #1 until entire cluster had been updated to SP2

For more info see KB 174799 which outlines how to install SPs on a cluster and Microsoft's Failover and Network Load Balancing Clustering Team Blog which explains a rolling upgrade of a cluster.

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

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 beta available

porourke — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:44:00 GMT

Exciting news for Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center, and VMWare customers. The beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is now available on the Microsoft Connect site for download. If you don't already have access to VMM on the Connect site you can get to it here by simply filling out a quick survey, which will help us better understand your virtualization needs. The new beta continues to extend the data center management capabilities of the System Center suite of offerings to build on the all up physical and virtual IT asset management features you already know, including the integration of Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager through the PRO functionality.

You can find current, full details on the VMM 2008 R2 beta in a post by Rakesh Malhotra at this location.

In summary, VMM 2008 R2 beta now supports new Windows Server 2008 R2 beta features such as Live Migration. Some additional features include:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Hyper-V host management

Enhanced migration including Live (Live Migration) and SAN migration in and out of clusters

Multiple VMs per LUN using Clustered share volumes

Hot add of VM storage

A reminder also that the Microsoft Management Summit is April 27 - May 1 in Las Vegas. This is an excellent time to learn more about all of the management offerings from Microsoft including the System Center suite and VMM 2008 R2. Hope to see you there.

Please go download the beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 today from the Microsoft Connect site and let us know what you think.

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].

DPM for data backup/recovery of virtualized apps and environments

porourke — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:47:00 GMT

We want to congratulate the Microsoft Storage Solutions team for releasing Service Pack 1 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

SP1 for DPM 2007 brings some great new capabilities for protecting Hyper-V environments. Most notably, of course, is the ability to protect guests within Hyper-V environments, often without downtime (for those guests running a Windows operating system that supports VSS). Also new for DPM with SP1 is the ability to run the DPM server on the Hyper-V host itself, so that the DPM server can protect the guests from the host viewpoint, within the same physical server - to disk, to tape and even to the cloud.

And unlike other (shall-not-be-named) virtualization platforms’ backup mechanisms, DPM does not require a SAN and does not require 3rd party backup software or add-ons. It’s an all Microsoft backup and recovery solution for Microsoft’s virtualization platform.

For more details on the SP1 release for DPM 2007, check out:

· Bala’s executive viewpoint on DPM 2007 sp1

· Some early SP1 customers are also blogging about their experiences and you can see at these links – ICON & Convergent Computing

· A feature overview of DPM SP1 is located here

The DPM folks have dedicated resources on “How to protect virtualized environments with DPM 2007” – http://www.microsoft.com/DPM/virtualization. And a very cool podcast showing how to protect Hyper-V with DPM 2007 SP1 - http://edge.technet.com/Media/DPM-2007-SP1-Protecting-Hyper-V

Congrats to the DPM crew – and nice job on backing up Hyper-V !!!

Patrick