Windows Virtualization Team Blog : virtualization

More on today's announcement with NetApp

porourke — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:06:00 GMT

We published some news today with NetApp; see here. In short, Microsoft and NetApp...

today announced a new three-year agreement that deepens product collaboration and technical integration, and extends joint sales and marketing activities to customers worldwide. Under the new agreement, the two companies will collaborate and deliver technology solutions that span virtualization, private cloud computing, and storage and data management, enabling customers to increase data center management efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve business agility.

As NetApp's partner site states, we'll work with NetApp to sell/market disaster recovery solutions using NetApp HA and DR storage with Hyper-V and System Center. There's a sample customer blueprint (.pdf) here with datacenter configs. And there's datacenter consolidation solutions, which are discussed in this white paper (here).

Above and beyond this, examples of technical integration include

the creation of NetApp's SnapManager for Hyper-V, which integrates their storage with Hyper-V and supports CSV.
NetApp management pack for System Center Operations Manager

In addition, NetApp is working with the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for enterprises and Powershell commandlets to rapidly provision VMs as the foundation for private cloud computing environments.

Patrick O'Rourke

City of Frisco (Texas) saves big with Hyper-V and NetApp

porourke — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:52:00 GMT

Hi, I'm Jim Schwartz, a director of virtualization solutions marketing in Redmond.

A great example of why companies are adopting virtualization and the resulting benefits can be seen in Texas, at the City of Frisco. The city, one of the fastest growing in America, needed to scale a siloed IT infrastructure to accommodate data growth of 200-300% year.

Check out this NetApp blog to learn how the City’s move toward virtualization resulted in substantial savings and maximized uptime for Exchange, SharePoint, and other apps.

Also don’t miss the Microsoft and NetApp live webcast on Thursday, December 3 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern: Virtualize with Microsoft and NetApp: Consolidate and Increase Uptime with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and NetApp. City of Frisco Enterprise Technology Manager Tim Yarbrough will join the discussion to talk about his environment and Windows Server 2008 R2 upgrade. You will have the opportunity to submit live questions to Microsoft and NetApp experts during the webcast.

Thanks,

Jim

Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 beta 2

porourke — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:20:00 GMT

Hello, this is Bryon Surace again. I’m a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team at Microsoft.

Recently, the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 beta 2 became available for public download. Part of this release is the Beta 2 version of Visual Studio Team System 2010 Lab Management; an integrated solution to give you all the benefits of virtualization for application lifecycle management. Congratulations to the Visual Studio Lab Management team for reaching this milestone!

Beta 2 Improvements:

§ Simplified Virtual Environment creation

§ Lab Environment Viewer with full-screen capability

§ Manual and automated testing in virtual environment

§ Build-deploy-test workflow for virtual environments

§ Enhanced workflow process parameters UI and report

§ Network isolation with support for domain controller VMs

§ Setup & Config – verification and auto provisioning of accounts

§ Virtual Machine templates

§ “In-Use” support for shared environments

The main features of Lab Management are:

Easily manage more complex test configurations

Lab environment as a first class entity for managing multi-machine test environments
Setup multiple configurations for testing quickly
Consistent, reliable access to test environments
Create multiple copies of test environments for parallel testing

New “clean” environment in minutes

Environment snapshot: lightweight and efficient
Facilitates exploratory testing

Scheduled build/test cycle on steroids

Snapshot to clean environment
Build triggered app deployment
Testing in more realistic environment

Rich bugs with environment snapshot

reduce the number of no-repro bugs

Visual Studio Download Page – you can download all the required components from there. This video can guide you through the download and installation process of TFS. And check out the Lab Management blog.

Thank you,

Bryon Surace

Upcoming Webcasts on Best Practices for Virtualizing MS Server Applications

porourke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:25:00 GMT

We’ve got some great webcasts coming up in the next few weeks to discuss recommendations for virtualizing MS server applications and the benefits of choosing hyper-V + System Center as your virtualization solution. Each technical webcast will focus on a specific server application- Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. Please see below for detailed information.

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SQL Server (Level 300). Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 at 10am Pacific time

Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing SQL Server using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing SQL server for Production and Test/Dev scenarios focusing on consolidation, scale, load balancing, dynamic provisioning and high availability. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Server (Level 300) Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 10am Pacific time

Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing Exchange using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing Exchange for various Production scenarios. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.

Update: More than recession: IDC's server virtualization tracker report

porourke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:24:00 GMT

Update: The folks at IDC asked that I remove this blog post until further notice.

That said, do check out Roger Johnson's post. He discusses Dell PowerEdge R910 and his Hyper-V deployment at Crutchfield. I met Roger at VMworld 2009. He's a VCP, having run an ESX Server-based datacenter for some time before Crutchfield moved away from VMware and onto Hyper-V/SCVMM earlier this year.

Patrick

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

Hyper-V, your journey starts here!

vtango — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:59:00 GMT

I have been inundated by people here at VMworld 2009 with tons of questions on Hyper-V and who want to see demos of Hyper-V. This blog post attempts to put together a list material for folks. Given the large amount of material this list is only a snapshot but one which will provide you enough to get started.

First off there is a huge amount of technical articles, documentation, whitepapers, case studies, API documentation that’s available. Your start point should be the Virtualization page here. That site provides links to numerous case studies about customers who are using Hyper-V and Microsoft Virtualization solutions. Next I suggest looking at the solutions site that provides information on the customer focused scenarios. Following this I encourage you to delve into the products that are used to build these solutions.

For the geeks like me who are really looking to understand how to get started and the technical details you should start your journey at the Virtualization TechCenter. For those of you who wanted to just get to the nuts and bolts go straight to the Hyper-V Getting Started Guide. For folks wanting to understand the architecture in some depth you want to start here. Developers can jump straight to the WMI API’s.

Finally for folks who want to see a collection of videos with great demos of the products I’d like to point to Tony Sopers blog which contains a huge collection of these.

Enjoy.

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

Follow us on Twitter and get a chance to win a Zune HD

vtango — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:09:00 GMT

I now have the final list of sessions that I will be attending at VMworld. As I noted last time I had a lot of waitlists which it now appears I have not made the cut for most of the sessions. That means I will be at our booth (#2422) almost all of today (Aug 31, 2009) and at the times when I am not attending a session.

There is a great opportunity to win a 32GB Zune HD. All you have to do is to follow the Microsoft Virtualization experts on Twitter. By the way this is open to folks who are not attending VMworld as well. So follow along with us!! You can follow me here.

I am heading over to the Moscone Center to register and see if I can get into some of the labs being offered today.

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

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

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

Guest Post: All Eyes on SteelEye with DataKeeper Support for Hyper-V

porourke — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:10:00 GMT

Hi all,

My name is Dave Bermingham and I’m the director of Windows product management for SteelEye Technology, a provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. I’d like to thank Microsoft’s Virtualization team for the opportunity to guest blog on SteelEye’s continued support for Hyper-V as well as exciting new features coming in support of Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2.

I can’t believe it is almost a year ago since I demonstrated SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition at the Microsoft Virtualization Launch event in Bellevue, WA. In the past year we have seen the interest in our Hyper-V disaster recovery products increase dramatically and with the recent release of Windows Server 2008 R2, I believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg!

SteelEye’s mission is to “Replicate Any Data, Protect Any Application.” We pride ourselves on our commitment to provide the Windows marketplace with flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions that are enterprise-grade yet customizable for any size business. Most recently SteelEye identified an opportunity to extend Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering (WSFC) by delivering SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition, a real-time data replication solution that integrates seamlessly with WSFC to enable multi-site clusters while eliminating the single point of failure traditionally associated with shared storage resources. A comprehensive and cost-effective disaster recovery solution, DataKeeper Cluster Edition helps supports improved productivity and availability of your Hyper-V VMs.

SteelEye soon will be announcing support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and the highly anticipated “Live Migration”. As our Windows team continues to develop and build additional capabilities for enhanced disaster recovery support of Hyper-V, we welcome your comments and suggestions. To learn more about the latest developments for Hyper-V support, take a look at our FAQs or visit the SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition page on our website.

Thanks,

Dave