Last week we organized a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure day together with Citrix. We’ve published the sessions onto TechNet Edge.
Session 1: VDI Day: Citrix & Microsoft Desktop Virtualization Strategy
In this session we will guide you through the desktop virtualization strategy and show you how Citrix and Microsoft will help you reduce the costs of Managing your virtual desktop infrastructure. We will answer questions like: “Will desktop virtualization really fit every user?”
Speakers: Jurgen Van Duvel & Andreas Van Wingerden
Session 2: VDI Day: Planning and Deploying VDI with Citrix and Microsoft Technology – Part 1
In this more technical session we will drill down into the Microsoft virtualization architecture of VDI and determine what key questions need to be asked and answered around required components, networking, capacity and end user experience. In the second part of the Presentation we will drill down into the Citrix components of our joint VDI solution. You will learn what the different key components are and how to setup your own test environment.
Speaker: Arlindo Alves – http://blogs.technet.com/b/aralves/
Session 3: VDI Day: Planning and Deploying VDI with Citrix and Microsoft Technology – Part 2
In the second part of the Presentation we will drill down into the Citrix components of our joint VDI solution. You will learn what the different key components are, what they add on top of the Virtualization back-end. By then end of this session you will be geared up with the knowledge to setup your own test environment.
Speaker: Andreas Van Wingerden - Citrix
This new white paper discuss how you can run SQL server workloads on our Hyper-V (R2) infrastructure.
The tests in this white paper demonstrate that Hyper-V provides the performance and scalability needed to run SQL Server workloads in consolidation scenarios. As an example, the following diagram compares OLTP workload performance of 8 stacked native instances and 8 stack virtual instances.
You can read the details of the results and analysis in the whitepaper.
A couple of weeks ago we organized a Best of MMS event together with our local MVP’s and SCUG user group. We’ve published all the sessions onto the Belux page on TechNet Edge
Session 1: Belgian Best of MMS: System Center State of the Union
In a year packed with new management product releases, MMS 2010 will provide the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter, Device and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. In this session we will give you an overview of the different announcements made at MMS.
Session 2: Belgian Best of MMS: The top 20 “Must Have“ customizations in Operations Manager
This session will look at the 20 most common configuration changes or customizations that we implement in our consulting engagements. At the end of this session, attendees will leave with the knowledge of how to optimize their Operations Manager installation. This session will walk through the 'eureka' configurations that all customers love and utilize on a frequent basis within their environments. If you want to be much more efficient in your day to day work, you will not want to miss this session.
Speaker: Alexandre Verkinderen http://www.scug.be/blogs/
Session 3: Belgian Best of MMS: Introduction into Service Manager
Service Manager is about to RTM – are you ready? Learn more about the capabilities, how to design and deploy a Service Manager infrastructure. After this session you will have insight in how Service Manager works and how to implement it in your infrastructure.
Speaker: Kurt Vanhoecke System Center Service Manager
Session 4: Belgian Best of MMS: Technical Introduction to Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010
The release of DPM 2010 is just a few weeks after MMS 2010, so this session (the 1st in a 4 part series) will cover installing a new DPM 2010 server, and then provide an overview of the core capabilities and enhanced protection/recovery scenarios.
Speaker: Mike Resseler System Center Data Protection Manager
Session 5: Belgian Best of MMS: Systems Management in Midsized Organizations with System Center Essentials 2010
For organizations up to 500 PCs and 50 servers, Microsoft is releasing System Center Essentials 2010 (SCE) to provide service monitoring, software deployments and updates, and management of physical and virtual machines. This single product is designed for midsized organizations, so this session will be full of demonstrations as we look at each of the major aspects of SCE 2010, including server and client monitoring, software deployment and patching, virtualization management and migration, and how to get started with easy setup and configuration. Come see it here first
Speaker: Mike Resseler Blog Mike
Session 6: Belgian Best of MMS: Opalis IT Process Automation: Introduction & Technical Overview
This session will walk you through the Opalis workflow designer demonstrating along the way how to integrate System Center products with other IT tools to create automated processes. You will also see how Opalis customers have automated best practices for incident management, provisioning and change management
Speaker: David De Backer – Technology Advisor Microsoft Belux
| VMST 3.0 helps customers more effectively—and safely—manage the workflow of updating their offline virtualization environment. Using VMST 3.0, customers can now service: | · Offline virtual machines in a SCVMM library. · Stopped and saved state virtual machines on a host. · Virtual machine templates. · Offline virtual hard disks in a SCVMM library by injecting update packages. · Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host clusters. | 
| Join the Beta Program |
One of our partners build a 4 node Hyper-V cluster with Datacenter Edition and wants to use System Center Essentials 2010 to manage the Virtualization layer. As SCE 2010 can manage up to 50 Machines it is the ideal solution for his environment.
However According to the TechNet article (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb422876.aspx) we only support Windows Server Standard and Enterprise Edition.
Our Product team confirmed to me that you can manage the Windows Datacenter Edition with SCE. The reason why it’s not on the supported list yet is because we are still finalizing the test. But they confirmed that there is no technical reason not to do it.
Best of Microsoft Management Summit 2010
Best of MMS 2010 will provide the opportunity to learn more about IT Management solutions from Microsoft and how you can adopt them in your datacenter. MMS is an annual event in Las Vegas where we deliver deep technical content on our latest management solution offering.
In a year packed with new management product releases, MMS 2010 will provide the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter, Device and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. This year 5 of our Belgian Experts from the System Center User Group will attend this event and bring back all the valuable information and present them to the Belgian IT Professionals.
You have the choice to either attend this event in person or follow it by using live-meeting.
Agenda of the day
- Overview of announcements made at MMS in Las Vegas
- System Center Configuration Manager vNext
- The top 20 “Must Have “ customizations in Operations Manager
- Introduction into Opalis
- What’s new and what changed in Data Protection Manager 2010
- What to Expect from Service Manager
- Technical Overview of System Center Essentials 2010
Full Agenda
Date:
May 11, 2010
Location:
Microsoft Office
Da Vincilaan 3
1935 Zaventem
Register now
What is SCOM 2007 R2 and how can it help in managing SQL Servers.
Managing SQL Server requires insight in the state and performance of the underlying infrastructure, OS and individual SQL components.
System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 cannot only give you that insight, but it can be reused in a broader application/service monitoring view.
This session focuses on the out-of-the-box capabilities of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 but also shows you how a distributed application can easily reuse these capabilities to provide an extra step in monitoring.
Registration is now open at http://sqlug.be/nextevent
I often get the question if you can use System Center Essentials 2010 (SCE) to manage your Virtual Infrastructure. The answer depends on how many virtual machines you want to manage today and in the future. SCE 2010 includes Virtual Machine management but only a subset of the capabilities of System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Let’s have a look at the differences:
| Configuration | Essentials 2010 | VMM |
| Templates | X | X |
| VM Cloning | X | X |
| Candidate Identification | X | X |
| Physical to Virtual Conversion | X | X |
| Virtual to Virtual Conversion | X | X |
| Migration across physical machines | X | X |
| Virtualization Reports | X | X |
| Monitoring VMs | X | X |
| Physical resource optimization (PRO) | X | X |
| Library | X | X |
| Provisioning | X | X |
| VM configuration & properties | X | X |
| VM state | X | X |
| Checkpoints (Snapshots) | X | X |
| 64 bit guest OS | X | X |
| Hardware Assisted Virtualization | X | X |
| Live thumbnail | X | X |
| Synthetic Network Support | X | X |
| Import VM (multiple VHD + snapshot) | | X |
| Configure advanced network settings | | X |
| Inspect Disk | | X |
| VMWare Management | | X |
| Self-service console | | X |
If you don’t need VMWare management and the self service portal you will be able to use SC2010.
There is also the licensing aspect that you need to take into consideration:
Licensing for Managed Virtual Machines in Essentials 2010
Essentials 2010 is licensed per device. Only physical computers consume server or client management licenses and are required to have a license. However, Essentials is limited to managing up to 50 server operating system environments and 500 client operating system environments. For example, you might have purchased licenses to manage 20 physical servers, are managing all 20 physical servers, and are also managing 30 virtual servers. Because you are managing 50 server operating system environments, you cannot manage any additional physical or virtual servers.
In conclusion you can manage 50 servers being Virtual or Physical and you only need to license your physical servers.
Watch the What's New with System Center Essentials 2010 webcast for more information.
2010 will definitely be the year of the cloud. During the keynote you will hear about the continuum of cloud services spanning from Iaas to Saas that Microsoft is offering and that will allow organizations to move between cloud computing models with the confidence that their existing investments in their datacenter are safe, and can be leveraged in this new paradigm. Existing applications and services will be able to move to the private or public cloud without the need to learn unproven technologies or introduce unnecessary complexity.
In the second part of the keynote you’ll see how you can increase user productivity by implementing the Microsoft stack
Speaker: Luc Van De Velde – DPE Director Microsoft Belgium
Guest Speakers: Tony Krijnen, Daniel Van Soest and Arlindo Alves – IT Pro Evangelists Microsoft
There was still one session in the IT Pro track that I could not disclose because the announcement was not made yet. But now that we announced the Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX capabilities in SP1 I can disclose the following session:
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and NEW SP1 features!
In this session, we will look at Hyper-V’s progression from Windows Server 2008, to R2, and will also give you a sneak peek of the new Hyper-V features coming in SP1. SP1 will include both Microsoft Remote-FX and Dynamic Memory. These features are designed to meet the increasing needs of our customers as they utilize virtualization in their environments with Windows Server 2008 R2. We will investigate how Hyper-V has continued to advance and how SP1 will address critical business and technology requirements.
Speaker: Bryon Surace - Microsoft Corp
This IPD guide, updated for App-V 4.6, provides actionable guidance for planning your application virtualization infrastructure. With App-V, your organization can respond to the complex challenge of managing applications. This guide simplifies your App-V planning process; updates now include support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, including such features as BranchCache; support for 64-bit clients; and server-sizing data.
Strategically planning your infrastructure can help you avoid problems before they begin, allowing you to serve your customers more accurately and reliably, as well as saving you time and money.
Download the IPD Guide for App-V 4.6 at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=182824.
Come to the TechDays 2010 and attend the following session:
Virtualization in Microsoft IT
Lessons learned in 5 years of implementing Microsoft’s virtualization platform and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, driving from 5 pilot Virtual Server 2005 hosts to 1100 virtualization hosts with 7000 Hyper-V guests. The changes in the computing hardware, storage solutions and Networking implementations. And what we envision for the next two years.
The PowerShell management module for Hyper-V contains about 100 cmdlets that will let you manage your Hyper-V infrastructure by using scripts. Out of the box you can only manage this through WMI and we all know that WMI is not so user friendly.
The PowerShell module is available onto codeplex
One of the shortcomings in Windows Server Core is the possibility to change the network order or bindings in an easy way. The only way to do it is through the registry key. After we received some feedback from our customers one of the Hyper-V team members decided to write a tool called NVSPBind.
NVSPBind also has the ability to enable bindings, bind or unbind the Hyper-V network switch protocol from a NIC and repair bindings on a NIC.
Read more about this tool http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2010/01/25/announcing-nvspbind.aspx#comments
I’ve just added a new Opalis session in the IT Pro track.
IT Process Automation with System Center and Opalis
In this session OpsMgr MVP Maarten Goet will talk about how IT Process Automation or Run Book Automation (RBA) can orchestrate tasks across systems and automate large volume or highly repetitive tasks. Maarten will demo the Opalis integration server integration with Operations Manager 2007 R2 and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. Get a hands-on approach with this session how to drive down cost through automation and improve service performance and availability through standardizing process and execution.
Check out the TechDays session builder and filter on IT Pro tags so you have a clear view on the different Infrastructure related sessions.
Get Ready Sessions are 1 day level 200-300 technical trainings given by top level speakers, generally acknowledged as experts in their field. The sessions are organized by Microsoft Partners, more specifically Certified Partners Learning Solutions (CPLS), warranting a high quality learning experience for the trainees.
The participating Microsoft Partners are Devoteam/Guidance, Global Knowledge, InfoSupport, Ordina and U2U. Below is an overview of the different topics for which each Partner is organizing Get Ready Sessions.
Here is a list of upcoming “Get Ready” Sessions:
| Feb 9 | Get Ready Session: SQL Server 2008 infrastructure
The ideal start for any IT professional who wants to know everything about
managing a SQL Server 2008 infrastructure. This one day seminar is provided by the best trainers from the Microsoft Certified Learning Solutions Partners. No loose collection of topics but a solid base of information on new management functionality in SQL Server 2008. |
| Infosupport | http://www.infosupport.com/Training/CursusInfo/GRSQL08 |
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| Feb 11 | Get Ready Session: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
This Microsoft Get Ready session by U2U covers the new features in Exchange Server 2010 compared to Exchange Server 2007. Topics: Exchange Server 2010 design goals. Client access features. Message policy and compliance features. Unified messaging features. Federated sharing. Message transport features. Mailbox server features |
| U2U | http://www.u2u.be/CoursePage.aspx?CODE=UEXP10 |
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| Feb 19 | Get Ready Session: Windows 7 : The Next Generation Windows Collaborative Platform: An Opportunity To Optimize Your Desktop Service
In this demonstrations-packed session, Devoteam experts will show you how to bring your desktop service to new levels of operational excellence. DevoTeam experts will demonstrate how to integrate the latest Microsoft desktop technologies, highlighting how they really change the migration game, improve your service levels, and lower the client platform TCO
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| Guidance/Devoteam | TBC |
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| Feb 24 | Server Virtualisation: Building Your Virtualisation Infrastructure Using Hyper-V and SCVMM
Discover the benefits of the virtualization capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center. Take advantage of the cost savings of virtualization through Windows Server 2008 R2. Optimize your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles using server virtualisation, efficiently run multiple different operating systems in parallel and fully leverage the power of x64 computing. |
| Guidance/Devoteam | TBC |
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| Feb 26 | Get Ready Session: SharePoint 2010
This Microsoft Get Ready session by U2U gives you an overview on what is new in SharePoint 2010, for Power Users, Developers and Administrators. Topics: SharePoint 2010 Overview What’s new in the SharePoint User Interface List and Document Management Improvements Introducing SharePoint Designer 2010 The new Business Connectivity Services (BCS) What is new in InfoPath 2010 SharePoint Workspace 2010 Introducing the SharePoint Development Platform What are Sandboxed Solutions? The new Client Object Models LINQ and REST in SharePoint 2010 Building Web Parts with Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint 2010 Administration Overview |
| U2U | http://www.u2u.be/CoursePage.aspx?CODE=UGSP10 |
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| March 12 | Get Ready Session: Exchange 2010
Since its early conception, Exchange Server has been one of the world's favourite email server platforms. Now with a whole new level of 64bit architecture Exchange 2010 provides a fully unified messaging and communications platform. With world class email, voice, data and fax Exchange 2007 delivers enterprise class services with improved speed, storage growth, manageability and security. In this Get Ready Seminar you will discover what's hot and what's not in Exchange 2010, so make sure you sign up to this exclusive one day session!!! |
| Global Knowledge | http://www.globalknowledge.be/Default.aspx?page=461&coursecode=GKEXCH2010 |
More to come as soon as we have launched the official TechNet “Get Ready” site.
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Learn More Install Now
In this session, we will take a detailed look at how Service Manager integrates with Operations Manager (SCOM) and Configuration Manager (SCCM) to help you to more effectively manage systems in your data center, learn how to define and manage business services, manage change to those services and create incidents when components fail or degrade.
Speaker: Nigel Cain, Senior Program Manager 
Nigel Cain is a Senior Program Manager in the Virtualization & Datacenter Management team responsible for driving customer focused design and development efforts. His primary product responsibilities include System Center Service Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Nigel joined Microsoft in 1998 as technical consultant and moved into a Program Management role in 2003. Since then he has worked on a number of different products and initiatives but his primary focus has always been on solutions that make Microsoft technologies easier to manage
Agenda Thuesday, January 19, 2010
- 18:00 Registration and lunch
- 18:45 Welcome
- 19:00 System Center Service Manager Integration by Nigel Cain
- 21:00 Q&A and drink
Register
The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 has free, tested guidance and automated tools to help customers keep their virtualized machines updated, without introducing vulnerabilities into their IT infrastructure.
The tool combines the Windows Workflow programming model with the Windows PowerShell™ interface to automatically bring groups of virtual machines online, service them with the latest security updates, and return them to an offline state.
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 now supports the following products:
- Hyper-V-R2
- VMM 2008 R2
- SCCM 2007 SP2
- WSUS 3.0 SP2
OVMST 2.1 also supports updates to Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008 R2 virtual machines.
To learn more about the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1., just click here. To download the tool, click here.
The Infrastructure Planning and Design team has released two updated guides, Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology and Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services.
With the release of these updated guides, the Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) series of guides further assists organizations in selecting the right virtualization technologies for their business needs.
To select an appropriate virtualization technology, organizations can look to the updated IPD Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology. This guide walks the reader through the technology selection process for each workload—and is now updated to include coverage of Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
If the IPD Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology points the organization to Remote Desktop Services as a best fit for their business needs, the guide then directs the user to the updated IPD Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services, which then outlines key infrastructure planning and design guidance for a successful implementation of Remote Desktop Services. The IPD Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services leads the reader through the nine-step process of designing components, layout, and connectivity in a logical, sequential order. Identification of the RD Session Host farms is presented in a simple, easy-to-follow process, helping the reader to design and plan centralized virtual data centers.
Used together, these updated guides provide comprehensive planning and design guidance for implementing a Remote Desktop Services infrastructure. The IPD Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology also teams with other virtualization guides in the IPD Series—to provide end-to-end planning and design guidance for a variety of virtualization technologies.
Download the IPD Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=160981
Download the IPD Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177881
For users of Windows Server 2008 R2, the Remote Desktop Services guide is a complete replacement for the Terminal Services guide. The Remote Desktop Services guide reflects the new capabilities introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as the rebranding of Terminal Services. The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services remains available at http://www.microsoft.com/IPD.
Are you looking for Technical information to help you with your Hyper-V Infrastructure?
We have quite a lot of resources available to help you with:
- Planning
- Installation
- Guidance
- Best Practices
- Deployment
- Pre-Deployment Tools
- Management
- Performance
- Workload Specific Guidance
It’s here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565807.aspx
As Infrastructure Architects, you obviously are passionate, knowledgeable and experienced in IT infrastructure technology and want to keep in touch with the upcoming technology trends.
Evenly important, and increasingly important in these crisis period, is that you need to clearly connect business objectives with IT initiatives, in order to make sure that business understands the value of the IT platform and hence will free up those critical budgets for your initiatives. Below you can find the links towards the different sessions.
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Connecting IT to Your Business Objectives: A conversation about the Microsoft Optimization Models
Is it possible to connect business objectives with IT initiatives? Haven’t we tried too many times just to find that it is too hard? Well, in this session we will go through a proven process to asses you current Infrastructure and Business Productivity capabilities using the Microsoft Optimization Models, and proceed to demonstrate the new Infrastructure Capabilities Integration business solution catalogue for horizontal and industry solutions, which are the latest addition to the Microsoft Optimization Framework then we will go through a practical example of how to bridge a set of example business objectives to with their corresponding IT initiatives.
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/technet/nl/chopsticks/default.aspx?id=1486 |
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Are you designing your User Experiences? How does Dynamic IT feel in the real world?... a proven CIO conversation
Can you say that you design the experience your user has on the IT environment they use day to day? Since 2003 Microsoft has been promoting the Dynamic IT initiative and producing software that delivers on this vision. The Dynamic IT vision promotes a virtual infrastructure, an Infrastructure that is designed for operations, a model based management tool set, and best practices such as ITIL, all of these to enhance the quality, reach and operational tempo of an IT organization, and by doing such, also enhance the end users experience. In this session we will go over several scenarios where we will compare current real world scenarios such as new en user desktop deployment, developers environment management, web service monitoring, and remote branch deployment to highlight not only the difference but with demonstrations how does it actually look and feel to have a Dynamic IT working for you and your end users.
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/technet/nl/chopsticks/default.aspx?id=1487 |
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Microsoft Software Roadmap: Portfolio Strategy For IT
As the role of IT continues the shift from cost cutting and efficiency to business strategy and people enablement, you need partners who are well positioned across the depth and breadth of technologies. Technologies which enable you to implement a Dynamic IT environment. Technologies that fit within your plans for a Services Oriented Architecture and fit well with the future promise of Software Plus Services. Technologies that you can trust to provide the best reliability and security. Technologies that work together to amplify the impact of the people in your organization. In this workshop you will have a chance to see and discuss Microsoft’s Software Roadmap of enterprise class technologies for delivering a People Ready Business from infrastructure to productivity applications.
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/technet/nl/chopsticks/default.aspx?id=1488 |
This session focuses on the new capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
We will also covers the base architecture of Hyper-V and provides guidance on key areas high availability, live migration, deployment and managing your virtual infrastructure using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.
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TechNet Event: Learn how to use Virtualization from the Desktop to the Datacenter
Using products that span the desktop to the data center, you can bring capacities online in real-time, as needed; streamline and provision applications, services and data on-demand; accelerate backup and recovery, and enhance availability so that your users are well protected against system failure and service interruptions.
This event will consist out of two tracks one for Data Center Virtualization and one for Desktop Virtualization.
Following technologies will be covered:
- Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization
- Application Virtualization
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
- Windows Server 2008 R2 - Hyper-V
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager
- ...
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TechNet Event: Learn how to use Virtualization from the Desktop to the Datacenter
Using products that span the desktop to the data center, you can bring capacities online in real-time, as needed; streamline and provision applications, services and data on-demand; accelerate backup and recovery, and enhance availability so that your users are well protected against system failure and service interruptions.
This event will consist out of two tracks one for Data Center Virtualization and one for Desktop Virtualization.
Following technologies will be covered:
- Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization
- Application Virtualization
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
- Windows Server 2008 R2 - Hyper-V
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager
- ….
Server Virtualization Track:
Storage and Hyper-V: The Choices You Can Make and the Things You Need to Know
Storage and virtualization are two of the hottest technologies in IT right now -- and they're even better together. Microsoft is delivering new products into both spaces. , and Understanding the impacts that storage has on a server virtualization design is key to understanding and successfully building a virtual infrastructure. This session talks about where we are, where we've been, and where we are going. We give you the information you need to know to make the right storage decisions in this new virtual world.
Security Architecture and Best Practices for Hyper-V
It is critical to ensure that your virtualization infrastructure is secured and protected against malicious intent. This session will outline the security architecture of Hyper-V and provide guidelines and best practices from a security viewpoint.
Disaster Recovery and Failover Clustering:
As Windows Server operating systems become increasingly accepted in the large scale and high-end mission-critical parts of organizations, the requirements for disaster tolerance and business continuance become more and more important. The goal of this session is to cover the considerations on how you can build a complete solution with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to achieve not only High Availability, but also Disaster Recovery.
Microsoft’s Builds the Foundation for your Private Cloud
Learn about Microsoft’s Private Cloud Infrastructure offering and find out how the latest technologies, tools and resources which are enabling the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure. Learn about the two extensible FREE Dynamic Data Center Toolkits; Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters (available now!) that enables hosting partners to offer managed
Client Virtualization Track:
Desktop Virtualization: Providing You with Clear Guidance
This business value session will review the different desktop virtualization solutions available and provide you with the context you need to create a meaningful and actionable plan to leverage Desktop Virtualization technologies to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. You will learn about VDI, App-V, MED-V, and other virtualization options in the context of selecting the "right tool for the right job" for your business needs.
Desktop Virtualization – The App-V side
App-V explained, what it is, how it works, what is the relation to Desktop Virtualization and how can App-V help us to achieve the Optimized Desktop vision. We will discuss deployment options and show an App-V Sequence and Deployment demo.
MED-V Client Hosted Desktop Virtualization
Client Hosted Desktop Virtualization – How can MED-V help us to achieve the Optimized Desktop vision. The difference between managed and unmanaged XP mode and we will show a MED-V demo.
Speakers:
Isaac Roybal – Product Manager Virtualization – Microsoft Corp
Isaac Roybal is a Product Manager in Microsoft’s Virtualization Marketing team. His responsibilities cover the Cloud Computing Infrastructure Initiative from a private cloud perspective, Dynamic Datacenter Toolkits for both hosters and enterprises and the Dynamic Datacenter Alliance. Isaac’s career started in Systems and Network Engineering working with Windows Server since NT 3.51. Prior to his current role, Isaac managed Microsoft’s Hyper-V and IIS product marketing efforts. He has been involved in IT for over 13 years (8 with Microsoft), received a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from New Mexico Highlands University and has his MCSE certification in NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and 2003.
Vijay Tewari – Program Manager Virtualization – Microsoft Corp
Vijay Tewari is a Principal Program Manager with the Windows Server Virtualization team at Microsoft. He has over 15 years of experience in the industry and has authored multiple specifications relating to systems management such as WS-Management. He owns the development of the Hyper-V role and the Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
Alexander Rublowsky - Group Manager, Desktop Virtualization for Windows Commercial - Microsoft Corporation
Alexander Rublowsky is responsible for leading Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization Sales Strategy for Windows Client. Responsibilities include the sales management of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) and Desktop Virtualization technologies like Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Application Virtualization (App-V) and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V).
Prior to managing Client Virtualization Sales Strategy, Rublowsky managed the Enterprise Partner Ecosystem for Windows Client including the development of the Application Compatibility Factory and led the Windows Client Deployment Team. Prior to joining Windows Client Rublowsky held Product Management, Product Marketing positions for product with revenue over $2.5 Billion and developed a unique demand based pricing strategy for Hardware Systems. Rublowsky holds a Master Degree from the George Washington University’s GSPM and an undergraduate degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Updated virtualization guides: Windows Server Virtualization and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
These guides, updated to reflect the features and functionalities of Windows Server® 2008 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, outline the critical infrastructure design elements that are crucial to a successful implementation of these virtualization products.
The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Windows Server Virtualization takes the reader through the process of designing components, layout, and connectivity in a logical, sequential order. Identification of the Hyper-V™ server hosts required is presented in easy-to-follow steps, helping the reader to design and plan virtual server datacenters.
The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager assists readers in the design and implementation of SCVMM architecture, thus enabling centralized administration of physical and virtual machines. Identification of the VMM server instances required is one of the simple, seven-step design processes presented in this guide.
Download the IPD Guides for Virtualization at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/ee395429.aspx
Infrastructure Planning and Design streamlines the planning process by:
- Defining the technical decision flow through the planning process.
- Listing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
- Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
- Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.
Hey All,
Microsoft just released the new VMMCA for vmm 2008 and vmm 2008 r2.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02d83950-c03d-454e-803b-96d1c1d5be24&displaylang=en
Brief Description
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and 2008 R2 Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) is a diagnostic tool that you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve VMM roles or other VMM functions.
Important
- You must install and run the VMMCA on the computer that either currently is or will become your VMM 2008 server.
- You should use this version of the VMMCA with VMM 2008 and VMM 2008 R2 only. To download the VMMCA for VMM 2007, go tohttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=132136.
The VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve VMM roles or other VMM functions. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal for the VMM role or other VMM function that you have specified for the computer.
I will soon post a blog about the results of the VMMCA.
Thanks,
Alexandre Verkinderen
You want to make sure your
Virtual machine are always up and running ? Come to this session and see for
yourself how simple it is to make a Hyper-V Cluster,Live migrate Virtual
Workloads and best of all: how you can do it for free !
Speaker:
Arlindo
Alves started his career as an ICT consultant at a Microsoft Partner, with a
strong focus and recognized expertise in server based computing. Today, Arlindo
is an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg, focusing on the
next wave of technology innovations. As part of the IT Pro team he works closely
with the technical community and maintains his own blog at
http://blogs.technet.com/aralves
Speaker:
Arlindo Alves started his career as an ICT consultant at a Microsoft
Partner, with a strong focus and recognized expertise in server based
computing. Today, Arlindo is an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft Belgium
& Luxembourg, focusing on the next wave of technology innovations.
As part of the IT Pro team he works closely with the technical
community and maintains his own blog at
http://blogs.technet.com/aralves
Windows Server Virtualization (Dutch)
Deze live meeting
geeft u een grondig inzicht in de nieuwe virtualisatietechnologieën,
zoals Hyper-V V2. Daarnaast bespreken we ook de nieuwe boot vanuit
VHD-functionaliteit en hoe u VHD gemakkelijk native kunt creëren,
monteren en gebruiken in Windows Server 2008 R2. We eindigen de
presentatie met een overzicht van de nieuwe capaciteiten in System
Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.
Windows Server Virtualization (French)
Cette session live
meeting vous présente en détail les nouvelles technologies de
virtualisation, y compris Hyper-V V2. Nous aborderons également le
nouveau principe d’initialisation à partir de la fonction VHD et
expliquerons comment créer, monter et utiliser facilement VHD en mode
natif dans Windows Server 2008 R2. Nous terminerons cette présentation
par une vue d’ensemble des nouvelles fonctions offertes par System
Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.
Hey All,
Microsoft has released the Product Support Reporting Tool for SCVMM2008 and 2008R2
Use the MPS Reporting Tool to gather detailed system status and configuration information from the Virtual Machine Manager server of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 or 2008 R2 server as well as from all managed virtual machine hosts, library servers, and physical to virtual conversion (P2V) source computers. This version of the MPS Reporting Tool collects gathers data to help Microsoft Support Professionals diagnose error conditions experienced in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.
The Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) version of the MPS Reporting Tool gathers the following diagnostic data for the VMM server, the virtual machine hosts and library servers that the VMM server manages, and physical to virtual conversion (P2V) source computers:
- Virtual Machine Manager traces
- Virtual Machine Manager database
- Windows event logs and virtual server event logs
- IP address
- Virtual Machine Manager setup logs
- SQL Server setup logs
- Registry information
- Open ports information
- System Information (msinfo)
You can download the tool here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4e3dc013-c299-4b80-9735-64a8b9fa60c7&displaylang=en
Cheers,
Mike
Securing Hyper-V (with the Winsec User Group)
Date and time: THURSDAY 1st October 2009, start at 18u30 until around 21u00.
Event Location: Microsoft BELUX - Corporate Village - Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3 - B-1935 Zaventem
Entry: Free
Registration: send a mail to benoit@mvug.be
Focus: with
the rising popularity of virtualization, it is time to start thinking
about how you secure your virtual environment. During this
presentation, best practices for securing a virtual environment based
on Microsoft’s Hyper-V are discussed, both from the angle of the
Hyper-V host as from the angle of the guests. Further it will be shown
how you can use Authorization Manager (AzMan)
to provide role-based access control for Hyper-V, separating host
administrators from guest administrators and precisely delegating
control to them, which will also be shown using System Center Virtual
Machine Manager (SC VMM).
More information can be found on the MVUG site http://mvug.be/content/Events.aspx
Hey All,
One of the big issues with SCVMM 2008 for me was that the memory available on the hosts is not correct. If you are running quite a large environment with a lot of virtual machines, it is difficult to know how many you have left. You can of course start calculating it manually but… ;-)
So here’s a screenshot of the problem
As you can see, all my hosts are giving zero kb free of memory. That’s not exactly correct
Here’s how to solve this one:
On each host that has this problem, open the registry and go to the following key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PerfOS\Parameters
If you see the key “Disable Performance Counters” then change it to 0.
Now you need to restart the WMI service on the host. Please pay attention because it will restart other services too and you don’t want to do this during production hours…
After that the services are restarted, you can refresh your configuration in SCVMM and then you get the correct figures
Cheers,
Mike
Microsoft has just published a guide building a simple PRO-enabled management pack for Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. This document gives an overview of creating PRO-enabled management packs and walks you through the steps required to create a simple PRO-enabled management pack.
Download here.
Alexandre Verkinderen
Now that Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 are released to manufacturing you could need some help to deploy those operating systems.Get a head start with Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0. Over 690,000 Microsoft customers and partners including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg have already downloaded and used this toolkit to date.
Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 is an integrated planning toolkit that makes it easier for Microsoft customers and partners to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in their IT environment. This agentless and scalable toolkit has the ability to discover all computers within Active Directory and workgroup environments. It performs key functions that include hardware and device inventory, hardware compatibility analysis, and generation of actionable, environment-specific IT proposals for migration to most major Microsoft technologies.
What’s New with v4.0?
Version 4.0 of this toolkit has the following new features:
- Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
- Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V R2 Server Consolidation
- Integration with the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Calculator
- Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests
- User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding
- Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance
Additional Features
In addition, most of the features from version 3.2 have also been carried over to version 4.0:
- Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation
- Windows Vista Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
- Windows Server 2008 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
- 2007 Microsoft Office Readiness Assessment
- SQL Server Instance Discovery
- Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation
- Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment
- App-V Infrastructure Readiness Assessment
- Power Savings “Green IT” Proposal
Next Steps--How can I get Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0?
Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0
Learn more about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit on TechNet
Get the latest news from the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Team Blog
Hey All,
One of the nice things in Virtual Machine Manager is the Cost Center feature. Although this seems like “just another field in the database”, it can come in handy when you need to prove to your management which business unit is using what resources. Or, if the servers are used for certain projects, you can prove which project is using what. This can be handy when you need more hardware and the management asks a prove if you are using everything you’ve got ;-)
In my example, I’ve added some cost centers to some servers. You do this by double-clicking on the virtual server or by opening the properties of it.
As you can see, I’ve added the Cost Center MSS to this server (which is actually the business unit I’m working for ;-))
Now the fun starts when you have Operations Manager in place and you have imported the Virtual Machine Manager Management Pack into OpsMgr. Now you get cool reporting.
In Virtual Machine Manager, I go to reporting and I have one interesting report called Virtual Machine Allocation
Ok, I hid the names of the cost centers but the important thing is that you can see that for each cost center I can see the # of VM’s, # of VM’s deployed, # in the library, # of processors, total allocated memory, number of disks, max disk space allocated and the number of nics.
Now the management has a great overview of who’s using all the hardware resources within the company.
Cheers,
Mike
The product team just announced that SCVMM 2008 R2 is publicly released.
Have a look at my previous post to know what changes in SCVMM 2008 R2
You can download SCVMM 2008 R2 from connect.microsoft.com
The Belgian Microsoft Virtualization User Group organizes their second get together on May 28th and will talk about following topics:
Hyper-V scripting (Part2) - PowerShell
So, you want to Script Hyper-V ? After the April session where we discussed WMI and Hyper-v,
you can come to this session and you will discover how to use the James O’Neill's created library: PSHyperv.
What's new Hyper-V R2 and SCVMM 2008 R2
What are the new features of Hyper-V R2 and VMM 2008 R2 ? Come to this session and we will explain them for you.
Some of the features we will cover will be:
- Live Migration
- Hot addition/removal of Storage
- New optimized networking technologies
- Enhanced storage and cluster support
- SAN migration into and out of clustered hosts
- Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs
XP Mode and VPC 7 Demo
There will be a short demo of all the new features of Virtual PC 7 and XP Mode.
Timing:
17:30 – 18:00 Arrivals
21:30 End of meeting
Location:
BDC SNACK - 1st Floor - Buro & Design Center
Heysel Esplanade B62
1020 Brussels
Belgium
Please register by sending an email to:anders@mvug.be
While SCVMM 2008 R2 is still in Beta the team is quietly working on improvements for the Release Candidate. There are some great new features coming up:
- Storage Migration where you will be able to migrate the storage of a VM within the same host or towards a new host. There will be some downtime but typical it will be less than 2 mins. Further will you be able to do storage Vmotion on VMWare hosts.
- Live Migration queuing allows you to do multiple live migration from one server. VMM will detect that the live migration fails and will try the live migration again for a period of time
- Rapid Provisioning is a feature that allow you to create a new VM based on a template without the need to copy over the vhd file with the bits transfer. Now you will be able to point to a dummy disk and change the path of the vhd file by using the PowerShell cmdlets to deploy the new VM.
- Host compat check, before migrating the VM to another box we will check the compatibility of the Hardware if it’s not compatible we don’t move.
We also added some other features for that I encourage you to read the full post:
http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/archive/2009/05/11/scvmm-r2-rc-features.aspx
Technology preview of System Center Virtual Machine Manager which is capable of managing Virtual Machines hosted in the cloud.
Last week I had the opportunity to present at the Windays in Opitija in Croatia. The first presentation is about the Windows Server Virtualization technology Hyper-V. In this deck I focus onto the new features of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.
In the second presentation I’ve talked about System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. With VMM2008 R2 we align with the different changes that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes.
Normal
0
21
false
false
false
NL-BE
X-NONE
X-NONE
Nice,
Microsoft just released vmm 2008 cmdlet reference.....and it's about 442 pages long! 
Have fun!
Abstract:
System Center Virtual Machine Manager
(VMM) 2008 is a server application that you can use to manage virtual
machines on a variety of virtualization platforms. As an alternative to using
the VMM Administrator Console to administer your Virtual Machine Manager
environment, you can use the cmdlets in the Windows PowerShell - Virtual
Machine Manager command shell, which is an administrator-focused command-line
shell. This document provides the Help topics for the VMM 2008 cmdlets.
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Cmdlet Reference.docx
Grtz,
Alexandre Verkinderen
VMM 2008 R2 Beta is a comprehensive management solution for virtualized infrastructure that takes advantage of many of the great new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta including:
- Live Migration: Enables the movement of running virtual machines from one virtual host to another with no downtime.
- Clustered Shared Volumes: Helps enable Live Migration and eliminates the previous one LUN per virtual machine requirement thus simplifying SAN administration.
- Hot addition/removal of storage: Allows the addition and removal of new virtual hard disks (VHDs) and iSCSI pass-through disks running on virtual infrastructure.
- Networking optimizations: two new technologies -- Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and Chimney - provide increased network throughput while reducing CPU load.
Call to action:
This newly-released collection offers a comprehensive introduction to the Microsoft suite of Virtualization products. Collection 6333 includes four two-hour clinics, covering Hyper-V and Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and Microsoft Application Virtualization.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6333.mspx
A few weeks ago my colleague installed Hyper-V onto her laptop and she copied one of her Virtual Machines onto this server.
When she booted the server there where some issues with the virtual machine, the main issue was that the vmbus technology was not available.
After a bit of troubleshooting I find out where the problem was.
I’ve looked into the device manager and saw that the Virtual Machine bus failed to load.
In the details pane of this device you can see the following error:
The device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. Basically this means that the VMBus cannot load. This is due to the fact that this VM was build on a non Hyper-V platform and therefore using a wrong HAL. The HAL running in the VM must be an APIC HAL. Now with Windows Server 2008 and Vista you can force to detect the correct HAL during the boot process. This is disabled by default but I will show you how you can enable it. First, open the System Configuration tool by running “msconfig”.
Next click onto the “Boot” tab and select the “Advanced Options”.
Click onto “Detect HAL” and close the tool and reboot the server. Once the server is rebooting it will detect the new HAL and install everything that is needed. If you open the device manager again you will see that the VM is now a “ACPI x86-based PC” (you can find this under the computer settings). After the reboot you can uncheck the “Detect HAL” option in msconfig.
I hope this helps.
Many of our customers do not know what computers are in their IT environment or what applications have been deployed. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 Beta makes it easier for customers and partners to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in their IT environment. MAP also makes specific and actionable IT proposals and reports to help customers get the most value out of Microsoft products and infrastructure. Over 500,000 Microsoft customers and partners have already used the MAP Toolkit and its prior versions including one of our Luxembourg customers Banque de Luxembourg.
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier for our customers to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this latest version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Security Assessment Proposal, Forefront/NAP migration, Microsoft Online Services, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help your customers “go green.”
In summary, MAP 3.2 assessment areas now include:
- SQL Server 2008 Migration Proposals and Reports (NEW!)
- Security Assessment Proposal (NEW!)
- Forefront/NAP Readiness Proposals (NEW!)
- Microsoft Online Services Migration Surveys, Proposals, and Reports (NEW!)
- Power Savings Proposals (NEW!)
- Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Migration Proposals and Reports (NEW!)
- Server Migration Reports and Proposals (Windows Server 2008 and “virtualized guests by hosts” reporting) (NEW!)
- Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V)
- Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on
- Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment Reports and Proposal
Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 BETA (Live ID login and registration required
Read MAP Toolkit Case Study: See how Banque de Luxembourg benefitted from using the MAP Toolkit
System Center Virtual Machine manager is RTM! Microsoft made an announcement today on theire website!
Microsoft is pleased to announce the release to manufacturing (RTM) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – the next generation of Microsoft’s solution for managing the virtualized infrastructure. A key member of System Center – a centralized, enterprise-class suite of data center management products -- Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage physical and virtual infrastructure from one console. New to this version of VMM is multi-vendor virtualization platform support, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) and enhanced support of “high availability” host clusters, among other new features.
You can donwload an evaluation version here.
Greetz,
Alexandre
http://scug.be/blogs
Whilst preparing for the TechNet Virtualization roadshow I came across some interesting links to help me with the configuration of the integration of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Opsmgr 2007 Management Pack for Windows Server 2008:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3529D233-5E3E-4B51-8F66-5D6F27005EC3&displaylang=en
How to integrate SCVMM and Opsmgr 2007:
Please follow the following blogposts to integrate both products and have the Pro Tips enabled: http://blogs.technet.com/rakeshm/archive/2008/07/08/scvmm-2008-and-ops-manager.aspx
Hyper-V update for issues that may occur when you manage the Hyper-V role on the 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 by using SCVMM:
After the integration services are installed, performance counters for storage devices that are attached to the emulated IDE controller are not reported. For example, the performance counters for storage devices report 0 even though files are being transferred on the related storage devices.
Virtual machines may stop responding while performance monitor data is being collected.
The Hyper-V Networking Management Service may stop responding to incoming requests.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956589
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