A free e-learning course is now available on the Microsoft Learning portal for those interested in learning about Hyper-V, the new virtualization technology that comes with Windows Server 2008.
The course is titled Clinic 5935: Introducing Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and is available for free, probably for a limited time.
Click here to activate the e-learning content.
On Thursday, June 26th, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. You can now download Hyper-V and it will be available via Windows Update on July 8.
Virtualization can help companies maximize the value of IT investments; from decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and the cost and complexity of managing today’s IT systems, to increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization, which span from the desktop to the datacenter, help IT professionals and developers move toward Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.
Hyper-V offers customers a reliable and scalable virtualization platform with high performance, that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables customers to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the System Center product family provides customers with a single set of integrated tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, enabling customers to create a more agile and dynamic datacenter .
PS: I am back.
I came across some excellent posts by Jeff on the Windows Server Virtualization blog that explains how high availability for virtual machines is achieved in Hyper-V and VMWare.
Virtualization is a wonderful technology – running more workloads on fewer boxes is a great idea – especially when it comes to cutting costs on rackspace, floorspace, power, cooling, hardware maintenance and improving resource utilization. However, IT Managers usually balk at the decision to virtualize because of one major reason – putting all eggs in one basket!
Believe it or not, this is one of the most common arguments that I get when I talk about virtualization. At the recent Microsoft Technology Day at Kuwait, I was asked the same question by the attendees during my session on System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
If you have 10 workloads running on 10 different boxes – even if one box dies, it just affects the workload running on that box. But if you run 10 workloads on one box, and if that box dies, will it bring down all 10 workloads?
The solution to this dilemma is Failover Clustering for virtual machines. Hyper-V integrates with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering and in an unplanned downtime scenario, when one server crashes, the virtual machines automatically failover to the passive node and each of the guest machines restart on its own – without any user intervention.
Fussy about the restart? Well, as of today that’s the best it gets – even if you have High Availability configured on VMWare, the guest machines WILL restart if a failover occurs.
So what’s the difference? Well – if you buy Windows Server 2008 Enterprise or Datacenter edition, Hyper-V and failover clustering is available to you at no additional cost!
I am preparing a Virtual Server image for my presentation on Windows Server 2008 Server Core at the Microsoft Technology Day to be held on March 30th at Kuwait.
I had to install the Virtual Machine Additions on the guest machine to accelerate the overall performance, and specifically to improve the video and cursor movements.
On Virtual Server 2005 R2, I click on the “Click here to start Virtual Machine Additions setup” link. This mounts the VMAdditions ISO image file to CD-ROM drive on the guest machine. It is important to note that the VM additions does not autorun.
You will have to go to the CD-ROM drive manually at the Command Prompt and execute the D:\Windows\setup.exe file where D: is the drive letter of the CD drive on the guest machine.
Microsoft Technology Day is being conducted by the Microsoft Experts Community (MSExperts.net) at Kuwait on March 30, 2008.
The event will consist of a total of 42 sessions by 20 speakers. Keynote speakers from Microsoft Gulf will be Vimal Sethi, Group Manager – Developer & Platform and Amr El Garhy, Developer Evangelist & MVP TechLead.
Microsoft Virtualization: From the data center to the desktop
Fellow MVP Adnan Rafik of the TechiesOnly usergroup has informed that his group is organizing a presentation on Microsoft Virtualization by Wolem Moses.
Wole Moses is a Senior Windows Marketing Manager for Microsoft Middle East and Africa. Wole is responsible Windows Vista and MDOP Marketing in the Middle East and Africa region. He is a 9 year Microsoft veteran and has worked in Microsoft Offices in the US, Turkey and Dubai.
Where: Conference Room, Microsoft, Dubai Internet City, UAE
When: 1630 hrs on November 22, 2007
Registration is free, just contact Adnan.
Overview of Presentation:
Microsoft Virtualization: From the Data Center to the Desktop
With the upcoming release of Windows Server Virtualization, with last year’s release of SoftGrid Application Virtualization and with the Partnership with XenSource (recently acquired by Citrix) Microsoft is making lots of moves in the virtualization space. Join us to get an overview and understanding of Microsoft’s upcoming Virtualization products and strategy from the datacenter to the desktops.
USEFUL INFORMATION
According to the mit webmaster guide, there is no replacement for dedicated servers. However if you want to work on the seo services as well, you will be needing inmotion hosting and therefore should start looking for a web host immediately.
If you’ve installed Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) , you will find that there is no option on the SCVMM console to install VM Additions on the virtual machines.
If you have installed your Virtual Server host directly from the SCVMM console, you will find that the host does not have the web-based Virtual Server 2005 site where you can install the additions.
In this scenario, you can locate and install the VM additions as follows:
Note: Sometimes you need to refresh the library folder in the SCVMM console before new items start appearing. Choose Library, right click the folder and choose Refresh share.
The organization that I work for has decided thats it’s time to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007. With approximately 18,000 Exchange mailboxes scattered across one four-node active-active-active-passive cluster and five two-node active-passive clusters spanning six geographic locations, this is going to be a mammoth task, nevertheless exciting!
The project will religiously adhere to the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF). Preparation is key to success. One of the most crucial stages is the testing. I’m doing the testing on a virtualized environment. More specifically, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. The virtualization software is Virtual Server 2005 R2. The host is machine is a Windows 2003 x64 box with 16 GB RAM.
The virtualized environment will consist of two domain controllers, two Exchange 2003 backends, two front ends, an Exchange 2007 CAS server, a mailbox server, a hub transport server, and an edge server.
More on my adventures with this massive implementation will follow.
If you use virtualization technologies like Virtual Server or Virtual PC and have virtual machines that are exposed to the internet, you might want to use ISA Server to protect them. While it is possible (and recommended) to have ISA Server on a separate machine to protect all your infrastructure, you might have a scenario wherein you’d like to run ISA Server on the host machine (i.e. the physical machine that has Virtual Server/Virtual PC installed and hosts the guest virtual machines).
If you have only one network card on that host machine and you install ISA Server on the host machine, you would expect it to protect all guest machines hosted on that host computer, right? Wrong!
Microsoft Virtual Server uses an NDIS driver to route traffic to its guest machines, based on their assigned MAC addresses. Since NDIS drivers are located “below” ISA’s driver (i.e. fweng.sys), the traffic is routed before ISA even sees it!! However, ISA will still protect any other applications or OS services running directly on the host machine.
In the diagrams, the dotted lines represent traffic that has been screened by ISA.
One way to overcome this difficulty is to have another network card on the host machine (the “Internal” card), and connect all guest machines to this network. The first network card will connect to the cruel world outside (the “external” card). Of course the internal network now has to be on a different subnet and you have to take into account all the hassles of having two networks.
In this configuration, all the traffic coming in from the external network will be routed to the internal NIC only through NAT/Route relationships that you have configured on the ISA Server. However, it is important that you make sure all your virtual machines are never connected to the external NIC in order to secure them.
If you don’t have a spare physical NIC on the host hardware, you can also use a ‘virtual’ Loopback adapter for the internal network. I have described the loopback adapter in a previous post.
We had an awesome day today at Qicx – another action packed, highly interactive session. The venue was at the Qatar Red Crescent Society, Doha. Even though attendance was not as expected due to the holiday session, the excitement was unshaken.
I did the first session, and talked about System Center Virtual Machine Manager. I took the audience around Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative, Virtualization concepts, and discussed at length the Microsoft virtualization technologies – Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Virtualization Server, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager along with some live demos. The audience was great and the session was very interactive.
Boutros of ICT took the stage in the second session, continuing with his series of Exchange 2007 seminars. He took the audience around the Hub transport server role and MRM in Exchange 2007 with live demos. The session was very informative and resulted in productive discussions.
The two sessions went very well, and after a great meal, we had some group discussions. The event closed with a raffle draw, where people were asked to check under their seats to see if they had won. 
Two lucky winners got prizes. Everybody who attended walked away with Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 DVDs and Forefront evaluation software.
Ankur, from Microsoft Consulting Services, Qatar is the founding member of QicX. He did a great job as always in arranging the whole event, inviting and managing the audience and sharing his expertise during the discussions. We think he’s cool. (yeah, we mean it!)
Oh yeah, and afterwards, we did this:
We jump-started Ankur’s 10 year old Wrangler which, in his words, “is a great car with a dead battery”.
Downloads/Resources from my presentation: