|
|
March 2011 - Posts
-
Here's a word of advice. If you ever get a chance to see Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich talk - in person or online - go see him. I haven't missed one of his talks over the last 6 years whenever he was speaking at an internal technical audience or even when I spoke last year at TechEd (he beat me by 0.01 points in "presenter skills, but I digress).
 Mark has the kind of insight on systems and how they run that goes to the core of optimization. Mark will be joined by a panel of IT Pro's and Subject Matter Experts discussing best practices in PC management, the challenges of protecting and supporting remote users and their experience with Windows Intune. This event is designed to jumpstart your trial of Windows Intune and includes product demonstrations, how-to tips and tricks and live Q&A from viewers.
When I found out he's hosting the panel about our new Cloud based PC Management Service called Windows Intune - I signed up to catch it online myself.
If you haven't as of yet - here's the link. It starts 9 AM PST (noon EST). 
|
-
After all the product announcements, betas and sneak peaks at all things management related at MMS last week, one thing crept out out of the Las Vegas haze that might have gone unnoticed. We’ve launched an online Virtual Academy called the MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy). Picture it as a single place to go for free training online on a variety of hot topics (private cloud, IaaS, Paas, Saas, System Center, Virtualization, Azure etc…) that you take assessments to validate your learnings and show off your score. A Microsoft Passport is required, personalized profile options and international and national rankings. I took the plunge and went through “Planning, Building and Managing a Private Cloud” course for in an effort to gain 60 points. 
Once the course was selected, check out the interface for your modules and progress below (I had just finished the first 2 when I had to refill my coffee). 
OK – the coffee had not quite set in yet as I finished up the last questions from the last module – I passed, but don’t tell my boss it wasn’t perfect, OK? To be fair – I was 100% on the other two modules. 
One of the neat things I like about this (not that I am competitive or anything) is the ranking in your country and around the world – you can see this on your dashboard screen. 
To sum it up: - Free resource to valuable online training and skills assessment / validation.
- Based on current technologies for topics that are important to your skills development AND your business.
- Helps you gain the knowledge to carry on a Proactive conversation with your organization, instead of a reactive one.
- Leads you to MS learning resources for certification or in person events to supplement your knowledge even more.
- Looks like there are promotions in the works that you can take advantage of based on your Skilz ranking (still to be confirmed – I’m checkin’ in on it).
Go on out – sign up and give it a shot. Can you Unseat me as #2 in Canada? I’m looking to gain #1 spot!!! 
|
-
I posted an article a couple of weeks back and I wanted to remind by Virtualization brethren of the VMware faith that there are some free online JumpStart courses coming next week just for you! With all the stuff announced at the Microsoft Management Summit this past week and with the essential skills of working with multiple Hypervisors in top demand – you should take some time for a crash course and learn what’s up with the Hyper-V stack. If you’re an MS guy/gal and wanted a fast track on our virtualization stack – this is also for you. Go register. Don’t wait! Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals Jump Start If you’re seasoned in Windows IT management and looking to expand the way your environments leverage virtualization, this special event is for you. Following just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), this three-day Jump Start class is specially tailored for VMWare and Microsoft technology pros. Here’s a glimpse of what we’ll cover: Jump Start training classes are specifically designed for experienced technologists and IT leaders whose jobs demand they know how to best leverage a new Microsoft technology. These advanced courses assume a certain level of expertise and domain knowledge, so they move quickly and cover topics in a fashion that enables teams to recognize progress quickly. Suggested Audience Not sure you’re ready? Suggested prerequisite skills include real-world experience with Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization and datacenter
management. This session is tailored to these types of roles: - IT Professional
- IT Decision Maker
- Network Administrators
- Storage/Infrastructure Administrators & Architects
Who is teaching? Symon Perriman | A Microsoft Technical Evangelist covering Virtualization, Windows Server, System Center and Private Cloud technologies, Symon is a recognized expert in high availability, failover clustering, network load balancing, storage solutions, mobile, domain and web services. Symon contributed to several technical books for clustering, virtualization and SQL, wrote technology articles for Business Today, and is the founder of Microsoft’s Failover Clustering & Network Load Balancing Blog. Corey Hynes | An IT Infrastructure consultant with more than 15 years in the field focusing on operating system virtualization, management and deployment. Corey has been working with products such as Hyper-V, VMWare, and XEN extensively since they were introduced. Currently, Corey is working with Microsoft and Citrix to help partners design and architect enterprise class VDI implementations using XenDesktop and Hyper-V. Corey is also the owner and lead technical architect for holSystems, an online VM hosting engine for training and demo providers, which hosts thousands of VM instances in a custom thin provisioning engine, available on-demand worldwide. Session One | “Platform” | March 29, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region?| Register Here - 10:00am – 10:30pm Virtualization 360 Overview
- 10:30am – 12:00pm Microsoft Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 2:00pm Differentiating Microsoft and VMware (terminology, etc.)
- 2:00pm – 4:00pm High Availability & Clustering
Session Two | “Management” | March 30, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region? | Register Here - 10:00am – 11:00pm System Center Suite Overview w/ focus on DPM
- 11:00am – 12:00pm Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 1
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 1:30pm Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 2
- 1:30pm – 2:30pm Automation with System Center Opalis & PowerShell
- 2:30pm – 4:00pm Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM SSP 2.0
Session Three | “VDI” | March 31, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region? | Register Here - 10:00am – 11:00pm Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1
- 11:00am – 12:00pm Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 2:30pm v-Alliance Solution Overview
- 2:30pm – 4:00pm Application Delivery for VDI
|
-
 A quick note to say that SP1 of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is now released and available to download. We announced the availability of the BETA of SCVMM 2012 earlier this week – but this brings some important support of our newest Hyper-V technologies that were included with SP1 for Hyper-V into the “managed” fold. With the advent of Dynamic Memory, Hyper-V hosts now have a CONSERVATIVE 40% greater consolidation capability WITHOUT impacting performance of Virtual Guests while maintaining the importance of ASLR.
I believe some posts are in order to talk about Dynamic Memory and how it has changed the way I think about allocating memory to Virtual Guests now. I’m in the process of restaging my portable lab environment I use for demos in order to support some events coming up – so I’ll capture some screencasts / screenshots and create up some blog posts to go along with ‘em. 
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
Check out my about.me profile! 
|
-
 Yet another cool announcement from MMS 2011 – Windows Intune is now RTM and available for a free 30 day trial or purchase. It’s a very interesting service that provides a one stop shop for keeping your PCs running at their best, no matter where they are – WITHOUT a local server infrastructure. I said it – No Servers Required – just a license on a per PC/Per Month basis. That’s a now a predictable Operational Expense, not a up front Capital Expense for those business types. Yup – it’s a cloud based service that you can license and use on domain joined, workgroup systems, remote / mobile workers who never “call home” to the office – it covers all the bases.
Lets face it – your users depend on you to keep their PCs up and running – it doesn’t matter where they are or where you are located. A single web based console gives you control of all your licensed systems and a great “all up” view. Are you a consultant/independent/solution provider that manages multiple clients and businesses? This is for you as well! 
I’ve taken the betas of Windows Intune on the road for TechDays last year and have been using it to keep a test bed of disconnected systems healthy, malware free and inventoried over the last few months. What can you do with it? - Centrally manage the deployment of Microsoft updates and service packs that you choose to all your PCs from the
Windows Intune console. - Help safeguard your PCs from the latest threats with centralized endpoint protection built on the award-winning
Microsoft Malware Protection Engine and using the same trusted technologies as Microsoft Forefront® Endpoint
Protection and Microsoft Security Essentials. - Receive alerts on updates and threats so that you can proactively identify and resolve problems with your PCs—
before they impact users and your business. - Get proactive performance information about your systems to keep them in tip-top shape
- Resolve PC issues, regardless of where you or your users are located, with remote assistance.
- Track hardware and software assets used in your business to efficiently manage your assets, licenses, and
compliance. - Centrally manage update, firewall, and malware protection settings across all of your PCs, even on remote machines
outside the corporate network. - Oh – it will also work with Windows XP clients, provided they are SP2 (SP3 recommended),
Windows Intune is targeted at small and medium sized businesses and has a Canadian cost of $14 per PC per month. This INCLUDES non perpetual upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise for qualifying operating systems (Windows XP Pro, Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise or Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate). Yes – I just said IT INCLUDES upgrade rights!!! By standardizing on Windows 7 Enterprise you are getting the ability to use Bitlocker and DirectAccess among other things. One last bonus previously only available to people with Software Assurance on their Volume License Agreements – you can get MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack – App-V, Med-V, Advanced GroupPolicy Management, Diagnostics and recovery toolset, Bitlocker admin and Asset inventory services) for an additional $1.20 per pc per month. What are you waiting for? Sign up for the 30 day trial. Tell me what you think! I’d love to share a story or two here on the blog about CANADIAN companies who are trying this out!
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn Check out my about.me profile! 
|
-
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Available in a Beta release RIGHT NOW – the next generation of System Center Virtual Machine Manager is now available for download in both 180 Day Eval install or pre-configured VHD install. This gives you a fantastic toolset to manage your virtualization infrastructure (From MULTIPLE vendors – VMWare, Hyper-V and Xen) and start to think and provision like a Private Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering to your organization. This is also our steppingstone to manage both Private and PUBLIC cloud resources for your organization.
Virtual Machine Manager 2012 enables you to:
-
Deliver flexible and cost-effective Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You can pool and dynamically allocate virtualized datacenter resources (compute, network, and storage) enabling self-service infrastructure experience for your business, with flexible role-based delegation and access control.
-
Apply cloud principles to provisioning and servicing your datacenter applications with techniques like service modeling, service configuration, and image-based management. You can also state-separate your applications and services from the underlying infrastructure using server application virtualization. This results in a “service-centric” approach to management where you manage the application or service lifecycle and not just datacenter infrastructure or virtual machines.
-
Optimize your existing investments by managing multi-hypervisor environments such as Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and VMware vSphere 4.1 in a single pane of glass.
-
Dynamic optimization of your datacenter resources based on workload demands, while ensuring reliable service delivery with features like high availability.
-
Best-of-breed virtualization-management for Microsoft workloads like Exchange and SharePoint.
Be sure to check out the resource page for more information. Download link is below.
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
Check out my about.me profile! 
|
-
With Service Pack 1 now released for Hyper-V R2 it is about time to start deploying it and updating your VMs. As with anything there is a process to follow to ensure that everything goes smoothly and that the virtual machines can take advantage of all the features available in SP1. We’ve already covered these new features in articles on Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX so lets look at what you’ll need to do to get SP1 installed on your hosts and what needs to be done at the guest level to enable those features. Standalone Hyper-V Server This is the most straightforward of installations but it will also incur the most downtime. The following process will allow you to get SP1 installed with the least downtime possible. - Save state of all running VMs
- Install SP1 on the host server
- Reboot
- Resume state of all running VMs
Clustered Hyper-V Servers This is still a straight forward process and thanks to clustering and Live Migration you shouldn’t experience any downtime. The following process will allow you to get SP1 installed on all nodes in the cluster. - Live Migrate all VMs from Node 1 to the other nodes in the cluster
- Apply SP1 to Node 1
- Reboot Node 1
- Live Migrate previous VMs from other nodes back to Node 1
- Repeat on all nodes in the cluster
Hyper-V R2 SP1 Virtual Machines Continue reading at Thelazyadmin.com….. 
|
-
-
“…Sweat pours from your brow, your muscles tighten as you hammer away the Cmdlets into the Windows Powershell console. A bead drips onto the keyboard revealing the smell of Ozone in the air. That last line poured out of your soul onto the page, and it felt so right. One more task automated. The systems bow down to the scripter…” Is this you? Are you an ITPro with that rare untouched gift? Automation? Scripting? How about a chance to put those skills to the test and an opportunity to Script real world scenarios to test your mettle, improving your skills at the same time! A rare chance to pit yourself against the best and build upon yourself at the same time! The 2011 Scripting Games are for Novices and Enthusiasts to with an opportunity for Fame and Prizes as well as EXPERIENCE in scripting against REAL Scenarios! THAT is what the 2011 Scripting Games are offering for FREE and they’re coming your way. The Excitement starts April 4th 2011 and continues on through to April 15th 2011. TEN (10) Events with both options for Beginners and Scripting Guru alike to pit their skills in Windows Powershell, it’s a rare chance to improve while improvising and have your code reviewed by a panel of judges comprised of Windows Powershell Celebrities and Experts! How can you lose? You CAN’T! Not only will your name possibly be in lights, but this is a chance to get critique on your scripting by Internationally recognized Windows Powershell experts and MVP’s as well as Daily Chances at Prizes! So why not give it a shot? This could be YOUR chance to shine! Why not take the chance? You have nothing to lose and EVERYTHING to gain! The 2011 Scripting Games are no small event either. Last year THOUSANDS of Scripts were launched and submitted from HUNDREDS of countries across the planet from people JUST LIKE YOU! Which has got to be the coolest part. Competing with people just like yourself! So a chance to Grow and LEARN for FREE? Have Powershell Masters review your scripts? Really? FREE? YES! Spectators and Competitors pour on in to the Scripting Games and benefit each and every year benefiting from the camaraderie as well as the INTENSE competition! Interested? You too can participate! Don’t fear on whether you’re a specialist or an enthusiast. The 2011 Scripting Games are for everybody! It’s all about learning Powershell and having some fun at the same time…. And perhaps a chance to rub your friend’s nose in it if you one up them!  Need more information? Head directly here for all the information you’ll ever need or watch POSHCODE and “Hey Scripting Guy” for more details! Curious what the games were like? Information from the Scripting Games from 2010 and Scripting Games from 2009 are still online for you to review! Except one difference. The future is here with 100% Fresh Pure poured Windows Powershell! So what are you waiting for? The 2011 Scripting Games are calling you! STEP up and seize the day! It’s yours to have O Mighty Scripter! ------------- Note From Rick: Who better then our friend Sean Kearney, Powershell MVP to write up a blog post about The Scripting games, eh? Thanks Sean! 
|
-
What’s holding you back? Here is the main download page with links to all the versions you need. While it’s downloading – here are three quick things I believe should help encourage you to try out IE9. It’s freakin’ fast. Really – it’s just sick how fast it is! We’re talking JavaScript performance as well as it being the only browser with full hardware acceleration support. Check out some of these hardware acceleration demos or these JavaScript performance scores (or better yet – check it out against your own JavaScript heavy apps). Handy with pin’ed websites. At first glance, I dismissed this as a cutsie feature – but now I’ve come to realize that it’s VERY handy. with over 250 top websites (and growing) lit up for pin’ed support with IE9, common ways to interact with specific sites are now a single click away. Facebook, Globe and Mail, TSN, CBC news, CTV news, redflagdeals – it’s a whole lot of what I use on the web, now in my taskbar with one click jump lists. Security and privacy improvements. SmartScreen technology was introduced in IE8, it’s been improved in IE9 to now include download filters as well. Malicious code or known disreputable executable are challenged with IE9’s baked in “integrated download reputation” to help users make the right choice before downloading an unknown app from the web. Both features are ON by default. On the privacy front, “Tracking Protection” helps protect users from being tracked online by 3rd party content/images/tracking bugs. Users (and administrators) can download a variety of tracking lists maintained by a variety of partners. More info in the FAQ for IT Pros as well as a great overview of IE9 from an IT Pro perspective and finally – links with info on the new GroupPolicy settings for your GP templates.
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn Check out my about.me profile! 
|
-
Almost all workloads are now supported on one virtual platform or another. There is a knowledge base article from Microsoft that outlines the support policy of it’s products that will help you determine what level of host OS, guest OS and application version you need to be at to obtain support but how do you determine if a machine should be virtualized or if it should stay a physical machine? It isn’t as hard as it sounds as there are some great guidance out there as well as some tools to help make the decisions easier. The first thing you need to determine is the limitations of your virtualization platform. With this information it will be easy to eliminate physical machines that cannot be virtualized. These will include any that aren’t supported (see the KB article or application vendor) as well as those with physical attributes that are not supported in a virtual environment. This might be specialized hardware but most likely it will be machines with CPU and/or memory requirements that are beyond the support of virtualization platforms. These limitations include: Hyper-V R2: - Maximum 4 virtual CPUs per VM
- Maximum 64GB RAM per VM
- Maximum 12 NICs per VM (4 synthetic, 8 emulated)
- Maximum 260 virtual hard disks (4 IDE, 256 SCSI)
VMware ESX 4.1: - Maximum 4 virtual CPUs per VM (8 in Enterprise Plus edition)
- Maximum 255GB RAM per VM
- Maximum 10 NICs per VM
- Maximum 64 virtual hard disks (4 IDE, 60 SCSI)
Now if you have a reliable and up to date hardware inventory it should be easy to cut out the physical machines that can’t be virtualized. But even still there is a determination to be made, just because something can be virtualized doesn’t mean it should be virtualized. There are two ways to help make this decision and both will also help you if you don’t have a reliable and up to date hardware inventory. One is the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, which is free, and the other is System Center Operations Manager with a few select management packs. Continue reading at Thelazyadmin.com….. 
|
-
 Over pints Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus decided they would put together a concise and timely podcast each “Update Tuesday”. The object is to keep it simple by letting you know in plain non technical language what the updates are, what they resolve and why you should care.
As always - if you have suggestions on making it better - please pass on your comments. Mail Rick directly – rick.claus@microsoft.com
Direct Download:
Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)
  
Disclaimer: This podcast was produced with the best information available to us at the time of recording. Your primary source for all things Security Bulletin related should always be the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.
In Depth Webcast on this bulletin will take place: Wednesday, March 9th – 11:00 AM PDT (UTC -7). (Registration link):
Bulletins discussed for March 8th, 2011:
Podcast Participants: Rick Claus, Pierre Roman
Additional Technical Show Notes:
- Recorded remotely using Lync communicator 2011
- PodSafe music from PodSafe Music Network @ http://music.podshow.com/. Artist: Derek K Miller, song - “You’re the Big Sky - rock guitar instrumental”
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn 
|
-
I am a big advocate of certification – putting your money where your mouth is – and have been for years. Heck, my first certification exam was “windows 3.11 and dos 6.22 for support professionals”. I’m not joking – it was my first cert and first course I took what seems like EONS ago. When I saw this announcement come in – I had to quickly blog about it. From now until June 30th 2011 - if you pre-register your intent, book and pass one of the 4 certification exams related to virtualization, you qualify for a free one year TechNet Plus subscription! Have a look at the exam outlines and figure out if it’s right for you. This is a great opportunity to get some certification muscle to back up your technical know how. If you take and pass either 70-659, 70-669 or 70-652 – you get yourself a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist designation. If you take 70-669 AND 70-693 along with either 70-659 or 70-652 – you are awarded a Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Windows Server 2008 R2, Virtualization Administrator. Do you have what it takes? Want some certification cred to go along with your street smarts? Here’s the website with the details on the offer. Hurry – the TechNet Plus subscription is limited to the first 1000 registrants.
IT Pro Team Blog|Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn Check out my about.me profile! 
|
-
I kicked off a new podcast called CareerBytes for the Regular IT Guy yesterday. In the premiere episode, Jeff Woolsey and I talked about the importance of building your skills by knowing how to work in a heterogeneous Hypervisor environment. It is a matter of fact that virtualization is here to stay and you need to know how to manage Multiple hypervisors. This was even backed up this week with VMware themselves finally acknowledging that there will be multiple hypervisors by opening up their ability to manage Hyper-V (although with very limited capabilities) with the release of XVP Manager plugin for vCenter.
With System Center Virtual Machine manager – we’ve been in the game of managing multiple hypervisors for quite some time now. To be blunt - we had to be – VMware has market share. That being said – things are changing. Hyper-V is rock solid, just got a MAJOR update in capabilities with Service Pack 1 (DynamicMemory and RemoteFX) and has been doing what customers needed since the R2 release (LiveMigration) from a couple of years ago. SCVMM also fits in nicely with our overall management strategy of managing physical AND virtual AND application layer with best in market System Center Operations Manager.
So what are we doing on the skills side to help out Technical Professionals worldwide to work with multiple hypervisors?
I got an email yesterday talking about a FREE THREE DAY (free as in beer, 5 hrs a day) online JumpStart session that is open to all. I know the two main presenters (Symon and Corey) and it looks like it is a damn good jumpstart. I’ve included the details below – be sure to register for all three sessions.
If you're a VMware Admin and want to bone up on the MS virtualization stack – this is for you.
If you’re an MS guy/gal and wanted a fast track on our virtualization stack – this is also for you.
Go register.
Don’t wait!
Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals Jump Start
If you’re seasoned in Windows IT management and looking to expand the way your environments leverage virtualization, this special event is for you. Following just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), this three-day Jump Start class is specially tailored for VMWare and Microsoft technology pros. Here’s a glimpse of what we’ll cover:
Jump Start training classes are specifically designed for experienced technologists and IT leaders whose jobs demand they know how to best leverage a new Microsoft technology. These advanced courses assume a certain level of expertise and domain knowledge, so they move quickly and cover topics in a fashion that enables teams to recognize progress quickly.
Suggested Audience
Not sure you’re ready? Suggested prerequisite skills include real-world experience with Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization and datacenter
management. This session is tailored to these types of roles:
- IT Professional
- IT Decision Maker
- Network Administrators
- Storage/Infrastructure Administrators & Architects
Who is teaching?
Symon Perriman | A Microsoft Technical Evangelist covering Virtualization, Windows Server, System Center and Private Cloud technologies, Symon is a recognized expert in high availability, failover clustering, network load balancing, storage solutions, mobile, domain and web services. Symon contributed to several technical books for clustering, virtualization and SQL, wrote technology articles for Business Today, and is the founder of Microsoft’s Failover Clustering & Network Load Balancing Blog.
Corey Hynes | An IT Infrastructure consultant with more than 15 years in the field focusing on operating system virtualization, management and deployment. Corey has been working with products such as Hyper-V, VMWare, and XEN extensively since they were introduced. Currently, Corey is working with Microsoft and Citrix to help partners design and architect enterprise class VDI implementations using XenDesktop and Hyper-V. Corey is also the owner and lead technical architect for holSystems, an online VM hosting engine for training and demo providers, which hosts thousands of VM instances in a custom thin provisioning engine, available on-demand worldwide.
Session One | “Platform” | March 29, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region?| Register Here
- 10:00am – 10:30pm Virtualization 360 Overview
- 10:30am – 12:00pm Microsoft Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 2:00pm Differentiating Microsoft and VMware (terminology, etc.)
- 2:00pm – 4:00pm High Availability & Clustering
Session Two | “Management” | March 30, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region? | Register Here
- 10:00am – 11:00pm System Center Suite Overview w/ focus on DPM
- 11:00am – 12:00pm Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 1
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 1:30pm Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 2
- 1:30pm – 2:30pm Automation with System Center Opalis & PowerShell
- 2:30pm – 4:00pm Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM SSP 2.0
Session Three | “VDI” | March 31, 2011 |10am-4pm PDT
What time is this in my region? | Register Here
- 10:00am – 11:00pm Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1
- 11:00am – 12:00pm Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2
- 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch Break
- 1:00pm – 2:30pm v-Alliance Solution Overview
- 2:30pm – 4:00pm Application Delivery for VDI
|
-
 Following the success for “Security Bulletins for the Regular IT Guy”, I’ve been toying with the idea of expanding on the concept of frank and matter of fact talks on a variety of subjects that are relevant to Technical Professionals across the board. When I was in Seattle recently, I decided to get off my butt and actually record something that fits the bill. I completed some audio editing last night and produced the first episode of an ongoing new podcast that launches today.
Welcome to Career Bytes for the Regular IT Guy.
The Goal is to have short, “tell it like it is” conversations with a wide mix of people focusing on topics related to ways you can invest in your career. Sometimes they will be technology focused, other times they will focus on personal/professional development.
In this first episode – i talk with Jeff Woosley, Principal Program Manager on the Virtualization team in Redmond. I ask him about skills and resources for IT Professionals related to Virtualization and Private Clouds. Its an area all IT Professionals should be spending time investigating their options from ALL vendors and how they fit in their organization. It doesn’t matter if you manage a small server environment for multiple customers or if you work in a large organization with raised floor server datacenters or somewhere in between. Virtualization technologies, how to manage them and how to work in Mixed Virtualization environments efficiently is an essential skill every technical professional should have in their tool belt.
As this is a work in progress – I am eager to get your feedback and suggestions on topics and ways to make this better. Please pass on your comments (good and bad) directly to me – rick.claus@microsoft.com.
Direct download
Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don’t miss an episode)
Podcast Participants:
Additional Technical Show Notes:
- Download Hyper-V Server and get information about Server 2008 R2
- check out System Center Virtual Machine Manager resouces and download a trial.
- Check out System Center Opalis, get more information and download a trial.
- Recorded at TechReady 12, an internal training conference for Microsoft Employees.
- It was in a corridor that happened to be near a service hallway. Please excuse the occasional background noise distraction.
- Recorded with my M-Audio Microtrack II
Senior Technology Evangelist | Microsoft Canada
phone 613.795.9216 | Live messenger rick.claus@hotmail.com
IT Pro blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
Check out my about.me profile! - I’m a PC
[transcript of podcast]
[Rick] Hi, this is Rick Claus, Senior Technology Evangelist with Microsoft Canada. I’m sitting here at an internal training conference called TechReady 12 and I managed to corner one of my favourite speakers for the session – Jeff Woosley, who is here and I would call you the Virtualization Guy at Microsoft but I probably think you have a more official title. Can you give us a little bit of a breakdown on what it is that you do.
[Jeff] I’m Jeff Woosley, group program manager for Hyper-V and Windows Server. I appreciate you giving me “The Guy” title – it’s hard for me to take that because there are so many people working on virtualization throughout Microsoft – it’s such a hot technology and we are invested in so many areas of Virtualization – Hyper-V and Windows Server is one of them, we have App-V we have a lot more technologies going on in terms of Virtualization – Hyper-V is simply one of these technologies – it’s a pleasure to be here.
[Rick] ok. Great! For this I wanted to ask you a question around the Careers aspect and stuff. You just mentioned and called out a wide range of products and technologies and what I am seeing right now in the marketplace in Canada – Infrastructure Professionals and IT Professionals that are the “rank and file” guys that keep the servers running and keep the systems working, do support desk calls and keep the lights on in the server room – they are faced at a turning point right now. They have a variety of forces being placed upon them to be more efficient with the stuff that they have – Virtualization is one of those tools but from a career aspect, where do you see would be a good area they could invest in besides a specific technology or a specific feature set - whatever that would happen to be – what would you say?
[Jeff] Virtualization continues to be an area that continues to be an area that is growing like crazy – it’s blossoming a lot of technologies because virtualization touches so many technologies – weather it storage, network or management or applications or workloads – and there’s different types of virtualization – weather it’s machine based virtualization, whether it’s App-V based virtualization – where you are doing application virtualization or using something like presentation virtualization and so – YES, Virtualization continues to be red hot. I know there’s a lot of VMware IT Pros out there – that’s great. One thing I would tell them is – be very aware that Hyper-V is growing in a very big way and in fact most of the analysts agree that we are seeing a shift now – moving to heterogeneous virtualization – where quite honestly people are saying it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to deploy an extremely expensive virtualization everywhere in my infrastructure when Hyper-V does exactly what I need it to do and more. In fact people are saying it makes a lot of sense now to be certified and be able to deploy, manage and understand VMware Virtualization as well as Hyper-V and we are seeing more and more heterogeneous virtualization – it is becoming a lot more important and quite honestly we have a very capable feature set in Hyper-V, we’re doing really great with things like LiveMigration, Clustering capabilities, High availability – things like that are simply baked into the product and are included and now with the R2 SP1 release, we’ve added even more capabilities like Dynamic Memory, so we’re getting a lot more proof of concepts then ever. We’re getting a lot more deployments then ever and quite honestly we’ve got a lot of happy customers out there running Hyper-V R2 so it’s a great opportunity for guys that are already IT Pro trained – make sure you are adding Hyper-V to your stable of certifications.
[Rick] it’s one of a number of different tools to bring in to solve the overall problem. What would you suggest people should start to look at or how to start if they are new to this? Again, maybe this is a VMware Admin that’s there and all they know is the ESX world and how they work with vSphere and how they work in that kind of environment. Where would they start to be able to find out more information about the Hyper-V pieces and how we integrate and play with the different VMware technologies?
[Jeff] A great way – a great thing is – the barrier to entry is extremely low. If you are an IT Pro, a serious IT Pro, more than likely you already have an MSDN/TechNet account – you can download Server 2008 R2, you can start playing with it because Hyper-V is simply a role, just like File and Print, Web, Terminal Services – I should say Remote Desktop Virtualization – but it’s simply another role. If you know how to deploy those – you know how to deploy Hyper-V. You can immediately start creating virtual machines and spending time with Hyper-V very quickly. Then I would start to look at other things and more broadly or more larger deployments – things like Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 as well as other products we have in the system center family such as Configurations Manager and Operations Manager.
[Rick] What would you say would be representative of the target market – is Hyper-V targeted at the small and medium shop? Is it targeted at the big huge massive hosters? Is it somewhere in between?
[Jeff] YES
[Rick] (laughs) there is no… it fits in all of those?
[Jeff] The answer is yes – it does fit them all. We found in many cases in small environments where quite honestly people are extremely price sensitive, they are looking at virtualization, they just want to get in there… they may have 8 or 10 servers in a very small shop and they would like to virtualize them down. Guess what? I can virtualize them down to two nodes, create a small cluster, using inexpensive iSCSI storage for example and very quickly have a highly available virtualized environment that is easy to use with Hyper-V. In a mid-market, you can run a lot more, you can scale up and start to look at things like Virtual Machine Manager where you manage a full cluster of servers running dozens if not more virtual machines and of course, we certainly plug into the Enterprise and Data Center space as well and at that point you are probably using something like Windows 2008 R2 DataCenter edition to give you unlimited VMs running atop Hyper-V and you are probably using System Center and through the ECI you’re probably using the entire suite – you’d get opps manager, config manager, datacenter protection manager, VMM as well as our new Opalis automation which is extremely important when you start to talk about really building up saleable large clouds. It’s an area.. it’s one of the reasons we purchased Opalis and we made it part of the System Center suite because when you start to talk about Clouds At Scale – I mean really Clouds at Scale, you’re starting to talk about a different type of management. Managing two nodes, five nodes, twenty nodes – that’s one thing. When you start managing one hundred nodes or a thousand nodes or ten thousand nodes – your management has to scale in a different way. You are not just going to walk up to a console, scroll through all these hosts and look for alerts and things like that. You expect the system itself to be self-healing. You expect it to do the right thing. Automation is a key fundamental component to make that successful. If there is a real problem and it does require intervention – you expect to be notified – but automation is the way to do it and Opalis is a fundamental way to do it and I would also say: If you are an IT Pro and you haven’t seen Opalis, if you haven’t looked at Opalis, if you haven’t started to evaluate it – there’s another area of deep investment because for an IT Pro – your position is going to get more challenging – in a good way. Honestly, I think it means more mature IT Pros and you are going to have to develop scripts or workflows and automation to manage more and more resources on a per IT Pro individual. Instead of one IT Pro managing ten servers or twenty servers, maybe they are managing fifty or one hundred servers. To do that and actually scale – you gotta have the knowledge and the ability to handle automation. Opalis is a great way to do that.
[Rick] this is an obvious perfect bridge perspective to look at it from a skills… starting off small, if it’s new to you or if you’ve started to work with virtualization already – how to integrate and interoperate with existing incumbents that are inside your shop. This is also a natural transition over to the Private Cloud Environment – is that really where this is going from a skills perspective? The stuff you are going to be learning from the scale side – that makes private cloud a reality for an individual inside their own environment so that they don’t have to necessarily go off an follow someone else’s guidance on what Private Cloud is. They can come actively to the table with “look, we can do this kind of stuff now.” That’s available now?
[Jeff] Absolutely. When it comes to Cloud – we’ve been very vocal at Microsoft that we are absolutely investing in every… in providing multiple ways to deliver solutions to our customers. Whether it’s Azure and providing an awesome Public Cloud experience or for customers who say “I’m not sure I’m ready to do that yet, but guess what – I want to build my private cloud and I want to treat my resources more. Basically outsource to my internal customers and be able to provide. My IT really becomes a utility model of computing.” Absolutely you can do that with System Center and Windows Server today.
[Rick] Fantastic. Well I wanted to say Thank you very much for taking the time out of your schedule from speaking today…
[Jeff] My pleasure!
[Rick]…to come and talk with us… You know… Awesome! Thanks!
[Jeff] Thank you.
|
|
|
|