The Release Candidate for SCVMM 2008 R2 is now available on Microsoft Connect. Now, both the next version of Hyper-V and the management infrastructure to go along with it are available. Use the link below to log in to Connect and download SCVMM 2008 R2.
I am just having a little fun with PowerShell tonight and my profile. Don’t use PowerShell profiles? You should. Here is the skinny to get you started.
Profiles are very very useful for efficiently getting some serious work done while in the Shell. But this post is about nothing of the sort. Once you know how to edit your profile by using the above link, you can do all sorts of cool stuff.
Now for your entertainment and amusement, see an RSS-powered quote of the day when you start up PowerShell! Just add this function to your PowerShell profile and save it:
function motd {$rssUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/brainyquote/QUOTEBR"$blog=[xml](new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($rssUrl)$quote=$blog.rss.channel.item[0]$quote.description
$quote.title
}
motd{}
Now that VMware officially supports Dynamic Power Management (DPM), I thought that I would share this older, but still awesome, video on what DPM can do for your carbon footprint and your wallet. This video was shown at VMworld in 2008, but the message is still valid today. Enjoy!
Looks like I’ll be pretty busy (although busy implies work and this, I consider awesome) putting the GA version of vSphere 4 through its paces over the next few weeks. In case anyone missed it, here are some links:
While hundreds of thousands of people will be flocking to the theaters to see Terminator Salvation tonight, I will be scouring the new vSphere 4 Configuration Maximums Guide for flash card fodder.
Can’t wait to get a look at the next version of Microsoft Hyper-V? The release candidates for Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 are available now. This will be a short post. Here are the links:
So, I just saw a little 5 minute demo for App-V for Datacenters. It’s a very simple demo that has a lot of potential. The first thing that impressed me was that Microsoft has a working demo of application virtualization for servers. OK, very cool stuff.
The really interesting trick comes in at about 4:00 in the video. A simple right-click->update Operating System feature in the next version of SCVMM 2008. You can update the Operating System from a template or another running VM! How cool is that? Also, thanks to App-V for Datacenters, the application comes along for the ride. This is certainly a taste of what us virtualization folks mean when we say that the battle for virtual dominance will happen with management, not necessarily the hypervisor choice. Do you have an opinion of Microsoft’s new toys? Share it in the comments below.
The Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V are now available on the Microsoft Download Center. The new integration components (which were available on connect.microsoft.com for a while) give Linux guests some extra Hyper-V virtualization and integration support, including:
Driver support for Hyper-V Synthetic devices- This means improved performance for items like disks and NICs
Hypercall Adapter- This translates Xen function calls (for Xen-enabled virtual machines) to Hyper-V hypercalls leading to increased performance for the guest.
Fastpath Boot Support- Boot devices can now take advantage of the storage Virtualization Service Consumer (VSC) to increase performance. The VSC is a component running in the guest VM that is enables device I/O to be handled by the Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) through the VMBus. In short, this means increased performance for hard disks in Linux Guest VM’s.
As a reminder, the following Linux guests are supported in Hyper-V with a single virtual processor only.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 2 x86 Edition
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 2 x64 Edition
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 1 x86 Edition
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 1 x64 Edition
I killed the SCVMM 2008 Certification Test! I should have since I just wrote a book on it. Anyway, I got a 906. A 700 is required to pass the test. So, I am now a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) on Windows Server Virtualization and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Who knows what I’ll be up to next .
My new book that I have been working on for the past year is nearly published! I love all things virtualization (VMware, Microsoft, Xen, etc.). So, when I had the opportunity to write a book on a subject that I am so passionate about, I was thrilled. My hope is that this book will help those companies and administrators looking to implement Hyper-V, get the most out of this virtualization platform for their organization.
Completing this project has been a difficult, but ultimately rewarding experience. However, publishing a book has been a lifelong dream of mine and I am glad that I was able to make it happen. It’s been a long journey that has taught me a lot along the way. I even had some fun along the way.
Here are just a few of the topics you can expect to see in the book:
Managing Hyper-V with SCVMM 2008 and PRO Integration
Creating Hyper-V failover clusters for highly available VM’s
Leveraging Quick Migration in Hyper-V failover clusters
Performing P2V migrations with and without SCVMM 2008
Managing and automating Hyper-V with PowerShell and WMI
Backing up and recovering VM’s with Windows Server Backup and DPM 2007
Implementing Role-Based Access control on Hyper-V servers with and without SCVMM 2008
I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you want to get a head start, the book is available for pre-order now at stores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Happy Reading!
My new article has been published at SearchVMware.com. Partition alignment is often forgotten by busy administrators. However, if you forget to align your partitions, you could be missing some disk performance in your virtual infrastructure. Here is an excerpt from my latest article:
Since VMware enables you to create new virtual machines (VMs) from a template, investing the time to make performance tweaks on a single VM that will be used as a template for others can provide a noticeable system-wide performance boost. One way to gain performance is by aligning disk partitions, which enables faster disk reads. In this tip, we’ll cover how to boost overall performance from Windows-based virtual machines by aligning disk partitions for a template VM, which can then be used to create other, properly-aligned and performance-enhanced VMs.
You can read the rest of the article at SearchVMware.com. Happy Reading!
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