Virtualization support

Recently, met up with few customer that interested with microsoft virtualization solution. However, they have different opinion and understanding. To share with you guys:

1) Yes, you will need Windows 2008 CAL to run Windows 2008 Hyper-V - however you need to understand this CAL is not just for Hyper-V - you can then run Windows 2008 other features, eg: Domain controller with RODC, serverCore +++

2) Lots of people did mention that Hyper-V do not support Windows 2000 as its virtual machine. It does, you will need SP4 and only support 1 proc. Check the guest operating system supports for Hyper-V:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954958/en-us

3) Other Microsoft product supported in other virtualization technology? Well, hopefully all in the near future. See what Microsoft would say: Its support policy.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/

Windows 2008 Hyper-V now RTM

Guys, good news!!!

At last, Windows 2008 Hyper-V is now RTM, yes, today!

This is the complete Hyper-V RTM package for Windows Server 2008 x64. This package must be installed on the Hyper-V Parent Partition (Can be either full or core).

Note: Once you isntall, cannot be uninstalled.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED

Windows 2008 Virtualization - in RC0

Guys,

Long time have not update this blog. Recently, participating a Early Adoptor of Windows 2008, code name Longhorn. One of the customer is eager to look into Virtualization, cool!

However, something that we found that would like to share it our here. As for now, only Windows 2008 RC0 that support virtualization, not other versions.

You also would be good to know:

- Not all the hardware is supported by W2008 V. There are lists of the hardware manufacturer in Microsoft website, so, do check it out before rolling out.
- W2008 Ent 32/64 bit support V.
- Only support 8 logical processor
- Max 64GB Ram
- Do not support more than 1 virtual SCSI controller (Means do not support cluster within V)
- Windows6.0-KB939854-x64.msu and Windows6.0-KB939853-x64.msu must be install to allow V to be in Server Management
- You cant install AD in the host OS
- You cant run VPC, VS in the physical machine together with Hypervisor
- Hypervisor do not support dynamic disk...beware or you will need to reinstall your OS

Lastly, when we try this out, our machine has multiple IPs, which results we can't log in using VMC. You can only have one primary IP, everything will then work fine.

Lots of things huh? Hope this will change in the near future :)

Virtualization in Windows 2008 - Part 1

Lots of principle now pushing Virtualization. Now, we would like to share why we mention please be patient and wait for Windows 2008 virtualization.

First of all, do you know that Virtualization has been around in computing since '60s? if you are old enough like me, you will know mainframe and each of the users will have one virtual machine.

This Changed in '80s, thanks to Personal Computer. Same thing to server side, scaling out is the trend rather than scale up. mainframe will have only one machine, isnt it? thats why some of the time, most of our "old like me" customer will always ask "Why we need to buy so many boxes??, one is enough."

Scalling out become an issue for enterprise customer- so many servers to take care of, backup and restore is an issue, hiring right people to take care even worst.

The first thing most of the tech guys will look for Server Consolidation. Lets imagine, having a DHCP server, which only will be used every morning, when users boot up thier machine and afterthat, only utilise less than 10% of the resources. Some of you might say, can we put in File server, DNS, and even some AD!At the end, can we monitor, plan and knowing the server refresh cyle and bottleneck? Or what if you want to down the server for maintenance?

In next part, we will want to share the different between other party virtualization and the difference between Windows 2008 virtualization.

Happy reading.