TechAgility

The communications to and from the VMware vCenter are encrypted via port 443 and as such use certificates to ensure their security.

There is the ability to add the keystore from a VMware vCenter during the initial install of vWorkspace 7.x – however it is not possible (at the moment ) to go back and rerun this wizard if you decide to add vCenter after the initial installation.

So to do this after the fact we need to carry out these 6 actions:

• Download a copy of the certificate from the vCenter Server
• Place it in the correct vWorkspaceVMware-Certs folder
• Copy the KeyTool.exe from the Java Folder to the VMware-Certs folder
• Use the KeyTool.exe from the Java install to convert the *.cer to a vmware.keystore file
• Restart the Quest Connection Broker Service
• Try again to add the vCenter as a resource in the Management console

Download a copy of the certificate from the vCenter Server

Open a browser to the vCenter using the HTTPS heading, and after bypassing the warning , you should be able to click on the “Certificate Error” and call up the message box below.

Click on “View Certificates” and this will allow you to call up the actual certificate.

Click on the “Details” Tab and this will allow you to save a copy of the certificate to file

Save this to the “C:Program FilesQuest SoftwarevWorkspaceVMware-Certs” folder

Copy the KeyTool.exe from the Java Folder to the VMware-Certs folder

Copy the KeyTool.exe from the Java folder – “C:Program FilesJavajre1.5.0_11bin”:

(The folder name may vary depending on the Java versions installed)

Place it in the vWorkspaceVMware-Certs folder:

Use the Keytool.exe from Java to convert the *.cer to a vmware.keystore file

So now it’s best to open a CMD Prompt and navigate to the “C:Program FilesQuest SoftwarevWorkspaceVMware-Certs” Folder where we now want to run the following command:

keytool -import -file vcenter.quest.local.cer -alias vcenter.quest.local –keystore vmware.keystore

Now in the above example my test vCenter is called “vcenter.quest.local” so I have chosen to use that as the name for the resultant Cert (*.cer) as well as the Alias name – but you can use whatever name you want – so long as the last part stays as vmware.keystore and it is in the correct folder.

Restart the Quest Connection Broker Service

So now is also probably a good time to go and delete the vCenter you still have in the system?

Once you have cleaned it out then go ahead and restart the Quest Connection Broker service:

Try again to add the vCenter as a resource in the Management console

So now you should have no problems with adding the vCenter in to the vWorkspace Management Console as a valid VirtualCenter Server

written by dcaddick

I came across this very interesting post today as something that both validates the “Client Virtualization” approach (I think VDI is a bit too narrow as a definition?) and yet at the same time tells a cautionary tale about how it’s not as easy as it’s sometimes made out to be? and it is way harder than simply Virtualizing Servers

However I think the point can be made that if it is approached in a structured manner, and you do take the time to run through the various steps of PoC, Pilot and then phased deployment while validating each step to check for issues then you should be on-track.

My experience so far is that it’s not really fair to blame “Client Virtualization” or VDI if the IT Dept. has brought in all the old baggage with “this is always the way we have done it”?

Justifying VDI – Part One

April 26, 2010 — David Freund

As Chris Murphy explained in his video blog post, EMC IT began last year to implement a virtual desktop infrastructure based on VMware View. The VDI concept is pretty straightforward, and sounds compelling: reduce desktop management complexity, more cost-effectively update aging desktops (and their operating systems), and give users greater platform choice—and “anywhere, anytime” universal access.

Can VDI really deliver its user experience promise? How much it would really benefit our company in cost savings and in increased flexibility? EMC IT came up with answers to those questions—and got a “green light” for deploying a production VDI environment during the second half of this year.

……

The latency “pain threshold” ended up being around 100 milliseconds. For local users, where network latencies are typically much shorter, virtual desktop performance was similar to a physical PC. For remote users with latencies exceeding 100ms, remote desktop performance was consistently slower than a local PC.

……

In my next post, we’ll finally look at TCO/ROI numbers that helped gain approval for next phase of EMC IT’s VDI project: a production rollout for 5,000 of EMC’s 40,000 desktop users.

Justifying VDI – Part One « EMC IT’s Journey to the Private Cloud

written by dcaddick

Some while back I was really wishing it was possible to boot to a USB Stick from within a VM – and now it is possible – great news because it just adds that little bit extra in the way of functionality

Great tip how-to boot from USB stick inside of VMware Workstation

A tip pointed by Ivo Beerens. By using my RSS Reader to stay updated on blogs in the Virtualization Sphere I checked this post from Ivo. It’s a great tip. What’s about?

Basically when you want to test ESXi 4 installation to the USB Stick (or this Video post too…) you’ll want to follow my post, which I’ve done in the past and that’s it.

But if you want to test unattended installation of ESXi 4 on USB stick then you would want to boot your VM which is executed in your VMware Workstation, from an USB stick too.Well you can’t. Even the version 7 of VMware Workstation does not support that.

Here comes the help tip from Ivo. Basically what do you have to do is a work around.

01. Download boot manager from PLoP
02. Use the Iso in the boot manager as a boot device to boot your VM
03. Add an USB adapter to your VM (if not already done).

03. Insert your USB stick with ESXi 4 installed in it.
03. When your VM boots from that ISO, just select USB from the menu.

Well not all the credit goes to IVO, because the original help provided was from Ulli Hankeln from sanbarrow.com. -:)

Great tip how-to boot from USB stick inside of VMware Workstation

written by dcaddick

Just a brief update as to some of the changes that I have discovered in WES 2011 CTP2 (as opposed to the original CTP) – this was simply built on a default VM Template based on Windows 7.

Also some useful reference links:

• Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP2 New Features and Changes
• Discovering Windows Embedded Standard 2011 – What is different to WES 2009? – Part 1
• Choose the Right Windows Embedded Operating System
• HORM in Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP

Please review the screenshots below (sorry about the quality, I’ll redo them this week)

• There are additional Templates (including Thin Client) that seem to have most of what people would need to get themselves started
• The Summary page then indicates anything that’s not there – in this case the VMware Drivers were missing – I just ignored this and moved on, once completed it appears to have managed to find it and installed it
• Disk Footprint
  • This is a huge improvement on the first CTP – Minimal install used to be 650Mb, and just adding Explorer ONLY saw it jump to 2.6Gb
  • Estimated OS footprint was listed as 1946Mb for the Thin Client template
  • After installation it appeared (at least in the VM as only 1.57Gb)
  • To be fair – there does not appear to be too much installed by default though?
• It looks just like Windows 7 – seriously
• So without even telling it what HW I have just check out the listing from Device Manager – only two items were not sorted!!
• No drivers were installed or referenced by me – I just let the wizard do its thing and here it is with the Internet working
• One curious thing I noted was that there is no RUN command, or Search function in the Start Menu, not that this is a bad thing on an intended Thin Client?
• I was able to check that both FBWF and EWF is installed by default
• As things stand I’d say this is a huge leap forward by Microsoft from the disk space point of view as it now looks quite likely that with some judicious pruning then a relatively useful Image can be created to simply act as the dedicated Client Device for Citrix, VMware VDI instances
• If you’d like to get your own copy of the Image Builder Wizard (IBW) then log on to connect.microsoft.com to download

So after thinking on this some more I had the following thoughts?

• This is essentially Windows 7 “super lite” and appears to be pretty much compatible with everything
• It’s so easy to build a new runtime it no longer needs a developer to create bespoke instances?
• Comes with the choice of enabling either Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) or File Based Write Filter (FBWF) to protect the base image
• A “Thin Client” install is only 1.5G in size – well down from the standard Windows 7 with Office reaching more like 20Gb
• Sure – the terms of the EULA specifically prohibit the *install* of Full MS Office Products
• But that doesn’t preclude any Application Streaming or Virtualization efforts?
• At only USD$90 a runtime version, and only 1.5Gb – will this be *THE* VDI base OS of choice?  
• It’s small, light, cheap AND it is non-persistent straight out of the box – it’s certainly worthy of some consideration?

written by dcaddick

So as things slowdown in the lead up to the break I have had some time to get back and review some twitter posts and other blog articles that I have been meaning to catch up on. I must admit that I tend not to use Twitter that much but do find it quite useful as pointers to additional material for research and recently posted material on the topics that I’m interested in.

So one article that really caught my eye was this from Ruben Spruijt’s post at Brian Madden, because for a number of years now it is the Hard Drive that has not kept pace with advancements in technology for the rest of the PC/Laptop components, and in particular I have noted a number of people getting very enthusiastic about the performance improvements they have actually noticed when using Laptops with SSD’s

Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec.
Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

Just how fast does the storage component of VDI have to be?
So it stands to reason that if you are going to Virtualize your Desktops (and by definition centralize?) then you are going to need to give some serious throughput for the Disk I/O or IOPS? So for anyone who is embarking on this then I would seriously recommend giving this article a through read? Understanding how storage design has a big impact on your VDI!

Possibly the most interesting point that Ruben did bring to my attention with this is that in VDI implementation the Disk I/O is predominately Writes and not Reads – I know this sounds contradictory in some respects, but do review this for yourself – in particular is a good comment from Claudio Rodrigues regarding the nature of how the O/S’s deal with this, as well as confirmation from Dan Feller at Citrix who confirms that most of the numbers and math are in sync with his findings. Ruben has also supplied a Sizing Tool to get a good idea of what might be needed?

So it also starts to make sense that you make sure that you focus very sharply on the XP or Windows 7 Template VM’s in the first place to reduce the I/O required as much as possible?
Citrix has some great tips in this document - Best Practices – Citrix XenDesktop with Citrix Provisioning Server

So as this brought up some interesting thoughts I also found this article relating to sizing and best practices, VMware View sizing & best practices
which followed on from this original article Virtual Infrastructure best practices and in essence this confirms that the storage requirements will need to focused somewhere around an 20/80 split on the Read/Write (20% read and 80% write)

While this table gives a quick representation of what sort of sizing requirements are out there please make sure you research this subject thoroughly, and read the post in full? J

In all fairness I must also confess at this point that my weakest area in IT is storage, and as yet I have not had a functioning Lab running either Citrix’s XenDesktop or Vmware’s View to be able to play around with this and get my hands dirty with either Provisioning Server or Composer. From what I can see (based on Marketing so far J) both of these products have the ability to drastically minimize the storage needed for VDI and as a consequence I am assuming that this may indeed have a flow on effect to mitigating the IOPS issue? (Can anyone comment or set me straight on this?)

I then went on to find some more details around the costing and financial side of VDI implementations and found this article of Doug Brown’s regarding Cost Savings of VDI: Is It Possible? as the diagram below points out, it is complex, and as such it could be that the regular ROT/TCO calculations are not highlighting all the potential benefits and savings?

Changing the ROI/TCO Calculation?
So this then brings me to another update in my Twitter was from Tyler at LiquidwareLabs.com with a new addition to the ROI/TCO debate,
COP – Coefficient of Productivity in VDI the New Math , in which he points out that you should also factor in any additional productivity gains and use this to dilute the true cost of the CAPEX.

Now I wonder how many VDI proposals are brave enough to start assigning values to what has traditionally been seen as "additional" benefits related to an architectural change? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it, but I can see the debate might start to get a bit heated in the boardroom? and in some respects maybe that’s exactly what’s needed – by assigning values and assumptions and then extrapolating them across an enterprise the resultant *potential* savings become too hard for the board to ignore?

Sure there will be debate, and rightly so, but in following this sort of process it should quickly become apparent that there is a technological shift under way where the concept of "My Desktop" still being something that can be pointed to in the Office sitting on a desk somewhere is rapidly becoming redundant?

Now having said all that – it’s interesting to note that Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009 seems not to have VDI listed? Maybe it’s hiding under something else here?

So will VDI make it to "mainstream"? AMD seems to think so, Taking Desktop Virtualization Mainstream, but also a lot of it will depend on a number of factors.

My main thoughts on this are:

To truly succeed VDI needs to be able to deliver a *High Fidelity* User experience equal to or better than what users have today – if what you are designing is unable to provide this then you should stop and re-evaluate now

If you can build a system that is able to provide this then users will want (no, Demand!) that they have it ASAP – you will know that you have succeeded when demand outstrips supply

To provide this *High Fidelity* User experience I’d suggest focusing on two key areas that may/or may not apply depending on your particular focus and what is considered in or out of scope for your project?

• Graphics
  
  • Bottom line – Graphics performance in this design CANNOT be measured, it has no metrics, or Best Practices. One persons "that’s fine" is another persons "there is absolutely no way I’ll put up with that", etc. This will always be a completely subjective assessment based on whoever is rendering the judgement.
  • You may think that you don’t need to focus too much on Graphics because "there isn’t much need or requirement for Video from the business" but I can almost bet that you would be wrong – if you are operating on this assumption be sure that you double-check with Stakeholders and get their agreement in writing?
  • So much content on the Internet is done in Flash today, it’s not just watching a CEO or Analyst briefing via YouTube, a lot of Web Based Training modules use the same or similar technologies, so even if you currently block YouTube and Facebook today it’s still quite likely that you need to factor this in to your design
  • Is RDP good enough? Check this assumption by giving targeted business users a Thin Client and removing their desktop to the lab and forcing them to access via the Thin Client – this is a simple but effective test that validates whether they truly need/demand High Fidelity, or will OK Fidelity do?
  • Do you need Citrix HDX? PCoIP? RGS? While I’m making the point about Remote Protocols – don’t forget to gather details of connecting accessories? Do you need to support serial or parallel?
• HDD or IOPS
  
  • Make sure the VM performs as well as possible while measuring the I/O on the VM itself? Check the disk queue, and ensure that it’s not the disk performance that’s holding this back – and make sure you have enough throughput to allow for Login’s etc.

So where does that leave us?
In the Graphics space there is already a number of solutions for VDI that have been out for some time (Citrix’s HDX) or have recently been released (Teradici’s software version of PCoIP). In addition to that there are other approaches if you need to support High Fidelity Users at the top end with HDX-3D taking advantage of Nvidias GPU’s that almost bring TeraFLOP performance to the Desktop.

A good introduction to CUDA – Just how powerful can GPU’s be? Back in mid-2008 the GT200 was able to deliver 1 TeraFLOP performance, the G80 supports 768 Threads per Core – on 128 Cores… Want a Personal Supercomputer? What would you use it for?

So I suspect that we are not far away from seeing vGPU’s being available to VM’s that will be able to deliver the performance on demand – the main thing is that you make sure you are either using a Remote Protocol stack that can provide this functionality – OR make sure you are using a Broker that supports a shift to one?

At the HDD level I’d suspect that as SSD prices come down and SSD longevity increases, along with improved methods of utilising this in some kind of shared caching mechanism in a VDI deployment we may well see some serious advances that enable VDI to overcome this IOPS roadblock?

With the monotonous regularity of Moore’s Law driving CPU performance up it should be possible to provide way more CPU power to users than they really need to enable this – but again – it’s quite possible that the Disk I/O that has the potential to spoil this party?

Please feel free to correct any of my ramblings?

written by dcaddick

The best piece I have read from the IT Industry in the last two weeks or so is:

Why desktop virtualization projects fail

Desktop virtualization is one of the hottest topics of interest and a major initiative of many companies. Touted benefits include lower operating costs, simpler management and desktop mobility. Below we’ll explore what the barriers to wide-scale adoption of desktop virtualization solutions are and some approaches to deal with them. It’s not a fit for everyone in a company but it can be for many.

Challenge #1: Assuming desktop virtualization makes sense because thin clients are cheap - Many people assume that virtualizing desktops is going to be magnitudes cheaper because thin clients can be found for approximately $300-400 whereas a PC can cost $500-$1200.

Tip: Client costs are only part of the picture. Desktop virtualization can reduce capital expenditures but do not expect that to be the case in the first year. Building the infrastructure is expensive (storage, servers, licenses, etc.) and may be the same in the first year. Think about using existing PCs as clients instead of replacing them with thin clients. Thin clients are cheaper than PCs but the reduction in hardware costs may not be seen for a couple of years due to the infrastructure needing to be built. More importantly, operational expenses will be seen immediately and that is where the true cost savings can be found.

………   more at source

I have also collated below some of the details I have discovered around the latest news on PCoIP and HDX-3D

From Brian Madden:

Look out PC-over-IP! Citrix announces new host-side GPU-based encoding for HDX 3D

For me the most crucial part of this post is explaining this:

How HDX 3D works

On the remote host side, Citrix is releasing a custom VDA for the environments where you want to use HDX 3D. (The VDA, or “Virtual Desktop Agent,” is the software agent you install on your remote workstation OS that lets it participate in a XenDesktop farm and gives the ICA hosting capability to a desktop OS.) Having a separate VDA shouldn’t be a problem for anyone since this is a physical workstation host solution anyway, so it’s not like you’re sharing the same disk image with remote desktop VMs.

On the client side, HDX 3D is just another plug-in for the Citrix Receiver. (That’s newspeak for “it’s just another virtual channel for the regular ICA client.”)
HDX 3D lets you configure the image quality, so you can balance the bandwidth-to-user experience. (PC-over-IP lets you do this too.)

From a technical standpoint, the HDX 3D engine replaces the existing ICA progressive display capability. It lets the OpenGL or DirectX stuff render on the host, and then it scrapes them and makes what’s essentially like an M-JPEG movie which is streamed down and played on the client. In many ways this is similar to the way HP RGS and Teradici PC-over-IP.

……….    more at source

What this tells me is that this is right in the zone for HP’s Blade Workstation’s as they have Nvidia based GPU, and that the BladePC’s would not be in at all as they are AMD/ATI based hardware. It’s also interesting to note some more details coming out via this Citrix Community Blog HDX 3D – What Happened to Projects Pictor, Apollo and Prism? and the subsequent comments from Sridhar Mullapudi, Sr. Product Manager:

Though the first release is available for only XD customers, future releases will enable XA customers to get HDX 3D using VM Hosted Apps technology. And with GPU virtualization and related technologies in the future, we will enable support of HDX 3D on virtual machines as well.

And for VMware Brian Madden had this commentary…

After VMworld, VMware still has to prove they "get" desktops. 13 questions about their desktop strategy they need to answer.

The irony of this is that I really, really want VMware to be successful with desktops. Competition from VMware has caused Citrix to put more innovation into their desktop delivery products in 18 months than they have in the past ten years combined. If VMware rolls over on the desktop, I hope that the Symantec or Quest can step up to apply pressure to Citrix or else we’re going to have another decade of innovation ice age.

But back to the main topic: VMware’s lack of desktop vision.

At last year’s VMworld, we got all these great indications of what VMware was capable of in the desktop space. (Here’s my article from then where I could hardly contain my excitement about six desktop announcements.) And how did VMware follow up at this year’s VMworld?

• We got demos of the PC-over-IP and the client hypervisor. (This has a lot of promise and looks to be really great.)
• We learned that VMware will OEM RTO Software’s Virtual Profiles technologyfor some future release of View. (Not View 4 though, from what we can tell.)

So those were two great things. (Tactical, but still great.) Unfortunately that’s kind of where the good news from VMworld stopped:

• VMware demoed their client hypervisor known as CVP. (yay!) But we learned that it won’t be available until 2H 2010! Last year they said their client hypervisor was going to ship by the end of 2009, and now it’s another 8+ months away!?!
• The View futures session was just about View 4. VMware still hasn’t announced a release date, although the rumor is it’s still coming at some point this year. View 4 will have PC-over-IP, but little else new. (Oh, it will have vSphere 4 support.)

  …………    more at source

from Citrix Community blog:

• Desktop Virtualization is not Server Virtualization  (This title pretty much tells it like it is)
• Setting the Record Straight on XenDesktop (there’s not that much difference between XenDesktop and View apparently? )
• Interesting comment towards the bottom – Lastly, while I differ with most of what one VMware Community member, Rkelly, posted re View vs. XenDesktop, I have to say I agree with his final point for the IT team in any VMware shop:  "Download the trial versions of both products and see for yourself" . You just can’t beat a “Try before you buy”

From Alessandro and Virtualization.info

Virtual Computer partners with XenoCode

The company already has a Xen-based client hypervisor and a fairly complex web-based console which uses virtual machines,  snapshots and clones to publish the right system environment to the right user with the right customization. Now Virtual Computer also simplified the management of the application layer thanks to a technology partnership with XenoCode, the application virtualization company that already has an OEM deal with Novell.

Compared to the Novell agreement, Virtual Computer is not OEM’ing the XenoCode Virtual Application Studio. It is just supporting the applications virtualized with the XenoCode technology out-of-the-box inside its NxTop virtual machines.

It is not a revolution but this way Virtual Computer is silently building an end-to-end VDI stack that one day could rival with the upcoming ones from Citrix and VMware.

And lastly….  I haven’t see this before? The AppFactory, based in UK from the looks of it and promising to Virtualize your Apps from 149 pounds an App?
I wonder how well these guys will do? Very slick and professional web site, so it will be interesting to hear how well they do?

written by dcaddick

So it’s hardly a surprise that Citrix have decided to “Announce” the long awaited HDX-3D “high quality user experience” protocol enhancement in the early hours prior to the start of the VMworld conference? Pardon me for being something of a sceptic, but it seems that this might have more to do with the fact that Teradici are expected to release the Software only version of their PCoIP protocol stack in Public Beta at this event?

I’ve had a look around the MyCitrix.com site and from what I can see there is no new components as the latest update was the addition of the Feature Release 1 update of the XenDesktop Agent component back on the 5/1/09? I’d be more than happy to be proved incorrect, but I’d imagine that if Citrix had actually posted this new component up on the web site as an available download then they’d be making sure it was “in your face”?

I’m pretty well acquainted with RGS and it’s capabilities, so I’m quite keen to get my hands on both of these new technologies and give them a going over to find their strengths and weakness’s.  One of the biggest issues/problems is that the visual quality that is delivered is subject to “peoples perceptions” and as such can be quite difficult to comparisons? One persons “great”, can be another persons “rubbish”?

I’ll be at Microsoft’s TechEd 09 on the Gold Coast here in Australia next week (on the HP Stand) and I’m hoping to be able to do live demonstrations and comparisons of RDP6, RDP7 and RGS so that Customers can see for themselves why implementing the correct Remote Protocol stack can be crucial depending on their particular circumstances.

Citrix Enhances Market Leading HDX Technology for High-Definition Virtual Desktops

Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:01am EDT

Breakthrough New HDX 3D Technology Enables Citrix XenDesktop to Deliver High-End
Professional Graphics in Real-Time over Any Network
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Today Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), announced a new breakthrough addition
to its market leading HDX Technology, ensuring a high-definition virtual desktop
experience even for the most demanding high-end professional graphics
environments. The new HDX 3D technology, available as a feature of Citrix
XenDesktop, delivers a rich, high-definition desktop experience applications to
users in any location, over any network. Combined with the full portfolio of HDX
technologies in XenDesktop, the new HDX 3D capability allows organizations to
leverage talent globally, while still housing data centrally, assisting in
real-time collaboration among disperse design teams while still ensuring the
security of critical intellectual property. HDX 3D is part of an extensive range
of HDX technologies from Citrix that go well beyond a single protocol to address
potential problems in all parts of the IT infrastructure, from the datacenter,
to the network, to the device. Combined with the company`s groundbreaking HDX
Adaptive Orchestration technology, XenDesktop can also dynamically adapt to
changes in the environment by applying the best technologies for each unique
user scenario (see http://hdx.citrix.com for more detail).

Citrix Enhances Market Leading HDX Technology for High-Definition Virtual Desktops | Reuters

written by dcaddick

So I am taking a keen interest in Windows 7 as it comes out and I noticed this post today regarding the leak of the latest build and it very much looks like it’s as close as you can get to a Beta for now?

The Windows 7 build 7000 leak and Microsoft’s reaction

By Emil Protalinski | Published: December 29, 2008 – 08:53PM CT

This past weekend, Windows 7 build 7000 leaked to torrent sites. It’s not the first build of Windows 7 to leak, but it definitely is the most important one so far. You see, the first 7xxx build marks the entrance of Windows 7 into beta phase (6xxx builds were pre-beta builds). Microsoft planned to release this build to a select number of beta testers, as well as to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Unfortunately for Microsoft, and fortunately for everyone who couldn’t, but wanted to, get access to the beta, this led to a leaked build. The company pulled the release off of MSDN and TechNet, and also removed the "Windows 7 Beta" entry from the next quarterly update kit for those part of the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS), which is slated to be sent out to subscribers on January 5, 2009. Thanks to Google’s cache, you can see that Microsoft also referred to build 7000 as "Windows 7 Beta" on MSDN.

more at source…

And for those that are doubting how prevalent this is on the Torrent sites?

In fact there is one site at TuxDistro.com that have uploaded a VM of Windows 7 all ready to go and compressed to just under 2.6Gb so there’s no excuse if you’d like to see how it looks?

Description:

Windows 7 Beta 1 Build 7000 VMware Virtual Machine
Operating System:
Windows 7 Beta 1 Build 7000
VMware Tools installed: Yes
Size: 2600MB Compressed/ 5.8GB Decompressed
Allocated Memory (RAM): 512MB
Requires the free VMware player from http://www.vmware.com/player
Username: tuxdistro
Password: tuxdistro
TuxDistro.com is your #1 Resource for Linux and VMware Virtual Machines!

written by dcaddick

Well thanks to an article by Alessandro at virtualization.info I have become aware of a company called iCore Software that appear to be heading down the virtualization path similar to Parallels in that it is OS based Virtualization.

iCore brings OS virtualization to the clients, selling its containers, called Virtual Accounts, as different user personalities for working, gaming, browsing, etc.
At the moment the company offers its product for free on Windows XP only and claims just 1-2% overhead.

So I popped over and reviewed the details on Parallels, and it appears to me that their Desktop and Workstation products are more like a Hardware Hypervisor product – but it’s the Virtuozzo Containers product that is the OS virtualization product (see diagram below) – and from what I can see this is clearly focused around the Server and Enterprise space
(Please feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken on this?)

The two diagrams below show the hypervisor or hardware virtualization technology in comparison to OS virtualization.

Click to Enlarge

So why is this new entrant so interesting? well it appears to be clearly focused at the desktop level in that the free download is all set to help you create as many multiple Virtual Accounts as you want based on XP Pro’s Smart Switching so this can initially be very useful even for the home PC.

So, given that it’s already set to work nicely with XP Pro in an OS Virtualization model, it almost begs the question of how well this might work as a mechanism for providing VDI?

Surely this has the potential to really shake things up in the VDI world? Without even testing the product I’d have to be thinking that this might actually be able to deliver a better video or graphics experience than ESX (or hypervisor) hosted Desktops seeing as it is “calling” for Graphics resources via the underlying OS as opposed to through a hypervisor call?

So as soon as I get back from the holidays in Perth I can see my Home rig might have to be redone with this in mind and I’ll update this as I progress? I was halfway considering looking at instigating SteadyState to keep the home unit stable, but now I think I’ll check this out first.

written by dcaddick

So this mornings news from Alessandro is the release of Hyper-V – Download a trial here.

I have also included at the bottom of this post a number of links that Justin Zarb helped collate regarding where to find all kinds of info relating to Hyper-V

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0

Thursday, June 26, 2008   |   0 Comments   |  

After over three years of development (the product was originally announced at WinHEC 2005 conference) Microsoft finally releases today its first bare-metal virtualization platform: Hyper-V.
During this very long process the product was delayed, changed name, and lost some planned key features.

Unlike Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Hyper-V is a type-1 virtual machine monitor (aka hypervisor) which features an architecture very similar to the one used by Xen and its commercial derivatives.
This allows a direct comparison with platforms like Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, the upcoming Sun xVM Server and obviously with VMware ESX.

Unlike the latter, Hyper-V adopts a microkernel developed from scratch (so it’s not the Windows kernel) which is less than 1MB in size and delegates most of the tasks to a so called Parent Partition.
Depending on the configuration you adopted, the parent partition automatically loads a full copy of Windows Server 2008 or the new Windows Server 2008 Core.

Being a first generation product, Hyper-V cannot really compete with the above in features, but it clearly offers a performance boost (up to +107% in case of disk I/O activity) and some much deserved improvements over Virtual Server 2005 R2:

• Support for 32bit and 64bit virtual machines
• Support for up to 4 virtual CPU per VM (the actual number depends on the guest OS)
• Support for up to 64GB RAM per VM
• Support for the Windows 2008/2003/2000, Windows XP/Vista and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux guest operating systems
• Quick Migration (the capability to suspend, migrate and resume a VM from one host to another)
• Automatic patching through Windows Update and WSUS

……

Microsoft Hyper-V is fully integrated with Windows Server 2008 64bit so any download of the OS includes it. Download a trial here.
For those customers already using the beta or the release candidate of Hyper-V, the product will be updated through the Windows Update service beginning July 8.

To demonstrate how much the company bets on this new product, Microsoft is internally adopting Hyper-V since a while and already migrated inside its virtual machines all the web front-ends that serve TechNet and MSDN websites.

Now the customers wait for the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, currently in beta, to centrally manage Hyper-V (along with Virtual Server and VMware ESX), and MAP 3.1, in beta as well, to perform accurate capacity planning.

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 | virtualization.info

Where should I look for Hyper-V Information?

So your looking for information on Hyper-V and struggling for where to look! So I wanted to get a nice bit of compiled information that Jeff did….

Websites

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page
Virtualization Case Studies
Virtualization Solution Accelerators
Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation:
Hyper-V FAQ
Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more):
Virtualization TechCenter:
How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper

Blogs:

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/
http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/
http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualworld/
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/
http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/

Webcasts:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032368894&CountryCode=US
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032372420&CountryCode=US

written by dcaddick