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One link lead to another until I happened to stumble across this great gadget for a Windows desktop sidebar created by Tore Lervik. I haven’t had a chance to personally use it yet, but I figured it was worth posting about to let VM /ETC readers know it was available. Here’s some info about the gadget from Tore’s mindre.net page:

“I’ve created a sidebar gadget so I can see what the Hyper-V server is doing from my workstation. The gadget can list multiple servers at once and also support vmconnect when double clicking on a VM.

PS: The gadget uses WMI to connect to the server so the user need remote WMI access (Step 5) on the Hyper-V server.”

The Step 5 reference and associated link are to a How to post titled “Part 1 - Hyper-V Remote Management: You do not have the requested permission to complete this task. Contact the administrator of the authorization policy for the computer ‘COMPUTERNAME’” which was written by a blogger named John Howard. That post is about configuration steps necessary to enable remote administration of Hyper-V servers in a workgroup and is also worth checking out. Obviously, a subset of the same configuration is needed to make Tore’s gadget work too!

Release notes and download links are available at Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar

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The title of this post is part of a quote from David Davis’ SearchCIO article titled COMPARISON: Microsoft vs. VMware. David’s article was published back on June 4, and it’s been sitting in my drafts “screaming at me” to comment on here at VM /ETC. Now, with Hyper-V having been released and Microsoft’s marketing machine starting to cloud virtualization reality, I point my readers to David’s arguments as examples of sane and logical analysis of the two products. Here’s the entire quote my title is taken from in the context it was written:

“VMware is obviously the most experienced company when it comes to delivering a virtualisation product. The company has 10 years of virtualisation experience and a huge customer base, including 100% of the Fortune 500 companies and 92% of the Fortune 1000, totaling over 100,000 customers worldwide. VMware also holds 11 virtualisation patents, and in 2007 their revenue hit the $US1.33 billion mark.

This is in comparison to Microsoft which has a new virtualisation product, little enterprise virtualisation experience, and, to date, no Fortune 500 customers who have adopted their enterprise virtualisation product in a production environment. Ask yourself, which of these companies sounds more qualified to deliver your enterprise virtualisation solution?”

David’s article goes on to make excellent comparison points about

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Microsoft announced the release of Hyper-V today six weeks ahead of schedule. Originally expected to be released in August, news of the much anticipated virtualization platform’s general availability is all over the Internet. In an article on Yahoo News, Jim Finkle reports that Microsoft is charging $28 per server. Although technically the correct cost for the hypervisor if the Server 2008 operating system is already owned, the article, Microsoft starts selling rival to VMware programs, is a shining example of the marketing spin capable of Microsoft.

“Microsoft says it charges $28 per server for its software, dubbed Hyper-V, which was put up on its website for download on Thursday. The company previously said it would make the product available in August.

VMware said it charges $495 for the most comparable software in its product line, which is known as ESXi.”

A more realistic comparison price for the IT department deciding to implement Hyper-V can be found at Newegg.com.

Microsoft Windows Server Standard 2008 32Bit/x64 English 1pk DSP OEI DVD 1-4CPU 5 Clt w/Hyper V - OEM

$699

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Microsoft has announced two new training and certification programs that align with their new virtualization products. In the news release Climbing the Ladder of Success with Microsoft Certification: New training and certification programs help IT professionals develop mastery of Microsoft technologies, Microsoft hints at the availability of the new certifications.

“… Jim Clark, senior product planner, and Per Farny, director of advanced training and certification, will be at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2008 in Orlando, Fla., this week to unveil two new training and certification programs from Microsoft Learning. Scheduled to begin later this year, the programs are designed to prime the pipeline of skilled workers and help companies maximize their technology investments.”

A general outline of how the curriculum will be be delivered is also discussed.

“The virtualization training will be delivered in a variety of virtual, distance learning, and instructor-led options that focus on the fundamentals of virtualization, the underlying principles of virtualization architecture and the specifics of Microsoft’s technology.”

In this same release Microsoft also announced

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Scott Lowe is live blogging from TechED 2008 in Orlando, FL this week, and his Tech-Ed 2008 Keynote Liveblog post from this morning’s opening Keynote reports on some interesting cross virtualization vendor management capability of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). I’ve blogged previously about how I believe the future virtual data center will a combination of ESX, XenServer, and Hyper-V hosts, so the idea of a single managment server for all platforms is very exciting.

Read all of Scott’s post at the link above, but here’s a few quotes that give a good overview of how the demo worked:

“At this point, Rakesh Malhotra comes on the screen to show off using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, Virtual Server, and VMware ESX. Rakesh launches the VI Client to show that there is a three-node ESX cluster. Flipping over to SCVMM, Rakesh showed that the same ESX cluster shows up side-by-side with a Hyper-V cluster.”

“In the next part of the demo, Rakesh uses SCVMM to perform a VMotion operation on the ESX cluster. Here, at least, Rakesh alludes to the fact that VMotion provides no downtime to the user, whereas Quick Migration does not. Bob chimes in to remind users that live migration will be added to a future version of Hyper-V.”

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Avoiding storage array snapshot pitfalls in a VMware environment is an article and tip published by Scott Lowe for Searchvmware.com. Scott discusses the design challenges and implications of combining the snapshot abilities of VMware ESX with the SAN based snapshot features of storage devices. The tip points out that incorrect configuration of VMware ESX with the storage device could lead to inconsistent and unusable images when trying to recover VMs.

“Because these snapshots are not, by default, integrated in any way with VMware ESX Server, we have to perform a few extra steps to ensure consistently reliable and usable storage array snapshots.”

Read all of Scott’s tip at the link to the article above.

My “2 cents” on this is that trying to configure the combination of the two snapshots manually might not

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Remember the movie Minority Report? It starred Tom Cruise as the leader of a “pre-crime” police unit in the future that was responsible for stopping murders before they happened. Pyschics known as “The Precogs” were able to see visions of murders that were about to happen, and images from those visions appeared on a big glass screen. Mr. Cruise could manipulate these images with his hands in order to figure out where and when the crime would take place so he could prevent the killings.

I’m testing your memory because I received the latest WServerNews email the other day and learned that Microsoft demonstrated the new Multi-Touch features that will be part of their next version, currently named Windows 7. Check out this video of the demo.

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Many administrators today are testing Microsoft Server 2008, or even testing running Server 2008 as a guest hosted on various virtualization products. There are also plenty of projects not even related to virtualization involving testing applications and services on Microsoft’s newest server operating system. For those looking for a little more time, there is the option to extend the standard Server 2008 evaluation period. The Dugie’s Pensieve blog post Extend the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period (KB 948 472) first made me aware this was possible.

Normally, installing Server 2008 without a key gives you a 60 day evaluation period. As Dugie’s post point out, Microsoft has provided a KB article titled How to extend the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period which fully explains the use of the script and how many times you can “re arm” the evaluation.

From the KB article:

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I wrote a post for the Virtualization Pro blog about my take on Microsoft’s ROI Calculator. I was inspired to check out the calculator by the VMware Virtual Reality post Microsoft’s Virtualization ROI/TCO Calculator: Our Take.

“…it wasn’t how Microsoft calculated the numbers that bothered me most. I struggled to understand why a TCO and ROI calculator included a competitive analysis. After all, VMware’s TCO calculator doesn’t compare the cost of competitor’s products. What does that have to do with return on investment? It just seems out of place to me. Furthermore, if you go back and review VMware’s points they are mostly about the competitive cost comparison, too. It’s easy to forget we are discussing a TCO / ROI calculator.”

Check out the whole post at Virtualization Competitive Analysis in the middle of an ROI Calculator? - Virtualization Pro: A SearchVMware.com blog.

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The Offline Virtual Machine Serving Tool appears to be Microsoft’s equivalent to VMware’s Update Manger for ESX - in some capacity. The Solution Accelerator tool schedules and automates updates of virtual machines that are not normally powered on in your virtual infrastructure. The tool powers up the VMs allowing them to receive updates such as antivirus definitions, security updates and patches. Unlike ESX 3.5’s Update Manager, the tool only manages the offline VM updates. Server 2008, Hyper-V, and running VM updates will be handled via WSUS and normal Windows Update processes.

The Executive Overview page provides some more information:

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I was researching Dell’s latest announcement, Dell Unveils Virtualization Blockbuster – From Servers and Storage to Software and Services and trying to find definitive proof of the $99 price for embedded ESXi or the $299 price for embedded Citrix XenServer Express as reported by virtualization.info. Although I did not find the pricing in the announcement, I was able to find it by going through the process of using the Dell Online Store to build a R805 server. By clicking the green “customize it” button I was eventually able to see the Optional Virtualization Offerings section with the pricing for the embedded hypervisors. See the screenshot to the right. (click for larger view)What surprised me during this process was the “Help me Choose” link in this section. Clicking that link took me to a Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page from Dell that is basically accurate and helpful for comparing high level features of ESX 3.5, ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Here is a screenshot of the comparison table from Dell’s page.

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The VMware Guest Operating System Installation Guide is downloadable as a .pdf or available online. The document’s “About this Book” section summarizes it’s purpose as follows:

“This manual, the Guest Operating System Installation Guide, provides users of VMware® ESX Server, VMware® GSX Server, VMware® Server, VMware® ACE, VMware® Workstation, and VMware Fusion^TM information about choosing and installing guest operating systems for VMware virtual machines.”

There are sections of installation instructions for every past and present operating system that is supported. What I am posting from this document is a very helpful table that is a quick reference of what VMware products support which VM operating systems. This table has been copied from the online version of the guide.

This table makes it very easy to answer questions like: 

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