W2K8 R2 Hyper-V Live Migration with Exchange 2010, SQL 2008 R2, SCVMM, and EMC CLARiiON NQM

Longest title ever?  Thankfully I abbreviated SCVMM down from System Center Virtual Machine Manager.  Anyway…
Microsoft has announced their launch dates for Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, and Exchange 2010.
EMC will be there to support them in many cities including Baltimore, NYC, Irvine, Raleigh, St Louis (to name a few).
I was asked to see if we [...]

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Windows 7 Release Dates Set

Microsoft has confirmed the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) (aka general availability) date for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 as October 22, 2009.  RTM/GA code will be delivered to partners and TechNet/MSDN subscribers at the end of July.
According to an informal survey on ZDNet, this could mean the beginning of a delay period for many [...]

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How to Build an Efficient Application Infrastructure through Virtualization

I couldn’t figure out how to embed this into my blog, but this is a great, short video which shows how EMC is working with Microsoft to virtualize applications like Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.  It’s only ten minutes long and showcases one of EMC’s great technologists, Brian Martin, as he speaks with Microsoft’s Jim Schwartz.

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Windows Server 2008 Foundation

The low end of Windows 7 – Starter Edition – has already been discussed quite a bit across the blogosphere, and its big brother is a bit jealous.  Like the future desktop version, Windows Server 2008 Foundation is intended to go lower (in price and functionality) than prior releases of the operating system.  Get em [...]

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Maximum LUN Size for Windows Servers

Sometimes people ask hypothetical questions of EMC’s field TC’s (technical consultants) just to see what we say.  Here’s one example of a hypothetical question that a few of us were discussing internally:
Question: What is the maximum size of a LUN you can present to a Windows server?
Answer: 2TB or 16TB or 256TB or 16 EB [...]

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Thin/Virtual Provisioning and Windows 2008 Formatting Confusion

If you are going to use a disk array that supports thin or virtual provisioning, make sure you understand that a full format in Windows 2008 will cause the “thin” volume to become fully allocated or “thick.”

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New Whitepaper on Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V Live Migration

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 – Hyper-V Live Migration Overview & Architecture can be downloaded from here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fdd083c6-3fc7-470b-8569-7e6a19fb0fdf&DisplayLang=en.
Description: One of the most highly anticipated new features in Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™ is live migration. This document describes the live migration feature of Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™ in detail, [...]

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Windows 2008 R2 Beta Testers: Free Licenses of Sanbolic Melio FS

Sanbolic offers an interesting proposition for Windows 2008 Server/Hyper-V users today: replace NTFS with Melio FS.  Melio FS is similar to VMFS in that it is a clustered filesystem allowing for multiple servers/VMs to access a shared LUN at the same time.
Sanbolic is aware of the upcoming Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV’s) feature in Windows 2008 [...]

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Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta Released

Like a stealth bomber flying too low to be detectable by radar, Microsoft’s Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 was just put into public beta status .  Because of all the hoopla over Windows 7 this piece of very interesting beta software was very much overlooked.
This edition adds:

Support for VMotion-like “Live Migration”
Support for Failover Clustering
Improved Memory [...]

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How to Get Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

How to Get Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

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