Uh huh! First Office 2007, and then of course Sharepoint! You can download the Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD (in 6 parts, 3.7 Gb).
I haven’t had a chance to try this out yet (I’m still downloading it) - but the documentation mentions “you will need to have Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 installed“. I’m guessing this is perhaps the VHD uses the virtual SCSI controller, but I haven’t checked. Once I know more I’ll post back.
ROFL!!! Just yesterday I was thinking damn, I could really use a Office 2007 VHD right about now — and today it is released, so naturally I’ve just downloaded it. :)
So below is a quick briandump of my first impressions
Overall, a pretty straight forward process - have fun!!
The The TechNet Australia Blog posted yesterday that WSUS 3.0 is the number 1 download from TechNet. Which is kinda cool, it just goes to show that free doesn’t necessarily mean it’s crud.
So I thought I’d check where WSUS ranks overall at Microsoft Downloads - and it come in overall at number #53. Then I saw that Virtual PC 2007 trumps it at number #19!
Anyway, I thought that was quite interesting, so I did a quick search for virtualization related resources and published them below. A few surprises:
The Top 3 Downlaods
- #1 - Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2
- #2 - Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
- #3 - .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)
Virtualization Downloads
- #19 - Virtual PC 2007
- #78 - Windows Vista VHD
- #126 - Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
- #305 - IE App Compat VHD
- #365 - Exchange Server 2007 VHD
- #367 - Windows Server 2003 R2 VHD
- #720 - ISA Server 2006 VHD
- #870 - Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite VHD
- #928 - SQL Server 2005 VHD
- #937 - System Center Essentials 2007 VHD
- #1143 - Virtual PC Demonstration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 VHD
- #1230 - SQL Server 2005/Exchange 2007 VHD
- #1315 - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Beta 2 VHD
- #1494 - Visual Studio Team System Basics Training VHD
- #1803 - Visual Studio 2005 Team System VHD
- #3618 - VHD Specs
- #3737 - Virtual Server and the HP BladeSystem
- #5417 - VHD Overview Whitepaper
- #6079 - VHD Test Drive Datasheet
Miscellaneous Downloads for some perspective
- #42 - Halo for Windows Trial Version
- #43 - Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
- #44 - SyncToy v1.4
- #56 - WSUS 3.0
- #6398 - Secure Your Computer Best Practices
Now, that’s very very interesting, you can make your own assumptions, but I’d be as bold to say that Virtualization is a very powerful enabler and tool for the IT Pro. To quote Isaac Asimov, “Hmmm that’s funny….”.
A brief architecture overview of Viridian (WSV), VMware ESX, and XEN
Massimo ReFerre from IBM has recently blogged the technical differences between Viridian (WSV), VMware ESX, and XEN.
A few others have blogged this already, but yesterday it ended up in the TechNet Server Virtualization Forums, so I thought it deserved reblogging here. You can read the full article in his post “A brief architecture overview of VMware ESX, XEN and MS Viridian“, and a snippet is below:
It is my feeling that there has been a bit of confusion lately around how hypervisors are being positioned by the various vendors. I am specifically referring to the three major technologies that seem to be the most relevant strategically going forward:
- VMware ESX is the VMware flagship hypervisor product: it’s the basis for the Virtual Infrastructure version 3 framework.
- MS Viridian is the next generation hypervisor that Microsoft is going to use in the Longhorn time frame and that is currently being developed. It’s basically the successor of Microsoft Virtual Server.
- Xen is an opensource hypervisor that is being integrated by a number of players which include RedHat, Suse, XenSource and Virtual Iron.
….
Back to the point there are really two set of thoughts currently in the industry (I warned you it’s still up in the air). The first thought is that these new hardware assists hardware (especially in future implementations) has diminished the need of paravirtualizing the guest. These hw implementations will be so efficient and optimized that there will be no need to optimize the guest OS as well and even a standard OS (i.e. non paravirtualized) will perform close to native speed. The other thought is that, other than the efficiency and optimization provided by these low level hardware instructions there is room to improve performance by paravirtualizing the Guest OS in areas where Intel-VT and AMD-V would have little effect. This second thought is backed by the fact that given points #1 and #2 above there would be no more supportability issues as Suse, RedHat and Microsoft are going to provide their own fully supported paravirtualized versions of their own OS kernels.
….as I said at the beginning of this third section, this is still pretty much up in the air and these have been speculations on possible future situations that might be proven wrong
The post is a mix of technical and personal commentary, and if time permits is worth a read.
This made me giggle, and of course Rodney Buike had to be part of it.
Head on over to the Canadian IT Professionals blog and read the post “A humorous look at Energize IT“, a small snippet is below:
Beep beep beep beep…“What happened doctor?”
“They call it severe cranial sensory overload.”
“What caused it?
Beep beep beep beep…
“He went to a huge Microsoft Event. ‘Energize IT 2007′. Then at the very last minute, during a small camera interview with Rick Claus, his brain exploded”
“Oh my God. Is it severe?”
“Are you daft?! I just said his brain effectively exploded. Good grief.”
“Oh I see. But is there any way to save him?”
“Only one. We’ll have to upload his brain contents to a Virtual Machine within a Windows Server Virtualization environment. Run a virus scan, pull out the extra information his brain couldn’t handle. Then it’ll require a re-indexing to re-link his security abilities. He’s going to also need a 5 day cooling off period to calm down his hyperactivity levels as well.”
“HUH?!”
“Don’t ask me to explain the details, It’ll need a geek, a real geek to implement this.”
Those guys have *all the fun :)
I’ve nearly finished reading several virtualization books:
The two in bold are Microsoft virtualization related texts and I think are definitely worth a book review here on VirtualServer.tv *
Anyway, I’m the type of guy that bends products to perform all sorts of unnatural acts, and thus realise my needs in a book will be different from the next bloke. But I do enjoy reviewing the books, — only I’m not so crash hot, I mean polished at the writing reviews.
But you can read them for yourself in a day or two when I finish writing both the reviews.
* side note: the web site VirtualServer.tv really is in the process of moving to a new domain name: WindowsVirtualization.com
Most people have heard about Microsoft ’s vision the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). The term has been around for a while, it was announced back in 2003. For those who haven’t heard of DSI, here’s a copy and paste straight from the Microsoft Website: (DSI) is Microsoft’s technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process, and IT infrastructure using technology
…Yup, you guessed it. Virtualization is one of the three key architectural elements of the DSI strategy. The other two elements are Design for operations, and Knowledge-driven management.
DSI is coming together, although it’s still a vision, Microsoft is 4 years into a 10 year strategy. But all the pieces are coming together. It gives me a buzz that Windows 2008 and Virtualization are “parts of the puzzle”. DSI isn’t “just windows“, it’s also technologies such as Visual Studio, Vista, System Center Suite and Forefront; combined with frameworks such as ITIL and open standards such as SML.
If you are interested and want to know a little more about DSI, download the DSI Overview White Paper, it’s only 12 pages long and a definitely worth taking the time to read.
I was reading Frank’s recent MSDN flash when I noticed a reference to “Tech Resource Preview: Channel 9: Virtualization.“
It’s a “golden oldie from Sept 06” Channel9 Video with Mike Neil and Jeff Woolsey (These guys rock, I got to chat with them over at the MVP Summit in Seattle).
Anyway the guys dive deep and talk about all the Virtual Server goodness and even some of the upcoming architecture in Viridian (Aka: Windows Server Virtualization). It’s an hour in length and worth watching — or if your like me, again. :)
Lastly, a bit of trivia for you, Mike is on WikiPedia?!
Looks like green is the way of the future - and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was reading “Google and Intel pledge to go green” and found this interesting:
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative [supported by Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft] aims to make computers 50 per cent more power efficient by 2010. The companies say that achieving this goal would save an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that released by 11 million cars in a year. Urs Holzle, senior vice president of operations at Google, said: “Today, the average desktop PC wastes nearly half of its power and the average server wastes one-third of its power.”
The plan would save an estimated $5.5 billion in energy costs and would, its proponents say, increase the cost of a computer by only about $30 per unit. Reduced running costs would pay for the extra outlay within a couple of years, they say.
…
“We’re also concerned that this initiative will be used to drive sales of more power efficient machines – contributing to global piles of e-waste – when there are many things people can do with existing machines to reduce power consumption, such as switching off monitors,” a spokesman said.Google and Intel say that their benchmarks follow guidelines set out by the Environmental Protection Agency, which encourage manufacturers to meet minimum energy efficiency standards in order to bear an approved logo.
Of course I imagine Virtualization will play some [even perhaps minor] part in this. I started thinking about this, and had bizarre flashbacks to assorted sci-fi movies.
Who knows, maybe in a few years it will be perfectly normal to put our Virtual Machines into some sort of stasis/hypersleep; migrate all the VMs to just a couple of physical hosts; and then put the unused physical hosts into some sort of power off or powersaving mode; …and when VMs are needed reverse the process as necessary.
…and some of you might even catch my bad pun of hypersleep, reference to hypervisor - the purists will argue that suspended animation would be better :)
Ok, Dave Northerly officially wins the “seriously cool blog post award“ for Virtual Server. Someone inside Microsoft managed to get their hands on a server with 256GB of memory and run up 508 virtual machines each with 512MB of memory.
You can check out more in his post “Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1” and a snippet is below:
Someone inside Microsoft managed to get their hands on a server with 256GB of memory and span up 508 virtual machines each with 512MB of memory. Granted it took them the best part of a day to turn then all on and they weren’t doing much - but 508 virtual machines on a single box (wow)!
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