Dugie’s Pensieve

Well by now VMworld has started, and as expected so have all the big announcements. It’s a little like Christmas really. 

Anyway, one announcement was the upcoming public CTP for Viridian.  Patrick has some more in his post — and has promised to post some photos.

So until then, here is a quick photo of the Microsoft Virtualization booth at VMworld this year. 

It sounds and looks like VMworld is the place to be [yet again]. I however will have to be content to sit here with a great cup of coffee , catchup on all my feeds, whilst wearing my VMware poloshirt.

PS:  Thanks to Mike for emailing through the happy snap!

We all know Wyse make thin terminals, and have a keen interest in all things ‘thin computing’ - including VDI or any other method of accessing Virtual Machines remotely.

Well yesterday, Wyse have announced they are making Thin Notebooks.  No moving parts, no fans, no HDD, so therefore I can only assume battery life is remarkable — but you will need data connectivity via wireless or your mobile phone. (Umm, no HDD remember)

Volume shipments will begin in late September and RRP for $699 which is comparable (in price) to the entry level Dell Inspiron 1501.

Wow, I didn’t see that coming - not so soon.  That changes the rules, yet again.  BTW:  The piccy is not the wyse notebook, just some clipart to make the post look pretty.

Tabloidish headline I know, but it’s true.  Ben Armstrong just posted about a new [draft] specification has been written by Microsoft, VMware, XenSource, Dell, HP and IBM for simplifying the virtual machine lifecycle.  …and that means interoperability!

You can read the entire Press Release, but Chris Wolf says it nicely:

“The impact of OVF will extend far beyond the participating server virtualization vendors to include the entire ISV community. With OVF, an ISV can potentially ship its solutions as a single virtual deployment package that is capable of running on any hypervisor — OVF marks a new era in virtualization one which includes never-seen-before interoperability in the enterprise. The whole IT community collectively stands to benefit from this landmark standard.”

Exciting times.

Nice.  You can now download the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 VHD from Microsoft Downloads.  –  You will need to register with a passport/live id.

It’s a 5 part download totaling 3 Gb.

I’m downloading it now, and I’ll post back in a bit.

Hello to everyone in Mr McPherson’s Year 9 Computer studies.  Mr McPherson is here in my study, talking all about you guys and the exciting things we can do with Windows Vista Media Centre.

Hey wants me to ask you all:   ….Have you lost anything?

I’ve reached a point where soggy toast and little vegemite finger prints are the norm in my house.  (Davo if you’re reading this, all those good times to come my friend) 

I’m also reaching the point where my son obsesses over my DVD collection more than I do, and not for the same reasons.

So I bought myself a 500Gb Western Digital Mybook.  It was really cheap, looks great, and sits nicely beside my Media Centre.

I’ve just finished copying up half of my DVD collection.  It was pretty much a straight copy with all the directors commentaries and stuff.  To copy the DVDs, I used AnyDVD and robocopy — and a small Vbscript to automate the “copy and eject process“.

With Vista, you will need to review KB 930526 and James’ walkthrough.

This means I’ve now emptied a full shelf on bookcase, which is about ~110 DVDs and reduced the footprint to something the size of a decent novel or hardback.  (See the photo above)

For the virtualization geeks, it’s kind of the ultimate P2V. :)

So tonight I’ll pack all the DVDs in storage crate, wrap it in plastic, and put them in lockup.  I’ve still got two more shelves of DVDs to do, so I’m off to the computerstore to buy another MyBook.

I’m very happy with the end result.  No more stressing, over soggy toast in the DVD drive, or scratched DVDs ending up in the dog bowl.  [Don't laugh]

System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) has now been signed off and Released to Manufacture and will be available next month!  Everybody’s excited :) 

Chris Stirrat has all the news.  I’m not even going to copy/paste.  You should check out the whole post,  ”System Center Virtual Machine Manager Huge Announcements!“. 

…and there has been some announcements of upcoming features for SCVMM R2:

• SCVMM R2 will release about
• SCVMM R2 will manage Windows Virtualization Hosts (aka Viridian)
• adding support for XEN
• adding support for VMware

Phwaar.  Exciting stuff!

Tony Soper has just posted “Virtualization Nation - Virtualization MVPs“.  So I wanted to take a moment to say Hello to everyone who has read his post and dropped by.

So I guess everyone (ok maybe not everyone) is asking, “What blogs does a Virtualization MVP read?“

Well, I’ve just launched the “Blogs I read” page, and will post more of the content shortly :)

I was just listening to the “System Centre Virtual Machine Manager” episode on TechNet Radio, and heard some supergossip.

Edwin Yuen (The Technical Product Manager for SCVMM) mentions in his interview that SCVMM will ship very soon …any day now …and be available for download as a trial (26:35 and 27:20)

Phwaar!  He doesn’t say how soon, is soon, but that’s pretty cool.  There was also a heap of other good stuff as well.  You can check the podcast “Managing Virtualization with Virtual Machine Manager 2007” for yourself or a snippet is below:

This episode will describe how the System Center products are used to manage the virtualized datacenter. We will cover the features and benefits of using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007 with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 environment. The Microsoft Virtualization Management strategy will be covered, along with various usage scenarios for VMM and SCOM.

Length: 0:31:49  WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low

You can download the SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 from Microsoft Downloads.  It is a 4 part download, totaling 2.2 Gb

Now before you ask, the username is Administrator and the password is Evaluation1

I’ve also updated my list of VHD Downloads as well.