Dell AppAssure was the winner of the 2012 Virtualization Review VMworld Best of Breed Awards as the Best Backup and Data Protection Product, which got me thinking what is so special about it. Further, if AppAssure did not have anything special about them Dell would not have enough to reason to happily acquire them back in February. After all those news about AppAssure and my personal interest in storage/backup & recovery arenas I have decided to try it out.

After trying it out for a bit in my lab & reading more about it, I have found the below three features about Dell AppAssure to be the most exciting ones … Read More

I have been enjoying my weekend, when a tweet popped on my Twitter that pointed out to Paul Rubens article titled: “
Microsoft or VMware — Who’s Really Stuck in the IT Past?“ which was a respond by Paul on a video released earlier by Microsoft “Don’t get stuck in the IT Past” which can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hewedqvSWaI

The Microsoft video was really disturbing, but the first thing that got on my mind after watching it was the old quote: “If your house is made of glass don’t throw stones on others”. The great part Paul Rubens article agreed exactly with that quote. I really recommend reading Paul Rubens … Read More

Infoworld has published a quite interesting comparison between Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat, & VMware at 
Virtualization shoot-out: Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat, and VMware. Its quite detailed and the methodologies and comparison basis was documented clearly which make it worth going through.

Although I agree with the comparison to a great degree I still had few comments to post on it. First of all let look at the great news the article has brought:

- VMware are the leaders when it comes to Advanced/Creative features.

- VMware were the only hypervisor to give a consistent performance with every OS & all kind of loads. (Hyper-V performed well when virtualizing Windows, but not … Read More

For the second year, Microsoft will not bring their Hyper-V to VMworld as per reuters.com. The fun part behind it Microsoft claim that VMware does not allow competing products to be shown in VMworld, where VMware deny that. To make the argument more fun, Citrix will be presenting their Xen Desktop in VMworld which compete directly with VMware View. I don’t want to come with a final conclusion about the reason why Microsoft will now bring Hyper-V to VMworld & will leave that for you to research.  Though I thought to share with you the news, so you don’t expect to see Hyper-V in VMworld this year.

Though Microsoft will … Read More

As our company is a partner of VMware, Citrix, & Microsoft. Yop, you heard it all of them at one shop. I get to visit many customers & try to help them find the best virtualization product for their enviornment. Lately, I have noticed a tendancy of many customers saying, “I will go Hyper-V as Microsoft know how to virtualize their products better than others.” It seems the Microsoft local partners have found a good stereo type to use that “the solution for every customer virtualization need is a hammer.”

I decided to do some study & find out if Microsoft really support their products in Virtualization better than others … Read More

I have been hearing many IT Professionals on many forums on the web complaining that their DHCP Server which is setup at the parent partition of their MS Windows 2008 Hyper-V Server is not working. Further more many of them has reported an error similar to the below one in their error logs:

1041:
The DHCP service is not servicing any DHCPv4 clients because none of the
active network interfaces have statically configured IPv4 addresses, or
there are no active interfaces.

The first thing I would like to bring to these administrators attention & to everyone else trying to setup any services or application in the parent partition of Hyper-V … Read More

I was reading Manlio Vecchiet article “Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites” can be found
here. I believe its quite misleading, but hey fair enough being a part of the Microsoft Marketing Team. I had left a comment on the article, but as it seems it had never made it on there. I thought I will post it on my blog & publish my opinion of the article.

It’s funny how Microsoft Virtualization Campaign is completely built on the word Free & lower Cost. I had never thought Microsoft main priority was ever to only produce a cheaper solution not a better one.

One thing bugged me … Read More

This article title say “Sony VAIO laptops disabled Intel VT“, but what should that mean to you. It should mean the world to a lot of us. It should mean think twice trice before you buy a Sony VAIO laptop, due to the amount of limitation that come with disabling Intel VT. Ok, let’s see some of the most obvious limitation:

1- Sony VAIO Laptops will not support Windows 7 XP mode, which require enabling hardware Virtualization:

Windows 7 will be offering a great feature which is called XP mode, which will allow you to run most of XP applications on Windows 7 without having to worry … Read More

In a very interesting article by Jeffrey Schawartz in Readmondmag.com, has published an interesting news about Microsoft’s decision – “unthinkable” until a few days ago – MS “open” more than 20,000 lines of code to the Linux community under the license GPLv2 (General Public License version 2).

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The code, published on Monday, includes three device drivers that will allow any business enterprise or any distribution of Linux community to use this device in a virtual machine within the stack virtualization of Microsoft Hyper-V battery.

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This would be the first time Microsoft opened its code to the Linux community, free of any licensing or patent restrictions under the GPLv2 … Read More

Citrix Systems, Inc. has just made available to the general public, Citrix Essentials for HyperV – Express Edition version, for free.

The new version of Express Edition is available for immediate download and includes Citrix StorageLink technology. With StorageLink, Windows administrators can dramatically simplify storage management.

The Express Edition version of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V is designed specifically for IT professionals in Windows environments that are in the early stages of adoption of Hyper-V.

Express Edition Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V supports up to two servers and a Hyper-V cabin storage.

This version can be upgraded easily to the Enterprise version ($ 1500) or Platinum ($ 3000) which include dynamic server … Read More

I have just came across a video of Microsoft trying to bust VMware top Myths, but what is funny to me it seems Microsoft had just busted them selfes in the video than anything else. The link to the video is below:

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/f8c3314f-c82d-4f8d-8b19-6a59733670f8

I have seen Gabe reply on his blog at his
Gabes virtualization Blog which seems to be a great busting to this video. Below is what Gabe is saying on his blog or please read it directly on Gabe blog at http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=445. Please give credit to Gabes & read this on his blog .

============== Directly from Gabes Virtualization Blog ===========

In the video they have 10 … Read More

This video is just what the title said, MS Hyper-V Crashes under heavy load. Watch out what a mess you are planning to go into!!!!!

I expect to see too many comments on this one, don’t get me disappointed .… Read More

Microsoft has released the beta version of a desktop virtualization software that can run applications from previous versions of Windows on Vista.

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) is based on a desktop virtualization technology by Kidaro, which Microsoft acquired in May 2008 and which allows Windows XP/2000 applications to run in Windows Vista.

According to
The Register, the final version of MED-V will be ready in the second half of the year and will be part of the
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. The pack will include applications like Softricity, DesktopStandard, AssetMetrix, and Winternals Software.

You can download the beta of MED-V
here.

Thank you to
John Ranchal for … Read More

In this series of posts, I will explain how to build a Windows Server 2008 cluster with Server Core and Hyper-V. There will be three posts as linked to below. Each post will be published as it get ready. Each post will have step-by-step snapshots. If it happens a certain image thumbnail is not good enough for you, then click on the snapshot to see a larger image.

1st Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – Server preparation

2nd Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – ISCSI Storage preparation & Configuration

3rd Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – Creating Windows Server Core 2008 & Hyper-V Cluster (You are here)

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3rd Part: … Read More

In this series of posts, I will explain how to build a Windows Server 2008 cluster with Server Core and Hyper-V. There will be three posts as linked to below. Each post will be published as it get ready. Each post will have step-by-step snapshots. If it happens a certain image thumbnail is not good enough for you, then click on the snapshot to see a larger image.

1st Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – Server preparation

2nd Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – ISCSI Storage preparation & Configuration (You are here)

3rd Part: Hyper-V & Server Cluster – Creating Windows Server Core 2008 & Hyper-V Cluster

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2nd Part:

… Read More