The Keynote presentation was all about Dynamic IT and how Hyper-V makes IT more efficient (power, hardware) and flexible (mobility and quick to deploy). MS’s argument is that virtualisation without management doesn’t give you dynamic IT. Hence, VMM 2008 and OpsMgr 2007 via PRO. You use a "single pane of glass" to manage the infrastructure, not point solutions, as you would have heard if you’ve heard me speaking about Hyper-V.
BTW, the venue is tiny. A huge amount of us were in another room watching a tiny screen. We could not see the presentations, speaker or demonstrations. Come on Microsoft! Amsterdam was much better than this place! And it smells too (don’t ask me what it smells like!).
The demo uses the food ordering demo built on multiple servers that MS has been using for a while. A web server running as a VM was no longer able to get required resources so it slowed down. OpsMgr recognises this. Via PRO, VMM can recommend an alternate VM and us quick migration to move the VM to another host with more resources. Of course, using Live Migration in Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, the VM has no perceivable downtime, e.g. VMotion in ESX.
Sidenote: I’m also reading at the moment that VMware are to cut software prices by 10%.
And there was a reminder that virtualisation is multiple technologies, not just machine virtualisation (servers and PC’s). MS purchased Kidaro to implement their own VDI solution aka VECD – a user logs into a virtual PC via a terminal or dumb PC via RDP. App-V is the renamed new version of Softgrid or application virtualisation. Applications are streamed into self contained packages. They execute on a PC but are not installed … they are self contained. Presentation virtualisation is Terminal Services – no explanation required there, I hope.
System Center manages it all – OpsMgr, VMM, Config Manager 2007 R2 (App-V).
"Announcements": Hyper-V server, VMM 2008, App-V 4.5 for SA customers and MAP. Nothing new to be brutally honest.
There is a claim that the MS Hyper-V and System Center solution for 5 hosts is 1/3 of the price of VMware VI. If you make use of authenticated host licensing with free OS’s for the guests then you certainly will see this.
MS deploys around 10,000 new servers a month. I’ve heard this before. The new data centers are huge, e.g. Grange Castle in Dublin – open in 2009. A new one in USA is powered using hydro-electric. Another uses local recycled water for cooling. They’re trying to do greener IT – virtualisation allows this. If you order a server in MS, virtual is the default. You need to justify and specify a physical machine to get it.
There was a demo of cross platform extensions, e.g. manage other OS’s and applications from System Center. Some of this is by MS and some of this is by 3rd parties (WS Man & Open Pegasus). This uses OpsMgr 2007 R2. Application showed modelling of Oracle, Apache, SUSE and Solaris alongside Windows and IIS. The model included synthetic transactions. This is 6 months old news 🙁 We also see a "new" feature in R2 for SLA management/reporting. That’s available now to OpsMgr 2007 customer as a free download (Service Level Dashboard Management Pack).
Operations Manager 2007 R2 will be a public beta by the end of November. I’m hoping there is actual new functionality in R2. I’ve not heard it yet 🙁
ForeFront: It’s based on System Center: MOM and WSUS. The new version will utilise existing installations of OpsMgr and WSUS. That’s a major improvement. Naturally, he reminds us that Active Directory is key to ID management.
Enterprise Business Server 2008: the 3 server solution for medium sized enterprises. Some announcements on November 12th.
Windows Server 7 aka Windows Server 2008 R2. R2 is the official name. There is an "M3" pre beta release available for download. The 3 focus points:
1) Virtualisation
- Hyper-V: Live Migration, more cores (64 or more),
- Remote Desktop Service is a renamed Terminal Services.
- VDI out of the box.
2) Management
- Powershell 2.0. Remote execution and more commandlets.
- Best Practice Analyser will use modelling.
3) Better Together
- Vista and W2008 R2 working better together.
- Do remote computing without VPN, e.g. TS Gateway/ VDI
- BitLocker to go: protect external devices, e.g. thumb drives or USB drives.
- Branch Cache: BOI solution for caching data that traverses the WAN. Think like WanScaler or Riverbed.
Now we get the demo of Branch Cache. We see a streaming video over a slow WAN link. The performance sucks. But the data is being cached by a branch office server on the local LAN. Data is cached as it traverses the BO server and is locally replayed with out traversing the WAN whenever the data is requested again. Access security is maintained – this is not a proxy. This will be fantastic for branch offices and similar latent network architectures if this really works when it’s released. Could be a real cash saver when compared with Riverbed Steelhead or Citrix WanScaler.
AC Milan (the football club) runs Hyper-V, System Center, SQL, Vista and Office 2007. That explains David Beckham 🙂 They use the solutions for business: to analyse the health of and extend the careers of their players. It’s called "Milan Lab". Lots of player interviews in the demo about how they’ve improved thanks to MS 😉 Why don’t Paul Allen’s (MS founder and retired executive) Seattle Seahawks do this? They’re crippled by injuries.
Next version of SQL is named as "Kilimanjaro". A new feature to make data analysis easier via Excel called "Gemini". This was a troublesome live demo by a jolly Italian gentleman. Holy Blue Screen Batman;I thought MS banned live demos! It integrates with SharePoint. Nice. Not very exciting to an IT Pro like me.
Now onto Software + Services. Here comes BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) and Azure. There’s a demo. The local AD is replicated to the online service. Yes – BPOS allows integration of on-site services with online services. Think of ADAM replication with AD. You also have Exchange integration between on-site and online. Your online user accounts can be managed on-site. Sweet. You can have on-site, online or hybrid implementation such as what I just described. This will be very popular for small businesses and large ones with branch offices. The services will be available from partners in Europe in the Spring.
Azure Services Platform: A SaaS platform for cloud computing. Using familiar tools, devs produce solutions and IT pros deployed it on the MS cloud platform. The solutions is "out here" on a fluid hosting platform. The speaker had nothing else to say. I’m sorry but Azure is the biggest thing that MS has done in years and deserves more time and a demonstration. It ties together so many technologies in a really useful way to resolve real business issues and cloud computing is a very current topic. Boo!