Virtualization in the SMB Environment

Walter Scott has made a very good article on the topic of virtualization in the SMBs.

After a short introduction, Walter goes trough some technological issues:

• Deploying a Server: Migration from physical to virtual, virtual to physical, virtual to virtual and physical to physical.
• Hardware and Software Support: Support for multiple hardware platforms and operating systems, including both 32- and 64-bit servers as well as VMware, Microsoft, XenSource and Parallels virtual environments.
• Customizing the Migration Process: Migrate an entire system or specific files to another server.
• Working with Data: Migrating either live data or data at rest with either an on-line or off-line migration with minimal disruption.
• Disaster Recovery: Take a backup image and migrate that to a new server for historic data retrieval purposes.

The conclusion is Use the right tool for the job.

Steve

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2 is out

Ever heard of SC VMM?

In short, System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides centralized administration of virtual machine infrastructure and enables increased physical server utilization and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and authorized end users.

This latest version of Virtual Machine Manager – Beta 2 – represents a major step forward in providing IT administrators with a fully featured, easy-to-use and integrated suite of management tools to tackle even the most distributed and complex virtualization migrations.

While the improvements in Beta 2 are too long to list, here is a preview of the major upgrades in this release:

• Completely new, easy-to-use and intuitive UI based on the System Center look-and-feel (same as System Center Operations Manager 2007, Service Desk and System Center Essentials)
• Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) Conversions (Windows Server® 2000 or Windows Server 2003 are supported)
• Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) Conversions – Using the Windows PowerShell® interface, converts a VMWare disk or a whole VM to the analogous VS vhd\vm representation
• 64-bit VMM server support
  Every VMM component is now remotely installable, including the VMM server, library server, delegated provisioning portal, administrative console and data store
• Full Windows PowerShell support with documentation – automate away!
• Better overall performance and scalability
• Every feature from Beta 1 with more functionality and enhancements

Some links:

• VMM Connect website (the place to register to get the beta 2 of SC VMM)
• SC VMM Website
• WinHEC06 Announcement
• Microsoft Virtualization Homepage

Steve