Archive for the ‘ Downloads ’ Category

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.0

After releasing a public beta in May this year, Microsoft has now released version 6.0 of its capacity planning tool, the Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP), which is the follow up of version 5.5, released beginning this year.

Version 6 includes assessment and planning for evaluating workloads for public and private cloud platforms, identifying the workload and estimating the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Fast Track. MAP 6.0 also provides an Office 365 client assessment, enhanced VMware inventory, and Oracle schema discovery and reporting.

Version 6 can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

Via cloudcomputing.info

2011
07/25
CATEGORY
Downloads
Free stuff
Microsoft
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SCVMM 2012 Beta is out

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 beta (evaluation) is now available for download. More info on what SCVMM 2012 brings in to the table:

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 delivers industry leading fabric managment, virtual machine management and services deployment in private cloud environments. Virtual Machine Manager 2012 offers key new features that include hypervisor creation and management, network management, storage management, private cloud creation, self-service usage and service creation. It features deep investments in server application virtualization, service design and service modeling all of which can be used to efficiently offer an on-premises private cloud.

  • Fabric Management
    • Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
    • Third Party Virtualization Platforms – Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
    • Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
    • Storage Management – Classify storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
  • Resource Optimization
    • Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
    • Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed
    • PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors
  • Cloud Management
    • Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
    • Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
    • Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
  • Service Lifecycle Management
    • Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, os images and applica tion packages
    • Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
    • Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
    • Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
    • Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing
    • Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V

Again, download is available here (both as an installer and in VHD format).

2011
03/22
CATEGORY
Downloads
Free stuff
Microsoft
Virtualization
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New Hyper-V component architecture poster

An updated version of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture poster, including the new SP1 features (Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX) has recently been published on Microsoft Downloads.

The new poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V components and technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, focusing on architecture, snapshots, live migration, virtual networking, storage, RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory.

You can also refer to the previously published Windows Server 2008 Hyper-v Component Architecture, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 component posters.

2011
02/21
CATEGORY
Downloads
Microsoft
Virtualization
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MAP 5.5 is out

After the public beta available last year, Microsoft has recently released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit version 5.5. MAP provides agentless discovery, inventory and assessment for a variety of scenarios, now supporting assessment for migration to the Windows Azure and SQL Azure platform.

The Windows Azure assessment inventories web applications and SQL Server database instances in the environment and reports the information you need to plan the migration of these on-premises workloads to the Windows Azure Services Platform and Microsoft SQL Azure Database.

The new 5.5 version provides the following new features:

  • Assessment for migration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure
  • MySQL, Oracle and Sybase database discovery for SQL Server migration projects
  • Server consolidation assessment for Hyper-V
  • Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7 upgrade assessment

Definitely a handy tool! You can see it in action here.

2011
01/21
CATEGORY
Downloads
Free stuff
Microsoft
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Windows Live Essentials 2011 is out

Yesterday marked the release of the 2011 version of the Windows Live Essentials suite. This release includes:

It also brings several other additions, like the Outlook Connector Pack, the Bing Bar or the Messenger Companion. When it comes to the Windows Live Essentials suite, I personally use Mesh and Movie Maker and (starting with this release) Live Writer and Live Messenger – they’re all great pieces of software that come to fill in the gaps in the software that comes included with Windows automatically.

All in all, it’s worth the download. :)

P.S. On a side note, I’ve also got my second year renewal as a Microsoft Virtual Machine MVP today. Yay! :D

2010
10/01
CATEGORY
Downloads
Free stuff
Life
Microsoft
MVP
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Hyper-V Linux Integration Services 2.1 RTM

The Microsoft Virtualization Team blog has recently announced that version 2.1 of the Linux Integration Services has been released. Quoting from their website, the following features are included in the 2.1 release:

  • Driver support for synthetic devices: Linux Integration Services supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
  • Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.
  • Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.
  • Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
  • Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.
  • Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.
  • Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

This version of the integration services for Hyper-V supports Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5. You can obtain the Linux IS’s via the Microsoft Download Center.

I’ve been told that this realease also fixes some major time drifting issues on Linux guests running with the SMP (multiprocessor) option activated that were present in the RC version. On this note, I’ll also be releasing a screencast (in Romanian) on running Linux under Hyper-V soon, along with some best practices. :)

2010
08/01
CATEGORY
Downloads
Microsoft
Virtualization
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Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX

Now that the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta are out, a lot of info has also been coming out on the new features it brings to Hyper-V R2: Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX.

As far as Dynamic Memory is concerned, there’s a very comprehensible article on the Virtualization Team’s blog, and a post on Ben Armstrong’s blog as well. Ben also mentions all the supported guest operating systems for both the DM beta and the release, and he also spoke about it at TechEd US 2010.

Also, when it comes to RemoteFX, while many SBC (server-based computing) players announced their support for it (e.g. VMWare, Quest, Wyse Technology), I do think nVidia is the one that stands out, because this brings a huge opportunity for them to enter the server market.

2010
07/17
CATEGORY
Downloads
Microsoft
Virtualization
Windows
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