tudy .ro – Tudor Damian
I plan to live forever. So far, so good.
SCE 2010 RC is out
Jan 20th
Yesterday, David Mills, Senior Product Manager on System Center announced that the System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate is available. This is from the Nexus SC blog:
Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2010 provides a unified IT management solution that enables you to simply and efficiently perform complex management tasks across virtual and physical servers, PCs, hardware, software and IT services from a single console.
Essentials 2010 -
- Delivers single console monitoring and management with summary information, common tasks, alerts and reports, allowing you to quickly see and manage your IT environment.
- Provides rapid provisioning, importation, management and live migration of virtual servers.
- Simplifies complex management tasks like packaging and deploying software, and configuring Microsoft and third-party updates.
- Helps quickly solve problems using integrated alerting, expert knowledge and troubleshooting for servers, PCs and IT services running in your IT environment.
Microsoft launches Kodu
Jan 15th
If you’re into maths, design or programming, this new visual programming language called Kodu designed especially for creating games might be the thing for you. Even though it was originally released for Xbox-360 only, it’s now available on the PC as well. Here’s a list of features from the official Kodu website:
Kodu provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games.
- High-level language incorporates real-world primitives: collision, color, vision
- Runs on Xbox 360 and PC
- Interactive terrain editor
- Bridge and path builder
- Terrain editor – create worlds of arbitrary shape and size
- 20 different characters with different abilities
Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7
Oct 29th
A very useful free eBook is available on Microsoft Downloads: Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance
Overview:
Microsoft’s eBook Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine combine selected chapters written by industry experts Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson, and the Windows 7 Team with select Windows 7 articles from TechNet Magazine. Sample topics include: Deployment Platform, Planning Deployment, Testing Application Compatability, and 8 Common Issues in Windows 7 Migrations.
Microsoft Security Essentials is available!
Sep 30th
Microsoft Security Essentials, the free antivirus from Microsoft is finally out of beta. 
It’s available for XP, Vista and Windows 7 users (both x86 and x64), with the sole mention that your PC must run genuine Windows in order to install it.
SCVMM 2008 R2 review
Aug 31st
As I was announcing last week, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 has been released. A SCVMM 2008 R2 evaluation version is available here.
Building on the new and (much) improved Hyper-V that comes with Windows Server 2008 R2, SCVMM 2008 R2 also comes with a few significant feature improvements, such as:
- Live migration between Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered hosts. With live migration, you can migrate a virtual machine from one node of a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without any downtime and with a barely noticeable impact on application performance. Because the virtual machine does not experience any downtime, the move is completely transparent to the users that are connected to the virtual machine.
- Network optimization detection during virtual machine placement. VMM 2008 R2 supports both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney, which are Windows Server 2008 R2 features that improve network performance for virtual machines.
- Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.
- Hot addition and removal of virtual hard disks (VHDs). In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V allows users to add and remove VHDs from a virtual machine while it is running. Microsoft also added storage enhancements to SCVMM to accommodate changes in the way that VMs can now use CSV (clustered shared volumes) and for provisioning changes to speed up VM deployments.
- Network adapters that support the TCP Chimney feature are able to offload the processing of network traffic from the networking stack. Both of these features increase network performance and reduce CPU utilization.
Also, it’s worth noting that since the first version of SCVMM 2008 was launched, VMware released the current virtualization platform, vSphere 4. Testing brings another great piece of news about SCVMM 2008 R2, in that it is able to work just fine with vSphere 4, although Microsoft officially supports only VMware Infrastructure 3 environments at this time.
All in all, I find SCVMM 2008 R2 to be one of the best Virtualization Platform Managers out there, especially due to it’s ability to manage multiple virtualization environments (Hyper-V, MSVS and VMWare for now, with Citrix/Xen support announced to be implemented later as well), and – of course – due to it’s other particularly useful features.
SCVMM 2008 R2 is RTM
Aug 24th
Just got this:
Dear SCVMM R2 Beta Testers,
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 has released to manufacturing (RTM’d) and will be generally available (GA) via volume licensing is October 1.
This is great news and we’d like to sincerely thank all of you who assisted us in our SCVMM 2008 R2 Beta program.
A 180-day evaluation version is now available on the Microsoft Download site. You can access it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=292de23c-845c-4d08-8d65-b4b8cbc8397b&displaylang=en. We encourage everyone to continue to explore the new System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and its new features such as quick storage migration, live migration, and many others. We even offer support for vSphere 4.
Finally, to learn more on the new features and capabilities of VMM2008 R2, please try to attend our upcoming TechNet session ‘Technical Overview of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2’. Presented by our Technical Product Manager Kenon Owens, it will be chocked full of new and cool VMM 2008 R2 items. Go here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032423216&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US to register for this Wednesday, September 09, 2009 (10:00 AM Pacific) event.
Thanks! The SCVMM Team.
Exchange Server 2010 RC
Aug 19th
As promised, Microsoft has delivered a public Release Candidate (RC) version of Exchange Server 2010. It’s available in three different ways:
Trial Software
The new Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is here. Download this 120-day free release candidate version and try the new features in your own environment. When you register for the Exchange Server 2010 RC software you will automatically receive valuable product evaluation resources assembled in one convenient location.
Virtual Hard Drive
The Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program provides customers with an enhanced server-based software evaluation experience that’s faster, better supported, and more flexible. You can now access the entire catalog of pre-configured Microsoft and partner products and solutions in the VHD format and start evaluating and testing today.
Online Trial
Experience the new world of Software plus Services through Microsoft Exchange Online, which enables you to try all the messaging and calendaring functionality you need with none of the administrative burden.
Enjoy!
