Archive for Server
November 21, 2008 at 8:51 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Server, Compete, Linux, Open Source
The next course I signed up for is one that helps me prepare for my future role in the Consumer Online International business group in Microsoft. (the COI, as we call it). This course is an approach to Open Source Software. OSS evolves faster and is more adaptive to local markets than other technologies. Given its community-based foundation, OSS can be a threat, an opportunity, or a combination of both to each of our businesses. This course will describe the OSS landscape, how to articulate Microsoft’s position, and how to successfully compete against Linux/OSS. This course is offline enabled. I’m eagerly awaiting the insights this will bring me, or the arguements and thoughts that can help me provide a solid base of reasoning to get through the often animated discussion I have with the adepts of Open Source.
Linux is a growing competitive threat and at the same time open source software (OSS) is an opportunity for Microsoft. This 30-minute course describes the state of the competitive environment,our strategy, and how you can engage in conversation to both compete with Linux and foster the open source opportunity for Microsoft. The course includes scenarios that illustrate these core messages through sample conversations.
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November 21, 2008 at 6:31 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Technology, Server, SQL, Business Intelligence, SharePoint
The next course on my list is Business Intelligence for Fiscal Year 09. Actually I find this course to be of less relevance to me personally and the role I have in our organisation, but since it’s a mandatory course, getting a better understanding of our Business Intelligence strategy including the value propositions provided by combining Performance Point, SQL and SharePoint is maybe not so bad after all. It could be handy to broaden my general view on how the services and products we deliver to our professional customers helps us and them to ‘make business’. Let’s give it a go and see what I end up learning.
Microsoft Business Intelligence provides valuable insight to all employees within an organization, leading to better, faster and more relevant business decisions. This course provides an overview of the Microsoft Business Intelligence vision and strategy, and explains how to communicate that vision to customers. This course will help you to successfully describe how the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution benefits our enterprise customers. The content included here will allow you to articulate the MS BI value proposition.
The course starts with a welcome video by Jeff Rutherford who leads Worldwide BI Sales. This year business intelligence is once again rated as the top CIO spending priority and Microsoft poised to capitalize on our strong growth and market momentum to become the leading provider of BI solutions to the marketplace.
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November 14, 2008 at 4:42 pm ·
Filed under Virtualization, Server
There are four key principles Microsoft outlined as best practices for companies to get the most out of the virtualization strategy as they apply it to their organization:
- Develop a cohesive, holistic virtualization strategy across the IT infrastructure.
- Integrate the management of virtual and physical computers with policy-based tools to reduce systems complexity.
- Leverage advanced security, continuity, and recovery opportunities to maximize business availability.
- Drive the necessary cultural changes to effectively manage resources in a virtual environment.
Microsoft aims to assist the clients in following these principles with a solution that provides a foundation to build a virtualized environment. With Windows Server 2008, everything a customer needs to support server virtualization is available as an integral feature of the Operating System. This feature is called Hyper-V. Hyper-V is a “hypervisor” and is also known as a “virtual machine monitor.” It allows users to run multiple Operating Systems on one computer at the same time.
With Hyper-V as a central feature of Windows Server 2008, plus flexible licensing policies, it’s easier than ever for Microsoft customers to take advantage of the cost savings of virtualization. Hyper-V is the Hypervisor that sits between the Server Hardware and the Server Operating Systems.
Basically, it isolates the hardware from the base Server Operating System that boots the system (we call that the parent partition), as well as all of the other Virtual Server Operating Systems running on the server (we call those Guests).
Windows Server 2008—Hyper-V makes the best use of your server hardware by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines running on a single physical machine.
With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple Operating Systems, such as Windows, Linux, and others, simultaneously on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.
If that isn’t enough, Hyper-V provides a dynamic, reliable, and scalable virtualization platform combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, so you can create an agile and dynamic data center.
The Hyper-V platform is designed to fit into the customer’s existing IT infrastructure and use the patching, management, support, and other tools that have already been built for Windows.
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November 14, 2008 at 4:08 pm ·
Filed under Virtualization, Server
What is virtualization? Why is everyone talking about it? Why is it even bigger than people know? Microsoft believes that virtualization is a key component of Dynamic IT, in which you can anticipate and respond to business challenges and opportunities rapidly and effectively. Virtualization frees each element of the system from the other. Computing components are essentially turned into on-demand services that are instantly available. This makes it easy to dynamically add, update and support all elements of the infrastructure, creating the foundation for utility computing – and a much more nimble business.
There is no doubt Virtualization technology is one of the hottest trends in today’s market, but we are still in the early stages of adopting this technology. At Microsoft, we focus on 4 big pillars of this technology:
- Server Virtualization
- Application Virtualization
- Presentation Virtualization
- Desktop Virtualization
- Server virtualization is the first element of Microsoft’s Desktop to Datacenter virtualization solution. With Server Virtualization, separate Operating Systems are created on a single server, allowing users to run multiple Operating Systems on the same computer. Today, Hyper-V is provided as an integral feature of the Windows Server 2008 Operating System to provide customers the support they need for Server Virtualization. The System Center Virtual Machine Manager comes as part of Microsoft’s Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) set of products that manages all of Microsoft’s virtualization offerings as well as the physical resources of a business’ network.
- The next component of our complete Desktop to Datacenter solution is Application Virtualization. Applications are transformed into centrally managed virtual services that are never installed and don’t conflict with other applications. Microsoft is the thought and technology leader in this space, thanks to our Softgrid product which is a part of our MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) offering.
- Presentation Virtualization is the third element. This technology is also known as Terminal Services, and it’s used by millions of customers daily. Microsoft has been offering Presentation Virtualization since NT 4.0 under the service name of Terminal Services. Terminal Service benefits include centralizing data, improving security, and reducing the cost of managing applications.
- Desktop Virtualization is the fourth component of the Desktop to Datacenter Virtualization solution. It uses the same technology as Server Virtualization and creates a separate OS environment on the desktop, called a Virtual Machine (or VM). Desktop Virtualization however, can be implemented in two different ways. This first method, often referred to as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), works by combining two concepts we already know. The first is Server Virtualization, or a single piece of hardware running multiple Operating Systems — only in this case, those Operating Systems are Windows Vista or Windows XP. These multiple Desktop OS’s, which are now running on one big server farm in the datacenter, are then accessed by the end users though the Presentation Virtualization techniques already discussed. In fact, VDI and Terminal Services are very similar in features and benefits, even though they use different technologies.
Now, the second form of Desktop Virtualization is a little more straight forward. This is the process of simply running a second virtualized copy of an OS on a desktop. For example, many Apple users run a virtualized copy of Windows Vista or XP on their Apple computer, so they can still have access to all of the great and mission critical applications that only run on a Windows Desktop OS. In the Enterprise Space, Microsoft has a number of new and exciting Desktop Virtualization technologies which you will be hearing a lot about in the next few months.
Microsoft Virtual PC and Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) are the Microsoft products that allow Desktop Virtualization.
VECD is a licensing model that allows unlimited virtual instances of Windows Vista Enterprise (or downgraded Windows Operating Systems) to be installed on a server. These instances are then licensed by access device (PC or thin client) rather than by the instance of installation.
Click the image below for a clearer overview:
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