Archives For TechEd

Yearly Microsoft event for systems admins, engineers, and software developers. 10,000 people all digesting the next wave of Microsoft products in July.

BOF65: The Physical Datacenter in a Virtual World

Jun 3, 2007

Say hello to my first BOF moderation: Are you a TechEd 2007 attendee that keeps hearing how virtualization is here to stay and will affect your server (and desktop) environment in major ways? Are you a leading-edge engineer who already has a virtual datacenter and dealt with the many forms of virtualization and how it affects your physical server designs? If so, come to the Birds of a Feather session Tuesday at 7:45pm in Room N210 B.

I’ll be moderating this discussion which I hope will help dispel some myths, expose some potential hang-ups (see Breakout Session SVR240 Avoiding Virtualization Gotchas the same day at 1pm in S230 E), and educate us all on how we can better plan and prepare (and hopefully jump onboard) for this next wave in server build-out and datacenter design.

In Microsoft, Networking and Security, TechEd
permalink

How to keep plugged in at TechEd

Jun 3, 2007

So there is a huge blogging world at TechEd.  I use it to keep up on Breakout Sessions I?m missing, fun stuff happening in the TechEd-o-sphere (youtube, flickr, etc) and get that general ?plugged in? feeling at the event.

Several ways I this are:

This year is different for me in that I won’t be there until Tuesday morning, so until then I’ll be glued to Virtual TechEd.  Not sure if the presenters will be uploading their content to the Schedule Builder on the fly, but it would be cool if I can catch some PowerPoint’s before I get there.

In Microsoft, TechEd
permalink

What's your plan (virtually)?

May 14, 2007

After 10 years on Windows in the enterprise, I think 2008 will be the year of virtual guest machines being used for production as a near mainstream tactic for “Server Virtualization”. VMware (as I’ve personally experienced) can be a lot to get going for a Windows shop, so I see the free Virtual Server 2005 R2 appearing as a way to take the now $5k dual-proc quad-core servers HP is putting out to good use. Few apps will utilize these I/O and CPU resources and with VS 2005 R2 SP1 out any time now, we’ll see even more barriers being taken down for those that actually want to utilize their hardware assets.

Soon SCVMM will hit the streets, Longhorn will ship, and if you’re a smart Windows shop and implementing SCCM, SCOM, SQL Reporting Server, and the other System Center products, you’re datacenter will be humming along with near-amazing agility and workload insight previously only seen in very highly maintained 1%’er shops. The amazing thing is if you’re willing to focus on System Center products rather than a mix and match of everything from other venders? you’ll end up with something much like a true distributed computing environment with deep insight into what’s going on at a application and “app system” level rather than the more common ‘pinging port 80/443′ to determine if services are up.

I believe this shift to virtual web and application servers will happen so quickly (for those that let it) that I’m hosting a Birds-of-a-Feather session on in at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2007 this year (Tuesday night). Come see what others are already doing to ensure their datacenter is “virtually ready”.

In Microsoft, TechEd
permalink