• Sean Earp has taken a look at running various Linux distributions on Hyper-V (although without integration components they will be running in emulation mode - which will negatively impact performance).
• As for the aforementioned Linux integration components (ICs), it seems that they are still under development but release candidate 2 Linux ICs are available.
• Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) is not on the list of supported operating systems either, but being a Windows-derivative, ICs can be added to WinPE (and Mike Sterling has provided an updated script for the RTM Hyper-V ICs).
• Earlier this year, John Howard wrote about how to turn on hardware assisted virtualisation but Michael Pietroforte has written about free tools from AMD and Intel which allow administrators to check whether (or not) a computer has the required hardware virtualisation capabilties.
• Michael has also written about a Vista Sidebar gadget that allows monitoring of Hyper-V hosts.
• Matthijs ten Seldam (The author of VMRCplus) is working on a virtual machine import tool for Hyper-V.
• John Howard has written a script for locating Hyper-V hosts in a domain (showing the dramatic growth in Hyper-V usage at Microsoft) and Ben Armstrong has a script for compacting virtual hard disks (if only they had written them in PowerShell - James O’Neill has reworked John’s script in PowerShell - as well as posting his PowerShell management Library for Hyper-V on CodePlex).
• Finally, if you’re not sure which version of Hyper-V you have running on a host (or in a VM), Sander Berkouwer has a post on determining your Hyper-V version and upgrade method.

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Predictably, I’m having problems installing the software on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 but I’m sure I’ll get there if I do some research (which I won’t at 10pm on a Sunday), but the XP installation on another PC was straightforward (if bloated and time consuming) and the Mac installation seems to have gone reasonably well too (using Bonjour to track down the device on the network). The only catch on the Mac seems to be that the software is written for Mac OS X up to 10.4 and I’m running 10.5.3. This means that some of the hooks in the installer didn’t work - like when it was looking for the printer setup utility and it seems that utility does not exist in Leopard. Luckily, the Leopard’s lost features blog pointed me in the right direction:

“Tiger’s ‘Printer Setup Utility’ has been removed, and all printer configuration is now done and managed exclusively through the Print & Fax system preference pane.”

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I do moderate comments on the blog and some of the spammers are pretty blatant - stuff with suspect links like the spam e-mails we all get in our Inbox - but, as far as I know, none of those are live on the site. There are others that are more devious and, despite my rules for comments being pretty clear that I don’t welcome blog spam, if their product links are relevant to the discussion, then I’ll generally turn a blind eye (although one guy did repeatedly spam me to promote his product and then had the nerve to e-mail and request a direct link - as you can imagine, my answer was not a positive one).

Then, this afternoon, I noticed a very sly spammer. Some time back, I wrote a post that commented on how, after Nationwide Building Society suffered the theft of a notebook PC with several million customer records, they wrote to my two-year-old son and asked him to show the letter to his parent or guardian! I (somewhat provocatively) titled the post “a lack of business intelligence” and this seems to have grabbed the attention of a blog spammer…

You see, when someone leaves a comment on this blog, WordPress tells me their IP address (as detailed in the privacy policy and data protection notice for this site). I’ve removed the commenter’s personal details but do you notice anything strange about the following comment?

Author : [name removed] (IP: [IP address removed] , inetgw04.unx.sas.com)
E-mail : [e-mail address removed]
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=[IP address removed]
Comment:
I have just taken a job as a CIO at midsize corporation and have been tasked with implementing BI within the organiztion. This is new territory for me as I was working at a smaller company basically insuring that the essential computing infrasture was in place to insure day to day operations. One book I was going to mention that has been helpful to me is Business Intelligence Books - Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App [link removed]. I would be intersted to hear what others are reading out there.

It’s the reverse lookup on the IP address that gives it away. So you are a CIO at a midsize corporation are you? Well your e-mail seems to have coming from a pretty large business intelligence company (although it’s not clear what they have to do with the book that is being promoted).

It’s not the first time that a large company has spammed this blog. After I criticised Dell for their customer service (and to be fair they worked hard to rectify the situation - for which I gave them credit at the time), someone called “Anonymous” left a comment which linked to a forum post showing HP in a negative light. I smelt a rat and checked their IP address - sure enough it was registered to Dell Computer Corporation.

I really do hate blog spam…

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Interview with Mike Neil (Microsoft General Manager, Virtualization) about Hyper-V RTM, including:

• Why Microsoft decided to get into the server virtualization environment.
• Changes between the various release candidates and RTM.
• Challenges encountered along the way.
• Where Hyper-V is heading.
• IT Pro challenges for deploying Hyper-V.

Architectural overview:

• Virtual service provider (VSP) virtual service client (VSC) and VMBus.
• Disk operations within the Hyper-V architecture.
• Comparison of fixed, dynamic, and differencing VHD disks.

Snapshots:

• How virtual machine snapshots work.
• How to properly export a specific VHD/snapshot.
• Limitations with multiple branches of snapshots.

Backing up Hyper-V virtual machines:

• Virtual machine snapshots and Volume Shadow copy Service snapshots (VSS).
• How VSS snapshots function.
• What happens with a backup for VSS and a non-VS aware operating system (e.g. Linux or Windows 2000 Server).

Disks and iSCSI:

• Determine when to use a pass-through disk.
• How iSCSI works and how to use it with Hyper-V.
• Learn some best practices for using iSCSI.

High availability:

• Guest operating system clustering.
• Virtualization platform clustering.

How Microsoft uses server virtualisation for it’s own IT.

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For many organisations, Exchange Server is one such workload but there are scenarios when it might be appropriate - at least for part of the messaging infrastructure. Up until now it’s been unsupported (in any case, Exchange Server 2007 requires a 64-bit platform, and that wasn’t available on a Microsoft virtualisation platform before the advent of Hyper-V) but Microsoft is running some of its Exchange Servers on Hyper-V and, as Andrew “Dugie” Dugdell commented a few days back, Exchange Server support for Hyper-V is on its way.

In a Hyper-V briefing last week, I asked Bryon Surace, a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft’s Windows Server Virtualization group, to clarify the situation with regards to Exchange Server support on Hyper-V and he explained that support for virtualisation is part of Microsoft’s common engineering criteria for 2008:

“Windows Server virtualization Support
Each server product must be capable of running within a Virtual Machine (VM) as provided by [Hyper-V] on Windows Server [2008]. Each server product must handle escalation and support running in a VM at the same level as was the product running directly on Windows Server.”

Some of the product teams are still testing their products on Hyper-V but, according to Surace, Exchange is supported but recommendations are to follow on implementation (the Exchange Server product team committed to an announcement within 60 days of Hyper-V’s RTM including a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices).

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1. I was on vacation when it was announced and have yet to catch up on all the coverage.
2. I’m not sure if I need 3G or GPS (note the emphasis on need - want is an entirely different issue).
3. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my 1st generation phone if I do upgrade…

One of my friends has sold his v1.1.4 iPhone on eBay this week (unlocked) for a whopping £233 - not bad for a second-hand mobile handset - leaving him plenty of cash in the kitty for the upgrade (even if the old handset he’s using until he can get his hands on a new iPhone is driving him mad). Mine has a small scratch on the side (left by a grain of sand that got caught between the phone and the case it lives in) but is otherwise immaculate - it’s had a screen protector since day one and always lives in a case. Even so, I don’t think it will fetch as much as my friend’s - but hopefully it would be enough to cover the cost of the upgrade.

I did think of keeping the v1.1.4 iPhone as a spare handset - with the v2.0 software but then again I hope I’ll never need a spare iPhone. I could give it to my wife but she doesn’t like the iPhone form factor and the various extended family members that I’ve spoken to don’t seem that bothered either.

I also toyed with unlocking it and using with the SIM for my business cellphone but the two-dozen or so of my colleagues who have done this have been tracked down “asked” not to use the iPhone on the Vodafone network (bizarre - as the Vodafone network must have many iPhones in use on it and I’m sure they don’t get upset about other unauthorised/untested handsets). Perhaps changing the IMEI to my officially sanctioned Nokia 6021 would work. But then again, maybe they will have another way of tracking me down and I’m sure that “asked” will become “instructed”.

Then there’s the whole issue of whether Apple or O2 will require me to have the old handset with me when I upgrade. I sure hope not, because selling mine before the price tanks on July 11 will make a lot of sense… so I’m considering taking it to the pawn shop (as long as I can get enough for it to cover the cost to upgrade) - and I can always buy it back if I need it!

So many choices! And I still don’t know if I will upgrade or not.

In any case, I wanted to share some iPhone tips - and one source is the excellent iPhone Hacks website - but I stumbled across a hidden feature myself a few days ago, completely by accident (this phone is running v1.1.4 and is not unlocked or jailbroken). I have a PIN code set on my phone, but that’s a real pain if I need to pause the iPod functionality on the phone for some reason (slide to unlock, enter the PIN code, then access the iPod controls). Then I found that, if I hit the home button twice in quick succession, it lets me access basic playback controls without unlocking the screen. Neat.

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Vista has now been available to enterprises for over a year and a half, has long since passed the first service pack release, and many of the initial difficulties are now resolved. It’s not perfect, but very few software products are. For that matter, neither is Windows XP (nor for that matter are Mac OS X or the various Linux distributions).

Sadly, for Microsoft, the general perception of Windows Vista is not a good one. Ask anybody who ran Vista from day 1 and they will have stories of the problems that they have had because ISVs and IHVs were too slow to update their applications and device drivers (hey, they only had 5 years notice…). But ask the same question from anybody who waited a few months and it’s a different story - Vista runs perfectly well on most modern PCs (and I don’t mean an exotic machine with a fantastic custom hardware specification - I mean pretty much any business PC purchased in the last few years, as long as it has enough memory). Unfortunately there is a saying that perception is reality.

So today is the last day that you can buy Windows XP. Except that it’s not really. In an open letter to Windows Customers entitled “An Update on the Windows Roadmap”, Bill Veghte (Senior Vice President for Online Services and Windows Business Group at Microsoft) explains that:

“It’s true that we will stop selling Windows XP as a retail packaged product and stop licensing it directly to major PC manufacturers. But customers who still need Windows XP will be able to get it.”

So you can get XP. But why would you? The simple fact is, that if you are looking to deploy a new Windows desktop in the next few months, then basing your plans on XP is building a problem for later.

In terms of the product cycle and future roadmap for Windows XP (Professional, 32-bit):

• Support for Windows XP RTM and SP1/1A has already ended.
• Support for Windows XP SP2 will end on 13 July 2010.
• Although no official announcement has been made by Microsoft, it seems unlikely that there will be a fourth service pack for Windows XP. On that basic, mainstream support for Windows XP SP3 will end on 14 April 2009 and extended support (i.e. security patches only) will be available until 8 April 2014.

Some of my recent customers are just starting rollouts based on Windows XP SP2. By the time they have completed their rollouts, XP will be on extended support. And if they don’t move to SP3 soon, then they will be unsupported. In most cases the reason they are not considering Vista is application compatibility - in which case they should really be looking at application upgrades, or possibly using desktop/application/presentation virtualisation technologies - but why does a move to Vista have to be wholesale? A co-existence strategy involving managed diversity on the desktop is the way forward for many organisations.

So, I’ll finish up by repeating what I said at the head of this post:

“For the majority of Microsoft’s enterprise customers, there are very few reasons why Windows XP should be deployed on new PCs in preference to Windows Vista.”

Additional reading

• Windows XP: Facts about the future.
• Windows Vista: Look how far we’ve come.
• An Update on the Windows Roadmap

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I commented on Gates’ departure a couple of years back and more recently wrote about Mary-Jo Foley’s concept of Microsoft 2.0.

It’s 33 years since Microsoft was formed and 30 years since the famous photo with most of the founding employees was taken in Albequrque. 30 years is a long time in IT. Come to think of it, 30 years is most of my life (I’m 36) and I was interested to read about how the famous photo had been recreated for 2008.

Meanwhile, Stephen Levy has written an article for Newsweek entitled “Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.)”.

There’s a Microsoft video looking back at Gates’ life - and forward to the future but I prefer the version from the 2008 CES keynote:

Some people love to hate Microsoft. Some people can’t stand other people being successful - and it’s difficult to deny that Gates has been successful. For 14 years now, I’ve followed a career in IT, during which I’ve worked largely with Microsoft products, so I’d like to say “thank you and good luck” to the world’s most famous geek as he does what all of the world’s richest people should do at some stage in their life and changes his focus to work with helping those who are less fortunate.

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I don’t think that VMware is the new Netscape (although it seems IDC might think so) - they will be back with bigger and better things, and then Microsoft will push forward again in the next release of Hyper-V. Even so, all of a sudden, this is a two horse race, and VMware will start to see their market share decline.

And to all those who are comparing Hyper-V with VMware Virtual Infrastructure - get real - that’s not comparing apples with apples. More realistic comparisons are:

• Hyper-V and ESX.
• Hyper-V Server (not yet released) and ESXi.
• Virtual Infrastucture and Hyper-V plus various System Center components.

As for the argument that it’s all about TCO, I’ll leave that to the vendors and analysts to go into the detail but, from a simplistic view, Hyper-V and System Center are much less expensive to purchase than Virtual Infrastructure 3, the technical skills required for support are less specialised (read less expensive) and I find it hard to see how a broad management suite like Microsoft System Center is more expensive to run than a virtualisation-only management product like VMware Virtual Center together with the other products that will be required to manage the workload itself.

Critics say that virtualisation is about more than just the hypervisor and that management is important (it certainly is), then they deride Hyper-V (which is really just a hypervisor and basic management tools) by comparing it to virtual infrastructure’s management features. Their next argument is typically that Hyper-V won’t support desktop virtualisation and, from what I’ve seen, Microsoft is pretty much there on a credible solution for that too - as well as profile, presentation and application virtualisation, with partners like Citrix, Quest and AppSense filling in the gaps.

It’s not all over for VMware but they do need to find a new business model. Quickly.

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