In Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Virtual PC we install "VM Additions" to improve the performance of the virtual machines and to enable time synchronization with the host machine. But VM Additions won't be there in Windows Server Virtualization (WSV). Instead, WSV is going to have something called "Integration Components". One of the features included in the Integration Components is the Virtualization Service Client (VSC) which I described in one of my earlier blog posts. Other features include time synchronization and heartbeat functionality.

Virtualization Service provider (VSP): This is the component of WSV which runs in the parent partition and directly communicates with the hardware drivers. VSP makes sure that the other virtual machines (child partitions) running in the same host can access the hardware successfully. It also ensures that the hardware access and sharing by multiple virtual machines is secure. For example VSP is responsible for sharing a common storage device across multiple virtual machines.

Virtualization Service Client (VSC): VSC runs in the child partitions and presents the virtual device to each child partition. For a given VSC there would be a corresponding VSP in the parent partition. In other words VSP and VSC exist as pairs. For example there would be a VSP/VSC pair for storage device.

VMBus: This is a point to point in memory bus and is used by VSP and VSC to communicate with each other

The entire webcast series which I did on the security features of Exchange Server 2007 is available for download from here.

Yes it is out. Microsoft has released the public beta of Longhorn server yesterday. Click here to find more

Often questions are asked about where the hardware drivers are loaded in Hyper-V. Some virtualization vendors load drivers in their hypervisor. But for improved security and reliability Windows do not load the divers onto Windows Hypervisor. Instead drivers are loaded onto the parent partition. These drivers are regular Windows drivers and do not require any customization for virtualization.

One of the reasons that pulled business users back from deploying Windows Vista in their mobile PCs is the lack of availability of supported VPN client. I think this problem is solved for ever because both Checkpoint and Cisco have come up with vista compatible VPN clients. For more details click here for Cisco VPN client and Checkpoint VPN client

This entire week I am doing a series of webcasts on Exchange Server 2007 security related features. Once I finish the same I am going to blog about it in detail. So watch out this space to know the tips, tricks and "how to's"

I am doing a series of webcasts on the security aspects of Exchange Server 2007 next week. Click here to see the details

Microsoft is proving again that they are committed to interoperability in their products and solutions. The virtual server team will soon release the latest update (SP1) of their product, Virtual Server 2005 R2 . This release would officially support two new operating systems – Suse Linux 10 and Solaris 10 - as guests. Now Solaris would run as a window on my desktop. That's so cool, isn't it?

www.ieaddons.com This web site links you to hundreds of free add-ons for internet explorer. It's a pretty neat collection. I just downloaded a much needed download manager for internet explorer. Now I can download things without fearing the connection problems.

One of the reasons why I got so excited about my Toshiba Tecra M5 was that it supports hardware assisted virtualization. Virtual PC 2007 (VPC 2007) can take advantage of this feature and provide improved performance for virtual machines. So I started using VPC 2007 ever since the beta was launched. But I always found that the "Enable hardware-assisted virtualization" option is greyed out. Initially I thought that this could be a problem with the beta version of VPC 2007 and I just ignored it. Later when the full version got released I checked the same setting to see that it was still greyed out. Then I started suspecting the BIOS settings and found out that virtualization was not enabled thereL. As soon as I found this out, I enabled the same in the BIOS and went to check whether VPC 2007 was recognising it or not. But the option "Enable hardware-assisted virtualization" was still greyed out. I did not know what to do next. Finally I decided to ask few of my colleagues to see whether they were facing the same issue or not. Within minutes I got e-mail replies saying that this could be a BIOS problem. And finally I got suggested to upgrade the BIOS to version 3.20. I got thrilled and was damn sure that this solution would work. It was late in the night. But I couldn't resist. I started downloading the latest BIOS update (3.6MB) from Toshiba's web site using one of the slowest internet connections (Tata Indicom data card) available in the world today. I think it took half an hour for me to get the file downloaded on to my machine. I did not wait for even half a second to start the installation. But here comes the saddest moment in the entire story. My OS was 64 bit and the setup was supported only in 32 bit OSLLL. So there was no way I could upgrade my BIOS that night itself. I went to the bed in great despair. Today I am here in office to reinstall my laptop with a 32 bit Vista OS. But I finally I managed to upgrade my BIOS to version 3.20 and now I am in a state of nirvana because I can see the option "hardware assisted virtualization" enabled in VPC 2007.

Processor: Hyper-V supports hot addition of processors to virtual machines provided the guest OS supports the same. Guest OS supporting this option are Windows server Longhorn Enterprise and Datacenter editions. Hot removal of processor is not supported. But administrators can use the dynamic resource allocation feature to achieve effectively the same goal.

Memory: Hyper-V allows hot addition of physical memory resources to virtual machines provided the guest OS supports the same. The guest operating systems supporting this configuration are Windows Server 2003/Longhorn Enterprise & Datacenter editions. Hot removal of memory is not supported. But administrators can use the dynamic resource allocation feature to achieve effectively the same goal.

Storage: Hyper-V lets virtual SCSI devices to be added or removed while the virtual machine is running provided the guest OS supports the same. The guest operating systems supporting this configuration are Windows Server 2003/Longhorn Enterprise & Datacenter editions.

Network Adapter: In Hyper-V it is possible to hot add/remove virtual network adapters provided the guest OS supports this feature. The following guest operating systems support this feature
• Windows 2000 server/advanced server
• Windows server 2003 Enterprise/Datacenter editions
• Windows server Longhorn Enterprise/Datacener editions

Also Microsoft is jointly working with XenSource to make many of these features available in Linux OS.

These days I have been writing a lot about Windows Server Virtualization (WSV). But now I realize that I forgot to mention few important things about the Microsoft Virtual Server R2. The service pack 1 of Microsoft Virtual Server R2 is going to be released soon. You can download the beta 2 from here. Some of the major enhancements made in this release are

• Support for hardware assisted virtualization: AMD virtualization (AMD – V) and Intel virtualization technology (IVT) are now supported
• Support for volume shadow service. This allows the snapshot backup of all virtual machines running in a physical host without any downtime.
• Offline mounting of VHD files. This would help administrators to run scripts against the virtual machine hard disk files while the virtual machines are turned off. For example virus scanning can be done when a virtual machine is turned off.
• Windows Vista will be supported as a guest operating system
• Physical memory support up to 256 GB as against 64GB today
• Virtually unlimited number of virtual machines per 64 bit physical host. But this number is practically limited by the amount of hardware resources available.
  Technorati Tags: Virtual server 2005 R2 SP1, Offline VHD, Intel VT, AMD virtulization

With the release of Windows Server Virtualization (WSV) server administrators are going to deploy hundreds or thousands virtual machines in their data centres. Unlike a farm of physical machines virtual machines are much easier to manage. Microsoft is releasing a set of powerful tools to manage large pool virtual machines. Let's see what these tools are

• Microsoft Management Console (MMC): This tool is useful if you have only a handful of servers running virtual machines. The "Windows Server Virtualization MMC" comes free with Longhorn server. The same MMC would be made available in Windows Vista after the release of SP1.
• WMI Scripts: Administrators can use their WMI scripting skills to manage virtual machines either locally or remotely. Though WMI scripting is very powerful, creating custom scripts is not always very productive given the fact that there are GUI tools to do the same job.
• System Centre Virtual Machine Manager: This is going to be the most preferred tool for managing large arrays of virtual machines. Some of the most important features of this product are
  • Centralised management console for both Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server Virtualization (WSV)
  • Physical to virtual machine conversion tool
  • Live migration of virtual machines
  • Integration with Microsoft Operations Manager 2007
  • Management of virtual machine libraries (ISO images, VHD files, virtual machine templates etc.)
  • PowerShell integration. Since this tool is built on top of Windows PowerShell it allows you to find the PowerShell commands equivalent of the GUI commands you have executed. These PowerShell commands can then be used for automation at a later stage.
  Technorati tags: virtual machine manager

This is amazing! Microsoft Word 2007 can be used as a blog editor. This is my first blog post from Microsoft Word 2007. It is so easy to set up your blog account in Word 2007. Just three steps.....

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click New.
2. Double-click New blog post.
3. In the Register a Blog Account dialog box, click Register Now to register your blog account with Word.

"Server Core" is a new feature in Windows server code named as "Longhorn" (LHS). In other words it is one of the installation options in LHS. In "server core" you don't find the typical Windows GUI shell. It has a subset of various server roles available in a full installation of LHS. This helps system administrators to reduce the attack surface. Also this minimal installation option reduces the resource consumption. Have a look at this wonderful interface of "server core" :)

Very interesting community work from Microsoft. Click here to read more

This is unbelievable! There is a new edition of Windows Vista made for your pets! This is very interesting. Read my colleague’s blog http://blogs.technet.com/nmercer/archive/2007/03/31/announcement-rumor.aspx