med-v – TechVirtuoso

TV Guide for April 7

April 7th, 2010 at 11:15 AM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

The folks over at the ISO group are none too happy with Microsoft’s implementation of the OOXML document specification in the upcoming version of Microsoft Office 2010. Due to delays in the final approval and recent changes to the strict specification, Microsoft was not able to include full support for creating new OOXML documents in 2010, and will only include transitional support. However, Redmond has stated that they intend to have full support for the creation of OOXML-Strict documents by the next version of office… what is not clear is if that means Office 2010 will be patched for full support or it will not be 2010 at all and users will need to wait until Office “15” for support.

Microsoft has released MED-V 1.0 SP1 and App-V 4.6. The big update to MED-V is full support for 32-bit & 64-bit Windows 7 hosts, but it also includes support for Japanese versions of Windows. Chances to App-V are mostly centered around language support. MED-V is an enterprise desktop virtualization management system that allows administrators to deploy and control Windows XP or Windows 2000 deployments running inside Windows 7 or Windows Vista host operating systems.

For all five of our readers with a Zune HD, you’ll be happy to know the Zune 4.5 firmware was released last week. It features an new Smart DJ mix with personalized recommendations, Zune Marketplace for TV, and better video codec support. Microsoft will also be releasing a new Zune HD 64GB model soon. To get the update, plug it in and sync with the Zune software on your desktop.

For all five of our readers running Windows Server on Itanium processors, you’ll be disappointed to know that after Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft will no longer be releasing versions for Itanium processors, and will focus on the x64 platform going forward. There was no 2008 R2 version released for 32-bit processors, either. Microsoft will no longer develop other software for Itanium, and SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 are also the last versions to support it. Mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems (and R2) will end, in accordance with that policy, on July 9, 2013, while extended support will continue until July 10, 2018. That’s roughly eight more years of support.

Just so that our entire update isn’t focused on Microsoft today… If you’ve been living under a rock since last week, we just wanted to remind you that the iPad came out on Saturday. It’s magical, especially when you watch Harry Potter on it.

Great overview of VMWare vs Microsoft server virtualization options

January 16th, 2010 at 1:40 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

Up until this last year, the virtualization options available from Microsoft lagged woefully behind VMWare. This is led people like me to really ignore Microsoft’s virtual offerings. However, Redmond is quickly playing catchup with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the upgrades to the integrated Hyper-V virtualization options, as well as other platforms such as MED-V, Virtual PC and App-V. This is causing a lot of other administrators to take a second look.

Over at the blog Clustering For Mere Mortals, David Bermingham has a great write up comparing the features, pros and cons of the latest version of Hyper-V vs VMWare vSphere (previously ESX)

How do I recover my virtual machines in the event of a complete site loss? The good news is that virtualization makes this process a whole lot easier since a virtual machine is just a file that can be picked up and moved to another server. While up to this point VMware and Microsoft are pretty similar in their availability features and functionality, but here is where Microsoft really shines. VMware offers Site Recovery Manager which is a fine product, but is limited in support to only SRM-certified array-based replication solutions. Also, the failover and failback process is not trivial and can take the better part of a day to do a complete round trip from the DR site back to the primary data center. It does have some nice features like DR testing, but in my experience with Microsoft’s solution for disaster recovery they have a much better solution when it comes to disaster recovery.

Head on over to his site to get the full rundown.

Microsoft highlights MED-V features for Windows 7

January 7th, 2010 at 1:33 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), is a component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance customers. It allows administrators to provide a virtualized desktop image to users and manage them from a central console. The upcoming Service Pack 1 for MED-V will expand support for Windows 7 (both 32 and 64-bit) as a host platform. Considering most large companies held off on upgrading to Windows Vista and opted to wait for Windows 7, this technology will help boost the migration since they can do so and run older programs that may no longer be supported or have not been certified for Windows 7.

In V1 SP1, MED-V continues to employ Virtual PC 2007 as the virtualization engine but unlike the consumer “Windows XP Mode” it does not require hardware-assisted virtualization like Intel VT or an AMD-V to be present in the processor. This allows even those with lower end or older processors to take advantage of enterprise desktop virtualization.

Microsoft has put together a screencast demonstrating running a MED-V workspace using a V1 SP1 client in the Windows 7 environment.