virtualization « Tim Anderson's ITWriting

Three questions about Microsoft’s cloud play at TechEd 2011

By tim, on May 17th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

This year’s Microsoft TechEd is subtitled Cloud Power: Delivered, and sky blue is the theme colour. Microsoft seems to be serious about its cloud play, based on Windows Azure.

Then again, Microsoft is busy redefining its on-premise solutions in terms of cloud as well. A bunch of Windows Servers on virtual machines managed by

…continue reading Three questions about Microsoft’s cloud play at TechEd 2011

Another Windows app store – but this time it is virtual. Embarcadero’s AppWave promises instant installs

By tim, on March 25th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Embarcadero has announced the AppWave Store, a forthcoming app store for Windows which uses application virtualization to avoid the hassles and risks of the usual Windows install process.

The idea is that purchasing apps for Windows will be as simple as installing an app on a mobile using the Apple app store or Android

…continue reading Another Windows app store – but this time it is virtual. Embarcadero’s AppWave promises instant installs

Restoring an old Small Business Server 2008 backup: beware expired Active Directory

By tim, on February 8th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Seemingly tricky problems sometimes have simple solutions – but you have to find them first.

So it was with this one. I was asked to recover some emails from Small Business Server, from a backup that was about six months old. This SBS runs on Hyper-V using a proven backup system and I decided to

…continue reading Restoring an old Small Business Server 2008 backup: beware expired Active Directory

Microsoft Hyper-V Annoyance: special permissions for VHDs

By tim, on December 31st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Today I needed to enlarge a virtual hard drive used by a Hyper-V virtual machine.

No problem: I used the third-party VHD Resizer which successfully copied my existing VHD to a new and larger one.

The snag: when I renamed the VHDs so that the new one took the place of the old, the VM

…continue reading Microsoft Hyper-V Annoyance: special permissions for VHDs

Migrating from physical to virtual with Hyper-V and disk2vhd

By tim, on November 30th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I have a PC on which I did most of my work for several years. It runs Windows XP, and although I copied any critical data off it long ago, I still wheel it out from time to time because it has Visual Studio 6 and Delphi 7 projects with various add-ins installed, and it

…continue reading Migrating from physical to virtual with Hyper-V and disk2vhd

Using backup on Windows Hyper-V Server or Server Core

By tim, on July 19th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a free virtualisation platform from Microsoft and an excellent bargain; I guess it is something Microsoft feels it has to do in order to compete with VMWare’s vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) which is also free. Of course Microsoft still gets your money if you run Windows Server on the VMs, in

…continue reading Using backup on Windows Hyper-V Server or Server Core

Bare-metal recovery of a Hyper-V virtual machine

By tim, on July 12th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Over the weekend I ran some test restores of Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. You can restore a Hyper-V host, complete with its VMs, using the same technique as with any Windows server; but my main focus was on a different scenario. Let’s say you have a Server 2008 VM that has been backed up from

…continue reading Bare-metal recovery of a Hyper-V virtual machine

USB devices and Hyper-V – remote client yes, host no

By tim, on June 7th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

At TechEd in New Orleans, Microsoft has announced that the version of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 – a typical Microsoft mouthful – will include support for generic USB devices. That is, you can remote into a Hyper-V VM, plug in your USB camera, scanner or bar-code reader, and it will

…continue reading USB devices and Hyper-V – remote client yes, host no

VMforce: Salesforce partners VMware to run Java in the cloud

By tim, on April 27th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Salesforce and VMware have announced VMforce, a new cloud platform for enterprise applications. You will be able to deploy Java applications to VMforce, where they will run on a virtual platform provided by VMware. There will be no direct JDBC database access on the platform itself, but it will support the Java persistence API, with

…continue reading VMforce: Salesforce partners VMware to run Java in the cloud

VMWare: the cloud is private

By tim, on February 23rd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I attended this morning’s VMWare roundtable, debating the rather silly proposition that IT should be removed from the boardroom agenda. To be fair, even VMWare does not really believe this, but is arguing that its virtualisation technology makes IT service provision so trouble-free that the board can focus on IT as it advances their business,

…continue reading VMWare: the cloud is private

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