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Hyper-V

Windows Server 2008 R2 Coming Half July, Public Availability Of Hyper-V 2.0 Set For 22 October

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From Microsoft’s Windows Server Division Weblog:

“You may have seen some of the recent news articles that have started to roll out around the RTM and General availability dates of Windows 7.  As Windows Server 2008 R2 is a joint development effort with Windows 7 we are aligned with the same RTM and General Availability (GA) dates.

With that – Windows Server 2008 R2  RTM code is on track to be available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be broadly available about the same time as the Windows 7 GA date of Oct 22.

Download and start testing with the RC candidate at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver“

Via Virtualization.info

Diskeeper Debuts V-locity, A Virtual Platform Performance Optimizer

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Diskeeper Corporation has officially shipped V-locity, a new virtual platform performance optimizer designed to maximize server speeds on Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

Already a VMware and Microsoft partner for its Diskeeper product line, the upward move to develop V-locity was made to create a virtual-specific product that not only performs defragmentation functions, but also synchronizes the complex and ongoing activity between host and multiple guest operating systems.

V-locity also frees up vital storage resources by eliminating VHD “bloat”. This is the wasted disk space that takes place when virtual disks are set to dynamically grow but don’t then shrink when users or applications remove data. V-locity actually compacts the VHD, thereby preventing waste and allowing IT Managers to better allocate their virtual storage resources.

Diskeeper was the first ever defragmenter certified for Hyper-V, garnering notable praise from Microsoft* citing that “After independent testing, we found that Diskeeper’s automatic defragmenter not only exploits Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V capabilities but also is designed to meet mission-critical expectations in a virtualized environment.” Now V-locity has taken that technology to an all new level, bringing the first ever virtual platform performance optimizer to the enterprise.

V-locity consists of two components:

  • V-locity Host installed on Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V
  • V-locity Guest installed on Windows virtual machines

Microsoft Equips IPTV Platform Mediaroom With Virtualization Support

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Microsoft today launched Microsoft Mediaroom with virtualization, making it the first Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) platform to offer virtualization support. Mediaroom with virtualization can deliver up to a sixfold reduction in the number of physical servers required to support a full-featured IPTV service, significantly reducing hardware and management costs and speeding time to market for Mediaroom customers by up to three weeks.

With virtualization support, it is possible to deploy and operate a full Mediaroom-powered TV service for up to 30,000 subscriber homes per market using fewer than 10 physical servers. Even for deployments of greater than 30,000 subscriber homes, a mix of virtualized and dedicated servers can still provide efficiency benefits.

Mediaroom with virtualization offers the full functionality of Microsoft’s award-winning IPTV platform including video on demand, DVR Anywhere for viewing and managing recorded shows in any room, and Mediaroom Anytime for viewing of previously aired programs or restarting currently airing shows without any preplanning or prior digital video recording. Other capabilities include high-definition video for live and on-demand content, multiview, instant channel zapping, and TV applications that support rich interactivity and seamless blending of Web content and services with broadcast TV.

To power virtualization in Mediaroom, Microsoft is using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor-based server virtualization technology.

Release: Unitrends 4.1 (Data Recovery Software)

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Further expanding its OS, virtualization and application support, Unitrends today announced the latest version of its data recovery software with new support for the Windows Server 2008 family and the Novell OES family of products, including Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen virtualization platforms. Unitrends Release 4.1 also includes expanded multi-appliance management and monitoring capabilities as well as enhanced support for Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1 backup and recovery software offers support for more than 40 operating systems and applications. This support now includes:

·         Windows Server 2008 (including Hyper-V)

·         Exchange 2007 support on Windows Server 2008

·         SQL 2008

·         Novell OES1 and OES2 (including Xen and Groupwise 8.0)

·         MacOS X 10.5

·         Linux 64-bit

·         pSeries 6.1

The latest Unitrends release also delivers extensive context-sensitive help, increased appliance management and monitoring functionality, and new reporting flexibility. In addition, Unitrends Release 4.1 adds new appliance scalability features and supports NAS protection via CIFS and NFS protocols without a high-priced NDMP agent.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1, with enhanced operating system support, is available now for all Unitrends rapid-recovery appliances including the recently announced, 1U Recovery-610.  There is no charge for the new version for existing Unitrends customers.

HDS Comes Out With Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V

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Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Hitachi and provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced the availability of Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V, a new business continuity and disaster recovery solution for virtualized environments based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.The solution combines Microsoft Windows Server 2008 capabilities such as high availability through Microsoft Multipath I/O, server virtualization and clustering with the proven platform capabilities of Hitachi storage virtualization and system-based replication to create a cost effective, highly available and remotely replicated virtual server infrastructure for organizations looking to reduce business risk and associated downtime costs.

Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V extends Microsoft migration capabilities to remote sites, allowing midrange to enterprise customers to replicate and migrate virtual machines within virtualized environments either locally or across geographically dispersed sites. The solution also features breakthrough automated failover and data resynchronization, as well as simplified failback of virtual machines. Additionally, organizations looking to optimize business continuity can use the quick and live migration capabilities of Windows Server for local protection of virtual machines.

According to a recent report by Enterprise Strategy Group, an estimated 85 percent of organizations who suffer a major disaster and do not have a viable business continuity or disaster recovery solution in place are either out of business one year after the disaster or suffer huge financial losses. In addition to the many benefits that server and storage virtualization can provide separately such as consolidation, improved resource utilization, and improved performance, Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V can help organizations reduce downtime and improve data availability, which have important risk-reduction and cost savings implications.

Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V is immediately available through Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services (GSS).

Citrix Project Satori Sees Light Of Day

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From the Xen blog:

Citrix Project Satori is the result of a collaborative agreement between XenSource and Microsoft, and was carried forward after XenSource was acquired by Citrix Systems. The base Satori components are released by Microsoft as the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V, and provide support for paravirtualized XenLinux guests running on Hyper-V. The Linux Integration Components can be downloaded here.

The complete source code and license information (GPL version 2) on this project is now available here.