Rishi's Space on Microsoft

Quote by Eric Siebert : vExpert

           What is virtualization?

 If you work with virtualization for a living, inevitably you’ll be asked what virtualization is. Trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t work with computers can often be challenging, and after you explain it they still may not know what it’s about.

So how do you explain it to someone for the first time? I find that using analogies that anyone can relate to is a good way to explain things to people. Before I attempt a virtualization analogy I’ll try explaining it in basic computer terms.

Virtualization software, also called a hypervisor, emulates computer hardware allowing multiple operating systems to run on a single physical computer host. Each guest operating system appears to have the host’s processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. The hypervisor, however, is actually controlling the host processor and resources and allocates what is needed to each operating system, making sure that the guest operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt each other.

There are two types of x86 virtualization: bare-metal and hosted. Sometimes these types are referred to as Type-1 and Type-2 hypervisors respectively. Bare-metal means the virtualization layer (hypervisor) installs directly onto a server without the need for a traditional operating system like Windows or Linux to be installed first. “Hosted” means that an operating system must first be installed on a server, and the virtualization layer is installed afterwards, just like an application.

Bare-metal hypervisors include VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Hosted hypervisors include VMware Workstation, Fusion, VMware Player and VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Server, and Sun’s VirtualBox. Some of the differences between hosted and bare-metal hypervisors are listed below.

Bare-metal hypervisors include VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Hosted hypervisors include VMware Workstation, Fusion, VMware Player and VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Server, and Sun’s VirtualBox. Some of the differences between hosted and bare-metal hypervisors are listed below.

Hosted hypervisors

• Requires a host operating system (Windows/Linux/Mac), installs like an application.
• Virtual machines can use all the hardware resources that the host can see.
• Maximum hardware compatibility as the operating system supplies all the hardware device drivers.
• Overhead of a full general-purpose operating system between the virtual machines and the physical hardware results in performance 70-90% of native.

Bare-metal hypervisors

• Installs right on the bare metal and therefore offers higher performance and scalability but runs on a narrower range of hardware.
• Many advanced features for resource management, high availability and security.
• Supports more VMs per physical CPU then hosted products.
• Because there is no overhead from a full host operating system performance is 83-98% of native. There is a small bit of overhead from the virtualization layer of the hypervisor

Why is virtualization such a great thing? Because most computers do not fully utilize the resources (memory, CPU, disk, network) that they have which is very wasteful. Would you rather have 10 computers that are all using less then 20% of their total resources, or three computers that are using 70% of their resources?

You might think you could avoid this by simply installing more applications on one computer but this is often a bad idea as the applications may conflict with each other and cause problems, and a single OS crash will take down all your applications. Virtualization solves this by allowing the applications to run on the same physical computer, but separates them by allowing each one to have its own isolated guest operating system.

So those are the basics on what virtualization is. Now on to an analogy.

Imagine computers as cars on the road in motion. Each car has it own resources, such as fuel, heat/cooling, radio, etc. Most cars are never filled to capacity, and many have only one person in them which is wasteful.

Imagine virtualization as a bus, instead of many people driving in many cars you now have many people being moved around by a few buses. A person may only ride one bus at a time, but if a bus becomes inoperable due to a flat tire or an engine problem, the people may simply get off and transfer to another bus that has unused seats. In virtualization, this “transfer” happens because of features like High Availability (HA).

A person may also hop from one bus to another if it becomes too crowded while it is moving. In virtualization, this is called VMotion, if you’re using VMware, or Live Migration if you’re using Hyper-V. By utilizing buses that hold more people instead of cars, fewer resources are wasted, while all the people still get where they are going. Buying and operating one bus instead of 10 cars is a lot cheaper and more efficient.

-Rishi

Quote from Brian Hall from Office 2010 Team!

Office comes to Windows Live – starting today

Today is a real milestone for people who use Microsoft Office or Windows Live. Starting today, a select group of SkyDrive customers will be invited to try out a technical preview of the online versions of Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint, also known as the Office Web Apps, integrated right inside their Windows Live SkyDrive experience. Over time, as the final version is released, the Office Web Apps will become available to all 500 million+ users of Hotmail, Messenger and other Windows Live services.

While the tech preview doesn’t have all the cool features that will be available in the final offering, it does show off the exciting potential of having online versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, and how you can easily access and work with your Office documents from anywhere with an Internet connection.

When those of you participating in the Tech Preview upload or create a new document, you’ll be able to view them much like you do today when using the full Office programs—without the loss of formatting or data and with the familiar Office 2007 ribbon. And it will be very easy to share your documents in password-protected folders and give permission to whoever you want to have access – just like with any other SkyDrive files.

Personally, I’m excited that, in the final release of the Office Web Apps, I’ll be able to access Office documents from any PC and then be able to share them, show them, edit them, and collaborate on them with people around the globe. I do a lot of presentations so it will be particularly helpful for giving presentations right from Internet Explorer (or Firefox or Safari). Because I’m kind of an Excel geek, I’ll be able to share my spreadsheets in all their glory – with conditional formatting, charts, and more. In the final release, I will also be able to share notes from OneNote in real-time with others.

Over the coming months here are some of things you can expect to be able to do in later versions of the Office Web Apps:

     

 

Why are we making Office Web Apps available as part of Windows Live?

We all use a lot of different services online – e-mail, social networks, photo sites, video sites, and so on. In many cases, we use more than one service for very similar purposes, using Facebook, MySpace , StudiVZ, Mixi or many others for social networking; Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail for e-mail; Flickr, SkyDrive, FotoLog, or Photobucket for sharing photos.

That said, there are certain things we really just want one of. I really just want one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar I can share with my family, one primary mail service that also allows me to check all of my e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all of my social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage my massive and ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos.

I can get all of that at Windows Live. And now, with the addition of Office Web Apps, I’ll soon be able to go to Windows Live to create, edit, share, and collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote digital notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets – all in high fidelity and all online regardless of which PC I’m using and whether that PC has Office on it.

I’m super excited about today’s release and the future of Office Web Apps.

Today’s a great start on terrific things to come.

Stay tuned.

- Rishi

Finally, everyones waiting has ended for the right nevertheless simple and power total Antivirus, Antispyware, Antimalware etc... solution only comes from Microsoft and it's free for their end-users/customers. Here is the weblink :- http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Microsoft has released a free version of complete malware protection software today. This software is branded as “Microsoft Security Essentials” (MSE). MSE is supported on Windows XP/Vista/7. Click here to know more about it. Download link is also available there.

Pl GoAhead with MSE free security solution and be the one to secure your PCs..

have a grt day...............

There we go;

1) Run regedit- select file- connect network registry- enter the name of the remote computer & select check names.

2) Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server-- fDenyTSConnections=1

3) Change the fDenyTSConnections value to 0

4) Then your session will be enable.

Enjoy………………..

- Rishi

Quote

Thick vs. Virtual Clients

 

I almost laugh at companies that think they can save all kinds of money with a virtualized their desktop. Most companies have little or no business reason for virtualizing their desktops; they just think it has a less TCO than supporting physical desktops. I really try to dig down to why customers are looking or piloting a virtual desktop environment. Is it centralized management of disks? Or is it flexibility of hot-desking with applications and the desktop state still running as a service? Is it for security so that data and applications never leave the data center? Or really, is it a shiny new toy for IS to figure out? I do believe there is a scenario for virtualized desktops. For instance I worked with a large bank who wants to keep their IP local to the US but have offshore developers manage the code and need access to virtual boxes for development and test. The scenarios for a valid virtual desktop is limited and most customers will be swayed away from virtual desktops when they are briefed on better ways to address their pain points of well managed desktop or moving to terminal server architecture. I asked most companies looking at a VDI methodology what kinds of clients were used to access the VDI desktops and without hesitation they said desktop PC’s. So when looping back to their original business case of moving to a VDI approach, they start to understand that virtualization sprawl is not necessarily a good thing because now they need to support double the desktops for their solution instead of using presentation virtualization for their desktops or applications which would meet their business needs and keep their supported desktops to a minimum.

 

Most companies when looking at a virtual desktop are still looking at sustaining the virtual desktop just like they did the physical desktop. So the effect of a virtual desktop is the extraction of the dependencies of the operating system from the hardware. This will give them the ability to dramatically reduce the amount of images they have to maintain and will allow for dynamic provisioning of images. Again, this is not a great argument, with Windows Vista and Windows 7; companies can maintain one image that is hardware independent and can be deployed to virtual or physical computers and have indexes that dictate the applications that get deployed to the target pc. Yes this is physical or virtual however, it starts to lead down the path of where the true focus in this argument should take place, and it’s about the applications not the operating system that companies run on.

 

The customers might see better availability by running the desktop in the data center because in my opinion, the data centers tend to maintain better SLA’s due to tighter change and control procedures but customers can also see improved physical desktop reliability numbers with better change and control procedures applied to the desktop PC’s. Customers looking at virtualizing the desktop have been looking at virtualizing the wrong area in the OSI layer; these customers need to really be looking at virtualizing the applications. Once they see how by virtualizing the applications can provide them greater application compatibility, agility and dynamic deployment of applications on thin-trim-thick clients they understand that they are looking in the wrong area of virtualization.

 

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Desktop Virtualization. VMWare has a TCO tool that produces a very nice Excel spreadsheet that shows the TCO cost savings using VMWare for virtual desktops. This tool uses a a model of a typically managed desktop and compares it to a well managed virtual environment. It is interesting if you add the well managed desktop numbers into the spreadsheet, you get an almost identical cost for a well managed desk and depending on the workload, and a well managed thick desktop is cheaper than a VDI Light and Heavy Workload. It really comes down to how many clients can be on a single core. VMWare says that they can handle 50 users per core but customers are experiencing about 6-8 users per core where as a 64 bit terminal server documentation says it can handle about 150 user per core but in reality customers run approximately 100 users per core.