smbvirtualization.net

So I had the chance to talk virtualization with Channel Pro at WPC.

Enjoy!

Yesterday was so busy I didn't have a chance to blog -- two presentations and a number of meetings.

My presentation yesterday focused on the five step process for ramping up your virtualization practice. As WPC comes to a close today, I'm thinking now about the details in the practice. It's time now for prescriptive plans in your own business for how to put this all together.

What are you doing to put your practice together? I want to hear about it, as the more I think on this the more I think banding together is the way to go. There is going to be incredible movement in this area.

Morning keynotes again, and this time "Cloud Computing" was the theme. Microsoft showed off System Center, profiling Virtual Machine Manager as a key product. I'm going to get the slide deck, because there was a slide and discussion around the move between the on premise data center and the cloud.

And what is the bridge? Virtualization. Moving from on premise, to the virtualized data center, to the private cloud to the public cloud, the layer that makes that possible is virtualization.

I've spent a lot of the afternoon with meetings, running from location to location more than usual. One of my press interviews led to a hallway conversation to an interesting thought.

Google, of course, made a lot of noise last week with the vaporware announcement of Chrome OS. It's the exact opposite of the design of Windows 7, where the light browser only OS is compared against the idea of a heavier, thick client experience. I don't see this as a huge threat or even option in the next 12 months, but notable because it's Google.

Enter Office 2010.

Attended the morning keynotes at WPC, getting engaged. There was some great virtualization content, and the most important stuff was almost the smallest. Allison Watson discussed Microsoft's commitment to virtualization came out in a statement that was almost a throwaway.

Microsoft announced that they believe the partner ecosystem is so strong in support of virtualization that they are discontinuing their virtualization consulting practice to end customers, and instead relying on partners.

Why do we SMB consultants care about this?

So I'm writing this blog post from the airplane on my way to WPC (Delta IAD to MSY via ATL, and it has onboard wifi) and so I thought I'd do a bit of a blog post about WPC and what I'm looking for.

Coming off a great webcast with Ryan Morris from IPED on Friday (recording going online when I get back), I'm thinking a lot about virtualization as the the bridge between on premise and cloud services, and how this technology will allow solution providers to be the bridge keepers for our customers.

A last minute webinar, but others cancellation is our gain! As SMBVirtualization.net kicks off our webinar series, we're starting with a blast with a great guest -- Ryan Morris from IPED. Come join us for a discussion on the future of IT delivery.

The Future of the IT Partner

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

Based on popular demand, we've launched a yahoo group intended to focus on SMB Virtualization for discussion and questions.

Feel free to join the discussion!

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/smbvirtualization/

Microsoft is offering some free Hyper-V training. You will need to enter a specific access code 9350-Y2W6-3676 and sign in with your Live ID. The course ‘Collection 6319 - Configuring Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008’ includes the following modules:

Got a call today asking "is my machine virtualization/hyper-V/VMWare ready?"

Want to know?

virtualization/hyper-V/VMWare requires processor virtualization extensions (Intel-VT and AMD-V) and requires those features to be enabled along with the No-Execute (NX) feature. For AMD it also requires that the CPU be revision F3 or grater or F2 with additional BIOS support – most of the server OEM’s have the additional BIOS support but not all.

AMD

For AMD you can download the AMD Virtualization Technology and Microsoft Hyper-V System Compatibility Check Utility.