Helping IT Gain Efficiencies and Reduce Costs - Microsoft...

Toolbox.com Live Chat Helping IT Gain Efficiencies and Reduce Costs - Microsoft System Center

Transcript of original session on January 28th, 2010

Sponsored by: Microsoft

Toolbox.com Live Chat- Helping IT Gain Efficiencies and Reduce Costs

About the Live Chat

Save costs in the enterprise with Microsoft systems management and virtualization tools. Join Microsoft experts Jeff Wettlaufer and Kenon Owens in a live chat on Microsoft System Center and helping IT gain efficiencies and reduce costs. Learn how System Center can benefit your IT environment with integrated solutions from the desktop to the data center, management of physical and virtual IT environments, knowledge-driven management, and rapid time to value.

About Kenon Owens

Kenon Owens is the Integrated Virtualization Technical Product Manager where he is responsible for marketing the technical value proposition of virtualization products (across the portfolio) and solutions (enabled by MS products and the partner ecosystem). His responsibilities will include core content development, demo development, integration with the outbound/campaign teams on messaging/positioning, technical presentations at internal/external events, and support of field selling process as technical subject-matter expert.

About Jeff Wettlaufer

Jeff Wettlaufer – Sr. Technical Product Manager, System Center. Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 9 years, and in that time has specialized in enterprise infrastructure management, from deployment to operations, from the datacenter to the client.

Jeff’s main areas of specialty are; enterprise management, virtualization, windows deployment methodology, Management, Security, Windows and Office product lines, as well as Infrastructure Optimization. In addition to this, Jeff has been heavily involved in build strategy, infrastructure lifecycle management, client and server build automation, Resource Kits (Windows and Office) , Management technologies and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. In his time in Microsoft – both in the UK and Redmond HQ, he has worked with international customers and partners on different sizes of organizations, from Small Business up to large scale Enterprise deployments, numbering over 700,000 seats. In these engagements Jeff has assisted in deploying a secure well managed infrastructure, incorporating virtualization capabilities, removing deployment blockers, planning deployment automation, and customizing builds to suit corporate needs. Finally, Jeff has worked closely with the Partner community in service definition and offering development of the Microsoft platform. Previous to Microsoft, Jeff was with a UK Partner specializing in desktop deployments and Novell technology (CNE). Prior to 2000 Jeff lived in Vancouver Canada and was a Network Administrator for the Bank of Montreal. Jeff graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1996. As a new dad, most of his time is spent with his wife of 13 years, and his son Gavin. In his spare time, Jeff is active in social media hockey, cycling, basketball, rowing, golf, skiing and running. He loves to cook and travel in search of great food and wine with his wife (and new son) when the schedule permits!


Moderator: Hello everyone and welcome to the Microsoft System Center chat! It is now 8:45 - we will be starting in 15 minutes.

Moderator: We will be starting the chat in 5 minutes.

Moderator: Welcome to the Microsoft System Center live chat! We will start by introducing our guest speakers Kenon Owens and Jeff Wettlaufer.

Moderator: Kenon Owens is responsible for marketing the technical value proposition of virtualization products (across the portfolio) and solutions (enabled by MS products and the partner ecosystem). His responsibilities include core content development, demo development, integration with the outbound/campaign teams on messaging/positioning, technical presentations at internal/external events, and support of field selling process as a technical subject-matter expert.

Moderator: Jeff Wettlaufer's main areas of specialty are: enterprise management, virtualization, Windows deployment methodology, management, security, Windows and Office product lines, as well as Infrastructure Optimization. In addition to this, Jeff has been heavily involved in build strategy, infrastructure lifecycle management, client and server build automation, Resource Kits (Windows and Office), Management technologies and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

Moderator: Next we'd like the audience to share some information about themselves and what they hope to get out of this chat.

Reena: Hi this is Reena and I would like to get more information on how we can effectively implement Systems Center

Reena: Hi this is Reena and I would like to get more information on how we can effectively implement Systems Center

Mamidip: Myself, working as an AM - IT in one of the MNC's. My concerns and looking forward to hear tips /best practices on the Data Center Management in keeping neat and tidy. We are located in India and dust has become one of the major issues here....

Jeff Wettlaufer: Good morning from Redmond Reena! We have a wealth of guidance here on our core products, Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager or Virtual Machine Manager?

Reena: Thanks Jeff. Looking forward to hearing your advice today.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Good morning Mamidip, we have some areas of datacenter management that might help, are your datacenters using fresh air circulation systems, or are they closed HVAC rooms?

Kenon Owens: Microsoft built a new State of the Art Datacenter in Redmond Ridge, here is some information on this: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Sep09/09-14RedmondRidge.mspx


Josh: Jeff: I'm interested in what Configuration Manager looks like. We're looking at puppet and I’m wondering how configuration manager compares?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Good morning Josh, I believe Puppet is an Open Source config tool, if that is the tool you refer to, we compare very well to that technology. Their product offers patch, soft dist, and configmgmt.

Jeff Wettlaufer: as well as some other capabilities. If I am honest with you I have not encountered any customers using Puppet, but I am aware of it. ConfigMgr would be the comparative tool from System Center, and we offer all of the capabilities that Puppet has - as well as OS Deployment, Inventory, and more. You can see more at http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/default.aspx

Dave Holland: Do you see there being a limit on what can be virtualized? At our company we've done some testing with moving some things to virtuals and had some good experiences and some bad. How do you suggest someone go about deciding what servers can be virtualized, and what hardware the virtual would have to run on to perform comparatively?

robert leslie: Good morning: we are looking to expand out our WAN and define parameters for patching and connectivity with 2008r2 MS-SCCM if possible in a sub domain environment

Kenon Owens: Hi, Dave, Great Question, I am I'll let you know my thoughts...

Kenon Owens: The question as to what can be virtualized is great and top of mind for most people

Kenon Owens: There are obviously some easy candidates: Things on really old servers, apps that don't use much processor or disk, etc

Jeff Wettlaufer: Good morning Robert, I would be happy to offer some guidance on this....

Kenon Owens: There are apps that are NOT good candidates. Things that need special physical cards, servers that are massively taking up all the resources on a machine

Jeff Wettlaufer: So Robert, there are def a few things that will help define your infrastructure, when you are thinking about rolling out Site Servers for capabilities like Patch.

Kenon Owens: But there are apps in the middle, and which of those are good candidates? My thoughts are this...

Jeff Wettlaufer: For example Robert, user counts can help define load traffic and help assist in server placements.

Kenon Owens: First of all, use a tool like Microsoft MAP tool (Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool) found at http://www.microsoft.com/MAP

Kenon Owens: This tool will look at the utilization of a machine using an agentLESS way of grabbing the data


Kenon Owens: It will assist you with determining if the utilization of the machine is more than can fit in a VM.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Robert for our Software Update point, we support up to 25,000 per site role for patching, but other areas of management services need to be considered, like what else is happening on that side of the WAN link.

Kenon Owens: We have just done some testing and announced over 700,000 IOPS from one Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V server, so things like Disk utilization won't really hurt, we should be able to handle most apps

Jeff Wettlaufer: And Robert, a very cool new feature in W2K8 R2 edition of server we pick up on and support with Service Pack 2 of ConfigMgr is called Branch Cache. Branch Cache can definitely help with the load of your WAN and managing your traffic across the links.

Kenon Owens: Check out http://dantedog29.blogspot.com/2010/01/massive-iscsi-iops-for-hyper-v.html for some information

Jeff Wettlaufer: Let me place some links in here for more information on things like Patch setup and Branch Cache. Coming

robert leslie: we are able to understand that and functionality presently in system center is almost acceptable as users must VPN in to the local / regional internet breakout and then are patched with 2008r2 will the direct connect and bit's make this seem more operational for the end user

robert leslie: thanks

Kenon Owens: Also, looking at what the app is trying to do would help. If you are using the latest version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, and running on pretty current hardware (especially hardware with SLAT enabled (EPT or RVI Intel or AMD respectively) then you will see that more and more of these apps work, but if you have, say, a SQL server that is utilizing all 16 cores on a 16 core system, then running it in a 4 core VM wouldn't work

Kenon Owens: I hope that helps

Jeff Wettlaufer: Robert this page is packed with all of our planning guidance summarized in 1 page for you to easily scroll and see the topics, Software Update management as well as site planning are covered there. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/sms.aspx

Jeff Wettlaufer: Robert - Branch Cache link coming

robert leslie: great

Jeff Wettlaufer: Robert Branch Cache link is here for you http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd996634(WS.10).aspx


Mamidip: Yes, we are having a good Air conditioning systems installed....also we have placed a system to wear some use & throw socks to get in to Data centre and also changed the mats to sticky mats when anybody gets in DC

Kenon Owens: Mamidip, I have heard that in extreme environments is to have many smaller rooms that are isolated from one another to create that barrier, but it sounds like you are going in the right direction.

robert leslie: so it seems a public facing connection would be avoided then

Moderator: Please send in your questions for Kenon and Jeff - we'll be fielding them in the order that they're received.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Robert, no, actually public facing - or in our case Internet Based Clients is a scenario we support, we can push patch across the internet. There are 2 ways that can be setup within ConfigMgr. Without Server 2008 R2, we offer IBCM, in our product, and if like you, Server 2008 R2 is in place, we can take advantage of the new service called Direct Access. More on that here. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758757(WS.10).aspx

Srinivas: I would like to hear about the management of heterogeneous servers within systems center. How would we achieve scalability while keeping performance at the top priority?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Good morning Srinivas, it is very common for organizations to have hetero environments in their datacenter. When System Center thinks about managing these, there are a few levels of thought.

Jeff Wettlaufer: For example Srinivas - there is managing the base configurations of those kernals, OS and app levels. There is also managing those platforms from a performance perspective. Finally, System Center thinks about these from a Virtualization perspective.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Srinivas - the System Center product lineup is really focused on managing the service. In many cases, that workload or service is made up of several levels, and these can be both physical and virtual based.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Srinivas - We have developed and released some non windows support for the performance management of services and workloads, and these take the form of Management Packs and PRO - Performance Resource Optimization Packs - that use both Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Srinivas the deployment and configuration of non windows is far more complex than monitoring the performance. From a config management perspective, we today rely on our partners like Quest to support those platforms. Partners like Quest do integrate right into our console, so the experience is pretty seamless.

Dave Holland: How does Microsoft's virtualization work with open source solutions? For example we use memcacheD which runs on Linux - would I be able to virtualize that with Hyper-V?

Kenon Owens: Dave, we currently have support for Single Processor SuSE and Red Hat Linux Guest Operating Systems. We recently open sourced our Integration Components so other distributions can get


the enhanced performance. You will actually see more things happening in this space in the near future, so stay tuned. Check out: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/07/20/the-hyper-v-linux-integration-components.aspx for more info. I hope that helps.

Srinivas: Jeff, thanks for the information.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Robert, great points. If the 400-500 in the W Hemisphere are distributed across many sites, that is not a large load to consider. You are right WAN traffic is a factor, and if they are remote, outside corporate gateways, internet based connections can be far more cost effective, and higher degrees of performance. DA is a fantastic solution to consider. Server 2008 R2, also can be combined with a new Forefront Unified Access Gateway product to help manage load, monitor performance and configure settings. Direct Access is an always on connection that provides seamless connectivity to network resources. TO System Center, always on is always managed.

Dave Holland: You've talked about System Center and virtualization in a server/production environment setting. What impact do you feel this can make in an office?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey guys, anyone in here want to talk about Windows 7 or any client services? Let’s hear your questions! Application Management? Futures for Client Management?

Kenon Owens: You've probably heard a lot from Microsoft talking about Dynamic IT...In my opinion, you can't get there without Virtualization, and you HAVE TO HAVE Good Management!

Kenon Owens: With that being said, you have look at the entire System Center Suite of Tools combined together.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Kenon, wasn’t there an interesting quote from Tom Bitttman about the growth of Virtualization and the need for increased Management? Have you got that handy for these guys?

Kenon Owens: If you just put Hyper-V in your environment, you are really are missing out

Kenon Owens: You need to have good management like using System Center Operations Manager to monitor the health and status of the applications, the virtualization layer, AND the physical layer (plus your physical systems as well)

Kenon Owens: Then you tie that to Virtual Machine Manager with PRO Tips and you have a TRULY dynamic infrastructure that will get you on your way to Dynamic IT

Kenon Owens: Actually Jeff, you are right: Tom Bittman said: : “virtualization without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the first place.” check out this link for more: http://www.cpatechnologyadvisor.com/print/The-CPA-Technology-Advisor/Windows-Server-2008-Launch--A-Look-At-Virtualization-With-Hyper-V/1$1979

robert leslie: so I guess the next steps logically would be to take the 100 user environment here and then see what the realistic load would be and define internet WAN breakouts from that data with the normal use. Do you know if direct connect will tunnel to find the best or functional of multiple breakouts?


Jeff Wettlaufer: Hi Robert, yes, I would definitely recommend a pilot of some kind. For example, you would want to go through a patch cycle, and soak test the connections to ensure your clients are receiving policy and packages. I would say for your org size, 100 as a pilot is a good number to look at. One thing to consider is making sure that through DA the clients can see the services effectively. An area to pay special attention to with a DA managed client is that ConfigMgr will see them as 'on the network' - so daily routine advertisement activity such as patch is 1 thing, but other larger packages like OS deployment are not recommended across those connections. I am digging up more information for you to review.

Howard: How can System Center help lower the cost of my Windows 7 deployment?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hi Howard, Windows client deployment is a process that can be complicated with applications, user data, hardware configs and network connectivity. Deployments and migrations can cross multiple hardware destinations, and security models.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Howard, System Center can help automate this process with 4 main areas of capability. Planning for the deployment with inventory, license knowledge and app compatibility data. Customizing deployments and building on the Windows WIM image format - and chaining applications into the process including updates. Then, System Center can help explicitly target schedule and deploy the OS packages. Finally, System Center can monitor, report and help troubleshoot any issues with access to low level reports and great step by step status message data.

Singh: What can System Center do to help deliver more Green IT?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Environmental IT is a strategy that is increasing in popularity for a lot of great reasons. Cost savings, IT efficiency and greater community awareness are major drivers to get more efficient with low IT uses power. There are a lot of ways to drive Green IT into your organizations, from little things like employing Power Management to spin down hard disks, or flip off monitors during times of non peak activity. Other things like monitoring the performance, or CPU cycles and migrating server workloads based on performance thresholds dropping below a certain level can even help to turn off entire server hardware in times of low activity. Virt takes a huge role in this area.

robert leslie: Thank you for the direction and information. I will now need to go digest it have a great day.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Singh, for Microsoft, Environmental IT is also a growing strategy. Like we did a few years ago with Trustworthy Computing where we drove security best practices into software engineering and application development, we are not working across campus with developers and product groups to drive sustainable engineering best practices into our products. This is evident in products like Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Office 2010 and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Robert, take care and thanks for the great questions. Keep in touch!

Jeff Wettlaufer: Ever seen our blogging, or twitter streams? Check out our team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter, and http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenterexperts.


Jeff Wettlaufer: Following twitter at all? Kenon and I are pretty active in twitterville as well. Follow Kenon @ms_int_virt and Jeff @jeffwettlaufer

Jeff Wettlaufer: For those of you who might be using SMS 2003, Mainstream Support ended Jan 11th 2010. Thinking of migrating to Configuration Manager? WE have launched a brand new migration and deployment portal at http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/sms.aspx

BDenny29: OK, so why is System Center the best option for the enterprise?

Jeff Wettlaufer: LOL, BDenny29, that is a GREAT question. Where to start. We have been in the Management business for 15 years. We have been doing inventory and soft distribution for the entire time, but in the last 5-6 years, we have shifted to think about the network service, the datacenter workload, the combination of physical and virtual management from 1 console, and deep integration into windows. There is no one in the world who can commit as much resource, development, research and time to delivering better management solutions than Microsoft. We are committed to driver broader and deeper coverage to both clients, the datacenter and now the cloud than anyone in the industry. I have been with MS for 10 years and in this product group for almost 5. The growth and resulting demand for continued investment is a momentum that has the teams buzzing. IT is really exciting to be a part of, and to share our commitments to you guys about where we are going.

Singh: Will System Center manage my applications and operating systems that are not Windows-based?

Kenon Owens: Singh, with Operations Manager we have some Management Packs, and already have some nice capabilities to manage Linux and other non-Windows Based OSs. Couple that with our Partner Created Management Packs from Bridgeways and NWorks and others, you will see that we now have a great way of managing heterogeneous environments

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey guys, we have a new System Center Pack catalog site experience, in the new Pinpoint site. Check us AND our partners out here. http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/systemcenter/managementpackcatalog

Moran: Could you explain some of the pros and cons of virtualization?

Kenon Owens: There are MANY Pros to Virtualization and only a few cons. The biggest PRO is that Virtualization provides a way for you to better use resources and gain tremendous IT efficiencies Lowering Costs, Improving Availability, and Increasing Agility.

Kenon Owens: The only real con I see is that people can't virtualize fast enough...

Kenon Owens: Actually, if they virtualize too fast and don't do it intelligently

Kenon Owens: they can encounter more problems than they solve

Kenon Owens: at least in the physical world you had to buy a server to sprawl it, virt makes it so much easier

Kenon Owens: That is the downside, the upside is tremendous.


Kenon Owens: Now I can run those apps and have quicker time to implementation by deploying the apps in a VM

Kenon Owens: I have the ability with Live Migration and PRO Tips to rebalance my workloads across servers as the utilization changes

Kenon Owens: I can be much more efficient and in the near term save companies money

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Kenon, on that migration comment, what about the world of P2V, physical to virtual?

Kenon Owens: Well, with tools like the MAP tool we talked about earlier, we can now find what is virtualizable, now how do I get them into a VM?

Kenon Owens: With System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 we have a P2V capability that will take a running physical Windows Machine and convert it into a VM. Then I can gain the benefits of Virtualization on all machines I can get in there.

Picard: How can System Center assist or rule deployments of virtual environments? I'm thinking here about the ability to automate a resizing of the virtual environment according to the demand (deployment or decommissioning of hypervisors within an existing cloud, deployment and move of virtual machine accordingly, etc).

Kenon Owens: Picard, great question, and you have touched on where Virtualization is going

Kenon Owens: To be able to respond to the load within your local datacenter, and expand to use resources when needed and contract when not

Kenon Owens: is where we are taking virtualization

Kenon Owens: Today we have some of those capabilities with PRO Packs and Integrating System Center and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V with Live migration to redistribute the workload within a farm as the workload changes

Kenon Owens: What could happen in the future is actually seeing the workload changing and as it changes adjust the systems by deploying new Hyper-V machines and automagically adding them to the cluster with say Configuration manager and VMM and such

Kenon Owens: The future and where we can take virtualization by leveraging our management expertise, combining it with cloud principles is just incredibly exciting!

Jesse Hackman: Just a newbie in IT and would like to know about how to transfer virtual server from computer to server.

Kenon Owens: Jesse, to move a VM from one server to another you can now use a technology called Live Migration that is built into Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V


Kenon Owens: Adding on to that

Kenon Owens: You basically put the Hyper-V machines in a Failover Cluster, and put the VM on a shared LUN. To better manage the environment, USE System Center Virtual Machine Manager to do infrastructure Management

BDenny29: How do you envision the System Center Mobile Device Manager keeping up with the ever evolving line of Smartphone offerings from Blackberry/iPhone etc.?

Kenon Owens: Also, if you tack on OpsMgr and use PRO enabled management packs, you would be able to get more automation

Jeff Wettlaufer: hey BDenny29 - great question. MDM has actually been migrated into System Center engineering, and will evolve into core product functionality in ConfigMgr Vnext. So, a lot of what you may see today in SCMDM, will exist in the Device Management capability moving forward. We are tightly integrated to WM 6.1, 6.5 and soon WM7, and have agreements in place to jointly develop platform management moving to our next release with Nokia Symbian. As for Blackberry and Apple, those are great products and have definite market share. To integrate those into your management story, we today have partners like Odessy, Quest and Citrix who can assist with those devices, and we are actively investigating our own device roadmap.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Adding to that.

Jeff Wettlaufer: In our next release of Configuration Manager, we are developing a concept called User Device Affinity, which supports our Vision of User Centric Client Management.

Jeff Wettlaufer: what that means is

Jeff Wettlaufer: In our next release we will have a software model that calculates on the fly who you are, what kind of device you are on (primary laptop, walkup kiosk desktop, home system or device) and depending on your connection we will present you an application version that suites that scenario. These are called Deployment Types, or deployment rules, and support full traditional MSI installs, virt app formats, scripts and of course CAB files for devices.

Jeff Wettlaufer: so

Jeff Wettlaufer: the scenario where Julie from Accounting is on her work laptop in the office, and opens a spreadsheet, we may provide that app association with full install - but

Jeff Wettlaufer: when Julie travels home and wants to see that data on her phone, we would support that data file association with the cab install of Excel.

Jeff Wettlaufer: then when Julie gets home and is on her home PC, we may further deliver excel to her through TS, VDI, or virt app experiences.

Jeff Wettlaufer: User Device Affinity is what we call it.


Charles: In the new Virtualized environment what MS certifications will hiring managers be looking for?

Kenon Owens: Virtualization in Windows Server is just a piece of the OS, in other words if you are MCSE certified, you will have had Hyper-V training

Kenon Owens: Now on the Systems Center side, I will let Jeff answer that

Jeff Wettlaufer: Thanks Kenon, there are a collection of MOC, or MS Official Curriculum, that one can pursue. We have both online learning as well as official training that one can get certified in. While we

Jeff Wettlaufer: don’t officially today have Virt certifications from System Center, as a strategy we have seen a lot of downturn in official 5 day instructure lead training for customers and partners. Why? The time it takes to go on the course is too long to be out of the office, and they are expensive for everyone. Expensive for the trainee, and expensive to build. They are expensive to build in both time and cost. For example, a 5 day MOC can take between 9-19 months to build, and to hit a market in the right time, like when a product or technology launches, the workback of when that training has to be started to be built puts a strain on finding people who are experts enough to build it. The core people who know the bits, well they are focused on shipping the technology. So.....

Jeff Wettlaufer: We are finding there are far more effective ways to delivery training. For example, on demand training, where a person can go when they want, online, cheaply, or free and walk through a hands on lab, are very effective, and cost effective for us to build and delver. Also easy to rev as some technology changes. So

Jeff Wettlaufer: HoL online are 1 way, but also, the world of digital content has really come a long way for us, so things like podcasts, online demonstrations, blogging, webcasts and other forms of digital content can be extremely effective.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Employers like certs. They seem to be feathers in the CV cap. When I talk to IT Pros, Execs, and IT Management people all over the world, these certs seem to be decreasing in value, with more emphasis on experience, and product knowledge.

Jeff Wettlaufer: Some areas like Management, Virt and Security are all evolving so quickly, that official certification training isn’t agile enough to deliver, or be certified in.

Jeff Wettlaufer: I am no expert in training, but that is just want I am seeing. From our perspective, I don’t look for a person to be certified, or MOC lettered like MCSE.

Jeff Wettlaufer: If you need a training element covered in a cert category - let us know, I am happy to talk about a specific area.

Marasigan: What are the pre-requisites for Virtual Server, and what are some of the benefits some of your clients have seen after implementing it?

Kenon Owens: Virtual Server is our hosted platform, and would run on either a Windows Server 2008 or 2003 platform. I would instead however recommend using Hyper-V


Kenon Owens: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2 are fantastic Virtualization platforms

Kenon Owens: They require a machine with either AMD-V or Intel-VT chipsets

Kenon Owens: But when you use them, they can create a solid platform for running MANY virtual machines. Also, they support migration capabilities like Live Migration

Kenon Owens: This gives them a way of moving your applications to the systems that have the resources to manage them

Kenon Owens: The biggest benefits have been lower costs, both up from capital, and ongoing Operational expenditures as well as

Kenon Owens: Increased availability due to the ease of restarting or recoding a virtual machine along with site/disaster recovery, and...

Kenon Owens: improved business agility - allowing an IT organization to give the applications/services the resources they need when they need them


dantrainor: What are some options for organizations interested in migrating from existing Virtualization systems, such as VMware, Xen, KVM, OpenVZ, QEMU, etc? Is there a recommended approach to this?

Kenon Owens: Dan, Great Question! There are a couple of ways to migrate from an existing virtualization solution to a Microsoft Virtualization Infrastructure.

Kenon Owens: First of all, I would not recommend a rip and replace strategy, it would be too disruptive

Kenon Owens: instead, I would recommend a phased migration approach with some coexistence

Kenon Owens: Start off with an Introduction where you use a Microsoft Virtualization in new projects or say a development one

Kenon Owens: Then, move to the Expand phase where you grow the MS presence, and reallocate the licenses to the other farms (here you would start using our P2V Tools to start moving VMs from one platform to another)

Kenon Owens: Entrench your MS Virt Infrastructure by putting all new projects on MS Virt, and also retiring the older virt version

Moderator: We have one hour left in todays chat - please send your questions through now and we'll get to them before the chat ends!

Kenon Owens: Then finally remove the older platform



Tewary: How can we cut costs in the enterprise with Microsoft systems management and virtualization tools?

Kenon Owens: With Virtualization you can cut costs by consolidating and making better uses of your resources. Instead of buying a new datacenter, just consolidate your old one

Kenon Owens: Plus you can use existing skill sets to manage these as they are managed via the Windows common tools

Jeff Wettlaufer: hey Tewary, that’s a great question, we have had a lot of interest in cost cutting efforts over the past year :). There is no doubt that Management services like System Center can accelerate cost savings by adding centralized management of both physical and virtual services, systems and capabilities.

Kenon Owens: You can save money on DR and ensure better uptime which means the company will lose less during an outage and probably have less outages in the first place

Jeff Wettlaufer: Tewary, from a client perspective, managed virt in the forms of desktop and application virt can significantly reduce costs around application compatibility, packaging, delivery and system impact. Forms of managed virt like App-V, where System Center streams or delivers applications in a virtual format to the client can significantly reduce costs, and then on the managed desktop side where things like VDI can come into the story, virt can also be a reduced cost. Check out our War on Cost site, where we have some great data we arrived at from several years talking to customers about Infrastructure Optimization, and technology adoption. The link is http://www.spotlightoncost.com

rishi: how much does it cost?

Kenon Owens: For the Virtualization Platform, Hyper-V is a part of Windows Server 2008 R2, so if you are licensed for Windows Server 2008 R2, you have Hyper-V. There are Standard and Enterprise and Datacenter versions of that depending on how many VMs you want to run. On System Center we have the Server Management Suite of licenses, both Enterprise and Datacenter depending on, again, how many VMs you want to run

Jeff Wettlaufer: We have a great easy to read site on our pricing and licensing for System Center capabilities. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/pricing-licensing.aspx where you can find more detail. For example, the Server Management Suite http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/management-suites.aspx and the ECI - or Enrollment for Core Infrastructure. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-options/enrollments.aspx#tab=2

Jeff Wettlaufer: the ECI is really interesting. For example…

Jeff Wettlaufer: The Enrollment for Core Infrastructure helps you easily acquire the foundation for a protected, well-managed IT infrastructure by offering a cost-efficient way to license software together in a simple per processor license.


Jeff Wettlaufer: ECI includes Server, System Center and Forefront. Here is a link to a datasheet breaking out the details....http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/9/A/89A3F8B9-94DE-4956-A56E-F6D2B215D0E6/Enrollment_for_Core_Infrastructure_Datasheet.pdf

dantrainor: Can you elaborate on what kind of virtualization entitlements are allowed under which platforms etc etc?

Kenon Owens: I am guessing you are asking for how many VMs I can run with which license

Kenon Owens: That is what I will answer, if you want something different, please elaborate

Kenon Owens: Windows Server 2008 R2 comes in three editions, Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter

Kenon Owens: Depending on which license you apply to that physical machine will allow a specific number of VMs to be run on that system.

dantrainor: In a nutshell, that is my question. I know it may be a bit vague but lots of people - even myself - did not consider virtualization until I heard about what kind of entitlements were included.

Kenon Owens: In other words if I apply 1 Standard Edition License (SE) to a box, then I can run 1 VM on that box

Kenon Owens: If I apply 10 SE licenses I can run 10 VMs

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Kenon and DanTrainor, we have also published some information how Microsoft has Adapted Windows Server System Licensing to Virtualization Scenarios. You can see this here. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx

Kenon Owens: They can be different VMs at different times, but only a max of 10

Kenon Owens: If I apply one Enterprise Edition License (EE) then I can run up to 4 VMs

Kenon Owens: If I apply 3 EE licenses then I can run up to 12

Kenon Owens: I can live migrate VMs back and forth between boxes, BUT I can never run more than 12 on this box in the above example

rishi: thanks!

Jeff Wettlaufer: Here is the Virtualization Team Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/

Moderator: Just 30 minutes left in the chat - get your questions in now!

Kenon Owens: With Datacenter Edition (DE) I can run an unlimited amount of VMs on the system

Kenon Owens: So, if I am running basically on average 1 VM per core, then DE is the best solution


Kenon Owens: REMEMBER, however, that DE is licensed per physical socket, NOT per box

Kenon Owens: so license appropriately

Kenon Owens: Now, System Center is license similarly, check out the links wrote earlier as they really show the power of the bundle

T: why are they limited to 1 vm per core?

Kenon Owens: We aren't limiting to 1 VM per core, what I am saying is that if you are running AT LEAST 1 VM per core, than the DE license model is the most cost effective

Kenon Owens: I have customers that are running 40 VMs on an 8 core machine and most of those are SMP VMs

Kenon Owens: so there isn't a limit of 1 VM per core

T: what sort of advantages do you offer over competitor products like VMware?

Kenon Owens: SMP means Symmetric Multi-Processor, basically, any system with more than 1 virtual CPU assigned to it

Kenon Owens: Jeff, can you tell me what is DCM and why would I use it?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Kenon thanks for letting me in the chat (we are getting paid for the number of words we type DCM is a capability in ConfigMgr called Desired Configuration Management - that allows us to define Configuration Items, or CIs.....

Jeff Wettlaufer: and we then take a collection of CIs and define a Baseline. Once we have that CB< we can apply it to our systems. As soon as that application of the CB happens, we start to measure what is called Configuration Drift, or what systems are missing particular Configuration Items.

Jeff Wettlaufer: CIs can be OS levels, apps, app versions, restricted apps, updates or anything you want to try and detect on a system, synch as files, directories, registry key values etc.

Jeff Wettlaufer: This model based configuration management allows the Admin, or the business to define a 'model' for what a system should look like, client or server, and allows the Admin to report on where they are in the config efforts.

Jeff Wettlaufer: So effectively, the Admin can build a client or server, define that as a baseline and deploy that configuration out. This applies to any system we can see, physical or virtual.

Jeff Wettlaufer: More on DCM can be found here.http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/desired-configuration-management.aspx


Jeff Wettlaufer: Link http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/desired-configuration-management.aspx

Alexopoulos: How can System Center help my Company in the ITIL Configuration Management?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey Alexopoulos, ITIL is a huge area, and is made up of a lot of moving parts. From a System Center perspective, ITIL provides a framework for change management, process management, workflow management and approvals.

Jeff Wettlaufer: We have a new product entering the market called System Center Service Manager, that will provide a CMDB, and hooks through Connector technology to things like Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Active Directory as well as a connector framework for 3rd party technologies, such as Help Desk products.

Jeff Wettlaufer: More information can be found on Service Manager here.

Jeff Wettlaufer: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx

Jeff Wettlaufer: There is also a large industry and partner community for support around this space, as well as Microsoft Partners like the Solution Accelerator Team. The links for these are ....

Tyrrell: We recently introduced MS Forefront Client Security into production. MOM 2005 comes with Forefront and is responsible for the alerting and notification task. Question: Is there an upgrade path from MOM 2005 to SC, in regards to migrating Alert and Notification task for the Forefront Server from MOM 2005 to SCOM 2007?

Jeff Wettlaufer: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/partners.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/secguide/

Jeff Wettlaufer: We also have a new Security Compliance Manager Beta program which you can access here.

Jeff Wettlaufer: http://co1piltwb.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/mcoeredir/mcoeredirect.aspx?linkId=13139967&s1=9d706b18-5c3c-4d6f-b46a-fb793f7a7eaa

Kenon Owens: Tyrrell, from my understanding there isn't a direct upgrade from MOM 2005 to SCOM2007, so for the actually Operations Manager Product you would basically install the new OpsMgr and run it side by side with MOM 2005. Then migrate the machines from the one to the other over time. As for any Management Pack integration, I am unsure how that piece would work, but I believe there is an updated MP for OpsMgr 2007 you could use

Moderator: There are 10 minutes remaining in this chat. If you have any questions you would like answered, please submit them now!

Chan: How do we prevent SCCM agent loss from SCCM server?


Jeff Wettlaufer: Hi Chan, I believe this is referring to how to ensure the ConfigMgr Site remains connected with the managed clients,

Jeff Wettlaufer: Chan ConfigMgr can report on what clients have not responded to policy in the last 'x' days.

Jeff Wettlaufer: This means that you can run a report that states what clients are radio silent. In the report data you can begin your troubleshooting, and you may see an error flag about what the last response was, for example - 'software update successful pending reboot' -

Jeff Wettlaufer: On the client side we also log activity like heartbeat and policy refresh

Jeff Wettlaufer: so if you are reaching out from a help desk and looking at a target system you can view local client reports in the logs directory

Jeff Wettlaufer: Here is a link to troubleshooting client issues, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693982.aspx and here is a link to the team blog with a similar topic http://blogs.technet.com/configmgrteam/archive/2009/03/13/troubleshooting-client-deployment-issues-running-ccmsetup-as-a-service.aspx

Jeff Wettlaufer: Last 5 minutes, come on, let’s play stump Kenon!

Steve: I know Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager will manage my Microsoft virtual machines running on Hyper-V, but I also have some VMware ESX virtual machines as well. Does VMM provide support across my virtualized environments?

Kenon Owens: VMM can manage the Virtual Machine management for both Hyper-V and VMware ESX Systems!

Kenon Owens: We don't manage the particular ESX Servers, but we do manage the VMs running on top of them

Kenon Owens: We do this by interfacing with the VMware APIs through vCenter, and we support both ESX Server 3.x and vSphere 4

Kenon Owens: So, now you can have 1 interface for all of your Virtual Machine Management needs whether they be MS virtual machines or VMware

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey guys, this has been a lot of fun. These have been great questions. Both Kenon, myself, and our entire team have several events over the next 6-12 months where we will be attending, speaking, demonstrating this technology. I did a blog post about it, http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/12/21/thinking-about-attending-an-event-in-2010.aspx


Jeff Wettlaufer: We would love to see you at one of these events, and don’t forget our team blogs and twitterstreams http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter , http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenterexperts Kenon @ms_int_virt Jeff @jeffwettlaufer

T: is system center available in the action pack?

Jeff Wettlaufer: Hey T can you clarify what you mean by Action Pack?

Moderator: Thanks everybody for attending today’s System Center Live Chat! Special Thanks to our speakers, Kenon and Jeff.

Moderator: For any other System Center questions or information, visit the Microsoft System Center community on Toolbox.com: http://it.toolbox.com/communities/system-center/


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