New Blackberry model announced

The Blackberry Bold was announced overnight Sunday, and the new device looks pretty slick.

If sports HSDPA for super-fast data performance, WiFi, GPS, a 2MP camera and the most interesting feature to me: a desktop media manager that integrates into iTunes. If this isn't a direct attack on the iPhone, I don't know what is.

Look for it at your ATT store later this summer. Between this and rumors of a new iPhone, ATT is going to be selling a LOT of hardware this year.

XP SP3 notes beginning to trickle out

Now that XP SP3 has been out for a couple weeks, some details are starting to trickle out regarding some of the bumps in the road associated with the deployment.

The first issue is related to AMD-powered HP desktops that are running the HP image of Windows XP. Like many of us, HP uses a single image across all their hardware, both AMD and Intel PCs. The image loads a driver for Intel power management, which is fine right up until SP3 is installed on an AMD-powered PC and the system reboots. At that point the system tries to use Intel codes on the AMD motherboard and things do not end well. Disabling the driver in advance of the SP3 install will solve the issue, but not knowing that in advance is a recipe for a very unhappy upgrade.

Another issue is related to a change in the Internet Explorer security zones. Of course, the effect has absolutely nothing to do with Internet browsing and everything to do with copying files from a network location to a local PC. The issue is similar to the effect of running menu links from a shared network location, where a security prompt would come up if the network location isn't in your trusted sites list. There are some steps for a workaround, and they can be managed via GPOs, but it is annoying.

There are some other fun improvements that XP SP3 offers, including for Microsoft's implementation of Network Access Protection, so it is definitely worth installing. But, like everything else, make sure to test it well before deploying to users.

Fun future features in Windows Server

Finally something not virtualization related! As part of the Virtualization thing I attended earlier in the week we also got to talk about some things related to Windows Server that are not part of the virtualization stack. The guy presenting is an engineer in the Server group and he mentioned a few interesting nuggets outside the virtualization realm.

One of the more interesting bits was a hint that NTFS might actually finally get the update that it needs to allow for multiple host access and other features. NTFS was supposed to be updated as part of Longhorn/Server 2008, but that slipped as they weren't able to get it done inside the release timeline. But the feature is back in the product road map for a couple years out and he seemed pretty confident that it would make the date.

There is also an effort to further componentize the OS, with the goal of shrinking the core components down to ~300 MB. Of course, getting functionality out of the server would require adding more components, so the server will always be more than the 300 MB, but they're working in that direction.

And there is some discussion on improving the recoverability of servers by removing the configuration data from the servers. One thing that Exchange has done pretty well since the 2000 version is that the configuration is stored partially in Active Directory. AD is generally running on multiple systems and there are multiple online copies of the database, plus you need AD first before anything else will work. So if AD is online, why can't all the data about a server also be stored in AD? Imagine taking bare metal, installing a basic Windows Server code base on it and then pointing it to AD and just having it figure out the apps and configuration that it needs from there instead of having to do application restores and other fun stuff like that. This will likely depend a bit on the efforts to update the VHD format to be able to layer apps on top of the OS rather than just being an OS (discussed in Wednesday's post), but it will be pretty cool if they manage to pull it off.

Just some fun bits to look forward to a few years down the line...

Fusion 2 Beta released

It's all virtualization here on Technology Update this week apparently...

VMware released the beta of Fusion 2.0 this week, including a bunch of cool new features:

• True Multiple Display Support
• DirectX 9.0 with Shader Model 2 graphics
• Virtual Printing - Virtual machines automatically detect and map your default Mac printer and all configured Mac printers
• New Virtual Machine Library
• Shared Folders Improvements
• Integrated VMware Importer and VMware Converter (P2V)
• USB Improvements
• Allow USB mice/tablets in a virtual machine without custom configuration
• Faster USB Storage performance
• Full Screen Improvements
• Support super large displays that are over 2048 (MacBook and MacBook Air) or 4096 (iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro) pixels wide
• Mouse and Keyboard Improvements - Support advanced USB input devices like graphics tablets

These are pretty significant improvements and should make running virtual apps on Macs all that much better. Plus, it will be a free upgrade for Fusion 1.x users when it is released for real. Good stuff.

Microsoft's vision of virtualization -- Part 3

So far I've covered the server and desktop aspects of virtualization from the Microsoft event I attended earlier this week. This post focuses on the management arena, the space where I think that Microsoft actually has accomplished the most.

So once you get your whole environment virtualized, there is a lot to do on the maintenance side of the house. In addition to monitoring all the guest servers, you now also need to monitor the hosts to ensure that the hardware remains functional and that none of the guests are stepping on each others' toes. Some of this can be automated through features like DRS from VMware, but some of it requires a bit more visibility into the servers. After all, moving a guest server that is hogging resources to a less loaded host doesn't address the fact that the guest is still hogging resources. Microsoft is touting their Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and SCCM products as a means to manage a heterogeneous virtualized environment, and it seems to be a pretty decent approach.

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) is about to be released (the 2007 version is available now) and will address many issues of management in a heterogeneous environment. It will allow for the management of VMware, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V environments, all from a single console. And they are working on integration for Citrix/Xen, too. The tool is based on open APIs and PowerShell, two of my favorite things, so it will allow you to do things like script the Vmotion move of a guest from one host to another, from the same console that you can manager your dev environment that is running on Hyper-V. I know that VMware has some scripting, too, but having a single interface for everything is nice, especially when an environment is big enough that a single vendor isn't really an option.

Building on top of the System Center line of products, Microsoft also has their Data Protection Manager that integrates into the Hyper-V code, allowing for VSS-aware snapshots of guests from the host system. I wrote about that in the first part of this series and I'm not going to get into the details again, but it is pretty cool and part of the management so it is worth mentioning.

And still in the System Center realm, there is the SCCM/MOM integration for the guest OS sessions. The big feature that Microsoft is pushing here is the availability of their Performance Resource Optimization ("PRO") Tips in the guests as well as on the host. The idea behind the PRO tips is that they are application aware and can provide troubleshooting best practices - either as a suggestion or an automated action - based on the agent seeing various activity in the applications, not just at the OS level. So when it sees 75% CPU utilization on a guest session the MOM agent might be able to see that it is the SQL Server process that is causing the usage spike, and tell you why the SQL process is doing that. This isn't really new - it is part of MOM, but it does integrate into the whole SCCM and VMM environment, so the unified interface there is nice.

Microsoft has also moved management out of IIS and into an MMC. It seems that they're finally realizing that not everyone wants to run everything from a web browser, nor do we all want to have dozens of web servers everywhere that we have to keep track of and monitor.

The advances in VMM are definitely worth keeping an eye out for; I think that they will be more significant than the Hyper-V release from a management perspective.

Microsoft's vision of virtualization -- Part 2

As promised in yesterday's post, here is part 2 of my summary from the Microsoft Virtualization thing I attended this week, focusing on desktop virtualization technologies and where Microsoft sees them going.

Microsoft has made three significant purchases in the past couple years that focus on the desktop virtualization arena. There was the Softricity purchase for application virtualization, and a new release of that is coming soon (v4.5) as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) that should almost be Enterprise-ready for streaming applications to an existing OS install. More significant than that, however were the purchases of Calista and Kidaro, two companies that focus on performance and functionality for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) implementations.

In the server virtualization space densities of 20 or 50 guests to 1 host are pretty good. But if you're trying to get a VDI implementation for a couple thousand workstations a 50:1 ratio still doesn't meet the needs of most organizations. There is a lot of effort going in to improving the hypervisor performance to meet these needs, but it is not quite there yet. As for the Calista and Kidaro purchases, I now have a much better understanding of what they are all about.

• Calista was focused almost completely on improving graphics performance in the RDP stream. They had made huge strides in reverse engineering the protocol and then leveraging the GPU on the local machine, rather than the CPU, to make graphics performance in a terminal session much, much, much better. With the recent claim by someone from nVidia that the GPU is more important than the CPU in terms of future improvements in system performance, the focus on using the GPU is actually completely reasonable. From Microsoft's perspective the Calista purchase is all about improving the RDP protocol's graphics handling though any means they can leverage. Combining this with the synthetic drivers functionality that I mentioned yesterday where the full feature set of the hardware can be leveraged through the hypervisor, and things are looking up in the graphics arena for terminal services shops. Still, there is some acknowledgement that neither RDP nor ICA are able to provide the full experience of device connectivity, UI and performance that a true VDI solution would require. That makes it reasonably likely that the Calista technology will get rolled into the new super-RDP, whenever that comes out, to make VDI more feasible.
• The Kidaro purchase is a cross between Virtual PC and Published Applications in a Citrix/Terminal Server environment. Kidaro includes both a client and a server component and allows for an application to run completely in a Virtual PC environment on a local PC with the appearance of just a regular local application. Plus, the server component allows for the VHD associated with the app to be managed centrally and distributed or revoked from the console, precluding the need to individually manage the VHDs on all the PCs. So if you have some legacy application or custom code that requires Office 95 to function but you also want to deploy Vista you can build a centrally managed Windows XP SP3 VHD and install Office 95 on it, distribute the VHD via Kidaro to the appropriate people and also provide a seamless UI experience via Kidaro. The effect will be similar to how VMware's Fusion product works with Macs, allowing a seamless window for a Windows app to run inside OS X. For folks who have worked in a terminal services environment and struggled with the seamless versus window-in-a-window UI this is particularly appealing. The Kidaro product will be rolled into the MDOP once it is fully integrated into the Microsoft suite.

Microsoft is also continuing to work with Citrix/Xen on some connection brokering functionality. The Citrix platform has been well ahead of Microsoft on the connection brokering (published apps, load balancing, etc.) and web interface pieces for several years now, so Microsoft is continuing to leverage that, in combination with their Virtual Machine Manager product (more on this tomorrow) and Hyper-V platform. The ability to have individually assigned VM sessions for some users who have special needs or the ability to provide an generic "shared" VM for users with similar needs allows for scalability and functionality similar to a terminal services environment, but with isolation between the users. This all depends on a new approach to "profile virtualization" to maintain user settings. In reality this is just folder redirection, but using virtualization in the name of something makes it cooler, right?

A real VDI solution that scales and provides a rich user experience is still a couple years out, but in certain niche markets, like call center apps, it will happen much sooner.

Microsoft's vision of virtualization -- Part 1

I had the great fortune to attend a presentation from Microsoft earlier this week where we spent a couple hours with one of the senior engineers in their server group discussion the future of the server OS, focusing specifically on virtualization. For the most part it was a discussion on serve virtualization, but there was some discussion of the desktop as well. We covered a ton of information and I can't get it into a single coherent post so I'm going to split it up over the next few days. Check back for more on virtualization management and some of the desktop bits later in the week.

Moving from "installation" to "configuration"
Microsoft is moving to adapt the VHD format, making it much more flexible for application deployment in addition to server OS virtualization. The goal seems to be a result that is a bit like a WIM in that it can be edited and updated, but also to have applications that can be delivered as VHDs to end users. These wouldn't be demo VHDs that have an OS install and then the application on top of that. Microsoft would expect that the end-user would provide a VHD or physical server install for the base OS and then be able to layer the application VHD on top of that. It sounds a bit like the SoftGrid platform but for servers instead of workstations. We'll see what comes of it, but it is definitely interesting. Not having to wait while a bunch of DLLs and other binaries copy from the install media would definitely be a nice change, though waiting for the one big VHD file probably isn't all that much faster in the long run. Still, the idea is that we would be focusing on configuring the applications rather than installing them.

Hyper-V and the other Hypervisors
Hyper-V is really close to being released, and it seems to have some very interesting benefits as a hypervisor option. I still maintain that it isn't a competitor in the Enterprise space (and the MS guy agreed, several times) yet, but it is clear that Microsoft is moving that direction with great haste, and good things will be coming in the next few product cycles. So, what are the good and bad things?

Hardware Drivers (good)- Microsoft's approach to the hardware situation is a bit different than VMware's (and similar to Xen's). Rather than writing a driver to emulate a specific hardware model (think the LSILogic SCSI controller in VMware), Microsoft has "synthetic drivers" for their hardware. The synthetic drivers can operate with driver code written by the hardware vendors to run in the guest OS sessions. This approach allows for a lot of flexibility for hardware support, both from a breadth of supported hardware as well as the features that can be supported. For example, if you're looking to host a VDI environment and buy a super-powerful video card to handle all sorts of fun UI features, you cannot take advantage of those features unless the guest OS can see the underlying hardware and leverage the power that it has. Synthetic drivers expose a framework that lets that happen. It requires the hardware manufacturers to write the drivers, but that should happen soon enough. The synthetic drivers also requires an OS that is aware of the virtualization platform, also known as an "elinghtented" OS. Fortunately, all the current Windows versions (XP SP3, 2003 SP2, Vista SP1, 2008) are enlightened, so that isn't a barrier.

Data Protection (good) - The VSS integration in Hyper-V takes the idea of snapshots to the next level. Currently, any VSS-integrated backup tool can tell a server that it is going to take a backup snapshot and the files would be quiesced for the snapshot. In a virtual environment, however, that doesn't do a lot of good. The VHD file would be quiesced, but without visibility into the guest OS there is no way to ensure that the applications inside the VHD will be aware that a backup is happening. This leaves you in a crash-consistent state - as if you pulled the plug on the server. Hyper-V exposes a new VSS service in the guest OS sessions. This service allows the host session to tell the guest that a VSS-aware backup is running. Any VSS-aware apps in the guest then quiesce, improving the reliability of the system when you recover it from the snapshot of the VHD. This is very useful for Active Directory, Exchange, SQL and SharePoint servers, as they are all VSS aware.

Host Migration (not as bad as I thought) - One of the major issues I have with Hyper-V as an Enterprise solution is that it doesn't allow for a Vmotion-type migration of a running system in a live state. They do have a "Quick Migration" however, that is a big step ahead of having to shut the server down, migrate it to a new host and then power it back up. The Quick Migration flushes the RAM state to disk, stops processing and then loads the RAM state on the new host and resumes processing. There is still a window where the guest OS is unavailable, but it is still better than having to shut the guest all the way down and power it back up. This would require a 1:1 ratio of VM to LUN, which is going to drive the storage guys crazy; see below for why.

Disk Management (good and bad) - The good news is that Hyper-V allows for pass-through disk access (same as RDMs in VMware), in addition to direct-attached storage, FC, iSCSI and ATA support. The pass-through doesn't have a huge performance benefit - only ~5% - but if you're doing pass-through it is almost always for management, not performance. The bad news is that the NTFS file system is really unhappy when more than one host tries to write to a volume at the same time. This means that if a VHD guest is active on a host and then you want to move it to another host you have to move all the VHDs on the same LUN. Essentially this means that each VHD has to be on its own LUN to maintain the flexibility that you need. Compared to the VMFS-3 file system from VMware this is a huge limitation. The good news is that the Windows Server guys are working on this, but it isn't going to happen until at least R2 of 2008, and probably not until the next version of Server.

That's pretty much what we talked about on the server virtualization front - or at least the parts that I found interesting and took notes on. Look for workstation virtualization notes tomorrow and management stuff heading into the weekend on Friday.

Virtualizing the I/O layer

Hardware and software virtualization are old hat at this point, thanks to VMware, Hyper-V, Softricity/SoftGrid, Altiris and many others in those spaces. So, lacking anything else new in those areas, some vendors have decided to hype the virtualization of the I/O layer, focusing on the "virutalization" of ethernet and SAN connectivity. I found an article/post about the topic from last week that talks about a couple vendors, 3Leaf and Xsigo, but neither the article nor the vendors are particularly up front on what they are actually doing. Their products are InfiniBand switches, plain and simple.

Don't get me wrong - I love the InfiniBand concept. But seeing these new vendors popping up with their "new" technologies is rather silly in many ways. InfiniBand basically extends the PCI plane from the server to a switch via a 10 Gbit connection. In the switch you can have multiple connections out to various other services, most commonly Ethernet NICs and Fiber Channel SAN connections. InfiniBand is getting more interesting now that the wiring and standards for the 10 Gbit connections are pretty easy and common, and also since 4 Gbit SAN connections are available, but it definitely isn't new technology. Cisco has been selling InfiniBand switches for at least 3 years, and the protocol goes back older than that.

Of course, the fact that the technology has been around a while actually is a good thing when looking to evaluate it, either in the form of these new vendors or from an established player like Cisco. Instead of multiple switches for each topology, everything runs from the server to the switching infrastructure on a single InfiniBand connection (two, for redundancy, if you're into that). Instead of installing various drivers to support all the hardware there is a single driver for the InfiniBand card. And from the InfiniBand switch you can provision multiple NICs and multiple HBAs on a server, all through the one InfiniBand connection. It will definitely reduce cabling complexities and provisioning time, so those are both good things.

Definitely an interesting technology to take a look at again, but also most definitely not new.

Searching for Office solutions

The switch from previous versions of the Microsoft Office Suite to Office 2007 is fraught with training troubles. The new Ribbon interface is a sea-change from the previous menu structure, and finding a command in the new version can prove troublesome. I had trouble again just this week finding a command for working with Headers (it is under the "Insert" tab, not the "View" tab, on the ribbon). Microsoft has (finally) admitted that maybe there really is a problem with the new UI. And they've decided to address this one, rather than how they're dealing with Vista's slow uptake.

There is now an new Microsoft-sponsored (and SharePoint driven) website called Office Labs. The site appears to focus on various tools that might make Office more user-friendly, and this seems to fit the bill.


Image from Microsoft

The Search Commands bit adds itself as a tab to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The search is super fast and supports type-down, so the results get more specific the more you type. Even better, it not only puts the buttons on the results pane for you to use, it also tells you where you can find it next time, even if it is five clicks deep.

Developments like this make Office 2007 significantly more usable, especially for folks who are apprehensive to the change it entails. If nothing else, it should help cut down on help desk calls.

More Virtualization improvements from Microsoft

While I still don't think that Microsoft's virtualization is ready for the enterprise space, they do continue the incremental growth that it takes to get to that point. The most recent instance of this that I've seen is their Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (that link might be restricted to Partners only - I'm not sure). The idea behind the tool is that there are often virtual machines that are used for some function or another but that might not be left in a powered on state all the time. These VMs will quickly fall out of compliance in terms of patch management and potentially have their Kerberos tickets expire, booting them out of a domain if they were a member. To address this issue Microsoft has integrated a management process into their Virtual Machine Manager toolkit. The process leverages PowerShell to wake up a machine, patch it and then put it back to sleep:

Image from Microsoft

The whole process is integrated with PowerShell scripts, so it has some incredible flexibility. I'm looking forward to a configuration that can update a "gold" image and run the sysprep process again, which I'm sure is just a matter of someone figuring out how to script. But the idea of having your new systems deployed fully up to date every time has me drooling in anticipation.

Of course, this is still beta stuff right now, but it seems to have a lot of promise.

Just how "world" is that World Phone?

There's an interesting graphic online in a recent article on the economist.com. It shows the areas of the world that have GSM coverage for a BlackBerry. Extrapolating that to cover any data service at all, since that's all that BlackBerry uses, it is an interesting view of the growth of mobile technology across the globe. Here's a hint: Avoid northern Canada, the Amazon , the Sahara and Gobi deserts, the Australian Outback and the Russian East and you should be fine.

Or, more simply, most places where lots of people live have service, so it isn't a big deal. But it is a cool picture.