Archive for category Desktop Virtualization

With the postponement of Catalyst Europe, I had the opportunity to virtually attend the Microsoft MMS conference keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. MMS has long been one of Microsoft’s best conferences, and this year didn’t disappoint. I’m not going to rehash the major announcements, but you can read the full details in the following Microsoft System Center team blog posts:

• System Center Service Manager 2010: An Integrated Platform for IT Service Management
• Configuration Manager vNext: User Centric Client Management
• Mobile Device Management with Configuration Manager vNext
• Configuration Manager 2007 R3 Beta released
• What’s coming up with the next versions of SCOM and VMM!
• User Centric, and System Center Configuration Manager vNext
• MMS 2010 Kicks Off in Las Vegas

As I had done in previous conferences, I commented throughout the keynotes via twitter. Here is a summary of my take on Bob Muglia’s Tuesday keynote and Brad Anderson’s Wednesday keynote.

Tuesday Keynote – Bob Muglia

• Bob opened by stating that Microsoft’s has been building dynamic IT management for the last seven years as part of their Dynamic Systems Initiative. Microsoft is essentially underlining the fact that they are not newcomers to dynamic IT and cloud and is playing on its strength in systems management.
• Bob highlighted the need for standard service models, and I agree. I started discussing this topic with vendors in 2008 and blogged about standard models in the security context early last year. I recently discussed this issue in my posts on metadata standards and the infrastructure authority. Still, vendors need to move beyond talk about standards for service delivery, metadata, and application interfaces, and deliver them. Mobility to and among cloud infrastructure-as-a-service providers requires these standard models. It’s time for vendors to show their hands, even if they’re holding proprietary service delivery models, metadata sets, and interfaces today. There are far too many competing interests to expect vendors to agree on an industry standard any time soon. Still, progress is being made on the standards front. SNIA’s Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), the DMTF’s Open Cloud Standards Incubator, and the Cloud Security Alliance’s work on standard cloud security models are three good examples.
• It would be nice if Microsoft would offer a complete set of documentation on how to stage their on-stage demos. The orchestration practices that were demonstrated are of high value and Microsoft should share the configuration information with their clients.
• Microsoft’s demos were Microsoft-centric, as expected. I would like to see Microsoft demonstrate integration with third party management products, which would strengthen their position on interoperability. Most Gartner clients are not homogenous Microsoft shops; demonstrating orchestration capabilities across multi-vendor management stacks would speak to the needs of the typical enterprise organization. If Microsoft doesn’t want to do this at a conference, then why not offer this information online?
• I thought Microsoft made a great move in acquiring Opalis, and liked seeing the Opalis integration and System Center Service Manager 2010 shown on-stage.
• Microsoft demonstrated long distance VM live migration, and in the process Muglia took a swipe at VMware, noting that moving VMs to new sites requires deep integration and validation across all management services. In the demo, Microsoft was able to show processes such as validating that a recent backup was completed before allowing the inter-site live migration to continue. While the demo was impressive, I would have been even more impressed if Microsoft validated the recent backup by integrating with a third party tool such as NetBackup.
• Microsoft is talking cloud using the terms “shared cloud” and “dedicated cloud.” There are so many disparate terms out there for cloud that pretty soon Rosetta Stone will release a CD on speaking cloud. The Gartner/Burton teams have been working closely on defining a core set of cloud terminology, and its important for vendors in the space to adopt common definitions.
• Edwin Yuen demonstrated System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) vNext, which will include drag-and-drop capabilities for deploying multi-tier applications. The demo was powerful, but my existing concerns about SCVMM were unanswered. Today the product is not extensible, and it does not support the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) industry standard; I’m hoping those two features make it in to SCVMM vNext.
• Microsoft’s demo of cloud service management looked solid from the administrator’s point of view, but nothing was shown from the consumer’s point of view. IT service delivery requires the presentation of services to consumers using intuitive interfaces that the customer understands. Microsoft has yet to show a consumer-centric view of how consumers will interact with Microsoft cloud service management.

Wednesday Keynote – Brad Anderson

• Brad opened by talking about how the Windows 7 release was the most significant event in the desktop space in a very long time. I would counter that equally significant was Microsoft’s announcement to end-of-life (EOL) Windows XP in April 2014. The XP EOL announcement put IT organizations “on the clock” to replace their existing client endpoint OS, and in many cases re-architect all major aspects of user experience and application delivery.
• There was a good discussion about power management, but one interesting area of research that was not mentioned was Microsoft’s work on in-guest VM power management. Take a look at Joulemeter for more information.
• I liked hearing Brad talk about the future desktop representing a convergence of services. This is a concept I recently discussed in the post “The Next Gen Desktop’s Cloudy Future.”
• I saw a bit of irony seeing Microsoft discuss Hyper-V R2 SP1’s dynamic memory feature on stage. A year ago Microsoft was solidly against VMware’s memory overcommit feature, which allows VMs to share a physical pool of memory on a server. Jeff Woolsey did a nice job describing Hyper-V’s dynamic memory capabilities in the following posts:
  • Dynamic Memory Coming To Hyper-V
  • Dynamic Memory Coming to Hyper-V Part 2…
  • Dynamic Memory Coming to Hyper-V Part 3…
  • Dynamic Memory Coming to Hyper-V Part 4
• Microsoft demonstrated the RemoteFX technology that was acquired from Calista. It will be interesting to see how quickly Microsoft’s IHV partners offer a shipping solution. Several have stated their intent to support the technology.
• Microsoft demonstrated their new Windows InTune product – a cloud service for managing PCs. While I like where Microsoft is taking PC management, I’m still disappointed that they have yet to address desktop OS licensing for cloud-based desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) deployments. Device-based desktop OS licensing is incompatible with the on-demand and device-agnostic nature of cloud service delivery, and Microsoft needs to address this issue sooner rather than later.
• I was disappointed by the System Center Service Manager demonstration on compliance validation. The demo included no mention of virtualization or virtual infrastructure, which is the default x86 application platform of many of our clients. If the product is not providing controls and validation capabilities for multi-tenant VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer environments, then it is not ready for prime time.

Overall I was very impressed with the conference keynotes. System Center Service Manager and Microsoft’s increasing integration of the Opalis software are two areas to watch. Muglia’s talk about standard service delivery models also leads me to believe that Microsoft is poised to aggressively go after the cloud provider space. The release of Microsoft’s Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit and growing number of partners in Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center Alliance (DDA) is proof of that. What did you think of MMS 2010? I’d love to hear your thoughts.