Dev & IT Pro Days 2007:: Pre-Conference

For the first time we are organizing a pre-conference day during the Dev & IT Pro days. During that full day of sessions you will learn about the Virtualization techniques and features of today and tomorro. Here is a sneak preview of the Pre-Conf agenda.

 

Session Abstracts

Microsoft Vitalization: Today and Tomorrow

Virtual PC and Virtual Server have gained significant adoption in development and test environments, and are an important stepping stone to realizing Microsoft's vision of self-managing dynamic systems. Vitalization technology is gaining a foothold in the data centre, enabling more efficient utilization of hardware and helping IT react more quickly to changing demands. This session introduces the Microsoft Virtual Server technology, its capabilities, how its being deployed today and the benefits and challenges customers are seeing. We look at how Microsoft will evolve the technology with the introduction of Hypervisor in codename Longhorn Server. We’ll look at the steps Microsoft is taking to help customers and partners use Virtual Server effectively in heterogeneous environments. Finally, we’ll predict how vitalization will change IT, from the data centre to the branch, servers to the desktop.

 

Managing a Mixed Virtual/Physical Environment: Tools and Techniques

Microsoft believes the management of physical and virtual machines should be largely transparent. The same tools and techniques should be used to deploy, monitor, maintain, and backup physical and virtual machines. For this to happen, tools need to understand the difference between physical and virtual, and automatically adjust the actions they undertake to accomplish the same task for physical and virtual. This session looks at System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsoft's first product which bridges the gap between physical and virtual. We’ll look at the complete lifecycle, from provisioning, to backup, migration (physical to virtual and back) to monitoring, and how this fits into the management of the rest of the server infrastructure.  

 

Microsoft Vitalization Deep Dive

What is the Architecture of Virtual Server, and how will this change with the introduction of Hypervisor? How does host clustering work, what are enlightenments? This session starts with a look at the components which make up Virtual Server, covers the changes introduced with Windows Vitalization (Hypervisor), and takes a detailed look how the vitalization stack works. We cover the High Availability capabilities inherent in Virtual Server, investigate the benefits of AMD-V and Intel VT hardware vitalization for non-Windows guests and cover some of the standards work Microsoft is pushing to improve the performance of disk and network for the vitalization industry.

 

Notes from the field: Practical advice on adoption, deployment and migration

If you believe the hype, you could be forgiven for thinking Vitalization can solve most IT problems. In this session, we will share the experience gained by customers that deployed and managed Virtual Server. We’ll look at typical workloads, why they’ve been virtualizes, the challenges they needed to overcome to gain business benefits. And, of course what the business benefits were. Things like backup and recovery, load balancing and capacity management are all covered. In effect, the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

Note that you can still submit your IT Pro session to me: arlindo.alves@microsoft.com

 

Technorati tags: virtualization, virtual server, hypervisor, microsoft