Planet Lowyat

Are you interested with Hyper-V, Microsoft virtualization?

The session features a discussion of the virtualization technology roadmap and an outline of Microsoft’s vision for how these technologies will combine with future capabilities in processors, chipsets, and I/O devices to enable unprecedented flexibility by the Windows Server platforms.

Presented by Mike Neil

Length: 51 minutes 59 seconds

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VMware has just released a Beta 2 build of its very popular and free server virtualization software, VMware Server 2.0 (build 84186).

What’s New

New features and enhancements in the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 release:

• Updated VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access management interface: With the faster performance, improved stability and broader range of configuration options, the VI Web Access management interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive management experience. In addition, embedded help files are context sensitive based on the task being performed.
• Independent virtual machine console: With the new VMware Remote Console, you can access your virtual machine consoles independent of the VI Web Access management interface plus resize the virtual machine console windows as needed.
• Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.
• Multi-tiered permissions: Configure different levels of permissions to access virtual machines in different ways, including browsing, interacting, configuring and administering virtual machines.
• New hardware editors: Edit and add devices such as USB 2.0 devices and legacy devices such as floppy drives, serial and parallel ports.
• Automatically start your virtual machines: Select which virtual machines that you want to automatically start when VMware Server starts. In addition, there is also an option to boot the virtual machine directly into the BIOS Setup Screen.
• Link to Virtual Appliance Marketplace: Access thousands of pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run enterprise applications packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine. This speeds up time to value and simplifies software development, distribution, and management.

Existing VMware Server 2.0 Beta features

• New operating system support: The broadest operating system support of any host-based virtualization platform currently available, including support for Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10 in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• More scalable virtual machines:Support for up to 8 GB of RAM (up from 3.6 GB in Server 1.0) per virtual machine, 10 virtual network interface cards and up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors per virtual machine.
• 64-bit guest operating system support:Use 64-bit guest operating systems on 64-bit hardware to enable more scalable and higher performing computing solutions.
• Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode to improve performance in specific Linux environments.
• Support for VIX API 1.5: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.

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Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 management tools for the Hyper-V release candidate are now available.

This update package installs the Hyper-V remote management tools on a computer that is running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). This package includes the following:

• The Hyper-V Manager. The Hyper-V Manager is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides management access to a Windows Server 2008-based server that uses the Hyper-V role.
• The Virtual Machine Connection. The Virtual Machine Connection is a remote connection tool that you can use to establish an interactive session on a virtual machine.

Hyper-V provides customers with efficient and cost-effective virtualization infrastructure software. It enables customers to reduce operating costs by increasing hardware utilization, optimizing infrastructure and improving server availability. Customers and partners can download the release candidate at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V by 10 a.m. PDT today.

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Personally I would preferred to use keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse. In fact, you may said you can save a lot of time using mouse for certain task. In some cases, you must know the right keys to push to do what you need to do much more faster.

There are some required VMware keyboard shortcuts you should know:

Ctrl+B - Power on the Virtual Machine
Ctrl+D - Edit the Virtual Machine Settings
Ctrl+E - Power off the Virtual Machine
Ctrl+G - Grab input from mouse & keyboard
Ctrl+N - Create a new Virtual Machine
Ctrl+O - Open a Virtual Machine
Ctrl+P - Edit User Preferences
Ctrl+R - Reset Virtual Machine
Ctrl+Z - Suspend the Virtual Machine
Ctrl+F4 - Close the selected Virtual Machine
Ctrl+Alt - Return to normal(windowed) mode
Ctrl+Alt+Enter - Switch to Full Screen Mode
Ctrl+Tab - Switch between open virtual machines while mouse and keyboard input are not grabbed. VMware Workstation must be the active application. Read more »

ESX Server 3i is the industry’s first hardware-integrated ultra thin hypervisor built on a next-generation thin architecture, giving your organization an efficient foundation for building a dynamic, secure, reliability, manageability & automated data center.

ESX Server 3i represents a significant advance in realizing the vision of virtualization as the standard computing platform for x86 servers, further simplifying IT operations through integration with server hardware.

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