Hi - by now you might have read there's 17,000 of us attending VMworld in San Francisco. Huge crowds, just as Rick Vanover predicted. Lots of energy and excitement as you can imagine. This post is designed to bring some of the show to you, assuming you're not attending and queuing up to a session 45 mins before the start.

The expo hall started Monday. The attendees who found us were entertained to see 'the biggest little booth' at VMworld. Here's a view. Mike Neil, our GM of Windows Server and Server Virtualization, filmed this 20-minute video from the VMworld blogger lounge (aka, The Cube). After the expo floor closed, we and Citrix hosted a Tweetup. Great conversations and crowd - not to mention the excellent vanilla bean beer made by Thirsty Bear. The discussions reflected the still maturing adoption of virtualization:

• a software gent from Fort Collins is attending VMworld to learn more about server consolidation. They have 100+ servers and are running out of room. We discussed what Hyper-V could do for him, and then after a bit of time it was revealed they're 99% SPARC shop with Java apps. We agreed that he's got to tackle the hardware before the Virt, otherwise Oracle...
  
  
• Why Does Microsoft exhibit at VMworld?
  

  I’ll be posting more this week about what you’ll see when you visit the Microsoft booth (#1431) at VMworld 2010 U.S. conference next week. You can read an overview at NetworkWorld.

  But last week a virtualization industry insider and consultant who has followed Microsoft virtualization for 5+ years and has met with Microsoft at the last 5-6 VMworld conferences, wrote the following to me:

  “I really don't get why you guys insist on exhibiting at VMworld. The number of people stopping by must be huge to justify it.”

  His email made me pause. If this gentleman doesn’t know why we’re there, then many others must wonder the same. I/we answered that question lots of times the first few years at VMworld, but the questions have diminished in the last few years. So I reflected on why we participate at VMworld, and wanted to share our thinking. At the high level, VMworld attendees are Microsoft customers: 

  ·        Approximately 75% of VMworld attendees run Windows Server (estimate based on industry analyst data of virtualized OSes)

  ·        About 50% of VMworld attendees run Microsoft server applications, such as Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint (estimate based on market share data)

  ·        Nearly 90% of VMworld attendees run Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 and MS Office (estimate based on market share data)

  We first chose to exhibit at VMworld in 2005 because it was marketed as an industry...
  
  

• Go vote
  

  The savvy editors of NetworkWorld chose 3 weeks before VMworld 2010 conference to publish an online tech debate between Microsoft and VMware. The topic: who has the better virtualization platform. The editorial summary reads:

  VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?

  Read the debate here. Following is an excerpt:

  There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.

  Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.

  Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.

  At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As...
  
  

• Linux Integration Services v2.1 Now Available
  

  We are really excited to announce the availability of the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services for Linux Version 2.1. This release marks yet another milestone in providing a comprehensive virtualization platform to our customers. Customers who have a heterogeneous operating system environment desire their virtualization platform to provide support for all operating systems that they have in their datacenters. We have supported Linux as a guest operating system on our virtualization platform from the days of Virtual Server and continue to enhance our support in that regard.

  The following features are included in the 2.1 release:

  Driver support for synthetic devices: Linux Integration Services supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

  Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

  Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.

  Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

  Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.

  Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.

  Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the...
  
  

• Installing Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
  

   With the release of Beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 a number of you have asked about Service Pack 1 for the standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, and whether the new capabilities of Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX will be available for it. Absolutely, both Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX have been developed for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as well.

   

  In order to get these capabilities for the Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, you will need to install the Beta of Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Note that the first wave of the Service pack installer is only in 5 languages (English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish), so if you try and apply the package to Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (which has 11 language packs installed by default) you will rightly see the following screen

   

   

   

   It’s pretty simple to uninstall these language packs to thereafter install the Service pack. In order to uninstall the language packs, there is nifty utility included (lpksetup.exe). Launch this from an administrator’s command prompt and select “Uninstall display languages”.

  ...