• The construction of the plant in Poland that started at least 7 years ago.
• The consolidation of offices in Dublin with reduced floorspace.
• The stories in the Wall Street Journal about Dell selling the manufacturing plant in Limerck.

There's no doubt what Dell's plans are.  We're told the plant in Poland is 2.5 times bigger than all the floorspace in Ireland. 

I can't blame Dell or Poland.  A huge amount of their staff in Ireland are probably Polish.  Why hire Polish people in Ireland when you can hire them in Poland?   You pay them less and they'll also have a better quality of life.  Yeah ... the cost of living has rocketed here (it just got worse thanks to the budget) and salary demands have obviously matched the rate of inflation.  Dell really has had no choice.

We also have to consider that there's stories of IT spending freezing with the global economy downturn.  Dell will obviously want to react to that.

There's a good chance that lots of people will use their TechNet licenses and Hyper-V for labs and self training.  If so, you're going to want a router or even routers.  There's been many options for a software router or "appliance" for VMware.  I just did some searching and found a blog entry by Stefan Stranger on how to get Vyatta Virtual Router working on Hyper-V.  It looks pretty straight forward.

Credit: Stefan Stranger.

I'll be off to Barcelona for TechEd EMEA IT Pro 2008 for all of next week.  I'll be blogging as much as possible of my experiences.  I also aim to do a session for the Windows Server 2008 User Group Ireland on the highlights of the week.  I'll be going out on the country night for the Irish party on Wednesday.  I'll also be attending the MS International Community party on Nov 6th.  Things I aim to watch out for include:

• Anything by Steve Riley.
• I'll also be attending the Mark Minasi sessions.
• ConfigMgr.
• OpsMgr.
• Hyper-V and VMM.
• Windows Server.
• Hopefully some Azure briefings.
• Anything that makes data centre management and remote access services easier.
• Free t-shirts and assorted swag :)

Check out this post to have a quick preview of what's coming.

The SQL management pack for Operations Manager 2007 now has support for discovering and monitoring SQL 2008.  Congratulations to the SQL team for getting this update out so quickly.  I only wish some of the Windows teams were half as efficient.

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is based on Powershell.  Anything you do in the GUI can be saved as a script.  Store the script in the library and you can tweak/reuse it.

This gives you an overview of VMM and Powershell in action to manage virtual machines.

Information is finally breaking out to the public about some of Microsoft's new efforts to maintain it's position as new approached to computing are gaining an accepted foothold.

To compete with Google Applications, Microsoft has the Business Productivity Online Suite.  This is an online solution that includes:

• Microsoft Exchange Online
• Microsoft Office Live Meeting
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Office Communications Online

This all comes in under the banner of Software Plus Services or Software + Services.  You may know of "Software as a Service" or SaaS.  MS sees SaaS purely as a delivery mechanism, i.e. how to make software available to customers.  S+S is about wrapping services, e.g. customisation or management, of that software solution.  It's also location independent, e.g. in a MS data centre, a hosting partner's data centre, on the customer's site or even a hybrid.  An interesting example of the hybrid solution is that some of an organisations mailboxes might be hosted by MS or a partner while the rest reside in a traditional on-site Exchange server.

The newest thing to break out is Microsoft Azure Services Platform.   Azure is Microsoft's platform for cloud computing.  Cloud computing is where a solution lives out on the Internet and the consumer doesn't care where.  It is mobile; this gives the application fault tolerance of hardware, data centre and maybe even country!  It's available to try now as a Community Technical Preview (a pre beta release with no support).

HyperVoria has listed the features that will be introduced with Hyper-V V2.0, some of which were public knowledge (live migration, cluster file system), some of which a few of us heard about but couldn't comment on publicly (boot from VHD - the VM has dedicated hardware and the bootloader loads an OS from VHD instead of hard disk) and some of which were new to me (dynamically pooled RAM for VM's, i.e. RAM over subscription as in ESX).

The latter may not make it into RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2.  Hopefully it will.

Credit: HyperVoria.

Microsoft has released System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.  VMM 2008 is to Hyper-V what VMware Virtual Center is to ESX.  Just like Virtual Center, it is an additional purchase.  Just like Virtual Center, it add's additional management functionality to Hyper-V.

VMM offers:

• Integration with other management products, i.e. System Center Operations Manager via PRO to give hardware to application (including all points in between including virtualisation) and cradle to grave management.  Your virtualisation layer is managed by the same management infrastructure as all your other platforms.
• Improvements on the clustering experience for virtual machines.
• A library for scripts and virtual machine templates.
• A web portal for KVM access to virtual machines.
• Simpler delegation, e.g. non administrators can be given a quote for self service VM deployment.
• Manage ESX servers.
• Perform P2V (convert physical to virtual) or V2V (ESX to Hyper-V conversions).

VMM 2008 can be purchased as part of the System Center CAL/SAL.  This includes OpsMgr, ConfigMgr and Data Protection Manager CAL's/SAL's at a price where you get 4 products for the price of 2.

There is a free evaluation and an online video demonstration.

Like many, I'm dubious of claims where marketing people have been involved.  If you're in IT any length of time, you've probably been burned.

I deployed a test W2008 Terminal Server last week and I configured RemoteApp (application publishing), TS Web (web interface) and TS Gateway (SSL access to the previously listed functions).  I got our networking folks to set up a firewall rule to the lab machine (on a  dedicated lab network) so I could access the test machine over SSL from the Internet.  All of this runs in our data centre in a remote and secure location.

I didn't configure anything related to printers on the Terminal Server or the lab network.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Zero.  No drivers were set up and no configuration was made for Easy Print.  It's literally log in and print.

I then logged in over the Internet to Terminal Services via the TS Web (SSL) from home.  I was able to print to my local photo printer with no delays.  I was in the office on Monday and connected to the TS Web (SSL) - remember that the data centre is still remote.  I printed to a Dell printer with no delays.  This included a Word document with lots of formatting and pictures as well as a PDF document.

Fantastic! The user experience easily exceeded my expectations.  Well done to the TS team in Microsoft!  This is a cracking solution to a major problem.

I got to do some Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services work over the last few days.  In particular, I was focusing on:

• RemoteApp: Applications can now be published like in Citrix's old solution.  A shortcut pointing to a TS application is shared.
• TS Web: A web interface for logging into TS.  You can publish your RemoteApp shortcuts or even a desktop to the web interface.
• TS Gateway: This provides a secure way of sharing RemoteApp applications to the Internet, e.g. a RemoteApp shortcut can be shared on the Internet via TS Web.  The RDP session is encapsulated in HTTPS/SSL thus making it Internet and firewall friendly.
• EasyPrint: The biggest failing of TS over the Internet was printing.  You just couldn't print over the Internet or a Corporate WAN, e.g. a 2MB PDF can generate a 20MB stream of data that is sent to a printing device.  This is only available to Vista SP1 and XP SP3 clients.

The user experience is simple.  They sign onto the site and then either log into a desktop or an application that you've published.  Simple as that.

You then do your traditional TS stuff for the user experience and server lockdown, i.e. file permissions and loop back GPO processing.

I tried it out on my 3MB DSL from home connecting to a W2008 TS in our data centre at work.  The user experience was excellent.  I printed a doc to my photo printer with no driver messing (thank you Easy Print!) and my DSL wasn't clogged for hours :)  Overall, two thumbs up!

The Best Practice Analyzer for Small Business Server has been a critical tool for SBS administrators and engineers.  Microsoft has just released a new version of the BPA for Small Business Server 2007.

Microsoft has released a new Operations Guide for System Center Essentials 2007.

Microsoft has released a new Windows Server 2003/R2 Distributed File System management pack for Operations Manager 2007.

One of the people from Dell has written a guest article on the MS virtualisation team blog.  They've tested Hyper-V using Intel's new 6 core processors.  The end results were predictable: more processing power and less electrical consumption, adding more ammo to the virtualisation argument. 

TONYSO talks about planning VHD strategies when setting up highly available Hyper-V VM's (using Windows clustering services).

First off, MS only supports Pass Through disks and fixed size VHD's in production so forget about using differencing disks.

The VM will usually be on a LUN of it's own.  So you need to allocate a LUN from your cluster's shared storage for each VM.  (Note: Shared storage will be used in Windows Server 7 Hyper-V thanks to a new cluster file system that allows simultaneous multiple host access).  You'll want to save space on this LUN so you need to size it correctly.  Here's how I size a dedicated LUN or volume for storing a VHD:

LUN Size = (VM RAM + VHD Size) * 1.1

This works out as:

• VM RAM: The amount of RAM assigned to the virtual machine, e.g. 2GB RAM.  This is required to allow the VM to save state, e.g. during host shutdown or for quick migration.
• VHD Size: The amount of disk assigned to the virtual machine, e.g. 40GB.
• 1.1: This allows for 10% free space on the volume.  You need to allow free disk space for a healthy volume.

Given these numbers:

LUN Size = (2 + 40) * 1.1

LUN Size = 46.2GB

This figure will be rounded out as 47GB because your SAN management software probably won't handle decimal points for the GB allocation.

The VM will probably not be able to do snapshots with this calculation.  Note that MS does not support snapshots in production - according to PSS.  They want you to use backup tools with Hyper-V VSS support instead for state saves.  If you do want to do snapshots then you need to allocate more disk.  How much ... who knows!  Snapshots are done using differencing disks, e.g. anything done after the snapshot is saved in a differencing disk (hence the lack of production support from PSS?).  This differencing disk will grow as time passes so you need to allocate disk for this.  I'd recommend a central store for saved states.  You can configure this on a per VM basis.  This means the VM LUN doesn't need to be expanded to allow for snapshots.  Forget shrinking the VM disk if you expand it for snapshots.  I've tested that with a HP EVA and it screwed up the file system/VM.

Credit: TONYSO.

EDIT:

You might want to add 5GB of disk space to the above if you want to leave room for an ISO image if using VMM 2008.  Remember that VMM 2008 cannot share ISO's from the library so you have to copy them ... that copies them to the VM's LUN.  You'll also need more space if you want to use snapshots.

This is pretty handy.  Microsoft has launched a couple of free online training courses for their virtualisation platform:

Clinic 5935 - Introducing Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008

This 2-hour online clinic provides IT Professionals experienced in Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 with the knowledge and skills to implement and manage Hyper-V in an IT environment.

Topics covered in the clinic include:

• Features of Hyper-V
• Features of server consolidation
• Hyper-V implementation
• Creation of virtual machines
• Dynamic datacenters
• Clustering in virtual environments

Access it online at
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/5935.mspx

Clinic 6334: Exploring Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

This 2-hour online clinic provides IT Professionals experienced in Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 with the knowledge to implement and manage Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Topics covered in the clinic include:

• Features and functionalities of VMM
• Implementation and management of VMM
• Management of VMM library
• Management of hosts by using VMM
• Implementation of virtual machine Self-Services

Access it online at
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6334.mspx

Please note you will need to sign-in with a Live ID before accessing.

My work laptop is configured with redirected folders and offline files so all my data primarily resides on our office server and is centrally backed up using the company's Iron Mountain LiveVault account (which we host as a reseller in our data centre).

I work from home most of the time thanks to modern technology, e.g. VPN to the office, Remote Assistance, VPN to the data centre, HP ILO and Windows Remote Desktop.  I'm only in the office once a week or maybe even once every two weeks.  This means that business critical data that I'm generating resides on my laptop for possibly two weeks at a time without being backed up.  That's not good.  I should really "do as I say" and resolve that issue.

I've installed an Iron Mountain Connected agent on my laptop.  It couldn't have been easier; register the account, download the client, click-click-click installation and then select the files I want to back up.  The latter is usually easy, e.g. Desktop, Favourites, My Documents (if not redirected) and the Outlook PST file (which I'm not too worried about because we use a SaaS provider  with a central mailbox for that).  Then I let it run and I know my data is backed up ... and secure thanks to AES encryption which starts and ends on my agent, i.e. the data remains encrypted and the data centre cannot even read it.  Connected can access open files thanks to the Volume Shadow Copy service (VSS) so files I'm working on can be backed up.  The solution requires an initial synchronisation to get the data into the vaults but only does block level (only what changes within a file) from then thus minimising Internet bandwidth usage.  We also keep Connected data on two independent but replicated stores.  So if one server dies my data is still safe.

And after that first backup I got nice news.  90+MB of data was backed up.  This was optimised to around 30MB, thus saving Internet bandwidth.

I then logged onto the central web console to view my account.  I get a summary of historical operations and my account's storage allocation usage.  I can recover data via the console (handy if my laptop isn't available but I need access to data).  I also have the option of ordering a CD or DVD with my data on it (still in it's encrypted state for secure travel) in case my laptop was lost or destroyed.

The whole experience is as simple as can be.  I'm running Vista SP1 and Office 2007 which is a good test for the product.  It's a whole lot easier and more resilient than using DVD-RW or external hard disks.  The company is also safer in knowing that business files I'm generating get backed up before I can replicate to the office server or upload them onto SharePoint.

Disk encryption is done using Iron Mountain DataDefence.  I don't have much on my laptop but I still want to be sure that the data is secure against accidental loss or theft, thus protecting our business and our clients confidentiality.

I just noticed a new product in WSUS: Windows 7 Client.  We know that the general public will get their hands on betas via Connect in November.  There's also rumours that some lucky people will get it before then.  When you do get it, you'll know that WSUS will be able to patch your beta installations.