Alpesh Nakar – SharePoint Consultant's Blog

Have you used virtuals before? There is no reason why you would have not if you are geek ? Microsoft and VMWare are major players in the Virtual World.

Microsoft provides Virtual PC, Virtual Server and VMWare provides a variety (free and paid).

Microsoft have released Virtual Server R2 SP1.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 includes the following new capabilities:

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Enterprise Edition can be installed on servers with up to 32 physical processors.

•Virtual Server host clustering. Support for host-to-host connectivity lets you cluster all virtual machines running on a host.

•iSCSI support. iSCSI clustering enables guest-to-guest connectivity across physical machines.

•x64 support. Virtual Server runs natively within a 64-bit Windows host operating system, providing increased performance and memory headroom.

•Enhanced PXE booting. PXE boot support has been added to the virtual machine network adapter. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system in the same way as physical servers.

•Other improvements. Virtual Server now includes improved hyperthreading, support for F6 Disk (SCSI driver), Active Directory integration using service connection points, and virtual disk pre-compactor functionality.

•Performance improvements.

If you are not into virtual environments, would you like to learn and know more about it? I am happy to do a series for you. I just live in virtual environments. I could go on and on in this post, but I’d rather do a series.

Microsoft have made available few VHDs for you to evaluate them in your test environment.

Windows Vista Enterprise 30-Day Edition VHD

Windows Server 2003 R2

Exchange Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

Recommended Reading:

Building a Highly Available Virtual Environment with Virtual Server on Windows Server

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