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Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are now GA

26 October 2012
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Reading Time: < 1 minuteAfter years of development, Microsoft launched the latest version of Windows (with the NT version 6.2), with a official announce of its CEO Steve Ballmer during product’s launch event in New York on October 25, 2012. It is most probably the most radical version of the Windows OS (at least in the aspect, in the design was NT 6.0) and the client OS is mainly designed for new mobile devices like tablets, but can also be used on desktop PC (but need more training on it). Windows 8 is the new client OS and the […]

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Windows Server 2012 – Networking optimizations

25 October 2012
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Reading Time: < 1 minuteNetwork tuning and offload Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 (DOC) Network Subsystem Performance Tuning Networking Adapter Performance Guidelines (on Windows Server 2008 R2, but still good) Specific technologies Registered I/O Networking Extensions (RIO): Microsoft site, alternative site Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) IPsec Task Offload Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV): Overview of Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), What is SR-IOV? (Scott Lowe’s Blog), PCI SIG Specifications Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V & Data Centre Bridging (DCB)

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Windows Server 2012 – Storage considerations

25 October 2012
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Reading Time: 2 minutesWith the new Windows Server 2012 there are several improvements in the storage part, expecially when we apply to a Hyper-V enviroment. The main news on the storage part, is that now is possible build a Windows Fail-Over Cluster with a shared SMB3 share and use it for store VMs (in a similar way as NFS could be use to NAS connectivity on a VMware vSphere cluster). Also a specific function (Virtual Fibre Channel) as been added to map a FC SAN LUN directly to a VM (similar to the same function in VMware vSphere). […]

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Windows Server 2012 editions

Reading Time: 3 minutesMicrosoft has recently published more information about the Windows Server 2012 editions (and also the possible pricing). More information are also available on: Windows Server 2012 Licensing&Pricing Datasheet Microsoft announces Windows Server 2012 versions Editions Overview Edition Ideal for… High Level Feature Comparison Licensing Model Pricing Open NL (US$) Datacenter Highly virtualized private & hybrid cloud environments Full Windows Server functionality with unlimited virtual instances Processor + CAL* $4,809** Standard Low density or non- virtualized environments Full Windows Server functionality with two virtual instances Processor + CAL* $882** Essentials Small business environments Simpler interface, pre-configured […]

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Windows 8 installation options

30 April 2012
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Reading Time: 3 minutesIf you want to “play” with Windows 8 Consumer Preview or “Windows Server 8” Beta, then there are several installation options. Destinations Hard disk This the common solution, but mean the needs of a blank partition, or space to build a new partition, or the possibility to erase your disk. If you choose a dual boot configuration, of course, the bootloader must be modified to add the new entry. Physical installation permit to test most of the features and can give better performance (for example you cannot realize how fast is the boot procedure in […]

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VCB with vSphere 5 and Windows Server 2008

9 February 2012
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Reading Time: 2 minutesAs written in the previous post related to the upgrade to vSphere 5, the old VCB framework can still be used also with latest version, but is a not supported configuration (I’ve made the test only with a Windows Server 2008 R2 for the VCB proxy, but I suppose that works also with previous OS). Of course the SAN transport mode could not work (or not if you use VMFS5), but the NBD works as on the old vSphere 4.x. The only issue that I get (but honestly I’ve make only few tests) is on […]

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Why Dynamic Disks are a bad choice

22 December 2011
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Reading Time: 3 minutesMicrosoft Windows Dynamic Disks (or Dynamic Volumes) are an abstraction layer (introduced in Windows 2000) over the partitions (similar to the LVM layer on Linux environment) to decoupled the volumes (with their NTFS data) from the disk partitions and have a greater flexibility, like hot-extend a volume by simple add new partitions (but also several other advantages). But in a virtual environment there are other way to handle disk flexibility, like hot-extend a virtual disk at hypervisor level (for VMware this feature was introduced in VI 3.5U2)… so there is no need to use dynamic […]

Highlights, Microsoft, vDesign
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