Age of Virtualization | Hyper-V, App-V, Virtual PC…

New VHD available from Microsoft – Exchange Server 2010. Download VHD here. As you all probably know new version of Exchange 2010 has a lot of useful and cool features:

• Exchange 2010 is faster because Microsoft reduced I/O load. Hence you can use slower and cheaper disks to get great performance.
• OWA now works great in non-Microsoft browsers and on non-Microsoft platforms
• SMS – users can now send and receive SMS text messages from Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Web App
• Support for IRM in Outlook Web App - IRM-protected messages in Outlook Web App can be accessed through Windows Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (no plug-ins required)
• Voice mail transcription -  Exchange 2010 uses a speech recognition engine to automatically transcribe voice mail messages
• Much much more…

Really, there are a lot exciting features of Exchange 2010, and if you would like to try them go on and download pre-configured virtual machine (13365.4 MB).

New VHD available from Microsoft – Forefront Identity Manager 2010 Rc1. This VHD is really useful to get you going with FIM, because clean FIM installation and configuration can take pretty much time. You need to install all FIM components (and believe me, there are a lot of components), configure provisioning etc, etc.   Anyway, now with FIM 2010 VHD available for download, you can try all features:

• Provisioning of users and groups to AD
• Creating new dynamical groups
• Self service password reset
• Integration with office
• And much more…

If you are interested in identity management, grab your VHD here , create Hyper-V Virtual Machine and manage your identities.

One day I ran into one very useful and nice web site where you can find a lot of virtualized applications for download. Check it out here, and grab your virtual appliacations. On that site you can find applications for all kind of different purposes:

• Audio/Video
• Financial
• Games
• Internet
• Messaging
• Productivity
• Programming and a lot more…

So maybe you are asking yourslef, what do I do with those applications, or what are benefit of using virtualized applications. Well first using virtual appliactions can be very useful for you and your precious computer:

• Virtual applications are never installed on your OS, so they do not slow down your system (e.g big registry etc…).
• Virtual applications are in their own virtual bubble so they do not have incompatibility issues with other appliacations.
• Your registry is a lot smaller when using virtualized applications.
• Managebility of virtual applications is just great and easy.
• Virtual applications are in one way portable applications, because you can grab them on your usb key and carry them around without need for installing them.
• And a lot more benefits.

Ok, after we mentioned few benefits of virtual applications, how can you launch them on your computer, after downloading from this site? Well there is one thing you need to have and that is Microsoft Applications Virtualization Client – one tiny software which you can download as part of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. Of course if you  wanna use your applications with APP-V management server you will need to change one parameter in OSD file of application package, and that parameter is servername. If you don’t have management server then you can use App-V standalone mode described nicely here and here.

Hello again. I am happy to announce that Microsoft published free Windows Server 2008 R2 E-Book (with two virtualization chapters), and you can download it from here (PDF file, 11.1 MB). Book has 200 pages and following chapters :

Introduction    xvii
Chapter 1    What’s New in Windows Server R2    1
Chapter 2    Installation and Configuration: Adding R2 to Your World    9
Chapter 3    Hyper-V: Scaling and Migrating Virtual Machines    25
Chapter 4    Remote Desktop Services and VDI: Centralizing Desktop and Application Management    47
Chapter 5    Active Directory: Improving and Automating Identity and Access    65
Chapter 6    The File Services Role    91
Chapter 7    IIS 7.5: Improving the Web Application Platform    109
Chapter 8    DirectAccess and Network Policy Server    129
Chapter 9    Other Features and Enhancements    147
Index    163

Download and enjoy reading.