In a blog post from the VMGuru site, I learned that the upcoming VI3 book from Ron Oglesby, Mike Laverick, and Scott Herold has three free chapters that were released on Friday.  The three free chapters can be obtained on the homepage of the book vi3book.com

Looks to be a good read...

The SoftGrid Team blog has two nice blog entries that illustrate the communications between a SoftGrid Client and a SoftGrid server during Desktop Config refresh as well during an application launch.  These articles are quite informative if you're not familiar with the networking protocols/ports that are used during these actions.

Tim Mangan directed me to an article from Mary Jo Foley where states that since the inception of the MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) Microsoft has sold 2 million licenses.  Without argument, most of those sales were probably due to the SoftGrid acquisition (though I wouldn't complain about getting the fantastic SysInternals tools too).  While many people (including me) would like to see Microsoft separate SoftGrid from the SA requirement, it seems pretty clear that they are definitely driving value to the SA business through SoftGrid.  Therefore, it seems unlikely that Microsoft would separate SoftGrid.  In either case, this clearly demonstrates the demand for SoftGrid.  Interesting times ahead....

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Over at the SoftGrid Team Blog, Microsoft posted information that the new Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2007 has been released (which includes SoftGrid 4.2).  The VAS components have not been updated since SG 4.1 SP1, so no update is required on your servers (just the client and sequencer).

Shawn

In a recent blog entry titled "A brief architecture overview of VMware ESX, XEN and MS Viridian", Massimo does a great job explaining the architectural differences between the competing virtualization products from VMWare, Microsoft, and the open source Xen.  While it's clear that there's no true winner from an architectural perspective, my personal thoughts are that many people are going to adopt Viridian simply because it will be made available more easily and cost effectively.  Time will tell though.

Shawn

So those Mac user's out there that have been using the Coherence feature of Parallels virtualization product, you need to checkout this video posted on VMWare's VMTN blog.  It's pretty amazing!

Shawn

Tim and Kevin (both regulars on SoftGridGuru.com) have announced that they have built training courseware on SoftGrid and will be conducting independent training classes on the courseware.  While this is unofficial training, I'm extremely excited to see this type of thing available for the SoftGrid platform.  I think it's going to be a great opportunity once SoftGrid starts to gain more traction in the industry.  Besides, I'm already biased on supporting independent training.

Read the forum posting on SoftGridGuru.  Add read more about the training on the GridMasterTraining.com.

Shawn

In a forum post on SoftGridGuru, smileyej posted links to download locations for SoftGrid 4.1 SP1.  The strange thing is that the download links are public?!?!  Mistake?  Get 'em while they're hot!

Shawn

Microsoft has posted additional details on the SoftGrid Team Blog about the outstanding survey for participation in the SoftGrid 4.5 Technology Adoption Program (TAP).  Here are some of the interesting plans for SoftGrid 4.5 (bold emphasis is mine): ·         Enhanced client scalability: improvements to allow very large deployments and integration with ESD systems, such as System Center Configuration Manager

·         Availability and maintainability: the most stable and reliable version of SoftGrid to date

·         Security tightening: the first SoftGrid release to go through the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and enhancements to support internet-facing scenarios

·         Globalization and localization: support for both virtualizing non-English language applications and running the SoftGrid user interface in certain non-English languages

And here are the requirements of the TAP:Requirements for participating in the SoftGrid 4.5 TAP:

·         Executive...

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While it can't be used in a production environment, Microsoft has posted a Tech Preview release of SoftGrid 4.2.  SoftGrid 4.2 brings support for Windows Vista and Side-by-Side (SxS) support for things like Office 2007 and Visual Studio Express.  The release of 4.2 is slated for July 2007.  Read the full details at the SoftGrid Team blog entry.

Shawn