From an entry on John Howard's blog, I've learned that Server 2008 RC0 with Vridian just hit MSDN last night.  I'm off to download it now.  BTW, John also posted a nice entry on the steps required to install Vridian (no server core option just yet).

I recently had a need to convert a few SoftGrid-related VMs from VMware Server 1.02 VMs to one of my ESX 3.x hosts.  I needed to do this because VMware Server only allows for a single snapshot/revert path.  While sequencing/testing applications in SoftGrid, it's ideal to have multiple VM snapshots to be able to revert back to a variety of timelines.  I have explained many different methods of converting VMs and have detailed a few of the processes (complete with screeshots).  I hope this helps someone out there who may need to do the same thing.  Read the full article here.

I came across a blog post from Dave Caddick referencing an article from Channel Register that seemed to indicate that Microsoft's Viridian hypervisor is under 1MB footprint???  There's been a lot of conversation around VMware's introduction of the ESX3i Embedded virtualization platform that boots off flash memory in less than 32 MB, but 1MB? that's pretty insane.  According to the article, it came from Mike Neil (Microsoft) who should be a trusted resource on the matter.  I'm a little unsure on Mike/Microsoft's lack of value seen in an embedded virtualization platform as their reasoning for not wanting to do it is that you still have to store your virtual images somewhere....duh! of course you do, but that's what SAN disk is for.  However, the question still remains as to whether it's more...

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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