PNY XLR8 SATA Review

I am preparing for the VCAP-DCA exam, the first step for the exam coming is to build a computer for lab. I decided to upgrade my old Thinkpad T410 for this purpose. My laptop already have a Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge, 16GB of RAM. The weakness is a traditional HDD with large capacity but low performance. I decided to upgrade my HDD only. I go to amazon and search for a suitable SSD. Yes, i am a fan of Amazon. My expectation is a new SDD with high performance, capacity and low cost. After days of searching, I picked PNY XLR8 SDD up with 240GB of capacity. This SSD offers high speed data transfer of up to 500MB/s read, 475MB/s write; random IOPS up to 60,000. Another really cool thing is PNY offers a five-years warranty. In overal, I am really happy about performance, capacity and cost also.

• Capacity: 120GB/ 240GB/ 480GB
• Best Value: Premium grade flash to handle a wide variety of workloads
• Transfer Rates: Up to 500MB/s read, 475MB/s write
• Capacities: 240GB
• Controller: SandForce 2281
• 3 year warranty plus an additional 2 years when registered with PNY
• Price: Amazon

Free What’s New with Horizon View 5.2 Video Series

VMware Education Services have been public some free great new Horizon View videos. These videos are done by VMware Certified Instructor, Linus Bourque. He creates what's new video series, including:

• What’s New with Horizon View 5.2 user experience (part 1)
• What’s New with Horizon View 5.2 ease of management and cost of ownership (part 2)
• What’s New with Horizon View 5.2 Demonstration
• Horizon View 5.2 Mac Client Update
• Horizon View 5.2 Mac Client Update Demonstration
• Horizon View 5.2 HTML Blast Client 
• Horizon View 5.2 HTML Blast Client Demonstration
• Optimizing PCoIP GPO Settings
• Optimizing PCoIP GPO Settings Demonstration

What’s New with Horizon View 5.2, Part 1 
Check out VMware Education Video Site to see these and more other free videos too.

VMware Workstration 7 is Out !

VMware today announced the release VMware Workstation 7, its desktop virtualization software for a variety of different usage scenarios where one desktop PC or even a laptop might need to run Windows 7, XP and Vista. Some features are listed below:

Ultimate Desktop Virtualization Product for Windows 7

Run Windows 7 in a virtual machine with the industry’s first support for Windows Aero 3D graphics. Easy Install makes installing 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 in a virtual machine even easier than on your physical PC. VMware Workstation 7 works with Flip 3D and Aero Peek to show live thumbnails of your virtual machines. Better than Windows XP Mode, you can run Windows XP with 3D graphics, faster performance, and tighter integration with Unity, shared folders and drag and drop convenience. VMware Workstation is optimized for maximum performance when running on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 PCs.

Best 3D Graphics Just Got Better

VMware Workstation was the first to support 3D graphics in virtualized environments and is now the first to support Windows Aero in Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines. Run even more 3D applications with support for DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.13D graphics in Windows virtual machines.

Most Advanced Virtualization Platform

Create virtual machines with up to 4 virtual processors or 4 virtual cores and up to 32GB of memory per virtual machine. Driverless printing makes your PC printers automatically accessible to your Windows and Linux virtual machines—no configuration or drivers required. Smart card authentication enables you to dedicate a Smart Card reader to a virtual machines or share access.

Features Professionals Cannot Live Without

• Install and run VMware vSphere 4 and VMware ESXi in a virtual machine

• New IDE integrations for the SpringSource Tools Suite and Eclipse IDE for C/C++

• Replay debugging is now easier and faster

• Remote Replay Debugging makes it easier to share virtual machine recordings for analysis

You can download it from VMware' website: http://www.vmware.com/workstation

Free VMWare Server Serial Numbers or License Keys

VMware is a great virtualization technology. Unfortunately, VMware is not free, to use it legally you must purchase. Today, you can get VMWare Server free serial number or product key, simply complete this registration. You can get for free up to 100 serial numbers at one go without any charges or fees. If you read this inforamtion, please announce to everyone who needed. I have get 10 product keys for VMware Server. Hix, although i don't need up to 10 keys concurrently. If you need, you can leave an email, i will send key to you.

Create and Attack a Virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7

In Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, you can create and attack a virtual hard disk to the computer as physical hard disk. It is true, today i will show you how to do it.

STEP 1: You must know that Virtual Hard Disk create only on a boot partition, in many case boot partition is C: driver. I create a virtual hard disk in my computer that installed Windows 7, also you can create it in Windows Recovery mode when you choose boot from Windows 7 DVD. The difference between two methods is when you boot from Windows 7 DVD, you must press Shift + F10
or boot into the Command Prompt from the Start Recovery Options screen (see screenshot below)

STEP 2: You type Diskpart in command prompt and press Enter.

To create a VHD file, you have two options. First, create a fixed VHD file that allocate the entire maximum size that you set for the VHD file (command below allocate 20GB for the VHD file):

create vdisk file=C:\Windows7.vhd maximum=20480

Second, create a Expandable VHD file that store only as large as the amount of data that is saved in the VHD file. by execute the following command:

create vdisk file=C:\Windows7.vhd maximum=20480 type=expandable

STEP 3: To attack a VHD file to your computer, you must select this vdisk and attack it by execute these commands:

select vdisk file=C:\Windows7.vhd
attack vdisk

STEP4: Verify
Now, you can insert a Windows media, maybe Windows 7 DVD to install it, you have a new disk. It is the VHD file that you have created.

Finally, you can download this video to more detail (this video is created by Keith Combs): Download here.

Download System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 – Evaluation

Overview

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center. It enables increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator, delegated administrator, and authorized end users.

VMM 2008 R2 can manage all the platforms managed by VMM 2008 and adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

Windows Server 2008 R2 includes significant feature improvements to Hyper-V. VMM 2008 R2 leverages these new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Host Management

• VMM 2008 R2 creates and manages virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts. When you add a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 that does not have Hyper-V enabled, VMM 2008 R2 automatically enables the Hyper-V role on the host.
• VMM 2008 R2 supports the following new features of Windows Server 2008 R2:
  • Live migration between Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered hosts. With live migration, you can migrate a virtual machine from one node of a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without any downtime. Because the virtual machine does not experience any downtime, the move is completely transparent to the users that are connected to the virtual machine.
  • Network optimization detection during virtual machine placement. VMM 2008 R2 supports both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney, which are Windows Server 2008 R2 features that improve network performance for virtual machines.
  • Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.
  • Network adapters that support the TCP Chimney feature are able to offload the processing of network traffic from the networking stack. Both of these features increase network performance and reduce CPU utilization.
  • Hot addition and removal of virtual hard disks (VHDs). In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V allows users to add and remove VHDs from a virtual machine while it is running.

Feature Bullet Summary:

• Live migration
• Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) support that enables multiple Highly Available Virtual Machines (HAVM) per LUN.
• Hot add of storage
• Support for VMware vSphere 4 (VMware VI3 feature parity only)
• SAN Migration into and out of clustered hosts
• Processor flexibility
• Network optimization
• Quick storage migration
• Maintenance mode for hosts
• Support for third party cluster file system, Sanbolic Melio FS
• Support for third party storage class resource, Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows
• Expanded support for iSCSI SANs
• Support for VMware port groups for virtual switches
• Support for Virtual Machine permissions assigned in Hyper-V
• Dynamic policy based load balancing

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 Datacenter; Windows Server 2008 Enterprise; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Server 2008 Standard

Review Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 system requirements (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=110906) and supported configurations (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=128909).

Download: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

Licensing Microsoft Servers for Globalization (video)

I found this video at: Windows Virtualization Team Blog. This video is nice, it let's me know the defference between each editions of Windows Server 2008 about license, price and advantage.
Learn the licensing use rights for virtualizing Microsoft's server products, such as Windows Server, SQL, BizTalk and Exchange.
It also covers moving running instances (VMs) between servers using technologies such as System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:07788dbb-8b8a-46ea-affa-a6ec66927d50&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Licensing Microsoft Servers for Virtualization">Video: Licensing Microsoft Servers for Virtualization</a>
You should visit this blog frequently to update many information about technology.

Intel® Virtualization Technology List (Support Hyper-V)

My CPU is Intel E4400 is not listed in Intel Virtualization List. I buy this computer in 2007, E4400 is a new chip that inexpensive. I buy it, now when I learn Microsoft Technology, i see Hyper-V a new feature of Windows Server 2008. Unfotunantely, My CPU does not support this feature, I want to upgrade my CPU but money is big problem with me, so sad. Uhm, To check whether your CPU have support Hyper-V you can read previous post: How to check Intel and AMD Hyper-V Compatibility


Here is Intel® Virtualization Technology List. You can view this list to consider your CPU have listed: http://ark.intel.com/VTList.aspx

Using SYSPREP.EXE to Change SID in Windows Server 2008 and Vista

I use VMware Workstration to create Virtual machines. Installing operating system for Virtual Machine is boring. I often clone virtual machine. This make virtual machines have same SID that these VMs do not have ability join domain. In previous version of Windows, we can use NewSID tool. This tool can not use in Windows Server 2008 and later. A new tool become candidate is "SYSPREP.EXE" included in Windows Server 2008 that we can use it by type sysprep in RUN dialog, SYSPREP Preparation Tool appear. If you want to create a new SID, remember to CHECK the “Generalize” checkbox

I use VMware Workstration to create Virtual machines. Installing operating system for Virtual Machine is boring. I often clone virtual machine. This make virtual machines have same SID that these VMs do not have ability join domain. In previous version of Windows, we can use NewSID tool. This tool can not use in Windows Server 2008 and later. A new tool become candidate is "SYSPREP.EXE" included in Windows Server 2008 that we can use it by type sysprep in RUN dialog, SYSPREP Preparation Tool appear. If you want to create a new SID, remember to CHECK the “Generalize” checkbox.

During the following reboot a new SID is automatically generated - and you will have to type in your Product/License Key, provide a new Computer Name, select an Administrator Password etc.

Download Windows Virtual PC with XP Mode for Windows 7

Windows VirtualPC with XP Mode for Windows 7 is now availabe to everyone.

Windows Virtual PC provides the capability to run multiple Windows environments such as Windows XP Mode from your Windows 7 desktop. Windows Virtual PC requires a CPU with the Intel™ Virtualization Technology or AMD-V® feature turned on. This feature must be enabled in the system BIOS.

The beta version is available earlier in April, 2009. The final version will released on 22, Oct and it will be compatible with Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
Read here: To enable Windows Aero Glass in Windows Virtual PC