I downloaded and installed SCVMM 2008 today and installed it to check out the VMware integration. I created a new virtual machine with Windows Server 2008 x64 with 1,5GB of RAM and started the installation from an attached ISO. When I did that the installation failed during WAIK installation. I copied the WAIK files (from \Prerequisites\WAIK\1033) to the server and installed WAIK from there. I than reran the setup procedure and SCVMM installed fine.

The first thing you do after installation is to add some hosts. This beta of SCVMM 2008 supports the following virtualization hosts:

• Virtual Server 2005
• Hyper-V (on Windows Server 2008)
• VMware VI3 (with VirtualCenter)

To manage ESX you need to add a VirtualCenter server. SCVMM cannot connect to ESX servers directly. The result (click to enlarge):

In the screenshot above at the right, you'll see an action called Add VMware VirtualCenter. That action launches a wizard that asks you for the name of your VirtualCenter box and your credentials. Upon completion, the wizard adds folders to SCVMM for each VMware datacenter object and then adds the ESX boxes.

If you look at the screenshot further, the Summary tab shows some information about the ESX host like CPU, memory, storage and the virtual machines on the host. The Storage and Networking tab shows the following info:

When you click on the Virtual Machines button and select the ESX host you get a list of virtual machines:

From that list you can do what's expected: stop, start, suspend, modify the virtual machine settings, VMotion, etc... You can also connect to the console of virtual machines. The first time you do this you need to install an ActiveX control. The console looks like this:

That's all I have time for today. Next I will check out how SCVMM works with ISOs and virtual machine templates and how that ties in with VirtualCenter. I will report those findings later.

Scott Lowe has written an interesting post about enabling jumbo frames for VMware's software iSCSI initiator. VMware does not support this (yet) but it appears you can already enable it. For full details, check his blogpost.

A jumbo frame's size is typically set at 9000 versus the standard size of around 1500. Setting the frame size (or mtu) to 9000 actually lowers the amount of packet processing (assembly/disassembly) by a factor of six. The overhead for ethernet packets also decreased because you send less frames. In general, you should see a performance increase of around 20 to 30%. Note that you have to enable jumbo frames on all levels of your infrastructure: the ethernet switch, the server and the storage box (e.g. NetApp, EqualLogic, ...).

Microsoft published a very interesting whitepaper about their use of Exchange Server 2007 and Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR). I was surprised to learn that they use DAS instead of a SAN-based solution. When you think of it, it makes sense because it eliminates some complexity and dramatically lowers the implementation costs. A big advantage of that design is that it avoids what they call hot-spot contention when another workload is using the same spindles as Exchange Server 2007.

All in all a very interesting read! You can find it here.

After redirecting the Favorites folder on Vista to a different location I could not save a link in my favorites. It turns out you have to run the following command:

icacls "path_to_new_favorites_folder" /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low

This has something to do with IE in protected mode and the integrity levels that were introduced in Vista.

I also found out that I could not print a web page. To solve that I had to create a directory called low under my temp folder and also set the integritylevel with the icacls command.

A while ago I did a talk at the Microsoft Techdays in Belgium about migrating from public folders and file servers to SharePoint. In that talk I mentioned the fact that public folders are not dead and that you can continue to use public folders if you really want to. I mentioned the guidance from a blog post at msexchangeteam.com and that guidance has now been updated. You can find the updated guidance here.

The guidance boils down to these main points:

1. Public Folders have full support for 10 years after the release of the next version of Exchange Server. That is longer than the initial reported date of 2016.
2. SharePoint is the better option for document sharing and custom applications (e.g. workflow) even if you currently use public folders for this.

For many users, the strength of public folders comes from the fact that there is full Outlook integration. It is easy to drag and drop e-mails as msg files in public folders or share things like calendars and contacts. Although some of these things can be done with Outlook 2007 and SharePoint, the features are not exactly the same. Outlook 2007 does not do two-way sync or allows you to drag and drop e-mails as msg files in document libraries. A tool such as Colligo Contributor is needed if you need those abilities. Colligo Contributor works really well and is worth having a look at.

Another strength of public folders is the built-in replication. SharePoint does not do replication but there are several 3rd party tools that can do it such as those from Infonic.

It would be great if the next version of SharePoint would include features such as replication and better Outlook integration because that would make it even easier to migrate without having to incur extra (potentially high) costs for these extra features.

Check out PowerTerm WebConnect for WS08 if you want some extra features for Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services for free:

• Ability to publish multiple applications from multiple terminal servers in one step.
• Ability to publish applications to specific users and groups.
• A web interface with single sign-on that only shows your published applications (and not all of them like in Windows Server 2008)

Note that WebConnect is not completely free. When you download the installation package you actually install the full version. After 30 days, only the free features remain with some limitations. More information about these limitations can be found here.