May 12 2007

Server Core testing – Initial setup

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Now that I have a new Server Core installation ready for setup, I read through the Step by Step guide a bit more and continued on to the initial setup. Change the admin password As I mentioned in a previous post, when you create a new Server Core installation you are greeted with a logon […]

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May 12 2007

Longhorn testing round 2

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Well this is interesting – my first, first-hand experience with Server Core. There’s only one command prompt window rather than the two that was present in previous betas. There is still a GUI, and you can run several apps such as Notepad, Task Manager, Regedit, which are probably the three most useful GUI apps I […]

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May 12 2007

Longhorn testing round 1

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Longhorn 1 – Stuart 0 First round of Longhorn didn’t go well, but I’ve only got myself to blame. I installed a Standard edition of Longhorn into VMware Server which all went fine. Then I jumped straight into the new Server Manger, and went a bit crazy and selected a whole bunch of roles at […]

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May 11 2007

Microsoft in defensive mode

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Big news this week was that Microsoft have had to drop postpone some key features from their new virtualisation software currently in development. Mike Neill, GM of virtualisation strategy went on the defensive with a lengthy blog post detailing all of the cool things about Microsoft’s new virtualisation platform, codenamed Viridian. But if you kept […]

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Apr 13 2007

Citrix Desktop Server update

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OK, so my understanding of this product is that it provides Citrix ICA sessions to virtual machines running in the data centre. This model provides access to three types of desktops: Virtual machines running on Microsoft or VMware virtualisation products. Terminal services desktops running on Windows Server. Dedicated blade computers for the more demanding user. […]

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Nov 08 2006

Microsoft virtual appliances now available for download

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Microsoft are following VMware’s lead by providing pre-built virtual machines for download. Have a look at this search on the Microsoft downloads site and you’ll find a few there already: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=VHD&DisplayLang=en These are only official trial versions from Microsoft, so VMware still has the lead here with a whole community of user-created virtual machines most […]

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Apr 04 2006

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition now free

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This was widely accepted to happen sooner or later, but Microsoft have today announced that Virtual Server 2005 R2 will now be available as a free download. As both the Enterprise and Standard editions will now be free, the Standard edition is becoming redundant as there is no reason why you would run Standard instead […]

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Oct 21 2005

VMware Player released

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VMWare have released a free tool called the VMware Player. You can use it to run virtual machines that have been created with VMware Workstation (or GSX/ESX). You can’t create VM’s but it’s definitely useful if you’ve only got a few full VMware licenses available. I haven’t tested it yet – it won’t install on […]

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Sep 26 2005

VMware vs Virtual PC

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For the past year or so I’ve been using Virtual PC for setting up labs for study and testing purposes, but recently I decided to give VMware Workstation 5 a go. I couldn’t believe the difference between VMware and VPC – the first major difference was the performance improvements in VMware. I had gotten used […]

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