The dynamic memory feature is a huge benefit to our business model at Vaasnet so I was eager to download and try it out.  During the beta and RC cycle, dynamic memory only worked for certain operating systems and editions.  Web and Standard editions weren’t supported, but were promised for final release.

First off, the download is large and the install is very slow.  In fact it takes longer to upgrade the Service Pack than it does for the initial installation.  Windows 7 SP1 took about 1/2 hour on my new desktop computer, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 took about 1/2 hour on one server and took well over an hour on two other servers.  In fact, a warning message during the install says that it can take an hour or more and require one or more reboots.

The install was very clean and you have the option to have the installer reboot automatically.  This means that you can accept the license and a couple next/next buttons to kick it off and walk away and it will complete it to 100% without any further interaction.  That makes up for the long install time.

Anyway, back to my real issue. 

After upgrading the host I wanted to test dynamic memory on some Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard edition VMs.  During the beta cycle you simply needed to upgrade the Integration Services components for editions like Enterprise edition, so I assumed that was all that was needed here.

As a side, there are already many great articles and walkthroughs available on how to do this.  Here are some good links for further information on this topic:

• http://www.hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/?p=433
• http://msmvps.com/blogs/jeffloucks/archive/2010/08/22/dynamics-memory-for-hyper-v-how-to-sp1-for-windows-7-and-2008-r2.aspx
• http://www.jackcobben.nl/?p=915

Try as I might, I couldn’t get the dynamic memory to work.  Memory Demand and Memory Status fields didn’t populate and the OS didn’t change the memory level.  The new columns appeared on the server after upgrading the Host server, but nothing on the guests.

I read and re-read all posts available to date and I ensured that I had the key elements completed successfully:

• upgraded Integration Services on the guest
• powered off the VM and set dynamic memory range from 512 to 4096

No luck.  So, I figured there must be something in the release notes that would give me a clue.  Finally, and it wasn’t easy to find, I found my answer. 

It turns out that simply upgrading the Integration Services components isn’t enough for certain editions of the OS!  You MUST upgrade to Service Pack 1 on the guest for Windows Server  2008 R2 Web and Standard editions.  And you may also need to perform one extra reboot after the install.

After that it worked!

I’m sure this information will be easier to find in the coming days and weeks, but for those that find this blog post first, here’s the key link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817651(WS.10).aspx

And, here’s my version of the chart summarizing the requirements for the different editions.

The key takeaway is that Windows Server 2008 R2 Web and Standard Editions require Service Pack 1.  Unlike all other OSes and editions, they will not work simply by upgrading the Integration Services.

Furthermore, after installing SP1 on the guest, it still didn’t work for me.  I had to do one further reboot after the install completed!  It seems that the SP1 upgrade installs everything, but one more reboot was required to activate the new functionality.

When it’s working, it works great!  Hopefully this helps someone else that made the same initial assumptions that I did.

Today’s technical news is filled with so much about cloud computing, distributed and delegated computing, server virtualization, application virtualization, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), zero client, and so many other buzz words.  Google is all about managing your information in the cloud, Twitter data uses Amazon’s AWS, the new Windows Phone 7 that was just released to the US greatly leverages cloud computing using Microsoft’s Azure platform, and websites and tools all over are moving to a cloud based model.

Virtualization is a key component of many technologies and innovations these days but no one quite understands where we will be with virtualization in the next several months let alone the next decade.  But there is one thing we all can agree on; the growing and improving virtualization technologies will enable more cloud computing in the future.

The Stage is Set

I think back to when my father brought home an amber lite terminal in the mid-eighties with a 300bps modem so that he could connect to his corporate mainframe from home if he was stuck in a snowstorm where we lived in Eastern Nova Scotia, Canada.  I remember him talking about the differences between thin-client and thick-client computing.  Over the last 25 years since then, I’ve watched as the tech world has oscillated between thin-client, thick-client computing, and various hybrid models in-between.  I think back on the first Citrix MetaFrame seminar I attended in the 90’s where I saw how a single server could host multiple desktop sessions, each user retaining their own personalized desktop user experience (that was a turn back towards thin-client computing).

Fast forward to today and entire operating systems can be virtualized so that one server can host dozens of virtual servers.  The application layer is virtualized so that complex applications can be housed in the data center and the tiniest little client app is all that is needed to run it from anywhere.  Companies like Vaasnet (http://www.vaasnet.com) offer training labs, delegated customizable demo machines, and R&D environments instantly available on-demand.

In addition, high speed Internet access is available for the vast majority of the modernized world, therefore virtualization is not just for corporate networks, but virtualized infrastructure can be used by anyone from anywhere (even over your home ISPs broadband connection).  Cell phones provide hotspots while on the road, and even airlines are starting to provide Internet access while flying 30,000 feet in the air.

So many puzzle pieces are falling into place to create a perfect environment for the world of virtualization to progress to the next level.  The question for us now is how this applies to us today and what will the state of virtualization look like in the future.

They say that history repeats itself.  We saw a major technology cycle just over a decade ago with the Dot-com bubble, bust, and leveling out.  I expect that we will see the same here, although I believe that we are at the early stages of this cycle for cloud computing.

The Future of Virtualization Technology in the Cloud

From a technology standpoint, what is needed to see cloud computing fully mature?  I see four major underlying concepts still lacking but heading in the right direction.

1. Stabilization of Cloud-related Technologies

First, there needs to be a maturing of the cloud technologies and services that exist today.  Quest Software has released a recent survey that says that 40% of respondents are not even interested in cloud services; and only 10% of IT organizations are currently using cloud services in production!  The survey revealed that it is not because cloud computing does not apply to the vast majority of the IT community, but that it is still new, not fully stabilized, and the jury is still out on how security will pan out.  There are a lot of unknowns, but tremendous investment is being made to see these questions answered.  Do not expect full answers soon though; there will be years of maturing and fighting for standards before we see universal adoption.  Yet, that won’t slow adoption for many in the meantime as more and more organizations adopt these virtualization technologies.  Look at HTML5 as an example where the adoption of a technology has gone ahead before the standards have been approved.   We are already tracking in the right direction; we just need a stabilizing and maturing of what is already around us today.

2. Data Deduplication

Second, with so much data, much of it identical, there is a pressing need for a solution in the area of data deduplication.  Data deduplication (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication) takes identical data and keeps just one copy of it to save valuable space.  Data deduplication is a technology still in its infancy.  Options are available for secondary storage like backups and archiving, but there are few solutions that can handle the line speed data deduplication at performance levels necessary to "dedupe" during virtualization processing.  Instead, storage space is growing at astronomical levels to make up for the lagging data deduplication technologies.  Virtual servers, one of the core tenants for the cloud, are perfect candidates for data deduplication since they have a lot of identical data for the operating system files and service packs, which are nearly identical between the different instances of virtual servers.

Not everything dedupes well though—take, for example, the 70 gigapixel picture of Budapest (http://70gigapixel.cloudapp.net/index_en.html), currently the largest picture in the world, which has very little data that will dedupe.  But still, for the most part virtual servers dedupe very well.

3. Operating System Virtualization Offloading

The third area where we will see major growth as virtualization technologies mature will be operating system support in the cloud.  Until now most of the progress in virtualization has been at the data center level.  Even operating systems from years ago can be virtualized nearly as well as the newest operating systems.  There is some client integration component support for newer operating systems, but for the most part, that is the extent of the operating system support for cloud computing.

Right now, most operating systems have no support for offloading small slices of their computing requirements to a 3rd party.  Imagine if an operating system could pull resources from disparate cloud providers from around the world.  Today the operating system tightly couples storage space, storage I/O, computing, CPU, memory, user state, and all aspects of the operating system software.  Expect to see these become separate units that can be decoupled and offloaded to third party providers in the cloud.

As an example of operating system virtualization offloading, look at storage space within the operating system.  Today I troubleshoot far too many servers that do not have enough storage to keep up with years of service packs and hotfixes.  How I wish I could offload at least the C:WindowsWinSXS folder to a cheap hard drive or even a cloud provider.  In fact, why not point to a trustworthy storage location in the cloud that will offer read-only access and include all of the latest operating system binaries—let Microsoft take care of that—off  of the server.  Of course that puts large requirements on the cloud and the Internet access to it, so offline solutions are still required.  The question is how the storage can be decoupled from the local hard drives on the server.  Dropbox, Windows Live Skydrive, and others are heading in the right direction, but again, have a long way to go.

Another example of operating system virtualization offloading is patching of the operating system, which is currently a mess for a number of reasons.  Usually it is disruptive to the operation of the system, requiring services to be restarted or reboots performed.  I realize that the *nix operating systems do better in this regard than Windows, but no operating system is without some impact during most upgrades.  Additionally, the software is so tightly coupled to the operating system that issues during patches can affect unrelated technologies on the server.  We need to see the operating systems decouple the software they run from the operating system and allow online patching.  It is no easy matter, otherwise we would have seen it years ago, but it is possible in time, and a key requirement to the future of the cloud virtualization.

Here is one other example of operating system virtualization offloading: RAM.  When a modern day client or server operating system starts up, it uses hundreds of MB of RAM just for the base operating system.  Why not share that among dozens, hundreds, or thousands of servers so that only a pointer to the data is required for the base operating system.  VMWare’s virtualization technologies offer memory deduplication, which helps some, but today the operating system does not support this.  In fact, the latest versions of Windows Client and Server purposely randomizes the data in the RAM so that it cannot be deduped.  Security is the primary reason, but there are better ways to address this.  We need operating system support before cloud computing can fully evolve.  Google’s soon to be released Chrome OS is heading in the right direction by making the client as thin as possible and leaving the processing to the servers.  However, it still does not address delegated processing of resources when there are heavy client-side processing demands.

4. Standardization of Virtualization Units

Finally, I believe we need to see standards evolve so that standard cloud units mean the same to everyone.  If I want 2 minutes of compute power to render a video, I should be able to point to any cloud provider and expect the same results. And the process should be hidden from me while it works in the background.  One example of where we see this today is with hard disks.  It is effortless to pull out a hard drive and replace it with another one from a different vendor.  Sure, there are some weaknesses at times, but my point still stands that cloud computing needs standards so that what occurs under the hood is irrelevant to the implementation.

Wrapping It Up

The four areas described above are not an exhaustive list of the areas where we will see major growth as virtualization technologies evolve.  Today, the world of cloud computing is mature enough that there are many ways that it can benefit you immediately.  And as virtualization technologies mature we will certainly see startups such as Vaasnet (http://www.vaasnet.com) take advantage of these virtualization technologies by providing very useful cloud services to users.   We have just barely seen the beginning of virtualization technologies and cloud computing.  We are excited to see what the future may hold, and how the various hurdles that currently exist to cloud computing/virtualization are overcome.  There is no doubt that cloud computing is the way of the future, so we can certainly embrace the cloud of today while looking forward with optimism for what is yet ahead.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the free version of SharePoint that installs on top of Windows Server 2008.  You can take a look at SharePoint Foundation 2010 quickly and easily by starting a preconfigured SharePoint Foundation 2010 Virtual Machine at Vaasnet.com.  Just start the virtual machine and then browse to the public IP address in your favorite browser to see what SharePoint Foundation 2010 has to offer.

In addition, with SharePoint Workspace 2010, you can get an offline copy of your SharePoint team site allowing you to add/edit your documents in any SharePoint document library easily and allow SharePoint Workspace 2010 to handle the file synchronization for you. If you want to try out SharePoint Workspace 2010 with SharePoint Foundation 2010, make sure you follow these other configuration steps required for configuring SharePoint Foundation 2010 for SharePoint Workspace 2010.

Vaasnet.com is a new Internet startup that provides preconfigured virtual machines that are ready for you to start and begin using right away (such as this virtual machine with SharePoint Foundation 2010 already installed).  Vaasnet.com takes the hassle out of downloading and installing the Windows Server 2008 operating system and SharePoint Foundation 2010 so that you can quickly log in and begin trying out the new features of SharePoint Foundation 2010.

If you try connecting SharePoint Workspace 2010 to a default SharePoint Foundation 2010 installation you may get an error like this one:

—————————
Sync to SharePoint Workspace
—————————
SharePoint Workspace was unable to interpret the SharePoint location. Please check and ensure the location contains no typing errors.
—————————
OK Help
—————————

This is because the default configuration of SharePoint Foundation 2010 requires two configuration changes to allow SharePoint Workspace 2010 to work.

The first is to enable the Remote Differential Compression feature on the server that is hosting SharePoint.  This is used by SharePoint Workspace 2010 to send and receive the files for synchronization.

To enable Remote Differential Compression go to the Server Manager > Features and choose Add Features.

Check the box for the Remote Differential Compression feature and then click Install to enable this feature.

The second configuration change to allow SharePoint Workspace 2010 to work with your SharePoint Foundation 2010 server is to add an Alternate Access Mapping of the public facing DNS name (or IP address) to SharePoint using the SharePoint Central Admin.  If you are connecting to your SharePoint site using the machine name then this is not necessary, but if you are connecting over the Internet through either an IP address or DNS name then you will need to add this alternate access mapping.

The reason is that when SharePoint is first installed, the only way it thinks users are connecting to the server is through the machine name: http://machine_name (as if on a local intranet).  Since most likely SharePoint Workspace 2010 users will be connecting through a public facing DNS name (or IP address), you will need to add this DNS name (or IP address) as an alternate access mapping (indicating that this DNS name is the same as the machine_name and should map to the SharePoint site).

To add an Alternate Access Mapping to SharePoint Foundation 2010, visit the SharePoint Central Administration on the SharePoint Foundation 2010 server:

Once in the SharePoint Central Administration website, click on the Application Management link

Then under the Web Applications heading choose Configure alternate access mappings

Choose Edit Public URLs

And then select the public facing SharePoint website that you want to add an access mapping to.  You do this by changing the Alternate Access Mapping Collection (clicking on the “No selection” drop down button) to the website that is running on Port 80.

The  default name of the public facing SharePoint site is “SharePoint – 80” but you may have changed that when you configured your SharePoint site.

Once you have switched the Alternate Access Mapping Collection to the public SharePoint website (SharePoint – 80) then you can specify the Public URL by adding the publically accessible IP Address or DNS name to the Internet field:

Click Save to apply the alternate access mapping and now you should be able to connect to your SharePoint Foundation 2010 site with SharePoint Workspace 2010:

SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the free version of SharePoint that installs on top of Windows Server 2008.  With SharePoint Workspace 2010 you can get an offline copy of your SharePoint team site allowing you to add/edit your documents in any SharePoint document library easily and allow SharePoint Workspace 2010 to handle the file synchronization for you. 

You can take a look at SharePoint Foundation 2010 quickly and easily by starting a preconfigured SharePoint Foundation 2010 Virtual Machine at Vaasnet.com.  Vaasnet.com is a new Internet startup that provides preconfigured virtual machines (such as a virtual machine with SharePoint Foundation 2010 already installed) that are ready for you to start and begin using right away.  Vaasnet.com takes the hassle out of downloading and installing the Windows Server 2008 operating system and SharePoint Foundation 2010 so that you can quickly log in and begin trying out the new features of SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Full Screen 1680 by 1050 1280 by 1024 1024 by 768 800 by 600 640 by 480

The size is then automatically included in the RDP file that is generated when you click the Connect button.  The dropdown defaults to Full Screen.  Enjoy!

You can get to the Corporate Accounts management functionality by logging in and then going to the Your Account section.  Scroll to the bottom and you can “Open Your Corporate Account”.  Once you open your corporate account you can then begin sending invitations.  Anyone that you send an invitation to will receive an email with instructions on how they can register to use your payment method to start a virtual machine. 

When they go to start a virtual machine, they will be presented with a choice of payment methods; either their own personal account, or one of the corporate accounts that they belong to.  You can also use this feature to categorize the usage of a virtual machine; is it for your personal use or corporate use.

The Corporate Accounts section on the Your Account page has links to allow you to manage and invite other users, change the name of your corporate account, and also close your corporate account if you no longer need it.

As always, please let us know your feedback and comments about this feature or any others that you have in mind.