27 juin 2009
Nissan Shifts Manufacturing Costs With Hyper-V
Microsoft's virtualization software helped consolidate 159 servers used in assembly and component manufacturing down to 28.
Over the course of a year, the engineers at Nissan's vehicle manufacturing plants in Smyrna and Decherd, Tenn., have implemented virtualization to consolidate 159 servers used in assembly and component manufacturing down to 28.
The consolidation is impressive, not only for its scale, but for the fact that it's been carried out by manufacturing and quality-assurance specialists outside the regular Nissan IT department. None of the servers involved was considered part of the business information services function, said Phil D'Antonio, department manager over conveyors and controls engineering in Nissan's Smyrna plant.
The consolidation was accomplished in some cases by combining what had been standalone but related manufacturing applications into one application, which was then run in one Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine. That is, the server reduction reflects manufacturing applications being combined as well as stacking up virtual machines per server.
In Smyrna, Nissan is running an average of eight virtual machines per Dell (Dell) R900 rack server; in Decherd, it's averaging six. Many pieces of the software infrastructure, such as the database, Active Directory, and Web servers, did not lend themselves to being virtualized and remain standalone applications, said D'Antonio.
The consolidation has led to a 34% savings in computer electricity consumption at the Smyrna plant, where preliminary measures have been made. "At Nissan, we're a [U.S. Department of Energy] Energy Star partner. It's very important to us to us to conserve energy and protect the environment," D'Antonio said.
In addition, what had been three computer rooms at each location has now been reduced to two. Two will be maintained, no matter how much consolidation occurs, so that a mishap that knocked out one computer room wouldn't shut down the plant. Each room can serve as a recovery facility for the other, for the servers at another plant. Virtualization makes that process simpler and easier to maintain, said D'Antonio.
The Hyper-V virtual machines are running manufacturing, quality-control, and process engineering applications, such as paint mixing for different models. The Smyrna plant produces Altima sedans, coupes, and hybrids; Frontier pickups; Maxima sedans; and Xterra and Pathfinder SUVs. The Decherd plant produces engines, crankshafts, and cylinder blocks.
The end on :
RVTools 2.5.5!
Latest Version: 2.5.5 | June 27, 2009
Download | Documentation
Release notes:
Version 2.5.5 (June 27, 2009)
Changed health check properties are not set at start of the program. The program will use the default values until you start and transmit the properties screen. This problem is now fixed.
Since version 2.5 the vDisk tab displays information that is aggregated from “config.hardware” and “guest” information. That was not a good idea! If there is more than one partition on a virtual disk the displayed information is wrong. To solve this problem I now split this information in a vDisk tab which will show only the information that is provided by the “config.hardware” information and a new vPartition tab that will display the “guest” information.
Better exception handling on filter.
New fields on vHost tab: Number of CPUs, Cores per CPU and virtual CPUs per Core.
For those who are using this awesome tool, there’s a donate button and of course there are other ways to give Rob some credits 
. Visit Robware.net
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/06/27/rvtools-2-5-5/
Découvrez un site dédié exclusivement à la virtualisation assez original !
Je voulais partager avec vous un site qui peut s’annoncer indispensable pour tous les fans de virtualisation ! En effet, un collègue de Microsoft UK a eu la bonne idée de créer un site dont le contenu est uniquement basé sur des petites vidéos (tutoriaux) exclusivement sur la virtualisation ! C’est donc un site à connaître absolument et qui peut s’avérer très pratique pour voir comment utiliser : Hyper-V / Med-V / App-V / SCVMM / VDI etc. etc.
Le site est divisé en plusieurs catégories :
- Serveur Virtualisation comprenant : VS 2005 R2 / Hyper-V / Hyper-V R2
- Desktop Virtualisation comprenant : Med-V / Virtual PC / VDI / Windows Vista ECD
- Presentation Virtualisation comprenant : Terminal Services / RDS / RDP
- Application Virtualisation comprenant : App-V
- Management : SCOM / SCVMM / SCCM / SCDPM
Pour chaque catégorie, retrouvez des dizaines de vidéos notamment une assez sympa expliquant comment comment utiliser des périphériques USB dans une VM au travers du réseau avec Fabulatech.
Rendez-vous sur le site Virtualboy TV !
Publication de tous les chemins de migration possibles vers Windows Seven / 2008 R2
A moins d’un mois de la sortie de la version finale du futur couple Client / Server de Microsoft, voici la publication de deux documents à garder précieusement puisqu’ils expliquent pour chaque OS à savoir Windows Seven & Windows Server 2008 R2, tous les chemins de migration possibles et supportés !
En effet, il n’est pas toujours évident de savoir si on peut migrer d’un Vista Home Prenium 32 bits vers un Windows Seven Ultimate 64 bits de même pour savoir si on peut passer d’un Windows 2000 server SP4 vers un Windows Server 2008 R2 Core…
Toutes ces réponses figurent dans ces deux documents sous forme de tableau à deux entrées :
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Changes to virtual machine snapshots in Windows Server 2008 R2
In Windows Server 2008 R2 we have made some surgical changes to the way virtual machine snapshots work and how they are exposed in the system in order to address some key customer pain points. Changes include:
- You can now export a single snapshot from a virtual machine. This works by selecting the snapshot in question and then selecting Export… from the Action pane. We will merge all the snapshot disk data into a single new virtual hard disk – and the resulting exported virtual machine will look like a virtual machine with no snapshots that is identical to the snapshot you selected. Note that the virtual machine needs to be turned off in order to perform this operation.
- Snapshot AVHD files are now created in the same directory as their parent VHD files. Their names have also been updated to include the name of the parent virtual hard disk. Both of these changes make it easier to identify and group snapshot files.
- When you open the settings for a virtual machine snapshot and look at the hard disk settings – you will see the name of the AVHD that is associated with that snapshot. This helps you to map AVHD files to specific snapshots.
- You can now edit AVHD files in the edit VHD wizard. This means that if you want to manually merge AVHD files to a new VHD to give to someone else – you can (note: be careful as you can cause problems if you merge back into the parent in this case).
- You can now directly attach an AVHD file to a virtual machine. This is very handy if you have lost your virtual machine configuration and need to get data off of a snapshot file.
There is more work we need to do here, but hopefully this will help make snapshots more flexible and usable.
Guides pas à pas sur Terminal Services 2008 (Windows Server 2008)
Suite à de nombreuses demandes voici un lien vers les 6 guides fondamentaux sur Terminal Services dans Windows Server 2008
Windows 7 à moins de 50 euros, mais pendant 30 jours
Du 15 juillet 2009 au 14 août 2009 il y a une bonne affaire à faire ;-)
Plus d’infos et réactions sur :
http://www.journaldugeek.com/2009/06/25/les-prix-pour-windows-7/
http://www.01net.com/editorial/503827/windows-7-a-moins-de-50-euros-mais-pendant-30-jours/
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/0,39040745,39700589,00.htm
http://www.clubic.com/actualite-284554-microsoft-windows-7-prix-dispo.html
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 2 est disponible
Disponible sur http://connect.microsoft.com depuis hier , la beta 2 de MDT 2010 prend en charge Windows 7 (et Windows Server 2008 R2) RC
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 2 package includes:
- MicrosoftDeploymentToolkit_x64.msi
- MicrosoftDeploymentToolkit_x86.msi
- MDT 2010 beta release notes
Important Release Information:
- Light Touch Installation(LTI) based deployments should use Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 RC (build 7100).
- Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Beta should use Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 RC (build 7100).
- Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 should use Windows Automated Installation Kit v1.1.
26 juin 2009
Wind River Hypervisor : virtualisation pour l'embedded
Wind River, spécialiste de l'optimisation software, annonce sa solution Hypervisor, apportant la virtualisation sur des systèmes embarqués à processeurs mono- ou multicoeurs.
Wind River, éditeur DSO ( Device Software Optimization ), que le fondeur Intel s'apprête à racheter après des collaborations dans plusieurs projets communs, annonce la disponibilité de sa solution Wind River Hypervisor pour systèmes embarqués mono- et multicoeurs.
Il s'intègre notamment aux environnements VxWorks et Wind River Linux et peut apporter la virtualisation aux systèmes embarqués de nombreux marchés comme l'aérospatial, la défense, l'automobile mais aussi l'électronique grand public.
Virtualisation en multicoeurs
Le système permet de gérer plusieurs systèmes d'exploitation à partir d'une même carte, voire d'un unique processeur, réduisant les coûts de matériel et de consommation d'énergie et réduisant les temps de développement.
" Wind River Hypervisor apporte la virtualisation aux systèmes embarqués, permettant ainsi aux développeurs d'accroître le fonctionnalités dans un format plus petit. Nous répondons à une forte demande du marché en enrichissant notre solution logicielle multicoeur, déjà à la pointe de l'industrie, avec un hyperviseur performant assurant la virtualisation "
, explique Tomas Evensen, directeur des opérations de Wind River. Fidèle à son coeur d'activité, l'hyperviseur cible naturellement les spécificités des systèmes temps réel, comme la performance, la latence, le déterminisme et une empreinte minimale.
Wind River dispose ainsi d'une solution pour le domaine en forte évolution de la virtualisation, qui est pressenti pour connaître un très large déploiement dans les années à venir. Pour mettre en avant son Hyperviseur, la société compte sur le choix des OS supportés et des configurations logicielles multicoeurs : SMP ( Symmetric Multi Processing ) et AMP ( Asymmetric Multi Processing ) ainsi que sur l'environnement de développement unifié reposant sur Wind River Workbench.
Tomas Evensen présente Wind River Hypervisor
25 juin 2009
Windows XP Migration to Windows 7 RC using MDT Beta 1 - Part 1: The OS Install
In part 1 of this 2-part series, Jeremy Chapman shows how a Windows XP computer with user files and settings can be migrated to Windows 7 RC. If you recall, we did this a few months back in an interview with Jeremy and the whole process using hard-link migration took about 30 minutes, installed the applications we selected and migrated more than 20GB of user state from Windows XP to Windows 7. This video is a screen capture walking through an updated migration to Windows 7 RC. The second part of this video series will show how this was done using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 Beta 1.
For more information on the tools and processes, see www.microsoft.com/deployment on TechNet.
http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/edge/0/4/1/3/mdt1_2MB_edge.wmv