Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters: An Update on Momentum and the Road Ahead

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Over the last six months since the launch of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters, we have seen tremendous interest by the Hosters and Telcos from around the world. I am pleased to report that we have over 100+ Hosters who are in various stages of developing cloud services based on Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters (DDTK-H). About 17 have already launched their cloud offers based on the DDTK-H. We are expecting an additional 20 of them to launch by March 2010.

 

We are also working to update the toolkit and the next version of DDTK-H is going to launch around the Hosting Summit in April 2010. However, a few things have changed in the existing DDTK-H and I want to bring those to your attention:

 

1. All source code for DDTK-H is now consolidated and made available at MSDN Code Gallery. It can be accessed here.

 

2. We have updated some source code and the updates have been posted . These came from bugs reported by hosters. Please download and use the new bits when you get a chance. All interfaces are preserved; so your code should just work as before (but will require a new round of testing).

3. We have now added a new service that leverages SCVMM to manage Hyper-V instances. This means you can see all machines on all cluster nodes. The older service that made calls directly to Hyper-V is now deprecated. (Again, the interfaces are maintained).

 

4. A frequent request from hosting providers has been how to be able to access the Hyper-V Guest through the Host in the same way VMM does. We have just published a sample of an ActiveX control that does just this. It is a wrapper around the standard Windows RDP control and should work with Windows clients including XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2008. Full source code is included in the download.

 

5. A new license agreement has been created for anyone who wants to use DDTK-H as part of a product they intend to resell. Like the original license, this is also free of charge. The default license agreement that is provided with the installer is geared for hosters to use in their own management code. So, in response to our customers, control panel vendors and ISVs may license DDTK-H code with this new agreement. If you would like to use the DDTK-H in a product for resale, please contact your local Microsoft account rep who will supply the agreement.

 

6. SharePoint 2010 Multi-tenant management services have now been added to the DDTK-H samples. The samples can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Gallery. It can be accessed here.

 

In the upcoming Hosting Summit, we are going to release the next version of DDTK-H. It will contain many exciting new samples and whitepapers/guidance on how to leverage the features of Windows Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010.

 

While you build your offers on DDTK-H, I would like to offer you our assistance. Please reach us through this blog on the discussion page if you need any assistance.

 

More importantly, PLEASE share your SUCCESS with us. We would love to hear from you!!!!

Hyder Ali, Industry Solutions Director, Hosting Business, Microsoft Corp.