Virtualization Solution Accelerators

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With Virtualization on everyone's mind and now that we've kicked off our "Get Virtual Now" campaign I thought it was worth making youVirtualization Accelerators aware of some resources we now have to help you in your virtualization projects.  Whether you are in the planning stages or already have something in operation we have tools that can help you out.  So with that below is a list of resources.

  • Infrastructure Planning and Design - If you have Virtualization on your project roadmap and you need help to get started check out the latest Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides.  These guides help you select a virtualization infrastructure and includes topics on Hyper-V, Application Virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and many more.  You can learn more about these guides here.
  • MAP Toolkit - When you are planning the move to virtualization you have to choose the right technologies for your environment.  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit can help design the right solutions for your needs.  More details can be found here.
  • Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool - Keeping virtual machines up to date with the latest patches can be a real pain. this tool helps protect against potential vulnerabilities when bringing virtual machines online that might not be patched.  This way you can patch them offline as needed and bring them online when fully patched.  More details can be found here.
  • Security Compliance Management Toolkit - This toolkit includes best practices for creating security baselines for computers in your environment much easier.  More details can be found here.
  • Secure your servers - the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide helps with best practices for securing servers running Windows Server 2008 and it includes a great tool for creating standard GPO's to deploy recommended settings.  The GPOAccelerator can save you hours of work by configuring these GPO's for you.  More details on the security guide can be found here.
  • And finally deployment - at the end of the day you have to get the OS out there. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 helps to deploy Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 (including the virtualization role) and other applications.  More details can be found here.

So hopefully that's enough to get you started on your virtualization projects!

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