System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 screencast - Checkpoints
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) has been released and one of my favorite new features is the Checkpoint management that is now possible. Spend ten minutes of your day watching the video demonstration to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
UNDO Disk Files
I'm sure many of you are used to using UNDO disk files with the virtual machines you are running on Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005. I pretty much have to with my demos. I've always enjoyed using UNDO and was shocked to see it is not supported in SCVMM. Why might you ask? Read on.
Where are your children?
We've had a technology known as differencing disks for a long time in our virtualization products. SCVMM uses that technology to create Checkpoints. The beauty of this is that SCVMM hides all of the complexity and gives you an easy-to-use interface.
Windows Server virtualization (WSv) adds some additional capabilities I have recorded for another screencast. I'll have a ton of information on WSv when the time is right. Stay tuned for that...
In the meantime, check the video out and see for yourself. This really adds a great new dimension to your high availability, backup/recovery, and change management processes. That's really what the System Center family is all about. Allowing your org and infrastructure to improve so that it's a well oiled and managed machine. A virtual machine that is...
The Screencast
Take a look at the screencast and go on a tour of SCVMM Checkpoints. The video is right at 10 minutes in length. If you want to save this local and review it offline, please right mouse click the second link and "SAVE AS".
Save Local - https://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/scvmm/Checkpoints.wmv
Other Resources
A number of websites are going live through the course of today. Here are a few of my favorites. The TechNet area will have a SCVMM virtual machine you can download. This will save you the time and trouble of setting everything up from scratch (although I recommend the "from scratch" approach for training).
https://www.microsoft.com/scvmm