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Microsoft finally released an video ad which shows why the Surface is such a great device. Surface Imagine shows you a device that can finally do it all. It has the power of a laptop with the portability of a tablet. It has a USB port and a click-in keyboard and the power to run Office.
Finally Microsoft just announced the Surface Pro prices and dates for the European countries such as Switzerland.
Surface Pro will be available in Switzerland on May 30th, priced as follows:
The following accessories will be available at launch:
You should definitely checkout my review on the Surface Pro and the review on the Surface RT which is already available in Switzerland.
Some days ago System Center Universe DACH/Europe was announced and finally we got more information on the event it self.
Finally the event will be a two day event on September 16th/17th 2013 in Bern Switzerland. There will be sessions in 4 parallel tracks, 2 Keynotes (day 1 and day 2) and approx. 36 Breakout sessions with a lot of System Center and Windows Server specialist, Microsoft MVPs and Microsoft employees as speakers.
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Markus Erlacher (CH) General Manager itnetx and former Microsoft Senior Technical Solution Professional http://www.itnetx.ch/ @markuserlacher
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Maarten Goet (NL) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.opslogix.com/ http://www.inovativ.nl/ @maarten_goet
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Thomas Maurer (CH) Microsoft MVP [VIrtual Machine] http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/ @thomasmaurer
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Mike Resseler (BE) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://scug.be/mike/ @mikeresseler
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Travis Wright (USA) Principal Program Manager for Windows Server & System Center Microsoft Corp / @radtravis
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Marcel Zehner (CH) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://blog.scsmfaq.ch/ @scsmfaq
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Pete Zerger (USA) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] @pzerger
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Philipp Witschi (CH) Virtualization and Fabric Management Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ @philippwitschi
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Carsten Rachfahl (D) Microsoft MVP [VIrtual Machine] http://www.hyper-v-server.de/ @hypervserver
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Andreas Baumgarten (D) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://startblog.hud.de/ @abaumgarten
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Stefan Roth (CH) Cloud Architect, SCOM Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://blog.scomfaq.ch/ @scomfaq.
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Stefan Johner (CH) Cloud Engineer, SCSM Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://scsmlab.com/ @scsmlab
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Mike Epprecht (CH) Technical Evangelist DPE Microsoft Switzerland @fastflame
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Stefan Koell (A) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://code4ward.net/ @stefankoell
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Markus Klein (D) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.ms-privatecloud.info/ @markusklein01
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Michel Lüscher (CH) Senior Consultant - MCS Switzerland
http://www.server-talk.eu @michelluescher
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Thomas Roettinger (D) Program Manager Server and Cloud Division Microsoft Germany @troettinger
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If you need more information about System Center Universe Europe check out the System Center Universe website and checkout the blog post from Stefan Roth: System Center Universe DACH/Europe (SCU DACH) – FAQ
In Windows Server 2008 R2 you had a setting in the Hyper-V Manager GUI to enable Processor Compatibility for legacy operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000. In Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V this setting is gone from the GUI, but you can still change it via Windows PowerShell.
By using the Get-VMProcessor cmdlet you can list the virtual CPU information of your Hyper-V virtual machines.
As you can see you can find a property called CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled which is set to “False” by default and this is okay in 99% of all cases. But even if Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000 is not officially supported by Microsoft anymore there are some customers which have to run some VMs with legacy operating systems and by changing this setting via Windows PowerShell and the Set-VMProcessor cmdlet you can allow VMs to run old operating systems.
Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 1
And of course you can also change it back
Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 0
Together with Symantec, Mahmoud Magdy (Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server) and Mikko Nykyri (VMware vExpert) we produced a whitepaper called “Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions”. This whitepaper covers an overview about virtualization and the challenges which come with the new workloads in terms of backup and recovery.
Because of the outstanding economy, flexibility, and service levels it offers, virtualization is transforming data centers at breakneck speed: by 2016, an estimated 80 percent of the world’s x86 servers will be virtual machines (VMs).1 But the speed of this transformation, along with the high resource utilization, ease of cloning, moving workloads, and other ways virtualization works its magic, raise challenges for “traditional” IT services and the teams that deliver them. Nowhere is the complexity that virtualization creates for traditional IT services more apparent than in backup and recovery, which participants in a recent Symantec survey ranked among their least-successful IT initiatives. This paper addresses five critical decisions organizations must make when building a backup and recovery plan to:
- Maintain protection, visibility, and control of applications and data.
- Maximize utilization of established infrastructure, processes, staff, and budget.
- Use virtualization to improve backup and recovery processes.
- Create an efficient, scalable, future-prepared backup and recovery environment.
Each issue is presented first in general terms that apply across IT environments, and then add comments for specific platforms, applications, or industries based on our individual experience as VMware® vExperts and Microsoft® MVPs.
You can download the whitepaper here: Symantec Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions
Make also sure you checkout the Google Hangout event on Fri, May 10, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM.
Join a panel of virtualization experts including Microsoft MVPs Mahmoud Magdy & Thomas Mauer and VMware vExpert Mikko Nykyri as they discuss the white paper they co-authored and offer their thoughts on the most important things to consider for a virtualized server environment.
Have you ever heard of the famous System Center Universe (SCU) hosted by Catapult Systems? If not then it’s about time to visit http://www.systemcenteruniverse.com and check out the excellent content.
After talking to Catapult Systems we decided to bring this great event to Europe. We are now in the planning phase, talking to partners, speakers, sponsors etc. that are interested to partner with us and help making this event coming true. Visit the event web site where we will start publishing more information shortly!
Microsoft last week released the Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1 – Virtual Machine Manager which includes a lot of fixes and improvements. If you want to update you can do this by using the Windows Update scenario or install it manually.
You have to uninstall the Update Rollup 1 for SCVMM (you can find more on the reason on Carmen Summers blog post). Windows Update will not show you the Update Rollup to before you have uninstalled UR1.
If you have downloaded the Update Rollup 2 via the Windows Update Catalog and have installed it manually, it’s recommended that you uninstall UR2 first, after that uninstall UR1 and finally install UR2 on a System Center 2012 SP1 installation without any Update Rollups installed.
After you have installed the Update Rollup 2 for Virtual Machine Manager, make sure you also update the Agents on the Hyper-V hosts.
Update Rollup 1: 3.1.6011.0
Update Rollup 2: 3.1.6020.0
Btw. Remember to do this not only for the VMM management server, don’t forget the hosts where the VMM console is installed, like System Center App Controller.
