Recently I posted about a page in the TechNet Wiki which lists a lot of Hyper-V tools. Yesterday on Hyper-V workshop, Michel Lüscher mentioned two lists in the TechNet Wiki where you can find Hyper-V and Cluster Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2.

List of Hyper-V Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2 (TechNet Wiki):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1349.hyper-v-update-list-for-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

List of Cluster Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2 (TechNet Wiki):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2008.list-of-cluster-hotfixes-for-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

Microsoft and the community are really starting to work with the TechNet Wiki platform. Now thanks to James van den Berg I found a great wiki page with a collection of Hyper-V tools.

The collection includes a list of the following content:

• Supported Microsoft Tools (Solution Accelerators, Product Downloads, etc.)
• Microsoft Products and Solutions that are Built upon Hyper-V Technology
• Remote Management from Client Versions of Windows
• Unsupported Microsoft Tools (Sysinternals, MSDN/ScriptCenter Code Galleries, TechNet/MSDN Blogs)
• Community Tools (CodePlex and blogs)
• Third-party Free Tools
• Hardware-Specific Tools from OEMs and Vendors
• Partner Solutions (Commercially Available)
• Application-specific Performance Planning/Testing/Analysis tools

You can find also a lot of other interessting content on the TechNet Wiki. For example for Exchange, PowerShell and SQL.

A few weeks ago was the Hyper-V.nu Community Event in Amsterdam. Carsten Rachfahl recorded the sessions.

Hyper-V.NU – Keynote – Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk

Hyper-V.NU – Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Networking – Aidan Finn

listen carefully at 59:00

Hyper-V.NU – SCVMM 2012 – Maarten Wijsman

Hyper-V.NU – Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Storage — Hans Vredevoort

Hyper-V.NU – Windows 8 DDDD – Ronald Beekelaar

In the last days I got my new machine for work, a Lenovo ThinkPad X1. As usual I always want to work with the latest and greates technology, that’s why I have chosen to set up the ThinkPad X1 with Windows 8.

Even in Developer Preview state Windows 8 runs very stable and brings a lot of cool new features which I can use for my daily work. I love the new PowerShell versions and Internet Explorer 10. But the best and the biggest feature for me, is the integration of Hyper-V 3 in Windows 8. So I don’t have to use VMware Workstation or VirtualBox to run virtual machines on my notebook for testing or presentations. I also can simply use the VHD (or VHDX) format to play with virtual machines or even boot them via boot from VHD.

The downside of the Windows 8 Developer Preview is missing .NET framework 3.5, but I think the Windows 8 beta, which should be released by the end of February, should fix this.

Maybe some people have realized that I am a big fan of business style notebooks. And what would be better business design than the ThinkPad series. Lenovo tried to combine good old ThinkPad values with new design features, and in my opinion succeeded. I really like the ThinkPad design in this very slim chassis. It looks elegant and business “high-class”.

The build quality of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is like you would expect it from a ThinkPad. It feels great and very robust. Keith Combs describes it in his review ”The ThinkPad X1 is build like a tank.  It’s probably the most solid notebook I’ve ever had in my hands.” and I have to agree with him.

More information on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 here.

Last week I got my Nokia Lumia 800 and even I already have read a lot of articles and reviews about it, I am impressed about the beautiful design and the build quality.

The first problem noticed was the battery life. My HTC Titan had something like two days of battery life and the battery of my Lumia 800 was empty after just one day. At the same day I also got the Windows Phone update (7.10.8107.79) and I deactivated the Exchange Push for my work mail account. Now the battery life seems to be the same or better than on my HTC Titan.

Now the Lumia 800 (3.7-inch screen) cloud be a bit bigger for me (the Lumia 900 with a 4.3-inch Screen could be perfect). I also miss the Internet Sharing feature, but there should be an update soon to activate this feature.
Overall I really like the Nokia Lumia 800 and it will be my main phone for the next months.

Last year I did a little research project about Microsoft’s public cloud and how it cloud affect Small and Medium sized businesses. So I created a paper which should help Microsoft partners to decide how they can improve their services and solutions by using the Microsoft public cloud. I the paper I focused on Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Intune. This should be for the partner which do infrastructure solutions like Active Directory, Exchange and PC Management.

You can download this paper from my Windows Live SkyDrive.
The paper includes a lot of text copied from Microsoft documents and websites, and research I did by myself. All the sources should be marked, but if you find anything which is not marked please feel free to contact me.

Today is my first day at itnetx gmbh, a consulting and engineering company located in Bern/Switzerland. itnetx is focussed on Microsoft Technologies, especially Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Virtualization. In 2011 itnetx has been awarded by Microsoft Switzerland as “Microsoft Partner of the year – Datacenter”

Since this are my preferred Microsoft technologies, it seems like a perfect match.

For some courses at KTSI we need a CentOS to test some Linux spesific things like Apache and other stuff. The good thing, Windows 8 got Hyper-V and Hyper-V supports CentOS.

With Version 3.2 oft the Linux Integration Services Microsoft fixed also a bug which occurred in Windows 8.

1. First download CentOS
2. Download the Linux Integration Services Version 3.2 for Hyper-V
3. Start Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine
4. Install CentOS 6.x
   
5. Reboot the virtual machine
6. Login as root
   
7. Mount the Linux Integration Services ISO from step 2
8. Now run the following commands in the virtual machine

   sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media
   sudo /media/install.sh
   

   

9. After you the Installation is completed you have to reboot the virtual machine again
   
10. done

In the last days Lenovo showed pictures of the Lenovo ThinkPad T430u for the first time. The ThinkPad T430u is a 14-inch ultrabook which will be release in 2012. There is not a lot of information about the specs of the T430u but it will use one of the new Intel Ive Bridge CPUs and should also be available with Nvidia discrete graphics options.

This could be a very interessting notebook option for business users. My hope for the T430u is that it will bring a great high-resolution display option. But we will see it later this year or maybe at CES 2012.

More Information about the T430u on theverge.com.

Aidan Finn (Virtual Machine MVP) just made a blog post about Hyper-V & PowerShell in Windows Server 8 and how you can enable Hyper-V via PowerShell in Windows Server 8. So this gave me the idea about doing a little more with PowerShell and Hyper-V 3.

I already did a blog post about how you can attach multiple VHDs to a SCSI Controller with PowerShell in Windows Server 8. In this post I will show how easy you can export and import a lot of Virtual Machines.

First you can run a Get-VM Test*, to check which VMs you will export.

Get-VM Test*

Now you can export the Virtual Machines

Get-VM Test* | Export-VM -Path "C:\VMs"

Now I removed the Virtual Machines in Hyper-V with Powershell (You could also add the -confirm parameter so you don’t have to press “y” for each VM.

Get-VM Test* | Remove-VM

And now you can import the Virtual Machines again

Get-Childitem "C:\VMs" -Recurse *.xml | Import-VM

I will post more about PowerShell in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 (Hyper-V 3) in the next upcommig weeks. If you want know more about what new Hyper-V features and improvments are coming in Windows Server 8, you can read the following blog post: “Hyper-V: Version 3 kills them all”