You can access the webcast at https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?publisher=12&delivery=249912#

As a quick recap, Microsoft see’s virtualisation as more than than just machine virtualisation.  In the Microsoft, virtualisation is split into:

• Presentation Virtualisation – What would have previously been known as Terminal Services
• Application Virtualisation (App-V) – Where applications are “streamed” to your desktop or terminal services presentation without being installed
• Machine Virtualisation (Desktop aka VDI or Server) – what most people think of as “Virtualisation”

Virtualisation will be supported in for a set of scenarios with SBS 2008 and EBS 2008.  The first thing to understand is that the primary node has a large load on it and is not an ideal candidate to act as a host for virtual machines.  You also need to understand that the host can’t really be part of the domain if the primary node of SBS is virtualised on it as there are all sorts of nasty issues around dependency issues.

You might want to run some virtualisations scenarios to enable:

• Enable more “servers” to be run on a single server
• Enable greater flexibility in migration and DR between machines
• Enable greater remote access capabilities to desktops or applications via Desktop or Presentation virtualisation

So what was announced:

• SBS 2008 Premium Edition’s 2nd box can be a Presentation Virtualisation host – i.e. run TS on the 2nd box and use the gateway functionality on the 1st system
• SBS 2008 Premium Edition’s 2nd box can be a Machine Virtualisation host.  This box can run as both a host and guest, providing the host is used to simply run the Hyper-V role.  Both the 1st and 2nd SBS systems can be run as guests on the host.

There are some other gotchas that need to be considered:

• The backup on SBS is based on USB removable disks, however the USB disks are not passed through to the virtual machine in the same way so you need to look at other strategies, such as creating a large VHD in the USB disks and mounting those.
• COM ports are not virtualised into the virtual environment, meaning that UPS and FAX services are not possible in that environment
• VM Snapshots are not supported due to AD with the FSMO roles being inside the VM.  This means that quick migrations are not possible as they rely on Hyper-V snapshots.

There is lots, lots more information in the webcast, so go have a look.  There are also other webcasts that can be found on SBS / EBS (8 in all).

ttfn

David