Category: Virtualization
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Kali on VirtualBox: Start to Done
A few months ago I wrote an article called Kali on Hyper-V: Start to Done. I teach a lot of cybersecurity classes, and Kali Linux is a distro that includes most of the tools that so many cybersecurity professionals will use on a daily basis. When I wrote the article I was not thinking that…
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Kali on Hyper-V: Start to Done.
**See notes on SecurityOnion at the bottom! It is funny where life can take you. I have been a specialist (and in some things maybe even expert) in so many different technologies over the course of my career, so when I sat down a few weeks ago to create a Kali Linux virtual machine on…
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Building Your Local Lab: Creating your virtual machines
**DISCLOSURE: While I am contracted to Microsoft Corporation, I am not an employee. The articles that I write are not meant to represent the company, nor are they meant to represent me as an employee or spokesman for the company. As has always been the case, all articles on this website represent me and nobody…
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Drive Space Nightmares with Hyper-V
As you know, I have been using Hyper-V since before it was released, and am a huge proponent of the solution (although I am also a huge proponent of VMware). The fact that Hyper-V is also included in Windows 10 makes my life easier – I use it on my Windows Client for several reasons. …
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Virtual Machine Snapshots: The useful tool that will drag you down.
Note: Once again I accidentally scheduled a technical article to publish on a holiday. In honour of Canadian Thanskgiving I am republishing this article on Tuesday. -MDG The Story: One of my clients called me and asked me why some of their servers were running so terribly slow. Actually, that’s not entirely true… they told…
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Converting Fixed Size VHDs to Dynamic Sized VHDs
I was called in to help a company recently with a small Hyper-V environment. They created a 2TB VHD file (they had good reasons for not using .vhdx files, but the steps in this article will work for both versions). They realized that they had unnecessarily created the drive as a 2TB Fixed Size disk…
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A VMware Gripe
Okay, I can’t delete a file. Any Level 1 systems administrator would look at this message and say: ‘Okay, VMware is not allowing me to delete an ISO file. Very likely the ISO file is connected to a virtual machine.’ Ummm… but WHICH virtual machine is it? Gee thanks, vCenter, I have scores of VMs……
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Hyper-V 2008 R2: Still good enough?
I manage a vSphere environment at work, and it is a real change from the last few years when I spent all of my time talking about Hyper-V. I want to be clear – it is not better or worse, it is just… different. We have a number of virtualization hosts, plus a physical domain…
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Another tough exam…
As a subject matter expert (SME) on virtualization, I was neither excited nor intimidated when Microsoft announced their new exam, 74-409: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center. Unlike many previous exams I did not rush out to be the first to take it, nor was I going to wait forever. I actually…
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Counting Down the Classics with the US IT Evangelists
“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…” “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall…” “Thirty-five articles on Virtualization…” All of these are great sing-along songs, whether for holidays, camping, bus-rides, or comparing virtualization technology. Each one is a classic. Wait… you’ve never heard the last one? That’s okay, we…
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Hyper-V CPU Compatibility Mode
it is pretty well known that for Live Migration to work in Hyper-V, the CPUs on the hosts must be of the same family (Intel to Intel, AMD to AMD). However it is not as simple as that. Both companies are constantly improving their products, so a CPU that Intel makes in 2013 will have…
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Back on RunAs Radio!
Over the past few months I have recorded a number of webinars and webcasts on a plethora of topics around virtualization, but the one that seems to have gotten the most attention is the one I did for VMTraining that pitted me against Jeff Weiss – Microsoft versus VMware. A few days later Richard Campbell,…
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Actual Reality: Desktop Virtualization Solutions from Microsoft
In July I presented my first webcast with BrightTalk. They were putting together a series on virtualization, and asked if I would be able to speak about VDI and Desktop Virtualization strategies. It was my pleasure! The webcast is now available on-line. I encourage you to download it, and let me know what you think!…
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Do You VDI? You should…
Over the past few months I have been doing more and more work in VDI – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Recently I wrote an editorial piece for WServerNews.com titled VD Why? VD Sigh… or VD Aye! VDI has the potential to save organizations immense amounts of money, but some of those savings would be wasted if…
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Two Years Later, Gartner Makes it Clear!
It was two year ago this week that I published an article calling out Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure (Gartner agrees with me… Hyper-V is for real!). I was thrilled that Gartner (a completely independent unbiased industry observer) evaluated Microsoft’s Hyper-V 2008 R2 and determined that it was indeed an industry leader.…
The World According to Mitch 