Windows Vista Team Blog : IT Professionals, Virtualization

Essential Tool for the Job - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 for Windows Vista (RTM Announcement)

Baldwin Ng — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:53:00 GMT

RTM Announcement - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1

Hello,

It's been a few months since I last blogged about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 - formerly known as WVHA or Windows Vista Hardware Assessment. Today, I'd like to announce the RTM release of this tool with new capabilities including desktop security assessment, Hyper-V virtualization assessment, and more.

As you know, many of the IT pros out there like you are now spending a lot of time planning for Windows Vista deployments. But many question and challenges remain:

Are my existing PCs compatible to Windows Vista when it comes to Hardware and Device Compatibility?
Will my PCs have BIOS issues after the upgrade to Windows Vista?
Which of my PCs are ripe for an upgrade to Windows Vista? (e.g. CPU too old so it's time to replace them; or just add 512MB system memory and the PCs would be Windows Vista capable!)
What kind of software has been installed?
Are all of my PCs secure? Is Windows Security Center installed? Do they have Anti-Virus or Anti-Malware software installed? How about Windows Firewall settings?
What about application virtualization readiness?

The MAP Toolkit 3.1 is designed to address all of these desktop-side issues from a single tool! The MAP Toolkit is a platform of tools that combines the strength of agentless discovery and report generation capabilities from the previous generation (Windows Vista Hardware Assessment). The pie-chart below is part of an auto-generated readiness report from the MAP Toolkit and it illustrates the level of hardware readiness for Windows Vista upgrades across the desktop infrastructure.

As a matter of fact, if you view the latest MAP Team RTM blog post from yesterday, you will find that the MAP Toolkit 3.1 also havs many server-side and virtualization features including a Hyper-V virtualization candidates assessment and SQL Server discovery!!

Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 RTM Version
Read documentation about MAP operations on TechNet
Learn tips and see video demos on MAP Team Blog
Join MAP Fan Clubs on TechNet Forum or Facebook
Very importantly, download other Windows Vista Solution Accelerators like the MDT Toolkit, Windows Vista Security Guide and more as well!

Cheers!
Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators - Virtualization Lead)

Microsoft Readying Customers with New Assessment and Deployment Tool for the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 Launch!

Baldwin Ng — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:43:00 GMT

Hello IT Pros!

February 27 is a big day. Windows Server 2008 will be officially launching in Los Angeles with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, kicking off in just a few hours.

In support of this very important technology milestone as well as the Windows Vista SP1 release, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team has just released the third-generation of the agent-less infrastructure assessment platform called Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator 3.0 (or simply MAP). Through the use of remote WMI calls and secure inventory engines, the MAP tool enables you to quickly inventory a wide variety of networks (AD-managed, IP ranges, and workgroups), securely assess IT environments of servers, desktops, applications and devices, and auto-generate specific and actionable reports and proposal documents in a matter of hours.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE BLOG POST...

GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD MICROSOFT ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING (RTM BITS)

Thank you,

Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning)

Announcing Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008

Baldwin Ng — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:12:00 GMT

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0

For those of you who are considering the migration of your desktop and server infrastructure to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, we have good news for you!

As we've announced at TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona last November, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is going to release the expanded version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 called Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 (aka MAP).

In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization's desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

What do I mean by AGENT-LESS inventory? Simply put, it means that you do not need to launch any software agents on any of those machines you want this tool to inventory and query - so no more security concerns and user interruption!

It offers quick network-wide inventory of machines and generate hardware and device compatibility reports with actionable recommendations in the form of auto-generated proposal documents - perfect documentation for your IT project planning in the new fiscal year!

The best part is that you can use this tool to inventory your environments ONCE and get multiple assessments and reports for not just server and desktop migration, but also various virtualization options from Microsoft (see our Virtualization Day Summit blog post here)!

How it Works?

Through the use of a sophisticated, agent-less and network-wide inventory engine, Microsoft Assessment and Planning will be able to discover machines on your network whether they are in workgroups or managed AD environments. By way of WMI, Win32, SNMP and other protocols, we can then securely collect hardware and device attributes of each machine and auto-generate migration readiness reports in Microsoft Word and Excel for the user.

What a great way to help you jump-start your planning process when you know your manager is waiting for your IT project plans for the New Year!

What's New with MAP 3.0?

Full incorporation of the features of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment including the generation of reports and proposals in 7 languages including N. American English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese
Windows Server 2008 migration hardware assessment
Windows server virtualization assessment (supports Virtual Server 2005 R2; will also add Hyper-V assessment in later this year)
Application virtualization infrastructure assessment for Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid)
New Graphical User Interface

Check it Out!

Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Beta Refresh today, give us your feedback, and see how you may get a free copy of Windows Vista software and more!
Visit the MAP Team Blog to learn more or check out other great Solution Accelerators!
Subscribe to the Windows Vista Team Blog & MAP Team Blog RSS feeds to make sure you're the FIRST to know when MAP 3.0 will RTM (target date: February 27, 2008)
Sign up to join our weekly Live Meetings and chat directly with our development team
Download the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment - if you can't wait for MAP RTM version (RTM on Feb 27)

See you next time!

Baldwin Ng - Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning + Virtualization Solution Accelerators

Microsoft Virtualization Day: Helping IT professionals do more with less

Nick White — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I'm relaying the following article on behalf of my colleague Shanen Boettcher, General Manager of Windows Product Management for the enterprise. It's the first in a series of posts from Shanen exploring what we're doing to make it simpler and easier to introduce and get the most out of virtualization of Windows in enterprise environments.

Today we're making a series of announcements outlining our company-wide strategy for virtualization from the desktop to the datacenter.

For all the hype and excitement in the industry, the primary scenario of using machine-level hardware virtualization to consolidate server machines has been used on less than 10% of hardware servers. While virtualization started in server consolidation, it is only a small piece of the value offered by virtualization. Nowadays virtualization is not a single technology; instead, it is a collection of technologies that can be applied to all aspects of the server and the desktop. Less than 1% of desktops take advantage of virtualization and yet machine virtualization, application virtualization, presentation virtualization and even profile virtualization are upcoming virtualization techniques that when applied can increase the flexibility, business continuity, security and agility of desktop deployments. Application virtualization -- the notion of reducing conflicts between applications running on a single copy of Windows -- is especially important for the desktop and interest in this technology is very high. Microsoft Application Virtualization (technology we acquired and improved from the application virtualization leader Softricity) became the fastest-ever selling enterprise product at Microsoft, with four million units sold in less than a year. Profile virtualization enables users to take advantage of separating their documents and profile information from Windows, making it easy to get working again on a new machine in case of a stolen or dropped laptop. Presentation virtualization provides the ability to work remotely. More and more virtualization vendors are moving toward creating a comprehensive set of technologies that interoperate and are managed consistently, and we are strongly focused on providing customers with these solutions.

We have a vision that focuses on businesses employing our virtualization toolset to more simply and cost-effectively manage their IT environments. We're calling that vision Dynamic IT. Dynamic IT is aiming to help IT professionals get more out of their computing resources across both server and desktop environments. One of the benefits of this initiative is to enable IT managers to dynamically make changes or add capacity to their deployments in a matter of minutes instead of hours (or even days). In a phrase, Dynamic IT is about efficiently getting the necessary resources to users and computers at any given moment and with a minimum of hassle and effort. We expect this vision to result in a whole new era of datacenter and desktop PC management, all hinging on virtualization technologies and Windows.

Central to the vision of Dynamic IT is the concept of the Optimized Desktop. The Optimized Desktop refers to virtualizing a user's applications and profile together so that they follow that user, regardless of the location of the PC in use at the moment. An example of this all-too-common scenario is a run-of-the-mill user happily working on their laptop in a taxi, but absent-mindedly leaving the taxi without the laptop. Fortunately, the laptop was BitLocker-encrypted, so the lost information was "safe" from prying eyes -- but for many users today it would have been lost data. However, that changes entirely with virtualization: taking advantage of application virtualization and profile virtualization, we provision a new laptop for the user, including installing their applications, resetting their desktop wallpaper and restoring their documents in only a few minutes and with no manual steps. It's pretty impressive and really how we expect people will be deploying Windows Vista to their mobile workforce. When presentation virtualization is used alongside the Optimized Desktop, it helps in allowing users remote access to individual LOB (line-of-business) applications running in the datacenter, and can even run whole Windows desktops virtually on the server (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI) for certain enterprise users.

The point of all this is that virtualization eliminates the need to "hard-wire" any single computing resource across the computing stack (operating system, applications, presentation, storage and network). By enabling virtualization across an entire enterprise deployment, we aim to help IT managers keep up with the changing needs of their individual business by speeding up deployment while reducing risk and cost.

With all the flexibility that virtualization brings, great management tools are essential to enable IT Pros to apply business rules and policies to each level of resources and data. The most successful vendors will provide the full stack of virtualization capabilities, coupled with management tools that can span both the physical and logical datacenter. Because companies will not convert their whole datacenter to virtual over night, they benefit greatly from management tools that work the same across both environments, helping consistently manage both virtual and physical resources from a single management suite. This is where we believe Microsoft has the best and most complete offering with System Center 2007.

Per today's announcement, we are now offering a comprehensive set of products and technologies to enable virtualization at all layers of the computing stack, from datacenter to desktop to management:

Hyper-V (Beta), the brand-new hypervisor architected on top of hardware virtualization technologies from AMD and Intel that is an exciting new feature of Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Application Virtualization (aka Softgrid) for running specific applications in a virtualized environment
Folder Redirection and Offline Files for user profile virtualization in scenarios such as hot-desking or PC replacement
Virtual PC 2007 for creating and managing virtual desktops
Terminal Services for presentation virtualization

In addition, Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop allows for an entire desktop to be hosted on a server and remotely delivered to a desktop device.

With all that said, virtualization itself is not a panacea. It is a great enabling technology, but alone does not translate to business value. Virtualization will require broad platform support, integration with other products, mapping virtualization to specific needs of a given company, and implementation best practices and guidance in order to help customers make the most of virtualization in their businesses. MS as an entire organization is strongly committed to making it very easy for our customers to deploy, manage and use virtualization throughout their entire environment, from the datacenter and network to the desktop PC and application stack. In addition to redefining virtualization within the IT environment, we've also undertaken a number of initiatives designed to make it easier still to integrate virtualization as an IT professional:

We've acquired Calista Technologies, whose technology in combination with our virtualization portfolio will enable people to watch video, listen to audio and enable remote workers to receive a full-fidelity Windows desktop experience without the need for high-end desktop hardware
We are partnering with Citrix to develop a desktop connection broker, which will create the ability to further optimize the desktop experience. Our joint offering will be based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Optimized Desktop solutions, extended with Citrix’s XenDesktop and Presentation Server products, and managed by System Center
With Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop, we're simplifying the license for Centralized Desktop to help ease virtualization of hosted desktops
By modifying virtualization in Windows Vista Home Basic, we are extending virtualization rights to allow virtualization throughout all versions of Windows Vista
Regarding application virtualization of Microsoft Office: we're providing new and clear guidance on support of Microsoft Office when virtualized with Microsoft Application Virtualization
To help customers evaluate, plan, secure and deploy Microsoft virtualization technologies across desktops and datacenters, we've introduced four new Solution Accelerators that will be available at the Windows Server 2008 launch in February. This is a set of free guidance resources and tools to help customers effectively plan and deploy virtualization technologies, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services and Microsoft Application Virtualization

Our virtualization toolset continues to be used by IT professionals to realize the tangible benefits and quick returns on investment at the core of the Dynamic IT initiative. Are you doing all that you can to maximize your IT investments by enabling virtualization in your computing environment? Check out our tools listed above to find out more, or go here to learn more about virtualization in Windows in general.

This is only the first of a series of posts on virtualization in Windows and the concerted efforts around it occurring throughout MS. Expect to hear more from me about virtualization in Windows Vista in the very near future.

-- Shanen

Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Getting A Major Facelift: Tool Expansion Announced at IT Forum 2007

Baldwin Ng — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:37:00 GMT

Hi all! It's been a little bit over 2 months since my last blog on the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 (WVHA) release back in August. You may wonder what our dev team is up to. Well, aside from getting the much needed rest, we have been busy working on the NEXT version of the tool. Yes, we're talking about a major expansion here. For those of you who haven't heard of WVHA, it's basically a network-wide readiness assessment tool that goes out to your network and securely assess each PC for their hardware and device compatibility for Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office migration - click here for my detailed blog post.

Tool Expansion - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator

This expansion will not only retain the original WVHA functionalities and the 7-language localization, but it will also incorporate many elements for the Windows Server 2008 wave and Microsoft Integrated Virtualization initiative. Imagine having the same agent-less inventory capabilities to survey the IT infrastructure of servers, applications and workstations and get back a series of assessment reports in an hour or two!

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator, the new name announced at IT Forum 2007 this week, will be the next-generation WVHA where we will add new assessment scenarios for Windows Server 2008 migration, server virtualization via Hyper-V, application virtualization recommendations using Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid) and more.

Come join our MAP Beta Program today and give us your feedback on the new product/technology scenarios!

http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=297

Cheers and stay tuned for more...

Baldwin (mapsbeta@MICROSOFT.COM)

“Fireside Chat” with Heartland Technology Solutions at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2007

Baldwin Ng — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:42:00 GMT

Hi all,

For those of you who missed some of the actions and announcements at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference regarding key technologies and tools including SoftGrid, Windows Partner Solutions, Windows Vista Hardware Assessment and Windows Business Value Assessment Tool, read on...

Baldwin

Interview with Heartland Technology Solutions at WPC 2007

On Day 3 of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 (WPC) in Denver, I caught up with IT veterans from the Heartland Technology Solutions (HTS) in Harlan, Iowa - CEO, Arlin Sorensen and Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Larry Hedin. Here's what they have to say about what's they've seen at WPC.

Baldwin: "Arlin, it's good seeing you and Larry again. A few months ago, I met you and a few peer group members of the Heartland Technology Group (HTG) during a series of product and technology review meetings on Microsoft's Redmond Campus. Can you tell us a bit more about the Heartland Technology Group (HTG), how it started and what the charter is?"

Arlin: "Sure. Back in 2001, I recognized that there was a general lack of peer groups for Microsoft partners that serve the SMB space in the United States and Canada. As technology continued to morph and change, we knew that we couldn't figure out everything on our own, so I decided to launch the first HTG peer group that same year. The HTG peer group is an open community where technology leaders would share their own daily real world experience with those having the same challenges. Better yet, they are all coming from non-competing markets so there are no worries and concerns about competition. Through sharing of best practices in business and technologies implementation, we are able to stay ahead of the rapidly changing industry. That's how we are able to grow and grow - we are now at close to 100 company members."

Baldwin: "Very interesting. You certainly have a great group of technology leaders. I always enjoy meeting them and tapping their insights."

Baldwin: "Larry, as part of the Worldwide Partner Conference partner panel, what was your impression about the solutions and technologies that Microsoft has rolled out at this conference? What impressed you the most?"

Larry: "Baldwin, there are two things that are very impressive - SoftGrid and Windows Partner Solutions. SoftGrid application virtualization has really become affordable for my customers. As part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), SoftGrid really helps reducing deployment time down to a minimum. It takes care of tough apps - apps that conflict with other line-of-business apps previously without SoftGrid. It is really awesome to see how energized my sales force are when they discuss SoftGrid and MDOP with our customer base. These technologies give partners like us greater leverage and help remove deployment roadblocks for Windows Vista."

Larry: "I am also very impressed with the assessment tools rolled out this week as part of the Windows Partner Solutions program. The Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool is a great tool that helps my sales force quickly assess the existing PCs of my customer base and determine if they are ready for Windows Vista and Office 2007 migration. It is easy to learn and use and, most importantly, it helps accelerate my business! Another great tool is the Windows Vista Business Value Assessment Tool (may require partners log-in). It enables partners like us to sell the business value of Windows Vista. Without the data-centric intelligence provided by this tool, it's much harder to sell. This tool is straightforward and the customization to specific market and company size is a great addition. We can now build our sales process around the use of these assessment tools and the results they generate. Partners should definitely download these free tools and see how they can help accelerate their sales.

Baldwin: "Arlin, what would you say would be another technology that our customers and partners should keep an eye one?"

Arlin: "Partners here are seeing and hearing the buzz about Software plus Service and how this will offer great business to us. We too are getting ourselves prepared to get more involved in the Managed Services side of the IT business."

Baldwin: "Arlin, Larry, on behalf of our Windows Vista Team blog audience, I'd like to thank you for your time today. Thanks for your insights and hope you enjoy the rest of the event."

Arlin and Larry: "Thanks for having us."

Flexible Desktop Computing White Paper Released

Dave Kim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:52:00 GMT

Hi folks, for the past couple of months we have been working on a white paper that discusses the variety of both established and emerging desktop deployment technologies in the industry today. For most organizations rich clients have been proven to be the most productive way from a desktop angle and with Windows Vista there are big improvements to make everyone even more productive. Combined with some server based elements, (e.g. Softgrid Application Virtualization, Folder Redirection, etc...) Windows Vista provides key benefits to enhance user productivity while increasing data security and management capabilities. Still, for some organizations, the complexity of their environments have grown as some workers have very limited tasks in their desktop environments yet deal with massive amounts of sensitive data while other workers need full capabilities on their desktops. So the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and a starting point for a discussion on some of the different desktop architectures out there as well as showing how Windows Vista can play an integral part in their deployment.

You can find and download the paper at www.windowsvista.com/flexibledesktop or you can read it right away on this blog if you click here. At both the first site and this blog you will continue to find more and more information on what we are doing at Microsoft to make it easier to manage and customize your IT infrastructure. Happy reading! -Dave Kim