This is a whitepaper that John Dodge and I wrote in February 2008 for Kingston and was released as part of the Windows Server 2008 "Heroes Happen Here" product launch events held by Microsoft.  The paper discusses Windows Server 2008 memory strategies with regards to:

• Windows Terminal Services in Server 2008
• Server Core
• Hyper-V
• Visual Studio 2008
• SQL Server 2008

The whitepaper defines the above-listed memory roles and shares recommendations on memory management and provisioning to help you stay ahead of the curve and proactively plan for optimum physical memory requirements.  You download the paper on Kingston's site here , or download it below from this site.

Download: Windows Server 2008: Memory Provisioning Recommendations (1.8 MB)

I gave this presentation at BriForum 2007 last year in Chicago.  It discusses both the technical aspects of sequencing applications as well as tips ways to optimize the process of mass-sequencing efforts.

This presentation, along with the entire 3-day conference, is available on DVD on the BriForum site .  However, you can download my PowerPoint presentation below. 

Download: SoftGrid Advanced Sequencing: BriForum 2007 (1.7 MB)

I gave this presentation at BriForum 2007 last year in Chicago.  It discusses some new ideas in thinking and explores leveraging different technologies from virtualization vendors to create a platform for dynamic Terminal Server and Citrix farm deployments.  By combining technologies from vendors such as Ardence, SoftGrid, Citrix, Symantec, Acronis, Virtuozzo, etc., the session showed some creative ways to rapidly deploy and maintain Terminal/Citrix servers, ensure disaster recovery and keep up with changing demands of the farm.

This presentation, along with the entire 3-day conference, is available on DVD on the BriForum site .  However, you can download my PowerPoint presentation below.

Download: The Dynamic Terminal Server Environment: BriForum 2007 (3.2 MB)

While perusing the web, I stumbled across a nice "experimental" feature of the VMware VI 2.5 client that allows you to use your logged on Windows credentials to automatically log onto VirtualCenter.  OK, so this may not be big news for everyone and it's not like this is a huge secret, but I find it quite handy.  To try it out, create a shortcut to the VMware Infrastructure Client (or modify the default one) to include the following bold text in the target field:

"C:\Program Files\...\VpxClient.exe" -s VCServerName -passthroughAuth

...where VCServerName is the name or IP address of the VirtualCenter server.

I have been wanting to post my BriForum presentations for a while but I just hadn't gotten around to it.  This presentation was given at BriForum 2006 in Washington, DC.  It details (a bit painstakingly) the licensing process with Windows Terminal Server 2000 and 2003.  I admit I put far more information in this presentation than I was capable of fitting into 90 minutes, but it was really well received.  There certainly is a lot to licensing!

One quick note on this presentation - I have updated the flowchart on slide 42 in my article on CAL Allocation on the MSTerminalServices.org site, but I was unable to fit it into the slide.  I will be posting the flowcharts separately on this site in the coming weeks, so stay tuned, or check out the article for a more detailed and accurate view.

Download:   BriForum 2006 - Terminal Services Licensing.zip (5.5 MB)

This is another recently-published whitepaper written for the folks at Kingston about VMware HA and DRS Capacity Planning.  This paper was yet again a collaborative effort between myself and a great colleague, John Dodge, and started as a pet project while working with a few enterprise customers.  It rapidly evolved out of the obvious misunderstandings around HA, DRS and memory overcommitment.

Memory overcommitment is a great feature of VMware ESX - one that really separates it from the competition (at least for now).  However, I was surprised at the lack of understanding around the limits to which overcommitment was being pushed and the implications when using VMware HA and DRS.  VMware's own somewhat vague messaging is partly to blame, not really getting the information out to customers on reasonable limits and shortcomings.

Anyway, I digress...  This paper delves into the details of properly planning for capacity when leveraging HA and DRS in VI3, and how overcommitment plays into these scenarios.  It also details precisely what HA does and does not do, something I find isn't documented very clearly by VMware. 

The whitepaper can either be downloaded from Kingston's site here, or from my site (below).  Enjoy!

Download:    VMware HA and DRS Capacity Planning Recommendations (2.4 MB)

This is a four-part article I wrote for MSTerminalServices.org last year. Parts one and two focus on common server-related licensing issues. Part three covers more obscure server-related issues such as corrupt license server databases and activation issues. Part four looks at licensing-related issues from the client side.

The flow of this article series works best when read as one document, but the publishing guidelines for MSTerminalServices.org place restrictions on the length of a particular article, which is why they end up broken into several segments. The links to all four segments are below:

• Troubleshooting Terminal Server Licensing Issues (Part 1)
• Troubleshooting Terminal Server Licensing Issues (Part 2)
• Troubleshooting Terminal Server Licensing Issues (Part 3)
• Troubleshooting Terminal Server Licensing Issues (Part 4)

This paper was co-written with a great colleague and friend of mine for Kingston and released at VMworld 2007.  The paper defines the planning process for determining the appropriate amount of memory for a VI3 deployment, dispels some common misconceptions, and describes the consequences of sub-optimal sizing.  Physical memory is a critical component of all VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) deployments, and appropriate sizing is necessary to ensure the success of solutions based on VI3, such as Server Consolidation. Provisioning the ideal amount of physical memory for VI3 components is more important as systems with an ever increasing number of CPU cores and processing threads rise in popularity.  The paper can be downloaded from here (below) or from Kingston's web site directly.

Download:    Memory Provisioning Recommendations for VMware Infrastructure 3 (201 KB) 

I co-wrote this whitepaper back in the Spring along with a few colleagues of mine.  It focuses on some security-realted best practices around VI3 deployments, and offers some additional/different advice from the VMware-published paper.  This paper was developed to help network administrators, server administrators, and other individuals specifically focused on security, understand and address the many security implications of Virtual infrastructure. It provides objective guidance for integrating VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) and IT infrastructure without compromising security in the process.  The paper can be downloaded from here (below), or from Foedus' web site.

Download:   VMware Infrastructure 3: Security Best Practices (336 KB)