Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

MMS is about to begin! The Ventian seems larger than I remember it. I know they've added on some things, but I don't remember the convention center being as large as it is now.

I was just discussing the pre-show playlist with Curtis. Normally, Microsoft plays some electronic or something low-key. Today, AC/DC, Stone Temple Pilots and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Not bad at all.

Oh lord, it's Rodney Sherwood again. I'm not saying anything else, I promise.

Bob is explaining Dynamic IT again. We're five years into the ten year plan. If you haven't seen the Microsoft Dynamic IT strategy check it out here.

Changes in the datacenter

• The physical datacenter is changing. Blades and other form factors have made things more efficient. Cooling and energy efficiency is key.
• Virtualization is the wave of the future. Operating System virtualization is just the first step. Application virtualization is more important because state is separate from system.

Interesting demo of the task sequencer in SCCM. Some of the OEMs - Dell was included in the demo - have created configuration packs that allow configuration of their hardware. BIOS settings, like Hyper-V enabling, can be set in the task sequencer. Server roles can be configured in the task sequencer using Microsoft Deployment.

Multicast is going to be available in the R2 release of Configuration Manager. Much better.

MSDN and Technet are virtualized on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. Benchmarks are "competitive" with VMWare ESX server.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 beta is available today. It can manage Microsoft Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMWare ESX VMs. The system is PowerShell-based. At the end of the wizards, the script can be previewed. V-Motion can be driven from VMM. VMWare can not be provisioned from this console, but can be fully managed.

Microsoft will add live migration to Hyper-V It is working in the lab, but didn't make it into the first release.

The "Library" contains building blocks for VMs. It can contain ISOs, scripts, templates, etc. Make this VM highly available checkbox in template will make sure the created VM is always on a cluster and is available.

Cross-platform extensions for System Center Operations Manager. It will include Linux, HP-UX, and AIX. Discovery Wizard can discover UNIX boxes. Cross-Platform Extensions beta is available today at the conference.

Open standards support including OpenWS and OpenPegasus.

Good keynote today.