MMS Day Two : Keynote
Some awesome announcements in the keynote address.
First off, the comedian guy at the beginning : the "show of hands" line of jokes was funny last year. Not so much this year. Won't be at all funny next year. His strength is in the 'man on the street' interviews. Those are golden.
VMM 2008:
Beta announced today. Allows management and migration of VMWare ESX and Virtual Center servers from within the Microsoft VM Console. You can migrate VMWare to VMWare live, VMWare to Windows Hyper V "nearly live" (short downtime). They promise that live migration in HyperV is in the lab now and is something we'll see soon. I'm guessing it we'll see it at the next MMS.
Ops Manager Cross Platform Extensions:
Announced also was a beta of Cross Platform Extensions for Ops Manager 07. This allows you to manage Linux, Unix, HPAIX, Solaris from within the operations manager console. Working with partners and Open Source, you can now view Apache web sites, MYSql dbs, Oracle dbs, and basic OS info around these systems from within the Ops Manager console. This means that you can also report on them, pull them into Distributed Apps, and use every other Ops Manager feature (tasks!) with them.
Favorite Quote: "It's not your grandfather's Microsoft."
They understand that we all live in a heterogeneous environment, and the want us using their tools to manage it. That's a foot in the door of every space we're in for Microsoft, and there's nothing for them not to like about that.