Microsoft recently announced their new virtualization technology  "Hyper-V" (codename Viridian) as part of Windows Server 2008 that will replace Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. I wanted to understand the differences between the two virtualization products and how to use Hyper-V. In my search, I came up with the following list of references and understandings.

Rough Technology differences between Hyper-V and earlier products:
One way to think about these new chip technologies is that they introduce a “-1” ring essentially to the usual four rings in the x86 CPU architecture. With the VPC and Virtual Server offerings, they use a trick called ring compression where the kernel of the VM is placed into Ring 1, instead of the expected Ring 0. This is so that the host can absolutely ensure that VMs are running in their own sandbox and can’t gain access to any resources of the host or other VMs. There is something like 14-17 CPU instructions in the x86 instruction set that can’t be executed directly because of sandbox violation. Hence, the need to place the child VM’s kernel into Ring 1 so that the host can place itself in Ring 0 to intercept those calls to protect them directly or to emulate them. By introducing a “-1” ring, the hypervisor lives here and controls the access to the various virtual machines. So, with the introduction of a hypervisor living in ring -1, the need for ring compression of child VMs is essentially removed. At least, this is one way to think about. They hypervisor itself is not a complete OS, per se. The hypervisor is a VERY thin and small, trusted computing base.

Technical References:

• Hyper-V Architecture, API overview from Wikipedia
• Windows Server Virtualization (WSV/Hyper-V) Preview
  
• Hyper-V Documentation from MSDN
• Install Hyper-V Beta
• Step by Step document on Hyper-V
• Installing Windows Server 2008 on Hyper-V
  

VM Additions for Linux

Earlier Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 didn't have VM Additions for Linux, recently Microsoft released fully supported VM Additions for Linux (Download from here).

Though Microsoft Silverlight is a cool technology, it pales in front of Adobe Flash (98% of browsers have it) in terms of availability. It is not an unique MS problem, it is a problem for any new offering when there is an incumbent who has a majority market share. To change this requires education, awareness creation and put it in front of users at many as possible in exchange for an added value to them. I was pleased to see Microsoft doing some steps in this direction (unlike their pathetically nil action to have .NET Framework Runtime in desktops widespread in its earlier days) by having a beta of Silverlight enhanced downloads when people come to MS Download Center site. 

நேற்று பக்ரித் - அலுவலகம் விடுமுறை.  இரண்டு நாட்களுக்கு முன்பே இணையத்தில் பார்த்ததில் பிர்லா மற்றும் அழகிய தமிழ்மகன் போன்ற ஏந்த படத்திற்கும்  இடம் கிடைக்காதால்,  "கண்ணாமூச்சி ஏனடா" படத்திற்கு முன்பதிவு செய்து நேற்று போனோம்.

படத்தில் கதை என்று எதுவும் இல்லை. அடிதடி, கொலை, கவர்ச்சி என்று எல்லா மசாலா சமாசாரங்களைத் தவிர்த்து குடும்பத்தோடு பார்க்க கூடிய ஓரு  முழுநீள நகைச்சுவை படத்தை கொடுத்துள்ளார் இயக்குனர் பிரியா.  படத்தில் பெரியாதாக பேசும்படி எதுவும் இல்லையென்றாலும் படத்தைப் பார்க்காலம்.        

Yesterday I attended a Balanced Scorecard session organized by SPIN Chennai and the speaker was Mr.SUDIPTO MARJIT (Practice Head of QAI Limited).  Before the session my exposure to Balanced Scorecard was limited (or lower), but Mr.Marjit did an excellent job in giving an overview within the 60-75 minutes he had that at the end I felt I know a lot on the topic. Though this is a theoretical topic he made it very lively with his engaging style, with every sentence he spoke we could easily sense his passion for the topic and experiences he has had on ground.

He introduced the need for having something like Balanced Scorecard before going into the actual topic. This approach helped in appreciating this concept better. "Balanced Scorecard, is a world-renowned management technique for implementing strategy and creating a performance management system. Designed by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, it has been recognized by the HBR as the leading management tool in the last 75 years"

Two key Areas that Mr.Marjit concentrated on the talk were

• Balanced Scorecard methodology and understanding of a Strategy Focused Organization
• Aligning Strategy through Strategy Maps

I really liked his example of SouthWest Airlines using a strategy map.

Over the years I have tried with little success various models of Wireless input devices (Keyboard and Mouse), right from the early Logitech desktop sets. I see only one advantage of a wireless over the wired models is the convenience of giving it to the person on the other side of the table for a quick demo. Most of the wireless models anyway have wires for their base station and you need to keep the base station almost touching the keyboard for any good signal reception.

I am particular about ergonomics and I prefer keyboards that have a natural curve for hand comfort with a good play of the keyboard buttons as I type pretty fast. So when I saw the new "Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000" few months back it seemed to fit my bill - came with a small USB Dongle as a base station and had ergonomic styling. I got the desktop set few weeks back and been using it, but I found the keyboard to be unresponsive most of the times. I was using the native drivers that came with Vista x64 and didn't install the CD that came with the desktop set. As a try, I downloaded and installed the OEM drivers and software from Microsoft site and now it seems to be working perfectly well. The software also gives you additional tabs with customization features in the control panel applets. Download drivers for Windows Vista x64 from here.

One thing I keep wondering, why are the names for products from Microsoft always too long and confusing. Look at the names below, I guess only Microsoft marketing can come up with such creative inspiring names

• Microsoft Natural Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard 7000 (Natural Wireless - hmm, I didn't know all the other wireless technologies we used were all artificial)
• Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 (the keyboard was Wireless Ergonomic, but the mouse is Wireless laser - does this mean the mouse is not ergonomic but only laser?)

In MSN today, I saw this article on PARADE Magazine picks its must-have technology for 2007. What I liked about this list was it was yet another list of Mobile Phones & Music Players. Not all of them were exciting, but I learned of few new interesting gadgets: Solar Charger for Cellphones, Biometric Door Lock that opens on fingerprints, HP Presto printer that does email without a PC, Ooma VoIP phone & Smartshopper that records your grocery list and prints it.

The article unfortunately doesn't have links to the product manufacturers so you had to Google for each of them.

I have watched few Hindi movies, main reason being I understand little of the language. Though I can read and write Hindi (since I was in a CBSE school where it was compulsory till 8th standard), strangely I cannot understand the language much.

Last week in NDTV, I saw the coverage of a new movie produced by Sanjay Dutt - "Dus Kahaniyaan". Somehow the idea of 10 different short stories made into one single movie interested me, especially the part "Shabana Azmi" playing a south indian grandmother. So today we went to the movie in Sathyam Cinemas "Season" theatre. Before I say about the movie I liked Satyam's online booking which includes facility to order snacks and softdrinks as well (these are delivered to your seat during interval).

The movie was certainly a different experience, with each director doing their best to set the character, highlight the background and tell the story all in 15 minutes. If you a regular movie goer, don't miss this movie. I saw a good review from Times of India about the movie, which reflects pretty much what I had to say and has said it better.

BTW, at few instances I did ask my wife to help me in understanding of the dialogues

Last month while in the US, I bought this DVD "Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" a documentary picture. I managed to watch this only today.

The picture talks about the false intelligence behind the US war on Iraq. Though the DVD is pretty old (made in 2004), seemed to be still relevant. Since it was a documentary it seemed to be made too academic and it was boring beyond a point. Unless you are going to argue with someone on the subject - you should skip watching this movie.

If your laptop like mine is part of a domain, then updates are likely to be controlled by your IT Team. In our office, our IT team uses WSUS to download the updates locally, test them on local machines and then approve the updates for general consumption across the organization. I am one of the few in the office to use Windows Vista, so these updates are approved at the last and I have to wait. More so, ultimate extras don't flow correctly through WSUS. Since they are controlled by WSUS, even if I am a local system administrator I cannot directly run Windows Update locally or go to Microsoft Update and get updates.

This week one of my IT Engineer gave me a tip. It was to login locally to the machine, using a local machine user name and then use Windows Update. I used it and it worked perfectly. Please be warned that doing updates this way, may not be supported by your IT Team!