Virtualisation 360

This session was all about what virtualisation is and Microsoft's view of the future. It had some great slides so I wont go into too much detail here.
Key points:

• Prediction that in 5years time 75% of all servers will be virtual.
• The recent Kidaro acquisition allows MS to provide seamless windows for applications (like Citrix) whereas currently they can only provide full desktop sessions.
• System Centre Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) can do snapshots of virtual machines and restore to a different host in the event of failure. It will be possible to do the same with applications using SCDPM and MS Application Virtualisation.
• Heavy pushing of System Centre and its components as the one stop shop to manage physical and virtual as well as client and server, regardless of OS, Virtual host, hardware vendor etc.
• Different models of providing services to the end user (this could be part of my solution space for the Client Architecture Framework). Refer to the slides for further info.
• MS Assessment and Planning 3.0 - updated infrastructure tool to assess both server and client environments, it will tell you which servers could be virtualised and what applications for client devices. It generates a nice report with lots of graphs. It sounds like an interesting tool but they didn't go into how it makes those recommendations.

So that was all of my sessions for Tuesday, I'm now off to the keynote for Wednesday which is all about 'Managing the dynamic desktop'. Should be good!