Microsoft to release out-of-band security update 11/23 that impacts Windows. Exploit code must either be out there or close to it. *gulp*

Home from MMS 2008. I'm thoroughly exhausted but it's worth it. zarchasmpgmr will feel snarky when I mention that one of the main focuses at this conference was talking about virtualization. ( Techy stuff behind the cut, to spare those who are not interested )

The conference itself was at The Venetian in Las Vegas, and will be there next year as well. While the room itself was nice, as you may have seen from previous posts with pictures or from their web site directly, I wasn't thrilled with this location. First, to get to the very nice room, one had to take no less than two elevators and walk quite a bit. If I caught the elevators correctly, it took me seven minutes to get from my room to the conference floor. While I need the exercise, it was a bit excessive in my opinion. Also, the food at the conference, while still plentiful, was less than satisfactory. The wireless access was very limited, which also was unsatisfactory. At Mandalay Bay as well as San Diego Convention Center, the wireless was plentiful and food great.

Thursday night I played a table game for the first time in my life. Several of us had gone over to the Casino Royale after the daily conference. Several of the peoplewere playing craps, which I find thoroughly confusing. Ben was sitting at the roulette table, and I watched him for a bit. After a while, I plunked out $40 and played. A few hours later, I walked away from the table with $60 and had a blast. I think I've found a new game for the next time Jen and I go to Vegas.

Speaking of which, Jen and I leave Monday morning for Chicago, as previously mentioned. The weather looks to be ... partially wet. Humpf.

This is a "drinking the Kool-Aid" type of email. If Microsoft's virtualization announcement today lives up to statements, it could end up having huge implications for many companies - enterprise and mid-sized.

Summary:
System Center Virtual Machine Manager went RTM today

General availability in October 2008

New license (System Center Management Suite Enterprise license)

Priced at $860 per physical host

The license is on the physical host and includes unlimited VMs running on that host

Includes the following licenses

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007
System Center Configuration Manager 2007
System Center Operations Manager 2007
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup edition available January 2008

Manages up to five physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines

Priced at $499

Future release (with Viridian)

In our next set of releases will be adding support for non-Windows virtualization environments – specifically VMWare and Xen

From a single console and a single command-line you will be able manage Virtual Server, Viridian, VMWare and Xen.

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 has been released this week, and WSUS 3 was released ... well, in May. Don't have a Config Manager logo yet, so you get the SMS 2003 one still.