Join me for aTechNet Live Meeting: Hyper-V Storage Efficiencies & Optimizations in Windows Server 2012 R2

So you have been  playing with or down right seriously testing Windows Server 2012 and perhaps even Windows Server 2012 R2. That’s great. Many of you might have it running in production or are working on that. That’s even better.

Windows Server 2012 has brought us unseen capabilities & performance enhancements that make it a future proof fundament for many versions to come and it is ready for the ever accelerating pace of hardware improvements. R2 has fine tuned some points and added improvements that are stepping stones to better today and even greater in vNext. I’d like to invite you to a free TechNet Live Meeting on Hyper-V Storage Efficiencies & Optimizations in Windows Server 2012 R2 and look at some of these capabilities with me.

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As a virtualization guy two subjects are very dear to me and that is networking & storage, and this event is about a subset of the storage improvements. You might have heard about ODX and UNMAP but you have not had the change to play with it. You have read about the tremendous scalability of the IOPS in a VM and about large sector support for the next generation of hard disks drives. Well some of these we’ll demonstrate (ODX, UNMAP, Dynamically expanding VHDX performance) if the demo gods are with us. Others we’ll discuss so you’ll know where this comes into play and how you’ll benefit from them even without realizing you do. So without further delay register for the free TechNet Live Event here.

Heading Home after the 2013 MVP Global Summit

The 2013 MVP Global Summit has come and gone already. I’m very happy to have attended and I was once again emerged in a culture of sharing knowledge and helping out our fellow MVPs and friends. Thank you Carsten!

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We shared a lot of experiences we had running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V in production. We met up with new MVPs and veteran attendees. To all my fellow MVPs and the people at Microsoft I’d like to say that it has been an honor and a privilege to have been able to talk shop with so many highly skilled, intelligent and engaged people. What ever their background they all share a level of commitment to be all they can be in their expertise. Thank you all for taking the time and putting in the effort. I hope to see you all next time!

E2EVC Hamburg 2012 Video Interview

In November 2012 during Experts2Experts Virtualization Conference in Hamburg a couple of fellow MVPs (Aidan Finn  aka @joe_elway, Carsten Rachfahl aka @hypervserver, Thomas Maurer aka  @ThomasMaurer) I delivered a keynote and a master class on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. During some down time at the conference we took the time to do some podcast interviews with Florian Klaffenbach form Dell aka @FloKlaffenbach.  We also sat down for a video interview on our beloved subject. Carsten Rachfahl was the interviewer/director and did a great job, for which I’d like to thank him in this post as he’s been doing a bunch of them over the years and it’s nice to see the results of the time he puts into them.

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Subjects include converged networking, migration paths, Cluster Aware Updating and the very capable Windows 8 hypervisor we can now enjoy for free.

A New Year and it came with a Microsoft MVP Renewal for 2013

I’m a January 1st MVP. That means that on the 1st January I get an e-mail that brings news of a renewal or not … so apart from celebrating the new year relaxing a bit we also keep an eye on our inbox. This is what arrived just now:

Dear Didier van Hoye,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.
The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

Mike Hickman
Director
Community Engagement
Microsoft

Great news to start the new year with. While you get the MVP reward for contributions over the past year to the community I must say that being active in the community is a very rewarding endeavor in itself. For my job I need to figure out a lot of things and I like to share them, including my mistakes, for the benefit of all. Sharing means communication, which leads to questions and discussions that help all of us gain a better knowledge of how things work. It’s not one way traffic. They say there is no better way to learn a subject that to teach it or write a book on it. I think that holds true. Heck, “just” doing a presentation on one subject helps. There’s a constant stream of new capabilities and options that can be leveraged to achieve our goals and being able to discuss these with so many experts from different environments makes a lot of difference in wrapping our heads around it all.

It also helps me be better at my job. So it also helps my employers. In that respect I have very good bosses. They invest in their people without hesitation. They don’t fear the possibility that we might leave for greener pastures. Instead they focus on getting the best out of us and support this actively. Pretty smart and we all gain something from this, as this makes for a very nice green pasture to stay on and they get knowledgeable, motivated employees.

I’m very happy and I’m looking forward to seeing many of my fellow MVPs in Redmond in February for the 2013 MVP Global Summit. Last year’s summit was very educational. It was also a blast to meet so many people in real life for the very first time and talk shop. Thank you all for the opportunities, the challenges and the continuous learning journey.

To conclude I wish all my community buddies and readers a wonderful and happy 2013!