Free E-Book: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions

Either its a coincidence or just luck, right this very moment I am working with HYPER-V (or hyper-v working a VM export-import thing, oh yea, lemme blog about that next time!) and was reading some guides on it. I searched for a topic over the internet and this came up! Its a free Ebook that can be downloaded here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/4/5B46A838-67BB-4F7C-92CB-EABCA285DFDD/693821ebook.pdf

Inside the book are some what I can call, GEMS like this one:

But what I am really after is the Import and Export of Virtual Machines in Hyper-V, found at Page 79.

“You can use the Hyper-V Manager console to export a virtual machine from one Hyper-V
server so that you can import it onto a different Hyper-V server. This import/export functionality
allows you to migrate a virtual machine from one host computer to another using a
process called Quick Migration.”

I had to read this really AFTER doing server migrations. I already had the guides from TechNet but this book re-validates everything that I did and yup its the same thing – and that’s GOOD!

That’s all for now, I’m just waiting for the filecopy to finish, I’m importing the last VM’s now 😛

PHIWUG non technical event, a photography 101 session

Another event by the Philippine Windows Users Group: Photography 101 as lead by MVP Adrian Rodriguez

As an offer by PHIWUG to the members of the club and the community at large, we’ll be holding a high levl photography class (taking advantage of Windows 7, Windows Live).
Itinerary:
9:00 am – 12:00 nn: Intro to Digital Photography and Basics
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm: Post Processing Techniques
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm: Storage and Archiving

More lectures from Adrian on Composition, finally more photographers on our events hehe 🙂

 

There are also some familiar faces from the community that are also photo enthusiast, great to see them in a different setting.

 

And also, some introduction of the User Group and the Microsoft Philippines Community. Hope to see you guys in the forums, since most of the attendees are also techies (Sys admin and Developers). Thanks for attending!

 

Very Late Post: Virtual PC Differencing Disk

Hi all! This is a veeeeeeeery late post, but I always and still see people still struggling to do copy-paste VHD on their VPC. So guys hope this screenshot gallery can help for you to understand and hopefully use differencing disk.

So first, what is a differencing disk? Well — “A differencing disk is a virtual hard disk you use to isolate changes to a virtual hard disk or the guest operating system by storing them in a separate file” I think the simplest that I can articulate is you have a base VHD but instead of saving your changes to a base VHD you save it in another file, called differencing disk. But why do this? First is that you can actually save space by doing this, rather than duplicating each VHD only the changes on a COMMON base are saved. You can also chain your differencing disks but, thats for another day 🙂

To use differencing disks, you must first create your base. In the screenshots, I assumed that you already have this base (A clean image of what Operating system you want to clone, in my example a Windows Server 2003). What I do is I first create differencing disks and then use them later via “New Virtual Machine Wizard, Select Virtual Hard Disk”

So to create a differencing disk, on the VPC, click file then choose Virtual Disk Wizard. Click next until you arrive at Virtual Hard Disk Options.

on Virtual Hard Disk Options, choose Differencing. Select the parent or base that you created earlier and then click next up to finish.

      

We can now use this VHD, on the new Virtual Machine, choose an Existing Virtual Hard Disk and choose the newly created Differencing disk.

 

Hope that helps 🙂

Office2010 : Speak! (Text to Speech)

I remembered before about this contest on Office 2010: http://windows7kami.com/2010/04/07/office-2010-demo-video-contest/ and I was going to post an entry (being the geek + office ninja me) and I guess this can help anybody for their productivity, so let me just share it! Its the Text to Speech functionality of Office 2010, before what I use way back in 2007 is just Excel’s Speak Cell. But that’s kinda wierd when somebody walks besides your cube and see an excel worksheet open being scrolled automatically. In 2003, you cant use your computer while excel is reading, if you do click something, the excel stops reading. But in 2010, whoa, even Word has it (well, i don’t know if it’s already in there, but I can’t seem to find it).

In 2010, you can find it thru File then Options.

Then on Word Options window, Click Quick Access Toolbar and Choose commands from: All Commands.

Scroll down and find SPEAK. What I do is hold down “S” then let it scroll. Choose Speak then Click the “Add >>” Button. Click OK.

So on your Word document, just highlight the text that you want the PC to read and then press Speak at your Quick Command at the top left corner of the toolbars.

Go ahead give it a try 🙂