Read Jim Henrys’ answers to your questions during Tuesday’s Virtualisation round table discussion.

Q: Dan Robinson: How would laptop users fit into a virtualised desktop (VDI) environment?

A: Looking ahead… in theory once a desktop is instantiated as an x86 virtual machine it can be moved from a server to a client device (as VMs can today be moved from server to server in dynamic resource pools); thus a desktop in a VDI environment can be migrate to a client device where it can then be used in both connected and disconnected states.

Q: Manek Dubash - How important is flexibility of device at the desktop - should all be locked down or should end users get to choose their own devices?

A: In today’s environment a standardized “one size fits all” approach has been  adopted to make the image build & validation process & support model one which is manageable.  This approach is somewhat device centric. Looking forward, virtualization offers us a way to become more user centric. For example, an individual in the enterprise may be using multiple devices for IT purposes – be it laptop, netbook or one of the emerging MID devices – and they want to access the same IT from each device. Virtualization offers the potential to virtualize an individual’s desktop/profile to a standardized x86 machine which can then migrate from device to device effectively “following them around”.  As IT would only have to concern them about validating an image for standard Virtual Machine it offers, again potentially, greater flexibility of device and form factor. Client side hypervisors, the missing ingredient needed to make this happen should become available in during 2010.

Q: Manek Dubash: What's the impact of so-called green computing on desktop virtualisation?

A: Proponents of server side desktop virtualization would argue that a Thin Client device used to access a virtual desktop is consumes less power than a traditional PC.  The thin client advocates will often use old, unmanaged desktops in power comparisons, which naturally paint PC-based computing in the most unfavorable light.  Also, beware of vendors that use the PC’s maximum power to calculate its power consumption.  PCs operate at maximum power only under peak workloads, such as video encoding, and spend most of their time at idle power. Further, you must look at power consumption of the complete end-2-end solution, not just the end point. Hence, to get a true picture the data center PUE and virtual desktops that can be hosted per server also need to be factored in.

Q: Chris - How can virtualization help startups from the word go, and would it be advisable to develop for it?

A: If starting up a new business today how would provision IT? There are vendors providing Software as a Service SaaS (e.g. salesforce.com), Platform as a Service PaaS (eg. Azure) and Infrastructure as a Service SAAS (e.g. Amazon EC2) with PaaS and SaaS models often based on server virtualization to be dynamically provisioned and scaled. With the advent of Client Virtualization the opportunity arises to provide Desktop as a Service – something for the SI community to explore. What will be interesting is seeing as a startup matures at which point it starts to bring key IT functions in-house as it is something that gives a competitive advantage; likewise when does an enterprise look to outsource non-competitive advantage IT functions?

Q: Anon - does the hardware make a difference? I see a lot of technology now having to be built into the thin client to compensate for graphics across the network, surely a PC still is better for this

A:Yes, the hardware makes a big difference to both the user experience and to IT. From the user side the advent of rich content such as Unified Communications (voice, video, collaboration); visualization (the emergence of the 3D internet) and rich applications (sliverlight, flash) which improve productivity need the powerful client side compute capabilities. Network load and graphics processing server-side can cause significant negative impact on the infrastructure – hence thin vendors have started looking at need for hardware acceleration technologies. Further, the Thin Client vendors have “thin clients” with 1GHz+ CPUs and embedded Windows XP operating systems to deal with these types of scenarios… begs the question “how thin is thin?” From the IT perspective Intel has a suite of capabilities that fall under the Intel vPro badge that improve/secure client side virtualization. Namely VT technology to ensure near native performance (to optimize and reduce the load of the overhead needed to run a hypervisor) and Trusted Execution Technology that can protect client side virtual machines from security threats.

Are you enjoying the snow? I didn’t think so. The first day is great, everything looks different, the kids stay home and everyone has a collective sense of hunkering down and making the most or it. The first couple of meetings that get cancelled can be rescheduled, that journey to a customer or supplier will have to wait until the next week but the impact is limited.

Then that first day turns to a few days and the work is starting to pile up. That customer meeting that took three months to arrange really needs to happen, the planning session to agree the next quarters targets is now overdue, the supplier payments need to be reconciled. Now the snow is becoming a bit of a drag.

I’m very lucky not only do I work in a role that is independent of location, but my employer has also provided me with the tools and has a culture to allow me to have flexibility over where and when I work. This type of policy may not be suitable of all types of business or all types of roles but the ability to maintain at least some level of productivity is an important part of the modern workplace.

It’s not just snow that impacts our ability to get into the office, transport disruption, medical emergencies and acts of terror can all create unplanned disruption to the normal flow of the workplace. A small company I work with have had their entire accounts department stuck at home for nearly a week now, they have no ability to remotely access their systems and as a result the pay run for their staff may be delayed, their suppliers aren’t getting paid and they aren’t processing their income either, this can have a real impact on the cash flow of a small business.

The Government have just announced a consultation that relates to next generation broadband infrastructure, we hope that the resulting recommendations will enable the country to take these types of events in our stride, no matter where in the country you live.

Key considerations for working from home:-

• System security
• Access rights
• Infrastructure
• Company policy / HR guidelines
• Laptops and other tools for access

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8421373.stm

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file54154.pdf

https://www2.bt.com/btPortal/application?event=bea.portal.framework.internal.portlet.event&pageid=mb_pns_catalogue&portletid=mb_pns_catalogue&portletns=pns_catalogue&wfevent=link.Category&productCategory=categories/bt_corporate_solutions_workforce.xml&siteArea=mb.corp&origin=content.jsp&PorS=solutions

So, what's your take on working from home? Tell us your thoughts and reasons for or against it!

When Intel decided to pilot Windows 7 internally I was keen to be involved being the Microsoft Alliance manager at Intel in EMEA.  I got a new Centrino 2 with vPro laptop and I was soon running the Beta version of Windows 7.

I was amazed at the responsiveness of the platform and the speed at which I was able to get things done.  All my applications worked straight away with no support required from IT and so far all my hardware peripherals have also worked straight away.  Some of the new features in Windows 7 such as the new Task bar make navigation a lot simpler and the whole operation of Windows 7 seems quicker with fewer clicks to get to the end goal e.g. finding a file and opening it.  The snap feature is great for comparing two documents side by side and the shake feature is nice when I have opened too many Windows and I just want to de-clutter my desktop.  On top of all this the battery life is exceptional and I no longer seem to be looking for seats next to power sockets.

I am now running the 64 bit finished version of Windows 7 and it’s a marked difference to running my old PC with Windows XP.  Work colleagues and family who have seen the new platform are also impressed with the new features and the overall look and feel of the PC.  As Intel starts to roll out Windows 7 across the company it will be great to see how vPro technology will be used to enable the migration and to continue to manage the platform on an ongoing basis through our IT help desk.  I can’t wait to see the new business features in operation e.g. Direct Access, and I know the data I put on to my USB sticks will now be more secure with Bit-Locker-To-Go.  If you want to read more about Intel ITs experience of running a Windows 7 pilot see here: http://www.intelalliance.com/microsoft/download/brief/Win_7_IT_Intel_Brief.pdf

The next step for me is to get Windows 7 installed at home and I know for sure my children will be looking for a new laptop for Christmas.  I have seen the new Windows 7 Home Group feature and this will be great in order to be able to connect up the PCs in my house to share photos and music.  We will be spending much less time hanging around whilst we import music in to iTunes or creating a panoramic photo in Windows Live Photo gallery.  With the new Intel Core family of processors and Windows 7 we’ve just managed to get some time back to do the jobs a PC can’t do  - like walking the dog (see everyone’s happy).

In my blog tomorrow, I’ll summarise why Intel based PCs are the right choice to run Windows 7, and why you should be looking for the Core Processor as the essential element of your new PC.

Hello!

So you’ve made it over to Intel IT Galaxy to find out more information about why windows 7 would be useful to you. Well, I hope you have, because that’s what we’re going to be looking at.

First off, I’ll give you some background information on myself (and why I can advise you). I’m currently an IT Specialist at Intel in Swindon, studying a degree in computer science at the University of Kent. I’ve been involved in Quality Assurance and Testing on our Windows 7 pilot, and am involved in training other members of staff in how to use this new product, and will be deploying this product in the not too distant future..

So, back on topic, why should your business care about Windows 7? Surely XP, a tried and tested system, is still good enough? Well, yes and no.

One of the major upgrades in the world of computing recently has been the upgrade to ‘dual-core’ or even ‘quad-core’ processors. These provide better performance, allow for better applications to run, and generally just make everything that bit better. If you want to find out more technical information, a decent online search is your friend. Until recently, applications have not been capable of taking control of all the power these cores provide.

Since Windows NT (before XP and Vista), there has been support for ‘Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP)’. This provided the basic support for multi-cored computers. As technology changes though, old technologies need to be renewed, and this began with Windows Vista. Software written today contains optimisations that allow them to perform at their best in multi-cored computers (for the technical minded they take advantage of the low-latency and shared-cache that multi-core provide). However, since Vista launched at the start of multi-core’s take over, the support was minimal.

With Windows 7 however, there has been time to take this idea back to the drawing board. This has allowed Microsoft to look at the way they did support in the past, and improve immensely on it. There are a number of benchmarks that show how well this ability has been improved; a quick search on the internet shows this.

So, back to the original question (in perspective of multi-core)... If your business is still running computers built at the dawn of the 21^st century (Pentium 3 or 4), then yes, Windows XP may good enough. However, as soon as a hardware upgrade takes place, the advantages Windows 7 provides will become evident.

So, there is one reason that deployment of Windows 7 in your business is worth looking at. Join us at IT galaxy over the next few weeks as we look at even more reasons.

Throughout the development process of Windows 7, Intel and Microsoft have worked together with a common goal – simplify the PC experience, provide better performance and responsiveness whilst providing better energy efficiency. By both companies working directly throughout Windows 7’s development, we have ensured that the Intel platforms meet all the requirements for Windows 7 and together, our products deliver new ways to improve performance, energy efficiency, security and virtualization. Intel and Microsoft’s collaboration on Windows 7 will be beneficial in several ways:

• Working with Intel, Microsoft implemented support in the Windows 7 kernel for Intel multi-core processors with Hyper-threading Technology, enabling better performance. This will help users get the maximum benefit from multi-tasking.  As well, the Windows Scheduler has improved over time to support both muliticore and Hyperthreaded processors.  Working with Intel, Microsoft implemented a new feature called SMT parking which optimizes the Windows 7 scheduler for Intel Hyper-threading Technology enabling better performance on multi-core, and hyper-threaded Intel processors. Intel and Microsoft developed technology that enables Win 7 scheduler to identify physical vs logical cores, and prioritize physical cores first.  The previous OS could distinguish between logical and physical cores but it scheduled them all in a “greedy” fashion, with the assumption that this would provide the best overall throughput.  This works well for some workloads, but harms others because it may pair up two logical processors on the same physical processor (sharing resources) and leave other physical processors completely idle.

• Intel and Microsoft jointly analyzed the boot/shutdown/sleep/resume times on Intel platforms during the development of Windows 7 to identify opportunities to optimize Intel drivers and BIOS as well as Windows 7. Our mutual goal was to provide the most responsive compute experience possible.

• Another key part of the performance and responsiveness was our collaboration to optimize Intel Solid State Drive technology for Windows 7.

• Our graphics and media teams worked closely to ensure Intel integrated graphics solutions were optimized for the new Windows 7 graphics driver model and enable users to playback high-definition audio and video content on all Intel platforms.  The Intel graphics driver works with the WDDM1.1 model in Windows 7 to reduce its memory footprint using a combination of techniques such as reducing the video memory that is reserved for the driver and moving to a more dynamic memory management scheme.

• Many, many other collaborations across networking, storage, graphics, kernel, server, security, media center and more have resulted in Windows 7 and Intel platforms being designed and tested with each other.

Intel introduced new power management features in the Penryn and Nehalem micro-architectures as Microsoft were developing Windows 7.  Intel and Microsoft worked closely on how to take advantage of these new features.  One of the features is Intel® SpeedStep™ Technology, which allows the operating system to ratchet up and down the performance of the processor at the appropriate times so the workload can execute as efficiently as possible.

Another enhancement was deep power down in the Penryn architecture and they improved on this for the Nehalem microarchitecture. This state allows the processor to go into very deep sleep when idle. Microsoft along with Intel looked at the way that Windows 7 operated to see what was keeping the processor awake. It could be timer ticks being delivered by device drivers that were scheduling timers or it could be background activity. As Microsoft identified these things, they looked at ways to minimize that kind of background activity, in order to enable the processors to get into deep sleeps and stay there. Microsoft added API’s and modified the operating system to try to get idle and stay idle. Microsoft has something called tick skipping where Windows 7 doesn’t actually wake up an idle CPU to deliver a timer tick into it (for example to update the time of day). Microsoft offers something called timer coalescing so that drivers and applications that have timers that have the same period of timer tick but were offset by a slight amount align those two periods and service both of them with just one tick and end up waking up the processor once and not multiple times.  Windows 7 really takes advantage of the deep sleep state when it’s available. If you’re not consuming power on the processor you can enable the battery to last longer because you’re not drawing energy from it. This allows PC OEM vendors to build more energy efficient platforms using Windows 7 on Penryn and Nehalem micro-architecture-based processors.

All of these technical collaborative efforts have resulted in a fantastic operating system taking advantage of key technologies within the Intel processor microarchitecture to produce platforms that are performing up to 6 times faster with certain workloads.  Take a look at my blog tomorrow to see more about the performance figures and to see why you should buy a new PC running with the Windows 7 operating system.