Right about time since long time Microsoft has MAP 5.5 released. MAP 6.0 Beta includes assessment capabilities to evaluate workloads for both public and private cloud platforms. With MAP 6.0 Beta, you now have the ability to identify workloads and estimate the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Fast Track.
New features and benefits from MAP 6.0 Beta release help you:
- Analyze your portfolio of applications for a move to the Windows Azure Platform
- Accelerate planning to private cloud with Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track onboarding
- Identify migration opportunities with enhanced heterogeneous server environment inventory
- Assess your client environment for Office 365 readiness
- Determine readiness for migration to Windows Internet Explorer 9
- Discover Oracle database schemas for migration to SQL Server
To download you are require to connect to MS Connect Portal. Click here
I will skip the installation as i have repeated the step few times. Let quickly check out what is the enhancement especially on Virtualization section.
1. In term of pre-requisite of installation, you do not require to install MS Office Word and Excel. Report generated can export and view on another location. Additionally, you’re require to install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 and 4.0 Full Profiles.
2. Inventory and Performance assessment process remain the same.
3. Once you have completed the inventory and performance assessment, you can process to next step : Hardware library configuration which allow you to define Hyper V Fast Track infrastructure. By default, Microsoft included with three (3) sample on Hyper V Fast Track: 2 AMD Processor infrastructure and 1 Intel Processor Infrastructure. By using Hardware Library Wizard, you can create your own Fast Track infrastructure.
You’re required to have an extensive understand about virtualization infrastructure before using MAP. Here is a snapshot of an infrastructure:-
4. On the storage configuration, you need to understand IOPS requirement
5. Added virtualization platform:- Hyper V R2 SP1 as one of the platform in the MAP.
Server consolidation wizard will require you to select Hyper V Fast Track infrastructure to come out with a final result on server consolidation.
Lastly, my final review on MAP 6.0 Beta is quite impressed and the job of Virtualization Consultant will become more challenging . To use MAP 6.0 Beta , it would be better than you have a deep knowledge on the virtualization infrastructure.
