WSC Hyper-V Workshop in Kathmandu!

WinServer Community organized a full day workshop in Hyper-V, Microsoft’s Server Virtualization platform for the local IT Professionals on Saturday, December 21, 2013. To align with the objectives of WinServer Community, the event was targeted for IT Officers, IT Managers, System Administrators, Technical Specialists, CTOs, CIOs, etc.

working in various organizations across Kathmandu valley to educate them on what Hyper-V virtualization solutions can do for organizations to run mission critical applications. 40 IT Professionals from 28 organizations became the part of ‘never before’ workshop. The event was held at Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal, Unlimited Building in Khichapokhari, Kathmandu.

WSC Hyper-V Workshop:  Windows Server 2012 R2

Figure 1: Participants at the workshop registration desk

The level 200 workshop covered various aspects of virtualization technology such as Introduction to Microsoft Virtualization, Hyper-V Infrastructure, Hyper-V Networking, Hyper-V Storage, Hyper-V Management, Hyper-V High Availability and Live Migration and, Integration with System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.

The workshop was held at a time keeping in context that Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal was providing opportunity for IT Professionals and students to certify in Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center exam (Exam Code: 74-409) to be a Microsoft Certified Specialist: Server Virtualization with Hyper-V and System Center.

Figure 2: Pradeep Kandel

The registration began at 9:30am in the morning. The workshop formally started at 10:00am with a welcome keynote presentation by Pradeep Kandel, User Group Lead who is also a Technical Specialist at Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal. Pradeep introduced himself, key contributors of the WinServer Community and also requested all the participants in the workshop to introduce themselves one after the other. During his half an hour session, Pradeep talked about WinServer Server Community, its past activities and highlighted all the big reasons why this community came into existence some nine months ago. Time for a short break and Nitesh Shrestha, a vibrant technology blogger takes the lead to talk about introduction to Microsoft virtualization. Nitesh, who hails from eastern Nepal beautifully briefed about various Microsoft virtualization

Figure 3: Nitesh Shrestha

technologies and also talked about their significance in context to today’s current difficult global economic environment, when cost savings has become even more critical. Nitesh’s presentation rolled out on the fact that Server virtualization can be a part of this cost savings if IT professionals understand how to best design and implement server infrastructure. Back again, Pradeep Kandel took over the session to talk about Hyper-V infrastructure and Hyper-V Management topics. He talked about Server requirements and scalability; deployment and planning tools thru cloning virtual machines to Hyper-V snapshots. His presentation was also focused on new virtualization tools, including System Center Virtual Machine Manager which help organizations to save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Refreshment apart that were served in between, next session was with Basant Shrestha, IT Officer at BrainDigit IT Solution. Basant’s session revolved around virtual networks, Hyper-V extensible switches, Network load balancing and topics on storage considerations. He also talked about iSCSI and storage virtualization with Spaces.

Figure 5: Basant Shrestha

Refreshment apart that were served in between, next session was with Basant Shrestha, IT Officer at BrainDigit IT Solution. Basant’s session revolved around virtual networks, Hyper-V extensible switches, Network load balancing and topics on storage considerations. He also talked about iSCSI and storage virtualization with Spaces.

Figure 4: Ujjwal Dharewa

After an hour of lunch break, Ujwol Dharewa, IT Manager at BrainDigit IT Solution took the lead and talked about Hyper-V optimization on a cluster, Cluster deployment and cluster shared volumes and live migration technologies.

Figure 6: Suprasiddha Tamrakar

The final presentation was with Suprasiddha Tamrakar, Technical Specialist at MIC Nepal, who had his presentation focused in high availability planning and Hyper-V Replica. Couple of demos were thrown in throughout the workshop to showcase some of the features and capabilities of Hyper-V solutions.

At the end of the workshop, certificates of participation were awarded to all the participants. And, with all these efforts, WinServer Community believe that the workshop will be helpful as a catalyst to pass the certification exam.  We wish all the luck to the participants.

Figure 7: 360 degree view of participants sitting thru the Hyper-V Workshop. In total, 39 IT Pros attended the one day camp. Also, can be seen books and e-book vouchers that were gifted to the participants.

Many thanks to Mahesh Dahal, Active contributor of WinServer Community, also Technical Specialist at BrainWorks Solutions and Services who helped with taking photographs of the overall workshop. All the photos that were shooted can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/qztl7fx

Also, thanks to Sailendra Dangol, Active Contributor of WinServer Community and Prometric exam Protor at MIC Nepal for taking care of Hyper-V and System Center exam registration where 28 participants registered for the exam on the spot. Last, but not the least, thanks to Suraj Dhakal from Nepal Army and an Active Contributor of WinServer Community for being at the workshop registration desk and taking care of accounts.

Figure 8: Participants and lucky winners being awarded with certificates of participation and, group photo session in the closing ceremony.

Our heartiest gratitude to Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal for availing the venue and refreshment for the workshop. We would like to thank Junu Thapa, MIC Manager for addressing the participants and informing them about the major activities that MIC Nepal have been involved in for the past couple of years and providing technology services to the technical community across Nepal.

We would like to thank Oreilly Media for providing free e-book vouchers and continuous support towards the community.

We would specially like to thank Allen Bailochan Tuladhar, Country Director of Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal for his valuable suggestions and feedbacks that helped a lot to make this event a huge success.

Many congratulations to the door prize winners!