Virtualization Report | David Marshall | September 2006

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September 2006

September 29, 2006

Voltaire Announces GridVision Enterprise Software

Voltaire, a provider of grid backbone solutions, announced a new software solution for the management and automation of dynamic Grid computing environments in the data center. The software enables true automation of repetitive IT tasks associated with network, server and storage provisioning to deliver unprecedented efficiency. Provisioning tasks that used to take days and involve multiple groups within IT can now be reduced to seconds.

"GridVision Enterprise is the missing link for the provisioning and management of scalable, dynamic grids," said Patrick Guay, senior vice president of marketing, Voltaire. "Together with Voltaire's rack interconnect solutions supporting InfiniBand, Ethernet and Fibre Channel, Voltaire is delivering a best-in-class solution that provides enterprise customers with a new 'efficiency edge'."

GridVision Enterprise leverages advanced I/O and network virtualization technology embedded in Voltaire's multi-service switches. It automatically maps the relationships between application requirements and the physical or virtual data center environment consisting of servers, storage and networks to create a logical and highly efficient data center.

The product employs an abstracted object model, a graphical user interface and an open web services API. It integrates with leading server and storage virtualization solutions, as well as provisioning and scheduling tools, and creates a single, logical data center environment consisting of both physical and virtual resources.

Voltaire is working with partners such as AMD, FalconStor Software, IBM, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, Novell, Platform Computing, United Devices, VMware and XenSource to integrate GridVision Enterprise with their grid computing and virtualization solutions.

GridVision Enterprise will be available in December 2006. Beta trials are currently underway with customers worldwide. More detailed information can be found at the company's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 10:28 PM

September 29, 2006

Qlusters Announces openQRM Pro

Qlusters, a provider of open source data center provisioning and management software for both physical and virtual environments, recently announced the availability of openQRM Pro.

The offering allows users to request hardware and software resources via a Web portal and then automates the approval process, provisioning and monitoring of the resources maintaining detailed reporting along the way and de-provisioning the resources once they are no longer needed by the user. openQRM Pro also supports complex network topologies including those with virtual LANs, multiple storage islands and virtualization technologies such as VMware and Xen. The solution provides integration with LDAP servers, allowing IT Administrators to take advantage of existing user management and role-based security.
"Provisioning a new server in the enterprise can take from two weeks to several months, adversely effecting the IT department's internal SLAs and often leading to resources that are under utilized and difficult to re-provision," said Ofer Shoshan, founder and CEO of Qlusters. "openQRM Pro gives enterprise IT departments the tools they need to automate the entire requisitioning and provisioning process including integrating their existing LDAP systems to authenticate users and create audit trails vital to keeping the overall organization compliant with regulatory standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley."

Where traditional enterprises can take several weeks to months to provision a single new server, openQRM Pro simplifies the process and makes it possible to manage hundreds of servers, routers and storage devices from one common interface. As a result, overworked IT professionals can automate user requests for systems and services from beginning to end. Features include:

Policy driven resource allocation

LDAP integration (authentication through LDAP server)

Detailed audit trails of resource request and usage

Diskless server support

Automatic, policy-based de-provisioning of resources

"IT managers need a way to streamline the requisitioning and provisioning of disparate server, storage and router devices using one common platform," said Andi Mann, a senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "openQRM Pro will fill that need. It automates the entire management process and supports a wide range of virtualization technologies, network topologies and operating systems from a common interface. I find openQRM Pro to be delightfully disruptive and data center managers should consider evaluating it."

The product has an open plug-in architecture that enables easy integration with existing data center applications such as the monitoring solution offered with Nagios.

Qlusters also offers its advanced Transparent Application Migration (TAM) product, which enables live migration of applications from physical to physical, virtual to physical, physical to virtual, and virtual to virtual.

You can learn more about the company and its products by visiting their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 10:04 PM

September 29, 2006

IBM Launched New Tape Virtualization Solution

IBM recently announced the next generation of tape virtualization solutions as they introduced the IBM System Storage TS7700 Virtualization Engine. It's a mainframe virtual-tape offering that is designed to improve tape processing while attempting to provide business continuity through Grid connectivity and automated replication.

The TS7700 Virtualization Engine introduces a new modular, scalable architecture to meet customer demands and provide for future growth and expansion.

The new TS7700 is built on new software and hardware architecture that incorporates global awareness functionality, enabling a virtual tape grid computing environment. Leveraging global awareness, data is able to reside on TS7700s at different sites, and each unit can track where the data is located and access it. This can lead to better disaster recovery designs.

The new product includes functionality such as advanced policy management, cache management, dual copy, automatic copying across a grid network, and copy mode controls.

The TS7700 Virtualization Engine is available now with a starting list price of $493,080. For more information, visit the following Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 09:30 PM

September 29, 2006

Novell Announces Intel VT Support for Virtualization Solution

Novell announced the industry's first enterprise Linux-based virtualization solution built on Xen and optimized for Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT). SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell running on Dual-Core Intel Xeon platforms will provide customers with a low-cost, high-performing virtualization solution that has the ability to host Linux environments without the need to modify the guest operating systems.

With the integration of Intel Virtualization Technology within Xen, Novell also announced plans to offer enterprise support for virtualized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, allowing Red Hat customers to migrate to Novell service and support while still running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a virtualized environment.

"Being first to provide Xen virtualization with enterprise Linux means our customers will be first to reap the benefits of running virtualized Linux platforms, including Red Hat, on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10," said Jeff Jaffe, Novell executive vice president and chief technology officer. "This cross-platform approach to virtualization means both Novell and Red Hat customers will be able to take advantage of the cost and flexibility benefits of virtualization at a fraction of the cost of existing virtualization solutions."

Doug Fisher, Intel general manager, Core Software Division, said, "Intel and Novell have worked extensively together to deliver an enterprise-ready virtualization solution based on Xen. With Intel Virtualization Technology, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 will virtualize data center workloads on Linux environments with very low overhead and high performance, providing customers the ability to configure applications and systems for maximum efficiency."

Novell will begin a pilot program in late October with several large enterprise customers. General availability of this solution is expected by the end of the year.

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 09:17 PM

September 29, 2006

moka5 Opens Beta Testing of LivePC

moka5 announced that it was launching a public beta program for its LivePC product which had previously been tested through an invitation-only process.

Rather than following the traditional use of virtualization technology, moka5 LivePC instead moves downstream of the typical enterprise use-case toward consumer based virtualization computing.

"We see this as the ultimate in hassle-free computing, a notion we call community-managed personal computers. We have hundreds of techies creating LivePCs that you can try safely with a click of a button, without installation or uninstallation headaches," said Monica Lam, Founder and CEO of moka5.

LivePC technology allows a LivePC creator to deliver new PC content to many users instantly and effortlessly. Users simply subscribe to LivePCs they are interested in, just like updating a music play list or changing a TV channel, and the LivePCs are streamed over the network to them. Every time a user brings up a LivePC, it has the latest features provided by the LivePC creator: new software, new data, security patches or even a new operating system. LivePCs can be run on any Windows PC using the free moka5 LivePC Engine. moka5's streaming technology enables users to start running a LivePC long before it has completely downloaded. LivePCs even work when disconnected from the network.

The LivePC Engine might seem familiar as it is built on VMware's client virtualization platform, and incorporates VMware Player. Also somewhat familiar might be the company's "subscription model" which is akin to VMware's virtual appliances. These subscription LivePCs are made available over the Web and kept up to date to keep users virus free and protected from other malware. LivePCs are streamed down to users, can be used while still streaming, and can be used in a disconnected session once streaming is complete.

To get started using LivePC Engine, visit the following Website. You can also check out a collection of LivePCs that are available for streaming.

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 08:44 PM

September 29, 2006

The Virtualization Report Checks Out AppStream

InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum 2006 talked about all kinds of virtualization platforms, including application virtualization and application streaming. Prior to the show, I was able to sit down with Brad Rowland and Brian Duckering of AppStream to find out more about application streaming as well as finally getting the chance to actually see their product in action. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on September 29, 2006 08:16 PM

September 28, 2006

InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum 2006 Day 2

For those of you in attendance, I hope you were able to make it to both days of the forum. Day 1 offered a lot of insight into the how and why of virtualization. And day 2 looked to be ready to capitalize on that momentum and continue to run the course for those able to make the second day.

Party

At the conclusion of day 1, Novell sponsored an evening cocktail and networking reception in the grand ballroom. The mixer had a good turnout, and there was no shortage of food or drink. Tables were setup with the usual cocktail party foods, and there were servers walking around offering up a number of different food items. With two bar areas setup, it was quite easy to get a drink refill and continue having good conversation. Everyone there seemed to have a really good time. But one individual started the party off on a much higher note - if you signed up for a drawing at Novell's exhibit booth, you had a chance to win a slick looking, green laptop computer running Novell SUSE Linux. Unfortunately for me, I didn't win... but I was still able to have a good time along with everyone else.

The Keynote

I thought the keynote presentations on day 1 were done extremely well. Each one offered valuable insight and presented the technologies and value of virtualization in a clear and concise manner so that everyone in the room could understand. I wasn't sure how they could top it, or even come close.

Andi Mann, Senior Analyst from Enterprise Management Associates, put on quite a presentation. If you weren't sure of the different areas or approaches of virtualization before the presentation started, you certainly walked out of the ballroom with a much better handle on where we are and where we are headed after the presentation concluded. The discussion detailed how many of these areas are approaching significant maturity, while other areas are only now starting to energize the market. Throughout the discussion, he spoke about how these techniques are providing significant benefits in many areas, but also kept it real by saying that these same virtualization techniques also pose new and unique challenges that have to be met. Again, like the previous keynotes, I highly recommend you download Andi Mann's slide presentation for more information.

The Sessions

Unfortunately, I was not able to stay until the conclusion of the forum. However, I did get a chance to see Paul Venezia's two panel discussions that took us through the process of a physical to virtual implementation. To set the stage, Paul introduced the audience to his "faux company" and we were walked through the process of how they should migrate from a traditional IT world to one powered by a virtualization solution. It was an interesting way to get the discussion going, and also helped the audience put things into perspective as they go through some of the same pain points.

The discussion was broken up into two sessions. The first session covered the planning stages and went into specifics such as skillset needed, software licensing issues, performance and resource utilization metrics, and hardware platform requirements and considerations. The second session continued with the topic but this time focusing on the deployment side. The panel talked about their challenges and the pitfalls that can be avoided, and they discussed the different tools that are now available to help with a P2V migration. If you haven't already gone through this process, these panel experts definitely gave the audience a lot of food for thought to take back with them.

Conclusion

Each day, InfoWorld provided a questionnaire sheet and asked that the attendees fill them out and turn them back in. Hopefully, many of you were able to do just that. While I certainly enjoyed myself, learned new things, found new products, met new people and had interesting conversation... the forum was for you. It was for you to gain a better understanding of this whole virtualization notion, where does it fit within your organization? What can it do for you? And which solution will work best for you and the way you do business? It is important to get your feedback on things like this so that next year's forum can be even better.

For those of you that spoke with me, thank you. I sincerely enjoyed hearing about your products, ideas and implementation stories as well as seeing your enthusiasm for a technology that I love. I hope to see you again next year.

If you have any thoughts about the show and want to share them with me, you can either post them here for all to read, or drop me an email. I'd love to chat more about it.

Posted by David Marshall on September 28, 2006 06:17 AM

September 27, 2006

InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum 2006 Day 1

For those of you who were unable to attend the InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum 2006 event that took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week, you missed a really great time!

Venue

The Roosevelt Hotel seemed to be a fantastic venue for the first InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum. The Grand Ballroom was the perfect size to fit the event, and the table and chair layout was not only comfortable, but offered a great way to meet and interact with peers. It was quite easy to talk with and meet the people sitting at your table. The usual rows of chairs at events don't make it easy to speak with anyone except for the two people sitting on each side of you.

And what a great mix of people in attendance, from many diverse companies and backgrounds, and different levels of virtualization knowledge and experience. It was great fun speaking with decision makers to find out their thoughts and ideas around virtualization and how they think it fits in their organization. They wanted to know how it affected their bottom line, and they listened intently to the speakers, exhibitors, and those of us walking around the floor.

The stage was setup in a way that there really wasn't a bad seat in the room. Which is odd for me, I'm used to getting into a session late and not being able to hear or see what's going on. The event also had a second room, the Plaza Suite for other break out sessions as well. The room was smaller than the ballroom, but comfortably fit everyone in the sessions that I was able to attend.

Security was high on my first day at the Roosevelt. After getting my luggage scanned at the airport, I thought I was all set. Who knew it would be scanned again at the hotel. This was my first trip to the big apple, and I didn't know if this was customary or not. Come to find out, this isn't an everyday occurrence, nor was this due to the forum. It seems that important people were in town this week... but who were in New York for something bigger than virtualization (is that possible?).

And might I add, this was the best dressed IT forum that I have been to yet. I don't think I've seen this many suites and ties at an IT forum in my life! No shorts and t-shirts with geek phrases at this forum, that's for sure!

The Keynotes

The keynotes did not disappoint. In fact, the general tone and overview of each keynote session simply reiterated what I have already come to know and talk about regularly... virtualization is catching on and the keynote speakers reiterated this notion. In the first two morning keynote sessions, the two speakers really brought it home, each talking to the subject at a high level. Steve Fox kicked off the forum in high gear, explaining the various types of virtualization, their benefits, and noting that "It's all about the business". One of the main questions asked at every forum was "will the slides be made available at some point for download?" So before people could ask, Steve let the audience know, the presentations will be made available on October 1st at virtexecforum.com. So watch for the slides!

Steve Yatko (CTO, Managing Director, Global Head of R&D, Credit Suisse Securities) and Dr. Jeff Jaffe (Executive Vice President, CTO, Novell) each did a fantastic job of keeping the audience's attention with a high level business discussion around virtualization, and did so with very little overlap. The challenges and benefits of virtualization were explored. Dr. Jaffe interjected a bit of humor into his discussion as he talked about the changing world. Open-source technology was one of the key topics here, and its future was heavily discussed.

There was a lot of information and a lot to take in from each of these presentations, and whether you were in the audience or not, I would highly recommend downloading the slides when made available to go back over them. The presentations were both well received, and the ballroom was packed.

The Sessions

The general and breakout sessions were a little less formal than the key note sessions. Using a more Q&A panel discussion layout, the audience was able to hear a nice mix of expertise and use case scenarios. The topics on day 1 ran the gambit. Panel experts talked about storage virtualization, virtual server sprawl problems, the how and why virtualization was found to be needed in different environments, product complexity, scalability and metrics needed to determine if costs or productivity are being met, as well as covering applications that leverage virtualization such as through development and testing.

One of the sessions I enjoyed that dug deep into the virtualization products itself was "Inside Hardware Assisted Virtualization". For the techie, this one was a must see. It was great to hear VMware, XenSource, Microsoft and Virtual Iron representatives all on the stage at the same time, talking about their products and where they overlap or depart. Unlike some of the other sessions, this one was most definitely not a high level discussion. This one dug deep into paravirtualization, hypervisors, drivers, and more.

If I were a virtual machine, I would have cloned myself to be able to see and hear everything. Unfortunately, I could not. The drawback to having a lot of things going on at once... you end up missing a few things.

The Exhibitors

If you wanted to find out more information about each of the contributing sponsors of this year's forum, you didn't have to go far. Each sponsor had their own exhibit booth that was manned by well informed employees who were all too eager to talk about their company's product. Unlike some forum events where the exhibit booths are manned by spokes models, this time I was actually able to have an intelligent conversation with the person manning the booth and walk away with a better understanding of the company, its product, and where they fit in the realm of virtualization. Don't get me wrong, I didn't simply leave with information in hand, for those of you wondering, yes, the exhibitors brought swag. I didn't escape with any Hollywood swag, but the usual tech giveaways were out there: pens, USB drives, shirts, hats, a cool time piece, a plush SUSE toy (for my daughter of course) and more. Oddly enough, none of the exhibitors were making people scream out catch phrases or play games for prizes. They simply made them available. Which I suppose goes back to the whole "well dressed attendees" thing.

Posted by David Marshall on September 27, 2006 04:41 PM

September 23, 2006

InfoWorld Test Center Reviews Virtualization Products

The InfoWorld Test Center recently put three virtualization products through a series of tests and came to the following conclusions:

Scalent Virtual Operating Environment 2.0 from Scalent Systems.

The product received a rating of 8.5, Very Good, with the following bottom line: Scalent's V/OE promises much, and it delivers. By separating the server from the hardware, you can move server instances among physical hardware and even among virtualization platforms in a seamless manner that retains all network, iSCSI, and FC connections. Combined with a very attractive and usable Flash-based GUI, V/OE 2.0 is a glimpse of what a truly adaptive datacenter could look like.

Read the entire review, here.

Surgient Virtual QA/Test Management System 5.0 from Surgient, Inc.

The product received a rating of 8.0, Very Good, with the following bottom line: VQMS is a capable, enterprise-scale lab-automation solution that exploits virtualization. It boasts a good management console, a scheduling system, excellent capture and replay capabilities, and a helpful reporting system. The extensive feature set, however, is hamstrung by pervasive complexity.

Read the entire review, here.

Vizioncore esxRanger 2.0 from vizioncore, inc.

The product received a rating of 8.1, Very Good, with the following bottom line: esxRanger provides a simple, fast method to properly backup and restore VMware virtual servers. The GUI is straightforward and easy to use but lacks some advanced features. The CLI base is a snap to script, however, and the performance of the solution is beyond reproach, delivering fast backups and high compression ratios.

Read the entire review, here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 01:19 PM

September 23, 2006

TechWorld Interviews IBM's Rich Lechner

TechWorld recently took the opportunity to speak with IBM's Rich Lechner, VP of Virtualization, when he dropped into the UK on a European tour. Lechner was able to shed some light on both IBM's role within virtualization and where he thinks the technology is headed.

Two interesting question and answer sessions follow:

Q: What are your customers saying about virtualisation? A: We regularly survey IBM and non-IBM customers, and 54 per cent either have or will implement virtualisation this year. For SMBs -- that's companies with under 1,000 employees -- the adoption rate is the same as for big enterprises which is very unusual for a new technology. Sixty per cent of all virtualisation engagements are in SMBs and their pain points are same as those of the big customers: cutting costs, consolidation, and handling storage growth while containing IT admin costs.

Virtualisation is like a microwave oven -- it's very complex and capable, and it brings rapid ROI with a simple application of the technology. For example, take storage: a customer can justify the cost of virtualisation through a single data migration. Then they can do tiered storage, disaster recovery and so on.

And until very recently the drivers have been cost reduction via better utilisation of floor space and so on. But in the last two quarters, customers have been saying that disaster recovery and higher availability are their main drivers, such as failover partitions, VMware's VMotion, and data replication services.

...

Q: What challenges can you see ahead for virtualisation? A: The main problems for customers are organisational barriers, such as when they move from physical resources that are owned by divisions within the organisation to a distributed architecture. Departments need to be assured they'll only pay for what they use -- on mainframes we've been able to do this for years.

Customers are also rapidly realising that management of the virtualisation environment is critical. Firstly, they don't want physical resources to be divorced from the virtualised environment -- in other words, they don't want a whole new set of management tools; they have enough. Secondly, they want management tools to work across broad physical resources. And thirdly, they want integration of those tools into enterprise management systems such as IBM's Tivoli.

But the single biggest challenge to virtualisation is a lack of skills, whether for those who are or who aren't doing virtualisation. So we're educating our services people and those of our partners to design and deploy systems for customers.

We've also created patterns for virtualisation implementation that customers can follow, such as how to design and implement networking, server selection and so on -- it's not IBM-specific as it's aimed as accelerating adoption. We had the same problem with Web services and that proved a good template to adapt. And 65 per cent of all customer engagements are led by our business partners, so it's good news for them.

Read the entire question and answer session, here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 01:11 PM

September 23, 2006

Optimize Virtual Machines Using a new Release from Invirtus

No matter what role your virtual machine plays, whether testing, development, disaster recovery, training, or IT production, a smaller and optimized virtual machine is definitely warranted.

Invirtus produces a commercial software application that fits the bill. Its claim to fame is a product called VM Optimizer which attempts to reduce virtual machines to their smallest size possible and at the same time enhance its performance.

The company's latest version has just been released, VM Optimizer 2.5. And with it, the company has made some improvements to the product offering:

Settings Manager - Settings Manager is an innovative supplemental application for Corporate Edition owners that allows you to create an XML based configuration file that VM Optimizer uses at run-time.

FreeSpace - An included application that integrates into the optimization process and goes sector by sector on the virtual hard disk thoroughly zeroing out unused space to ensure that optimization results are as good as possible.

NullBoot - To end the hassle of forced reboots during the optimization process, the company has created this proprietary technology for implementing live core OS configurations without requiring a reboot. It is available in the Corporate Edition.

VMShrink - This additional tool was written to integrate with VMware's product and carry out the VMDK shrinking with zero intervention. Users no longer have to perform the additional steps of mounting the VMDK file and then use command line switches.

You can try VM Optimizer by going to the following Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 12:28 PM

September 23, 2006

Virtualization - Views from Infrastructure Management World and Sun

Today we look at what attendees were thinking and talking about around virtualization at this year's Infrastructure Management World Conference. I also took a look at the hardware that Sun is now offering and spoke with Graham Lovell from Sun to get his thoughts about virtualization. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 11:33 AM

September 23, 2006

Parallels Updates PC and Mac Products

Virtualization provider Parallels continues to move at record speeds as it pushes forward with updates for its PC and Mac versions of its desktop virtualization software. Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux and Parallels Desktop for Mac are both currently available in a release candidate version.

The PC version, Parallels Workstation 2.2, includes a number of key improvements. Perhaps one of the most asked for additions by end-users is the added guest operating system support for Windows Vista Beta 1, Beta 2, and RC1. The company also improved its support for Intel's Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) and AMD's Secure Virtual Machine Technology (SVM). These virtualization technologies help drive Parallel's virtual machine speed, performance and stability. The new version also offers improved USB support and performance, a smoother Shared Folders utility, support for Windows Mobile 2005 devices, and a redesigned, more user-friendly interface.

The new release candidate of Parallels Desktop for Mac (build 1898) offers substantial improvement to Mac Pro and 64-bit iMac performance, eliminates those annoying kernel panics, and fixes a number of major bugs. It also offers a new tool that will help with the 2GB RAM issue. Rather than manually limiting RAM via the command line in Terminal, the tool allows the end-user to perform the same action without any command line coding. The new build also adds support for Windows Vista RC1 as a guest operating system.

The company also said that it was currently working on a new RC build of Parallels Desktop for Mac that will be compatible with any Intel-based Mac with any amount of RAM. And it could be available within the next week or two.

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 06:33 AM

September 23, 2006

INSYSTEK Releases Virtualization Roadmap

INSYSTEK announced the company's strategy for managing complex virtual environments. The company's CTO, Richard Carlsen, said that virtualization management will be an enabled technology to all INSYSTEK solutions. Their beta release due out in the next few months will initially have support for VMware VirtualCenter.

INSYSTEK's Virtualize IT technology offers the ability to manage complex virtual infrastructures from the same console that is used to manage the physical one. The company expects to have Virtual IT enabled solutions with several features:

Enterprise management support for thousands of physical and virtual machines

Discover virtual infrastructure systems and resources

Create virtual servers and desktops

Automatically track and manage physical and virtual relationships

Deploy software applications to your virtual environment

Run reports for virtual resource configurations and usage

Audit all virtual machines for resource configurations

Audit guests for operating system and software configurations

More information about the company and their solutions can be found on their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 23, 2006 05:52 AM

September 20, 2006

GreenBorder Pro Secures Firefox

After releasing its product sometime ago for Internet Explorer users, GreenBorder Technologies, Inc. announced it was adding support for the Firefox web browsing software by introducing a new release of its GreenBorder Pro product. The product is a patented technology that combines highly efficient session virtualization with strong security, creating what the company calls an "impenetrable protective barrier that keeps all interactions with a website and its associated content or programs away from the internal parts of the PC as well as the user's drives and files."

In today's world of phishing, hacking, and identity theft, people are often afraid to surf the Web or read their email. Many have started creating virtual machines on their desktops or laptops only to use them for checking email or Web browsing.

GreenBorder hopes to eliminate that fear. It makes user's personal files, data, and PC internals invisible to the Web. It also protects personal information from identity theft by securing data that users enter online while shopping, paying bills, and doing online banking. It even keeps the machine running fast by preventing trash build-up from Java applets, temp files, and other Web junk that usually slows the machine down. And it keeps malicious code encountered online or embedded in downloaded content from silently installing on the machine. Its "set and forget" protection is automatic and doesn't need to be constantly updated with new signature files like an anti-virus solution to keep the system safe.

Sounds too good to be true? In March of 2005, GreenBorder hired independent security assessment firm, KeyLabs, to help validate the company's solution by subjecting their product through a battery of tests which included spyware, worms, viruses, custom-crafted exploits, and other forms of malware through both the browser and email. The report stated that all threats were uniformly contained by GreenBorder and unable to damage system integrity.

"We compared the machines protected by GreenBorder to those without GreenBorder after exposure to a broad spectrum of real-world threats delivered through both IE and Outlook," said Eric Bowden, chief technical officer at KeyLabs. "While the unprotected systems quickly became unusable, those protected by GreenBorder continued to function, allowing full access to Internet resources. In addition, when the testing was over, GreenBorder automatically eliminated all code, files, and cookies that had been silently dropped onto the machine, returning it to a clean state, maintaining perfect system integrity. GreenBorder's design and implementation gives it a marked advantage over traditional enterprise-class anti-malware products."

So it appears as though there is another option to secure and safe Web browsing other than creating and running a "web surfing" virtual appliance.

GreenBorder Pro 2.9.2 with support for Firefox and Internet Explorer runs on Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems. A free 30-day trial can be downloaded from the company's Web site at a special introductory price of $29.95 per year per PC.

Posted by David Marshall on September 20, 2006 06:32 PM

September 20, 2006

Interview: Graham Lovell talking about Sun and Virtualization

According to a recent press release from Sun Microsystems, one company in particular is combining the well planned architecture of Sun's Sun Fire X4200 Server and the power of virtualization to perform a 22-1 server consolidation, thereby allowing them to combat and reduce power consumption and high heat output by up to 84 percent:

NewEnergy is replacing its entire Houston data center, comprised of 22 Intel processor-based servers, with two Sun Fire X4200 servers powered with the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor, and running the Solaris 10 OS. NewEnergy's Houston data center performs CPU-intensive Grid computing simulations for its customers nationwide, which mirror real-world electric Grids in order to plan for potential disasters. Trial results demonstrated the Sun Fire X4200 servers as being much faster than other servers which is partially credited to the Solaris 10 OS's efficiency over memory-intensive applications running the Windows OS.

Sun and VMware have combined efforts to provide innovation and deliver proven virtual infrastructure solutions for enterprise computing. Leveraging the power of VMware Infrastructure 3, Solaris 10 and the Sun Fire series of servers, customers can maximize performance and reduce overall cost of ownership via server consolidation, business continuity, and test or development solutions. Combining these products, IT managers are given a complete solution to help increase their server utilization, improve performance and reduce costs while making better use of their data center resources, like space, cooling and power consumption.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Graham Lovell, Senior Director of the Systems Group for Sun Microsystems. I wanted to find out more about Sun and to get his take on the whole virtualization scene, specifically software licensing, emerging trends, and customer needs in the virtualization space.

David Marshall: In your own words, what is Sun's strategy towards virtualization?

Graham Lovell: The first thing we need to establish is what we mean by virtualization and how we communicate it. We need to define it with customers in different circumstances.

Customers generally look to improve the utilization of their servers. They want to run multiple applications and different operating systems. The idea is to snapshot what they have in a piece of hardware and then run it on another system in a virtualized way.

They can see the benefits of running virtualized environments, but they have to support it. They need management tools to run it well.

It is important that suppliers such as Sun can provide a range of options on different multiple operating systems. We have SPARC and x86 product lines. With Solaris 10, we have containers. It lets you run isolated systems where each one thinks its running on a dedicated system. If you are running Xen or VMware, you aren't running multiple software copies.

This has been popular with customers running Solaris and SPARC and Solaris on x86 platforms.

The next choice is that customers can select VMware. VMware has a number of new products, but people think it is a single solution. When we talk to customers about experiencing VMware, some of them may have just heard of it. That is when we can talk about different styles of implementation.

Customers are seeing the benefit on how they can mix VMware. They talk about pooling resources in the data center so one can then resource data across several servers. This makes it easier to move applications around and help with capacity planning. Virtualization can help you install pool behavior.

David: Are you finding that people are using Solaris containers to do the same thing as VMware? Such as for development and test or support? Or are they strictly using it for server consolidation?

Graham: Customers look at virtualization to test and debug applications across a range of application systems. That is where the customer can be more sophisticated in their choice with VMware or Xen. With VMware, you can see things have more choice. Xen is up and coming. It is embedded in a number of operating systems. It has interesting and new budget tools. I think Xen will have an interesting future virtualization stack as well.

Containers are typically rolled out in an application environment.

David: How does virtualization impact software licensing?

Graham: The software industry is reeling from pricing multiple cores per processor. Microsoft has strong policies around pricing cores. Virtualization software subdivides a processor into pieces of CPU. Vendors then argue why do they pay for the whole software when they only use a fraction of it?

Value-based pricing is a more reasonable way to charge for software. I think Microsoft is one of the first to come out with policies around virtualized environments.

David: I agree with you. Software licensing will have to change. People are using virtual machines for things such as disaster recovery options and software companies will have to adapt.

Graham: Without the flexibility in licensing, customers may find themselves paying more for the software. They moved the software from a 2-core system to an 8-core system. Virtualized environments have bigger engines. They need to make sure they don't fall far of software restrictions.

Customers need to go back to their ISVs and say, is it ok if I can move from 2-cores to 4? Then you have a start for negotiation.

Sun has an enterprise system where you charge by the number of employees in the company. It doesn't matter how much hardware you run, it's a site-based license with lots of flexibility.

David: What do you think is driving the demand for virtualization today?

Graham: I got this Windows NT application. The problem is I can no longer get hardware that can run the physical operating system. You can't buy old hardware that will run this new software. Legacy reasons are one of the key drivers for virtualization.

Server sprawl also generates too much heat and uses too much power. If I consolidate them, I can then improve the use of space, heat and power in the data center.

When customers think of disaster planning, they need to easily migrate applications across platforms. If one data center has a problem, it's easier to migrate in a virtual environment than a non-virtual one.

Virtualization also offers more flexibility. When a business comes along and the IT department needs to respond quickly to business needs - virtualization can ramp things up.

David: I've seen problems using VMware and Xen with patch management. Since the containers approach is based on one operating system, would that solve part of the patch management problem? It seems like instead of having to patch multiple areas, you just have to patch one.

Graham: The flip side is that it runs the same kernel code. So it is all consistent. But you can apply different patches into the user space. You can't have multiple kernels. If you make any changes, it is reflected across the containers. Then you may want to run VMware with several implementations of Solaris. Then you have a patch level in one instance of Solaris.

David: Can you leave us with a good customer example?

Graham: The one that gets my juices going is New Energy Associates.

Neal Tisdale, Vice President of Software Development of NewEnergy Associates, consolidated 22 Dell servers to 2 Sun servers. He cut down not just the number of systems, but he cut down on heat, power and physical space. He then managed a server consolidation environment.

That is the low-hanging fruit for customers. They can do better with modern technology and make a huge energy cost savings. Computing is underutilized by customers.

There are significant benefits to making that change and pushing people to experiment.

Posted by David Marshall on September 20, 2006 03:41 PM

September 19, 2006

Mandriva's Corporate Server 4.0 Showcases Virtualization

Mandriva, formerly known as MandrakeSoft, has made available for purchase its Corporate Server 4.0. This release is Mandriva's attempt to exit end-user Linux and make a move against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5 due out at the end of the year.

Like its competitors, Mandriva's Corporate Server 4.0 is integrating virtualization into its offering. Unlike its competitors who have integrated the open-source Xen product into their operating system, Madriva is taking a different approach. Rather than simply adding the Xen hypervisor, the company will be the first to offer all three of the major virtualization technologies being made available to the Linux community - Xen, VMware, and OpenVZ.

Corporate Server 4.0 comes with the Xen hypervisor developed by XenSource. Xen will create virtual machine partitions allowing each virtual machine to get its own operating system and software stack. Likewise, the product will come with VMware to offer similar virtual machine partitioning. One can assume that this offering will be the recently released free-of-charge version of VMware Server. And finally, the software will include support for OpenVZ, a partitioning solution that is similar to Sun Solaris containers. OpenVZ is an open-source implementation based on SWsoft's Virtuozzo product.

By offering all three platform choices, the operating system allows the end-user to choose which virtualization approach meets their specific need. Since each virtualization technology has its own drawbacks and benefits, the right virtualization approach can be used to solve the problem at hand rather than feeling forced to use one particular solution.

Posted by David Marshall on September 19, 2006 06:53 PM

September 19, 2006

NetXen's I/O Virtualization Unleashes Potential of Server Virtualization

NetXen, Inc. introduced a complete I/O architecture that unleashes the potential of server virtualization.

Based on new functionality for the company's Intelligent NIC family, the NetSlice architecture dramatically improves a server's I/O performance by supporting multiple virtual I/O channels. By offloading network interface tasks from the host server, the NetSlice architecture allows datacenters to greatly increase server consolidation with virtual machine scalability -- one of the primary goals of server virtualization strategies.

Because NetXen's new I/O virtualization architecture leverages the company's programmable Intelligent NIC, datacenters get a flexible platform that accommodates a wide variety of virtualization schemes. As standards become available for I/O virtualization, the NetSlice architecture can easily adopt them to provide the highest possible performance at each step in the technology's evolution.

"I/O virtualization extends the benefits of server consolidation strategies built upon virtual machines," said Anne MacFarland of The Clipper Group, Inc. "Server consolidation is a common trend in the datacenter, but it can result in I/O contention between VMs, impeding performance. I/O virtualization addresses this issue. That it allows more rapid provisioning and simplified system management is the icing on the cake."

"Virtualization and the convergence of networking, clustering and storage are major drivers in next-generation datacenter networks," observed NetXen's vice president of marketing, Vikram Karvat. "In this environment, Intelligent NICs are the ideal solution because they offer scalability and bandwidth, as well as the flexibility to accommodate changing standards."

The NetSlice architecture introduced today provides a broadly applicable set of functions for I/O virtualization, including support for as many as 1,024 VMs, multiple DMA engines, DMA remapping for PCIe-related activities, interrupt moderation for managing each virtual channel independently, mapping of multiple MAC addresses to the virtual NICs of a given VM, multiple transmit and receive queues dedicated to each VM, and virtual switching and traffic steering based on Layer 2 and Layer 3 packet header information.

NetXen has configured these functions to work with currently available server virtualization hardware and software. Since the industry has yet to establish standards for I/O virtualization, NetXen offers operating-system- specific solutions when necessary. As standardized schemes become available, they can easily be implemented in NetXen's Intelligent NICs via firmware upgrades. Datacenter investments in the new virtualized I/O architecture are thus protected into the foreseeable future.

In addition to introducing the NetSlice I/O virtualization architecture, NetXen is announcing support for VMware's ESX3 system. The new NetSlice I/O architecture works with the ESX3 system to enhance VM scalability.

The ultimate goal of the NetSlice architecture is to optimize the VMs' I/O subsystem for direct access to I/O resources. Ultimately, the VMs will bypass the host-based protocol stacks for nearly all networking functions.

Posted by David Marshall on September 19, 2006 06:45 PM

September 18, 2006

Virtual Iron Launches Channel One Global Partner Program

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure in the data center, today announced the launch of its Channel One program for value-added resellers, systems integrators and consulting firms. The program enables channel partners to significantly broaden their solution portfolio and grow revenue opportunities with the first true enterprise-class virtualization alternative.

Virtual Iron delivers its software exclusively through a core group of channel partners in each region and the product's advanced capabilities create a number of consulting and professional services opportunities for channel partners. These include data center assessments, physical to virtual migration, business continuity planning, capacity planning and utilization, implementation and deployment, policy-based automation development and various managed services.

"Virtual Iron offers a comprehensive virtualization and management solution that enables users to take full advantage of new technologies like the open source hypervisor and new hardware-assist capabilities from Intel and AMD," said Ken Simon, Vice President of Sales for Enterico, a division of Continental Resources. "This complements our expertise in streamlining data center infrastructure and management and delivering the latest technology solutions to our customers."

"Virtual Iron provides state-of-the-art virtualization and management solutions and offers a distinct price advantage compared to alternative solutions," said Norio Nakai, Managing Executive Officer, Enterprise Business Unit, Nissho Electronics Japan. "We are already seeing strong demand for the Virtual Iron solution in the Japanese market and have incorporated it into a Virtualization Starter package with offerings from IBM-Japan and Nissho Electronics."

The Virtual Iron platform combines advanced virtualization and policy-based management capabilities with an open source hypervisor derived from the Xen community open source project. It takes full advantage of new hardware-assisted virtualization from Intel and AMD and provides support for unmodified 32- and 64-bit Linux and Windows operating systems, as well as for SMP and very large memory (96GB). Virtual Iron is purpose-built for production-class workloads and supports hundreds of physical servers and thousands of virtual servers. It automates many time-intensive manual tasks such as provisioning new servers and moving capacity to handle dynamic workloads. The software also monitors physical systems and automatically responds to availability issues. These capabilities enable users to streamline data center management while dramatically reducing capital and operating expenses.

"Virtual Iron's business model is entirely channel-driven so we're very focused on our partners' success," said John C. Thibault, President and CEO of Virtual Iron. "Our product is the first virtualization and management solution that is truly enterprise-ready. With our superior performance and economic price point, we will help our value-added resellers expand their market opportunity with existing customers while attracting new users of virtualization technologies at the same time."

The Virtual Iron Channel One Program provides a number of partner support resources including:

Comprehensive sales and marketing support

On-site sales and technical training

Joint marketing, press and lead generation programs

Lead registration and qualified lead distribution

Pre/post-sales and technical support

Partner knowledgebase

Demo and evaluation software

Dedicated account support

There is no fee to join the Virtual Iron Channel One Program through December 31, 2006. For more information, or to apply for the program, please go to Virtual Iron Channel One, or call 978.849.1241.

Posted by David Marshall on September 18, 2006 04:42 PM

September 18, 2006

PlateSpin and Virtual Iron Partner to Accelerate Virtualization Adoption and ROI

PlateSpin Ltd. and Virtual Iron Software today announced a new technology and business partnership that will help users assess the best opportunities for enterprise-class virtualization in their data centers and streamline solution deployment. The companies have agreed to develop joint product offerings for users and resellers as well as collaborate on marketing and sales efforts.

With the agreement, PlateSpin, which provides software that analyzes physical and virtual resources and provides OS portability between physical and virtual environments, will support Virtual Iron's enterprise-class virtualization and management platform. PlateSpin PowerConvert is an automated software solution that enables customers to migrate data, applications, and operating systems across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures in any direction. The combination of PlateSpin PowerConvert and Virtual Iron will provide users with the ability to migrate physical servers into Virtual Iron virtual infrastructure to quickly achieve the benefits of large-scale server consolidation, rapid provisioning, high availability and capacity management. General availability is planned for November.

The companies also announced that they will make available PlateSpin PowerRecon with support for Virtual Iron at the same time. PlateSpin PowerRecon provides analysis capabilities that optimize the consolidation of physical servers into virtual servers. The software remotely collects all the relevant hardware inventory data, resource utilization and workload statistics that create the foundation for server consolidation projects. This allows users to remotely identify what physical and virtual resources exist in the data center and presents a complete hardware, software, and services inventory. The partnership allows users to easily identify consolidation candidates and perform fully automated migrations of a broad-based set of enterprise workloads. This enables dramatic reductions in operational costs involved in server migration activities.

"PlateSpin is dedicated to providing users with the ability to optimize resource utilization through the automated migration of Linux or Windows servers between physical and virtual infrastructures with zero manual effort," said Eric Courville, VP of Global Alliances at PlateSpin. "PlateSpin's support for Virtual Iron will continue to extend these capabilities to a broader set of virtual platforms, giving users the flexibility they need to leverage the benefits of virtualization in the enterprise data center."

"PlateSpin's support for Virtual Iron will allow our customers to quickly determine which systems provide the best returns for consolidation and rapidly consolidate their physical hardware onto virtual servers" said Mike Grandinetti, Chief Marketing Officer at Virtual Iron Software. "Customers also gain the ability to broaden their choice of backup and disaster recovery strategies by combining Virtual Iron's policy-based automation and PlateSpin's Flexible Image archives."

Virtual Iron will bundle one free migration of PlateSpin PowerConvert with every Virtual Iron Consolidation and Enterprise Edition license. Subsequent migrations will be available for purchase from Virtual Iron and PlateSpin authorized resellers. Virtual Iron will also offer a server assessment solution as well as a server consolidation bundle through its network of authorized resellers. The offering will include PlateSpin PowerRecon and a Virtual Iron/PlateSpin PowerConvert bundle that will be aggressively priced to encourage adoption of the joint solution.

Virtual Iron and PlateSpin will be demonstrating their technologies together at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco at the Moscone Center September 26-28, 2006. Interested parties can also learn more about their combined offerings by registering to attend a webcast being hosted by the companies on October 18th, 2006. More details are available by clicking here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 18, 2006 04:32 PM

September 18, 2006

How can I achieve high availability with virtualization?

When you start building out your virtualization infrastructure, you might start wondering what to do to achieve high availability. VMware ESX Server 3.0 recently added that functionality into the product, but what happens if you are running ESX Server 2.5.x, Microsoft Virtual Server or Xen? I spoke with Bob Williamson from SteelEye Technology about that very subject. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on September 18, 2006 04:11 PM

September 17, 2006

Acopia Networks Showcases Intelligent File Virtualization

Acopia Networks, which provides high-performance, intelligent file virtualization, announced it will showcase ARX solutions at the Storage World Conference, Fall 2006 that takes place on September 19-21, 2006 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kirby Wadsworth, Acopia's senior VP of marketing and business development, will join a panel discussion entitled, "The Virtues of Virtualization", which takes place on Tuesday, September 19 at 2:00 PM. The panel will examine the current state of the storage virtualization market as well as its anticipated rapid growth.

"High cost, stranded capacity, disruptive processes, and performance issues are persistent problems in today's enterprise datacenter," said Wadsworth. "The raw cost of storage is falling, but IT budgets aren't benefiting because the disruption and switching costs associated with traditional technologies are high. IT managers feel locked in. Intelligent file virtualization breaks the bonds, letting customers take full and immediate advantage of new technologies, and changing market conditions." He added, "I am delighted to have been invited to join such an esteemed group of panel participants to discuss and debate the current status and future direction of the file virtualization space."

Acopia will offer a demonstration that will highlight the value of intelligent file virtualization, and its ability to simplify file storage management. Specifically, it provides the ability to:

Migrate large numbers of files, transparently to users, without scheduled outages

Tier data to appropriate storage media automatically and continuously - freeing expensive high-performance disk and dramatically reducing storage and backup costs

Increase utilization and optimize performance with advanced real-time load balancing

Replicate data efficiently and flexibly to ensure data protection and high availability

Posted by David Marshall on September 17, 2006 04:36 PM

September 17, 2006

Webcast: A Software Virtualization Panel Discussion

Altiris invites people to attend a 1 hour complimentary webcast on Wednesday, September 20 at 1 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. GMT, Europe).

Join Altiris and an expert panel to discuss software virtualization technology, the virtualization landscape as well as how Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) fits into this space.

This live event will provide you the opportunity to get your questions answered by members of the panel including Altiris experts, Michael Dortch (Principal Business Analyst for Robert Frances Group), and an Altiris partner that is working on SVS implementations.

Some of the topics this panel will be prepared to discuss:

How software virtualization is different from what is being seen in the server realm

How IT organizations can get value from software virtualization

Why companies have selected SVS and how SVS has been implemented in these organizations

Altiris' future vision for SVS and upcoming features

Posted by David Marshall on September 17, 2006 09:09 AM

September 16, 2006

Opsware Offers Strategy for Virtual Server Management

Opsware, a provider of Data Center Automation software, announced the company's strategy for managing complex virtual server environments. At the company's annual user conference, OPSWorld, held in San Jose, California, CEO Ben Horowitz discussed the little understood challenges of managing virtual servers. This complexity created by the rapid adoption of server virtualization and the accompanying rise in server images that need to be managed is described as reaching crisis proportions as IT departments struggle to keep up with the dramatically increased workload.

"The whole world is talking about virtualization as the next great panacea for IT," said George Hamilton, Enterprise Computing & Networking Director, Yankee Group. "Virtualization offers great promise, but if you don't accompany it with automated management, you risk creating bigger problems than those you solve. Opsware recognizes this potential and has articulated a comprehensive strategy for helping IT sidestep the pitfalls and enjoy the full benefits that virtualization has to offer."

To combat these problems, Opsware has come out with a roadmap to automate the virtualized IT environment:

Discover and map virtual environments - In today's dynamic IT environment, it is increasingly difficult for enterprises to discover and track virtual servers. Opsware's Data Center Automation software solves this challenge, clearly delineating between the physical world and virtual environment and through one single management console providing the ability to provision, view and track physical and virtual servers.

Create virtual servers - Opsware will automate the process of creating virtual servers through a simple point-and-click interface that enables rapid creation of virtual machines for all virtual server platforms, including VMware, Sun Solaris, Microsoft Virtual Server and XenSource. Without this level of automation, IT organizations would have to use separate, disparate point tools, each requiring administrators to have specialized knowledge and expertise.

Seamlessly track and manage physical and virtual relationships - With the massive complexity created by virtualization, enterprises are demanding an integrated view of their physical and virtual server environments, including the ability to track virtual machine dependencies. To ensure seamless management across physical and virtual environments, Opsware provides a graphical representation of dependencies between physical and virtual servers and automatically tracks when virtual servers are moved across physical servers.

Manage across multiple virtualization platforms - System administrators typically rely on different tools to manage various virtualization platforms. Opsware enables IT to manage across all virtualization platforms from a single solution, minimizing platform specific training and saving significant time and resources.

Automate the lifecycle of a large number of virtual servers - Until now, IT could not manage virtualized environments in the same manner as traditional servers. Opsware's solution allows enterprises to automate the full lifecycle of virtual servers including provisioning, patching, and compliance, providing the deepest level of visibility and control across the IT environment from a single console.

"Virtualization has the potential to deliver tremendous cost savings, both from better hardware utilization as well as through the ability to standardize software stacks across heterogeneous environments," said Tim Howes, CTO of Opsware Inc. "However, you can only achieve these benefits -- and avoid huge IT management nightmares -- if you automate the management of virtualized environments. Opsware offers greater capability than anyone to do this today, and the roadmap we're announcing will deliver comprehensive capabilities suitable for even the most complex global enterprises."

Posted by David Marshall on September 16, 2006 12:50 PM

September 16, 2006

Dunes Technologies Raises Capital and Appoints a new CEO

Dunes Technologies SA, creator of process automation and system management software for virtual environments, announced that it has raised new equity capital led by Affentranger Associates along with private investors and employees. The company plans on using the funds to ramp-up its sales activity and expand its operations into the United States. They plan on doing so under the leadership of their newly appointed CEO, Dr. Robert Laurie.

With a software suite that is dedicated to virtual servers and desktops, Dunes empowers companies to optimize the use of their servers and virtual infrastructure. Using preset or customized procedures, Dunes software enables automation of the management of virtual infrastructure environments which drastically reduces cost, time and risk of IT operations.

"Our investment reflects our strong belief in the value proposition of the products developed by Dunes and, the arrival of Dr. Laurie as CEO is a major milestone for the company" said Ernst Messmer, Partner at Affentranger Associates and interim Executive Chairman of Dunes. "Dr. Laurie's track record as an entrepreneur and his deep knowledge of the US market will enable Dunes to move to the next level of growth and success."

"The current explosion of the market for virtual servers is creating a very favorable environment for Dunes" said Dr. Laurie. "With new capital, Dunes is well positioned to leverage the positive dynamics of the market. In the coming weeks, we will ramp-up our sales and technical team to serve our fast growing client base including several Fortune 500 companies that are planning to roll-out a virtualized environment across their organization."

As result of this investment, Nicolas Fulpius from Affentranger Associates will be joining the Board of the company as Chairman. Ernst Messmer will remain actively involved with the company as a technology advisor to the Board.

Posted by David Marshall on September 16, 2006 06:41 AM

September 16, 2006

VMware Announces the Virtual Vanguard Awards

VMware stunned many of us when they announced the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge, along with its $100,000 prize. The challenge made the VM community stop what they were doing, and focus their creative energy on coming up with the next great virtual appliance. Now that the challenge is over and behind us, VMware has moved forward, this time announcing an award for creativity and innovation rather than making another challenge.

VMware knows that individuals and companies have been leveraging the virtualization technology to create innovative environments and applications to improve IT performance, minimize downtime, and reduce the cost and complexity of delivering enterprise services. To honor these customers, VMware is announcing the Virtual Vanguard Awards Program.

The award program is open to all VMware customers who purchase virtualization products for use in their own organization. All entries for the program must be submitted by a VMware customer. And they must be received by 12:00 p.m. PST on Friday, October 6, 2006. Participants should submit their entries by selecting one of the award categories below.

Best Overall Return on Investment (ROI) and Operational Benefits

Most Comprehensive VMware Infrastructure

Most Mission-Critical Application in Production

The Vanguard Award for Innovation

The entries will be reviewed by judges including VMware engineers and executives, industry analysts and select VMware customers. Winners will then be notified by 5:00 p.m. PST on Monday, October 23, 2006 via email.

The awards ceremony will be held at VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles, California on November 7, 2006. Award winners will receive a free attendee pass to the show where they will be recognized and collect their award.

Posted by David Marshall on September 16, 2006 06:10 AM

September 14, 2006

Fedora 6 to Strengthen Virtualization with Xen 3.0.3

It looks like Red Hat is making preparations to release version 6 of its freely distributed version of Linux, Fedora Core Linux, sometime next month.

According to IT Week, "The updated system includes version 3.0.3 of the open-source Xen virtualization software, which was originally scheduled for release early in July."

Roger Klorese, product director at XenSource, told IT Week, "We decided to synchronize the release of 3.0.3 with the Fedora Core 6 schedule and hence push it back... It now has several of the features that were originally slated for 3.0.4."

XenSource had previously said that most of the changes in the 3.0.3 release would affect Xen's para-virtualization capabilities. This update includes optimizations for para-virtualized USB and network performance, as well as a para-virtualized frame buffer that enables graphic displays of virtual machines. Other new features may include a new CPU scheduler and support for a basic NUMA memory allocator.

Klorese told IT Week that the 3.0.4 release is expected before Christmas. He said that 3.0.4 would be optimized to run on servers that were fitted with four CPUs, which is what they expect most customers will be using, although Xen supports configurations with 32 CPUs.

Posted by David Marshall on September 14, 2006 07:18 PM

September 14, 2006

VMware Hosted Webinars for VMware Server

VMware is hosting a series of complimentary webinars that cover key topics in virtualization. The webinar series is designed for VMware Server customers.

Learn how to leverage virtualization best practices for server consolidation and business continuity initiatives. You can also learn how to leverage VMware technology for special use cases in remote or branch offices and for small to medium sized businesses.

As an added bonus, attendees will be eligible to win a free 60GB video iPod.

The sessions run for 30 minutes and include specially designed content for VMware Server users. Each session will also contain Q&A time with VMware experts.

Server Consolidation & Containment
Cut hardware costs by 50% while dramatically cutting energy costs.
September 19, 2006 10:00 AM PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Virtualization for the Small and Medium Business
Cut IT costs, rapidly provision desktops with one simplified infrastructure.
September 20, 2006 9:00 AM PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
Zero downtime for maintenance; low-cost, reliable disaster recovery.
September 20, 2006 10:00 AM PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Using Virtualization in Branch or Offshore Offices
Secure access and manage resources for your global workforce.
September 21, 2006 10:00 AM PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

To enroll or find out more information, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 14, 2006 06:44 PM

September 13, 2006

XenSource Adds Former Microsoft Exec to Team

XenSource announced that former Microsoft executive Gordon Mangione will join the company as senior vice president of product operations. Mangione brings more than 20 years of software experience to XenSource.

He led the successful development and delivery of a number of Windows-based products and services to the enterprise market. While with Microsoft, he was well known for having managed and bringing to market SQL Server and Exchange, two of the most widely used enterprise applications in the data center today.

Mangione comes to XenSource from Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm in Seattle, where he was an executive in residence.

"I am excited to join XenSource and create a strategic product roadmap to enable the company to take advantage of the numerous opportunities available to it," said Mangione. "This is an exciting time and XenSource has a unique and dynamic business model based on the innovation of open source development and exploding market demand for volume virtualization products."

Peter Levine, president and CEO of XenSource, said the addition of Mangione adds another exceptionally strong technology executive to the XenSource management team and that his experience leading product teams at Microsoft would help XenSource deliver great virtualization products to their customers.

Ian Pratt, XenSource founder and project leader of the open source Xen hypervisor project, said Mangione "brings to XenSource a wealth of experience delivering complex enterprise systems software and managing large distributed teams. With XenSource now shipping its first enterprise products, and ramping development with major ISV partners, Gord will play a key role in XenSource's success."

Posted by David Marshall on September 13, 2006 08:39 PM

September 13, 2006

The World of IT is Changing - vPro and Software Licensing

The world of IT is constantly evolving. Intel hopes to change the way IT thinks as it introduces its vPro technology, and virtualization is changing the way IT administrators and software manufacturers are thinking about software licensing. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on September 13, 2006 04:25 PM

September 12, 2006

Best of the Best? VMware According to Windows IT Pro Readers

If it seems like VMware is a favorite with IT audiences, it's because they are. With each new reader poll that comes out asking about virtualization favorites, VMware stands tall and sticks out above the rest. They are the undisputed heavy weight champions when it comes to virtualization, and its users rally to the cause whenever these types of questions are asked. For the most part, its user base is made up of hardcore virtualization users who are fans of the product. So much so, if virtualization were compared to college football, you might expect that VMware users would be tailgating, blue and white body painted fanatics who would proudly wear a virtual machine or virtual appliance on their head if they could. Hardcore fans of the product have helped VMware get to the top, and these same raving fans have allowed VMware to win yet another honor, "Best of the Best" from Windows IT Pro readers.

Windows IT Pro readers named VMware ESX Server the Best Virtualization Software Product and VMware Capacity Planner the Top Capacity Planning and Trend Analysis Software Product. Readers also recognized other VMware products as solid picks in several Windows IT Pro categories: VMware Player in the Best New Product category, VMware VirtualCenter in the Best Applications and Operations Management Tool category, VMware VirtualCenter in the Best Remote Management Tool category, VMware VirtualCenter with VMotion technology in the Best Enterprise Backup/Recovery/Archive Software category, VMware ACE in the Best Proxy Server/Web Access Control and Monitoring Solution category and VMware Workstation in the Best Software Deployment Tool category.

"The 2006 Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice awards continue our tradition of honoring products that our readers tell us are most worthy of recognition," said Kim Paulsen, group publisher of Windows IT Pro. "These are the hardware, software and services that measure up where it counts most -- in the businesses, agencies and institutions that rely on them to deliver what they promise."
Paulsen continued: "The IT pros who voted in this year's awards are tough, in-the-trenches critics. They demand solid value and performance from the products they use and put those products to the test day after day. Readers' Choice award winners can feel proud that the products they develop have earned the respect and recognition of the IT world's most knowledgeable and exacting professionals."

The Readers' Choice awards were first given in 2002 to let Windows IT Pro readers evaluate and recommend the best technology products in the industry. This year more than 5,200 readers were asked to choose their favorite products and services from a pool of more than 750 entries in 12 broad technology categories.

"VMware ESX Server, now part of the comprehensive VMware Infrastructure 3 suite that includes built-in management and availability, has delivered simplified and cost-reduced IT operations for more than a million enterprise server workloads to date," said Brian Byun, vice president of products and alliances at VMware. "These products have become the defacto standard for many companies building out their virtual infrastructure, and are now simpler than ever to implement with the availability of newer tools such as VMware Capacity Planner."

Additional information about the Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards can be found, here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 12, 2006 06:03 PM

September 12, 2006

PlateSpin Announces Rentable Software for Server Consolidation and Virtualization

As if announcing a free version of PowerRecon wasn't enough, PlateSpin also announced the availability of PowerStore, an online initiative that will allow SMBs and department-level users of larger organizations easier access to PlateSpin's server consolidation and virtualization software products. PowerStore will offer data center administrators the convenience to rent PowerRecon and PowerConvert directly from either PlateSpin's Web site or via one of the participating PlateSpin partner Web sites.

PowerRecon is agentless software that can measure, analyze and then determine the optimal fit between server resource supply and workload demand. While PowerConvert allows users to stream servers between physical servers, blades, virtual machines, and image archives over the network.

"The introduction of the PowerStore and our aggressive pricing strategy creates an easy entry point for many companies that have invested in virtualization," said Stephen Pollack, PlateSpin CEO. "We have also set up an online purchasing infrastructure that our reseller network can deploy on their own sites so they can quickly and inexpensively generate qualified leads and close deals."

To rent PowerRecon or PowerConvert now, visit PlateSpin's Web site. Alternate pricing and packaging is also available from any PlateSpin Authorized Reseller.

Posted by David Marshall on September 12, 2006 04:42 PM

September 12, 2006

PlateSpin Offers Free Version of PowerRecon

PlateSpin recently announced the release of a special version of their PowerRecon software that allows data center professionals to get a jump-start on their virtualization and server consolidation projects at no cost. The software enables users to take a complete inventory of x86-based physical servers or virtual machines running VMware or Microsoft Virtual Server across the enterprise without needing to install software agents.

PowerRecon lets administrators automatically collect hardware information across Windows and Linux services such as CPU, disk, memory and network and also collect software information from servers such as OS configurations and list of installed and running applications for analysis.

Data centers can also use the free version for other purposes including server inventory, asset management, and preliminary capacity planning for disaster recovery, consolidation or virtualization.

"This newest release marks the first completely free product that PlateSpin has announced to the market in order to fulfill demand for easy-to-use, agentless software tools for data center asset inventory," said John Stetic, Director of Product Management at PlateSpin. "Users can take inventory for hundreds of servers distributed across the enterprise without leaving their chair."

In addition to announcing the free version of PowerRecon, PlateSpin also announced a list of new enhancements that were made to the full version of the product. The full version has added support for VMware Infrastructure 3 and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. And for larger data centers, the full product offers enhanced scalability as well as an application and services workload report.

PlateSpin PowerRecon 2.2 is available now and comes in three different software packages. The free version can be downloaded from PlateSpin's Web site or any of the participating PlateSpin partner Web sites.

Posted by David Marshall on September 12, 2006 04:16 PM

September 11, 2006

Problems Installing Windows Vista RC1 on VMware Workstation?

Ok, so you finally downloaded the latest build of Microsoft's Windows Vista only to find that you are having problems installing it inside of your VMware Workstation 5.5.2 virtual machine.

Evidently, there is a bug with the Vista pre-RC1 (build 5536) and RC1 (build 5600) that causes interaction problems with VMware's Workstation 5.5.2. During the operating system installation, the system seems to hang at the text mode screen "Windows is loading files".

Screams were heard around the world, or at least across the VMware VMTN forums. But as usual, VMware forum users were on top of things, and immediately started posting helpful workarounds to get people up and running. Some solutions were easier than others, but all were equally clever and well received:

A few users posted a "blind install" method, where they listed the specific key strokes in a step-by-step fashion that needed to be entered to continue through the install. This method works, but is not recommended.

Another user recommended installing the Vista operating system into a VMware Server virtual machine, then install the VMware Tools to get the correct graphic driver installed, and then migrate the virtual machine back to VMware Workstation. Again, this method works, but an easier method exists.

Currently, the easiest workaround for this installation bug is to add the following lines to your virtual machine's configuration file (.vmx) before installing the operating system:

svga.maxWidth = "640"
svga.MaxHeight = "480"

After the operating system is installed, install the VMware Tools and then shutdown the virtual machine. Remove the added lines from the configuration file and then power the virtual machine back on.

Thanks to the VMware VMTN forum users for these great solutions!

Posted by David Marshall on September 11, 2006 07:29 PM

September 11, 2006

UtilityServe to Offer the First True Utility Computing Service

UtilityServe announced the availability of what they describe as "the first true utility computing service" that is based on a new grid operating system.

The service gives customers the ability to use a browser to easily build, deploy, manage and scale Web applications on demand, and only pay for the computing resources that they need. UtilityServe eliminates the traditional IT resource and cost barriers that are associated with owning and maintaining the hardware infrastructure, and instead allows customers to focus on providing applications and growing their businesses.

UtilityServe explains that their hosting service enables IT managers, open source enablers, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Web 2.0 start-ups to easily run and scale existing Web applications, add and remove resources at any time, and pay only for the memory resources they use to run applications. John Keagy, president of UtilityServe described their offering as having many advantages over the state-of-the-art in colocation and dedicated servers, and said the company is positioned to advance the industry with dramatic improvements in scalability, flexibility, and improved costs.

The hosting service is available in three packages starting at $99 per month, and offers an impressive list of hosting industry firsts:

First to provide pay-as-you-go computing on a per GB hour basis

First to guarantee unlimited CPU power for applications

First to offer an unlimited number of servers, nodes, and tiers

To find out more information about the company or their product offering, visit their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on September 11, 2006 06:37 PM

September 10, 2006

VMware Lab Manager 2.4 Beta Program

Early on, VMware realized that it needed to enhance its offerings and story around the use of virtualization to provide added benefit to development and testing organizations. To that end, VMware began aggressively pursuing a small start-up company, Akimbi Systems, for their QA testing product, Akimbi Slingshot. According to the Dow Jones News Wire, it looks as though VMware acquired Akimbi and their technology back in June for somewhere in the neighborhood of $59 million.

VMware has been working hard to integrate the Slingshot product into their own product line. Now, VMware is ready to announce a beta product of that solution, appropriately named VMware Lab Manager 2.4. Interestingly, rather than starting over with a 1.0 release, VMware chose to continue the versioning of the product where Akimbi left off.

The company described the product as a "premier Virtual Lab Automation System for Development and Test organizations. It provides software development and test infrastructure that automates the rapid setup and teardown of even the most complex multi-machine software configurations, shaving man-months off of software development projects."

Existing Akimbi and VMware customers have already been notified about open enrollment for beta testing of the product. Enrollment will continue through September 15th, and individuals that are accepted for the program will be notified on September 29th. Beta testing will begin around October 5th, where VMware hopes to get feedback on the ease of product installation, licensing, product quality, scalability and support readiness.

Individuals will need to fill out and submit a Beta Application Form to be considered for the beta program.

Posted by David Marshall on September 10, 2006 09:16 AM

September 10, 2006

VMware Announces Virtual Machine Importer 2.0 RC

One aspect of VMware that