Virtualization Report | David Marshall | October 2006

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October 2006

October 31, 2006

Altiris ManageFusion and the Software Virtualization Solution

Recently, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at Altiris ManageFusion 2006 in Orlando where I was exposed to a number of interesting products from Altiris. But the one that stuck out for me, obviously, was their Software Virtualization Solution (SVS). Here is a quick recap. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 31, 2006 08:54 PM

October 31, 2006

Kidaro introduces virtual workspace for enterprise desktop computing

New technology provides fully operable, centrally managed and secured enterprise work environments to users anywhere, utilizing a server-less, scalable infrastructure.

NEW YORK - 31 October 2006 -- Kidaro, provider of virtual desktop computing for the enterprise without boundaries, has announced the Kidaro Managed Workspace for extending fully operable, managed, secured and easy-to-use work environments for enterprise users anywhere. Kidaro Managed Workspace encapsulates selected corporate resources and tools -- OS, applications, IT/IS management software and remote access clients -- into a centrally controlled, protected and isolated workspace that can be deployed to any end-user.

"The enterprise desktop computing landscape has changed," says Kidaro founder and CEO Ran Kohavi. "The workforce has become a diverse mix of users and PCs: desktop workstations, corporate laptops, home users, outsourcers. IT administrators struggle to control unmanaged devices, secure corporate assets and maintain regulatory compliance while meeting user demands for working on any corporate application and resource, anywhere, online and offline. Kidaro Managed Workspace offers an easily managed platform that combines rapid deployment, unparalleled security, complete control and audit over user activity and a familiar, simple user experience."

Kidaro facilitates various enterprise IT scenarios. Extending the enterprise perimeter, Kidaro Managed Workspace enables offshore offices, subsidiaries and remote-users flexible, secured use of enterprise applications and resources. For corporate internal and mobile users, Kidaro offers unmatched data protection solution, isolating and encrypting sensitive information on their machines.

Kidaro's unique set of technologies go one step beyond any other virtualization platform for enterprise desktops. Leveraging standard, vendor-independent machine virtualization technologies (e.g. VMware Player, VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Vista), Kidaro brings the essential elements required to successfully deploy a complete virtualization solution for enterprise end-users:

- Centralized Management - Kidaro's powerful, unified management console streamlines the way IT administrators can create, deploy and update virtual machines, monitor active users, and generate audit trails and reports.

- Optimized Delivery - Patent-pending Trim Transfer technology dramatically accelerates deployment and reduces the network bandwidth needed to transport a virtual machine by an average 90%, allowing fast delivery via any remote network connection.

- Seamlessness, Transparent Operation - Kidaro Managed Workspace is the only solution that does not change the user experience when a virtual machine is introduced. The workspace integrates between the local and the virtualized desktops to create a familiar look-and-feel.

- Data protection - Kidaro Managed Workspace enables policy-based control over any network connection, file transfer, printing, copy-paste or device access, enforcing corporate policies and regulatory compliance.

For more information about Kidaro, please visit http://www.kidaro.com.

About Kidaro
Kidaro introduces a new category of virtual desktop computing for the enterprise without boundaries.

Kidaro solutions meet the productivity needs, IT challenges and security requirements of enabling enterprise computing across a diverse and physically dispersed workforce - from mobile users and home workers to outsourcing and offsite facilities.

Kidaro was founded in 2005. The company is privately held and is backed by Genesis Partners and Storm Ventures.

Posted by David Marshall on October 31, 2006 04:36 AM

October 30, 2006

Parallels and Sentillion Partner in Desktop Virtualization

As Sentillion begins to roll out its next release of its desktop virtualization solution, it seems as though it won't be powered by VMware any longer.

According to the announcement, Parallels and Sentillion have entered into a strategic partnership designed to address the costs, complexities and performance of desktop virtualization technology and radically improve the end user experience. The agreement has Sentillion vBusiness embedding Parallels Workstation for Windows into its vThere offering.

Parallels is a company with recent fame for delivering Parallels Desktop for Mac - the first solution to market that allows Mac users the ability to run Windows and OS X simultaneously on a single Intel-powered Apple computer.

This new partnership will allow Parallels to break out of the desktop solution and enter the enterprise-class solution arena. The companies are committed to the co-development of future products and plan to leverage their respective sales channels and participate in cooperative marketing activities. "This relationship leverages Parallels proven leadership in building powerful, user-friendly virtualization solutions, and Sentillion's unmatched expertise in delivering enterprise-class solutions and infrastructure support, said Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager, Parallels.

"Through this partnership, Sentillion vBusiness and Parallels have created a packaged enterprise class virtualized client-side computing solution, which eliminates the challenges and complexities currently associated with the deployment of a virtualized computer to non-technical users," said Paul Roscoe, president, Sentillion vBusiness. "For the enterprise market, vThere represents a new paradigm for the adoption of desktop virtualization technology by enabling a simple, integrated and seamless experience for both IT professionals and end users."

vThere leverages virtualization technology to enable users to run a contained, controlled and fully functional software environment in a virtualized desktop on computers in remote venues such as a home or branch office. This approach is a powerful alternative to traditional remote access solutions. vThere consists of the vThere Image Creator which is used by IT departments to create distributable vThere images; the vThere Player which is used for playing the images on the end-user host computers; and www.vThere.net, a managed Web site for users to obtain and download their images securely.

"One of the key benefits of vThere is how simple it is for our customers to administer and for end users to deploy on their unmanaged personal computers," said David Fusari, vice president and CTO, Sentillion vBusiness. "By integrating Parallels' virtualization technology into our vThere offering, our customers are getting a one-stop enterprise class packaged virtualization solution with the levels of security, manageability and usability that they are demanding."

Posted by David Marshall on October 30, 2006 08:19 PM

October 30, 2006

Microsoft Updates VM Additions for Linux

In a very quiet and fanfare free way, Microsoft released a package that contains the Virtual Machine Additions for Linux that is used with their Virtual Server 2005 R2 virtualization platform.

The Virtual Machine Additions for Linux can be installed in the following Linux operating systems when running as guests of Virtual Server 2005 R2:

Enterprise distributions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 6)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (update 6)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Standard distributions
Red Hat Linux 7.3
Red Hat Linux 9.0
SuSE Linux 9.2
SuSE Linux 9.3
SuSE Linux 10.0

As usual, the latest version (1.1) of these Additions can be downloaded via the Microsoft Connect site.

Posted by David Marshall on October 30, 2006 04:49 PM

October 30, 2006

Cassatt and PlateSpin Form a Partnership

Cassatt Corporation and PlateSpin, Ltd., today announced a new technology and business relationship to accelerate the move of large enterprises to consolidate their servers and implement automated data center management, with the goal of making IT more responsive to business needs. Cassatt is an emerging leader in software for automating the management of large, diverse data centers for more efficient and dynamic utility computing. PlateSpin's software analyzes resources and provides operating-system portability between physical and virtual environments.

With the agreement, Cassatt is able to bundle two PlateSpin products - PowerConvert and PowerRecon - as part of a Cassatt Collage software deployment. These products can help customers accelerate their adoption and usage of virtualization in their data center. Cassatt can now offer the PlateSpin products, alongside its own products for automating the management of data centers, providing customers with a more complete way to begin and accelerate their adoption of virtualization and move toward making their data centers more dynamic.

The companies also have agreed to provide cooperative support for joint customers and to collaborate on marketing and sales efforts.

PlateSpin PowerConvert is automated software that enables customers to migrate data, applications, and operating systems across physical, virtual, blade, and image-based infrastructures.

PlateSpin PowerRecon provides analysis capabilities that optimize the consolidation of physical servers to virtual machines. The software remotely collects all the relevant hardware inventory data, resource utilization, and workload statistics that create the foundation for server consolidation projects.

The Cassatt Collage software platform automatically manages physical and virtual IT infrastructure to assign and optimize resources across large, heterogeneous data centers and ensure delivery of application service levels according to pre-defined rules and business goals.

"Cassatt and PlateSpin offer complementary technologies that, together, will help companies and other organizations achieve the benefits of large-scale server consolidation, rapid provisioning, high availability, and capacity management," said Eric Courville, vice president of global alliances for PlateSpin. "The combination of PlateSpin and Cassatt products provides a unique opportunity to optimize the use of server resources across the enterprise to improve business service levels and lower costs."

"We're excited about our relationship with PlateSpin and its high potential to help customers consolidate servers and automatically manage large, diverse data centers," said Gamiel Gran, vice president of channels and sales operations for Cassatt. "This announcement complements our recent alliances with virtualization providers VMware and XenSource. Today's announcement is further indication of Cassatt's commitment to help our customers move toward more dynamic data centers at compelling new price points - and to do so as smoothly and easily as possible."

Posted by David Marshall on October 30, 2006 04:44 PM

October 29, 2006

Info-Tech Research Group Reports Virtualization Findings

Small to medium-sized companies that implement server virtualization tend to take an 'all or nothing' approach to the technology, a new Impact Research report from Info-Tech Research Group says. Although smaller companies are less likely to gamble on new technologies like virtualization, those that do often reap greater business benefits than their larger enterprise counterparts because they are more decisive about the implementation.

"Small to medium-sized companies often have a more relaxed approval process and higher tolerance for risk. As a result, they take an all or nothing approach to adopting new technologies, implementing them broadly across the organization. Large enterprises experience more difficulty implementing new technologies such as virtualization," said Matt Brudzynski, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group.

Virtualization is a technique that 'fools' servers into thinking they are unique devices when in fact they become a shared resource thereby decreasing the number of physical machines required in the data center. Info-Tech's Impact Research report, "The Business Case in Virtualization", also finds that the companies that have taken an all or nothing policy when implementing virtualization have seen a greater return on their investment resulting primarily from hardware savings.

"Companies that take a robust approach to their virtualization implementation can see their hardware acquisition costs decrease by 40 to 75 per cent and will also save another 25 to 50 per cent in recurring monthly costs for hardware-related maintenance," Brudzynski said.

Brudzynski notes that virtualization is an infrastructure initiative that can bring some level of value to businesses of any size. The greatest benefit to date has been seen in small and medium-sized organizations where the proportion of the IT environment that is based on x86 servers is much higher. Large companies have more extensive and layered technologies and frequently test virtualization across smaller infrastructure segments.

Info-Tech strongly recommends x86 server consolidation through virtualization for any enterprise looking to streamline functionality and reduce operating costs.

Posted by David Marshall on October 29, 2006 07:54 AM

October 29, 2006

LSI gets Virtual with StoreAge Acquisition

LSI Logic Corporation announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire StoreAge Networking Technologies Ltd. for something in the neighborhood of $50 million in cash.

StoreAge Networking Technologies, a privately held company based in Nesher, Israel, provides enterprise SAN storage management and advanced, multi-tiered, data protection solutions that centralize and simplify storage network administration.

"We are excited to add the significant capabilities of the StoreAge product portfolio to our industry-leading storage silicon, systems and software building block offerings," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI Logic president and chief executive officer. "We look forward to welcoming StoreAge employees and continuing to serve the needs of StoreAge channel partners and OEM customers."

"With the rapid growth in data storage capacity, enterprise customers are seeking enhanced levels of data protection, highly effective storage management tools and reduced cost of ownership," said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Logic. "Through the acquisition of StoreAge, we anticipate offering our OEM and channel customers a richer set of products and features that fully address these important end user requirements."

StoreAge products included solutions for high availability, disaster recovery, backup enhancement, storage consolidation and dynamic storage provisioning, and storage services consolidation. The company offered:

SVM (Storage Virtualization Manager) - an out-of-the-data-path (asymmetric) SAN appliance that provides virtual volume management and storage management across all storage within a SAN.

multiView - a low-capacity snapshot copy application that creates multiple read/write point-in-time image copies of any virtualized volume on any storage device in a SAN

multiCopy - a data replication application that creates multiple read/write point-in-time physical copies of any virtualized volume on any storage device in a SAN

multiMirror - offers enterprises an advanced Disaster Recovery solution via Asynchronous and Synchronous Mirroring, as well as Local and Remote Mirroring

multiMigrate - a tool for migrating a volume from one storage device to another while the applications stay on-line

SVM Report Generator - an external utility, which analyzes data collected by SVM to generate reports on various aspects of storage usage on the SAN

SVM App-Pack - offers the required integration between storage-intensive applications and the powerful StoreAge SVM suite of storage services

Posted by David Marshall on October 29, 2006 07:34 AM

October 29, 2006

I/O Virtualization Startup Secures $12M

VirtenSys Ltd., a U.K. fabless semiconductor company and developer in the emerging PCI Express I/O virtualization market, announced that it has closed a first round of funding in the amount of US$12 million. The financing came from a syndicate that includes Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), Celtic House Venture Partners (CHVP) and GIMV.

With this Series A round of funding, VirtenSys should be able to grow its team, complete its product development and generate initial revenues. According to Tony Palmer, CEO of VirtenSys, "The company is ideally positioned with the backing of such a strong and experienced investor group to become the industry's preferred supplier of PCIe I/O virtualization solutions."

New business models are also emerging with analysts predicting that by 2010, 25% of all IT services will be supplied through utility computing models, substantially increasing the requirements for more dynamic workload capabilities to meet the needs of the emerging business models. The company also claims that its technology will allow system developers to build data centers that can adapt instantaneously to any workload, self-configure and self-heal in event of failures, and operate at significantly higher utilizations than today's systems.

Tony Palmer added, "The trend towards efficient merchant solutions for the data centers, storage and networking infrastructure will continue. VirtenSys' products will enable OEM vendors to build dynamic and tiered data centers based on cost and performance effective servers and platforms."

So what exactly does the company do? Well, VirtenSys positions itself as a company that provides critical I/O virtualization solutions to the data center, storage and networking infrastructure markets. Its products increase the servers' utilization in the data center while decreasing the IT asset and ownership cost. Their strategy is standards compliant and is based on an evolutionary migration path that allows dramatic improvements in the value, space requirements, effectiveness, power and thermal usage of both newly installed and existing IT infrastructure.

"There are major challenges facing the IT industry today trying to balance the conflicting needs of limited IT budget growth while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and improving the systems utilization and performance," said Stuart Paterson, a Director in SEP's Information Technology group. "Semiconductor vendors like VirtenSys are increasingly responsible to deliver cutting-edge semiconductor solutions that OEMs rely upon to meet those needs."

"VirtenSys has attracted very strong interest from the world's leading providers of powerful networking and storage systems for the agile data center," said Rudi Severijns, Executive Investment Manager with GIMV. "It's a powerful backing of the differentiating technology the company has developed as well as a strong indicator for the growing need for such solutions in the market place."

VirtenSys was founded in December 2005, and has assembled an exceptional team of experts in semiconductor and system development across a wide range of protocols and technologies with background at ICL, Fujitsu, Power X and Xyratex. The majority of the team was most recently with the Integrated System Division of Xyratex. Today, the Company's headquarters and engineering operations are located in Manchester, UK with marketing, business development and sales offices in Silicon Valley.

For more information about the company and its product, visit their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on October 29, 2006 06:57 AM

October 28, 2006

Virtualization and Storage go hand in hand

More and more, when you start to have a discussion about virtualization, you can't help but mention storage and the issues that surround it. IBM is talking about storage, discussing how SMB customers in Asia-Pacific are driving storage virtualization adoption. And ONStor recently announced a new software replication product, Disk Mirror. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 28, 2006 07:30 AM

October 26, 2006

InovaWave Delivers Virtual Machine Performance Pill

Through the use of their innovative software solution, InovaWave claims that they can increase virtual machine density and performance at the same time.

In today's world of server virtualization, server consolidation seems to be the king of the roost. The majority of people getting into the virtualization game are doing so with the hope and anticipation of getting multiple operating system instances to run on a single physical piece of hardware, whether that piece of hardware is a server, desktop or laptop computer.

A former colleague of mine, who is as passionate about virtualization as I am, recently contacted me and asked, "What if you could increase the virtual machine density of your physical host machine by reducing the memory footprint of each virtual machine and yet still receive the same or better performance on each of those virtual machines, would you be interested?" Of course I answered in the affirmative, but I'd also like my virtual machines to make me a nice strong pot of coffee in the morning too - I didn't expect either of them to happen. Evidently, InovaWave claims to have a solution to the density and performance problem, although they haven't quite figured out how to make a virtual machine have my morning coffee ready. Still thinking it was more of a magic trick through slight of hand rather than a software solution, I pressed on for more information.

Their secret sauce is called DXtreme and it looks as though it installs on top of a Windows platform. When asked which virtualization platforms it supports, Dave McCrory, CTO and Co- Founder of InovaWave, responded that it would work with most virtualization platforms today that install on top of either Microsoft Windows XP Pro, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows Server 2003, which really opens it up to quite a wide list of platforms that include: VMware Player, VMware Workstation, VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Parallels Workstation for Windows.

Since I don't have a huge test lab available to me, I requested a version of DXtreme that would operate on a desktop or laptop computer running Microsoft Windows XP Pro. The company provided me with a 15-day trial of the software, and I installed it on my laptop running Windows XP and a copy of VMware Server. The installation process of the software solution was very simple. The only installation annoyance was having to reboot the system for the configuration changes made to the software to take effect. This is no fault to the software, as this is common when installing this type of Windows application. Other than that, it was a simple MSI installation of mostly clicking "next" and taking the default choices. In order to optimize the performance of my virtual machines, the software prompted me to browse or enter the directory where my virtual machine hard disk files live, and that was pretty much it. So far, so good.

After the reboot of my machine, I ran several tests against one of my commonly used Windows Server 2003 virtual machine images that normally get configured with 512MB of RAM. Using a testing and benchmarking tool from PassMark Software, I was able to gather a number of performance metrics. After stopping the DXtreme software, I ran the same set of PassMark tests against this same virtual machine configuration. Needless to say, I was quite impressed with the results. Without DXtreme, the PassMark Advanced Disk Test reported a result of 2.35MB/sec. After performing the same test with DXtreme running, the test result increased to 21.08MB/sec.

Keep in mind, my laptop computer only has 1GB of memory. So typically, when I configure and run a Windows virtual machine on it, I configure it with 512MB of RAM. With the VM powered on, it only leaves my host operating system 512MB of memory, so I usually only run one virtual instance at a time to maintain acceptable performance. To try and increase the density of my laptop, I re-enabled the DXtreme software after cloning the virtual machine and configuring them each with only 256MB of RAM. While the previous test showed a huge performance boost, I still expected that running two virtual machines with half the memory footprint would take my laptop down at the knees. When I powered both virtual machines on, I waited for the moment of truth. Within about a minute and a half, both Windows Server 2003 virtual machines were up and running, and once again, the PassMark Advanced Disk Test told the story. Running two virtual machines with a 256MB footprint and no DXtreme produced .95MB/sec for the first VM and 1.01MB/sec on the second. Once again, after enabling the optimization software, the test results reported an increase. The first virtual machine now reported 17.05MB/sec and the second reported 18.95MB/sec.

Although impressive, my tests were limited to a 1GB laptop. Try it out for yourself in your own environment, using your own virtual machines. A free 15-day trial license of DXtreme can be requested by contacting InovaWave.

Posted by David Marshall on October 26, 2006 07:30 PM

October 26, 2006

Virtualization Desktop Initiatives

More and more, announcements are being made about virtualization desktop initiatives. Perhaps the most vocal of these announcements has been from VMware about VDI. A company called Chip PC is announcing support with its enhanced thin client product line. And in addition to supporting VDI, Wyse is now announcing support for Citrix DDI and the Desktop Broker solution. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 26, 2006 07:14 PM

October 26, 2006

Altiris Named a Top Technology Innovator by VARBusiness Magazine

Altiris, Inc. recently announced that it has been recognized by VARBusiness magazine for outstanding achievement in technology innovation. Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) technology was named the winner in the software infrastructure category of the VARBusiness Tech Innovators award competition. VARBusiness magazine, as you may know, covers the business of technology integration. In this competition, nearly 700 entries were submitted in 14 different technology categories.

"Innovations like what we've seen from Altiris demonstrate the vibrancy and vitality of the industry," says VARBusiness Editor Lawrence M. Walsh. "They represent breakthroughs that will benefit our solution-provider readers and, in turn, the users of technology."

SVS is quickly gaining popularity by providing faster, simpler and more manageable deployment of PC applications. SVS helps to reduce support costs and streamline software operations.

Carine Clark, Altiris VP of marketing, said, "At Altiris we take pride in developing service-oriented management solutions that are delivered to the market through a strong and diverse channel. Altiris Software Virtualization Solution is the latest technology innovation we have provided to our channel partners, giving them a unique competitive advantage in the market. We are honored to have our technology and our channel strategy recognized by VARBusiness Magazine."

In addition, the company will be recognized in the VARBusiness Tech Innovators issue on Dec. 4, which will include profiles, features and in-depth explanations of the winning technologies and products.

For more information about SVS or to download a free for personal use license, please visit the Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on October 26, 2006 04:44 AM

October 25, 2006

Unisys Selects PlateSpin Software

PlateSpin Ltd. announced an agreement with Unisys Corporation in which Unisys will offer PlateSpin data center optimization technology as part of the Unisys Real-Time Infrastructure solution for enterprise virtualization. Unisys offers the solution to enable clients to quickly and efficiently deploy virtualized infrastructures in their data centers.

Unisys will provide both the PlateSpin PowerRecon data center assessment solution and the PlateSpin PowerConvert OS Portability technology (patent pending) on Unisys servers based on Intel x86 processors.

PowerRecon offers Unisys customers the ability to remotely capture server workload and resource information to determine where OS and applications should reside for optimal savings and performance. PowerConvert then provides the ability for Unisys customers to rapidly and easily decouple the data, applications and operating system from any server and stream them to the most appropriate environments based on virtual platforms.

"This agreement combines industry-leading optimization solutions from PlateSpin with Unisys expertise in enterprise computing, and expands the range of customers we can serve together," said Eric Courville, PlateSpin Vice President of Global Alliances. "Together, Unisys and PlateSpin intend to provide those customers with a complete end-to-end solution to meet their enterprise data center optimization needs."

"PlateSpin provides Unisys with market-leading virtual systems workload management technology that meets the requirements of enterprise class data center infrastructures," said Alan Bender, vice president and general manager, Real Time Infrastructure Solutions, Systems & Technology, Unisys. "We believe that this technology will make it easier for our customers to deploy virtualized infrastructures with a significant savings in time, labor and money."

Posted by David Marshall on October 25, 2006 08:05 PM

October 24, 2006

Aplix Develops a Unique Virtualization Technology

Aplix Corporation unveiled its newly developed patent-pending user-space virtualization technology that can dynamically generate virtual execution spaces for native applications running on information appliances.

In recent years, computer viruses and spyware have proliferated in the mobile space via the Internet, which has prompted the industry to develop different security mechanisms based on the platform it has targeted. Comparing the solutions available thus far, this new user-space virtualization technology is unique in several aspects:

It automatically creates a virtual execution space for any native application, restricting the application from directly accessing the underlying operating system, thus providing a secure environment for the running application.

While it is as secure as the Java execution environment, it is lightweight with fast execution speed as it traps only a limited number of instructions.

It is OS independent as it does not rely on the underlying architecture of the operating system, thus can support Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BREW, and many others.

Compared to the conventional OS, where means of permission is limited to statically preset file access with an associated user-id, user-space virtualization allows for a very flexible configuration to control the usage of any system services/resources (e.g. communication bandwidth, file usage, display access, etc) per application, and can be easily modified by downloading a description file.

It operates in "user-mode" to enable application-level deployment, making security policies modifiable via OTA.

It does not need to call any security functions nor be pre-processed with the security systems already in place, thus current applications can be executed without any modification.

In today's mobile networks, Operators often enforce a set of pre-defined rules for the access of system resources on the network devices when distributing applications over its network. In light of this, user-space virtualization technology aims to bring a common security platform by providing a reference implementation that is coherent across different system platforms.

The user-space virtualization technology is comprised of a number of different functions, such as user-space virtual machine, state machine and security manager. When an application is executed, the user-space virtual machine scans the binary code to detect any security-sensitive code. If any dubious code is found, the user space virtual machine generates the safe code. The generated safe code calls to the security manager that to check whether the code should be granted the access to the system resources.

The reference implementation and architecture of this technology is applicable to any CPU architecture, and compatible to Java runtime environment, BREW, Linux, Symbian platform security, and others. Aplix plans to license this technology as part of its platform solution and also provide technology license for a broad range of devices.

Aplix CTO Ryu Koriyama says, "In the next generation of data device platforms, the question of how we can ensure security is an extremely important issue. I think the security technology we provide for the execution of innovative applications may prove to be the basis of a solution. Our user-space virtualization technology can be installed in almost all data device platforms currently available, creating value by enabling the construction of a safe environment for application execution."

Posted by David Marshall on October 24, 2006 04:22 PM

October 24, 2006

SWsoft Industry's Fastest-Growing Supplier of Virtualization Technology

Operating system virtualization software Virtuozzo from SWsoft is growing fastest among all vendors -- 98 percent -- in the hot overall market for virtualization technology, according to industry analyst firm IDC. The worldwide industry sales of virtualization software experienced a 67 percent growth rate from 2004 to 2005 -- with revenues topping $560 million.

According to IDC, the virtualization market is expected to grow to $15 billion worldwide by 2009. The proliferation of servers in the data center has led to increased complexity and costs. Virtualization helps to reverse this trend by dramatically reducing the need for adding physical servers and their associated capital, power, software and management costs.

"Our sales momentum is a reflection of our highly-efficient operating system-level Virtuozzo technology, along with its management capabilities for physical servers and virtual environments," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "We will enhance those with management and automation tools that will allow customers to further maximize the benefits gained through virtualized resources."

Virtualization Efficiency and Manageability

By consolidating virtual environments on physical servers, IT managers can reduce hardware costs, while increasing server utilization rates. The ability to effectively manage and automate a growing catalog of virtual assets ensures that complexity is reduced and that virtualization delivers cost savings

"Overall, IDC views virtual machines as a foundational technology to the dynamic IT," said John Humphreys, program director with IDC's Enterprise Platform Group. "Virtualization, which decouples the application from the underlying hardware, allows the customer to create service oriented infrastructure whereby they can begin to manage services and employ policy-based automation to manage and deliver the underlying infrastructure."

The IDC report also showed virtualization implementations on Linux experienced the fastest growth from 2004 to 2005 continuing the trend from the previous year. That trend is expected to continue through 2009.

Operating System-Level Virtualization

With SWsoft Virtuozzo operating system (OS)-level server virtualization technology, a single Linux or Windows OS instance can be dynamically partitioned into multiple, highly-efficient virtual environments. The low overhead of Virtuozzo allows for demanding workloads such as database and application servers to run inside virtual environments with near-native performance.

Also, Virtuozzo is the first and only virtualization technology that addresses the challenge faced by today's datacenters of operating systems sprawl where a number of different operating systems require support, maintenance and updating. Overall, Virtuozzo provides efficiency and manageability that result in the lowest total cost-of-ownership and fastest ROI for customers.

Posted by David Marshall on October 24, 2006 04:16 PM

October 24, 2006

Virtual Iron Certifies HBAs in Virtual Iron 3.0

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure in the data center, announced that Virtual Iron 3.0 will support host bus adapters (HBAs) from both Emulex Corporation and QLogic.

Virtual Iron 3.0 provides server virtualization that enables users to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, often as part of a server consolidation project. The Fibre Channel storage networking connectivity capabilities provided by Emulex and QLogic are essential to the deployment of server virtualization - especially for enterprise environments that require automated capacity management and high availability.

"Virtualized environments continue to become more pervasive, as a result, we are witnessing a rapid increase in the need for servers that leverage SANs. said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing, QLogic Corp. "SANblade 4Gb HBAs and SANbox 4Gb switches from QLogic offer a suite of technology advancements that help storage administrators ensure complete business continuity, maintain application performance and cost-effectively scale their networks in virtual server environments."

Virtual Iron 3.0 makes use of the standard QLogic driver in the virtualization layer that has passed QLogic testing across a wide variety of SAN environments. This allows virtual machines running in Virtual Iron to access storage through a certified storage stack. Virtual Iron is also working in partnership with QLogic to support N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and Virtual Fabric technologies, HBA virtualization technologies that provide a more secure, manageable, and higher performance environment for virtual machines.

"Virtualized server environments are rapidly increasing in deployment and are driving a wider use of SANs, and Emulex's first-to-market availability of its LightPulse Virtual HBA technology within Linux operating environments further validates our commitment to driving increased value into the data center," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing at Emulex. "Support for Emulex HBAs within Virtual Iron environments ensures that end users may leverage the unique benefits of Emulex connectivity solutions, such as the ability to provide scalable performance, which is critical in virtualized servers."

Emulex is working closely with Virtual Iron to expand support for Emulex's LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, which was made generally available to customers last month. Virtual Iron intends to incorporate this technology in the first half of 2007. As more IT managers are looking to virtual infrastructure for consolidation, increased resource utilization and management flexibility, the Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBA technology enables each virtual machine to own and access a dedicated World Wide Port Name (WWPN), even when several virtual machines are sharing the same physical HBA. This new capability, using the industry standard N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), enables each guest to be managed independently, using SAN best practices for security and configuration management, such as fabric-based zoning and storage logical unit (LUN) mapping, even when the virtual machine is moved between physical servers using Virtual Iron's LiveMigration technology.

According to Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron, the certification of Emulex and QLogic with Virtual Iron's virtual infrastructure will be a key enabler for virtualization that meets data center cost, security and performance objectives.

Posted by David Marshall on October 24, 2006 03:12 PM

October 22, 2006

VMware Reporting Huge Growth in Third Quarter

VMware's parent company, EMC Corp., said its third quarter profit fell by almost a third, and they expect to cut 1,250 jobs or 4 percent of the work force by the end of next year. Although these reductions will not affect VMware as the company continues to grow and outpace previous expectations.

Despite these cuts, EMC expects to finish 2007 with more employees than it will have at the end of this year as it adds workers from the acquired companies.

Unlike its parent company, VMware reported that it had boosted third quarter revenues over the same period a year ago by 86% to $189 million. The company said that this was the highest growth rate in five quarters.

The company's revenue continues to climb. For the first half of 2006, VMware reported its revenue as $288 million. Compare this to the annual revenue recognized in 2005 - $387 million, 2004 - $218 million, and 2003 - $100 million, the growth is staggering.

With more than 20,000 companies now running VMware technology, including 99 of the Fortune 100 companies, VMware hopes the growth trend will continue. With products like VMware Infrastructure 3 shipping and the recently announced Mac product, things look positive for the company.

Posted by David Marshall on October 22, 2006 07:48 PM

October 22, 2006

VMLogix Receives Funding from Bain Capital Ventures

VMLogix, a global provider of virtual infrastructure management technology to simplify the software lifecycle, announced that it secured Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, one of the world's leading private investment firms, for $3.5 million.

VMLogix's LabManager product is designed specifically for IT operations, software development and quality assurance teams at Global 2000 enterprises, commercial ISVs and ITES companies worldwide. LabManager helps users build, share, deploy and optimize the management of complex, multi-machine development and test system configurations and QA/Test labs. LabManager fully automates the time-consuming and error-prone tasks in the test environment setup process – provisioning operating systems on servers and virtual machines, installing and configuring multiple software applications, provisioning test tools and executing and monitoring manual and automated test scripts.

Software engineering teams can now employ LabManager to deliver more reliable products faster, and at lower costs, than was previously possible. VMLogix addresses an important gap in the marketplace by providing the only solution that works seamlessly across diverse operating systems, virtualization platforms and physical machine environments. It also provides the user full process control at every level within the test environment – the virtual machine and host and guest OS. The LabManager platform has been extensively beta tested at 11 large enterprise-grade accounts, which include some of the world's largest and most successful software and ITES companies.

"VMLogix's value proposition should be very attractive to enterprises seeking to leverage new virtualization platforms from Microsoft and VMware to simplify and accelerate their software lifecycles," said Ajay Agarwal, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. "We believe VMLogix combines superior technology with innovative product vision and the entrepreneurial talent necessary to garner a leadership position within this rapidly growing space. We are pleased to provide VMLogix funding to help fuel its growth initiatives."

CEO Ravi Gururaj founded VMLogix while working at Trilogy, an Austin-based provider of technology-powered business services to Global 1000 companies, where he was managing director of the India Software Engineering Center. With more than 17 years of technology product development, management and marketing experience, Gururaj was previously director of e-commerce initiatives at Trilogy and held executive positions at UberWorks, Inc. and Dialogic Corporation.

"Funding from Bain Capital allows VMLogix to further its vision of bringing enterprise virtualization technology to all phases of the software lifecycle," said Gururaj. "VMLogix will use this capital to support ongoing product development and its U.S. go-to-market initiative. VMLogix's emphasis on ease-of-use, platform heterogeneity and open product architecture, ensure that LabManager is the most user-friendly, cost-effective, reliable, flexible virtual lab infrastructure management framework. Software developers are no longer limited when it comes to virtualization management solutions for their software development and testing needs."

Posted by David Marshall on October 22, 2006 07:31 PM

October 22, 2006

Sun Expands Virtualization Offerings

Sun Microsystems outlined its three-pronged approach to virtualization: harnessing commodity technologies, delivering Sun's own advanced products and technologies, and leveraging Sun's global expertise in providing systems and software. Sun will continue to help customers use virtualization to cost-effectively gain better synergy and productivity out of their computing infrastructure.

The cornerstone of Sun's virtualization strategy is the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS); its cross-platform capabilities, Solaris Containers; and the fact that it is both free and open source makes it ideal for eliminating the physical and cost barriers associated with datacenter growth and management.

"Virtualization is a layer of lubrication that unifies previously siloed areas of computing," said John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president, Systems Group. "As server sprawl accelerates and power and cooling costs grow, we see an opportunity to apply our years of expertise in network computing/virtualization to help customers solve these challenges. The Solaris OS is the foundation of our approach, and we build on it with Sun servers, storage, services, and partner services as well."

New Virtualization Offerings

As a complement to Sun's existing virtualization products and services, Sun is announcing six new offerings today:

LDoms: virtualization technology for Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology that lets customers run multiple OSes simultaneously with Solaris Containers; it helps customers to reduce server footprint, while increasing server utilization and datacenter efficiency.

Solaris on Xen: In 2007, Sun will deliver fully supported Xen functionality in an update to the Solaris 10 OS. This means that customers will be able to run concurrent Solaris 10, Linux and Microsoft Windows OSes as "guests" on a Solaris 10 OS-based Virtual Machine. In addition to the system flexibility this offers, the fact that Sun's Xen hypervisor is based on the Solaris 10 OS means that customers can benefit from unique Solaris 10 features such as Predictive Self-Healing, DTrace, Solaris ZFS and Solaris Trusted Extensions, even if they aren't running their applications on the Solaris 10 OS, the most advanced OS on the planet.

Sun Fire x64 Servers: "Galaxy" Sun Fire X4000 server line powered by Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors and the Solaris 10 OS.

Solution Customer Workshops: a two-day collaborative session designed to assess a customer's current business requirements, match them to technology, and determine actionable next steps. This complimentary workshop (estimated $10,000 USD value) delivers a high-level total-cost-of-ownership analysis that estimates the potential long-term savings for the customer.

Life Cycle Services for Virtualization: consulting, education, and support services to help architect, implement and manage a customer's virtualization solution investment.

Extended VMware Support: support for VMware ESX 3.0.1 on the Sun Fire X4600 server and Sun Blade modular systems.

For more information on Sun's virtualization offerings, please visit their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on October 22, 2006 08:45 AM

October 21, 2006

Desktop Virtualization on the Intel-based Mac

Today's Podcast takes a look at desktop virtualization on the Intel-based Mac platform. Parallels took the reigns early on delivering its Desktop for Mac solution. The company keeps updating the product for its consumers - adding fixes, enhancements and features. Now, virtualization giant VMware is trying to enter the picture. It is geared up to release its beta product, codenamed Fusion. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 21, 2006 07:54 AM

October 19, 2006

VMware Pens Alliance with Uptime Software

VMware has shown that smart business software can drive successful technology alliances. VMware approved up.time, server monitoring software by uptime software, for its superb server monitoring and capacity planning solution.

Uptime software, a software development company since 1993, develops powerful enterprise server monitoring and capacity planning software that VMware sees great benefit in, especially as new functionality now monitors VMware virtual servers.

"We are very excited to be working with VMware, one of the hottest companies in technology today," said Nick Johnson, Director of Marketing at uptime software. "Recent new functionality of up.time 4 will allow our customers to see even greater cost savings with virtualization and consolidation. up.time is one of the first enterprise server monitoring software solutions to provide IT professionals with the ability to easily monitor their entire VMware virtual server infrastructure with up.time 4."

According to the press release, uptime software was selected as a VMware technology partner because up.time is a first-in-class solution that installs in minutes, is easy to use, and is more affordable than most software maker's heavy, multi-component programs. up.time is enabled through a web browser interface, providing secure access at anytime and from anywhere, that monitors across most operating systems.

To learn more about up.time and monitoring virtual servers, please click here: virtual server monitoring.

An enterprise ready version of up.time is available for a free 14-day evaluation download.

Posted by David Marshall on October 19, 2006 08:15 PM

October 19, 2006

Virtual Machine Software Market Grew 67% in 2005, According to IDC

According to IDC, the worldwide virtual machine software (VMS) market grew to $560 million in 2005, a robust 67% growth over the previous year and topping the 63% year-over-year growth recorded in 2004.

"The growth in the dynamic VMS market will continue as organizations increasingly deploy VMS as a means of decoupling the application stack from the underlying hardware," said John Humphreys, research director for IDC's Enterprise Computing group. "While we believe VMS is a foundational technology to the creation of dynamic IT environments, the challenge going forward is to get users to integrate virtualization with legacy management tools and enhance management functionality to solve specific business issues."

EMC/VMware was the top VMS vendor in 2005, with a market share of over 55%. IDC believes that EMC's ability to support many operating environments concurrently on industry-standard systems, reinforced by partnerships or alliances with almost every leading hardware supplier, contributed to that performance.

Other highlights from the VMS market in 2005 include the following:

Linux experienced the fastest growth

Industry-standard (x86-based) systems lead the market for VMS software

North American organizations purchased over half of all VMS products

New use cases for the technology emerged

Posted by David Marshall on October 19, 2006 08:12 PM

October 19, 2006

Wyse Announces Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation Solution

Wyse Technology announced a thin desktop device that is optimized for the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The solution is based on Wyse's thin client OS technology.

As a participant in the VMware Community Source program, Wyse and VMware are able to collaborate on a number of development efforts. One such effort was the collaboration to make the Wyse Thin OS - VDI Edition aware of key VDI-oriented technologies.

"VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure delivers value to our customers through improved security and manageability. Since the announcement of the VDI Alliance in April, we have been collaborating with several partners to deliver virtual desktop offerings to the enterprise," said Jerry Chen, director of enterprise desktop platforms and solutions, VMware. "We are excited to work with Wyse within the VDI Alliance and our Community Source programs to deliver their first VDI optimized product offering which will enable our customers to quickly adopt and deploy VDI within their environments."

The new Wyse solution is expressly designed for the VDI architecture. It incorporates:

The New Wyse Thin OS - VDI Edition, which eliminates the user complexity around deploying the Virtual Desktop architectures, enables single pushbutton "power on to work" for virtualized environments and is integrated with popular connection broker technologies, and

Wyse's popular S Class thin client device

Wyse and VMware will be embarking on a series of seminars to promote this new solution. The company plans to begin shipping the new OS and device solution sometime this quarter.

Posted by David Marshall on October 19, 2006 07:34 PM

October 18, 2006

Microsoft Offers SoftGrid Through Software Assurance

At the SoftSummit conference in Santa Clara, California, Microsoft announced plans to release a set of new software tools designed to take care of some of the biggest pain points that enterprises experience when deploying and managing desktops and applications.

The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance (SA) will include the SoftGrid for Windows product that was acquired from Boston-based Softricity earlier this year. The product is used to virtualize applications, meaning they can run on multiple PCs and other licensed desktops running Microsoft Windows without being locally installed. Instead, they run as individual networked services, enabling central deployment and management, minimizing compatibility problems and providing employees more ways to access applications.

Also included in the optimization pack will be a software inventory program, Microsoft Asset Inventory Services, which is designed to analyze all programs on employee PCs and provide the most current, accurate inventory.

The pack will also incorporate the Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management tool that increases control over Group Policy Objects. It is intended to allow IT administrators to delegate or assign administrative control of specific tasks based on employees' titles or roles.

And finally, it will add the IT admin pack acquired from Winternals in July. The pack will be renamed to the Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset. The tool makes it possible for the IT department to quickly pinpoint the causes of PC troubles, recover lost data and prevent future downtime with post-crash analysis.

Beginning in January 2007, Microsoft plans to offer the optimization pack worldwide as an add-on subscription for companies with Software Assurance agreements. The cost for those users is estimated at $10 a year per desktop.

Posted by David Marshall on October 18, 2006 08:17 PM

October 18, 2006

Microsoft Opens Up Its Virtualization Format

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it was going to make its virtualization format technology available for free.

At the Interoperability Summit in Brussels, Microsoft said that its virtual hard disk (VHD) image format specification could be used by third parties for free without the need for a commercial license. The company said that the technology would be made available under its Open Specification Promise (OSP) first announced in September 2006.

"We are focused on delivering interoperability by design," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "This means that customers have control over their data while vendors provide technologies that connect diverse systems. By having the VHD specification available under the OSP, the technology is viable for any development or business model. We continue to increase our commitment to interoperability in our products and by providing access to technologies like the virtualization open format."

As a common virtualization file format, VHD has been adopted by more than 60 vendors, enabling partners such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., Diskeeper Corp., Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Network Appliance Inc., Virtual Iron and XenSource to help provide more seamless manageability, security features, reliability and cost efficiency for customers. Customers and partners realize the value of standardizing on the Microsoft VHD format because it is the Microsoft virtualization file format and offers migration across Microsoft Virtual Server, Virtual PC, and Windows Server virtualization with Windows Server "Longhorn". The OSP will help further broad adoption of the VHD format.

More information about Microsoft's commitment to interoperability by design and the list of specifications covered by the OSP today can be found, here.

Posted by David Marshall on October 18, 2006 04:44 PM

October 18, 2006

The Truth About Vista Virtualization Licensing

Microsoft has recently made a number of waves within the virtualization community. Many of us were overjoyed when Microsoft decided to offer Virtual PC and Virtual Server as free products. And with each new announcement, it seemed as though Microsoft was finally fully embracing the virtualization concept.

Microsoft made a key licensing change in favor of virtualization when it announced the licensing terms of their top-tier datacenter edition of Windows. The licensing opened up what Microsoft calls "unlimited virtualization rights", which means a customer can now run an unlimited number of virtualized instances of Windows Server on processors licensed with Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition without having to purchase additional licenses. Its use rights allow the choice of running Windows Server 2003 R2 (or a previous version) Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Datacenter Edition as the host operating system and in the virtual instances.

According to Microsoft, the unlimited virtualization rights significantly simplify the licensing of Windows Server for large-scale virtualization, and make it more affordable to consolidate on the Windows Server Platform.

Unfortunately, the same may not be said for Microsoft Vista. It seems as though Microsoft may be tightening the licensing terms for Vista when it comes to virtualization.

Once Microsoft published the Vista EULA online, speculation began running wild across the Internet. People who earned their law degrees from watching The People's Court immediately began dissecting the EULA to try and determine its true meaning. I myself have learned a lot from watching Judge Judy, but I must admit, I too was confused as to the correct interpretation. The confusion stemmed into multiple conversations as to what the meaning of the EULA truly meant.

Evidently, there are going to be two different EULAs available for the different versions of Microsoft Vista.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA HOME BASIC AND HOME PREMIUM
USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES
You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE
USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES
You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption.

This begs the question, does the EULA mean I cannot run Vista Home in a virtual machine? Or does it simply mean I cannot reuse the license from the host OS on a guest OS running inside of a virtual machine?

It seems as though the former is correct. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, "For production machines and everyday usage, virtualization is a fairly new technology, and one which we think is not mature enough for broad consumer adoption. Today, customers using this technology are primarily business customers addressing application compatibility needs or technology enthusiasts. For everyday usage, Windows Vista Home and Home Premium cannot be installed in any virtual machine technology, but Business and Ultimate versions can. Each virtual installation of Windows requires a new license just as it did for Windows XP."

Microsoft believes that enthusiasts, businesses and enterprises with IT staff better understand the challenges and risks associated with virtualization, and so they are making virtualization an option for the versions that match those audiences. To that end, the spokesperson continued, "The primary client virtualization scenario with Windows Vista is application compatibility in the enterprise. With Windows Vista Enterprise edition customers receive the ability to install 4 copies of the operating system in virtual machines for a single user on a single device, making Windows Vista Enterprise ideally suited for virtualization scenarios."

So what happens to those enterprises who want to use virtualization to help out with Development and QA/Testing? When creating a development or testing matrix to validate your software in the hands of the consumer, product testing will have to take place against all versions of Vista, not just Enterprise versions. The Microsoft spokesperson seemed to agree by saying, "Virtualization has been used heavily by developers, and through MSDN licensing any version of Windows Vista - including Home and Home Premium can be installed in virtual machines for development and test purposes as many times as required."

It sounds like good news for some, and not so good news for others. So while business users may not be affected that much, it seems like the home enthusiast may suffer the most from this new virtualization licensing agreement.

Posted by David Marshall on October 18, 2006 03:52 PM

October 17, 2006

VMware's Desktop Virtualization for Mac - Codenamed Fusion

Back on August 7, 2006, VMware announced a new product line that would enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Linux, Windows, NetWare, and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. A demonstration of the product took place during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2006 in San Francisco.

Until now, the Intel Mac market has clearly been dominated by a lean and mean, fast paced virtualization company - Parallels. In fact, Parallels just recently announced a new version of its Mac Desktop product that includes even more features and enhancements.

But the question being asked by so many for the past few months has been - where is VMware? People have been waiting to see what the virtualization software leader was going to bring to the table. And it looks like the answer may be one step closer to reality.

It seems as though VMware is going to be announcing their Intel-based Mac product soon enough. Codenamed 'Fusion' - it is currently in beta at build 33141.

VMware describes Fusion for Mac as a desktop application that lets the user create and run virtual machines on their Intel-based Mac.

The company claims that its first product for the new Intel Macs makes it easier than ever to take advantage of the security, flexibility, and portability of virtual machines. Fusion provides an intuitive user interface for creating virtual machines, and for running preconfigured virtual machines created with VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and ESX Server. With Fusion, you can run your favorite Windows applications on your Intel-based Mac. You can also download virtual machines from the VMware Technology Network (VMTN) Website, which has a growing library of virtual appliances with a wide range of pre-installed and preconfigured applications and operating systems.

Features of VMware Fusion:

Fusion supports all Intel Mac hardware, including the new 64-bit Mac Pro and iMac.

Your virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in today's newest Intel Macs.

Fusion supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine.

Simply drag and drop files and folders in and out of your virtual machines to transfer your data.

Could the growing list of pre-configured virtual appliances push VMware's product over the top? Are the features being announced enough to sway you one way or the other? A lot of Mac users have already bought or tried Parallels' product - can VMware win these consumers over? Stay tuned.

Posted by David Marshall on October 17, 2006 07:21 PM

October 17, 2006

Virtual PC 2007 Beta Available

Microsoft has released the beta version of its desktop virtualization solution, Virtual PC 2007. The beta program started on October 10 and it currently goes through March 30, 2007. There are two versions being offered for download, a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

The latest release takes advantage of hardware virtualization from both Intel and AMD, and is capable of running Windows Vista as either the host operating system or as a guest operating system. So if you are interested in trying out Microsoft Vista, this could be yet another option for installation.

What's new in Virtual PC 2007 Beta?

Hardware assisted virtualization - Virtual PC 2007 includes support for virtualization technology from Intel and AMD. By default, hardware-assisted virtualization is enabled if the feature is enabled on the physical computer. You can turn this assistance on or off for each virtual machine by modifying the virtual machine settings.

Support for Windows Vista as a host operating system - This beta release of Virtual PC 2007 introduces support for Windows Vista as a host operating system. The following versions of Windows Vista are supported: Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate.

Support for Windows Vista as a guest operating system - This beta release of Virtual PC 2007 introduces support for Windows Vista as a guest operating system. The following versions of Windows Vista are supported: Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate.

Support for 64-bit host operating system - This beta release of Virtual PC 2007 supports 64-bit host operating systems. However, there is no support for 64-bit guest operating systems.

NOTE:
Installing Virtual PC 2007 Beta on a computer that has AMD hardware-assisted virtualization support and uses an x64 version of Windows as the host operating system may generate a bug check and shut down the operating system. This occurs because x64 versions of the Windows operating system protect a critical system register that Virtual PC 2007 modifies to enable hardware-assisted virtualization. You can resolve this issue by installing a hotfix prior to installing Virtual PC 2007. The hotfix is available and can be downloaded from Connect in the same location you download the beta software. (This hotfix should not be used with Windows Vista)

If you are interested in participating in the beta program, you can sign up for it here.

Posted by David Marshall on October 17, 2006 06:51 AM

October 16, 2006

What's Happening with Virtual Machine Software?

Server virtualization technology is one of the key technologies that organizations are looking to for help in tomorrow's data center. So what's happening with virtual machine software? And what are the business drivers for adopting virtualization? Find out what IDC and the Butler Group are saying. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 16, 2006 04:14 PM

October 15, 2006

Parallels Releases Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux

Parallels announced the final release version of its Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux. Following a successful, multi-stage beta testing program that involved thousands of users worldwide, the final release will be available as a free upgrade to registered Parallels Workstation 2.0 and 2.1 customers.

Parallels says that its Parallels Workstation 2.2 product enables users to simultaneously run any version of Windows, including Beta and RC builds of Windows Vista, any Linux distribution, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS/2, eComStation or DOS, in a stable, secure virtual machine on any computer running Windows 2000, XP or 2003, or any version of Linux. No re-booting or partitioning is required, and users never need to shut down or leave their home desktop to access a virtual machine.

The latest Workstation 2.2 release offers a number of product improvements, such as:

Guest OS support for Windows Vista Beta1, Beta2, and RC1, as well as NetBSD and OpenBSD

Stronger support for Intel Virtualization Technology and full support for AMD Secure Virtual Machine Technology (SVM). These technologies, which are included in most new Intel and AMD processors, drive superior virtual machine performance and stability

Improved USB support, including stronger support for Windows Mobile 2005 devices

A re-designed, more user-friendly interface

Improved overall performance and stability

A Shared Folders utility that lets users easily share files and folders between operating systems and application programs

Support for dynamic primary OS video modes, custom video modes and 32 bpp video modes

Full Unicode support lets users name files in any language

Better networking support, including WiFi support for Linux primary OSes, a default network adapter that automatically bridges to the most readily available network, and the ability to change network and bridge type "on the fly"

Better sound recording and playback

A complete list of new features and upgrades is available on the company's Web site.

"Parallels Workstation 2.2 is another step forward in our mission to build the industry's most powerful, user-friendly virtualization solutions," said Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager, Parallels. "The product's improved feature set, and performance, unmatched ease of use and industry-leading $49 price point make Parallels Workstation 2.2 the logical choice for the everyday computer user who wants - or needs - to work with multiple operating systems simultaneously."

New users can download and evaluate Parallels Workstation 2.2 for free with a 15 day trial download.

Posted by David Marshall on October 15, 2006 06:19 AM

October 15, 2006

Parallels Releases Update for Desktop for Mac

Parallels is at it again. For several weeks, beta testing of its latest version of Desktop for Mac has been taking place. And now that it has concluded, the company is ready to release the Official Update of Parallels Desktop for Mac to the public. Parallels is proud to call it the first solution that enables users to run Windows, Linux and OS X simultaneously on any Intel-powered Mac without the need to reboot.

The official update is free for all Parallels Desktop users, and it includes a number of important, performance-enhancing features that include:

Full support for new quad-processor Mac Pro towers and Core 2 Duo Macs with any memory configuration

Guest OS support for Microsoft Vista Beta1, Beta2, and RC1

Host OS support for developer builds of OS X 10.5 "Leopard"

Better USB support, including support for webcams and Windows Mobile 5 devices

A hard disk caching tool that improves OS X performance when running Parallels

Improved sound and video quality in virtual machines

A full list of new features and product improvements can be found on the company's Web site.

"This Official Update offers complete compatibility with any Intel-Mac with any memory configuration, includes support for Windows Vista, and adds a number of important enhancements for sound, video, and USB support, as well as overall performance for both the host Mac and guest Windows machines" said Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager, Parallels. "We value the user feedback that has helped us deliver the best solution for running Windows on Macs."

Active Parallels Desktop users should note that upgrading to the Official Update will not require a re-install of any guest operating systems or any applications. After upgrading, users should re-install Parallels Tools.

Parallels offers new users a free 15-day trial version of the product as a free download.

Posted by David Marshall on October 15, 2006 06:02 AM

October 15, 2006

Virtual Iron Releases 3.0 Version

Virtual Iron Software announced that the Version 3.0 of its product platform is now GA. Version 3.0 delivers an enterprise-class open-source virtualization solution that fully supports Intel's VT platform. With this latest release, Virtual Iron hopes to set a new price point for state of the art virtualization at less than half of the cost of VMware.

"Our product is the first open source virtualization and management solution designed to meet the demanding needs of enterprise data centers," said John C. Thibault, President and CEO of Virtual Iron. "The feedback from our Beta customers has been overwhelmingly positive. Based on their experience and feedback, we are confident that with our version 3.0, products will quickly become the primary alternative to VMware."

Virtual Iron 3.0 combines advanced virtualization services and policy-based management capabilities using an open source hypervisor derived from the Xen open source community project. The company says that it is the first virtualization software and management solution to fully capitalize on running unmodified 32 and 64-bit operating systems while obtaining superior performance from hardware-assisted virtualization such as with Intel VT. As a result, end-users can apply Virtual Iron's solution to virtualize performance sensitive enterprise-class applications on the Intel hardware platform. The software automates many time-intensive manual tasks such as provisioning new servers and applications, moving capacity to handle dynamic workloads. In addition, it includes service level automation features for monitoring physical systems and automatically responds to availability issues. These capabilities enable users to streamline data center management while dramatically reducing capital and operating expenses.

The 3.0 product comes in three editions each with different offerings and licensing:

Professional Edition - enables native virtualization and management of a single physical server (up to two sockets). It is available at no charge and can be downloaded directly from the company's Web site.

Consolidation Edition - this is specifically packaged to help meet the needs of server consolidation projects. It offers native virtualization of multi-server configurations, physical to virtual server conversion, and advanced management.

Enterprise Edition - enables native virtualization for multi-server configurations and advanced management capabilities for rapid provisioning, live migrations with zero downtime (LiveMigrate), high availability (LiveRecovery), capacity management (LiveCapacity) and policy-based automation (LiveMaintenance).

Posted by David Marshall on October 15, 2006 05:29 AM

October 14, 2006

Egenera Joins VMware Community Source Program

Egenera Inc., announced it has joined the VMware Community Source program. Joining the program will allow Egenera to port VMware ESX Server to the Egenera BladeFrame system, complementing Egenera's virtualized computing architecture with the server virtualization capabilities of VMware ESX Server and offering their customers additional flexibility in hypervisor technology options.

VMware's Community Source program is a collaborative development effort that provides open technology access to the source code and APIs for VMware ESX Server.

The new agreement between the two companies will align the two companies' complementary technologies. The Egenera BladeFrame system combines diskless server blades with virtualization software to dramatically simplify datacenter infrastructure while delivering a highly available, flexible computing platform. Using VMware ESX Server to create and run virtual machines on the BladeFrame system allows customers to partition Egenera Processing Blade modules to run multiple operating systems and applications robustly and securely on a single blade. The Egenera BladeFrame system's built-in redundancy and high availability make it an ideal platform on which to run mission-critical production applications in a virtual machine environment.

"VMware and Egenera share many of the same values around driving our customers' success, including delivering lower total cost of ownership, higher return on investment and improved service levels across the enterprise," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of platform products at VMware. "The combination of VMware Infrastructure with the Egenera BladeFrame system is expected to provide customers with simplified virtual infrastructure management, and greater hardware utilization and flexibility."

"VMware ESX Server is the market-leading server virtualization solution, used widely for production applications. We are excited about the opportunity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with VMware for joint customers' benefit," said Susan Davis, vice president, Egenera. "With the new agreement, Egenera customers will be able to further extend the inherent datacenter virtualization capabilities of our BladeFrame system with virtual machine technology."

For more information about Egenera and their solutions, visit their Website.

Posted by David Marshall on October 14, 2006 02:15 PM

October 14, 2006

Veeam Releases FastSCP for VMware ESX Server

Veeam Software, a provider of systems management solutions for virtual machines, has announced the release of Veeam FastSCP (Fast and Secure Copy) for VMware ESX Server. It is a fast, secure and easy-to-use tool to transfer files between ESX Server and Windows machines.

Organizations that use VMware ESX Server know that delivering files to an ESX Server can be challenging. A fast and secure delivery mechanism is needed to move around ISO images, disk images, or backup copies of existing virtual machines. In many organizations, FTP is used to move around these files. And while FTP does work, it can pose a major security issue because it transfers passwords in clear text across the wire. FastSCP not only transfers these files securely, but Veeam also claims that it does so 6 times faster than SCP.

Veeam FastSCP includes three features that make it an essential tool for VMware administrators:

It's fast: Veeam FastSCP can copy files more than 6 times faster than SCP. It saves a lot of time when dealing with large files.

It's secure: Veeam FastSCP doesn't require installing anything on ESX Server. It establishes a connection generating a one-time username and password for each file. For example, if you have to upload 10 ISO files, the program will change credentials 10 times.

It's easy to use: Veeam FastSCP doesn't require any reconfiguration of ESX Server. It has Windows Explorer-like user interface familiar to any Windows user. An administrator can install FastSCP on his/her workstation and start copying files right away.

company's Website

Posted by David Marshall on October 14, 2006 01:54 PM

October 13, 2006

SANRAD Announces VMware Support

One of the side effects with using server virtualization to deliver on IT server consolidation projects is the need for larger amounts of storage. And when navigating through the murky waters of high availability and disaster recovery, the need for network storage becomes even more important. Vendors providing these types of storage solutions are lining up to gain VMware's favor with the hopes of then being added to VMware's supported list.

SANRAD Incorporated, a supplier of open enterprise IP SANs, announced that its product portfolio of IP SAN solutions now fully supports VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. With the announcement, SANRAD's solutions should provide support for VMware customers to utilize their existing IP network and storage resources to consolidate storage management and data recovery.

The SANRAD and VMware alliance offers clients:

An IP SAN for multiple ESX servers

Continuous real-time data access during component, storage or system failure

Low scalability costs using any type or brand storage

Ability to deliver high peak load performance

According to the company's press release:

Using the open, scalable architecture of SANRAD's IP SANs extends VMWare's consolidation and virtualization benefits to server storage. With SANRAD solutions, any brand or type of storage, including FC SAN resources, can be pooled and managed with a single platform. VMware customers can then divide the virtualized storage pool into unique iSCSI volumes for VMware ESX server datastors. By combining virtualization with open storage pooling, customers can create different storage tiers, acquire the specific storage capacity and performance they need, and utilize existing storage investments, thereby reducing overall costs and simplifying scalability.

SANRAD's unique IP solution increases resource availability with real-time data, path and system redundancy and provides for low cost scalability. It also provides decreased storage costs on a per terabyte (TB) basis as capacity increases. SANRAD's GDR supports VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 delivering business continuity and enabling customers to replicate data to a remote site for disaster recovery. All storage services for VMware are delivered and managed from SANRAD's consolidated IP SAN solution using a single graphical user interface.

"Our enterprise customers require a fully integrated storage solution for VMware. We are pleased we have created a unique solution that delivers a high reliability IP SAN architecture well suited for multiple VMware ESX servers." said Uli Gal-Oz, CEO of SANRAD. "VMware is the leader in server consolidation and virtualization solutions, and we look forward to working together closely as a VMware Technology Alliance Partner program member to deliver a complementary storage consolidation and virtualization solution."

SANRAD provides enterprise iSCSI platforms with a broad complement of embedded and simple to manage storage services. Its unique solution offers open storage pooling, virtualization, local and long distance data replication and disaster recovery services at the network layer. This in turn provides customers with greater scalability, interoperability and vendor independence in their storage solutions. SANRAD's V-Switch is compatible with solutions from Brocade, Engenio, HP, Veritas, IBM, Microsoft and others.

Posted by David Marshall on October 13, 2006 04:49 PM

October 13, 2006

Incipient Network Storage Platform and Intel's ESAA Program

Incipient helps push storage virtualization into the news by announcing that its flagship product, Incipient Network Storage Platform, would GA this fall. And then, we find out what Intel and VMware are talking about when they mention the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on October 13, 2006 03:46 PM

October 08, 2006

Intel, VMware Expand Virtualization Capabilities

Intel Corporation announced that it is now providing VMware Inc. certified virtualization solutions for some of the company's server platform and motherboard products.

The press releases states:

For the first time, server vendors from around the world which participate in the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA) program will have an opportunity to adopt and market VMware’s popular products to their IT customers.
ESAA aligns with leading software providers and includes a validation service within Intel's Enterprise Platform and Services division. The alliance is aimed at combining robust Intel-based server platforms and building blocks with software applications from other companies to provide certified server solution offerings to resellers.

"Authorizing ESAA resellers to sell VMware Infrastructure 3 on some of the most popular and powerful server building blocks in the world is a big revenue opportunity for the channel and a way to expand the benefits of VMware products to more and more companies around the world," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "This is an exciting addition to the growing number of validated Intel Xeon server-based software solutions Intel can offer its resellers through our ESAA program."

"VMware Infrastructure 3 now delivers a full set of capabilities that support a dynamic, pooled data center, resulting in cost savings and simplification for IT organizations large and small," said Brian Byun, VMware vice president of products and alliances. "VMware is pleased to expand the availability of this software suite globally on the Intel ESAA platform, and we look forward to working with Intel and participating resellers."

Intel ESAA platforms are now included on VMware's hardware compatibility list, which expands the range of certified target platform for VMware Infrastructure to companies such as ACER, Bull, Compusys, HCL, Itautec, Gateway, Lenovo, Inspur, Maxdata, MPC, Powerleader, Samsung, Verari and WiPro.

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Posted by David Marshall on October 8, 2006 05:55 PM

October 08, 2006

EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN Qualified for VI3

EqualLogic, a provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network solutions, announced that its PS Series storage has been qualified by VMware for VMware Infrastructure 3. This means that EqualLogic's PS Series will now be included in VMware's Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3.0 as a supported storage platform. Official support from VMware and being listed on the VMware HCL is important for perspective buyers looking to use SAN technology and VMware's virtualization platform.

"Our customers' VMware enterprise deployments require true enterprise-class data protection, with fully redundant infrastructures and remote-site disaster recovery capabilities – the PS Series' built-in storage management capabilities meet these customer needs out-of-the-box," said John Jos