Virtualization Report | David Marshall | December 2006

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December 2006

December 30, 2006

To help further strengthen VMware's position and story around using their virtualization solutions to help with software development and testing, the company has gone a long way in a short amount of time. With a June acquisition of Akimbi's Slingshot product, an open beta testing that began around October 5th, and now a general availability of Lab Manager 2.4 near the end of December, VMware is finally able to offer its "premier virtual lab automation system for development and test organizations".

The lab automation solution is targeted at enterprise software development organizations. According to VMware, the product should help with lab asset efficiency, the acceleration of development and testing cycles, and ultimately increase delivered software product quality.

Some of the features being offered include:

Multi-Machine Configuration - Create multi-machine configurations in seconds using machine templates - no limit on machine count, no manual adjustments - Act on machines in a configuration as a unit: suspend, multi-snapshot, revert to, shutdown, turn on, turn off, suspend, reset, deploy, undeploy, clone, capture to library, and modify properties
Configuration Library - Check out of configurations with memory and CPU state preserved nearly instantaneously - Enjoy simultaneous use of library configurations by multiple users without changing MAC and IP addresses or SID, using VMware's network fencing
Media Library - Store all development and test media in a central repository and tag media with descriptive attributes
Deployment - Set up automatic load balancing of machines deployed on host servers and get side-by-side execution of cloned configurations across physical server boundaries, even when IP addresses duplicated on a subnet
Machine Templates - Instantly create new machines from templates with distinct personalization - automated assignment of MAC and IP addresses, and SID (for Windows systems)
Monitoring - View all deployed machines and see an active unified "in motion" view of server pool and VM operations
Administration and Security - Supports LDAP integration as well as user, permission, and quota management

VMware Lab Manager Server will start around $15,000 and list prices for the solution bundled with VMware Infrastructure 3 starts at $35,000.

Posted by David Marshall on December 30, 2006 07:16 AM

December 30, 2006

VMware Announces Public Beta of Workstation 6.0

After giving a quick preview at VMworld 2006, VMware, the market-leading x86 virtualization provider, has finally announced a new public beta version of its Workstation 6.0 software. VMware also announced that the new version would include support for Microsoft Windows Vista, both as a host and guest operating system.

The beta product appears to be focusing some of its efforts on capturing a larger segment of the software development and quality assurance market. New efforts have been made that allow the product to integrate with debugging features in Microsoft Visual Studio and the open-source Eclipse programming tools. Developers can now deploy, run and debug programs directly inside a virtual machine. In addition, Workstation now offers automated APIs (VIX API 2.0) to help developers write scripts and programs to automate virtual machine testing.

Other new interesting features added include:

Multiple Monitor Support - The guest can now span monitors and also reflect the monitor topology which means that applications, task bars, and so on inside the guest appear as you would expect them to on a multi-monitor system. You can specify how many monitors a virtual machine can detect, regardless of how many monitors are attached to the host. This feature is especially useful if you plan to deploy the virtual machine to a different host after you create it. You can also specify what screen resolution to use and how much video memory to allocate.
Automatic Update to the Latest Version of VMware Tools - You can now set VMware Tools to automatically upgrade itself when the virtual machine is powered on.
Run Virtual Machines in the Background - You can now leave virtual machines and teams running in the background when you exit Workstation. On the host, a system tray icon indicates how many virtual machines are running in the background.
Enhanced File Sharing and Copy and Paste Functionality - You can now use shared folders on a Solaris guest. You can copy and paste text and files between Linux and Windows hosts and Linux, Windows, and Solaris guests.
Cross-Platform Drag-and-Drop Functionality - You can now drag and drop files and directories from a Linux or Windows host to a Linux, Solaris, or Windows guest, and vice versa.
Virtual Machines Can Act as VNC Servers - You can set a virtual machine to act as a VNC server without having to install any specialized VNC software in the guest.
Increased RAM Support - The previous limit of 4GB total RAM that could be used for all virtual machines combined has been removed. The amount of memory used by all virtual machines combined is now limited only by the amount of the host computer's RAM and page file size. The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated per virtual machine has been raised from 3.6GB to 8GB.
Support for Paravirtualized Linux Kernels - If you have a VMware VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) 3.0 enabled kernel in a Linux guest operating system, you can now enable paravirtual support in the virtual machine.
Support for High-Speed USB 2.0 Devices

This release also provides experimental support for the following operating systems now in Beta:

32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 as guest operating system

This release also provides full support for the following operating systems:

32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit Novell Netware 6.5 SP5 as guest operating system

You can register for the open beta program, here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 30, 2006 06:16 AM

December 29, 2006

KVM Beats Xen to Linux Kernel

If you aren't exactly up to speed with what KVM is, you probably aren't alone. And yet, as obscure as it is, it seems like it came out of nowhere to beat Xen and other virtualization solutions to the Linux kernel.

KVM stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine, and it has been accepted by the kernel guru himself, Linus Torvalds, for inclusion in the Linux kernel version 2.6.20.

KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware and it consists of a loadable kernel module (kvm.ko) and a userspace component. KVM is open source software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

KVM hasn't been around very long. It was only introduced back in October. But because of its small size and simplicity, the product has made a lot of progress in a short amount of time.

In order to operate with KVM, you will need an x86 machine running a recent Linux kernel on an Intel processor with VT extensions or an AMD processor with SVM extensions or AMD-V.

Where Xen is an external hypervisor, it assumes control of the machine and divides resources among guests. KVM on the other hand is part of Linux and uses the regular Linux schedular and memory management. This makes KVM much smaller and more simple to use. Unfortunately, there is a trade-off to be made here. KVM doesn't currently support the paravirtualization technique found in Xen, where modified guest operating systems can run with near native performance.

KVM currently supports 32- and 64-bit hosts, and any combination of PAE and non-PAE guests and hosts. The only unsupported combination is a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host.

You can find out more information about the product, here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 29, 2006 03:50 PM

December 29, 2006

Invirtus Receives Positive Feedback on Converter Tool

Back in November, we talked about how the image conversion race added a new player - Invirtus. The company had announced a new beta product, their Enterprise VM Converter product which transforms physical machines into virtual machines.

Invirtus Enterprise VM Converter is the second virtualization product to be introduced by Invirtus. Their award-winning VM Optimizer product was introduced in November 2005, and according to Invirtus, it is currently being used by thousands of companies worldwide to create smaller, faster VMs.

When talking about their latest image conversion tool, Tom Edwards, Invirtus Founder and CEO, says "We have received an abundance of positive feedback regarding the speed, quality and the intuitive nature of Invirtus Enterprise VM Converter." He continued, "We combined customer feedback with our proprietary optimization technology to enable customers to convert physical systems into VMs faster than other conversion products. Our customers tell us this will result in significant time and money savings."

Customers like Shawn Partridge, Director of Information Services at Cascade Die Casting Group, Inc., are excited about the ability to automatically transform many remote servers at once: "Not only is the tool incredibly easy to use, with no setup or hardware requirements, but also the remote conversions take place directly, making it perfect for satellite offices. I can connect at home and initiate the conversion directly from host server to destination server with no traffic over my VPN, just install and run!"

Using the product to convert production Microsoft Exchange and GIS database servers with excellent results, Randy Cress, Network Administrator of Rowan County, North Carolina says, "The drag-and-drop interface is extremely easy to use and the conversions happen very quickly." He also finds the ability to switch HAL types and the ability to select the drop-off network location without mapping drives very beneficial.

Recently named by Gartner as one of the ten "Cool Vendors for 2006", Invirtus is trying to continue that trend next year. The company claims to be developing a series of additional virtualization products for release during the first quarter of 2007.

Posted by David Marshall on December 29, 2006 02:35 PM

December 29, 2006

JumpBox Joins XenSource Technology Partner Program

JumpBox, a new virtual appliance development service, announced that it has joined the XenSource Technology Partner Program. XenSource Technology Partners (XTPs) are comprised of independent software vendors (ISVs) and independent hardware vendors that complement XenSource technology to offer complete solutions to their customers.

By joining the program, JumpBox will have access to XenSource's betas and pre-release products which will help ensure that the company's appliances are fully compatible with XenSource's family of products.

"We are thrilled to be a XenSource partner," says Sean Tierney, CEO of JumpBox. "They provide a rock-solid virtualization environment into which our JumpBox appliances can be delivered. The relationship with XenSource paves the way for joint marketing efforts and tighter technical integration that build value for both companies."

The partnership will enable JumpBox to develop, deliver and market its solutions to meet the requirements of the growing XenSource customer base and also increase awareness of the virtualization support provided by its products through the XenSource network.

Virtual appliances were originally brought into the spotlight by the virtualization market leader, VMware. Only two weeks prior to this announcement, JumpBox announced that it had joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program in hopes that it would give JumpBox added credibility within the virtualization industry as well as access to the other major players in the VMware family.

Posted by David Marshall on December 29, 2006 10:56 AM

December 29, 2006

It's All About the NAS

Today's topic is going to cover network attached storage. Once you go down the road of using Server Virtualization, you'll quickly realize the importance of storage. First, we'll talk about moves being made by Hitachi and BlueArc Corporation. And after that, we look at a recent survey conducted by Peripherals Concepts, a leading consulting firm specializing in storage and storage management. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 29, 2006 06:29 AM

December 26, 2006

VMware on the Mac for the Holidays

It looks like VMware has unwrapped a gift of its own for the Apple community - after a lot of discussion and public feedback which amounted to a lot of people screami... ahem, politely asking to be added to the VMware Fusion Beta program, the time is now!

VMware has made the Fusion beta available to the public with build 36932.

To give you an idea of the demand for this product, a VMware blogger said that about 2100 people petitioned for it, and 70,000 people registered for it online to be notified when they could start downloading it.

That time is here. You can begin downloading it now for free, but they ask that you keep in mind that the product is still in beta and is currently running in debug mode, so don't run any performance tests on it. And VMware has yet to implement many of the features that they have planned for the product, so stay tuned.

In case you missed it, here are some of the product's features:

Create and run a wide variety of 32- and 64-bit x86 operating systems on OS X without rebooting. You can simultaneously run PC applications next to your OS X applications.
Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvements. On any Mac with dual-core processors, you can assign multiple CPUs to your virtual machine to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads.
Access physical devices from the virtual machine: read and burn CDs and DVDs, and use USB 2.0 devices like video cameras, iPods, printers, and disks at full speed. Even devices that do not have drivers for OS X will work in a virtual machine.
Drag and drop files and folders between OS X and virtual machines to easily share data between the two environments.
Leverage the cross-compatibility of VMware virtual machines. VMware virtual machines created with existing VMware products are all cross compatible, including virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure 3.
Run any of the 360 virtual appliances available from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

Posted by David Marshall on December 26, 2006 06:21 AM

December 24, 2006

Integrated Virtualization Manager on IBM System p5

IBM recently released a new IBM RedPaper that is titled and describes Integrated Virtualization Manager on IBM System p5.

Abstract:

The IBM Virtual I/O Server Version 1.2 provided a hardware management function called the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). It handled the partition configuration on selected IBM System p5, IBM p5, and IBM OpenPower systems without the need for dedicated hardware, such as a Hardware Management Console. The latest version of VIOS, 1.3.0.0, adds a number of new functions, such as support for dynamic logical partitioning for memory and processors in managed systems, task manager monitor for long-running tasks, security additions such as viosecure and firewall, and other improvements.

The Integrated Virtualization Manager enables a more cost-effective solution for consolidation of multiple partitions onto a single server. With its intuitive, browser-based interface, the Integrated Virtualization Manager is easy to use and significantly reduces the time and effort required to manage virtual devices and partitions.

This IBM Redpaper provides an introduction to the Integrated Virtualization Manager, describing its architecture and showing how to install and configure a partitioned server using its capabilities.

The Table of Contents include:

Chapter 1. Overview
Chapter 2. Installation
Chapter 3. Logical partition creation
Chapter 4. Advanced configuration
Chapter 5. Maintenance
Appendix A. IVM and HMC feature summary
Appendix B. System requirements

To find out more or to download and read the RedPaper, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 24, 2006 08:06 PM

December 24, 2006

Virtual Iron and Fabric7 Discuss Partnership

Virtual Iron Software and Fabric7 Systems announced a new business agreement and partnership that should help joint customers maximize the capabilities of Fabric7's enterprise servers with Virtual Iron's virtualization and management software solutions.

Under the agreement, Fabric7 will bundle Virtual Iron's virtual infrastructure management software with its high-performance, AMD Opteron processor-based servers, to provide customers with maximum flexibility and reliability when deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in a virtual environment. The companies have also agreed to develop joint product offerings for users and to collaborate on marketing and sales.

According to both companies, they focus on providing customers with flexibility, efficiency, and simplicity in managing their IT environments. And the new joint solution should enable companies to take advantage of these benefits in both their physical and virtual environments. The goal is to allow users to be able to roll out server consolidation projects more easily as well as quickly realize substantial return on investment. The partnership leverages the companies' common focus on enterprise and line-of-business (LOB) workloads in the rapidly expanding x86-64 server marketplace. The joint solution also takes advantage of native support for AMD's hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V) to achieve higher levels of efficiency and utilization.

Fabric7's enterprise servers leverage a unique architecture, called fabric computing, to combine processing and I/O resources into a flexible and highly efficient network fabric that increases flexibility and utilization within both individual servers and across multiple machines in the data center. With Virtual Iron, Fabric7 will be able to further extend the value of its solutions by enabling customers to maximize the utilization of the company's hardware-partitionable processor and memory complexes with a highly advanced and flexible virtualization and management suite.

According to Virtual Iron's CEO, John C. Thibault, "Virtual Iron is committed to delivering enterprise-class performance and reliability to its customers." He continued, "Our joint solution with Fabric7 enables customers to virtualize mission-critical applications and workloads with confidence and dramatically improve data center efficiency and productivity. The cost savings and operational benefits are dramatic and immediate."

Posted by David Marshall on December 24, 2006 07:53 PM

December 24, 2006

Citrix Announces Acquisition of Ardence

Citrix Systems, Inc., a leader in application delivery infrastructure, announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Ardence, Inc. of Waltham, Mass. According to Citrix, this strategic technology acquisition will extend the company's end-to-end application delivery infrastructure leadership by enabling the real-time, on demand provisioning of desktops, server images and service oriented architecture objects. This real-time provisioning capability promises improved IT agility; increases security and reliability, and offers new options for how businesses deliver applications and desktops over the network to users.

Ardence has two product groups: one focused on on-demand provisioning, the other focused on real-time operating systems. Citrix stated that it has selected Ardence for its synergistic technology that, when combined with Citrix's existing product portfolio, reinforces its overall application delivery strategy and positions the company as a strategic vendor for desktop delivery infrastructure.

Several examples of how Ardence technologies will improve an enterprise's application delivery infrastructure include:

1. Provisioning Desktops for Delivery Over a Network - Using Ardence's innovative OS-provisioning and remote network boot technology, any x86-based computer can be provisioned with an entire physical or virtual desktop environment from bare metal to production in minutes. This capability could be used, for example, to deliver new versions of operating systems, service packs and hot fixes to a diverse range of end users in minutes, then quickly rolled back to previous versions if problems are detected.

2. Enhanced Management of Citrix Presentation Server Components. The provisioning capabilities of Ardence will allow IT administrators to more quickly add new servers to a Citrix Presentation Server farm and allow for the dynamic configuration of servers in a data center.

3. Provisioning Web Server Images as Load Changes - Ardence also complements the Citrix NetScaler line of web application delivery solutions, allowing IT administrators to dynamically change the amount of storage or CPU capacity available to web applications during peak load times. For high-volume e-commerce applications, the Ardence technology can even re-provision web servers from one application to another on the fly as demand fluctuates. As customers adopt services oriented architectures (SOA) for their web application environments, the Ardence technology could also be used to provide on-demand provisioning of these application components.

The financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007.

Posted by David Marshall on December 24, 2006 07:34 PM

December 20, 2006

Virtualization Mistakes and Customer Demands for Higher Bandwidth

To make the most out of your virtualization environment, the key is to set it up properly from the very beginning. In order to do that, you should avoid some of the common blunders found in virtualization implementation. Once you get your virtualization environment up and running, you might find that you are bandwidth limited. Many satisfied virtualization customers are finding that out as we speak. And QLogic and Emulex are trying to help. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 20, 2006 04:35 PM

December 19, 2006

3PAR and Polyserve Serve Up the Ultimate Utility Data Center

3PAR and PolyServe announced an integrated utility computing platform for database and enterprise file serving environments. The combined offering pairs 3PAR Thin Provisioning and Dynamic Optimization with PolyServe's Database Utility and File Serving Utility. The companies said the combination would provide rapid service level change requests, improved server and storage utilization and massive scalability.

Within their respective server and storage architectures, both PolyServe and 3PAR wrap comprehensive virtualization and unification services around highly scalable, cost-efficient modular components. When combined with each other, the companies describe the result as a utility computing data center that can be administered, scaled, balanced and consolidated like no other.

Scale Massively in a Single System Using Small, Affordable Increments
The combined 3PAR and PolyServe offering creates a utility computing environment with massive compute and storage scalability that can be expanded simply and rapidly as additional resources are required. For example, the 3PAR InServ Storage Server can scale to eight high-performance controllers, hundreds of terabytes and 128 host connections while the PolyServe cluster technology can scale to 16 servers of varying configurations, thereby supporting hundreds of processors. Yet regardless of the scale of the PolyServe and 3PAR cluster, it behaves and is administered as a single system. Database instances, file system images and online storage volumes are deployed across multiple physical resources but retain coherency and simplicity of management for a very flexible, cost efficient, and yet easy to manage system.

Balance on Demand
The integration of these two platforms allows on-demand service level changes for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server environments. Using the powerful Dynamic Re-Hosting feature included in the PolyServe Database Utility for Oracle or SQL Server, databases or database instances can instantly be moved to larger or smaller compute resources. Using 3PAR Dynamic Optimization, provisioned storage service levels, such as RAID selection, volume striping or underlying drive technology, can then be changed with a single command to match evolving compute requirements.

Squeeze Out Inefficiencies
With 3PAR and PolyServe utility computing platforms, improved levels of server and storage efficiency can be achieved. By consolidating database instances or file serving onto a highly available cluster using the PolyServe Database Utility or File Serving Utility, server utilization is increased and compute costs are reduced by up to 50%. By coupling PolyServe's cluster technology with 3PAR Thin Provisioning, capacity and related costs for cluster deployments can also be reduced by more than 50%. In traditional storage environments, capacity utilization (the amount of written capacity on disk drives) is often no better than 25%. By using Thin Provisioning (introduced by 3PAR in 2003 and built on automatic, dedicate-on-write technology) capacity utilization can be transformed to 80% or more.

Together, the 3PAR and PolyServe platforms allow organizations to consolidate their data centers and move to a utility computing model that is responsive to changing business needs, optimizes server and storage utilization, reduces the cost of IT infrastructure and data center footprint and greatly simplifies the management of critical IT systems.

3PAR and PolyServe have executed a partnership agreement, and each participates in the other's technical alliance program.

Posted by David Marshall on December 19, 2006 06:05 PM

December 19, 2006

eWeek Labs Names VMware a Top Product of 2006

It looks like VMware has once again been named a "Top Product" by eWeek Labs for the third year in a row. In 2004, VMware received a top product award for its VMware VirtualCenter management application. And then the following year, the company was named one of the Top Products of 2005 for its VMware Workstation 5.0 product. Fast forward to today where the company has received this honor for the third time as eWeek announced VMware Server 1.0 has been selected as one of the Top Products of 2006.

"It's tough to find much to dislike about VMware's server virtualization product: VMware Server 1.0 makes it very easy to turn a single physical machine into several virtual ones-each capable of running pretty much any x86-based operating system out there," said Jason Brooks of eWEEK Labs. "VMware Server also is a great example of how a piece of software can run very well on both Linux and Windows hosts. What's more, the product is available with optional support from VMware, and it boasts a graceful path for scaling upward - to VMware ESX Server - or downward - to VMware Player. Oh, and it's free."

Bringing the benefits of virtualization to all x86 servers and any end-user, VMware Server virtualizes Linux and Windows servers and enables users to partition physical servers into multiple virtual machines and to quickly provision new server capacity. VMware offers enterprise-class support for VMware Server and scalable management with VMware VirtualCenter to centrally provision, monitor and manage VMware Server environments. VMware Server is available at no charge and for immediate download.

"Being named an eWEEK Top Product of 2006 spotlights the easy to use, powerful capabilities and industry-leading platform that VMware Server offers," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. "VMware Server is a key component of VMware's award-winning range of offerings that span the desktop to enterprise-wide data center infrastructure, enable optimized IT flexibility, resilience and efficiency and are accessible for all customers."

To view eWeek's other Top Products of 2006, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 19, 2006 04:13 PM

December 18, 2006

IBM and Intel Work on Virtualization Benchmark

IBM and Intel Corporation have announced a joint initiative aimed at helping IT managers identify and quantify the value of virtualization in their organization. Specifically, the two are working together on a set of new tools that will help IT managers select, deploy and measure virtualized server solutions for enterprise data centers.

The first tool to emerge from this joint initiative is a new virtualization benchmarking methodology called vConsolidate. It runs multiple instances of consolidated database, mail, Web and Java workloads in multiple virtual CPU partitions to simulate real-world server performance in a typical environment.

The joint benchmark project should be ready for users sometime in the first half of next year. Intel and IBM are contributing the vConsolidate methodology to an industry standards body for consideration. As a side note, VMware is also working on a standardized benchmarking project of its own, dubbed VMmark. The project was discussed at VMworld 2006, and the company hoped to get buy-in from other vendors. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) announced earlier this month that it too had begun creating a working group to start development on a virtualization benchmarking project.

Boyd Davis, general manager of Intel Server Platform Group Marketing, said "By creating the vConsolidate methodology with IBM, we are helping to make it easier for IT managers to adopt the technology and compare processor platforms and system configurations."

Interestingly enough, vConsolidate has already been used to measure IBM multiprocessor systems against its competitor's products. The results showed the x3950 delivers up to 46 percent more performance throughput than a competing system when running a mix of larger two and four virtualized processor partitions.

Based on this and other customer test results, the two companies have created a VMware Infrastructure Sizing Guide that is aimed at helping customers select and appropriately configure the various virtualized server options available to them.

Both the sizing guide effort and the vConsolidate testing results identified memory as a key limiting factor in determining how many virtual machines can be loaded onto an Intel-based server. IBM and Intel researchers have studied the impact of increased addressable memory on virtualization performance. By collecting data from more than 10,000 servers through IBM's Consolidation Discovery and Analysis Tool, the researchers determined that while virtualization increases total processor utilization, additional reserve memory is required to allow for application usage spikes.

This insight prompted further joint development using the IBM System x3950 as a large memory system reference configuration to increase the total addressable memory pool from 64GB to 128GB. Intel and IBM expect this expanded memory addressability to be supported in the leading virtualization platforms beginning next year.

Posted by David Marshall on December 18, 2006 06:51 PM

December 18, 2006

BEA Jumps Into Java Application Virtualization

At VMworld 2006, one of the takeaways from the event was that the operating system shouldn't matter. BEA Systems is taking that to heart, and in fact, they seem to be cutting out the operating system from the picture altogether. The company announced a ground-breaking entry into the virtualization market accompanied with an aggressive strategy and product roadmap aimed at Java environments.

At BEAWORLD 2006 in Beijing, the company said the move underscores the growing industry trend of system virtualization, the bundling of software applications with optimized OS functionality to run on hardware-independent virtual infrastructure and thus the decoupling of the software from the hardware through virtualization.

As part of the virtualization strategy, BEA's aggressive product roadmap includes:

Liquid VM - A virtualization-optimized Java Virtual Machine that is designed to enable Java apps to run directly on a virtualization layer. Liquid VM today works with the VMware ESX Server hypervisor to run a Java application. It goes a step beyond basic virtualization by decreasing the system stack footprint to help enable even greater consolidation. Liquid VM is a foundational technology of BEA's virtualization-enabled product offerings and will be initially supported on VMware's ESX Server and the full VMware Infrastructure product line. Executives claim support for other virtualization technologies will follow.
WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE). Scheduled to be available in the first half of 2007, this is the first product on BEA's roadmap to be launched. It is designed to combine the foundation of WebLogic Server with BEA's Liquid VM, the virtualization-optimized JVM, and can enable Java applications to run more efficiently on virtualized hardware. This design can improve hardware utilization, which in turn, can lower the hardware costs per application. The software can also make it easier to add hardware resources to a live application, thus allowing the application's capacity to scale with evolving business needs.
WebLogic Liquid Operations Control (WL LOC). Currently scheduled for Summer 2007 availability, LOC is designed to enable management and control of Java applications running on virtualized infrastructure. This can allow handling of Java applications as software "appliances" that can be rapidly provisioned and augmented with processing power and memory in step with evolving needs; policy-driven automation of provisioning tasks; and visibility into runtime behavior of applications. The combination of WL LOC and Liquid VM is designed to extend and integrate existing system-level virtualization offerings by increasing the performance and utilization of Java applications on virtualized hardware, and integrating the resource management and provisioning of the Java and virtualized system-level infrastructure. In addition, WL LOC will provide significant management benefits for all Java applications in a virtualized environment-not just those running on Liquid VM or WebLogic Server.

"The forthcoming releases of WebLogic Server Virtual Edition and WebLogic Liquid Operations Control are designed to essentially redefine the very core of how application infrastructure interacts with and depend upon the layers below them," said Wai Wong, executive vice president products at BEA. "WLS-VE is designed to effectively eliminate performance overhead, reduce configuration complexity and increase system optimization. These new capabilities can extend WebLogic's leadership role in the market and solidify the product family's position as the foundation for SOA."

Posted by David Marshall on December 18, 2006 06:03 PM

December 18, 2006

Altiris Pushes Forward with Virtualization Solutions

One of the more interesting products in the virtualization space that doesn't seem to get much attention is the virtualization solution from Altiris. Altiris SVS is currently in beta and is offering new product enhancements to help push it along. In addition to SVS, the company also announced their Server Management Suite which offers new capabilities with VMware's ESX Server product. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 18, 2006 06:02 PM

December 17, 2006

Kidaro secures $10 million in funding

Since the days of the dot com bubble burst, Venture Capital firms haven't exactly been beating down the doors of technology start-up companies. However, it seems like virtualization may be changing that just a bit. Virtualization technologies are really hot right now and are expected to continue to grow at a record rate.

Kidaro is a great example of this. They recently announced the closing of a $10-million financing round with new investor Opus Capital. Opus Capital led the round, joining existing investors Genesis Partners and Storm Ventures.

Kidaro's flagship product, Kidaro Managed Workspace, enables organizations to extend their desktop environment securely to users anywhere, using a serverless, scalable solution. Kidaro leverages proven virtualization technologies from VMware and Microsoft to create, deploy, control and update corporate workspaces for diverse users, from remote employees to onsite temporary users, corporate laptop users and offsite facilities and subsidiaries.

"Opus Capital combines first-hand technology and management expertise, and we're gratified by their vote of confidence in Kidaro," says Kidaro CEO Ran Kohavi. "We intend to use the proceeds of this latest investment to solidify our position as premier provider of virtual desktop computing, expanding our North American sales and extending our proposition to the existing customers."

"Managing and securing end user computers while allowing users to personalize their work environment is a complex task in most enterprises" says Dan Avida, General Partner at Opus Capital, "Kidaro solves this important problem very elegantly".

"Virtualization is everywhere, and Kidaro is a promise in this growing market," says Ryan Floyd, General Partner at Storm Ventures, "Kidaro leverages desktop virtualization technology to provide the missing key to solving enterprise IT challenges: from deployment and management, to security and usability."

"I believe that Kidaro's technology will enable a paradigm shift in the way users interact with personal computers," says Eddy Shalev, Founder & Managing Partner at Genesis Partners, "We have been working with Kidaro from the beginning, and we're confident in its continuing success."

Posted by David Marshall on December 17, 2006 09:51 AM

December 17, 2006

Avocent Enables Seamless Access to Desktop Workstations from Remote locations

Avocent Corporation announced that it has achieved several important technical breakthroughs to enable desktop workstations and PCs to be seamlessly accessed from remote locations, for an unmatched user experience. The advances include transparent extensions of USB 2.0 as well as full digital video interface (DVI) over standard TCP/IP networks without any loss of video resolution, frame rate, content or clarity. The advances mean that users can utilize USB 2.0 devices and remotely access computers, as well as access exact replicas of computer videos that are located anywhere on the network. The company said patents were pending on the technologies.

"These types of pioneering achievements represent several years of work and a leap forward in the way that users will be able to access their computers in the near future," said Kieran MacSweeney, General Manager of Avocent Corporation. "We anticipate that further investments next year will enable a new user interface that can finally deliver true virtualized desktops. We continue to be committed to developing solutions that are truly innovative in the way that they help customers reduce costs and simplify the management of their IT infrastructure."

Avocent said the DVI extension enables exact replicas of video from computers to be accessed by users located anywhere on a network. The technology will also support, for the first time, single and dual video sources with high resolutions up to 1920 x 1200. Avocent said its technology will enable video compression rates at approximately 10 times higher than any comparable product. The unique compression technique will enable users to see video that is identical to video coming directly from a remote computer via a TCP/IP network.

Avocent said its transparent extension of full USB 2.0 enables any USB device that is plugged into a user station to be mapped directly to a remote computer.

The technology will support all USB devices including CD drives, touch screens, digitizing tablets and PDAs, at full USB speeds and provide seamless connection of those devices to a computer that is located remotely from the user.

The company plans to introduce a new solution during the first half of 2007 that would initially be focused on specialized applications where keeping PCs in close proximately to users was impractical due to space, security or environmental restrictions, such as financial trading floors, call centers, or industrial locations. Longer term, the company indicated it was developing desktop over IP solutions for a broad base of users to enable true virtualization of any desktop.

"As a result of these advances and additional ones that we will be introducing in 2007, we will have the capability to deliver a truly innovative 'desktop over IP' solution," said John Curran, vice president of marketing for Avocent. "In the coming months we intend to commercialize these new technologies and offer them to end users through our existing channels as well as OEM relationships."

Posted by David Marshall on December 17, 2006 09:45 AM

December 17, 2006

Hyperic Delivers Open Source Management Solution for VMware

Hyperic Inc. is making available its virtualization management solution Hyperic HQ for VMware. According to the company, the solution will enable data centers to consolidate complete discovery, monitoring, analysis and control of all application, system and network assets, both inside and outside of the virtual machines powered by VMware.

A big industry concern right now is how to manage or monitor the data center environment once virtualization is added into the mix. Industry watchers like Andi Mann, EMA Senior Analyst for Systems Management explains, "Virtualization magnifies management complexity by consolidating physical servers into multiple virtualized ones, each physical and virtual server with their own OS, configuration, applications. This means that what used to be maybe ten unique server environments can now become hundreds very quickly. A holistic approach to the manageability of all the various IT assets from applications to systems to networks becomes essential."

Hyperic says that its HQ for VMware solution dramatically extends the capabilities to manage and analyze the full virtual stack, including the operating systems and applications running within the virtual machine, which also compliments VMware's own management solution, VirtualCenter.

"Hyperic's sophisticated architecture is built to streamline discovery and manageability of complex data center deployments with large multiples of physical servers and multi-tiered application environments," said Hyperic CEO Javier Soltero. "By layering our inventory model to include the virtualized resources, and tapping VMware's management interfaces, Hyperic is once again able to quickly extend our full cross-platform support to ensure managing virtual environments is equally easy and affordable to manage as traditional environments."

Hyperic's technology offers users the ability to have a single, open source solution that can be used to manage systems across the entire virtualized infrastructure, regardless of the combination of hardware and software they are using. The company's technology-neutral approach enables the discovery, monitoring, analysis and control of enterprise IT assets from the network and operating system layers to the application and service tier. Hyperic claims this is the last "piece of the puzzle" that IT departments need in order to effectively manage their virtualized enterprise as it extends to widespread, mission-critical deployments.

The complete Hyperic HQ for VMware product is available now to all data centers via open-source licensing and can be downloaded from the company's Web site. VMware supported versions include VMware GSX 3.x, Server 1.x, and ESX Server 2.x and 3.x.

Posted by David Marshall on December 17, 2006 09:05 AM

December 16, 2006

Solutions in the News Based on Xen and KVM

Two virtualization solutions that are based on the Xen technology, XenSource and Virtual Iron, are both going up against virtualization market leader VMware, but at the same time, these two products are competing with each other as well. And while Xen and other virtualization solutions are trying to make their way into the Linux kernel, it looks like KVM may have just slipped in under the radar screen. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 16, 2006 06:16 AM

December 14, 2006

VMware Appliances: Not Quite What Microsoft Expected

Remember the Microsoft Test Drive program that we talked about back in November? The one where you can try out some of Microsoft's software as a demo but instead of installing it on your own machine, you could download the entire thing - preinstalled - as a virtual appliance type package? It sounded very much like a VMware appliance then and may sound like one even more with the latest news. Those same "test drive" Microsoft virtual machines are now making their way over to the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

I know, you are asking yourself, "but aren't these images Microsoft virtual machine images?" The answer is, yes.

VMware's VMTN reports that "The files offered on Microsoft's site may be downloaded, extracted and opened with VMware virtualization products (no need to install MS Virtual Server). Conversion is automatic. Simply open the .VMC file and VMware Workstation, Server, or Player will perform the conversion for you."

I don't think this is quite what Microsoft had in mind when it created the Test Drive program, but evidently, VMTN is claiming that these demos are also quite handy as VMware Virtual Appliances. The new appliances showing up at the Appliance Marketplace are:

Posted by David Marshall on December 14, 2006 06:22 AM

December 13, 2006

SWsoft Partners With Acronis

SWsoft, a leading provider of automation and virtualization software, announced a partnership with Acronis to resell Acronis True Image Server for SWsoft Plesk 8.1 control panel software.

According to the company, the stand-alone solution will enable service providers to offer backup and recovery capabilities with dedicated hosting packages.

"This partnership supports our OPEN FUSION strategy to create a unified hosting ecosystem by advancing the integration of SWsoft products with a range of systems, applications and solutions," said Serguei Beloussov, chief executive officer, SWsoft. "This offering integrates two leading technologies - our Plesk control panel and the Acronis backup software - to deliver a powerful solution for hosting providers."

Two versions of the software will be available exclusively through SWsoft:

Acronis True Image Light - provides basic system protection and recovery of servers with minimal downtime.
Acronis True Image Pro - a comprehensive version that gives service providers more protection and functionality including remote backups, incremental backups, high compression capability, backup sharing across networks and more.

"By partnering with SWsoft, we will enable service providers to expand their rich product offerings based on our popular Acronis True Image Server technology, making it easier for them to protect business data in dedicated hosting environments," said Walter Scott, chief executive officer, Acronis. "This integration with Plesk enhances SWsoft's value proposition by providing its hosting partners with the ability to lease Acronis licenses."

Acronis True Image Server Light and Pro versions are available now from SWsoft. For more details, visit this Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on December 13, 2006 04:13 PM

December 12, 2006

Cassatt Introduces Collage 4.0

Cassatt Corporation announced the availability of Cassatt Collage 4.0. This new version includes new virtual machine and network virtualization control capabilities, helping organizations use automation to radically simplify data center management.

As part of this new release, the Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM) module of Cassatt Collage becomes the first product to simultaneously support the automated management of VMware ESX 3.0, Xen 3.0, and XenSource XenEnterprise 3.0 virtual machines. In addition, Cassatt Collage 4.0 uses its new Network Virtualization Service (NVS) to work with Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) environments to dynamically configure network switches so resources can be pooled and shared across networks.

With Collage 4.0, IT departments can now pool and control physical, virtual, application server, and network resources, a key enabler for enterprises to adopt a utility computing model. The new capabilities expand Collage's ability to assign a broad set of data center resources to meet desired service levels. Collage previously could automatically allocate and control application server instances (using the Cassatt Collage Web Automation Module) and virtual and physical machines.

"With these new capabilities, you could call Cassatt Collage the operating system for the enterprise data center," said said Bill Coleman, chairman and CEO of Cassatt Corp.

Collage 4.0 also introduces several additional features, including:

Enhanced node discovery. Allows Collage to manage a subset of nodes within a larger network without firewall setup while auto-discovering and auto-managing other nodes within the data center. This enhanced manual node discovery mode enables Collage to be non-disruptive when automating data center management.
Support for settling resource contention issues. Collage can dynamically allocate services to available "free pool" node capacity based on a combination of service priority and other service level measures. As with previous versions, Collage uses node allocation and "harvesting" to ensure that the highest priority application services are always available in periods of high demand.

Cassatt Collage 4.0 and the new release of the Cassatt Collage Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM) are scheduled to be generally available and shipping Dec. 29, 2006.

Posted by David Marshall on December 12, 2006 08:09 PM

December 12, 2006

VMworld 2006 - What's the Next Best Thing to Being There?

VMworld 2006 was, by all accounts, a huge success. And with over 7000 virtualization fans flooding the Los Angeles Convention Center on November 7-9, how could it be anything but a huge success. In spite of the strong numbers in attendance, it just wasn't in the cards for the entire virtualization army to make the journey. For those of you that couldn't make the trip, relax! VMware is offering up the next best thing to being there.

The VMware Technology Network (VMTN) has posted a number of general sessions, technical sessions and lab sessions for your viewing pleasure. The selections highlight the breadth and depth of the technical sessions presented at the event and offer webcasts, podcasts, presentation material, lab manuals and sample scripts.

Example sessions include:

ADC0134: Scaling Virtual Infrastructure: Planning for Growth, High Availability, and Rapid Provisioning
ADC0135: Choosing and Architecting Storage for Your Environment
ADC4439: Large, High Density VMware ESX Server Platforms
BCT0107: VMware ESX Server as a Foundation for High Availability and Disaster Recovery for the Microsoft Server Platform
BCT4539: VMware Consolidated Backup Technology: Today and Future
BCT9552: VMware Infrastructure 3 Capabilities for Improving Disaster Recovery
DVT0075: Managing the Virtualized Enterprise
DVT4696: VMware Server Tips & Tricks
DVT9699: VMware Server Snapshot Portability Using the Open Virtual Machine Disk Format Specification
MDC9694: Troubleshooting VMware ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2
MED4116: VDI: A New Strategy for Managing User Environments
and more...

VMware also includes a number of lab sessions as well that covered such topics as VMware Consolidated Backup, VDI, Performance Troubleshooting, Securing and Monitoring VI3, Programming and more.

Whether you made it to VMworld 2006 or not, I invite you to check out these presentations. You can find the complete list, here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 12, 2006 07:22 PM

December 11, 2006

XenSource Introduces XenServer Family of Products

XenSource, Inc. announced today a comprehensive family of server virtualization products supported and maintained by the company leading the evolution of Xen.

In addition to the already announced XenEnterprise solution (which the company describes as the market's first enterprise-grade commercially-packaged Xen virtualization solution supporting both Microsoft Windows and Linux guests), new additions to the family include XenServer, for Windows standard server environments, and XenExpress, a free production-ready product which enables anyone to quickly get started with Xen virtualization.

All three products are available now, and they each share the same architecture, delivering bare-metal performance and facilitating easy migration and upgrades.

XenEnterprise - (Pricing starts at $488 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $750 perpetual license per dual socket server) - Designed for the heterogeneous environment of enterprises, XenEnterprise delivers the performance, open source innovation, unified architecture and broad hardware support of the Xen hypervisor for x86 server virtualization of multiple operating systems, including Windows and Linux. XenEnterprise emphasizes ease of use, and simple deployment of the Xen hypervisor and guest virtual servers. It also provides the ability to install and manage multiple guests on the same server, with no imposed limit to concurrent virtual machines; network storage support; and resource controls for CPU, memory, net and disk. XenEnterprise offers integrated support for Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters from Emulex and QLogic. XenEnterprise will include additional features such as live migration, 64-bit support, high availability/failover and concurrent shared storage support in the first half of 2007.
XenServer - (Pricing is $99 for an annual subscription for a dual socket license) - Designed for Windows standard server environments, XenServer gives IT professionals a high performance, easy to use virtualization platform for Windows now. The platform runs Windows virtual machines on bare metal x86 systems with Intel VT or AMD-V hardware virtualization assist. Key features include Windows compatible guests, up to eight concurrent virtual machines, multi-host management console, network storage support and resource controls for CPU, memory, networking and disk I/O.
XenExpress - (Pricing is free) - Ideal for developers and technology enthusiasts, XenExpress is a free, production-ready product which enables anyone to quickly get started with Xen virtualization. XenExpress offers all of the performance and features of XenEnterprise, while enabling users to manage one server at a time. XenExpress can be freely downloaded today from the XenSource website and includes a license for a single server and four concurrent virtual machines. XenExpress supports both Windows and Linux guests. Additionally, because of the common, unified architecture, XenExpress can be easily upgraded to XenServer or XenEnterprise with a simple license key.

Posted by David Marshall on December 11, 2006 07:44 PM

December 11, 2006

So What's New With Virtual Iron 3.1?

Today, Virtual Iron Software announced the release of version 3.1 of its enterprise-class virtualization platform with full support for much anticipated unmodified Windows and Linux.

The company also announced the immediate availability of free, production-ready offerings of the software via download. Users can choose from two different free offerings of the product:

Free Single-Server Virtualization and Management - Free perpetual license for up to 4 sockets and unlimited cores. Users can consolidate Linux and Windows virtual servers, run 32 or 64-bit workloads up to 8 CPUs each, create and deploy virtual appliances, and quickly and easily template and clone virtual servers.
Free Multi-Server Virtual Infrastructure Management - Free 30-day evaluation license. Users get all of the capabilities of the single-server offering above plus all of Virtual Iron's advanced virtualization management and policy-based automation capabilities for use in an unlimited multi-server environment.

So what are the new features in version 3.1?

Full support for new quad-core Intel Xen processor 5300 series with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT)
Full support for AMD hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V)
Support for Windows and 32- and 64-bit Linux
Up to 80 virtual servers per physical server
Virtual disk files to improve storage efficiency and flexibility
Support for industry standard virtual hard disk file format
Advanced templating and cloning of virtual servers
Local hard disk support
Integrated virtual server import/export
Large memory (up to 96GB of RAM) support and support for hundreds of virtual servers on a single machine

The release offers a commercial alternative to VMware and targets mainstream user adoption for both enterprise and small to medium business users. With a price point of $499 per socket on a perpetual license basis, the company hopes to establish a clear price/value leadership position in the market.

"The cost of server virtualization should not exceed the price of an industry-standard server," said John C. Thibault, President and CEO at Virtual Iron. "We will drive broad adoption with an aggressively-priced solution that does not sacrifice the capabilities, performance and reliability required to deploy enterprise applications. Version 3.1 provides an enterprise-ready solution that enables the full benefits of server virtualization at a fraction of the cost. Virtual Iron is also the first and only company to fulfill the market promise of the open source hypervisor project."

Posted by David Marshall on December 11, 2006 07:17 PM

December 11, 2006

Is the P2V Market too Crowded?

In the last Podcast, we talked about the need for management and broad control in the virtualization market. This time, we look at another common question, how do I handle the migration of images from either physical to virtual or virtual to virtual? There are a number of software manufacturers out there looking to earn your business, but my question is, is the image conversion market big enough for all of these players? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 11, 2006 07:05 PM

December 10, 2006

When Virtual Appliances Turn to the Dark Side

Before going RTM or GA with Microsoft Vista, Microsoft wanted to overhaul the operating system's copy protection schema to try and fight back in the OS piracy battle that it has found itself in time and time again.

Unfortunately for the business community, this meant doing away with activation free Volume License Keys which certainly made deploying Microsoft operating system servers in an organization a lot easier for IT staff. Instead to try and curb piracy, Microsoft opted to change this business class licensing to a new program, Volume Activation 2.0 which comes complete with a license key management service (KMS). A KMS server within your organization would then be used to activate all of your Vista clients, that way, the client machines don't have to keep connecting back to Microsoft. Using KMS, a client machine in an organization would have to keep checking in with the KMS server every 180 days, again, as a form of piracy check.

Oddly enough, the KMS feature wasn't supposed to be scheduled for release until some time next year. To Microsoft's dismay, it seems as though those individuals or groups of people who crack or pirate software always seem to be just one step behind in the process. It seems as though they have already figured out a clever way to circumvent the copy protection using this yet to be released feature.

The idea is to use what we in the virtual community have come to adopt as the virtual appliance. By downloading a VMware virtual machine image and then using the free VMware Player to run it, a user can then execute the scripts on that virtual machine to act as a KMS server to offer client machines the activation rights needed from within the local environment rather than having to contact Microsoft directly.

This standalone KMS server called "Windows Vista Local Activation Server - MelindaGates" may very well be the first documented case of a virtual appliance gone bad.

Posted by David Marshall on December 10, 2006 06:22 AM

December 09, 2006

Parallels Updates, but what about Apple?

Parallels continues to impress with its fast paced development efforts as it prepares to bring to market yet another update to its Parallels Desktop for Mac software.

A beta release of the updated product is already in the hands of beta testers and is labeled as Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036. The beta product comes just as the MacWorld Conference and Expo is about to take over the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 8, 2007.

The beta release offers a completely redesigned interface for windows and dialogues making them more user-friendly, easier to manage and hopefully more appealing to the Mac audience. In addition to the new look and feel of the product, Parallels has also packed in a whole bunch of new features and enhancements to the product.

Perhaps one of the more interesting features added is the connection between Parallels and Apple's Boot Camp. One of the drawbacks to Apple's implementation of Boot Camp was the fact that the user had to reboot the machine each time they wanted to boot from one environment to the next. Now, Parallels will allow a pre-installed Apple Boot Camp partition with Windows XP installed to be used as a virtual HDD for Parallels Desktop for Mac. Users can now boot from their 32-bit Windows XP Boot Camp partition directly from within Parallels.

Another long awaited addition to the product is the seamless integration that Parallels will offer between the Mac OS and Windows. A new feature called "Coherence" shows Windows applications as if they were running natively on the Mac. Finally, no more switching between the Windows and Mac OS. True drag and drop functionality has also been added. It allows the user to seamlessly drag and drop files and folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa. Parallels windows can now be resized just like any other Mac application window. And the windows will auto-adjust its screen resolution to the actual main window size.

The virtual machine catalog is also being added to the product. Now, all of your virtual machines can be made available through a centralized VM catalog which appears on each Parallels Desktop for Mac instance.

Networking has also been enhanced. Networking modes can be switched between, on-the-fly, while the virtual machine is running. And now, each virtual machine can have up to five virtual network interfaces. Shared networking mode has also been enhanced as users will also be allowed to run Cisco VPN and many other complex networking applications in conjunction with Connection Sharing Mode.

Parallels is also working on adding in a new feature called the "Transporter Beta bundle" which will help users migrate a Windows PC or an existing VMware or Virtual PC virtual machine to a Parallels virtual machine. It will be Parallels version of the P2V or V2V solution.

In addition to these features, the product also offers a number of other additions or enhancements such as a transparent mapping of the command-AZXCV key combinations for Mac copy/paste in Windows, shared folders on the fly to add/remove/configure shared folders on the fly via menu Status Bar icon without shutting down the virtual machine, drag and drop CD/FDD images and folders to the Parallels Desktop statusbar, improved graphics performance and new animated Power On/Power Off/Suspend/Resume/Pause functions.

So where does Apple and Leopard fit in to all of this? It has been reported that Apple executives have stated that the company has no plans to incorporate virtualization technology into the final version of its Boot Camp software that ships with Leopard next spring. Bear Stearns analyst Andy Neff wrote in a research note to clients this week, "Apple indicated that it is very pleased with Parallels software and didn't feel the need to compete with its own version of embedded virtualization."

I suppose only time will tell what Apple will or will not do with their next release, however it is safe to say that Parallels isn't slowing down or taking its time coming out with feature enhancements.

You can read more or download the latest Parallels beta product by visiting the following Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on December 9, 2006 07:51 PM

December 09, 2006

PlateSpin Offers Awards to its Resellers

PlateSpin Ltd. announced the winners of its annual reseller awards which recognize the outstanding contributions of PlateSpin's global reseller network. Awards were handed out at PlateSpin's annual partner appreciation event that took place just prior to the start of VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles.

PlateSpin's founder and CEO, Stephen Pollack, presented the awards. Awards were given to partners in the following categories:

Global Reseller of the Year went to Strickland Consulting, Inc.
Reseller of the Year APAC went to Technical Architecture Solutions Pty Ltd
Reseller of the Year EMEA was awarded to Computacenter
Reseller of the Year NA won by Expert Server Group
Global Distributor of the Year went to CDG Europe
And Market Driver of the Year was awarded to Foedus Group

"Our channel partners continue to make significant contributions to PlateSpin's success," said Pollack. "In 2006, we strategically expanded our channel, adding 111 new authorized resellers around the world and opening six new global training centers. We now have over 225 resellers and distributors on five continents. Revenues from channel sales tripled year over year and channel sales accounted for approximately 75% of total revenues. Going forward, our focus is on quality not quantity. We are committed to strengthening our existing partner relationships and continuing to maintain conservative channel growth so our partners can capitalize on the market opportunity."

The annual reseller awards are based primarily on sales, but they also recognize the winners' loyalty, customer focus, quality of business relationship and extensive knowledge of PlateSpin's products. PlateSpin provides comprehensive training, testing and accreditation for PlateSpin partners to certify them as experts in the deployment and use of PlateSpin solutions for continuous server consolidation and now physical-to-virtual (P2V) recovery. Hundreds of IT professionals have already benefited from authorized training in PlateSpin's eight global training centers located in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

Posted by David Marshall on December 9, 2006 03:21 PM

December 08, 2006

Virtualization Spawns Need for Management Software

As virtualization continues to advance into the data center and increasingly play a more important role within production environments, one of the growing needs that has come out of this virtualization adoption is the need for some type of broad control and management to help keep this virtualization explosion under wraps. The management problem becomes even more complicated when you need to manage both, virtual and physical servers from a common interface, or when you need to manage a heterogeneous virtual server farm. Let's take a brief look at what's out there. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 8, 2006 06:18 PM

December 06, 2006

ThinPrint Virtualizes Printers

ThinPrint, an international software manufacturer that is a specialist for printing in distributed network architectures, now offers a print solution for VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3).

The .print Virtual Desktop Engine, with its well proven Driver Free Printing technology, virtualizes printer drivers which creates total independence from hardware, operating system, application, and physical location for printing.

ThinPrint's solution:

Eliminates the need for installation of native printer drivers on the virtual machines
Compresses print data to down to 1% of its original size
And makes it possible to use mixed 64 and 32-bit environments

According to the company, many companies today focus on virtualized environments. The independence from hardware, operating system, and application that virtualization creates helps businesses achieve high savings and consolidation potential. Trouble is, though, that printing puts an end to the freedom of a virtualized environment. As always, the applications are directly connected to the printer hardware by the relevant printer drivers, and the operating system is predefined, as well, because 32-bit printer drivers cannot be used in 64-bit environments or vice versa. The remedy is ThinPrint's .print Virtual Desktop Engine. Its Driver Free Printing technology disengages the inflexible connection between application and printer driver and even makes it possible to use mixed 32-and 64-bit environments. Thanks to compression of up to 99%, the distance and/or connection between application and printer hardware is almost limitless. That means complete virtualization of print management regarding hardware, operating system, application, and physical location.

Posted by David Marshall on December 6, 2006 05:44 PM

December 06, 2006

Are Server Consolidation Benefits Overstated?

In a recent InfoWorld Virtualization Report Podcast, I raised the issue about virtualization's maturity being questioned by various groups and companies. Now, a recent research report from Info-Tech Research Group is claiming that while consolidation of servers in data centers through virtualization has clear benefits, the benefits are being overstated by vendors that are promoting consolidation technologies to customers.

"In their pitches to customers, vendors tend to exaggerate the number of servers that can actually be consolidated which can be misleading for enterprises looking to invest in this technology," said Matt Brudzynski, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. "Vendors are quoting high consolidation ratios of 12 or more virtual machines per processor, while in reality only about half that, six virtual machines per processor is the common average at this time."

Brudzynski goes on to say, "The high consolidation rates touted by vendors aren't actually happening because customers need to leave adequate capacity on existing host servers for load-balancing, emergency back-up, and ensuring adequate data throughput to disk storage.

"The industry is moving closer to the target of higher consolidation with introduction of quad-core processors that are at the early stages of deployment in the marketplace," said Brudzynski. "These processors provide greater throughput to disk storage and will help vendors more effectively deliver on consolidation promises."

Info-Tech advises that prior to implementing virtualization, IT managers should do a thorough analysis of server utilization data over the past year, as well as workload forecasting and future performance modeling to ensure the right technology choices are made to achieve desired consolidation.

Posted by David Marshall on December 6, 2006 04:40 PM

December 05, 2006

United Devices Unveils Data Center Virtualization

United Devices (UD) officially entered the mainstream virtualization market by announcing general availability of solutions focused on virtualizing mission-critical business applications for enterprise data centers and outsourced IT service providers.

UD's data center virtualization solution, Data Center One, enables automatic provisioning of business applications across a shared pool of physical and virtual IT assets within an enterprise data center. Initial implementations have demonstrated lower total cost of ownership (TCO), improved productivity and responsiveness, and reliable service level agreement (SLA)-driven performance.

The company's managed services solution, Service One, uses the same core technology to enable IT service providers to offer cost-effective application delivery services to multiple customers. Service One provides automated, SLA-driven provisioning of applications across pools of heterogeneous IT assets that may span data centers, business units and companies with no restrictions based on location or ownership of assets.

"These solutions represent two years of intense product development funded by United Devices, our customers and our business partners," said Ben Rouse, chief executive officer. "The new capabilities are built on UD's proven technology that powers the industry's largest production grid implementations. As a result of our customer collaborations and documented success in driving data center efficiencies, we are in a unique position today to unveil Data Center One and Service One to the market at large."

Both the data center and managed services solutions take an application-centric approach to virtualization, where the needs of the application are paramount and infrastructure is managed as a shared pool of capacity. Each solution includes an analytics component to help IT organizations capture information about applications and associated infrastructure, including real-time capacity and utilization data.

Data Center One applies UD's award-winning grid technology to automatically provision applications on bare metal, manage virtual machines and third-party provisioning tools, and to deploy and manage large-scale enterprise software implementations such as SAP, Siebel or Oracle. This solution enables companies to achieve an agile infrastructure that lets businesses respond more quickly to changing needs with minimized manual intervention and shorter lead times to get new resources up and running.

In fact, UD's data center technology has been shown to reduce infrastructure costs related to SAP by 35%, as announced in a recently published white paper, "Grid-Enabled SAP: Solution Blueprint and ROI Analysis."

Service One leverages UD's core technologies to serve outsourcing companies, allowing applications to be automatically provisioned to multiple clients over a much broader set of assets and networks. Service One combines proven grid capabilities with application portals and services, a custom application performance management engine, and a set of professional services to help companies build and market their own offerings.

"The ultimate destination for IT services outsourcers and large data centers alike lies in automatically provisioning resources and networks according to the demands of the applications being run on them," said UD Chief Technology Officer Jikku Venkat. "That is where customers can expect to see a great leap in productivity and efficiency, and that is the arena in which United Devices alone is offering a proven set of application-focused solutions."

United Devices said that in addition to Data Center One and Service One, it will continue to provide its market-leading High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions and its Internet Grid offerings that let companies develop and build large-scale, geographically distributed grids of non-dedicated devices.

Posted by David Marshall on December 5, 2006 04:21 PM

December 04, 2006

Sentillion Announces the Release of vThere 2.0

Back in October, I wrote about a partnership that formed between Sentillion and Parallels where the Parallels Workstation product would replace VMware's Player as the virtualization engine powering the vThere product.

Today, Sentillion vBusiness, a division of Sentillion, Inc., announced the general availability of vThere 2.0, the company's packaged virtualized desktop solution.

vThere leverages virtualization technology to provide remote users with the same operating system and corporate application experience as if physically located in the enterprise, while still having the full benefit of the corporate security infrastructure. This latest version of vThere features functionality designed to improve the end-user experience and the provisioning and distribution of vThere images.

"During the earliest development stages of vThere, we made a commitment to reduce the deployment costs, required expertise and performance challenges associated with current desktop virtualization alternatives," said David Fusari, vice president & CTO, Sentillion vBusiness. "The technological and design enhancements in vThere 2.0 are reflective of this commitment to provide a simple, seamless and secure solution for both end users and IT professionals."

Launched in June 2006, vThere allows businesses to easily provision and deploy desktop virtualization technology to a large number of users. Generally hosted on unmanaged computers, such as a remote user's home computer or an employee-owned laptop, the packaged environments, called vThere images, create a self-contained, safe and secure corporate computing environment visible on the network domain. This environment, which eliminates the need for server farms, leverages the host hardware, but is otherwise completely isolated from the host, making vThere an extremely effective tool for enterprise desktop management.

"With the rise of unmanaged and employee-owned machines accessing the corporate network, vThere's security posture and policy management capabilities simultaneously address the IT challenges associated with deploying and managing remote access and desktop management solutions," said Paul Roscoe, president, Sentillion vBusiness. "Through vThere, IT organizations are now able to standardize and centrally manage the corporate desktop and provide remote access without compromising the security of the enterprise or the end user's experience when interacting with applications."

New features in vThere 2.0 include:

Seamless integration of Parallels Workstation for Windows - The tight integration between vThere and Parallels-the underlying virtual engine technology-provides the end user with a seamless solution that simplifies the installation and ongoing use of vThere.
Enhanced Image Compression - Improved vThere image compression to provide rapid download of vThere images allows for even faster rollout of the technology to large numbers of remote workers, including teleworkers, branch office employees, contractors, business partners or temporarily displaced employees who require immediate access to corporate applications and data for optimal productivity and business continuity.
A securely-hosted Web site for image distribution - Through www.vThere.net, organizations can quickly provision vThere images to remote users. Users can download and access their vThere images through a simple one-click process.
Centralized Activation Management - Activations of vThere images can be managed centrally, allowing for license management control, de-provisioning of images and management reporting.
Image Revocation services - vThere images can be automatically revoked from the end-user computing device according to system administrator policies for employee termination or as needed.
Centralized Policy Management - Improved capabilities for managing security privileges and access policies associated with vThere images, such as file sharing and local USB port access.
Location specific computing - vThere will detect whether the image is being accessed remotely or on the enterprise network and manage the network access automatically.

vThere 2.0 is now available and the pricing for the solution is $125 per user. And the vThere image creator toolkit is $795 per administrator workstation.

Posted by David Marshall on December 4, 2006 04:14 PM

December 04, 2006

Virtualization's Maturity Questioned

The maturity of virtualization has been questioned time and again by different groups and companies. In my opinion, virtualization has come a long way in the last seven years. On one hand, Gartner has attributed physical server sales slowdown to the wide adoption of server virtualization. On the other hand, Microsoft might be giving a different impression when questioned about its Microsoft Windows Vista Home product. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on December 4, 2006 03:55 PM

December 03, 2006

An Application Virtualization Overview

Confused about application virtualization? You aren't alone. Application virtualization is an extremely hot topic right now, but it doesn't usually get as much attention or exposure as the server virtualization camps such as VMware, Microsoft, and Xen.

Ruben Spruijt recently wrote an article in the Dutch Lanvision magazine discussing this very subject - application virtualization. In the article, he attempts to compare Microsoft SoftGrid, Altiris SVS and Citrix Streaming Server.

In it, he writes:

What is Application Virtualisation? By using application virtualisation, you can use Windows applications without having to change anything in the local operating system, let alone install application software at the workstation. In other words: the application is executed, stores data and prints as if it has been installed locally, without having to modify the local client. Sources such as the CPU, memory, hard disks, and network cards are used for the execution of the application.
Why application virtualisation?

Applications will no longer have to be installed on the clients

Conflicts between applications are a thing of the past

It eliminates the need for regression testing

It is possible to use different versions of applications simultaneously

Support for Web, Client-Server and Server Based Computing applications

Consolidation of Terminal Servers, more different applications possible

Fast roll-out and upgrade of applications

Each application virtualisation solution will try to realise what has been mentioned above in a different way. To be able to choose the right solution it is necessary to have an in-depth knowledge of it.

There are three developers of serious application virtualisation software that are already supplying this software or will be supplying it in the near future:

Citrix Streaming Server (a.k.a. project Tarpon)

Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)

Microsoft Softricity (SoftGrid and ZeroTouch)

For each solution, the article will clearly explain:

The essence of the solution

Applicability

Architecture

Strong and weak points

Licensing

If you are seriously interested in application virtualization, I recommend you check out the entire article.

You can read the entire article, here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 3, 2006 05:46 PM

December 03, 2006

Hitachi Jumps Into Virtualization Game

For quite some time now, the industry has been promising the idea of data center consolidation through the use of blade server technology. Hitachi believes that it has just the solution.

The solution being offered by Hitachi is their BladeSymphony technology with Virtage. The new product includes Virtage which Hitachi is calling a breakthrough embedded virtualization feature that builds virtualization right into a blade server's hardware for the first time. The company claims it will provide customers an alternative to third-party software solutions and thus enable them to decrease overhead costs while still increasing manageability and performance.

BladeSymphony with Virtage also includes blade symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) interconnect technology which improves scalability by enabling users to configure multiple blades so that they work as a single system. It is designed with a 10U chassis that supports hot-swappable blades that are capable of running both Windows and Linux operating systems.

Built on standards-based multi-core Intel processors with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), the product allows users to combine, scale, and virtualize BladeSymphony blades on Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9000 Series processors. It can also support BladeSymphony blades based on Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors within the same chassis.

IDC group's VP and GM of Enterprise Computing, Vernon Turner, said "BladeSymphony with Virtage is a leap ahead in the virtualization game. This technology will further fuel the significant growth of the blade market, as IDC has projected. Embedded virtualization, coupled with BladeSymphony's mix-and-match capabilities that allow users to work with Intel Xeon processor and Itanium processor-powered blades in the same chassis, will give end-users an expanded variety of options as they design their enterprise-class environment."

The product was introduced in Japan back in August 2006 and was first demonstrated in North America last September at the Intel Developer's Forum. BladeSymphony with Virtage will be generally available in North America around January 2007.

Posted by David Marshall on December 3, 2006 08:44 AM