Virtualization Report | David Marshall | January 2007

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January 2007

January 31, 2007

There are two companies making news this week in the virtualization space talking about making updates to their partner relationships. HP said it is broadening its distribution efforts by making the HP Care Pack Service newly available through select HP channel partners. And long time P2V solution provider PlateSpin recently announced a new Global Channel Partner Program. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 31, 2007 07:13 PM

January 31, 2007

VMware isn't the only New Converter Tool in Town

VMware's recent announcement about the release of VMware Converter 3.0 seemed to get most of the industry's attention. But it wasn't the only virtualization converter tool to hit the streets.

Overshadowed by the virtualization giant, Invirtus, better known for their virtual machine optimization software, quietly made available their first release of Invirtus Enterprise VM Converter - a physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to virtual (V2V) conversion tool.

Entering an already crowded market space, the company is promoting their software as a cost-effective, simple yet powerful conversion tool. According to the company, Enterprise VM Converter does not require any software to be installed on the machine being converted and there are never any reboots.

The product offers the following features:

Manual Conversions: allows users to convert one server at a time
Automated Multiple Conversions: allows users to simultaneously manage unattended multiple conversions of hundreds of servers.
Advance scheduling (can be timed in advance for lowest server workload and to minimize network bandwidth requirements)
Mixed environment (vhd/vmdk file types supported)
No reboot required
Easy to use, no training required.

The product is designed to convert physical and or virtual machines to the following formats:

VMware ESX Server 2.x/3.x
VMware Workstation
VMware GSX Server/Server
VMware ACE
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004/2007
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005/R2
Virtual Iron

Find out more about the product, here. And you can even watch a demo of the product, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 31, 2007 04:49 PM

January 31, 2007

Virtual Iron Certifies DataCore's SANmelody

Virtual Iron has announced that they have now certified DataCore's virtual storage solution, SANmelody, for use with Virtual Iron's server virtualization software.

The combined offering delivers an enterprise-class server virtualization and storage virtualization solution to the mainstream market at a very attractive and affordable price. Virtual Iron prides itself on its very competitive pricing, and yet still seems to be able to offer enterprise-class server virtualization solutions to meet the demands of server consolidation, development and test, business continuity and dynamic capacity management. At the same time, DataCore meets similar needs by virtualizing storage at a reasonable price as it converts PC servers into cost-effective disk servers and virtual SANs.

"SANmelody allows customers to build cost-effective and flexible storage networks delivering the highest levels of data protection using standard servers and networks," said George Teixeira, President and CEO, DataCore Software. "Together, Virtual Iron and DataCore are dramatically changing the economics of virtualization and delivering enterprise-class capabilities and ROI to the mainstream market."

"Networked storage unlocks the power of virtualization by allowing virtual servers to freely migrate to any server in the data center," said John C. Thibault, President and CEO, Virtual Iron Software. "However, to date, the price of existing networked storage has excluded much of the market from these benefits. DataCore SANmelody and Virtual Iron together deliver advanced capabilities at a fraction of the cost, enabling enterprise-class virtualization for the mainstream market."

Posted by David Marshall on January 31, 2007 04:26 PM

January 29, 2007

VMware Making P2V Easier With VMware Converter 3

Virtualization software giant VMware Inc. announced the release of its VMware Converter 3 migration tool that has been receiving high marks during its beta period.

VMware Converter 3 automates the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) conversion process for creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines, other virtual machine formats or third-party image formats.

The product is offered in two versions. The VMware Converter Starter Edition is VMware's free version of the product and enables one conversion at a time. The VMware Converter Enterprise edition on the other hand enables multiple concurrent conversions and is available at no additional cost to VMware customers who have current support and subscription contracts for VMware VirtualCenter.

VMware claims that experienced virtualization customers and those who are new to the technology alike can implement virtualization quickly using the intuitive wizard-driven interface of VMware Converter. The product helps automate many of the manual steps that were previously required to convert a physical machine to a virtual machine.

VMware Converter's central management console enables customers to easily manage thousands of conversions and benefit from:

Faster IT infrastructure virtualization. VMware Converter accelerates the process of transitioning to virtualized infrastructure by enabling fast, reliable and non-disruptive P2V and V2V conversions with its use of sector-based snapshot copying, or "hot cloning." VMware Converter takes a snapshot of the source machine before migrating the data, allowing users to transfer physical servers to virtual machines without shutting them down and eliminating the server downtime and reboots associated with traditional "cold" cloning migration tools. This results in fewer failed conversions and zero downtime on the source server compared to traditional file-level copying.
Automation and ease of use. VMware Converter's central management console enables easy management and scheduling of multiple P2V or V2V conversions. Using its simple wizards, IT administrators can convert a physical machine into a virtual one in just a few steps, and remote cloning enables them to clone machines remotely rather than converting each one manually.
Scalability. Converting servers manually one at a time is time consuming and labor intensive. VMware Converter provides a centralized management interface to enable remote concurrent conversion of many physical servers or virtual machines simultaneously for virtualization projects of varying sizes.
Broad hardware and software support. VMware Converter provides broad hardware and OS support including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (including 64-bit versions of these), as well as Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4 SP4+.

VMware Converter Starter Edition is available free of charge and can be downloaded, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 29, 2007 07:51 PM

January 29, 2007

Virtualization Market Growing - What's in the Future?

The virtualization market definitely grew this past year as sales grew to record numbers. Don't believe me? Ask SWsoft and VMware. Both companies recently announced just how successful 2006 had been to them. So how does the market look for 2007? We'll find out what analyst firm IDC thinks. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 29, 2007 04:43 AM

January 28, 2007

Microsoft Launches New Virtual Labs

Microsoft's TechNet Virtual Labs has added a few new virtual labs for your training pleasure. These labs allow you to quickly evaluate and test Microsoft's newest server products through a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less.

Writing Scripts with Windows Powershell (Virtual Labcast) - Typing commands at the Windows PowerShell command prompt is fine, but sooner or later you'll want to (or need to) take the next step: writing scripts in Windows PowerShell. In this TechNet Labcast the Scripting Guys walk you through the process of creating a Windows PowerShell script, along the way filling you in on the mysteries of the For Each loop and the allure of using the .NET Framework. They'll even show you how to do things like create and populate an array or clear the command window.

The Labcast is a blend of Virtual Lab and video demonstration packaged into a single guided-walkthrough and hands-on learning environment. You'll watch and listen to the video walkthrough of the presenter demonstrating different tasks, then switch to the Virtual Lab where you can try it out hands-on. The best part is, you can pause and re-play and switch between the tabbed lab and video environments at any time.

Windows Vista Virtual Labs - New Windows Vista Virtual Labs are here! In these labs you'll learn to deploy operating system images using Windows Deployment Services, configure User Account Control for standard and administrative users via group policy, and more.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Virtual Labs - New Exchange Server 2007 Virtual Labs are here! These labs will walk you through the basics of administration in Exchange Server 2007, new features in Outlook Web Access 2007, enforcing compliance and retention policies in Exchange Server 2007, and more.

2007 Microsoft Office System Virtual Labs - In these labs, you'll experiment with the new user interface improvements in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 including enhanced views and menus that simplify navigation within and among SharePoint sites. Integration with familiar productivity tools, including programs in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, makes it easy for you to get up to speed quickly.

Posted by David Marshall on January 28, 2007 03:26 PM

January 28, 2007

Need Help Calculating Windows Licensing Costs in Your Virtual Environment?

Trying to calculate Windows operating system licensing costs doesn't have to be a challenging chore any longer. Check out the new Windows Server Virtualization Calculator. It helps you estimate the number of Microsoft operating system licenses that you need, as well as the costs, to virtualize your data center configurations.

The Windows Server Virtualization Calculator provides two ways to estimate the number and cost of Windows Server Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition licenses needed for your virtualization scenarios to help you determine the most cost-effective edition of Windows Server.

The first option allows you to enter the number of servers by processor (socket, not core) count with the average number of virtualized instances of Windows Server that will run on each server.

The second option allows you to enter the processor (socket, not core) count and number of virtualized instances of Windows Server for each individual server.

The calculator is pre-populated with the US dollar estimated retail prices for Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition, but these can be updated with your organization's own prices for a more accurate estimate.

Try the calculator for yourself, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 28, 2007 02:16 PM

January 27, 2007

VMware Creates a Community-Supported Hardware and Software List

One of the limitations of the VMware ESX Server product that competitors always point the finger at is VMware's limited list of supported hardware and software. The competition claims that VMware's need for a hardware compatibility list (HCL) puts VMware at a disadvantage since the competitor products can be installed on top of most hardware without the need for special drivers. Of course, this "problem" hasn't taken the wind out of VMware's sails (or sales) yet!

Customers of VMware have quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) complained about this limitation before, especially when it comes to non-production activities such as testing. As an example, consumers want to install and operate ESX Server on non-SCSI disks (such as using cheaper SATA drives) to make the server cheaper for development and testing scenarios.

Well, VMware has made a slight course alteration. It now offers a "Community Supported Hardware/Software for VMware Infrastructure" list. This list of hardware and software components has been reported to work with VI3, either by the community or by the individual vendors themselves. VMware doesn't edit or endorse the list nor does it accept any liability for claims made by third parties.

The official VMware support policy has also been adapted for this new change. Unless explicitly supported in VMware's Compatibility Guides, third party hardware and software will be treated as follows:

VMware Global Support Services (GSS) will assist customers in problem analysis to determine whether or not the technical issue is related to the 3rd party hardware or software. In order to isolate the Error, we reserve the right to request that the 3rd party hardware or software be removed. This will only be done where we have reason to believe the issue is related to the 3rd party hardware or software.
If VMware GSS cannot directly identify the root cause or it is reasonably suspected that the problem is related to the 3rd party hardware or software, we will direct the customer to open a support request with the 3rd party vendor's support organization.

The list is growing and components are easily identified as being reported by either the community or the vendor and it also offers a community rating system.

You can check out the listing or find out more information, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 01:23 PM

January 27, 2007

Unisys Launches Two Solutions to Power Real-Time Infrastructure

Unisys Corporation announced two new solutions for enterprise computing that enable clients to align business and IT more closely and reduce IT management costs. These solutions are a significant component in the Unisys vision for a Real-Time Infrastructure - a complete business life-cycle management capability that enables the monitoring and management of IT activities, in real-time, based on business requirements.

The new Unisys Enterprise Virtualization and Enterprise Orchestration solutions create a flexible, Real-Time Infrastructure that enables enterprises to manage increasingly complex IT environments more efficiently, enhancing the quality of services provided and driving down operational costs. The new solutions feature business-driven resource automation capabilities, infrastructure discovery and implementation tools, and resource utilization software for enhanced cost allocation.

Enterprise Virtualization:

Virtualization is a key technology driver for Unisys RTI solutions. The Unisys Enterprise Virtualization solution leverages Unisys advanced technologies to enhance industry-standard virtualization offerings, such as VMware.

The Unisys solution delivers knowledge-based virtualization of existing IT infrastructures and rules-driven resource management for an optimized transformation in line with key business objectives. In addition, Unisys high-socket-count scale-up enterprise servers provide exceptional utilization and management capabilities to reduce the cost of both the transformation and ongoing operations.

The Unisys Enterprise Virtualization solution allows clients to quickly and securely implement a virtualized infrastructure and minimize server sprawl by taking advantage of optimization for the Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Server. The process is driven using Unisys IT Modeler, a Web-based application implementing the Unisys 3D Visible Enterprise (3D-VE) approach. Unisys IT Modeler enables enterprises to discover, categorize and store infrastructure assets and link them with related business assets.

Two new technologies give the Unisys Enterprise Virtualization solution a distinct advantage. Unisys Real-Time Consolidation Accelerator provides secure, anywhere-to-anywhere automated conversions of applications and operating systems between physical servers, virtual machines, and image archives. Unisys Real-Time Chargeback provides visibility and insight into the IT costs associated with business processes across heterogeneous environments, both virtualized and non-virtualized.

The Enterprise Virtualization solution delivers key benefits, including rapid discovery of critical infrastructure components, identification of optimal virtualization candidates based on utilization data, automated physical-to-virtual implementation on Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers using VMware Infrastructure 3.0 Virtualization Server, and ongoing capture of resource utilization metrics to create visibility into IT usage and costs.

Enterprise Orchestration:

The Unisys Enterprise Orchestration solution helps businesses achieve maximum service level performance and infrastructure efficiency - even in the most complex IT environments.

The core of the solution is new Unisys Orchestration and Provisioning technology - a rules-based software engine which allows organizations to set their own policies for resource use and performance, and which then automatically allocates resources based on the terms of the policies. This "hands-off" dynamic system optimization lowers capital expenditures and operating costs and helps enterprises meet or exceed service-level requirements.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 01:10 PM

January 27, 2007

Wyse Technology Receives Technology & Learning 2006 Award of Excellence

Wyse Technology, a leader in the thin computing market, is a recipient of Technology & Learning's 2006 Awards of Excellence. The team of 35 education judges tested more than 110 entries, and Wyse Streaming Manager was one of those honored and singled out for distinction.

These awards recognize innovative applications that break new ground in some important way and best-of-breed examples that demonstrate clear superiority over similar products in the market.

Wyse Streaming Manager (WSM) automates the management of student desktops, enabling the use of the broadest array of PC-based educational software titles, including rich animation, multimedia sound and video, on simple, stateless, thin computers. Thin computers or PCs can be used on the desktop, so the student experience is identical to that on a PC, but with WSM, the experience is secure, controlled, and less costly to schools.

"As a pioneer in thin computing solutions, we are honored to be acknowledged by this prestigious award from Technology & Learning for outstanding education technology," said Bill Platt, executive vice president, Products, Wyse Technology.

WSM can be deployed alone or with Citrix Presentation Server or VMware VDI technologies, to eliminate the hassles surrounding PC management, break/fix activities, and provide teachers with greater control over what is done by students at each desk. WSM provides reports to teachers as to "who did what, when, and for how long", so student activities are well understood. Because the student desktop has no hard disk, but is in every other way a PC, costs are reduced, useful life is extended, and student learning benefits from the latest in OS and application technology.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 12:40 PM

January 27, 2007

Retail Giant Embraces the Microsoft and Novell Alliance

Microsoft and Novell announced that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, became the latest customer to take advantage of the benefits of the new collaboration on interoperability between Microsoft Windows and Linux.

The agreement has Microsoft delivering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates to Wal-Mart for use in Wal-Mart's IT infrastructure. The engagement among the three companies opens a host of other potential opportunities for both Microsoft and Novell to provide Wal-Mart with additional software resources and support, building on future joint research and developments in virtualization and interoperability.

"Customers tell us every day that they need to operate a cost-effective IT organization and leverage the most they can out of their investments," said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. "Through our relationship with Microsoft, we've created new opportunities for enterprise interoperability and virtualization that ultimately result in real savings for our customers. We are delighted that Wal-Mart has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise, and we look forward to collaborating with them for many years."

By working together with Microsoft and Novell, Wal-Mart gains the ability to manage Windows and Linux by extending its existing Microsoft management tool set and authentication platform: Systems Management Server, Active Directory and Microsoft Operations Manager. Wal-Mart can also move to lower-cost commodity server hardware while simultaneously improving the customer experience.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 11:47 AM

January 27, 2007

Virtualized Mac OS X Machines?

When the Fortune article broke the news about SWsoft acquiring Parallels almost three years ago in a very "quiet" transaction, it also spoke about the possibilities of having a virtualized Mac OS X instance in a virtual machine.

You see, when Apple switched a year ago to using the same standard x86 processors that other PC vendors were using, it opened up the door for this wave of virtualization that is happening on the Mac today.

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has always been adamant about keeping control over the hardware used to operate his operating system. But that level of control seems to be slipping away, and virtualization isn't helping.

The article had Diane Greene, VMware's CEO, saying that her company's existing x86 desktop product is already being used by some to run Mac OS on computers from Dell, HP and others, though this was not intentional on VMware's part.

This is true. After doing a few simple searches on the Internet, there were dozens of people posting about running Mac OS X inside their VMware virtual machines.

SWsoft's CEO, Beloussov, reiterated Greene's comments. It seems Parallels has an upgrade to their desktop virtualization product coming soon that will make running Mac OS X even easier on a non-Apple computer. He also insists that this was not deliberate, but a consequence of the nature of the technology, especially now that Intel builds virtualization into its chips.

What will Steve Jobs do? There seems to be growing pressure from the community to allow the Mac OS to run on non-Apple hardware - whether that is within a virtual machine or installed on other vendors' hardware. Michael Dell has been reported saying that he would offer Mac OS on his Dell equipment if Apple would license it on reasonable terms.

However, I get the distinct impression that Steve Jobs won't find any of this appealing... no more so than Bill Gates would enjoy having Microsoft Vista turned into open source code!

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 11:13 AM

January 27, 2007

Vizioncore Offers Help to Understand VCB

If you or your organization is still confused about how VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) fits into your virtualized environment, you aren't alone. Luckily, Vizioncore (perhaps best known for their virtualization backup software - esxRanger) is offering some free advice for those companies who are evaluating this component of VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3).

Here are Vizioncore's top five things to know about VCB:

1. VCB is a backup PLATFORM, not a backup solution or application.

VCB was specifically designed to off-load the backup process from the host to a secondary proxy server to help improve the performance of the overall system. The VCB framework incorporates a centralized Windows machine as a proxy server, which can be leveraged by third-party backup vendors, such as Vizioncore, to allow our backup applications to complete file and/or image-level backups.

2. Use VCB to SUPPORT full image and file-level backups of VI3 from a central Windows server.

VCB will leverage snapshot technology that is delivered with VI3 to either:

Export the entire .vmdk
(like the legacy image export 'vmkfstools -e' command)

OR...
Mount the .vmdk on the VCB proxy server for file-level backups
(not an image backup, but a VIEW of the FILES in the .vmdk)

When using esxRanger Professional with our VCB plug-in, the first method can be performed without scripting, is much faster than backing up though the host server, and consumes fewer system resources. Additionally, esxRanger Professional can perform file-level restores from a fully exported compressed VCB image.

With the second method, a backup agent and scripting interaction can be used so file-level backups of the guest can be performed on the VCB proxy server. This approach is similar to traditional agent-based backups, except the negative performance associated with file level guest backup is eliminated. However, this approach still requires complex scripting and lacks restore functionality.

Both approaches can be used to provide differential or incremental backups; though again, using esxRanger Professional will streamline the process.

3. Use VCB to CONSOLIDATE agents on one host.

While VCB can consolidate agents to one host and improve performance, it does not eliminate agent-based backups. Companies looking to implement "agent-less" backup solutions in their environments can use esxRanger Professional in place of agents in many cases. esxRanger Professional offers full and differential backups with full and file-level restore capabilities without requiring agents to be utilized. Users can simply mount the esxRanger Professional image and select specific files to be restored to a running virtual machine.

4. Use VCB to enable faster LAN-FREE backups.

The architecture of VCB leverages SAN storage and can eliminate the backup traffic over a LAN resulting in faster more efficient backups. In addition, using esxRanger Professional with VCB can boost speeds by an additional 20% over VCB alone, by redirecting the VCB data stream through memory, compressing the data, and eliminating additional disk activity. This approach also reduces temporary storage needs on the VCB proxy server. The result is the fastest backup solution available on the market today.

5. COMBINE VCB and esxRanger Professional for a powerful and comprehensive backup solution.

Your investment in VCB can go further when paired with a proven industry standard tool like esxRanger Professional. Combining the two delivers a complete backup and recovery method that provides a full complement of functions to protect your datacenter, including:

Intercepting the export prior to being written to the disk, allowing the backup process to begin in memory and be delivered to your chosen destination directly.
Performing full image hot backups once a day or more frequent backups of just the differential data throughout the day.
Restoring virtual machines and their configurations by any level administrator.
Agent-less file-level restores for true backup agent consolidation.
Elimination of host overhead - no CPU, network or expensive disk I/O used.

A detailed overview of how VCB and esxRanger Professional work together can be found in a Vizioncore white paper entitled, "The Fastest Hot Backups for VMware Infrastructure 3," on the company's website.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 10:42 AM

January 27, 2007

SunGard to Deliver Keynote at InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum

IDG's InfoWorld has secured Don Norbeck of SunGard Availability Services to provide the keynote address at their second Virtualization Executive Forum on February 12, 2007 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA.

Norbeck, SunGard's director of product development, will offer prescriptive strategies for developing and managing a framework for virtualization in the data center. In "Virtual Reality: Leveraging IT Best Practices for an Always Available Infrastructure," he'll share best practices for transforming your infrastructure and business to meet the challenges of real-world client scenarios.

"SunGard Availability Services is implementing virtualization as a way to enhance a world-class, high-availability services infrastructure," said Doug Dineley, InfoWorld's executive editor and content chair for the event. "We're way beyond server consolidation now. I'm really looking forward to Don Norbeck's talk."

This event will offer presentations and panels with leading experts from VMware, Surgient, XenSource, Inc., and Microsoft Corp.; end users from Bank of America, Brigham Young University, Avanade, T-Systems, and ABM Industries; and InfoWorld's own top editors to put virtualization into perspective. The complete agenda is available online, here.

Don't forget to mark the date down on your calendar! Go ahead and register now and I'll see you there.

Posted by David Marshall on January 27, 2007 09:03 AM

January 23, 2007

SWsoft in the news - Benchmarking and Parallels

SWsoft is making more news, this time, for its announcement pertaining to joining the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. or SPEC group to assist with virtualization benchmarking. And also, the rumor mill was reaching capacity, so SWsoft and Parallels came out with an announcement that the two companies had indeed merged, almost a year ago. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 23, 2007 07:57 PM

January 23, 2007

Scalent Systems Scores $15 Million Series C

Scalent Systems, creator of Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE) software, announced that it had acquired a Series C round of equity funding.

This funding round was led by a new investor - Credit Suisse. Existing investors, Hummer Winblad, JK&B Capital, and Pequot Capital, all participated in this round. The Series C round came in at $15 million and according to the company will be used for continued expansion of sales operations.

"The backing of Credit Suisse serves not only as a solid foundation for our continuing expansion, but as a significant validation of our technology," said Ben Linder, CEO, Scalent Systems. "Some of the world's largest institutions are now running Scalent V/OE to support their mission-critical systems, and we're proud to be bringing greater reliability and agility to their data centers."

"Having validated Scalent V/OE, we were convinced of its value and durability in demanding enterprise environments," said Wayne Nemeth of Alternative Investments at Credit Suisse. "We firmly believe that Scalent's products will help enterprises increase their data center reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, and asset utilization - and are pleased to have had the opportunity to invest in the company."

Scalent Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE) 2.0 recently was awarded the InfoWorld 2007 Technology of the Year Award in the Platforms category.

To learn more about the product, you can check out the InfoWorld product review by Paul Venezia where he gave it a "Very Good" score of 8.5.

Posted by David Marshall on January 23, 2007 07:11 PM

January 23, 2007

VMware Continues to Fuel Parent EMC

EMC reported that it had achieved an all-time record revenue as well as strong profit growth for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2006. The company's 14th consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth was highlighted by better than expected revenue and profit performance.

Total consolidated revenue for the fourth quarter was a record $3.215 billion, 19% higher than the $2.710 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005 and $55 million more than the fourth-quarter revenue forecast provided by EMC in October 2006.

Part of that success can be attributed to the outstanding financial achievements made by its 2004 acquisition - VMware. VMware had its 31st consecutive record quarter and grew total revenues 101% year-over-year to $232 million.

VMware representatives attribute this exceptional growth primarily to rapid customer adoption of VMware Infrastructure 3, which began shipping back in June 2006. VMware's fourth quarter momentum and expanding customer base was also fueled by the release of 64-bit support for VI3, VMware Lab Manager, and a new virtual appliance marketplace and certification program now delivering more than 380 virtual appliances.

So how does one sum that up?

How about... EMC acquiring VMware for $625 million - Priceless!

Posted by David Marshall on January 23, 2007 04:41 PM

January 23, 2007

SWsoft Assists SPEC with Virtualization Benchmarking

SWsoft, the maker of the Virtuozzo operating system virtualization software, announced that it was joining the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) virtualization benchmarking party.

The group, currently made up of notable members such as AMD, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Sun Microsystems and VMware, is working together with SPEC to develop a new virtualization measurement standard.

"As virtualization becomes a baseline technology in the data center, benchmarking of all types of virtualization technologies will be an important part of helping customers choose the right solution for their needs," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, of SWsoft. "We are looking forward to contributing to the process, which will help further adoption of virtualization."

"SPEC welcomes SWsoft and looks forward to its active participation in the virtualization working group," says Walter Bays, SPEC president.

The group is investigating the use of heterogeneous workloads that are spread across multiple virtual machines on a single server. They claim that a key aspect will be defining a methodology to model the dynamic nature of customer workloads in this environment.

With so many variables to consider - different virtualization platforms and types, various applications and operating systems to consider within the guest and host OS, and what exactly is going to be compared in this benchmark - I have to wonder exactly how long this group is going to take before a set of benchmarking standards is actually created. With virtualization implementations on the rise, now is the time for such a beast to exist to help IT organizations make an educated and informed decision.

Posted by David Marshall on January 23, 2007 04:12 PM

January 20, 2007

Symantec Research Paper - Attacks on Virtual Machine Emulators

Peter Ferrie, Senior Principal Researcher, Symantec Advanced Threat Research, recently released a new research paper titled "Attacks on Virtual Machine Emulators".

As of late, one such use case for virtual machine emulators has been to use them to help better analyze malicious code. Unfortunately, malicious code is adapting and fighting back! This paper attempts to explain known attacks against the most widely used virtual machine emulators (VMware and Microsoft), and also demonstrate newly discovered attacks on other virtual machine emulators of which you might not be that familiar.

The introduction to the paper begins like so:

Virtual machine emulators have many uses. For anti-malware researchers, the most common use is to place unknown code inside a virtual environment, and watch how it behaves. Once the analysis has been completed, the environment can be destroyed, essentially without risk to the real environment that hosts it. This provides a safe way to see if a sample might be malicious.
This brings us to the simplest attack that malicious code can perform on a virtual machine emulator: to detect it. As more security researchers come to rely on virtual machine emulators, malicious code samples have appeared that are intentionally sensitive to the presence of virtual machine emulators. Those samples alter their behavior (including refusing to run) if a virtual machine emulator is detected. This makes analysis more complicated, and possibly highly misleading. Some descriptions and samples of how virtual machine emulators are detected are presented in this paper.

A harsher attack that malicious code can perform against a virtual machine emulator is the denial-of-service, specifically by causing the virtual machine emulator to exit. Some descriptions and samples of how that is done are presented in this paper.

Finally, the most interesting attack that malicious code can perform against a virtual machine emulator is to escape from its protected environment. No samples of that are presented in this paper.

It is important to note here that most virtual machine emulators are not designed to be completely transparent. They are simply meant to be "good enough" so that typical software can be fooled to run inside it. Their use in the analysis of malicious code was never a requirement. This situation is changing, though, with the creation of new virtual machine emulators, such as Hydra. However, even with full knowledge of what has been used to detect existing virtual machine emulators, it is clearly difficult to write a virtual machine emulator that cannot be detected. Some descriptions and samples of how to detect Hydra are included in this paper.

The interest in detecting virtual machine emulators is also not limited to the authors of malicious code. If malicious code is released that makes use of its own virtual machine emulator, then it will become necessary for anti-malware researchers to find ways to detect the virtual machine emulator, too.

You can find the entire research paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 20, 2007 12:49 PM

January 20, 2007

How PCI Express 2.0 Impacts Virtualization

Recently, the member organizations of the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) ratified the new PCI Express 2.0 standard specifications. The new standard introduces a dramatic speed increase with the interconnection rate on the bus doubling from the current 2.5GT/s to 5GT/s.

In addition to pure speed, the new standard also introduces a feature called input/output virtualization. The new feature will be key in allowing virtual machines to communicate directly with the physical components located on the PCI Express 2.0 bus.

Doing so could mean that the guest operating system would then be able to finally recognize and communicate with the 3D processor on the physical graphics card. Finally, virtual machines would be able to run 3D applications, demanding front ends such as Vista's Aero, and yes, even the important things like 3D gaming.

Posted by David Marshall on January 20, 2007 12:16 PM

January 19, 2007

Incipient, Inc. Makes Storage Industry History in 2006

In 2006, Incipient, Inc. made storage industry history by bringing to market its switch-resident storage virtualization software for Storage Area Network (SAN) environments.

With the 2006 release of its flagship product, the Incipient Network Storage Platform (iNSP) software suite, the company is poised to meet the growing enterprise demand for data migration, automated storage provisioning and copy services. These iNSP capabilities, now delivered from the network, allow companies to reduce the overall cost of managing, deploying and operating SAN-based storage, resulting in a lower SAN Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

"Eventually all data layer functions such as storage, databases, and file systems will sit below a unified virtualization layer, which is critical to making the promise of IT as a service oriented infrastructure real. Incipient is certainly playing a key role in this vision with the release of iNSP for enterprises," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "iNSP automates and delivers storage services consistently across the SAN - making time consuming and error prone tasks such as data migration and storage provisioning, simple and strategic. It is only a matter of time until service oriented architectures within IT are commonplace."

Incipient announced that it had taken several steps to further establish itself as a storage industry innovator and leader in 2006 highlighted by these significant accomplishments:

Completed iNSP Beta and Early Access Programs with successful deployments at large enterprises within financial services and healthcare sectors.
Displayed iNSP software at the Storage Decisions conference in New York City in September. An InfoWorld article dated October 5, 2006, referred to the iNSP announcement as "one of the most significant releases in recent storage news."
Announced GA of iNSP in December supporting Cisco MDS 9000 Series of intelligent Fibre Channel (FC) switches with the 32-Port Storage Services Module (SSM).
An Incipient customer participated in the storage virtualization panel discussion moderated by Arun Taneja, Taneja Group, at the Storage Decisions conference.
Participated in the Storage Virtualization Hands-On Lab at Storage Networking World Fall 2006 in Orlando, FL. The standing room only sessions gave end-users unprecedented direct access to the benefits of iNSP software.
Expanded sales and service teams to provide 24/7 support for Incipient's growing customer base. This included the opening of a new sales office in New York City to better serve the needs of financial services industry customers and establishing an in-country presence in the United Kingdom.
Certified iNSP's interoperability with arrays from top tier storage vendors including EMC, HP, HDS and IBM.
Secured two additional patents to protect various storage virtualization innovations, bringing the total number of core-issued patents held by Incipient, Inc. to four with several others pending.
Enterprise Strategy Group published a Storage Virtualization Report dated September 2006 which states that Incipient is delivering to customers what they have long been asking for - a storage virtualization software solution that runs natively in a leading SAN switch.
Raised $24 million in Series D financing bringing the total equity capital raised to $79 million.
Secured its initial customers for its iNSP breakthrough solution.

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 10:08 PM

January 19, 2007

Government Agency Spends Wisely - Uses Virtualization

In a recent press release, VMware announced that the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) - an independent support agency within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) - has virtualized nearly 100 percent of its server infrastructure using VMware Infrastructure.

So for everyone out there in Corporate America who is still on the fence, come on in and join the party! If the water is safe enough for the DoD, surely you guys can jump in? And guess what, they even saved money! That's right, according to Mike Williams, CIO at DCMA, "DCMA has a duty to spend taxpayer money wisely while keeping the infrastructure running on a daily basis, and VMware Infrastructure allows us to do that." As a key component of their data center strategy, virtualization was a cost-efficient way for them to accomodate agency growth without requiring additional floor space in their data center.

The agency is currently upgrading to VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware's latest generation of their enterprise class virtualization software suite. DCMA will leverage VMotion technology, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware High Availability (HA) to help them achieve service levels that weren't possible with a physical infrastructure. They are now taking the next step and using VMware to accomplish disaster recovery.

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 09:43 PM

January 19, 2007

Thin Client Provisioning and OS Delivery in the News

Thin clients and OS delivery once again make the news. Citrix recently announced that it has finalized the acquisition of Ardence to help further advance their Dynamic Desktop Initiative. And 2X of thin client fame is also in the news, this time, with the release of their latest software - 2X ThinClientServer version 4. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 09:21 PM

January 19, 2007

Virtual Iron Joins Citrix's Dynamic Desktop Initiative

Virtual Iron Software announced that it has completed integration between Version 3.1 of its enterprise-class virtualization and management platform with both the Citrix Desktop Broker for Citrix Presentation Server and the Citrix Password Manager, creating an advanced desktop virtualization solution.

Virtual Iron claims the joint solution is ideally suited to the IT requirements of providing support for branch office, back office and front office workers.

Plans are to co-market the solution under the Citrix Dynamic Desktop Initiative (DDI). At the same time, Virtual Iron also announced that it has officially become a Technology Partner under the Citrix Alliance Partner program.

"Virtualization has the proven ability to deliver huge advantages to IT organizations administering hosted desktops in driving cost savings through improved productivity," said Chris Fleck, VP of Platform Development at Citrix. "We are pleased to work with Virtual Iron in meeting the advanced needs of our customers."

"Hosted desktop virtualization is a rapidly emerging use case that has quickly captured the attention of corporate IT departments because of its ability to reduce complexity and cost while improving security," said Mike Grandinetti, Chief Marketing Officer of Virtual Iron. "The clear return on investment has opened the door for mainstream customer adoption. We are excited to work with Citrix to deliver a joint desktop virtualization solution that extends all the power of Virtual Iron 3 to the Windows desktop environment."

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 09:08 PM

January 19, 2007

Symantec Announces Veritas Cluster Server 5.0 for VMware ESX

Symantec Corp. announced the availability of Veritas Cluster Server 5.0 for VMware's ESX Server.

The solution provides advanced monitoring capabilities for applications running inside the virtual machines and it automates failover across local and remote sites in the event of a disaster in order to provide a higher level of application availability.

The Cluster Server product for VMware ESX Server provides high availability and disaster recovery for both physical and virtual servers. By simplifying and automating remote failover for VMware virtual server environments, Cluster Server for VMware ESX provides added protection against virtual machine or application failures, including:

Server, application and resource monitoring, which provides a higher level of availability;
Automatic recovery from application, network storage, virtual resource, virtual server, and physical server failures;
Centralized management of virtual and physical clustered servers from a single console;
Comprehensive protection from wide area disasters by integrating disaster recovery plan verification tools, remote application failover features and real-time data replication to enable organizations to test disaster recovery without disrupting production environments.

Veritas Cluster Server for VMware ESX is available immediately with a suggested price starting at $1,995 per server.

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 08:27 PM

January 17, 2007

Sun Adding New Virtualization Technologies

It looks like Sun Microsystems is gearing up to go after Linux as it announced a series of product and strategic updates to its Solaris 10 operating system due out this summer. The company is adding a number of new security and virtualization technologies to help push them further along within the x86 market.

OpenSolaris, the company's open source version of their commercial OS, already includes Xen. Now, the company plans to add clustering technology via the Xen hypervisor to its latest Solaris OS sometime in 2007.

Other virtualization technology enhancements have also been made, such as Logical Domains and enhanced Solaris Containers. With Logical Domains, Sun has added a server virtualization and partitioning technology that will allow customers to enable up to 32 OS instances on each UltraSPARC T1-based system. Solaris Containers adds isolation for software applications and services to give each application their own private memory space within a single instance of Solaris. When combined with Sun's high availability software, Solaris Cluster 3.2, the software can monitor the application in the container and then fail over when needed.

The new Solaris support subscriptions are priced much lower than an equivalent offering from competitor Red Hat. And so, the company appears to be gearing up for quite a battle to grab at the x86 server market.

Posted by David Marshall on January 17, 2007 03:42 PM

January 17, 2007

DataCore Offers Affordable Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

DataCore Software announced new, affordable, remote site Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) solutions under its Virtual Infrastructure Foundation class of products.

The new offering includes state-of-the-art thin, provisioning to automate and optimize the use of storage capacity, SANmotion to simplify data migration, storage performance acceleration software and a full range of auto-failover, auto-recovery, and advanced IP SAN mirroring data protection services that, as the company describes it, "surpass the functionality found in today's limited storage arrays and pricey disaster recovery systems".

The Virtual Infrastructure DR and BC packages are each priced at under $10,000, which includes a full year of customer support and the software needed to manage and protect two separately located SANmelody virtual storage servers, each capable of supporting up to 3 terabyte (TB) storage pools.

The packages provide:

Proven enterprise-class virtualization and storage management - employs the same underlying software, automation and virtualization technologies that are proven and in use by thousands of DataCore users in small, mid-size and large corporations worldwide.
True Auto-failover and auto-recovery business continuity - automatically monitors the data storage pool and I/O accesses and on failure in the system it transparently and automatically goes into failover mode and recovery, with no impact to production systems and no requirement for software to reside on application servers. Supports LAN or IP SAN based high-speed synchronous mirroring and failover.
Remote Site Disaster recovery - automatically protects critical data and storage pools using long distance asynchronous IP mirroring over LAN/WAN infrastructures.
Performance acceleration - includes sophisticated cache management software designed to significantly speed up storage and I/O intensive workloads.
Simple SANmotion data migration services - a powerful set of Windows data migration capabilities, which enables users to move and to migrate live data disks over a SAN. This advanced feature facilitates virtual server deployments and allows Windows disk data to be accessed, re-purposed or moved rapidly from one system to another across the IP SAN, using Ethernet connections.
State-of-the-art Thin-provisioning - automates storage administration and capacity provisioning and management across many systems and enables significant cost savings through its ability to optimize the disk space being served to many servers across the SAN. Previously this type of capability only existed in the realm of the highest-end data center systems selling for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Flexible open system interoperability and hardware independence - automates storage management and auto-protects multiple terabytes of data serving multiple application servers (e.g. VMware, Windows, Netware, Linux, Solaris, AIX, UNIX, etc.) over LAN, SAN or WAN networks. The solutions support either low-cost iSCSI or optional FC connectivity, or a mix of both. The software is hardware independent and runs on low-cost Intel/AMD platforms - enabling users to lower costs, optimize their hardware purchase decisions, maximize the use of existing investments, control their choice of platforms and storage and add a new level of flexibility to their storage infrastructure.

The new DataCore solutions fill the large void in the market that exists for reasonably priced DR and BC solutions. The high-end enterprise-class storage arrays that can support true failover and the multi-site SAN based disaster recovery systems (e.g. IBM) are typically proprietary, complex and cost many tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. "When we looked at the marketplace we found a real gap that needed to be filled," said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. "The total cost of a working system, the high cost of entry and the lack of flexibility and software utility are the real barriers in the SMB space. Small to mid-size businesses can't afford to deploy a SAN to manage storage and then pay the additional cost to also do business continuity and disaster recovery. They need a solution that does both and does it at the right price."

Posted by David Marshall on January 17, 2007 03:07 PM

January 17, 2007

EMC and VMware - Should They Separate?

A question was recently posed by ZDNet, should EMC and VMware separate? The claim is that the EMC acquisition of VMware in January 2004 may have been one of the better deals in the technology sector in the last three years. But was it good for EMC shareholders? J.P. Morgan analyst Bill Shope has his opinions as does Chuck Hollis, VP of technology alliances at EMC. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 17, 2007 02:18 PM

January 16, 2007

CiRBA Announces Consolidation and Virtualization Analysis in Version 4.0

CiRBA announced the release of version 4.0 of its flagship Data Center Intelligence (DCI) solution. Its new interface and its interactive visualization make it easier for IT organizations to more quickly identify which servers in their environment can or should be virtualized by providing the organization with much needed metrics and step-by-step action plans.

The company states that CiRBA 4.0 enables analysis of all critical factors for analyzing large scale consolidation or virtualization initiatives, including configuration, workload patterns such as CPU utilization and network and disk I/O, and business constraints such as geography, business service or maintenance windows. By including all constraints in an analysis, results are maximized while risks are minimized.

Significant CiRBA 4.0 enhancements include:

Interactive Consolidation and Virtualization Analysis - At the center of CiRBA's revolutionary analysis capabilities is a rich set of interactive interface elements and drilldowns that are available directly from the analysis screen to provide unprecedented intelligence. CiRBA 4.0 provides several options for performing what-if analysis to compare different consolidation scenarios.

Users can change color mapping to ease visualization of the potential within complex environments, and then drill down for the underlying details and settings that would be required to act on a given plan. The unique ability to combine configuration and business constraints with multiple workload analysis into one roadmap makes CiRBA the most comprehensive way to analyze data center changes.
New Interface - CiRBA 4.0 provides a crisp new interface and reorganized navigation menu to make it easer to find and move between tasks.
Enhanced VM Reporting Capabilities - A new "VMware Configuration" report is available in version 4.0 that provides detailed configuration on a VMware ESX host server and its guest VMs.
Forward Consolidation Analysis - CiRBA also helps IT departments avoid expensive re-sprawl through forward consolidation analysis. With 4.0, users can use CiRBA to find a place within existing infrastructure for a new application rather than ordering new hardware.
More Licensing Options - CiRBA now offers a departmental edition targeted at organizations that want to analyze for virtualization specifically and want to examine workload personalities only. The Enterprise edition suits those who want to analyze heterogeneous data centers and use multiple consolidation strategies considering configuration, workload and business constraints.

"Although consolidation - particularly through virtualization - offers enormous opportunity for operational savings, big questions loom for most data centers," said Gerry Smith, president and CEO of CiRBA. "Specifically, 'what and how should we consolidate so that we get maximum savings and ensure reliability?' CiRBA is all about enabling IT to confidently plan their consolidation from a high level strategy to detailed action plans."

CiRBA 4.0 is available immediately, licensed on a monthly basis with pricing based on the number of server operating systems being audited and term of commitment. For more information, visit the company's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on January 16, 2007 04:42 PM

January 15, 2007

InnoTek Opens Up VirtualBox Virtualization Platform

In 2006, virtualization news and technology really started to take off, and everyone anticipated what was going to happen next in 2007. Here we are two weeks into the new year and already we have an unexpected virtualization twist. You may not be familiar with the company or the product just yet, but the German software company, InnoTek, is shaping up to make a name for itself in 2007.

InnoTek has announced that it has made its virtualization solution, VirtualBox, available as open-source under the GNU General Public License (GPL). VirtualBox appears to be a fairly mature virtualization platform that runs on 32-bit Linux and Windows hosts. It has a pretty impressive list of guest operating system support that includes Windows NT 4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Windows Vista, OS/2 Warp, Linux with kernel 2.4 and 2.6, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

The company describes VirtualBox as "a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use." With its large feature set and small footprint, VirtualBox has long outgrown its initial purpose of a specialized virtualization solution. As a result, the company is now making VirtualBox generally available as a standalone solution for enterprises of any size - as well as for developers who are searching for a professional, yet flexible and open virtualizer.

In a similar manner to other virtualization platform providers, InnoTek has divided their product into two editions: an open-source version and a full version for enterprise customers that comes with additional features.

Some of the features of VirtualBox are:

Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only:

Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

For more information about the product, visit the product's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on January 15, 2007 04:36 PM

January 14, 2007

Vizioncore Offers Ten Steps for a Successful Migration to VI3

Vizioncore states that "to take advantage of the VI3 improvements, all of your existing virtual machines must be migrated from ESX Server 2.X to the new platform. Depending on how many virtual machines you are running, scheduling migrations and cutovers can become complicated, and downtime can become substantial. However, with proper procedures, you can upgrade smoothly so your company can more quickly take advantage of the new features. VMware outlines two main methods of performing migrations. The first, "in-place" migrations, involves selecting a particular ESX Server host (and all associated virtual machines) and isolating it for an entire upgrade at once. The second, "migration upgrades," involves selecting individual virtual machines and migrating them to a new LUN or piece of hardware upon which the VMFS and datastores have already been upgraded. In both cases, the migration methods offered by VMware may be supplemented with third-party software to automate migrations and fast-track infrastructures to enterprise functionality for virtualized environments."

By following these ten steps, companies undertaking VI3 migrations can make sure the process proceeds as smoothly and quickly to ensure fast time-to-business value:

Read all documentation thoroughly before you begin: VMware documentation identifies the needed steps, offers specific recommendations, and outlines the expected downtime of any given step. Reading through this documentation is a critical first step in understanding all the variables for migrations in your virtual environments.
Identify each virtual machine and its associated host for migration: Create an inventory of your virtual machines and catalog them in one central document. This step ensures you do not miss any virtual machines in the upgrade process.
Map interdependencies of virtual machines: Building a map of dependencies among virtual machines is an essential step to flagging their importance in order to minimize downtime of the most critical virtual machines.
Create a schedule and workflow of virtual machines in required order: Generally speaking, it is a good practice to perform migrations based on the service level associated with individual machines or groups of virtual machines.
Identify the method of migration: Whether you pursue an in-place migration or a migration-upgrade strategy depends on the complexity of your virtual environment and the service levels of your applications.
Back-up your existing virtual machines and establish a fail-back strategy: The most important step in a migration procedure is to begin with a back-up of your existing infrastructure. If anything fails during the migration, you will have no virtual machines to restore unless you perform this critical step.
Always begin with a test virtual machine: Testing virtual machine migrations is a highly recommended step in order to uncover any issues that you may have that the documentation does not address.
Perform migration steps in sequential order: There are four key steps in the migration process that must be performed in sequential order. Failure to follow this order can cause problems. These steps are: 1) install VirtualCenter 2.0, 2) upgrade the VMFS, datastores and hosts, 3) migrate virtual machines, and 4) install VMware Tools in each guest.
Manage your downtime window effectively: The amount of downtime you can expect is based on the size of the virtual machine and its interdependencies. It is important to ensure that you employ an acceptable maintenance window during which the application will not be available.
Leverage automation whenever possible: You need to choose tools that match the requirements of your environment. For example, esxMigrator from Vizioncore can migrate virtual machines to dissimilar hardware, can fail back to ESX Server 2.X if needed, automatically upgrades VMware Tools, and retains network identity and connections of virtual machines, among other key features. esxMigrator does not require a SAN or VirtualCenter to perform migrations and is easy to use by any level of administrator. It is a good move to drill down into the functionality of automated migration tools before upgrading your environment to ensure you have the right tools for the job.

To obtain Vizioncore's free whitepaper titled "Best Practices for Migrations to VMware Infrastructure 3", visit Vizioncore's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on January 14, 2007 04:51 PM

January 14, 2007

Microsoft Offers Online Trial of Windows Vista OS

Microsoft Virtual Labs launched a new Test Drive site to help give exposure to the Windows Vista operating system. The test drive site allows anyone to launch and try out various scenarios in a completely isolated, sandbox environment before they purchase and install the product on their own equipment.

In the past, many Microsoft applications have been made available on a test drive or trial basis by utilizing a Citrix client connection. The Vista OS trial is more of an "eat your own dog food" type demonstration as Microsoft is utilizing Microsoft Virtual Server to push out the trial.

In order to test drive this online trial, you must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, you must have JavaScript enabled, and you must install the ActiveX control "Virtual Server VRMC Advanced Control" from Microsoft. And don't forget about your popup blocking software. Mine complained numerous times as I tried to launch various scenarios within this test drive.

The Test Drive of the operating system is being powered by Microsoft Virtual Labs. In this particular test drive, Microsoft attempts to showcase four main areas of Windows Vista Business: Safe-Efficient-Connected-Collaborative. Each of these topics contains a number of videos and labs, which all-in-all total around 18.

While I personally found that the videos and step-by-step scenarios were all very helpful in learning about the product and how to use it, my experience with the actual hands-on Vista desktop interaction was quite slow. The video refresh and redraw of the graphics on this virtual machine was at times painful. But I expected that going into this demonstration, knowing how graphic intensive Windows Vista would be and combining that with the fact that I was using a remote connection over the Internet to run the test drive.

If you haven't installed or used Windows Vista yet, I invite you to try this product test drive. Visit the following Web site to begin your trial.

Posted by David Marshall on January 14, 2007 09:21 AM

January 14, 2007

XenEnterprise Achieves IBM ServerProven Status

XenSource, Inc. announced that their virtualization products have received IBM ServerProven certification. The ServerProven certification is part of IBM's PartnerWorld Program and designates XenSource products as having been enabled for IBM systems and successfully deployed in a real-world production environment.

When deployed on IBM x86 systems, XenSource virtualization products deliver breakthrough price and performance that reduce data center complexity, increase manageability and resource utilization, and reduce IT infrastructure costs.

Solutions that are ServerProven represent applications that have been enabled for IBM Systems and have been verified through a customer experience to be installed and running in a customer location. To earn the IBM ServerProven certification, XenSource verified XenEnterprise can run on one or more IBM Systems in a real-world customer environment. IBM ServerProven certification is intended for IBM customers to be able to easily identify compatible, reliable solutions for their business-critical needs. XenSource products deliver bare-metal performance on a broad-range of IBM servers, including IBM BladeCenter and IBM System x, running on Windows or Linux.

"We're pleased XenSource has completed testing of XenEnterprise on System x products, and has officially become a member of the IBM ServerProven program," said Jim Northington, VP of High Performance System x Solutions for IBM.

In December, XenSource released the XenServer product family which includes XenEnterprise, the market's first enterprise-grade commercially-packaged Xen virtualization solution supporting both Microsoft Windows and Linux guests. New additions include XenServer, for Windows standard server environments, and XenExpress, a free, production-ready product which enables anyone to quickly get started with Xen virtualization. Available now, all three products share the same architecture, delivering bare metal performance and facilitating easy migration and upgrades.

"XenSource is pleased to receive IBM ServerProven status, and is committed to delivering products that meet the virtualization needs for users of all IBM servers," said Frank Artale, VP of Business Development at XenSource. "Our products now have a proven track record in IBM environments, and offer a virtualization solution of choice for IBM customers that is easy-to-use and interoperable with their existing datacenter infrastructure regardless of operating system."

Posted by David Marshall on January 14, 2007 09:11 AM

January 14, 2007

Vulnerabilities Reported for VMware ESX Server

Danish vulnerability assessment clearinghouse, Secunia, has released advisory SA23680 which states that there are multiple vulnerabilities found within VMware ESX Server that affects both VMware ESX Server 2.x and 3.x.

Marked as highly critical, Secunia states that vulnerabilities have been reported in VMware ESX Server which can be exploited by malicious people to gain knowledge of sensitive information, bypass certain security restrictions, cause a DoS (denial of service), gain escalated privileges, or compromise a system.

The solution is to provide the following patches:

ESX 3.0.1 - Apply patch ESX 3.0.1 Patch ESX-9986131.
ESX 3.0.0 - Apply patch ESX 3.0.0 Patch ESX-3069097.
ESX 2.5.4 - Apply ESX 2.5.4 Upgrade Patch 3 (Build# 36502)
ESX 2.5.3 - Apply ESX 2.5.3 Upgrade Patch 6 (Build# 35703)
ESX 2.1.3 - Apply ESX 2.1.3 Upgrade Patch 4 (Build# 35803)
ESX 2.0.2 - Apply ESX 2.0.2 Upgrade Patch 4 (Build# 35801)

For more information, visit the following original advisories:

VI3 - ESX Patch 9986131
VI3 - ESX Patch 3069097
ESX 2.5.4 - ESX Patch 200612
ESX 2.5.3 - ESX Patch 200612
ESX 2.1.3 - ESX Patch 200612
ESX 2.0.2 - ESX Patch 200612

Posted by David Marshall on January 14, 2007 08:23 AM

January 13, 2007

Virtualization and Grid or Utility Computing

Today's stories will take a look at the topic of grid and utility computing. 3Tera, Inc. and Layered Technologies, Inc. announced an agreement to jointly offer customers grid-based private servers and Web hosting services. And then, we'll take a look at what the 451 Group analysts are thinking about as far as how grid computing and virtualization are working together. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 13, 2007 09:23 AM

January 09, 2007

VMware Demonstrates Its Mac Virtualization at Macworld

VMware will demonstrate its new desktop product for the Apple Mac at Macworld 2007. Its public beta enables Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X.

The product was originally introduced during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in August of 2006. The product finally went to public beta in December 2006. And now, it looks like the new desktop virtualization product is expected to GA by this summer.

"With our new desktop product for the Mac, we've combined VMware's advanced virtualization platform with an easy-to-use, native Mac interface, and we have seen tremendous interest in the product since its introduction at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference," said Srinivas Krishnamurti, director of product and market development at VMware. "Beta customers have been very excited about this product's ability to fully leverage the Mac's hardware capabilities - running 64-bit PC applications on Mac OS X, gaining additional performance by allocating a second CPU to virtual machines and accessing all devices, including iSight cameras and any Bluetooth device."

With the new product, users can:

Create and run a wide variety of 32- and 64-bit x86 operating systems on Mac OS X without rebooting and simultaneously run PC applications next to Mac OS X applications
Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvements so that on any Mac with dual-core processors, users can assign multiple CPUs to a virtual machine to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads
Access physical devices from the virtual machine to read and burn CDs and DVDs, access Bluetooth and USB 2.0 devices such as video cameras, iPods, printers and disks at full speed, view live battery status within the virtual machine by leveraging the Virtual Battery technology and even use devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X
Drag and drop files and folders between Mac OS X and any virtual machine to easily share data between the two environments
Leverage compatibility across VMware virtual machines so that existing VMware virtual machines created with the most current VMware products are all cross-compatible, including virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure 3
Run any of the 380 virtual appliances for solutions such as security, load balancing, collaboration, databases, development, communications and business applications available from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace; virtual appliances are pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-run software applications, all packaged within virtual machines that can be run using VMware virtualization products including VMware Player and VMware Server, which are both available for free download.

Posted by David Marshall on January 9, 2007 08:01 PM

January 09, 2007

InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum - Round Two

InfoWorld recently sent out a press release announcing that it had set the agenda for their second Virtualization Executive Forum that will take place on February 12, 2007 at the Hotel Nikko, in San Francisco. The focus this year will be on "Enabling Virtualization Across the Enterprise."

I attended last year's event in New York and had a fantastic time. Steve Fox kicked things off in high gear last year, going right at the virtualization topic explaining it in a way so that the entire room could not only understand it but more importantly so that they could see the value in it.

The keynotes were all informative and had little overlap as each presenter brought the story of virtualization home. The breakout sessions and the exhibitors each did their job to help identify ways in which virtualization can make your business more efficient, cost-effective or productive.

If I didn't get a chance to meet you last year, I'd love to interact with you this year. I hope to see everyone there. A lot has happened in the industry since last September, and I can't wait to hear what people have to say this time.

Here is the press announcement in case you missed it. It contains some more information about this year's event.

IDG's InfoWorld, the leading integrated media brand for IT solutions management, today unveiled the agenda for its second Virtualization Executive Forum, taking place Monday, February 12, 2007 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. The executive-level event provides real-world guidance and best practices for dynamically managing the IT environment. The Virtualization Executive Forum premiered last September 25-26 in New York City and attracted 300+ senior-level technology and business professionals looking to understand benefits and next steps associated with implementing an enterprise-wide virtualization strategy. February's event will highlight the most popular sessions from September and explore building and deploying server, storage, application and desktop virtualization technologies to reduce hardware costs, enhance business agility, improve deployment cycles, create a foundation for disaster recovery, and more. Passes to attend InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum are priced at $1,195, with credential, subscriber and early registration discounts available. Members of the press using promotional code VIRTPRESS are eligible for complimentary registration. To register, visit: http://VirtExecForum.com/register.
"Last year, x86 server virtualization jumped out of the test lab and into production environments," said Doug Dineley, InfoWorld's executive editor and content chair for the event. "At our February 12th conference, we'll hear from IT execs that made that leap and zero in on the benefits, challenges, and best practices for moving to a virtualized infrastructure. Server, storage, application, and desktop virtualization - and what they offer to the enterprise - are all on the agenda."

The Virtualization Executive Forum agenda features leading experts from companies defining enterprise virtualization across industries and end users that have successfully implemented a virtualization strategy for their business. Presenters and panelists include: Dr. J. Kelly Flanagan, Information Technology Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Brigham Young University; Marcus MacNeill, Director of Product Strategy, Surgient; Gordon Mangione, Senior Vice President of Product Operations, XenSource, Inc.; Mike Neil, Senior Director of Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft Corp.; Steve Norall, Senior Analyst and Consultant, Taneja Group; Don Norbeck, Director of Product Development, SunGard Availability Services; James Phillips, Senior Director of Software Lifecycle Solutions, VMware; and Alex Vasilevsky, CTO and Founder, Virtual Iron Software. Plus, InfoWorld's top editors will be on hand to share their expertise. The complete agenda is available online at: http://VirtExecForum.com.

InfoWorld's second forum on virtualization continues to attract support from the top vendors driving enterprise virtualization, including: Novell and Microsoft Corp. (Cornerstone sponsors); PolyServe, Red Hat, Inc., and PlateSpin (Platinum-level sponsors); Altiris, CA, EMC Corporation, and Egenera (Gold-level sponsors).

Posted by David Marshall on January 9, 2007 07:28 PM

January 09, 2007

Former Intel VP to Assist SWsoft

SWsoft made an announcement that Richard Wirt, a former vice president, Intel Senior Fellow and general manager of Intel Corporation's Software and Solutions Group, will serve the company as Senior Technical Advisor. In this capacity, Wirt will assist SWsoft as a resource to the development team and advisor to senior management.

"Richard's depth of industry knowledge and technical expertise will be an invaluable addition to our fast-growing team," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. "His role will include helping us develop business relationships to benefit our customers and our company."

"I look forward to working with SWsoft in an advisory role on business direction and development, as well as assisting with the industry technical community," said Wirt. "SWsoft has a strong track record and tremendous potential with its Virtuozzo operating system virtualization technology and suite of automation products."

Richard Wirt was instrumental in creating and enhancing the value of Intel's silicon and platforms through innovation in software technology. He made extensive contributions in the success of multiple generations of Intel processors and spearheaded early efforts to port UNIX to the Intel Architecture, including Intel-based multiprocessor systems.

Wirt was first named an Intel Fellow in 1990 and promoted to an Intel Senior Fellow in 2002, the highest rank for technologists in Intel, for his significant contributions in operating systems and compilers and more recently in getting this support across the Intel processors spanning communications and computing. He joined Intel in 1981 as part of the Intel team that worked with IBM on software for the first IBM PC platform.

Wirt also serves on the Open Source Development Lab board that helps set the Linux roadmap for the industry. He serves on the Board of Advisors in Computer Science and Engineering for both John Hopkins University and University of Illinois, and served as the Intel representative on the Board of Directors for the Enterprise Grid Alliance.

Wirt is a frequent speaker in professional society forums such as Linux World, Oracle OpenWorld, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Mesa Workshop, and the Intel Developer Forum. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Oklahoma and has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics.

Posted by David Marshall on January 9, 2007 07:12 PM

January 09, 2007

VMware Versus Parallels on the Mac

With a lot of attention on what will happen at the Macworld Conference and Expo this week, it looks like the battle for Mac virtualization dominance is starting to heat up. Parallels recently announced more beta updates to its already released Parallels Desktop for Mac product, and VMware announced the public beta of Fusion. Both companies will have a presence at Macworld, and both will be showing off their latest wares. What's your opinion? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on January 9, 2007 05:34 PM

January 07, 2007

Microsoft Ships Virtual PC 2007 RC

Microsoft finally made the much anticipated release of Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate available, but with little fanfare. The announcement keeps the product on track for a final shipment in the first quarter.

New features found in the release include support for Microsoft Windows Vista as both a host operating system as well as a guest operating system. Supported versions include Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate. It also includes support for 64-bit host operating systems, however there is no support for 64-bit guest operating systems. Support for such guest operating systems is not expected until Windows virtualization arrives after Longhorn Server.

Support has also been added for hardware assisted virtualization, which 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.

This build also adds built-in support for network installations. It's now possible to install an operating system on a virtual machine over the network. The virtual machine network adapter includes support for PXE (Pre-Execution Boot) boot. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system without the need for a PXE boot floppy disk.

Last summer, Microsoft announced that Virtual PC 2007 would be free. The latest Virtual PC 2007 RC can be downloaded, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 7, 2007 02:28 PM

January 07, 2007

Amazon Tries Hand at Virtual Appliances

A virtual appliance by any other name is still, well, a virtual appliance.

Sometime back around June of 2005, VMware popularized the notion of creating a virtual machine package and calling it a "virtual appliance". The idea