Virtualization Report | David Marshall | April 2007

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April 2007

April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware recently released build 44840 of their free virtual machine conversion software.

VMware Converter provides an easy-to-use, scalable solution for migrations of machines, both physical to virtual and virtual to virtual. With its hot clone ability, Converter can even import with no downtime on the source physical machine.

This latest release, 3.0.1, is considered a maintenance release. However, in addition to bug fixes and resolving previous issues, this build also introduced some fairly significant features for a minor dot release.

New features include:

VMware Converter imports VMware Consolidated Backup images - Converter can restore Consolidate Backup images into ESX Server machines, and can import them into VMware standalone virtual machines. Converter supports restoring Consolidated Backup images of any guest operating system type.
VMware Converter imports certain StorageCraft ShadowProtect images - Converter can import ShadowProtect images, with some limitations. These limitations include:
- Dynamic disks are not supported
- All images for the backup of a machine should be in a single folder, with no other images placed there
- For volume-based cloning, all volumes in the disk up to the active and system volumes must have been backed up (For instance: a disk has four partitions, 1 - 4, with partition 2 as the active volume and partition 3 as the system volume. The backup must include 1 through 3)
- If it is an incremental image, up to 16 incremental backups are supported
- Images of systems with logical drives are not supported if the default boot (Windows) partition is on a logical drive.
VMware Converter provides an experimental command line interface for migrations - VMware provides p2vTool as a tool for migrating physical and virtual source machines with a command line interface. Support for this CLI is Experimental. Therefore, users cannot file SRs (Support Requests) to VMware for p2vTool-related issues.

You need an Enterprise license to use p2vTool to migrate machines. The one exception is restoring a VMware Consolidated Backup image; in this case p2vTool can execute the query, verify, import, and postprocess options without needing a license if it detects that the source is a VCB image.

Download it, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 30, 2007 07:17 PM

April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtualization - Filling in the Missing Management Pieces

If you're listening to this Podcast, you are probably like me, one of the people in the IT industry that believes virtualization is the future. And to get to that future, one of the things we need is a good way to manage the entire infrastructure... virtual or physical. Let's face it, until things evolve, we're going to work in a heterogeneous environment where we might have a mix of physical and virtual machines or various virtualization platform types in the same environment. And as management systems evolve to take that into consideration, and they start to think about monitoring, provisioning, backup and restore, disaster recovery, and resource management and control, environments will get better, more efficient, and easier to operate. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 30, 2007 03:42 PM

April 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

View the VMware TSX Nice 2007 Presentations

If you weren't able to attend the VMware TSX 2007 event in Nice, you can at least now view many of the presentations online. VMware has recently added a list of presentations online, available for download. Some of the interesting presentations include:

To download and view the complete list, go here. Remember, knowledge and information is power!

Posted by David Marshall on April 28, 2007 02:55 PM

April 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenSource Publishes Xen Summit 2007 Presentations

XenSource has recently published the presentations made at the Xen Summit of 2007, held in New York this April 17-18, 2007.

Some interesting presentations to note:

Xen Development Roadmap by Keir Fraser and Ian Pratt
Paravirt Ops Update by Jeremy Fitzhardinge

The Xen API by Ewan Mellor

Secure Remote Management with Virtualization by Daniel P. Berrange

High Availability Clustering Using Xen by Yoshi Tamura

Nested Page Table Support by Elsie Wahlig and Wei Huang

Semi-Active Workload Replication and Live Migration with Paravirtual Machines by Daniel Stodden

View all of the online presentations, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 28, 2007 02:42 PM

April 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 with VMware and KVM Support

Linus Torvalds has released the second version of the Linux kernel in 2007. And this time, it further extends the virtualization capabilities found in Linux.

"It's been over two and a half months, and while it's certainly not the longest release cycle ever, it still dragged out a bit longer than I'd have hoped for and it should have," wrote Torvalds in a release note to the kernel mailing list.

The highlight to the Linux 2.6.21 kernel update is the inclusion of the paravirt-ops paravirtualization interface which creates hooks for multiple hypervisors directly into Linux. VMware's VMI (virtual machine interface) is included in this latest kernel, while the Xen hooks are expected to be in the 2.6.22 kernel.

The up and coming KVM (kernel based virtual machine) technology is evolving at a very fast pace. This release (KVM-15) brings many new features, such as:

Initial paravirtualization support, which has much faster performance.
Live migration support (the guest continues running even while being migrated). It is possible to migrate a guest from an Intel CPU to an AMD CPU.
Host suspend and resume support.
CPU hotplug support - a useful feature for data centers, where you can add/remove CPUs according to the load.
A stable userspace interface.

Posted by David Marshall on April 28, 2007 02:11 PM

April 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Free, Open-Source Virtualization for Mac OS X

Intel-based Mac OS X users now have yet another virtualization solution to choose from now that Innotek has announced a Mac version of its VirtualBox virtualization software. This time though, the product is based on open-source code and is the first professional virtualization product being made available free of charge to the Apple Macintosh platform.

OS X is the third major platform that VirtualBox supports as it was previously available to both Windows and Linux users. The product supports a wide variety of x86 compatible guest operating system such as: various versions of Windows from NT to Vista, DOS, OpenBSD and Linux. Features include USB support, snapshots and command-line scripting.

The OS X version is currently available in its first public beta version and is based on VirtualBox's new version 1.4 codebase. The product is expected to be completed in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

VirtualBox is free for personal use and evaluation under the terms and conditions of their license. There is also a VirtualBox Open-Source Edition (OSE) which uses the GPL, but it lacks a number of features found in the enterprise version.

If you have used the product, either on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows, I invite you to share your experiences using the product with the rest of us by commenting below.

You can download the product, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 28, 2007 12:53 PM

April 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Announces Technology Network and Virtual Appliances

Parallels, best known for their popular desktop virtualization solution on the Intel-based Mac (Parallels Desktop for Mac) and desktop virtualization solutions for both Windows and Linux, announced the Parallels Technology Network (PTN). The goal of the new resource is to create an online community for users, as well as developers using Parallels virtualization technology to deliver their software in self-contained virtual appliances.

Following in the footsteps of Microsoft's MSDN and VMware's VMTN communities, Parallels has created their PTN where users and developers can have access to a wealth of information related to Parallels virtualization technology. Also following in the footsteps of VMware's Virtual Appliance Marketplace and Microsoft's Test Drive Program, Parallels has entered the arena with their own version, the PVA Directory.

"We're taking ease of use to another level by facilitating the availability and adoption of virtual appliances that run on a PC or Mac regardless of the operating system," said Benjamin Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications, Parallels. "Parallels Virtual Appliances are the ultimate in hassle-free technology, as they give our users access to pre-configured applications running self-contained in pre-built Parallels virtual machines."

If you aren't yet familiar with what a virtual appliance is, Parallels describes it as self-contained software module, usually built using Linux open source software, that performs specific functions. VAs are an excellent, low cost way to ensure that every computer user has access to critical software, regardless of which operating system they choose to run on their host computer. Because VAs are isolated from the host machine, they are a very secure way to run software, and because they are self-contained, they can be easily backed up, restored, or deleted without compromising the host system. According to Brett Adam, VP of Product Development at rPath, "Virtual appliances are the easiest way to consume software."

One of the virtual appliances being made available at the Parallels Technology Network is an OpenOffice VA running the popular open-source software suite with Microsoft Office-like word processing, spreadsheet and presentation functions. Users can simply download the VA and run it, without any manual configuration or setup, on any Mac or PC powered by Parallels virtualization.

Other VA types being made available include applications, networking, operating systems, communications, databases and even entertainment.

Being billed as a combination research and development lab and community forum, the Parallels Technology Network features a searchable knowledge base (containing product guides, white papers, datasheets, VA documentation, FAQs and product trial downloads), a virtual appliance directory (complete with independently-developed virtual appliance software) and community forums (to discuss virtual appliances and Parallels virtualization software).

Participation in the PTN is free. Users can participate in forum discussions and submit virtual appliances to the Parallels Lab for review. VA Partners can post their logo and URL to the directory to establish a greater community presence, and can also work on co-marketing efforts with Parallels. In addition, technology partners exist. Their VAs are certified to be of extremely high quality, stability and functionality. Vendors also work closely with Parallels on marketing, business development, and product development, and play an integral role in fostering the adoption of virtualization in the broader computing market.

You can visit the Parallels Technology Network, here. And you can also visit the Parallels Virtual Appliance Directory, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 28, 2007 12:07 PM

April 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenSource and iSCSI Storage Partners Team Up

XenSource announced partnerships with several of the leading storage vendors to boost the comprehensive iSCSI storage support, included in its recently released XenEnterprise 3.2.

The company's iSCSI support brings the benefits of high-end SANs to a larger audience, complementing dedicated Fibre Channel networking and delivering disaster recovery capabilities for virtualized environments. New and expanded partnerships with NetApp, Compellent, LeftHand Networks and QLogic will further facilitate virtualization adoption and provide a broad array of interoperable storage options for users.

Benefits of using iSCSI with XenSource virtualization products include:

Simpler Disaster Recovery - offering replication capabilities of iSCSI storage systems to enable recovery from system and site failures.
Easier Backup and Restore - providing network-based storage snapshots to allow IT organizations to offload backup and keep server resources dedicated to users and applications.
Consolidation of storage - enabling centralized hardware to support multiple servers reducing costs of acquisition and management.
Virtualization of storage - ensuring the right level of performance and data protection can be delivered to each virtual server according to its business value transparently.

XenSource virtualization products include the Software iSCSI Initiator which allows any machine with a standard NIC to connect to iSCSI based storage arrays, as well as robust hardware iSCSI support using QLogic host bus adapters that offload iSCSI processing from the system CPU to a dedicated card to provide the highest levels of iSCSI performance. These capabilities will enable upcoming support of live migration of virtual machines between systems, high availability of virtual machines between physical systems, and more integrated backups.

"Just as customers are looking for more affordable, more scalable options for virtualization, we are seeing an increased need to find simpler, more cost-effective comprehensive solutions for storage," said Roger Klorese, sr. director of product marketing at XenSource. "iSCSI support expands on our 'ten minutes to Xen' simplicity charter, and our partnerships with leading vendors greatly increase the accessibility to and interoperability of these solutions. Integration with iSCSI storage brings the business continuity benefits of the storage network, such as storage snapshots and off-host/off-site backup, to users of XenSource virtualization solutions."

Posted by David Marshall on April 25, 2007 06:51 PM

April 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BladeSystems Insight Hosts Over 300 IT Industry Executives at Debut Event

BladeSystems Insight, a national invitational summit focused on blade-based and other data center solutions, made its successful debut on April 10-12, 2007.

At the event, over 300 participants attended which included senior-level IT executives from across North America, more than 20 leading and emerging vendors, seven industry associations, five separate analyst organizations, and media. The event took place at the Westin resort in Savannah, Georgia.

The three-day agenda culminated with the premiere of the BladeSystems Insight "Insight Awards" where attending executives voted upon outstanding vendor products and presentations showcased at the event.

IBM was awarded Best Server Product, Egenera was awarded Best Virtualization Product and Chris Hipp, technologist and entrepreneur, was presented with a special Outstanding Contribution to Blade Computing Innovation Award.

Other event highlights included a keynote address from IBM executive Mark Papermaster and Intel executive Lorie Wigle, 50 case studies presented by participating vendors and over 500 onsite one-on-one meetings scheduled between executives and vendors as well as private analyst meetings. The show included panels on virtualization and it brought together a panel from the Blade Community that included the presidents of leading industry associations such as Blade Systems Alliance, Blade.org, DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force), Ethernet Alliance and the Open Grid Forum.

BladeSystems Insight 2008 will take place April 27-29, 2008 at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Tuscon Resort & Spa in Tuscon, Arizona. Featured in next year's program will be educational workshops in vertical areas such as virtualization, power and cooling, networking, storage, and other data center technology sectors.

For more information, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 25, 2007 06:37 PM

April 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SWsoft Announces Virtualization Starter Pack

Hoping to appeal to the small and medium sized organizations looking to deploy operating system virtualization, SWsoft just announced a turn-key offering of software and support for businesses for a price below the $1200 mark. And they are appropriately calling this new package the Virtuozzo Starter Pack.

The Virtuozzo Enterprise Starter Pack, priced at $1,198, enables new users to try out OS virtualization technology and it is perfect for a small server consolidation project or pilot deployment. The company claims that the software can be downloaded, installed and up and running in just minutes.

The Virtuozzo Starter Pack for either Windows or Linux allows up to four virtual environments and includes:

a single or dual CPU server license
full management toolset for the starter pack server
one year of Silver level support and maintenance

"We're offering a friction-less way for organizations to discover OS virtualization and Virtuozzo for the first time," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. "The starter pack has the full range of capabilities and tools of the full Virtuozzo product at an attractive price point. Users can get comfortable with the technology, gain experience its advantages and see how it complements their consolidation projects."

The Virtuozzo Enterprise Starter Pack comes with full capabilities, including the company's VZP2V (physical to virtual) tool that is intended to assist IT administrators with migrating their dedicated physical servers to a Virtuozzo virtual server environment. The bundle also includes a management toolset to help easily and completely manage the Starter Pack server including the ability to provision, monitor, and perform backup and recovery operations. To make things easier, the starter pack also provides an upgrade path so that an administrator can ultimately migrate to the full Virtuozzo product if needed.

In a virtualization market that is expected to grow to $15 billion worldwide by 2009, SWsoft has been cited as growing faster than any other vendor in the overall market. Last year, SWsoft grew revenues from its Virtuozzo and Parallels virtualization product lines by a remarkable 734 percent. With this current announcement, it seems as though the company may not be completely satisfied with those statistics. Opening up the product in this way may very well make the solution even more attractive to the SMB market, and ultimately, give SWsoft an even bigger slice of that $15 billion pie.

Available immediately, you can go here to find out more or purchase the product.

Posted by David Marshall on April 25, 2007 04:32 PM

April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware is not Slowing Down

Virtualization is a hot topic right now, and I don't think anybody questions that. Having been in this business for as long as I have, the news coming out about VMware's financial track record completely amazes me. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand it, and I'm eating it up! Who would have thought that VMware would be on track to break the $1 billion mark? And to help with that goal, it looks like VMware is beefing up their hardware compatibility and certification program. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 24, 2007 08:19 PM

April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Thinstall Joins SAP Advisory Group for Virtualization

Thinstall, an application virtualization solution provider, today announced that it has joined the SAP Enterprise Services Community Advisory Group (CAG) for Virtualization. The group was formed in response to customer demand for solutions to implement virtualization strategies.

SAP has selected members to contributed use cases and best practices, collaborating on a governance model that will allow SAP applications to be supported by virtual machines. Thinstall joins member companies Cisco, EMC, Intel, NetApp, Novell, Virtual Iron and VMware in the newly-formed advisory group.

Michael Rose, associate research analyst, Enterprise Virtualization Software at IDC, says that Thinstall's application virtualization solution is "an important contribution in SAP's cross-industry group, and will help develop standards for compatible, interfacing system solutions for the future market."

Thinstall is a client-less, server-less application virtualization solution that allows applications to be packaged into simple EXE files that run in user-mode, isolated from the host PC, without installation or changes to the local desktop's registry and file system. Thinstall simplifies the application process by eliminating the need for a pre-installed client and allows the applications to run securely and directly from any shared drive with no infrastructure enhancements.

According to Henrik Rosendahl, executive vice president of Thinstall, "Customers need solutions to deal with the increasing costs of application deployment and secure desktop management. This pressure combined with the demand for reduced IT infrastructure costs while ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery make virtualization best practices vital for today's business."

Posted by David Marshall on April 24, 2007 04:44 PM

April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld Reviews Desktop VM Managers from Kidaro and Sentillion

InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy recently put two third-party desktop virtualization management applications into the InfoWorld Test Center for a quick look at how the virtualized desktop is finally coming of age.

The two products, Kidaro Managed Workspace 1.0 and Sentillion's vThere, "provide centralized authentication and validation of VMs, including the ability to isolate and revoke rogue images. They bolster security through encryption of the local VM disk image or file structure, and through encryption of the VM network connection, which is typically handled within the VM by a VPN client. They also offer the ability to restrict the VM's access to local resources such as USB, disk, and clipboard. And they integrate with Active Directory to simplify authentication and identity management.

Randall continues, "Beyond these essentials, Kidaro and Sentillion both provide a variety of additional unique and highly innovative features that differentiate their products from the more basic VMware offering, and also from each other. The solution you choose will come down to your evaluation priorities, with Kidaro's host integration prowess squaring off against Sentillion's deployment convenience to woo prospective customers."

Both products seemed to score about the same, with a very good rating of 8.4.

To find out how these two products stacked up in the test lab, read Randall's entire review, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 24, 2007 04:26 PM

April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Lab Manager 2.5 Reaches Public Beta

VMware, continuing its move up the virtualization application stack, is getting closer to releasing the latest version of its virtual lab management application - VMware Lab Manager 2.5. The company acquired Lab Manager from Akimbi last year and have been updating it ever since.

If you aren't familiar with the product or the idea behind virtual lab management, you should check out this informative white paper, Virtual Lab Automation, which describes it perfectly.

Lab Manager 2.5 has introduced quite a few new features in its latest version (build 212):

Support for ESX Server 3.0.2 - Lab Manager also continues to support ESX Server 3.0.1.
Support for 64-bit - Create, deploy and manage virtual machine configurations with 64-bit guest operating systems.
Solaris 10 support - Adds support virtual machines running x86-based versions of Solaris 10 x86 edition.
SMP support - Lab Manager now supports virtual machines with multiple CPUs.
Support for NFS and iSCSI storage as both virtual machine and media storage - Previously, NFS storage could only serve as media storage.
Automated server pool cleanup - You can set policies to automate the undeploy and delete operations for unused virtual machines.
Managed Server maintenance mode - You can redeploy all virtual machines on a Managed Server system to other Managed Server systems.
Storage maintenance tools - Lab Manager provides a graphic and tabular view of disk space usage to support maintenance of datastore content. From one location, you can perform various operations at the virtual machine level and assess disk space that would become available if you delete a virtual machine and its "hidden" internal nodes.
Support for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and ASP.NET version 2.0.5.727

You can register for VMware's Lab Manager beta program, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 24, 2007 04:07 PM

April 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware ESX Server Patch Recall and Fix Available

Folks, this doesn't happen very often so I thought it best to pass on the following information. VMware recently sent out a recall notice about two of their VMware ESX Server patches that had been made available for download. The patches in question are the 2.5.4 Patch 6 (Build #41630) and the 2.5.3 Patch 9 (Build #41618). Both have been recalled in the interest of stability for ESX Servers.

VMware stated: "In an environment where Windows and Linux virtual machines are configured with vmxnet virtual NIC driver, when the virtual machine is either powered off, suspended or migrated live via VMotion to another host, a small amount of memory is not freed. Hence, multiple virtual machine power-offs, suspensions and VMotions may cause the host to run low on memory."

The fix has been made available for immediate download in the form of new patches (ESX Server 2.5.4 Patch 7 and ESX Server 2.5.3 Patch 10).

If your system is already running ESX Server 2.5.4 patch 6 (build #41630), please download and install the new patch, here.

If your system is already running ESX Server 2.5.3 Patch 9 (build #41618), please download and install the new patch, here.

ESX Server 2.5.4 Patch 6 (build 41630) and ESX Server 2.5.3 Patch 9 (build 41618) has been fully recalled and is no longer available on VMware's web site. If you have already downloaded them, please skip these patch releases when performing patch upgrades.

If you have any questions, you can contact VMware support at 877-4-VMWARE.

Posted by David Marshall on April 24, 2007 03:47 PM

April 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtualization at Altiris ManageFusion Event

If you haven't been to Altiris ManageFusion before, you just might be missing out. The company once again put on a first class event. It brought together Altiris executives, product managers, developers, services professionals and support staff, all under one roof to interact with the analysts, the media, its partners, customers and their vendors. Attendees were given the opportunity to interact with one another in many different ways. And once again, Altiris' Steve Morton, VP of Product Marketing and Management hosted and stole the show. His wit, humor and musical talent entertained the audience. The show's theme was about getting smart, and that's exactly what I set out to do. I watched, listened and interacted with hands-on training so that I could "get smart" on what Altiris and partners were showcasing. So, what did I find out at this event? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 21, 2007 10:27 AM

April 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

FastScale Offers its Virtualization Provisioning Answer

FastScale Technology, Inc. has come out of stealth mode with guns-a-blazing as it introduces its software virtualization and provisioning solution for datacenters - FastScale Composer Suite.

The company comes out with claims that by automating the process of streamlining server software, virtualizing the environment and then provisioning in only seconds, they can deliver a scalable and dynamic software infrastructure that can increase overall server utilization to more than 90 percent and decrease system administration by 75 percent or more.

"Current data center automation offerings focus on managing server sprawl symptoms like software deployment," said Lynn LeBlanc, CEO of FastScale. "Only FastScale Composer addresses the root cause of software complexity by fully automating the process of building highly streamlined server software, on the front-end, while dynamically deploying and seamlessly managing the environments on the back-end. Early customer feedback on our unique approach has been incredibly positive with one CIO describing FastScale Composer as 'the most significant innovation to the concept of a golden image in 20 years.'"

Although originally considered a time saving concept within virtualization, golden images or template images are causing many customers a lot of heartache and man-hours trying to build, manage and keep them current. FastScale hopes to remove customer dependence on these images.

According to the company, with FastScale Composer, software environments average 99 percent smaller than traditional software images, are built on-demand and reside on servers only for the duration of the job in process. Once complete, the server is available for automatic provisioning of a new software environment in under a minute.

FastScale said that ease of use was a primary design consideration for Composer. System administrators benefit from flexible rules-based mapping and automatic patch and configuration management. The company also claims that in addition to a highly intuitive user interface, the system can be installed and operational within two hours.

According to one of the current beta customers, "FastScale Composer enables us easily to provision new machines to handle peak loads as well as providing exceptional support for platform migrations."

Key innovations of FastScale Composer include:

Application Blueprint - While operating systems support hundreds of thousands of applications, any given application only uses a small subset of the operating system. The Application Blueprint automatically identifies the precise operating system components an application requires at execution time, without any manual effort.
Dynamic Application Bundle - Based on the Application Blueprint, FastScale Composer automatically builds a small, full-featured software environment including only the precise software components required. Averaging only one percent the size of traditional server images, the Dynamic Application Bundle (DABTM) is created on-demand at job execution time, so it always includes the appropriate updates and patches.
Lightweight Provisioning - With the DAB's small footprint, provisioning to bare metal servers takes seconds, as opposed to an hour or more. The application software stack is small enough to run in memory, so diskless configurations are easily supported. When a job is complete, the server is available for provisioning of a new DAB - all in under a minute.

To run FastScale Composer Suite, a DB2-based software repository is used and is supplied and included in the price of the Suite; a dedicated management server is also needed. Pricing starts at $30,000. Currently, the product only works with Linux-based servers, but the company hopes to add Windows support by the end of the year.

Posted by David Marshall on April 21, 2007 09:46 AM

April 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SWsoft Recognized by Microsoft as a Gold Certified Partner

Server virtualization and automation software provider, SWsoft, announced that it had achieved Gold Certified Partner status in the Microsoft Partner Program.

The company attained Microsoft competencies in ISV/Software Solutions and Networking Infrastructure Solutions to meet the requirements for Gold Certified Partner. SWsoft has demonstrated expertise with Microsoft technologies and has proven its ability to meet customers' needs and impact the technology marketplace.

Since August 2004, SWsoft and Microsoft have worked together to develop and market virtualization and automation technology. In February 2007, SWsoft signed a three-year agreement with Microsoft by which SWsoft will receive enhanced support from Microsoft for its enterprise and hosting customers operating Windows-based applications within Virtuozzo virtual environments.

"We are honored to be named a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, which will allow us to promote our expertise and relationship with Microsoft," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "As a Gold Certified Partner, we will continue to work closely with Microsoft to enhance our leading virtualization and automation solutions for the Windows environment."

"Customers are looking for partner companies that can bridge the gap between their business demands and technology capabilities," said Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp. "Today, Microsoft recognizes SWsoft as a new Gold Certified Partner for demonstrating its expertise providing customer satisfaction using Microsoft products and technology."

Posted by David Marshall on April 21, 2007 08:56 AM

April 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SteelEye Aims to Protect VMware Infrastructure 3

SteelEye Technology recently announced their latest product designed to increase the availability and data protection of virtual machines in a VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) environment. The product is called SteelEye Protection Suite for VMware Infrastructure 3, and the company describes it as breakthrough technology which supports clustering together physical and virtual servers for high availability, continuous data protection and disaster recovery.

SteelEye Protection Suite is said to complement the high availability technologies that are already built into VI3 (VMware HA and VMware Consolidated Backup) by delivering advanced data replication and high availability clustering technologies to monitor and automatically recover any piece of the VI3 environment.

For example, while VMware HA protects virtual machines from hardware failures, SteelEye LifeKeeper provides protection against operating system and application failures within the virtual machines. The software can run within either a Linux or Windows guest operating system, and according to the company, LifeKeeper monitors applications and all of their dependencies including file systems, device drivers, IP addresses and data connections to ensure that any failure is automatically detected and recovered.

Recovery can include restarting the application within the same virtual machine, migrating the application to a virtual machine on the same server, migrating it to a virtual machine on a different server or performing failover to a physical server.

The company said that unlike other solutions on the market which provide for migration of virtual machines or monitoring of a small set of potential failure conditions, LikeKeeper monitors the entire virtual machine environment and can perform both administrator initiated stop and resume of ESX Server virtual machines and fully automated LifeKeeper initiated recovery, based on user-defined policies, to a paired physical server.

The Protection Suite also delivers what the company calls the first solution for clustering VirtualCenter Management Server. Being able to detect problems within VirtualCenter and then automatically recovering from them is key to avoiding any disruption in VI3 management capabilities.

"As companies migrate business-critical applications from physical environments into virtual environments (P to V) to take advantage of server consolidation, ensuring the availability of applications residing within those virtual servers is critical," said Jean S. Bozman, Vice President in IDC's Enterprise Computing group.

"With its support for VMware Virtual Infrastructure virtualized environments, SteelEye's extension of these clustering capabilities into virtual environment protection is a logical next step that preserves a common model for protecting applications in both the P and V environments."

Posted by David Marshall on April 21, 2007 08:00 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Citrix desktop management and Neoware devices

Many of today's desktop admins are looking for a solution to help them with the management and security of the desktops within their organizations. And Citrix hopes to have an answer for them. And speaking of Citrix, Neoware has recently announced the availability of Citrix ICA 10 for users of Neoware thin client devices. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 17, 2007 08:58 PM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware's Virtualization Benchmarking Tool Goes Public

VMware has finally released the first public beta of VMmark, the company's virtualization benchmarking tool. First announced just before VMworld 2006 (the company's annual virtualization conference for developers, partners, and end-users), the latest VMmark released to the public has undergone some key changes since that original specification was developed in order to simplify benchmark setup and execution.

Some of the more important changes include the distribution of virtual appliances for the Linux-based workloads (redistributing SUSE SLES 10), distribution of an XML-based open-source benchmarking harness for STAF/STAX, reduction of the memory footprint from 7GB per tile to 5GB per tile and replacement of the database workload with SysBench running against MySQL. A comprehensive benchmarking guide with step-by-step instructions for benchmarking setup and execution is also included.

According to Bruce Herndon, a member of VMware's performance team, "VMmark is intended to measure performance in an enterprise consolidation scenario. More importantly, it is a benchmark for the entire virtualization platform. Appropriately configured CPU, memory, network, and storage are recommended. In its current form, it still requires some degree of effort to set up and run effectively."

Dell has already begun using VMmark to benchmark their Dell PowerEdge servers and have recently published a paper using it titled Virtualization Performance of Dell PowerEdge Servers using the VMmark Benchmark.

Enroll for the beta, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 17, 2007 08:11 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Releases a Free TCO Calculator for Virtualization

VMware has released a free, self-service Web-based TCO calculator to help virtualization users estimate their return on investment using VMware Infrastructure, and it includes a detailed report on potential cost savings.

VMware describes the calculator as a sophisticated, user-friendly tool that requires just a few user inputs to quickly generate a detailed report assessing each area where a customer can expect potential savings. The TCO Calculator uses a robust methodology based on VMware customer surveys and experience in the field from working on VMware Infrastructure production deployments.

The free calculator can be used by IT decision makers to help find ways to address continually escalating data center infrastructure and administrative costs from hardware acquisition, management, power and cooling, real estate and disaster recovery. Using the VMware TCO Calculator, customers now can quickly estimate the potential savings of implementing VMware Infrastructure as a core element of their IT architecture.

"Virtualization is an effective initiative companies can undertake to reign in the spiraling costs of maintaining an enterprise data center," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product and solutions marketing at VMware. "The VMware TCO Calculator is a helpful utility that enables customers to visualize the potential benefits of infrastructure virtualization and assists them in creating a roadmap for getting started."

The access the calculator, click here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 17, 2007 07:24 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

STORServer Announces Backup Storage Appliance for VMware

STORServer, manufacturer of the all-in-one suite of Business Continuity Appliances, announced at Storage Networking World the company's new STORServer VCB Appliance. The backup appliance is designed specifically to protect vulnerable VMware environments and improve manageability by eliminating the need to have backup agents on each virtual and/or host machine.

According to the company, virtualization is on the rise and to address that growing demand the company's appliance comes preconfigured to incorporate both the hardware and software needed to provide centralized backup, disaster recovery and archiving capabilities all in one box.

Many businesses utilize VMware because it allows them to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, providing consolidation and cost saving benefits. However, this consolidation can cause challenges for traditional backup solutions, including complex scheduling and management, long backup windows and high CPU and network usage. Some companies even shut down the virtual machines before doing backups, meaning backups could only be performed after hours.

To address these type of issues, the STORServer VCB Appliance incorporates VMware Consolidated Backup on its appliance. Consolidated Backup is designed to improve manageability of backups and reduces costs, by centralizing the backup of ESX servers on the STORServer.

They describe the workflow like so: Using Consolidated Backup, a backup schedule is created on the STORServer for each virtual machine to be backed up. Each schedule creates a virtual machine snapshot, mounts the snapshot to the STORServer in the SAN and then uses the STORServer backup client to either back up the full virtual machine or to perform file level incremental backups, thus allowing the virtual machine to continue to operate while the backups are taking place. When the backup is complete the schedule dismounts and releases the snapshot of the virtual machine.

According to the company, the appliance also includes important features such as progressive incremental backups, policy based retention, disk-to-disk backup and ease of use. They also said that customers have only one vendor to call for support - STORServer. The appliance approach makes it easier for customers to rely on one company for all their storage needs.

Pricing for the STORServer VCB Appliance starts at $20,000. And for existing customers, the company will offer several options and configurations for VMware backups on any of their appliances.

Posted by David Marshall on April 17, 2007 06:46 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Vizioncore Releases esxReplicator 2.0

Vizioncore has released its latest version of esxReplicator v2.0, the company's real-time replication solution for the VMware VI3 Server environment. The company says that its esxReplicator 2.0 product offers a completely new approach to virtual machine replication.

Some of the new features found in this latest release include:

VMware Infrastructure 3 support
VMotion and DRS Awareness - esxReplicator's Virtual Center awareness enables esxReplicator to follow virtual machines from one host to another to continue replication even after a virtual machine has been moved as the result of a DRS or VMotion event.
Improved user interface - esxReplicator can be set up to communicate directly with the source and destination hosts or set up to communicate with VirtualCenter, which enables esxReplicator to follow virtual machines to the new source host in the event of a DRS of VMotion of source virtual machine. New features like Drag and Drop Replication, Startup and Job Wizards, and real-time performance statistics make esxReplicator even easier to implement.
Support for Destination Pre-population - With the support of pre-populated destinations, esxReplicator now supports:
- Improved failback performance
- D/R testing
- Bulk loading
Support for VI3 Hot Add - esxReplicator is now enabled to support VI3 Hot Add of VMDK or NICs. Any added hardware will be automatically picked up by esxReplicator on the next replication pass.
Now esxRanger Professional aware (when used with esxRanger Professional 3.15) - Through the use of an intelligent file locking mechanism, esxReplicator and esxRanger Professional can now work together error-free.

Download a trial, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 17, 2007 06:16 AM

April 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

NetApp StoreVault is now Certified for VMware Infrastructure 3

StoreVault, a NetApp division, announced that its StoreVault S500 has been certified to work with VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3). By combining StoreVault with VI3, SMBs are provided with infrastructure virtualization strategies that better manage their storage and server resources.

The StoreVault S500 will attempt to help customers realize the benefits of combining storage with infrastructure virtualization. When the StoreVault S500 is deployed in VMware environments, it can simplify storage management concerns such as resources, data backup and recovery, and capacity provisioning.

According to StoreVault, data growth challenges are creating tremendous headaches in data loss, backup, and recovery for SMBs. Part of the problem is that many SMB IT environments consist of many servers with direct-attached storage (DAS). As a result, there is an increasing interest among SMBs to realize the same benefits that enterprise data centers have but on a smaller scale. Severing the physical dependencies between servers and storage achieves measurably better returns on both server and storage resources.

"Virtualization is useful to businesses of all sizes, not just Fortune 500 companies," said Brian Byun, vice president of Global Partners and Solutions at VMware. "SMB IT managers face many of the same pressures as data center operators when solving storage and server management issues while having fewer resources to address the problems. Certifying StoreVault with VMware provides a great value proposition to meet the budgetary and reliability needs of smaller firms."

"We're seeing an interesting trend among SMBs that are looking for smarter, more reliable alternatives to the traditional way of handling storage - and iSCSI SAN and infrastructure virtualization are getting a lot of attention," said Sajai Krishnan, general manager of StoreVault. "Our strategic relationship with VMware is designed to bring added value to IT generalists within SMBs that are tasked with taming storage and infrastructure management with a limited budget."

Posted by David Marshall on April 15, 2007 09:35 AM

April 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's Virtualization GM Announces Virtualization Delays

Mike Neil, Microsoft's General Manager of Virtualization Strategy, announced on Thursday that Microsoft will delay delivery of two of its virtualization solutions - the much anticipated Viridian and the Service Pack 1 release for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. Neil wrote in his blog entry:

"As the person who oversees the development plans, teams and strategy for Microsoft's virtualization software on desktops and servers, I want to update everyone on the timing of our server virtualization offerings. I know that many of our customers and partners will hear of these changes from their usual Microsoft contacts, but I wanted to personally explain some of the reasons behind the new schedule for Windows Server virtualization (codename Viridian) and Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1. But first, here's where we stand today:

The public beta of Windows Server virtualization will ship in the second half of 2007, not in the first half as previously disclosed.

The final version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1 now will be available in Q2, not Q1 as previously stated. In the interim, customers and partners can download a Release Candidate (RC) version later this month - this is code complete and an update to the current beta 2."

According to Neil, the change in schedule for Viridian can be attributed to performance and scalability. "We're designing Windows Server virtualization to scale up to 64 processors, which I'm proud to say is something no other vendor's product supports." He continued, "We still have some work to do to have the beta meet the "scale up" bar we have set. Also, we're tuning Windows Server virtualization to run demanding enterprise IT workloads, even I/O intensive workloads, so performance is very important and we still have some work to do here."

The MSVS 2005 R2 SP1 update is also being delayed. Instead of being released in Q1 as expected, it should be released sometime this quarter. So, why the delay? According to Neil, Microsoft required some additional testing time on the service pack because of the new guest operating system support that has been added - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Solaris 10 and the most recent CTP release of Windows Server Longhorn.

And like Viridian, Microsoft is concerned with increasing scalability on MSVS 2005 R2. SP1 will allow the product to scale to 64 VMs on 32-bit hosts and 512 VMs on x64 hosts.

So what now? You'll probably read many articles from those that will criticize Microsoft for the delay and far fewer from those that praise them for trying to get it right (or at least, as close to right as possible) the first time out the gate. And you will probably see the competition take this as an opportunity to expand their own current market size, hoping that it gives them more time to get their own solutions implemented into the wild. For the rest, it becomes a waiting game.

Posted by David Marshall on April 15, 2007 08:51 AM

April 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

PlateSpin's PowerRecon 3.0 Promotes Green

PlateSpin announced major enhancements to its data center planning and analysis solution that will help organizations achieve new operational efficiencies while accelerating the path to environmental responsibility.

The company's PowerRecon 3.0 now offers medium and large data centers a profitable course to green computing by providing organizations with the unique ability to analyze and report on power and cooling requirements and create plans for reducing energy consumption in the data center.

"The cost savings and environment benefits of virtualization are closely aligned," said Stephen Pollack, founder and CEO of PlateSpin. "By consolidating servers into more energy-efficient virtual machine hosts or blade servers, organizations can retire old, power-hungry hardware and optimize underutilized servers to achieve significant savings in power, heating and cooling requirements, resulting in a greener data center. PlateSpin PowerRecon 3.0 supports green data center initiatives by helping system integrators and end-use customers accurately assess the environmental impacts and potential cost savings derived from a consolidation or hardware migration project."

New Features in PowerRecon 3.0 include:

Power and Cooling Data Analysis - PowerRecon supports green data center initiatives by providing the unique ability to measure the effect server consolidation will have on power and cooling costs. This analysis adds another dimension to consolidation planning and return on investment (ROI) projections as well as environmental impact assessments.
Workload and Resource Utilization Forecasting - PowerRecon now enables organizations to better plan for infrastructure investment and server consolidation by creating reports and charts that accurately describe how one or a group of server workloads will use resources in the future based on historical trend data. Forecasted values for CPU, disk, memory and usage trends ensure that server consolidation projects can accommodate future growth.
Enterprise-Level Scalability - A single instance of PowerRecon now supports robust data collection, analysis and planning for up to 1,500 servers in the network. Multiple instances of PowerRecon can run together in the data center, enabling the solution to scale well beyond 1,500 servers. The enterprise-class scalability puts PowerRecon in a category all its own when it comes to support for large-scale data center consolidation projects.
Distributed Data Center Support - Organizations with multiple data center sites are now able to distribute PowerRecon to multiple geographical locations to remotely collect data and schedule updates to a master PowerRecon installation, enabling centralized analysis and planning for enterprise-wide initiatives like server or data center consolidation.
Custom Field Support - In addition to providing powerful remote data collection capabilities, PowerRecon now allows data center managers to add supplementary workload profile information for individual servers or groups of servers. The ability to capture data about physical location, rack size, business owner and power requirements in custom fields provides organizations with a complete picture of the IT environment for centralized analysis and reporting.
Broad Multiplatform Support - With the addition of support for Sun Solaris, customers with multiplatform environments can now inventory, analyze and report on Windows, Linux and UNIX systems onsite in the data center using a single data collection and analysis solution.
Automated Report Generation and Delivery - With advanced, schedule-based graphical reporting, PowerRecon enables customized reports to be automatically generated and delivered via email or FTP to IT optimization specialists and service providers so they can easily track the state of the data center from anywhere in the world.

Posted by David Marshall on April 12, 2007 05:52 AM

April 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

QLogic Introduces Virtual HBA Ports to Novell's SUSE Environment

QLogic has announced an HBA virtualization solution for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server environments from Novell to help ease the creation and management of virtual machines in the data center.

Novell is the first vendor to support the QLogic N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) technology for Linux, allowing the creation and provisioning of virtual HBA ports across multiple physical servers in conjunction with Novell ZENworks Orchestrator and Virtual Machine Management. Storage administrators who deploy ZENworks Orchestrator and Virtual Machine Management along with QLogic SANblade 2400 Series 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs can now create virtual machines and ports that are easier to manage, maintain and support across the virtualized data center.

According to QLogic, without virtual HBA ports, storage administrators must use the physical World Wide Port Name (WWPN) of the HBA to define fabric zones, mask storage LUNs, and configure VMs. In addition, the company claims the typical one-zone design creates security concerns for disks with sensitive information and requires the reconfiguration of the network if more than one zone is defined.

Virtual HBA ports enable virtual machines to be bound to storage and multiple zones can be defined using the virtual port parameters. The company says it helps create an easier-to-manage and more secured virtualized environment.

"Novell ZENworks Orchestrator and Virtual Machine Management provide comprehensive tools to configure, deploy, and manage virtual machines in a heterogeneous SAN environment," said Richard Whitehead, director of product marketing for Novell. "Novell's cross-platform solution combined with NPIV capabilities from QLogic further simplifies the overall management of virtual machines and related physical and virtual resources. As the first management tool to support NPIV on Linux, ZENworks Orchestrator and Virtual Machine Management allows customers to get the most out of their data center infrastructure."

Posted by David Marshall on April 11, 2007 03:31 PM

April 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SYSGO and AMD Cooperate on Virtualization

SYSGO and AMD have formed a cooperative venture to exploit AMD multi-core technology in conjunction with SYSGO's PikeOS paravirtualization real-time operating system.

Stated in a recent press release, the two companies aim to provide a unique combination of multi-core technology, hardware virtualization, and software virtualization for the embedded industry. The first result of this partnership demonstrates the cooperative execution of Windows Embedded XP and a real-time application in clearly separated partitions.

"To realize our vision of a broad use of AMD-V virtualization technology and AMD multi-core technology in the embedded market, the right software solution must be available. With SYSGO's PikeOS technology, hardware and software virtualization can be combined in hard real-time, secure and safety-critical environments," said Jeff Chu, marketing manager of AMD's embedded computing solutions division.

"Since AMD, with its leadership role in hardware virtualization, drove their AMD-V technology into the embedded domain, we see a unique opportunity to join forces and to amplify the benefits exponentially, by combining AMD and SYSGO technologies. With PikeOS and AMD-V technology, virtualization is greatly empowered in the embedded market," said Detlev Schaadt, CTO at SYSGO.

PikeOS is a unique combination of a complete real-time operating system that's based on a separation microkernel, and a hypervisor with all its virtualization capabilities. Within PikeOS, the separation microkernel manages the partitioning of the user space, and therefore enables virtualization. With AMD-V virtualization technology, some if the separation work runs in hardware. These features will enable PikeOS to become even more efficient, by avoiding the execution of some rather complex algorithms. The very compact implementation of PikeOS will be reduced even further when using AMD-V, and overall performance will definitely be improved.

The SYSGO/AMD joint solution will be able to handle:

Running real-time applications cooperatively with Linux and/or Microsoft Windows
Running applications with different security and safety levels on one hardware
Combining several electronic control units on one platform
Running legacy code that's clearly separated from, but cooperates with, new technology
Enabling several instances of Linux running on one machine

Aside from the technical advantages, the SYSGO/AMD solution helps to reduce and control implementation costs, as well as the overall embedded project risk.

The first step of the cooperation roadmap is general support of AMD multi-core CPU's within PikeOS. This will be followed immediately by support for AMD-V technology. As soon as the new I/O MMU is available, PikeOS will utilize it. This will be the last step to a complete virtualization environment. SYSGO will continue to support AMD's single-core line.

Posted by David Marshall on April 11, 2007 03:18 PM

April 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SonaSafe Unveils Virtual Server Protection

Sonasoft Corporation announced the availability of its latest version of the SonaSafe solution - a solution which provides unique features for protecting virtual servers. The company has offered its SonaSafe line for products such as SQL, Exchange and file servers. This latest version of SonaSafe supports several scenarios to protect the virtual servers both at primary and disaster recovery sites.

According to the company's latest press release, they explain how virtualization is being increasingly used by IT departments for server consolidation and testing purposes. Virtual servers are used to reduce operational costs and improve system efficiency. The growth in virtual servers has created challenges for IT departments regarding high availability and data protection. It is not enough to protect physical servers but also virtual servers as they contain business critical data and information. Virtual servers offer the flexibility, but at the same time if a single physical server containing multiple virtual server fails, then impact of data loss is enormous.

Sonasoft provides a high-availability solution, protecting data that reside on virtual servers. SonaSafe application supports many interesting disaster recovery scenarios. Customers can have multiple physical servers at the primary location and at the offsite disaster recovery location, they can have one physical server with multiple virtual servers. Also, multiple virtual servers from the primary site can be easily backed up and replicated to the disaster recovery site. Sonasoft provides application specific protection for Microsoft SQL and Exchange servers. The replication is performed at a database and mailbox level which provides granular level protection for virtual systems.

Posted by David Marshall on April 11, 2007 03:07 PM

April 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Organizations That Rush to Adopt Virtualization Can Weaken Security

According to a recent press release from analyst firm Gartner, virtualization offers organizations the opportunity to reduce costs and increase agility, however, if this is done without implementing best practices for security, virtualization may actually increase costs and reduce agility.

Virtualization software allows users to simultaneously run multiple operating systems (OS), or multiple sessions of a single OS, on a single, physical machine - server or desktop. Regardless of the specific architecture, virtualization uses a privileged layer of software that, if compromised, places all consolidated workloads at risk.

"Virtualization, as with any emerging technology, will be the target of new security threats," said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Many organizations mistakenly assume that their approach for securing virtual machines (VMs) will be the same as securing any OS and thus plan to apply their existing configuration guidelines, standards and tools. While this is a start, simply applying the technologies and best practices for securing physical servers won't provide sufficient protections for VMs."

Because of the rush to adopt virtualization for server consolidation efforts, many security issues are overlooked, best practices aren't applied, or in some cases, the tools and technologies for addressing some of the security issues with virtualization are immature or nonexistent. As a result, through 2009, 60 percent of production VMs will be less secure than their physical counterparts.

Gartner analysts said the process of securing VMs must start before the VMs are deployed, and ideally, before vendors and products are selected, so that security and securability can be factored into the evaluation and selection process. During this process, organizations must consider these security issues in virtualized environments:

Virtualization software, such as hypervisors, represent a new layer of privileged software that will be attacked and must be protected.
The loss of separation of duties for administrative tasks, which can lead to a breakdown of defense in-depth.
Patching, signature updates, and protection from tampering for offline VM and VM "appliance" images.
Patching and secure confirmation management of VM appliances where the underlying OS and configuration are not accessible.
Limited visibility into the host OS and virtual network to find vulnerabilities and assess correct configuration.
Restricted view into inter-VM traffic for inspection by intrusion prevention systems (IPSs).
Mobile VMs will require security policy and settings to migrate with them.
Immature and incomplete security and management tools.

"Organizations need to pressure security and virtualization vendors to plug the major security gaps," said Mr. MacDonald. "Existing virtualization solutions address some of the gaps, but not all. It will take several years for the tools and vendors to evolve, as well as organizations to mature their processes and staff skills. Knowledge of the security risks and the costs to address them must be factored into the cost-benefit discussion of virtualization. If these added costs are avoided, the risk of not making the necessary security investments must be accepted by the decision maker in the move to virtualization."

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

April 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware's TSX Event Filled with Information

While not as big as VMworld, VMware's TSX Event for EMEA is providing quite a bit of information to those lucky enough to be in the audience. Topics are across the map covering Fusion, Lab Manager, VMTN, certifications, appliances and more. I can't wait for VMworld 2007, hopefully they save something for that show! listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 9, 2007 07:22 PM

April 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware's Awards Continue to Grow in 2007

VMware continues to stack up software awards early on in 2007, as the virtualization giant gets the nod from industry analysts, the media as well as consumers.

VMware Lab Manager recently won the 2007 Jolt Product Excellence Award in the Utilities category. The Jolt Product Excellence Awards, sponsored by Dr. Dobb's Journal, are designed to recognize the most innovative, trend-making, ahead-of-the-curve products for developers.

VMware describes Lab Manager as a product that automates the setup, capture, storage and sharing of multi-machine software configurations and makes them available on demand to local or remote development and test teams through a self-service portal. The product also includes a unique delta-tree image library management feature, which enables large image libraries to be maintained while eliminating data redundancy and reducing the amount of disk storage required compared to other lab management systems, as well as seamless integration with downstream production operations systems. The result is a system that uniquely helps enterprise operations and application development teams maximize utilization of development and test lab assets, accelerate software development cycles and increase the quality of
delivered software systems.

"VMware Lab Manager bridges the gap between application development and IT operations teams to maintain maximum efficiency and quality control during the software lifecycle from start to finish," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. "Winning this distinguished industry award affirms the capability of VMware Lab Manager to automate and streamline this process for our customers so they in turn can more rapidly deliver business-critical applications into production."

The company also announced that Redmond magazine readers have named VMware Workstation the best desktop virtualization product and VMware Server the best server virtualization product, marking the fourth consecutive year that VMware products have been honored by Redmond. Past recognition by Redmond includes the Editors' Choice, Most Valuable Product, "Products We Love!" and Readers' Choice Awards.

"Customer feedback is the most effective way to judge a product's relevance to the market," said Dan Chu. "Receiving these top awards directly from Redmond readers demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering high-quality products and validates the choice made by the increasing number of VMware users who have adopted virtualization as a strategic component of IT architecture."

Posted by David Marshall on April 9, 2007 05:40 PM

April 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Launches Fusion Beta 3 for Mac

VMware has released a new beta update to its VMware Fusion virtualization product for Intel-based Macs. The product uses a Cocoa-native user interface and allows the Intel-based Mac to run Microsoft Windows operating systems as well as many other x86 based operating systems, side-by-side with the Mac OS X operating system.

The update adds several new features to the product and greatly improves its performance. In addition, VMware programmers have added in simple UI polishes here and there that make all the difference. If you haven't tried the product in a while, you owe it to yourself to give it another chance.

In addition to bug fixes, VMware's Beta 3 of Fusion for Mac offers the following new features and improvements:

Greatly improved performance - By popular demand, you can now disable debugging code to experience the full power and performance that VMware Fusion offers for running your favorite PC applications.
Support for Boot Camp - VMware Fusion automatically detects your Boot Camp partition, so you can now run a Windows XP virtual machine from your existing Boot Camp partition. You no longer have to choose Windows or Mac: you can now run Windows side-by-side with your favorite Mac applications. Note: For this Beta 3 release, Windows Vista is not supported; only Windows XP is supported.
Windows Easy Install - You want to run Windows applications, but you don't want to become a guru just to install Windows. VMware Fusion has you covered; just answer a few simple questions, insert your Windows CD and let VMware Fusion take care of the rest and automatically create the optimal Windows virtual machine for your Mac, including the installation of VMware Tools.
Virtual machine packages - Virtual machines are now encapsulated in a single, easy-to-manage package. Move your virtual machines to another hard drive or Mac simply by copying a file.
Enhanced virtual machine creation - The entire virtual machine creation process has been streamlined, and the new Windows Easy Install feature makes creating a virtual machine even easier than before. The New Virtual Machine Assistant remembers the location you choose for future virtual machine creation.
Enhanced virtual machine library - Managing multiple virtual machines is even easier with the Virtual Machine Library. Add new virtual machines by just dragging them into the Library, reorder virtual machines with drag and drop, and use the delete key on the Keyboard to remove virtual machines from the library. Open a Virtual Machine without powering it on, using the new Settings button, which opens a virtual machine directly to the Hardware Editor.
Host-Only Networking - Host-Only networking creates a network that is completely contained within your Mac, with a network connection between the virtual machine and your Mac. Use host-only networking to set up an isolated virtual network.
Improved suspend/shutdown state - When a virtual machine is suspended, VMware Fusion shows a screenshot of the last known state of the virtual machine and a friendly play button so you can get up and running again quickly.
Improved hardware editor - Settings for virtual hardware are now complete: you can remove virtual hardware from the hardware editor when virtual machines are powered off.
Improved international support - European and Japanese Apple keyboards now work properly in virtual machines.

Posted by David Marshall on April 9, 2007 05:05 PM

April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Interview: Virtualization Management Q&A with Opsware CTO Tim Howes

Tim Howes, CTO of Opsware, recently sat down with me to discuss the subject of management within the virtualization space. Once you've gone down the road of virtualizing more than a single server, you quickly start to realize how important a good management solution becomes.

InfoWorld Virtualization Report: Virtualization adoption is skyrocketing, but reality is that most of the deployments (nearly 80%) have been limited to test and development scenarios on a few hundred servers. What is preventing enterprises from rolling out virtualization technology in production environments?

Opsware CTO Tim Howes: Rolling out virtualization on a large scale is easy. Managing a large virtualization deployment and the extra complexity it brings to an IT environment is hard. For the handful of organizations (about 20 percent) attempting large-scale deployments, the lack of enterprise class management tools has hindered success by increasing management costs and decreasing responsiveness and quality. This ultimately threatens the return on investment of virtualization itself.

IVR: What are some of the main challenges associated with managing virtual machines?

Tim Howes: The first challenge is that there are likely to be a lot of them. Creating virtual servers is easy to do and habit-forming, leading to an explosion of new virtual machines that must be managed. The second challenge is that VMs introduce a whole new set of relationships and dependencies that must be managed and understood, complicating tasks such as impact analysis and understanding virtual application compatibility. Finally, virtualization introduces new technology that must be managed, such as the hypervisor operating system. If virtualization is left unmanaged, it can lead to a variety of challenges ranging from unmanageable complexity, IT labor shortages, and security and service delivery problems on a global scale.

IVR: How does Data Center Automation software help enterprises maximize their investment in virtualization technologies?

Tim Howes: Data Center Automation is mature technology proven effective at reducing the complexity and cost of managing the physical world of servers, network devices and storage. On servers, the technology manages the entire lifecycle of server virtualization from provisioning and patching to compliance and configuration. For example, Opsware has added a new tool to its product family called Virtualization Director that provides all the capabilities necessary to manage large numbers of heterogeneous virtual systems deployed in multiple data centers, as well as the business-critical applications they support. This comprehensive server management system provides automated capabilities for creating, securing and controlling virtual servers. This includes discovering, visualizing and tracking dependencies between virtual and physical infrastructure elements and the applications they host, and standardizing management across both physical and virtual servers running on heterogeneous platforms throughout the enterprise.

Data Center Automation enables IT enterprises to realize the true value of virtualization by minimizing the complexity that is often a result of the adoption of server virtualization. More and more end-users are realizing a need for automation, and that's a trend that consistent across both physical and virtual servers.

IVR: Do customers really need a virtualization management tool from an independent vendor? Why can't the virtualization vendor provide this capability?

Tim Howes: IT stands to benefit the most with a vendor-agnostic management platform that manages virtual machines from many vendors in once centralized location. This enables IT to ensure consistency and standardization of server builds which will lead to a higher quality and more reliable IT environment. An independent solution also allows IT to combine virtual server management with management of physical servers. Virtual and physical servers must cooperate seamlessly to serve the applications running on them. Nobody wants to go one place to manage their virtual machines and another to manage their physical machines. The whole point of virtualization is that you should not have to care. Only an independent vendor can provide this level of integration. The result is seamless integration that provides even greater efficiencies and cost savings across an enterprise's global infrastructure.

IVR: Why is management across virtual and physical machines critical for today's enterprise?

Tim Howes: Seamless management of virtual and physical servers is key to building a zero-latency data center - reaching deep into the applications that power today's global enterprise. In contrast, with different solutions for physical and virtual machines, IT is burdened with an incomplete picture of the entire infrastructure that supports an application which ultimately could compromise core revenue-generating activities for the business, such as ensuring the ability for customers to place orders online. Seamless management for physical and virtual machines plays a critical role in helping companies comply with industry and government regulations, and ensuring the tightest level of security across the infrastructure. In the virtual/physical server world, IT's ability to understand how a change on a virtual server may affect other parts of the application and vice-versa is critical.

IVR: What will happen if enterprises don't automate management of virtual machines now?

Tim Howes: There are many consequences of not automating management of virtual machines, including widespread chaos and increased complexity across the data center. Just as IT cannot tolerate the risk of a missing security patch or misconfigured physical server, the same holds true for virtual servers. Unfortunately, this is an all too common occurrence in environments where virtual machines are not automated.

Enterprises must also ensure their virtual machines are in compliance with government and industry regulations. Only through automation can enterprises accurately track and audit activity across the entire infrastructure, including virtual machines. If enterprises cannot show they are taking steps to ensure compliance of their virtual machines, they are opening themselves up to costly fines, delisting and potentially jail time.

IVR: How has the market responded to Opsware's Virtualization Director?

Tim Howes: We've received an incredibly positive response to the introduction of Opsware Virtualization Director from current Opsware customers, as well as new customers who see the introduction of complexity caused by virtual servers as a reason to automate. Moving from a small, confined deployment to a large scale virtualization rollout can be intimidating for customers who need to ensure compliance, security and reporting policies. Opsware Virtualization Director provides a proven approach to server management that allows customers to create and maintain a significant amount of virtual servers completely integrated with the way they already manage their physical servers. In the end, this provides customers with the confidence to take their virtualization deployment to a whole new level.

I'd like to thank Opsware CTO Tim Howes for speaking with me about this important topic.

Posted by David Marshall on April 4, 2007 08:55 PM

April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Announcements Around Virtualization Products

Microsoft is making quite a stir around the virtualization community as it has announced more than a few products these past few weeks. A lot of news came out of the Microsoft Management Summit, and we even had a scare about delivery dates. One magazine reported that Viridian was going to slip even further out. But then, Microsoft had an answer for that. And Microsoft also had an answer for other virtualization needs, from Linux virtual machine support, to management, capacity planning, virtual lab testing, and virtual machine backups. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on April 4, 2007 04:48 AM

April 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenSource Pushes Forward With Release of XenEnterprise 3.2

Server virtualization provider, XenSource, announced the general availability of their latest commercial virtualization platform, XenEnterprise. The upgraded version offers SMP support for Windows guest operating systems and adds support for additional Windows and Linux versions as guests. Customers looking to virtualize demanding applications such as databases amd mail servers are now one step closer. Some IT administrators have been reluctant to use XenSource to run these heavy, CPU-intensive applications without SMP.

According to XenSource, XenEnterprise 3.2 lets IT staff easily manage the allocation of system resources to virtual machines, making virtualization easier than ever before. The new release includes drivers to support more servers and add-in cards out of the box - making XenEnterprise 3.2 the virtualization platform with the broadest possible hardware support. Additionally, XenEnterprise 3.2 incorporates multiple improvements in manageability and serviceability, offering built-in tools that let users upload all data needed for issue reporting with a single command, simplifying technical support.

The latest release includes new features such as:

Multi-processor support (SMP) for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP guests - delivering scalable virtualization of Exchange, SQL Server, and other multi-threaded and compute-intensive applications.
Windows 2000 guests - enabling consolidation of the vast majority of deployed Windows server workloads.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 guests - supporting unmodified installation with the full performance benefits of paravirtualization.
Improved Windows guest support - providing accelerated network performance, ability to suspend/resume virtual machines, up to 8GB RAM per Windows guest, and signed drivers with WHQL certification.
iSCSI SAN support - delivering affordable networked storage support.
VLAN trunk support for virtual bridges - providing network traffic isolation.
CPU, disk and network resource control - enabling IT organizations to deliver more server resources to the highest-priority workloads.

"XenSource offers a proven platform for Windows and Linux virtualization," said John Bara, VP of marketing, XenSource. "Customers are embracing XenSource solutions because they are open and easy to use, perform extremely well, and have the market's broadest hardware device support. Our new release offers enhanced features that provide broader guest OS choices and more powerful virtualization management."

This release is the latest attempt by XenSource to challenge the current server virtualization market leader, VMware, for a piece of the virtualization market that generated a cool $709 million last year for VMware.

XenEnterprise 3.2 is available now and pricing starts at $488 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $750 for a perpetual license per dual socket server. For more information, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 3, 2007 08:27 PM

April 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtuozzo Gets the Nod from IBM to Run DB2 9

SWsoft plans to announce today that Virtuozzo's operating system server virtualization software has passed IBM's high standards of testing and validation for DB2 9 and has achieved "Ready for IBM DB2 data server software" status.

"Our operating system server virtualization product is uniquely qualified to handle database and business intelligence workloads because of its low overhead and highly scalable architecture," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. "IBM’s rigorous testing process assures customers they can put the full power of Virtuozzo technology to work on their production servers."

According to Boris Bialek, program director IBM DB2 competitive technologies, "SWsoft Virtuozzo helps to enable the virtualization of IBM DB2 data server based solutions with no performance overhead penalty and can be used to consolidate IBM DB2 databases onto fewer physical servers."

The "Ready for IBM DB2 Data Server Software" program is a process designed for independent software vendors (ISVs) and solution integrators to validate their products for compatibility, stability and operation with IBM DB2 9. The process ensures that Virtuozzo has been proven to easily and successfully integrate with the IBM DB2 data server software.

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