Virtualization Report | David Marshall | June 2007

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June 2007

June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

While server virtualization is the talk of the town, more and more people and companies are talking about virtualizing the desktop. We started out virtualizing the desktop with products from VMware and Connectix, and then moved to the server. Now, we can leverage the server to virtualize the desktop to capitalize on security, isolation and availability to name a few reasons. Let's find out about HP and Provision Networks and then talk about Vista virtualization licensing. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 29, 2007 05:36 AM

June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dunes Updates VS-O 3.1 and Offers Virtual Appliance

Dunes Technologies announced an upgrade of its Virtual Service Orchestrator (VS-O) software that helps keep virtual machine sprawl in check and offers full automation of virtual datacenters.

The Dunes VS-O 3.1 new Web 2.0-based front-end extends previous releases by enhancing business process creation with new possibilities of expression and flexibility. The product's open architecture allows for a high level of customization within VS-O to control and automate virtually any IT process by following standards and creating applications that are Web-aware.

The company designed the latest version as a virtual appliance, based on VMware's virtual machine. It includes a Linux OS, a database and a directory service. The appliance comes preinstalled with a library of processes and connectors. With this packaging and delivery method, IT admins can have the product up and running very quickly.

When describing this approach, Stefan Hochuli Paychere, CTO and co-founder of Dunes, says "With the virtual appliance VS-O 3.1, customers can immediately get their services up and running and increase the speed to ROI by eliminating the time and cost of installing a separate OS and applications, resulting in a streamlined and standardized data center."

Dunes VS-O 3.1 platform enhancements include:

Revised access rights management provides administrators with more granular control of user authorization by separating the access right of the process and the access rights to the objects manipulated by the process.
Improvements to the workflow engine enable the product to function more efficiently, allow for better exception handling, makes process graph more readable and the development process more natural.
Improvements in the handling of workflow inputs allow users to apply advanced filters and define actions to refine input selection.
Added support for Novell eDirectory and open-LDAP directory services in addition to MS Active Directory.
Site-specific configuration techniques that enable administrators to simply and quickly adjust parameters based on individual needs.
Resources can now be part of exportable packages and benefit from the platform's versioning and DRM features.
Updates to the Web Service for SOA integration to better support current business practices and users.
Improved performance of many plugins, especially the VMware VIM3 plugin.
Constantly expanding library of over 100 workflows that act as templates for the customization and automation of client processes. The workflow library includes templates for life-cycle management, provisioning, disaster recovery, hot backup and other out-of-the-box processes. The library has been fully ported to the new 3.1 workflow engine, providing the user with the best possible experience.
Fully backward compatible with VS-O 3.0, including Web views.

Dunes VS-O version 3.1 will be available in July for $2,900 per server license and $790 per CPU license.

Posted by David Marshall on June 28, 2007 05:06 AM

June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

NEC and XenSource Sign Collaboration Agreement

XenSource has signed a new agreement with NEC that it hopes will help push demand and expand the market for its XenEnterprise server virtualization platform. This agreement gives the virtualization upstart access to an OEM with a well respected global brand in the marketplace.

In addition to collaborating to bring XenSource virtualization solutions to market, the companies will also collaborate to deliver Integrated VM on NEC's REAL IT PLATFORM vision. Integrated VM is a technology which realizes total management for multiple virtualization products and is performed by NEC's platform management software, NEC SigmaSystemCenter. Through this collaboration, NEC and XenSource will add XenEnterprise into the Integrated VM and enhance the virtualization market by joint development of the management features.

When it came time to find a provider who could help NEC deliver a virtualization solution to their customers, XenSource quickly became a clear choice for the company. Katsumi Inoue, General Manager, 2nd Computer Software Division, NEC Corporation said, "We are confident that our new solution will deliver the capabilities necessary for enterprises to achieve the full benefits of virtualization in the enterprise, and look forward to deliver this capability."

Under the terms of the agreement, NEC and XenSource agree to:

Joint development of virtualization products for NEC's Integrated VM vision
Study and development of enhancements for XenEnterprise in the areas where NEC has extensive expertise for enterprise systems
Embedding XenEnterprise with NEC's integrated management infrastructure, SigmaSystemCenter, which will manage XenEnterprise with other resources
Integrating XenEnterprise with NEC software and hardware solutions
Delivering a XenSource product packaged by NEC
And includes joint marketing activities

NEC will begin shipping XenEnterprise in August 2007, and the NEC SigmaSystemCenter with XenEnterprise Integrated VM capability by December 2007.

Posted by David Marshall on June 28, 2007 04:39 AM

June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtualization Doesn't Make Backups Go Away

For those of us living and breathing the datacenter life day in and day out, we know the value of our last good backup of data... you know the one, the one right before a major catastrophe strikes and someone in the organization decided it was "OK" to delete payroll data or source code. Backups are usually considered one of those nasty evils that nobody wants to do and nobody in the organization ever appreciates until data is actually lost. Well, unfortunately, moving to a virtualized datacenter doesn't magically make backups go away. So who in the industry provides help in the VMware world? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 26, 2007 04:29 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Surgient Announces New Software and New Delivery Mechanism

Surgient announced that it was about to release a new version of its Virtual Lab Management Application - version 5.3.

The company's software enables its customers to automate and enhance their software development and QA/Testing processes. But unlike their competition in this market, the product doesn't simply focus on QA/Testing. Instead, Surgient also focuses on other virtual lab management use cases such as training, marketing, sales and support.

Each of these use cases or organizations can leverage the software to help substantially eliminate the time and cost involved with manually deploying, configuring and tearing down complex environments. And doing so allows each to become more productive and efficient at their specific job function.

The new features found in version 5.3 include:

Advanced, agentless networking - NAIL Server enables complex networking between guest images without requiring a management agent, accelerating deployment and allowing the virtual lab environment to more effectively replicate a wider array of production configurations.
Universal Remote Access 2.0 - With a higher performing remote access and firewall transversal system, Surgient v5.3 provides enhanced global access to a centrally deployed virtual lab anytime, from anywhere.
Advanced Calendaring System - An advanced calendar capability allows lab managers to adequately schedule and keep track of current and future lab usage and reservations. Version 5.3 also features improved lab reporting that enables metered self-service.
Reporting Customization and Enhancements - New to version 5.3 is the ability to customize and extend reporting capabilities, enabling the extraction of specific business information such as usage information to enable chargeback billing, allowing integration with business intelligence tools, CRM systems and enterprise dashboards.

The company also announced that its Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS) software is now being resold by HP as a component of the HP Quality Center. The VQMS product seems like a natural fit to help extend the Mercury testing software provided by HP.

Before testing with the Mercury software can take place, developers and QA/Testers need to provision the test configuration environment. This is where Surgient's software comes into play. VQMS consolidates pre-production infrastructure and automates the provisioning of test configurations in an on-demand fashion. HP Quality Center integration enables testers and testing tools to reliably request and securely access test configurations 24x7.

"Test lab automation is fast becoming an essential element of an enterprise quality management strategy because of the breakthrough gains in time and cost savings it delivers," said Jonathan Rende, vice president, Products, Software, HP.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 05:00 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM Virtualization Software to Reduce Datacenter Complexity

IBM introduced a new release of its server virtualization management software that adds new automation capabilities for the management of both virtual and physical systems across multiple platforms.

The software is now available on IBM's POWER-based servers. And with the industry trend moving toward a more automated datacenter solution, this capability makes use of the expanded virtualization features that was recently announced with the launch of the POWER6 microprocessor.

The new Systems Director Virtualization Manager attempts to ease virtualization management by incorporating a Web-based user interface. It will also integrate with and compliment existing virtualization capabilities on IBM systems such as Hardware Management Console (HMC) and Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) on POWER.

The software also gives customers the ability to view the relationship between physical and virtual servers and quickly determine which resources are being used by which servers. It also adds support for x86 environments including integration with Storage Configuration Manager for more fully integrated server and storage management.

IBM also announced that they are introducing two new tools for availability management and image management. IBM Systems Director Virtual Availability Management will allow customers using Xen-based virtualization on x86-based environments to create a high availability farm to help manage and respond to unplanned host and virtual server outages and will provide for secure live relocation for Xen virtual machines with little to no downtime.

The second tool, IBM Systems Director Virtual Image Management, will provide a single, unified view of different types of system templates and server images to help customers manage and deploy their systems.

"As virtualization becomes ubiquitous, the management of the data center has become more complex," said Rich Lechner, vice president, IT Optimization at IBM. "Customers need a management platform that works across the data center and allows them to manage the physical and virtual resources to quickly and flexibly respond to business requirements. IBM sees management as the next era of virtualization technology and we are delivering technology and tools to help customers simplify the tasks involved in managing their IT infrastructures."

More information can be found on IBM's Web site, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 04:04 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Benchmark Paper: Networking Performance With Multiple VMs - VMware vs XenSource

VMware has created yet another technical paper in the hopes that its benchmark numbers and charts will showcase their hypervisor solution, VMware ESX Server 3.0.1, over that of its competitor, XenSource 3.2.0. In this paper, scaling and performance of the two products are measured by running a heavy networking load simultaneously in each of several uniprocessor virtual machines. The results are also compared with a single SMP native machine running the same total load. The paper begins with the following:

In a companion paper (Multi-NIC Networking Performance in ESX 3.0.1 and XenEnterprise 3.2.0, here) we looked at loading up a single virtual machine (VM) with multiple netperf instances, each running over its own NIC (Network Interface Controller). This effectively exposes the real virtualization overhead of high-throughput networking. While there are some real-world use cases that require this much network bandwidth in a single VM, a much more common scenario is spreading this bandwidth over many VMs running on one physical machine. This is a natural result of consolidating servers. For this paper we used the same hardware and software as in the multi-NIC paper, but performed a "scale-out" test: each of several VMs had a 1 Gbps physical NIC dedicated to it and each communicated to a similar dedicated NIC on the client machine through a netperf/netserver pair. The VMs did not share NICs. We hope this will lead to a better understanding of the performance issues involved with virtualizing networking.
By using up to four VMs/NICs here instead of the three NICs used in the earlier paper, we made better use of the 4-core server and were also able to test the scaling properties of each hypervisor. With dual- and quad-port network cards now commonly available, many users expect to be able to use four or more NICs even in low-end servers. Though the documentation included with XenEnterprise 3.2.0 indicates that the product supports only three physical NICs, the user interface had no problems configuring four NICs and issued no errors or warnings. Because of this ambiguity, and since this is such an important case, we included four-NIC benchmark results. Users should always verify support for their desired hardware configurations. VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 supports 32 e1000 physical NICs.

You can download and read VMware's entire paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 03:40 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Egenera Awarded Disaster Recovery Patent

Marlboro-based virtualization datacenter solution provider, Egenera, has been awarded US Patent No. 7,178,059 by the US Patent and Trademark Office for its new N+1 disaster recovery system.

According to the company, their disaster recovery technology simplifies and accelerates moving entire clusters of servers, including their storage and networking connections, to a remote site. Leveraging Egenera's Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture, clusters are reinstated within minutes at the new site, without hardware configuration.

A single back-up site can adopt the configuration of any number of primary sites on demand. They claim this unique N+1 approach provides complete yet simple disaster recovery at the lowest cost, without the physical and management complexities typical of physical replication approaches.

The company designed their approach to create pools of compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically allocated to applications as needed. Its PAN virtualizes server and network resources in the same way that a Storage Area Network (SAN) virtualizes storage resources, resulting in the ability to securely share allocate processing resources across applications; dramatically reduce complexity; enhance agility; and lower the cost of capital and operational expenses.

"During one of our DR tests with Egenera, we had the application up and running again in three minutes. I've had experiences where even under planned power downs we would build-in two to three weeks to failover complex, legacy systems - and the actual move would have taken seven hours," said James Crum, manager, Infrastructure Technology Services at Farm Bureau-Western Computer Services, Inc.

"We understand that designing, implementing or updating a DR strategy is one of the most strategic IT projects any organization undertakes. Replicating rigid, legacy environments across multiple sites only multiplies complexity and cost by at least a factor of two - all without meeting a single acceptable recovery time objective," said Pete Manca, EVP of engineering and CTO, Egenera.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 03:08 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mendocino Adds VMware Into Its Platform Support List

Fremont, California-based Mendocino Software announced that its InfiniView software offering now supports VMware ESX Server version 3.0 and higher.

If you aren't familiar with InfiniView, it is an enterprise-class continuous data protection solution that has a "one button" instant recovery capability. The company claims its solution can offer virtualized servers running on VMware ESX Server a faster, simpler recovery process that will help to maximize the overall availability of VMware environments.

InfiniView has the ability to present one or more "views" as readable, writable, recoverable, disk-based images of any previous point-in-time, on-demand. So views can be used exactly like disk-based snapshots are used today, and it won't impact production applications or take up additional storage space.

"Through our OEM partners such as HP, Mendocino's technology is being placed in Fortune 1000 companies to help optimize the recovery, administration and maintenance operations for mission critical application environments," said Steve Colman, President and CEO of Mendocino Software. "More and more, we are seeing these types of customers using VMware and asking about instant recovery capabilities for virtualized environments."

By adding VMware as a supported platform, the company now supports a fairly wide variety of operating system environments which include Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Linux.

You can find out more about the company and its products by visiting their Web site, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 01:47 PM

June 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Updates Fusion to Beta 4.1

Virtualization giant VMware announced last week that it was releasing an update to its Mac virtualization product, Fusion, which is still currently in Beta.

The latest update, Fusion 1.0 Beta 4.1, re-enables support for USB devices for those users that own a Santa Rosa-based Macbook Pro or those that have updated to Mac OS X 10.4.10. According to VMware, Apple made changes to the USB manager which required changes in Fusion to maintain USB support.

VMware also improved experimental support for running VMware Fusion on Mac OS X Leopard hosts. They corrected various issues with installation, launch and networking.

Fusion Beta 4 introduced other new features, with Unity being perhaps the biggest update in the product. This feature lets a user run Windows XP applications from the Mac desktop, much like Parallels' Coherence.

You can download VMware Fusion 1.0 Beta 4.1, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 23, 2007 04:44 PM

June 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Scalent Systems Releases V/OE 2.5, DR Edition

With virtualization and disaster recovery on the minds of IT organizations around the globe, Scalent Systems announces an update for their solution that seems to fit right in. The company announced the release of Scalent V/OE software version 2.5 - the DR Edition of Scalent V/OE. It adds features that are tailored for disaster recovery scenarios.

Datacenter managers are constantly trying to increase flexibility and response time as they combat spiriling IT costs. And Scalent believes the answer is their software, which allows customers to take their datacenters from a state of powered off hardware with no software to a live environment with network and storage connectivity, in five minutes or less.

According to the company, their solution addresses the entire data center environment, not just the individual server "box." The company's software enables datacenter operation owners to rapidly change entire systems and associated topologies (which servers are running, what software is running on them, and how they're connected to network and storage) without altering physical infrastructure.

With Scalent software, the claim to fame is instead of spending hours or days reloading software, adjusting configurations, and even moving machines and cables, IT teams can rack once, cable once, then reconfigure repeatedly, in minutes, effortlessly. Failover is automatic, and data center functionality matches the data center schematic.

Scalent says the infrastructure flexibility creates a significant increase in server utilization and reaction time. Instead of provisioning each application silo for peak demand conditions, IT can provision for average demand and shift spare resources to match business needs. Specific business systems can be redeployed as dictated by business priorities, time of day or other criteria.

New features include:

Image Portability: Support for Windows SAN Booting across disparate hardware
Clustering Replacement: Automatic failover eliminates need for clustering software
.NET: Addition of a .NET API for third-party systems integration and control

For more information, visit their Web site, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 23, 2007 04:17 PM

June 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Application Virtualization Having the Best Month Ever

Server virtualization is usually the hot topic within the virtualization space. People generally love to talk about and argue who does what best. But what about Application Virtualization? This market is definitely heating up, and more players are entering the space every day. This helps give consumers more choice. So as the application virtualization space heats up, who seems to be having the BEST MONTH EVER? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 23, 2007 01:59 PM

June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Novell Readies SUSE Service Pack and VM Drivers

Novell announced the first service pack (SP1) for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10. It featured significant enhancements in virtualization, high-performance computing, security, interoperability and system management.

Service Pack 1 enhancements include:

Enhanced virtualization support and management
Updated high-availability storage infrastructure
Support for new processor technologies such as Quad-Core Intel Xeon and Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors
Enhanced security features
Audit subsystem enrichment
Support for Novell Open Enterprise Server 2
Expanded support for OpenOffice.org
Desktop virtualization technology preview
Advances in enterprise integration capabilities

Novell also announced the commercial availability of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack. The package includes paravirtualized network, bus and block device drivers to allow unmodified Windows and Linux guest operating systems to run with near-native performance in virtual environments created with Xen in SUSE Linux.

Featured in the pack are drivers for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003, and it is scheduled to ship in July. And released later this summer will be drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.

Holger Dyroff, Novell vice president of SUSE Linux Enterprise product management, said, "The enhancements in SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 and the capabilities of the Virtual Machine Driver Pack are a direct result of customer feedback and Novell's commitment to meeting their needs. In many cases, we have been collaborating directly with customers to develop these new software features. As enterprise adoption of Linux grows, so does Linux development and innovation."

A one-year subscription to the driver pack will cost $299 per physical server for up to four virtual machines or $699 per physical server for unlimited virtual machines.

Xen drivers for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are available now as part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution.

Posted by David Marshall on June 20, 2007 08:49 PM

June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

EVault Offers VMware Users Hot Backups and Faster Restores

EVault announces the availability of the EVault VMware Plug-in for customers of the EVault Protect Software as a Service (SaaS) and EVault InfoStage licensed software, and service providers offering data protection services powered by EVault technology.

This allows the company to offer comprehensive disaster recovery protection of VMware virtual machine environments, including all major operating systems, applications and files.

While virtualization technology continues to grow at a fairly rapid pace, data protection tools aren't keeping up. According to the company, "The EVault VMware Plug-in is the only solution that reliably protects the entire VMware virtual environment - automating hot backups and faster restores of virtual machines, operating systems, applications and files, while keeping resource consumption to a minimum and meeting specific disaster recovery planning and regulatory compliance requirements."

The EVault VMware Plug-in leverages and extends EVault's DeltaPro technology to virtual environments by backing up and compressing only new and changed data at the block level, which enhances network performance, decreases the backup window and lowers the overall storage footprint.

It offers comprehensive data protection across the entire physical and virtual environment. Backups are policy-driven and scheduling, status monitoring and reporting are centrally managed via a web browser for all physical and virtual systems. Data is then securely sent offsite to one of EVault's seven secure Tier III and IV datacenters, which are all SAS 70 Type II certified. In the event of a disaster, all recovery steps are executed and the user simply has to power up the recovered machine. No need for lengthy restores with multi-step, manual processes.

The EVault VMware Plug-in is available now as an add-on for EVault SaaS and software customers as well as through service providers offering data protection services based on EVault technology.

Posted by David Marshall on June 20, 2007 08:18 PM

June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Workstation Named the Best Software Development Product

VMware continues its journey of being recognized in the industry as a leader and a user favorite as it pulls in yet another award. It was announced that VMware Workstation won the 2007 Visual Studio Magazine Readers' Choice Award in the Development Tools category. The magazine honors excellent software in 22 development categories based on votes collected from its readers. And the Readers' Choice Award is given to the product receiving the highest number of reader votes, demonstrating real value to the Visual Studio Magazine audience.

At first glance, that might seem strange to you. After all, with all the software development tools out there, why would readers choose a virtualization platform to be the winner? Simple. If you have ever worked as a developer, I bet you understand the pain of fighting for equipment, provisioning and re-provisioning the equipment and trying to reproduce bugs found by the testing team. VMware's Workstation product helps with all of that. By leveraging virtualization products such as this, software developers can easily and quickly provision multi-tier environments and accelerate their software development life-cycle. It proves to be a real time saver and it allows developers to do what they do best, write code.

Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware said, "Receiving this award from such a distinguished audience further emphasizes the leadership of VMware Workstation as the desktop virtualization product of choice for software developers."

Posted by David Marshall on June 20, 2007 04:54 PM

June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

HP, IBM and Sun - Blade Servers Going Strong

Time and again within the virtualization space, people ask about Blade Servers and virtualization. They want to know, are the two technologies competitive? Or do they work well together? In many cases, they both try to solve similar problems, yet the two technologies can and do work well together. And blade technology seems to be on the up tick once again. This month, IBM, HP and Sun have all made announcements within their blade server platform offerings. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 17, 2007 08:39 PM

June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Poking Under the Server Covers with ESX Lite

SearchServerVirtualization broke the news that VMware may be preparing a reduced footprint version of its ESX hypervisor and calling it ESX Lite. This slimmed down version would operate within a server's firmware rather than getting installed as part of a virtualization stack on the server's hard disk.

Apparently, this is no simple task. Where a default installation of VMware's ESX Server 3.0.1 hypervisor would take up approximately 8GB of disk space on a system today, VMware is planning on scaling ESX Lite down to where it consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple of megabytes. Doing so would make it a perfect fit to reside in firmware.

We all know that disks are one of the most common components prone to failure. So moving the ESX hypervisor from disk to firmware makes a lot of sense and would help increase the performance and efficiency of VMware's virtualization solution as well as increase its reliability.

Principal IT Adviser with Illuminata Inc. believes doing so makes sense as well. "Right now, virtualization is being made into part of the operating system, and VMware thinks it should be independent of the operating system. If VMware could convince a systems vendor to include it like a super BIOS, so to speak, then they are the ones who are in a controlling role, and not the OS vendor."

SearchServerVirtualization attempted to contact VMware for confirmation on the story, but they declined to comment.

This is one of the more interesting and significant updates about ESX Server in quite some time. I can't wait for VMware's confirmation on this story which will hopefully come with even more information about this new hypervisor delivery mechanism.

Posted by David Marshall on June 17, 2007 04:10 PM

June 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Announces Features of its Mac Server Virtualization Product

Parallels has been talking about a server-class and hardware virtualization platform since late 2005. And so all this time while I have been expecting and anticipating an x86 server-class product from the company, I had no idea it would finally come in the form of an Apple XServe platform. Although with all of the recent awards and worldwide support behind their OS X desktop platform, perhaps I should have.

Announced and demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2007 in San Francisco, the company showcased its alpha code of Parallels Server for Mac. The company hopes that Parallels Server for Mac will do exactly the same thing for Apple XServes as it did for Apple desktops and laptops by giving IT admins the ability to run OS X Server, Microsoft Exchange Servers running on Windows, Apache running on Linux and more all at the same time.

Ben Rudolph, Parallels' Director of Corporate Communications, said "It speaks volumes to our commitment to the Mac market and shows that we're ready to provide the world's only top-to-bottom, server and desktop, virtualization solution for the Apple community." He also said, "We're gearing up to provide a complete set of virtualization solutions for the SMB, government and education markets, as well as a new avenue of approach for enterprises that already have virtualization in place, and are looking for an easier, more cost effective approach."

Ben described some of the Alpha code features of Parallels Server for Mac in the following way:

Robust Server Capabilities: Parallels Server will include a number of enterprise-class features, like true virtual SMP (i.e., multi-core virtual servers), type-1 hypervisor, strong support for popular server OSes like Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions, local and browser-based management tools, and a completely new, management-focused interface that makes working with multiple real and virtual servers easy and intuitive.
Open APIs: Unlike our competitors in the space, Parallels will be completely opening its APIs and providing a powerful SDK to enable third-party developers and IT departments to fully leverage virtualization technology in their applications and tools. Providing a complete open API ensure companies can leverage custom tools or ISVs can easily manage Parallels virtual servers as well as servers from other vendors. Parallels built-in tools were developed using the very same tools that we're offering to the community, and that we plan to make a number of our in-house developed Server management tools OPEN SOURCE so that anyone, even those not using Parallels virtualization, can get more out of their existing server virtualization infrastructure.
Powerful Management from SWsoft's Virtuozzo Tools: Our parent company, SWsoft, has their own virtualization solution. It's called Virtuozzo and it virtualizes at the OS level, meaning that a real server can run multiple instances of the same operating system in extremely high-performing, totally isolated "virtual environments". Virtuozzo is an excellent enterprise-class virtualization solution used by thousands of companies worldwide, and its backed up by a very sophisticated, very comprehensive set of management tools that handle server grouping, group activity and prioritization, and automation. These tools are already being optimized via our SDK to work with Parallels Server, which means that from a single console, IT admins will be able to manage both their Parallels and Virtuozzo virtual servers.
The most comprehensive virtualization offerings in the world: Bringing Parallels and SWsoft closer together also means that we can offer our customers the world's most comprehensive set of virtualization solutions. Desktop or Server, Windows, Linux or Mac, OS-virtualization or hardware virtualization, we've got you covered. Now we can truly offer IT admins the "best of both worlds"; Parallels hardware virtualization for tightly integrated multi-OS environments, and Virtuozzo for near-zero-overhead heterogeneous environments.

Combining the management of SWsoft and Parallels virtualization products could prove to be quite a strong move as the company competes against VMware, Microsoft and Xen based products in the market.

Posted by David Marshall on June 16, 2007 04:03 PM

June 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld's Test Center Puts Mac Virtualization Under the Microscope

Paul Venezia said it best when he said that VMware has played second fiddle to no one since its inception and that those competing with the virtualization giant have found it to be tough going.

But perhaps someone failed to mention that to team Parallels. You would think that they would have learned that lesson with their Parallels Workstation product for Windows and Linux, but they quickly came out with a Mac OS X product anyway. First to market, and with a fairly seamless and well working and well received product according to Mac users, the company hasn't looked back.

The company recently launched their Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac product and it appears to be feature rich. On the other hand, VMware isn't sitting on the sidelines watching the Mac OS X market pass them by either. VMware announced Beta 4 of its Mac OS X virtualization platform, Fusion.

InfoWorld recently put both products through a series of tests in its Test Center.

Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac received an Excellent 9.1 rating. The bottom line stated: "Parallels Desktop 3.0 brings several new features to the Mac OS X virtualization game, including direct graphics acceleration capabilities, snapshots, and offline browsing of VM file systems. It's a very worthy companion to anyone bridging the gaps between the Windows and Mac world, and the price is definitely right."

VMware Fusion is still in Beta, but the bottom line reads: "VMware's first foray into the Mac OS X desktop virtualization market is a very strong showing, due in no small part to its proven technology on other platforms. The Fusion beta itself isn't enough to unseat Parallels as the tool of choice on the Mac platform, but it's certainly very close. The full release of Fusion is due in August, and that may make the Parallels-VMware contest a different ball game altogether."

I invite you to read the full review on both products.

You can read the full review on Paralles' product here. And you can read the entire review on Beta 4 of VMware's product here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 16, 2007 03:10 PM

June 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization Surfaces

It's been almost a year since Microsoft completed the acquisition of Softricity, Inc. and received the application virtualization technology of SoftGrid. And since that time, there really hasn't been a lot of announcements coming out of Redmond talking about the product or the technology.

Microsoft has been working on SoftGrid 4.2 and offered a Technical Preview of the product earlier this month. Expected to be released in July 2007, the product will contain several updates including Windows Vista compatibility, support for sequencing Side-by-Side (SxS) applications (such as Office 2007 and Visual Studio Express), and bug fixes since the 4.1 release.

At TechEd 2007, Microsoft announced that SoftGrid application virtualization was going to be an important component in its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). They said, "Using SoftGrid, IT pros can deploy applications that are not installed on the machine and do not require regression testing against other software, yet are available wherever and whenever the user needs them and can run alongside otherwise conflicting applications."

Microsoft is also working with their Technology Adoption Program (TAP) to work out new capabilities in the future release of SoftGrid, version 4.5. Some of the features being mentioned are:

Enhanced client scalability: improvements to allow very large deployments and integration with ESD systems, such as System Center Configuration Manager
Availability and maintainability: the most stable and reliable version of SoftGrid to date
Security tightening: the first SoftGrid release to go through the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and enhancements to support internet-facing scenarios
Globalization and localization: support for both virtualizing non-English language applications and running the SoftGrid user interface in certain non-English languages

Interestingly, the company also added timeframes around the product, showing a Beta release of SoftGrid 4.5 sometime in late October, with a release candidate due around mid March and then an RTM of SoftGrid 4.5 around May or June of next year.

Posted by David Marshall on June 16, 2007 09:51 AM

June 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VirtualBox Making Waves as Open Source Virtualization Platform

The youngest virtualization player to enter the x86 virtualization market is Innotek. And the company has recently announced a new release of its product, VirtualBox version 1.4.0, for Windows and Linux. The new version, like its predecessors, is available as both open source under the GPL as well as under a commercial license which allows you to use the product free of charge (in most cases).

The latest release also brings the fledgling virtualization product into the Apple MAC OS X market, where it will go up against veteran VMware and Parallels as they fight for Mac virtualization dominance.

Some of the new features and improvements found in VirtualBox 1.4.0 include:

Added support for OS X hosts
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) and Xandros Desktop 4.1 are officially supported
Improved support for FreeBSD and OpenBSD guest operating systems
Full support for 64-bit Linux hosts has been added
Signed all executables and device drivers on Windows
Added user interface for Shared Folders
Added configuration options for clipboard synchronization
Significantly increased maximum guest memory size
Experimental support for VMDK images (writethrough mode only, no snapshots yet)
Added raw host disk support, including individual partitions
Corrected a number of RDP issues and added RDP session shadowing
The GUI has been translated into 12 different languages
Allows more than one card configured for NAT networking
Rewrote Windows USB handling without the need for a filter driver

In addition to these updates, you can view the full 1.4 changelog, here.

You can also download the product, free of charge, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 16, 2007 08:57 AM

June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMLogix LabManager and IBM Streamline Software Development

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time speaking with Mark Angelo, Director of Business Development at VMLogix, where we were able to talk about the company's latest release - LabManager 2.8 - as well as discuss the product's support for the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform and the out-of-the-box integration with IBM's Rational Build Forge.

One of the great use cases that has recently sprung up within the IT community is using server virtualization to optimize the complex world of software development and test. Leveraging a solution such as VMLogix LabManager allows software companies to automate the manual process of provisioning build and test environments. Doing so helps streamline the software development lifecycle, which in turn helps companies bring products to market faster and hopefully with less bugs.

VMLogix LabManager seamlessly works across diverse virtual machine platforms and physical machine environments, giving developers full process control at all levels within the test environment.

After speaking with Mark, I gained a better understanding of how combining VMLogix LabManager with IBM Rational Software would provide an out-of-the-box solution that would help automate the entire creation and deployment process for a fast and repeatable build and test environment. And since LabManager features are accessible through the IBM Rational Build Forge user-interface, it helps accelerate the rate at which build and test scenarios can be executed by distributed teams.

IBM Rational Build Forge automates the software build and delivery processes while LabManager automates the provisioning and management of physical and virtual machine images. This ensures the ability to rapidly reproduce, troubleshoot and resolve even the most complex, environmentally sensitive bugs.

Some of the features available in LabManager 2.8 include:

Heterogeneous Virtualization Support - The product uses industry leading virtualization platforms from Microsoft and VMware, and plans to add to that list with future releases.
Synchronized Multi-Machine Deployments - Deploy and synchronize multi-machine test scenarios without user intervention. Launch, suspend, resume, snapshot, revert, reset, showdown, capture, and share these deployments as a single encapsulated unit.
Build and Test Automation - Automate build and test execution by leveraging advanced configuration of software, tools, scripts and data at the guest operating system level. Ready for IBM Rational Build Forge.
Automation APIs - Integrate LabManager with existing tools and programmatically control all operations using XML/RPC and command-line interfaces.
Image Builder - Build and rebuild multi-machine test configurations on-demand without manual user intervention.
Shared Snapshots - Capture and share "live" multi-machine configurations from the configuration library. Captured configurations preserve memory and CPU state and can be redeployed instantly.
IP Zones - Allow multiple users to safely deploy concurrent copies of suspended multi-machine configurations without changing MAC addresses, static IP addresses or Windows SIDs.

You can download a free 30-day trial of VMLogix LabManager, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 12, 2007 07:39 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld's Virtualization Report Goes to Microsoft TechEd 2007

This year, I was lucky enough to attend Microsoft TechEd in Orlando. For those of you who stopped by the exhibitor booth that I was working, it was great to meet you. While the show doesn't concentrate on virtualization, it did cover the gambit. Microsoft's keynote covered Windows Server Virtualization, there were plenty of Microsoft booths and labs setup to talk about virtualization, and the exhibitor booths came out in support of the technology as well. I had a great time visiting these booths and taking back some great information. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 06:49 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Symantec Updates Altiris Software Virtualization Solution

While attending Altiris ManageFusion, I was able to meet with Scott Jones, Altiris Product Manager for Software Virtualization Solution. When we spoke about the Symantec/Altiris acquisition, I asked him whether or not he knew if Symantec understood what they had with this jewel of a product called SVS or if they were too busy concentrating on Altiris' Server Management Suite and their Deployment Solution. He quickly assured me that Symantec not only knew about SVS but that they also understood exactly what it offered.

Fast forward to Microsoft TechEd 2007, I was able to meet up with Scott Jones once again. This time, he informed me that Symantec had announced the release of a significant update to Altiris SVS that would help optimize software management.

The new version contains a number of application virtualization improvements, as well as support for Windows Vista. According to Steve Morton, Symantec VP of Product Marketing and Strategy in the Altiris business unit, "New to this version, SVS now simplifies application compatibility and on-demand computing. The roll out of Windows Vista creates an excellent opportunity for IT organizations to take control of their computing environment, drive down costs and improve service levels."

But perhaps the most important addition to the product is the addition of integrated application streaming. And Gartner agrees as their research shows "application virtualization combines well with streaming technology. Because of the obvious benefits of combining these two technologies, application virtualization is regarded by some users as synonymous with application streaming. The two technologies will eventually become inseparable."

To that end, Symantec has signed a partnership agreement with application streaming software provider, AppStream, who has pioneered the streaming application market. The two companies have had quite a history together and the two products work so well together - they might as well be one. And perhaps, they should be. After the news about the Altiris acquisition was made, I immediately called for Symantec to purchase AppStream and keep this family of products together. While the partnership goes a long way, I still think both companies could benefit from marrying these two applications together once and for all. Application streaming and virtualization, after all, go together like peanut butter and jelly (or select your two favorite combined food items).

SVS version 2.1 is available through the company's direct sales force and resellers, and the product costs $29 per node. And keep your eyes open for the SVS 2.1 free for personal use license that will be made available for download.

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 05:52 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

PlateSpin Receives Virtualization Technology of the Year Award

In a recent press release, PlateSpin announced that they had won the 2007 "Virtualization Technology of the Year" award as part of The Banker Technology Awards.

The Banker Technology Awards are backed by The Financial Times UK and recognize innovation and excellence in the banking technology space worldwide.

"The Banker Technology Award is one of the most prestigious honors within the financial services industry," said Stephen Pollack, Founder and CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. "This international award is a testament to the uniqueness of our workload profiling and portability technology and the benefits our solutions bring to data centers worldwide. PlateSpin's solutions enable customers to take a unified approach to managing, moving and protecting all workloads in the data center. Within a single technology platform investment, data centers can leverage PlateSpin's workload awareness and anywhere-to-anywhere (X2X) workload migration capabilities to solve critical IT challenges such as server consolidation, hardware migration and disaster recovery."

"As large banks and global financial services organizations work to consolidate space, power, and server resources in the data center, innovative solutions like those provided by PlateSpin are becoming increasing important," said Brian Caplan, Editor, The Banker.

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 05:37 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Releases Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

Emerging from Beta today, Microsoft has released Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. There had been some discussion about the release being delayed as late as July, but here it is.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 now provides improved performance for non-Windows guest operating systems by leveraging hardware-assisted virtualization, high availability for both planned and unplanned downtime, and improved support for backup and disaster recovery. Microsoft said that Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 has been extensively tested.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 includes the following new capabilities:

Processor support. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Enterprise Edition can be installed on servers with up to 32 physical processors.
Virtual Server host clustering. Support for host-to-host connectivity lets you cluster all virtual machines running on a host.
iSCSI support. iSCSI clustering enables guest-to-guest connectivity across physical machines.
x64 support. Virtual Server runs natively within a 64-bit Windows host operating system, providing increased performance and memory headroom.
Enhanced PXE booting. PXE boot support has been added to the virtual machine network adapter. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system in the same way as physical servers.
Other improvements. Virtual Server now includes improved hyperthreading, support for F6 Disk (SCSI driver), Active Directory integration using service connection points, and virtual disk pre-compactor functionality.
Performance improvements.

For more information on this release, go here.

To download the latest release, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 05:23 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Details Windows Server 2003 Licensing with Virtualization Technologies

When you read about Microsoft Windows Server licensing, more often than not, the message is negative. Microsoft seems to be taking it on the chin a lot, but really for such a large software company, I think they are doing a fairly good job at trying to define and structure their licensing with respect to today's virtualized infrastructure. After all, there are other software companies out there that are still trying to license their software on a pure physical server basis without any regard to virtualization whatsoever.

For me, Microsoft's first step was creating a virtualization friendly license for Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise and Datacenter editions and SQL Server 2005 Enterprise edition.

The second positive step was when Microsoft detailed its licensing strategy with the creation of their Virtualization Calculators.

And now, it appears as though Microsoft is hoping to finally answer these licensing questions with something written down for all to read. The company has produced a new whitepaper or licensing brief that outlines how the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 operating system and other Microsoft server products are licensed when used with virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server and SWsoft Virtuozzo. In addition, it answers licensing questions about the use of virtualization technologies such as VMware VMotion and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

The introduction states:

To run Microsoft server software on a server, you must first assign the server a license. By assigning this license, you are designating a server to run an instance of Microsoft server software. In addition, you have the right to run as many instances on that server as the software allows-regardless of what kind of operating system environment (OSE) is present.
There are two types of OSEs: physical and virtual. A physical OSE is configured to run directly on a physical hardware system and can be physical and/or virtual. A virtual OSE is configured to run on a virtual-or otherwise emulated-hardware system. This distinction is vital to understanding how to license virtualization technologies; regardless of the type, each instance running requires a license.

To better understand the difference between physical and virtual OSEs, consider the following: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition permits one running instance at a time, while Enterprise Edition permits up to five-one instance running in a physical operating system environment and four instances running in a virtual OSE. If you choose to run five instances at a time under the Enterprise Edition license, the instance of the software running in the physical OSE may only be used to run hardware virtualization software and software to manage and service OSEs on the licensed server.

You can read the entire document, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 04:37 PM

June 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtual Iron Releases Version 3.7

Virtual Iron Software released version 3.7 of its virtualization platform. According to the company, with their support for logical disks, users of server virtualization can take advantage of all the performance and scalability benefits of raw SAN storage with the optimal flexibility and ease of use of virtual disk storage.

With Virtual Iron 3.7, users can now configure their virtual servers to access two types of disks:

Logical disks - High-performance disks that can be assigned to one or more virtual servers. The size can be smaller than the underlying physical disk, allowing the under-lying disk to be partitioned amongst multiple virtual servers. They can be supported on Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and local storage.
Raw SAN disks - Offer the best performance. They are used when one or more virtual servers use one entire physical LUN.

"Virtual Iron continues to reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise-class virtualization and management," said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron Software. "With logical disks, server virtualization users can now consolidate storage and move it around easily as they migrate workloads from one server to another. This adds tremendous flexibility and performance to the management of their virtual infrastructure."

Virtual Iron's Virtualization Manager presents a unified framework for controlling local or SAN disks that are accessible to managed nodes and their virtual servers. In this framework, users create one or more disk groups, and sub-divide them into one or more logical disks. Logical disks have additional utility in that they can be copied (cloned) and exported into Microsoft VHD files for use by different virtual servers. Neither of these capabilities is available in the management of raw SAN disks.

You can download the free version, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 10, 2007 04:56 PM

June 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Makes a Hosting Move and Changes Pricing

Perhaps hoping to add further value to its impending IPO, VMware has announced that it was going to update its pricing model as it enters the hosting market.

The company announced its VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) for Web hosting services, telecommunications companies and outsourcing businesses to help bring to market new virtual infrastructure as a service offering.

The VSPP offers a new licensing model to charge hosting providers on a per-virtual machine, per-month basis so that they can pass it along as utility computing to end customers. This would allow hosting providers to offer a "rentable" virtual machine or virtual machine capacity to its customers so that they could instantaneously add or reduce their hosted virtual infrastructure capacity to align with event driven demand.

"The VSPP opens new doors for managed service providers to reinvent hosting services and reach new customers of all sizes," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product and solutions marketing at VMware. "The added flexibility and availability of VMware Infrastructure as a service enables hosting providers to offer their customers immediate access to the proven benefits of virtual infrastructure as easily as flipping on an electric switch. Hosting customers can now rely on production system availability not possible with traditional hosted offerings, as well as automatic data and systems protection and rapid recovery from failures, while paying only for the computing capacity they require at the time."

It sounds like VMware is going to start encroaching on SWsoft's sweet spot in the hosting arena. While virtualization in general makes perfect sense for a hosting company, VMware has traditionally in my opinion priced itself out of the market. Perhaps this new program will change that. But is pricing alone going to be enough to disturb the market currently dominated by SWsoft's Virtuozzo software?

Continuing with the thought about pricing, I still have other unanswered questions. VMware is usually up front and matter of fact with their pricing; however, I haven't seen any numbers on the new hosting service. I do know that they offer it in two packages: VMware Infrastructure Enterprise or Starter. But how much is it? And along with how much, I wonder what existing customers will think about the new pricing mechanism? Will company datacenters also want to price their infrastructure with the same hosting rate rather than the current per socket license they pay today? And will that even be an option offered to them?

To find out more information about the VSPP, click here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 10, 2007 07:55 AM

June 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware's Fusion Reaches Beta 4

With Apple's WWDC07 starting next week and Parallels announcing the release of its Desktop 3.0 for Mac, is it any wonder that VMware has announced a fourth Beta of its VMware Fusion for Mac product?

Beta 4 of VMware Fusion for Mac includes the following new features and improvements:

Unity - The seamless way to run Windows applications: Run Windows XP applications alongside your favorite Mac applications and switch between any open application with command-tab or Exposé. Leave the Windows desktop and Start menu behind and use the VMware Fusion Launch palette to quickly find and launch your Windows applications. Save your favorite Windows applications to the Mac OS X Dock. Even use familiar Mac keyboard shortcuts to seamlessly copy and paste between Windows and Mac applications.
Boot Camp improvements - You no longer have to choose between Windows or Mac - run Windows XP with Mac OS X off your existing Boot Camp partition. Beta 4 adds experimental support for Microsoft Vista, greatly improves Boot Camp partition detection, and when you are running the Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine, VMware Fusion automatically updates the Boot Camp partition to use drivers that are optimized for your virtual machine.
Improved performance - Virtual machines boot faster and applications launch faster from virtual hard disks. Interactive performance is improved over previous Betas and VMware Fusion now uses Apple's multi-threaded OpenGL engine for improved performance.
Improved user experience - The toolbar is greatly enhanced and is now completely customizable. To make the display less cluttered and easier to use, the virtual hardware buttons have been moved from the toolbar to the status bar. The virtual machine hardware editor is now sheet attached to the virtual machine you are editing.

VMware has a lot of things going for it since they are the current market leader, have been around longer and offer an entire library of virtual appliances ready for download. Unfortunately, the product is still in Beta and it looks like the release date is still scheduled for sometime this summer. Add to that the non-stop rumors about Apple announcing its own virtualization software inside Mac OS X Leopard and you have to wonder what else VMware will respond with to help grow its Mac virtualization marketshare. Stay tuned.

Posted by David Marshall on June 9, 2007 07:15 PM

June 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Quick to Launch 3.0 Mac Virtualization

When Parallels announced the Beta of Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, they told me it would be live soon. And it looks like when they said "soon", they really did mean it!

Parallels announced the release of the 3.0 product, however unlike previous updates, current customers won't be getting a free upgrade to the latest and greatest product. Instead, they are going to have to pay $49.99 while new customers are charged $79.99. Unlike previous updates though, this 3.0 release is packing quite a punch with over 50 new features, enhancements and improvements to the product.

Like previous versions of the software, the latest release allows users to run Mac OS X, Windows and Linux on the same computer, and all at the same time.

"This new version is an important milestone for us helping computer users get the best of all operating systems on a single, seamless desktop," said Nick Dobrovolskiy, CEO of Parallels, Inc.

SmartSelect is being called the anchor of the product, and with good reason. This is one of their newest features which allows a user to select an application on either OS X or Windows and then have that application open any file type regardless of whether that file is on the Mac or Windows desktop. Users can select the right application to open a file each time via a right click, or they can set a default application association for that file type.

Another new feature found in this release is the addition of 3D graphic support. Gamers, designers and developers will certainly appreciate this addition. For years, these types of users have been begging for this type of support in their virtualization guest environments. Now, with added hardware-accelerated 3D graphics and support for OpenGL and DirectX 8.1, users can make the most of Windows-only 3D CAD programs and Mac gamers can enjoy games like Quake, World of Warcraft, Half-Life 2 and one of my all-time favorites Unreal Tournament.

And no virtualization platform is complete without snapshot capabilities. Now, users of Parallels Desktop for Mac can instantly save the state of a virtual machine's memory, settings and hard disk and then revert back to that instance at any time. VMware users take this feature for granted since it has been part of the VMware platform for some time now. But Parallels' users can now enjoy the freedom of being able to make a change or a mistake within their environment, or they can simply use their system without fear of corruption since they can now rollback to a known good state.

Parallels Desktop 3.0 offers many more new features and improvements. You can check them out, as well as watch videos or view screenshots of the software, by going here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 9, 2007 10:19 AM

June 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware's Second Annual Vanguard Awards

As VMware's annual showcase event approaches (VMworld 2007), the company is once again requesting customers to nominate their organization for the VMware Virtual Vanguard Awards.

Billed as "Win Fame, Glory and a Pass to the Premier Virtualization Conference of the Year", this second annual awards program is meant to honor and recognize customers who use VMware solutions to achieve significant improvements when addressing complex IT problems.

This year, the company is expanding the awards to recognize outstanding achievement in 10 different categories. While the majority of the awards are going to honor VMware customers, this year, VMware has added a category to recognize ISVs who have delivered innovative solutions using VMware's Virtual Appliance technology.

Best Overall Return on Investment (ROI) & Operational Benefits
Most Advanced VMware Implementation
The Virtual Vanguard Award for Innovation
Best Disaster Recovery Solution
Best Enterprise Desktop Solution
Best Development & Testing Solution
Best Infrastructure Optimization Solution
Green Award: Energy Savings
Most Successful Virtual Appliance Deployed by an End User
Most Successful Virtual Appliance Developed by an ISV

Winners in each category will receive a free pass to VMworld 2007. And like last year, a special awards ceremony will take place to honor the winners and present them with their award.

If you are interested, act quickly. All nominations must be submitted by Friday, June 29th at 5 PM PST.

For a submission form or to find out more information about the award, go here.

Good luck! We'll report on the winners after the show.

Posted by David Marshall on June 9, 2007 07:53 AM

June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Xen Reaches 3.1 and ToutVirtual Goes Pro

Recently, Xen made itself much more appealing as it released its 3.1 version to market. It added support for 64-bit as well as its VMotion type capability called Live Relocation. It also offered its XenAPI to help with management capabilities. Also helping with management is relatively new comer ToutVirtual, who has introduced their VirtualIQ Pro product to market. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 7, 2007 01:02 PM

June 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

With Technology Comes the Need for Security

Within technology, security has always been a major concern. With the introduction of the Internet and virtualization, computer technology choices, options and abilities have expanded, but so too have the potential for security threats. GreenBorder Technologies came up with a solution to help protect end users from threats while using the Internet and just got acquired by Google. And Blue Lane Technologies just announced that they have recently received the Best of Interop award in the security category for its VirtualShield software. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on June 3, 2007 01:51 PM

June 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Windows Server Virtualization at TechEd 2007

If you are one of the 14,000 people expected to attend this year's Microsoft TechEd 2007 event in Orlando, FL next week, you might want to keep your eyes and ears open about various virtualization sessions.

Over at the Windows Server Division Weblog, Patrick writes that Bob Muglia and Jeff Woolsey will demonstrate a Windows Server 2008 server core installation in a build of Windows Server Virtualization managed by MOM and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Patrick hopes they will demonstrate VM creation, interop and networking load balancing with limited disruption of service, and perhaps even a V2V conversion from VMware ESX Server to Windows Server virtualization. And I'll second Patrick's hope... I too would love to see that.

Here are some other sessions of interest:

SVR239 - Virtualization 360: Microsoft's vision and strategy for virtualization
SVR342 - High Availability for Physical and Virtual Environments with Windows Server 2008
SVR344 - Running Paravirtualized Linux Guests with Microsoft Windows Virtualization
SVR241 - Debunking virtualization market myths and misperceptions
SVR345 - Terminal Services and SoftGrid used together for application delivery
SVR201 - Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services overview

I'm looking forward to the show. And I hope to see many of you there!

Posted by David Marshall on June 2, 2007 07:10 PM

June 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Optimizing Your Data Center with Virtualization and Automation

If you haven't heard Simon Crosby, Founder and CTO of XenSource, speak before, you might want to consider signing up for this Webinar. I've heard him speak a few times at various forum events, and each time, I've enjoyed what he had to say and how he presented it.

Simon, along with Rob Gingell, CTO and EVP of Products at Cassatt Corporation, will discuss the advances being made in virtualization and automation and how to use them to make your data center more responsive and more dynamic.

The goal of the Webinar is to cover the following:

How virtualization prevents over-provisioning resources, offering clear, easily quantified economic advantages.
How service-level automation uses shared resource pools to assign and re-assign resources to applications based on the real-time performance of the services they support.
How a combined virtualization and automation solution can maximize flexibility while minimizing the resource expenses for both the software and hardware.

Join them for this 1 hour event scheduled for June 6, 2007 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

You can register for the event, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 2, 2007 06:30 AM

June 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Overhauls Virtualization Calculator

Calculating your Microsoft licenses in a virtual world does not have to be a daunting task. At least, not anymore. After all, when trying to architect and implement your virtualization environment, you have enough to deal with like capacity planning, which virtualization platform is the right choice for this environment, how am I going to migrate my physical into the virtual, how do I learn this new technology, what do I need to manage it, and so on. The last thing you want to struggle with is licensing, how many and how much?

Microsoft is trying to make that process a little easier, and I think, has done a really fantastic job. Only a few months ago, they announced the first version of this calculator. Now, they offer an overhauled version of the license calculator with a whole new approach... and it is still free!

The new calculator lets you interactively build virtual machines running multiple Microsoft server products to estimate the licenses and costs for Windows Server by edition (Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter) and many Microsoft server products. It starts with configuring your server based on virtualization technology, sockets and clustering requirements, and then builds the virtual machines.

The first step in this calculation process is to select how many processors you have. It doesn't ask for the number of cores, so make sure you answer with the number of physical processors. (If you have 2 quad-core processors, you need to select "2" processors, not 8.)

Next, the calculator asks you about clustering. If you need it, the calculator will provide license and cost estimates for Windows Server Enterprise and Datacenter Editions but will rule out Standard Edition since it doesn't support this feature.

Finally, it asks for your choice of virtualization platform technology. In addition to pricing for Microsoft Virtual Server, it also offers the option of selecting a 3rd-party (non-Microsoft) virtualization technology that sits on top of Windows or a 3rd-party (non-Microsoft) virtualization technology that installs on 'bare metal' or a hypervisor platform.

So go ahead and try it out. Add in your virtual machine environments to the calculator and select which Microsoft products are being installed in each, such as BizTalk, Exchange, MOM, SharePoint, SMS and/or SQL.

You can try the licensing calculator, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 2, 2007 05:57 AM

June 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Installing VMware ESX 3 on Workstation 6.0

Yes, you did read the title of the article correctly. We are talking about installing VMware's ESX Server inside of a virtual machine running on VMware's Workstation 6.0 product.

Come on, we've all been there before. Who didn't try to install older versions of VMware virtualization platforms inside of a virtual machine. Heck, I tried to install Connectix Virtual Server inside VMware ESX Server 1.0 and vice versa many ages ago... and guess what, it never worked. But hey, we try these things, don't we?

If you have ever tried doing this in the past (and failed), you might want to check out the latest white paper from Xtravirt. Paul Davey wrote this interesting 26 page white paper called the Guide to Installing VMware ESX3 on Workstation 6.

The white paper illustrates how to install and configure VMware ESX3 Server to run inside a VMware Workstation 6 virtual machine, and from that, the paper says that VirtualCenter, VMotion, HA and DRS features can be configured.

Using this configuration certainly won't win you any performance awards, and you most definitely aren't going to run this setup in a production environment. But what it does do is allow you to demonstrate, test or learn the software without having to worry about the VMware HCL and expensive server equipment.

Imagine, setting up and operating a VI3 environment on your laptop! How crazy is that? I definitely need to go try this one out.

You can download this easy to follow, step-by-step white paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 1, 2007 09:56 PM

June 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Launches Desktop for Mac 3.0 with 3-D Gaming to Boot

Parallels just announced that it has released a release candidate of Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0. The release candidate is in the final stages of a Parallels private Beta testing program that has been going on for the last several months. The final release is expected within the next few weeks.

The latest version of the product includes over 50 new features and enhancements as well as over 100 bug fixes. The three new features that stand out the most to me include 3-D graphic support, Snapshots and SmartSelect.

One thing I have personally been waiting for these past 8 years has been the ability to truly run a 3-D game or application in a virtual machine. And today's announcement should be welcomed news for any gamer who has tried to install, run and successfully play such a game. The 3.0 version will offer support for both DirectX and OpenGL graphics within a virtual machine. And as expected, it didn't take long for people to start trying out Half-Life 2 in a VM.

Half+life.jpg

Another important feature within any good virtualization platform these days and one that has been missing in Parallels Desktop for Mac until now is a good snapshot manager. Being able to save a virtual machine's state at different intervals or having the ability to rollback to a previous state in case something bombs or corrupts within the virtual machine is one of the things that sold me on virtualization early on in life. The 3.0 version finally brings this functionality to Desktop for Mac users.

And finally, 3.0 offers a feature called SmartSelect. This is a new built-in integration tool that allows users to open any file from Windows or OS X with any program from either OS. SmartSelect's total application and file integration adds tremendous value to the seamless multi-OS interface introduced by Coherence. Together, Coherence and SmartSelect give users the easiest, most fluid way to run multiple OSes and their applications simultaneously, without rebooting or switching desktop environments.

Other features mentioned by the company include:

Offline access to virtual machine files with Paralles Explorer
Coherence 2.0, including shared folders and UI enhancements
Linux Tools for seamless integration betwen Mac OS X and Linux
Expanded support for USB 2.0 devices
USB connection assistant quickly connects you to your OS of choice
Shared printers for cross OS printing
Significantly enhancements performance and audio quality
Control the levels of integration and isolation with Security Manager

Ben Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications at Parallels, said, "The release of Desktop for Mac 3.0 represents another opportunity to help computer users get the best of all operating systems on a single, seamless desktop". He continued, "We look forward to feedback on the important new features like SmartSelect, 3D graphics, and Snapshots as we prepare for the full launch very soon."

And if these features alone don't sell you on the upgrade to the 3.0 version, Parallels is offering a discount upgrade price of $39.99 until June 6 to convince you. After that, the product will be $49.99 to upgrade and $79.99 for a new copy. Find out more information by going to the Web site, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 1, 2007 08:59 PM

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