Virtualization Report | David Marshall | August 2007

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August 2007

August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

A Deeper Look Into the Citrix/XenSource Acquisition

Taking another quick look into the Citrix acquisition of XenSource, InformationWeek interviewed XenSource and Citrix representatives in a Q&A session - asking about how the acquisition affects the Citrix product lineup. Barron's also posted a blog post about the topic with an interesting take from CRT Capital's Ashok Kumar. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 30, 2007 05:29 AM

August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LeftHand Networks Gets Certified for Virtual Iron

Virtual Iron announced that it has certified LeftHand Networks' open iSCSI storage area network software. Virtual Iron said combining the two products delivers enterprise-class server and storage virtualization capabilities to the mainstream market and enables more users to take advantage of the significant benefits of virtual infrastructure management.

"Together, Virtual Iron and LeftHand Networks deliver affordable, production-ready virtualization and management solutions to the mainstream market," said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron Software. "The flexible and open architecture of SAN/iQ combined with Virtual Iron's advanced virtual infrastructure management and live workload migration capabilities, enable users of all sizes to leverage the full power and ROI of virtual infrastructure management."

The combined products can offer the following capabilities:

Virtual Iron enables the provisioning of new virtual machines to meet increasing application demands in the data center or to create new environments for software development and testing. SAN/iQ supports these capabilities by allowing users to clone storage volumes almost instantaneously and with minimal additional use of storage. This enables users to automatically allocate server and storage capacity to workloads as needed, without administrative intervention.
Virtual Iron Live Migrate migrates running virtual machines with their operating systems and applications from one physical server to another with zero downtime and without complicated clustering environments. This allows users to balance workloads and perform server maintenance without affecting service levels. SAN/iQ offers similar storage functionality, allowing volumes to be moved from one storage system to another with zero downtime and without modifying the virtual environment.
Virtual Iron LiveRecovery provides business continuity for all applications by automatically re-starting virtual machines affected by server failure without any downtime and without complicated clustering software. SAN/iQ architecture allows organizations to distribute their storage networks so that access to the virtual machines' storage volumes can continue uninterrupted even through the loss of an entire data center.

Posted by David Marshall on August 29, 2007 06:37 PM

August 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

FastScale Offers Its Take on Managing Virtualization

A few months ago, FastScale Technology decided it was a good time to surface out of stealth mode. And with the virtualization community still beaming from ear to ear over the VMware IPO and XenSource acquisition, now seems like a GREAT time for any company to surface with a virtualization application play.

FastScale announced the introduction of their Virtual Manager product which is designed to enable IT organizations to automatically build and streamline server software environments on-demand and provisions them to virtual machines in seconds. The company said that on average, server software environments are 99% smaller than traditional images, which helps them to be built in a matter of seconds.

Additionally, FastScale Virtual Manager delivers maximum hardware utilization by dynamically sizing a virtual machine disk image (VMDK) and its container to meet the precise requirements of the application environment. Interestingly, it also automatically includes and configures the appropriate VMware tools in the VMDK. The product currently supports the full line of VMware products, including VMware ESX Server, VMware Server and VMware Workstation.

"Now that more enterprises are virtualizing their data center environments, systems administration and management is more complex than ever," said Lynn LeBlanc, CEO of FastScale. "We are focused on eliminating the complexity through highly innovative technologies that address not only how server software is deployed in virtual environments, but also how it is built in the first place. No one else has tackled this problem."

FastScale said that its Virtual Manager enables users to:

Build & streamline software stacks automatically - to dramatically reduce system administration time, decrease manual errors and deliver more output from same physical resources.
Create VMDKs with dynamically sized containers – for maximum use of hardware resources.
Provision to virtual or physical machines on-the-fly – for optimal performance and load balancing.
Run 3X+ more VMs per physical server without degrading performance – to enable increased server consolidation.
Boot 40+ FastScale VMs in less time than a single traditional environment – for scalable, enterprise-class performance in a virtual machine infrastructure.
Build and deploy virtual machines centrally – to fully eliminate virtual sprawl.

The product will be available on August 31, 2007 and the pricing for it will start at $20,000.

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2007 05:59 PM

August 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The Chrome Thin Client - Pano Logic's Virtual Desktop

A silicon valley startup, Pano Logic, has announced their new technology which enables them to offer a virtual desktop PC that doesn't require any software or hardware components like a typical PC.

The company was founded by Nick Gault who was the founding chief executive of XenSource. So it seems as though Nick is following the path of where virtualization is heading. He went from focusing on virtualizing the server and is now going back to the desktop.

The Pano device is a small chrome cube with no processor, memory or operating system. Instead, the small device connects the user's keyboard, mouse, video, audio and other USB peripherals to an IP-based connection which links to a version of the user's operating system running in a virtual machine on a remote server.

The device is similar in its approach to the technologies being offered by Wyse, Neoware and ClearCube. However, the Pano device takes things up a notch. Because the device has no software, it doesn't require any software updates nor is the client affected by malware. And because there is no CPU, the device only consumes 5 watts, 3% of a typical PC, making it as green as they come.

And leveraging functionality provided by server virtualization, the Pano device also ties in what they call the "Pano Button". The Pano Button can be configured by IT or solution providers to orchestrate services provided by the server platform. For example, the user could rollback from a corrupted Windows instance to a known good instance or they could switch between virtual machines set up with software for different job functions.

"The right model for desktop computing is to have zero software - and hence no pain - at the desktop, and to centralize all software and management in the data center. And when there is no software on the desktop, a majority of today's desktop security problems vanish," said Nick Gault, CEO of Pano Logic. "The Pano architecture fully delivers on the promise of virtualization for the desktop."

Pano Logic will sell the Pano devices beginning in September for subscription prices beginning at $20 per month with another $60 per year planned for maintenance and support.

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2007 05:14 PM

August 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Expresses Views on Virtualization and Intel Gets Its vPro On

Microsoft's Larry Orecklin makes his opinions known about virtualization, the market and how Microsoft's approach compares to its competitors. And Intel is moving on with its latest generation of its vPro chipsets for business computers. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 27, 2007 04:49 PM

August 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Quick Hits - 3.0 Beta 2 and New Distributors

Parallels announced that Beta 2 of the Parallels Desktop 3.0 update has been made available on the Website. Beta 2 adds a few new features to the product. You can automatically share movies, picutes, music and documents (and desktops!) between Windows and OSX. They've improved Coherence by enabling any Windows window to be minimized to the dock, just like a normal Mac application window. And they updated Shared Folders so that the "My Documents" folder and its sub-folders display the same contents as your Mac's home folder.

You can download Beta 2, here. And in case you are wondering, it's free.

Parallels also announced two new distribution partners.

First, they announced Eisentech Resources joined Parallels as the official distributor for Malaysia. Eisentech Resources will serve as an electronic and boxed product distributor for all Parallels products and will concentrate their efforts on building both consumer and corporate reseller channels in Malaysia.

The company then announced that they have signed an agreement with Phoenix Software making them the exclusive distributor of Parallels Desktop for Mac in South Africa.

Parallels currently has more than 750 partners in 62 countries.

Posted by David Marshall on August 26, 2007 03:42 PM

August 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Green Grid Outlines 2007 Roadmap

The Green Grid, a nonprofit organization looking at datacenter power and efficiency, outlined its 2007 deliverables and technology roadmap.

The group, launched back in February, includes such notable technology companies such as AMD, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun and VMware. They plan to focus on data collection through the documentation of existing standards and the evaluation of metrics; data assessment through a market study of current efficiency practices; and technology proposals that outline The Green Grid's recommendations for the future of energy efficient data centers.

Specifically, as part of its technology roadmap, The Green Grid has announced the following deliverables:

Data Collection

Data Center Standards and Metrics Inventory (Q3'07) – this study will document existing standards and metrics for energy efficiency, identify coverage gaps and make recommendations for future development.
The Green Grid Metrics: Describing Data Center Power Efficiency (Q3'07) – this study will be an update to The Green Grid's existing study on data center efficiency metrics and will look at workload classification through a data center segmentation model.
Operationalizing Energy-Efficiency Data Collection (Q4'07) – this study will identify the requirements for collecting and aggregating data center power consumption data.

Data Assessment

Data Center Efficiency Baseline Market Study (Q3'07) – this study on the current state of the industry will allow The Green Grid to identify key factors driving companies to take action on data center power consumption and the challenges in doing so. Collecting and analyzing this data will help to provide companies with a baseline to compare their own initiatives, goals and performance.
Operational Best Practices (Q4'07) – these studies will focus on right-sizing the data center and will outline best practices in the adoption of virtualization and consolidation technologies.
Database for Data Center Performance (Q4'07) – The Green Grid will begin development work on a database focused on data center characteristics and performance schema.

Technology Proposals

Initial Technology Roadmap (Q4'07) – this roadmap provides an initial assessment of existing and emerging technologies affecting data center efficiency and performance, taking into consideration both return on investment and risk to the end user.
Power Distribution Options for the Data Center Study (Q3'07) – this study will look at the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of data center power distribution configurations.
Cooling Options Study (Q4'07) – this study will focus on the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of data center cooling architectures.

Lawrence Lamers, director of the Green Grid said, "Despite the fact that power consumption is one of the most important issues facing IT today, there is a lack of guidelines and resources available for those looking to drive a change."

"The Green Grid is focused on building the foundation and launching the key technology deliverables required to improve data center energy efficiency - both for existing data centers and for the design and operation of future ones."

The problem is, no two datacenters are exactly alike. However, these reports should at least give datacenter administrators and owners enough information to help them figure out their energy efficiency and how to take steps to become more efficient. The road has to begin somewhere, and someone has to start marking the road for others to follow.

Posted by David Marshall on August 26, 2007 01:07 PM

August 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware CEO Voted One of Top Five Women in Tech

If you have ever had the opportunity to speak with or hear Diane Greene speak, you would immediately recognize and identify with her passion for virtualization. Along with her intelligence and business savvy, it is this passion that has helped her to propel VMware to where it is today - generally recognized by the industry as today's virtualization leader.

The Inquirer.net has recently recognized Diane Greene as one of the top five women in tech - a nomination that I don't dispute. They write:

Diane Greene might well be the most important woman in IT today. As founder and CEO of VMware she runs what is possibly the biggest business technology success story of the decade so far. The MIT graduate previously worked at firms including Sybase, SGI and Tandem. As a child, she made cash in a more humble way, fishing for crabs in Maryland and selling them for a few dollars each.

Congratulations to Diane and VMware. In my mind, this recognition just further validates the virtualization market and where the technology is taking us.

You can read about the other four individuals on the original article, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 26, 2007 12:02 PM

August 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Server Vendors Driving Green Datacenters

The lack of space to expand a datacenter's footprint is a growing problem today for many organizations. Perhaps an even bigger problem being faced by these organizations is the rising power and cooling costs associated with today's datacenter designs. Server vendors such as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard are making every effort to try and provide datacenters with green options to create a more efficient environment while at the same time giving these companies the opportunity to save money. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 24, 2007 05:14 PM

August 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

StorageCraft Updates ShadowProtect - Server and Desktop Backup

StorageCraft Technology, provider of disk-based backup and disaster recovery for Windows-based servers, desktops and laptops, announced upgrades to its ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software.

ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 both include the company's secret formula for hardware independent restoration or HIR. HIR allows IT administrators to backup, restore or migrate server, desktop or laptop systems to any environment - physical or virtual.

The 3.0 edition of this product supports virtualization solutions from both VMware and Microsoft. And what's interesting with this product is that its HIR technology allows migration to new systems, whether from one physical to another (P2P), physical to virtual (P2V), virtual to virtual (V2V) or even virtual to physical (V2P).

"We've engineered ShadowProtect 3.0 to help IT professionals protect every Windows system in their computing environment," said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. "This means there aren't any limitations on the types of Windows systems you are backing up or migrating to – whether virtual or physical."

ShadowProtect 3.0 offers the following features:

Improved recovery environment which allows adding new storage controller drivers or NIC drivers
Bootable recovery CD based on Windows Vista; includes automatic hardware detection and network support.
New Verify Backup Image tool to ensure backup files are recoverable.
Additional optical media support (CD-R/RW, DVD+-R/RW, Blu-ray R/RE (both single and dual layer).
Network throttling during backup for improved performance.
Improved image management.
Windows Vista support.
Visual partitioning support.
Remote management of recovery environment.
Improved user interface.
Bare metal recovery of servers, desktops and laptops in minutes.
Ability to take online or cold state backup images without the need to install software.
Simple view to quickly recover files and folders or update backup images.
Network Configurator to manage domains, mapped drives and network resources.

The 3.0 products are available now through the company's Website as well as through their authorized StorageCraft distributors, MSPs and VARs.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2007 08:37 PM

August 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Can You Name 10 Virtualization Companies To Watch?

With VMware's IPO and Citrix's planned acquisition of XenSource, people are starting to wonder if saying that your product lives in the red hot virtualization camp automatically gets you brownie points... or even better!

NetworkWorld recently took on the challenge to scope out the virtualization product sector in hopes of identifying 10 companies that help target virtualization pain points. They searched, identified and now list for your viewing pleasure the following 10 virtualization companies:

3Leaf Systems - I/O bottlenecks are a key pain point in large, virtualized server environments. "It's definitely a problem to scale up lots of virtual machines on a cluster and not be able to scale up the I/O at the same time. 3Leaf is addressing this," says John Abbott, chief analyst at the 451 Group.

Attune Systems - "Basically, it virtualizes the file server to the user," says Zak Khalil, MIS manager at Lessard Group, an architecture firm in Vienna, Va. "It runs with any existing storage ... It's very easy to implement, and it works."

InovaWave - Databases and other applications with heavy I/O requirements are the most difficult to virtualize -- and Microsoft, VMware and others haven't come up yet with a good solution. InovaWave offers one today for companies that need the highest performance in a virtual machine, says Chris Voce, analyst at Forrester Research.

Insystek - Few enterprise server environments are virtualized fully, and that means most IT executives are faced with managing virtual and physical servers. Virtual IT lets users manage both from a single console, easing overall administration and cutting costs.

Kidaro - "Kidaro pushes the right buttons when it comes to desktop virtualization," says Andi Mann, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. Managed Workspace is secure and seamless, and provides centrally managed, policy-based control that provides for employee mobility and keeps corporate data secure at the same time, he adds.

Marathon Technologies - "Going forward, we see high availability and disaster recovery for business resiliency as key reasons why organizations will deploy virtualization software," says John Humphreys, an IDC program director. "There is huge market appeal for technology ... that addresses both planned and unplanned downtime in virtual environments."

Provision Networks - VAS improves management and security while keeping costs in check, users say. "We needed the ability to scale our business without increasing desktop-support costs," says Gary Parkinson, IT director with Isaac Agnew, a U.K. automobile retailer. "With over 600 network PCs across 17 retail locations, we needed to deploy new applications quickly, securely and efficiently to a standard desktop, regain control of those desktops, and turn them into simple, task-based tools. Provision helped make the deployment and control a much easier experience."

Scalent Systems - When servers -- even virtual machines -- move, their connectivity needs to move with them, and that's something most virtual-server vendors don't address. V/OE addresses the physical side, remotely turning on machines and making sure they have the right network address, storage access and operating system or hypervisor booting.

ToutVirtual - As virtualized servers proliferate, they become increasingly difficult to manage. "Where the complications happen are with management, the staff impact and the process changes that take place," says Stephen Elliot, an IDC director. "There's definitely an addressable need that [ToutVirtual] is trying to fill."

XDS - Once users get past server virtualization, they look to desktop virtualization to reduce support costs for remote users and increase security. XDS focuses on performance and delivers a dial-tone-like service that provides on-demand virtual desktop sessions with an experience similar to a PC or laptop that is reportedly high security and low cost.

Read the entire article to find out what these companies offer, how they started, how they got their names, who is on their management team, how much funding have they received and who is using their products.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2007 04:55 PM

August 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sorry Google, VMware is After Valley's Best

A little known technology company called VMware just got a lot more famous in Silicon Valley and the financial world after its monstrously successful stock IPO - raising just over $1 billion.

And now, just as expected, the company is looking to grow... quickly, by expanding the talent in its employee pool. And with such a large infusion of cash on hand, the company is now able to go after the very talent that has been, for the most part, monopolized in the area by Google.

It is being reported that there are easily some 500+ jobs just waiting to be filled in the Palo Alto area at VMware. And as a throwback to the 90s, these jobs are rumored to be paying a starting salary of $130-160k with stock options at a current strike price of around $66.

VMware has always had "interesting" technology. And this has been one offering to help bring people onboard. However, now, with cash in hand, the company is able to rival Google on compensation packages like no other company in the area. Throw in the fact that this "interesting" technology has gone mainstream thanks to its financial success in the stock market, and you have quite a compelling argument to draw people in.

Interestingly enough, both Google and VMware have moved away from simply offering their "core" product. Google is no longer just a search engine. And VMware is no longer just a hypervisor or virtualization platform. Both companies are searching hard for talented programmers because they have each moved into the application space as well, adding to their initial product offerings and making both companies much more than that from which they started.

Watch out Google! Hiring and keeping talent just got a little more difficult.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2007 04:40 AM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The Impact of Virtualization Software on Environments

Virtualization of system resources aboard x86 servers is one technology that has the distinct potential to really change the dynamics of the industry in many ways as it quickly becomes a de facto component of modern computing.

Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to automatically manage the resources of the physical server to efficiently support multiple operating systems, each supporting different applications.

This IDC Technology Assessment presents IDC's view of how virtualization technologies are impacting and will continue to impact operating environments and the operating environment market near- and long-term.

Check out this 11 page whitepaper, here. It is a really good read.

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2007 08:37 PM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Were Virtual Iron's Announcements Loud Enough?

Virtual Iron recently made a few announcements, but because of the timing of those announcements, they might not have been loud enough to overcome all of the chatter around VMware's IPO stock offering or the rumors and then the actual acquisition news discussing Citrix purchasing XenSource. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2007 05:11 PM

August 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SWsoft Reaches New Milestones This Year

With all of the hoopla over VMware and Citrix this past week, SWsoft didn't get the chance to properly pound their own chest very much. Many people, both new and old to the virtualization market, may not realize it, but SWsoft would like them to know that they are the second-largest overall virtualization software company in the world, the leading desktop virtualization vendor and the only company to offer both virtual machine and OS virtualization technologies.

Not only that, but the company also just announced that they have increased its revenue by 127 percent for the first half of 2007 versus the first half of 2006. No small victory.

They also announced a nice showcase of usage of their Parallels and Virtuozzo products. SWsoft is reporting that their combined products now power more than 1.3 million virtual desktops and servers:

More than 130,000 physical servers are currently powered by SWsoft products.
More than 600,000 physical desktops and notebooks use Parallels software.
More than 700,000 virtual environments (or containers) are powered by Virtuozzo.
Nearly every Fortune 500 company uses Parallels virtual machine software.

"These results are clear indications of the useful innovation and unique value that SWsoft products offer hundreds of thousands of customers every day," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft.

And the company isn't showing any signs of slowing down. It recently shipped a new 3.0 version of the Parallels Desktop software for the Mac which added quite a number of new features. It also just launched the Virtuozzo Starter Pack for Windows and Linux to entice new users to try its OS virtualization technology. The company is also working on a new server virtualization product under the Parallels brand, which will operate on bare-metal as well as on top of Windows, Linux or Apple's OS X server. And the company's recent SWsoft PEM 2.6.3, SWsoft Plesk 8.2 and SWsoft Sitebuilder 4.0 upgrades are expected to help extend the company's role as a leader in the datacenter automation field.

Could we be looking at the next ripe candidate in this market for acquisition?

Posted by David Marshall on August 20, 2007 06:05 AM

August 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Answers Security Questions with Acquisition of Determina

In a similar fashion to its quiet acquisition of the VDI desktop broker Propero, VMware has quietly acquired a company called Determina and its host intrusion prevention software - although terms of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed.

On August 13th, VMware informed analyst firm Gartner that it had acquired Determina, a vendor supplying host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS) technology.

Security has always been a major concern within the virtualization community. Consumers of virtualization technology have raised the question many times and have attempted to lock down their virtual environments as best they could. Likewise, security concerns have been trumpeted by many who aren't exactly on the virtualization bandwagon. The acquisition of Determina will definitely give VMware a solid answer to address many of these concerns.

In a research note discussing the acquisition, Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said that Determina brings two HIPS capabilities to VMware:

First, the Determina Memory Firewall HIPS solution protects an operating system (OS) and applications against unauthorized memory and program control-flow manipulation - for example, heap and stack overflows, buffer overflows, and similar techniques used by hackers to inject malicious code into running processes.
Second, as a byproduct of its memory protection approach, the Determina technology can also be used to inject new (or modified) code on the fly. This ability to perform "hot patching" is the foundation of the Determina LiveShield solution - a shielding alternative built by reverse-engineering patches used to protect vulnerable systems without a reboot until a permanent patch can be applied.

He went on to say that they believe VMware will use both capabilities of Determina and that by potentially integrating Memory Firewall into the ESX hypervisor, the hypervisor itself will provide an additional level of protection against intrusions.

MacDonald also said in his analysis that the memory protection would be extended to guest operating systems as well, saying "VMware's extensive use of binary emulation for virtualization puts the ESX hypervisor in an advantageous position to exploit this style of protection. Further, by using the LiveShield capabilities, the ESX hypervisor could be used "introspectively" to shield the hypervisor and guest OSs from attacks on known vulnerabilities in situations where these have not yet been patched. Both Determina technologies are fairly OS- and application-neutral, providing VMware with an easy way to protect ESX as well as Linux- and Windows-based guest OSs."

MacDonald also predicted that these capabilities will be freely included in one or more future versions of VMware products and that the Determina technologies will be discontinued for stand-alone purchase.

Posted by David Marshall on August 19, 2007 06:55 AM

August 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dell Creating Consumer PCs Complete with Virtualization

It looks like PC maker Dell is climbing onboard the virtualization train with its consumer PC division.

It has been confirmed that Dell is developing a consumer PC line that will run multiple versions of Microsoft Windows and Linux software at the same time using virtualization platforms to perform the magic.

Dell is partnering with VMware and SWsoft on their latest quest, and these virtualization enabled PCs could go on sale as early as next year.

And in a similar fashion to what Parallels and VMware Fusion did for the Intel-based Mac community, this could give the Linux operating system a boost from consumers who want to use the open source software but don't want to lose out on what Microsoft's Windows platforms offer.

While speaking at the Linuxworld Conference in San Francisco, Dell's CTO Kevin Kettler confirmed the news. And when asked whether or not these machines would be able to run Apple's OS X software, Kettler told reporters "I can't speculate on that." He added, "Virtualization is very powerful. It's an environment that would allow many different operating systems to coexist. You can interpret that however you like."

Posted by David Marshall on August 19, 2007 06:26 AM

August 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware and Citrix Prove Value in Virtualization

VMware's IPO and stock trading success combined with the acquisition of XenSource by Citrix further validates the virtualization market and everything that we've been doing in the community. If all eyes weren't set on virtualization before this drama unfolded, you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone is standing up and paying attention now. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 17, 2007 04:41 AM

August 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Stock Soars in a Down Market - Proving Virtualization Technology

VMware's initial IPO was a happy day for VMware, investors and the virtualization industry, although it wasn't a great day for the market overall.

Coming out of the IPO gate at $29 a share, VMware's stock saw an immediate gain that day of 72% where it finally settled at $51 per share. And according to Thomson Financial, this was the largest first-day gain of the year. The market itself dropped by over 200 points, but that didn't seem to affect the mood around the virtualization community.

Today, the stock continued to trade well, boosting itself another 13% to a closing price of $57.71 and reaching as high as $59.87 during the day.

VMware's stock price greatly reflects the positive things that the company has accomplished over the years; but it also reflects the virtualization market as a whole. People are finally paying special attention to a market that has a lot of potential left in its magical bag of tricks.

Other server virtualization platforms are now being given more respect and a second look by many in the financial industry. Citrix took the opportunity to announce that it was acquiring XenSource, a VMware competitor who oddly enough had also just announced the release of their latest virtualization hypervisor product, bringing it closer to feature parity with VMware's VI3 product.

With more eyes now focusing on the virtualization industry, other companies in this space will also start looking for similar success. And because the technology is so broad and far reaching, this market isn't limited to server virtualization. Desktop, application, operating system and storage virtualization will all benefit from this event. So stay tuned!

Posted by David Marshall on August 15, 2007 04:18 PM

August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenEnterprise v4 Helps ISVs Grow Solutions

On the heels of the announcement of XenSource's latest release, XenEnterprise v4, XenSource also announced that the new version of the company's server virtualization product is making it possible for several ISVs to offer new integrated solutions to market.

With this latest release, XenSource partners are being provided with an SDK, a DDK, as well as a storage back-end SR API for vendor specific enhanced storage functionality.

According to the company's press release, the following new solutions will be coming to market thanks to the new XenEnterprise v4:

Virtual Desktops
Citrix Desktop Server integrated with XenEnterprise provides customers with a centralized management infrastructure for delivering desktops dynamically from the datacenter as a secure, on-demand service, resulting in lower operational costs, decreased risk, and an improved end user experience. "We've found XenEnterprise v4 to be a robust and high performance virtualization platform that is easy to configure and ideal for virtual desktop delivery, Mick Hollison, vice president of Desktop Delivery at Citrix Systems.

XenSource Virtual Appliances
With XenEnterprise v4, software developers can now use rPath's rBuilder and rBuilder Online to create XenSource Virtual Appliances (XVA). Virtual appliance best practices are automatically incorporated into the process, and the ability to create the XVA format for XenEnterprise v4 has been fully integrated and tested. "With native support for XenEnterprise, rBuilder is now the fastest and most reliable way for developers to harness the power of XenEnterprise. Hand-crafted appliances simply can't compete with world class build automation and application lifecycle management," stated Brett Adam, vice president of engineering for rPath.

Virtualized Enterprise Storage
The Compellent Storage Center SAN builds on its Dynamic Block Architecture to deliver a scalable, virtualized storage system designed to effortlessly integrate with XenEnterprise V4 environments, which lowers overall costs with automated tiered storage, boot from SAN, thin provisioning and remote replication over IP. "With the newly available storage API, Compellent's storage virtualization technology can be easily and seamlessly integrated with XenEnterprise to significantly reduce the time needed to implement XenSource virtual servers," said Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of marketing for Compellent.

Lab Management
The integration of VMLogix LabManager with XenEnterprise provides XenSource customers with a reliable, feature-rich and cost-effective virtual lab management solution for enterprise software delivery. The solution allows developers, testers and support engineers to easily create, share and deploy multi-machine build, test and support environments. "Our partnership with XenSource and integration with XenEnterprise v4 underscores our commitment to provide customers with enterprise-class virtual lab automation for accelerating global software delivery, consolidating and improving utilization of lab infrastructure, and eliminating virtual and physical machine sprawl," said Ravi Gururaj, founder and CTO, VMLogix.

Management Software
INSYSTEK Control Center provides XenEnterprise customers with the ability to manage virtual and physical infrastructures. INSYSTEK's distributed services architecture provides unparalleled levels of automation, compliance, accountability, serviceability, and efficiency. "We are excited to be partnering with XenSource to provide enterprise solutions to customers looking for superior virtualization platforms that will increase their server/desktop utilization and reduce IT cost," said Alex Turner, founder and CEO, INSYSTEK.

VM Resource Management
Platform VM Orchestrator is now fully integrated with XenEnterprise. Built on Platform Computing's proven grid technology, it is a complete VM solution that offers best of breed dynamic resource management, and self-service functionality all from a common web-based management console. "XenSource is quickly becoming a leader in the virtualization space. Platform VM Orchestrator extends XenEnterprise's core capabilities and delivers policy-based dynamic resource management, and self-service management functionality," said Jingwen Wang, vice president of products, Platform Computing.

Comprehensive Protection Solutions
SteelEye LifeKeeper Protection Suite monitors, replicates and recovers critical applications and data residing on either physical servers or within XenEnterprise-based Linux and Windows guest OSes. "As a major advocate of virtualization technology, SteelEye congratulates XenSource on this very important milestone," said Bob Williamson, senior vice president of products, SteelEye Technology. "XenEnterprise v4 delivers a virtualization platform offering advanced features that any organization deploying Linux and Windows applications within a guest OS should investigate."

Enterprise Virtual Appliances
VirtualAppliances.net will enable the creation of XenEnterprise-ready, self-contained XVA Virtual Appliances providing instant application deployment in a nano-sized package. Designed with regular computer users in mind, virtual appliances make application deployments on XenEnterprise easy to install and operate. "As content providers in the virtualization marketplace we are very pleased with the quality of XenEnterprise v4, the reliability of the platform and the ease of installation and management," said Stephen Dennis, president of VirtualAppliances.net.

A complete list of XenSource Technology Partners and related solutions can found on the XenSource Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 14, 2007 04:45 AM

August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenSource Fights Back with its Latest Enterprise Offering

XenSource made a bold move today as it decided to announce its next generation XenEnterprise product, version 4.0, on the same day the entire community and financial industry awaited news about VMware's IPO.

The company is looking to offer a much improved and feature rich product for a growing list of enterprise customers looking for an alternative, cost-effective server virtualization solution to the industry leading VMware VI3 offering.

"The introduction of XenEnterprise v4 makes XenSource a strong choice for any enterprise looking to virtualize Windows from the data center to the desktop," said John Bara, VP of marketing at XenSource. "XenSource has experienced tremendous growth to its customer base and partner ecosystem in 2007. We expect the introduction of the new enterprise-class features in v4 to further accelerate this growth."

XenSource now has more than 650 commercial customers using XenEnterprise for Windows and Linux virtualization, making it a proven, tested platform in the enterprise. XenSource has also seen tremendous growth in demand, and the XenSource commercial customer base has doubled in the past ninety days.

To help get the product out there in the market, XenSource recently signed an agreement back in June of this year with server provider NEC who plans to bundle the XenSource technology with its server line. During the following month, XenSource signed an OEM agreement with Symantec to embed its storage and data security software into the XenSource virtualization platform. And now, the company offers new features in its XenEnterprise v4 which include:

XenMotion and Server Resource Pools:
- Combines multiple hosts into a powerful, scalable, and dynamically manageable pool of virtual resources and leverage XenMotion to enable live migration of running virtual machines between hosts to achieve resilient, optimal resource utilization for virtual infrastructure. Automated host configuration means no per-host configuration in a resource pool, dramatically simplifying pool management. Users can simply drop virtual machines on a resource pool and the pool assigns the right resources.

64-bit Hypervisor for Real-World Applications
- Scales XenEnterprise with increasing memory density and CPU core counts, with support for up to 128GB of physical memory, and with per guest VM limits of 32GB. The new release also supports up to 8-way SMP per guest, and leverages ACPI to support dynamic hot-plugging of CPU, network and storage into running virtual machines. The powerful hypervisor feature-set allows XenEnterprise v4 to support a higher density of virtual machines per host, with increased ROI and consolidation payback.
XenCenter: Resilient, Integrated Virtual Infrastructure Management
- Manages virtual infrastructure for the entire XenSource product family, offering the first enterprise virtualization management solution without a single point of failure. Management state is replicated across all hosts in a resource pool, enabling any host to assume the role of pool leader on demand, and dramatically enhancing resiliency and scalability of virtual infrastructure management. XenCenter is included as part of the core XenEnterprise v4 offering at no additional charge.
Open Storage Repository API:
- Offers the industry's broadest range of direct attached and shared storage for virtual machines including virtual disk images using NAS, iSCSI and SAN based storage infrastructure certified by XenSource through its OEM agreement with Symantec, whose Veritas Storage Foundation product suite will be included as an integrated component of a forthcoming point release of v4.
- Delivers powerful snapshotting, cloning and thin provisioning for virtual hard disks, leveraging the integrated features of modern storage infrastructure, without requiring a proprietary cluster file system and backup technologies. Via the open Storage Repository API, customers and partners can implement additional storage repository types, integrating storage virtualization and server virtualization into a powerful virtual infrastructure.
- Supports file-backed virtual hard disks using the Microsoft VHD format, as well as block backed raw virtual disk images.
XenAPI: Open APIs and Development Kits for OEMs, ISVs, and Enterprises
- Offers the same, XML-RPC standards based management API from XenExpress to XenEnterprise. XenSource v4 offers language bindings in C, C# and Java and a powerful CLI with bindings in three popular scripting languages to empower ISV, OEM and channel partners to create a broad-range of customer-needs driven value-added solutions - protecting management investment and fostering a rich open ecosystem of value-added products.

XenEnterprise v4 will be available on August 20, and includes as standard features: XenMotion, XenCenter, a 64-bit hypervisor and XenAPI. Pricing for XenEnterprise starts at $1,599 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $2,499 perpetual license per dual socket server.

For more information, visit their Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 13, 2007 07:55 PM

August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

AppStream Improves Application Streaming and SaaS Market

AppStream, Inc., a leader in on-demand application deployment and management, is challenging the application streaming and SaaS market with the latest edition of their software, AppStream 5.2.2. The product comes in two flavors, an Enterprise edition and a new SaaS edition. Both products are offering a number of new features to the market, many of which have come from listening to their existing customer base. ISVs will also like their new pricing options. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 13, 2007 04:59 AM

August 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Performance on VMware ESX Server 3

This VMware white paper discusses the performance and scalability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 when deployed within virtual machines running under VMware ESX Server 3.0.1.

The introduction of this 19 page white paper reads:

Virtualization has become a mainstream technology, allowing enterprises to consolidate underutilized servers while helping to increase reliability and fault tolerance and simplify load balancing. As organizations embrace virtualization in the data center, many may consider virtualizing Microsoft Exchange software. This paper suggests how an enterprise-critical messaging application like Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 should be sized and deployed on VMware ESX Server1 to obtain a satisfactory Quality of Service.
Specifically, we examine:

The performance implications of running Exchange Server 2003 on a virtual machine versus a physical system.

The performance of Exchange Server 2003 in virtual machine configurations when "scaling-up" (adding more processors to a machine) and "scaling-out" (adding more machines).

This paper discusses the performance and scalability of Exchange Server 2003 when it is deployed within virtual machines hosted by VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 on a Dell PowerEdge 6850 server with a Dell-EMC CX500 FC SAN. The Heavy user profile from Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003 Load Simulator benchmarking tool was used to simulate the Exchange workload. Results indicated that a uniprocessor virtual machine can support up to 1,300 Heavy users. Our experiments also show that consolidating multiple instances of these uniprocessor Exchange virtual machines on a PowerEdge 6850 can cumulatively support up to 4,000 Heavy users while still providing acceptable performance and scaling.

A key observation in the study is that uniprocessor virtual machines are, from a performance perspective, equivalent to half as many multiprocessor (two virtual processors) virtual machines. Hence we recommend that the Windows and Exchange licensing costs, ease of management, and corporate standards guide your configuration in this regard.

You can download the whitepaper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 12, 2007 03:13 PM

August 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 VHD

Microsoft has released a pre-configured VHD of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 that can be downloaded and safely evaluated in a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 environment in a similar manner to that of a VMware virtual appliance.

Overview:

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is the next generation of the Windows Server operating system that helps information technology (IT) professionals maximize control over their infrastructure while providing unprecedented availability and management capabilities, leading to a significantly more secure, reliable, and robust server environment than ever before. Windows Server 2008 delivers new value to organizations by ensuring all users regardless of location are able to get the full complement of services from the network. Windows Server 2008 also provides deep insight into the operating system and diagnostic capabilities to allow administrators to spend more time adding business value.

Windows Server 2008 builds on the success and strengths of the award-winning Windows Server 2003 operating system and on the innovations delivered in Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 R2. However, Windows Server 2008 is far more than a refinement of predecessor operating systems. Windows Server 2008 is designed to provide organizations with the most productive platform for powering applications, networks, and Web services from the workgroup to the datacenter with exciting, valuable new functionality and powerful improvements to the base operating system.

Download the Test Drive image, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 12, 2007 02:41 PM

August 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mastering Virtualization from the Datacenter to the Desktop

InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum is right around the corner. If you haven't signed up or made plans to attend this event, I invite you to do so. Once again, this event is going to take place in the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on September 24th and 25th 2007. I thought last year's event was a huge success, and I certainly enjoyed meeting and speaking with many of you about your problems, issues and successes with this great technology.

This year's event should prove to be even more interesting. If you aren't familiar with the show's format, it is a great place to connect you with leading industry analysts, senior technologists from Fortune 500 companies as well as your peers to help you collaborate on strategies to master virtualization whether in the datacenter or on the desktop.

The event takes place over two days, and in those two days, you will be immersed in presentations, case studies and candid discussions to help you understand how server, storage, desktop, file and application virtualization technologies can be combined to improve deployment cycles, reduce hardware costs, and enhance overall business agility.

To try and pack the most information into a two day period, InfoWorld has revamped the breakout sessions into two distinct tracks:

The Case Studies Track will present the firsthand experiences from end-users addressing benefits gained and lessons learned to help you evaluate which virtualization solutions are the best answer for you.
The Technical Track will feature tried and true guidance from experts outlining the tangible next steps for planning, deploying, managing, and scaling your virtualization initiative.

And to make the event even more interactive than it already was, they've given more time to allow people to interact and collaborate with each other. They've allotted more time throughout the day to ask questions of presenters, share your issues and concerns with others, get answers from the experts, connect with peers, and network with the leading virtualization vendors.

This event just keeps getting better thanks to the feedback of those of you who fill out the questionnaires as well as to the InfoWorld staff who puts on this event throughout the year.

To register and find out more information about the forum, please visit the Web site. And most importantly, go and have a good time while sharing and finding out all you can about this great technology.

Posted by David Marshall on August 12, 2007 06:34 AM

August 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Stealth Virtualization from Illumita Raises $6M

Illumita, an emerging company in the virtualization technology field, has secured $6 million in Series A funding.

The money raised is expected to help the stealth company accelerate its product development and get its first product to market. The money came principally from Madrona Venture Group and Ignition Partners, as well as additional funding from its initial seed investors, Bezos Expeditions and Washington Research Foundation.

A recent report from analyst firm IDC predicts server virtualization will become a $20 billion industry by 2010. The report also indicates $17 billion of that money will be spent on the virtualization solutions and services segment that illumita is targeting, on top of the $3.1 billion for virtualization software licenses.

So what exactly is this stealth company targeting? According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the company isn't seeking to compete directly with existing virtualization platforms. Instead, they are developing services that build on such software. The company's President, Steve Brodie, told the publication that Illumita is working on something they call "virtualization over the Internet", which was described as taking "all or some of the data center operations and moving it into the Internet cloud."

Brodie also told the Business Journal that the company is targeting Microsoft and XenSource as potential partners. He also said that the company is testing its services with 10 companies but declined to name them or give a timeline for when the services would be commercially available.

The company is currently located in Seattle's Pioneer Square with 10 employees working on the technology first developed by a group of scientists in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Steve Brodie recently joined the company as its President, along with Jonathan Weeks as VP of Engineering, and Brad Silverberg and Sunny Gupta joined the company's board of directors.

"The time has definitely come for broader use of virtualization," says Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. "The combination of an impressive team of technology and industry leaders in virtualization and strong customer validation for virtual services positions illumita for market leadership. Madrona has had substantial success working with several of the illumita team members in the past and we look forward to helping them build another great company."

"Virtualization is the next great wave of technology, and it's happening now," adds computer industry pioneer and Ignition founding member Brad Silverberg. "illumita has developed impressive virtualization technology that is the basis for an innovative computing solution we believe will have wide impact. We are impressed with the company's depth of talent and strategic direction and are very excited about the future of illumita."

Posted by David Marshall on August 11, 2007 08:15 AM

August 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware IPO is Upping the Ante

It seems as though VMware has filed an amended statement with the SEC for an initial public offering of its common stock. The company now expects the initial public offering of its Class A common stock to be between $27.00 and $29.00 per share, a 17 percent increase from the last posted expected price between $23.00 and $25.00 per share. This could signify that demand for these shares might skyrocket when they start to trade as soon as next week despite a recent dip in the market.

The proposed maximum aggregate offering price is now $1.1 billion which would give the virtualization giant a lot of spending cash. Cash that has been reported to be going toward paying back EMC for intercompany debts, purchasing a new headquarter building, and money for acquisitions and new product development.

Interest in the IPO has taken off thanks in part to two strategic investments made in the company back in July. Cisco invested $150 million for approximately 1.6 percent of VMware's outstanding common stock, while Intel bought in with $218.5 million.

According to VMware's SEC filings, the company plans to sell 33 million shares to the public, or about 10 percent of its shares. Parent company EMC plans on retaining about 87 percent ownership of the virtualization company.

I haven't followed anything like this since Google went public back in 2004. Some people are saying that this hot IPO could even reach into the $30 range before all is said and done.

VMware plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol "VMW".

Posted by David Marshall on August 11, 2007 07:17 AM

August 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Virtualization Security Fix Planned on Patch Day

Microsoft issued an advanced notification of nine security bulletins that the company plans on releasing with next Tuesday's patch day. Six of these will fix critical security vulnerabilities with bugs being found across the board from the Windows operating system, Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Basic to Windows Media Player.

Eight of the vulnerabilities allow attackers to execute injected malicious code. Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server users are vulnerable by attackers being able to elevate their privileges.

Affected versions include: Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 and Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 7.

Find out more specifics from Microsoft's Security Bulletin, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 11, 2007 06:52 AM

August 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Smartronix Uses Kidaro for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization

Kidaro, provider of enterprise desktop virtualization solutions, told me that a leading government contractor, Smartronix, is deploying the Kidaro platform in order to enhance the security and manageability of their desktop and laptop computers.

When asked what initially prompted Smartronix to the Kidaro product, John Parris, Executive Vice President of Smartronix, said his company was looking for a secure, repeatable, enterprise class desktop and application management environment. They looked at several competing technologies such as terminal services based solutions but were intrigued by the possibilities of a completely managed environment that did not require expensive server purchases. "We wanted to be able to use the existing corporate resources, such as laptops and wanted to be able to leverage users home computers while still being able to protect corporate data and our network. Kidaro's ability to centrally manage IT and corporate application resources really stood out."

The Kidaro Managed Workspace leverages industry-standard virtualization engines from Microsoft and VMware, managed within a scalable infrastructure for automatically provisioning, distributing, auditing, and securing desktop applications and data.

To help provide mobility, the company offers Kidaro ToGo which enables deployment of secure, encrypted virtual machine images to USB drives or even iPod devices. This USB function seems to be the preferred delivery mechanism for Smartronix employees that work at home. And because Kidaro Managed Workspace performs all processing on endpoint PCs, the virtual desktop can run disconnected from the network removing the need to build out expensive server farms. Parris said that his company is seriously considering a centrally managed development environment which would enable their software development team to have common configurations and be able to work securely on the road or at home.

Kidaro's TrimTransfer technology incorporates advanced de-duplication and image management capabilities which help to enable the efficient transportation of virtual machine images to thousands of desktops over the network. Using cryptographic fingerprinting to determine what data elements already exist on the target machines, Kidaro only has to send the incremental bytes that are required to complete the virtual machine image. And so far, Smartronix seems to be impressed with the speed in which changes can be centrally deployed.

Security is a major concern for IT departments, and Kidaro believes they can address that concern. The Kidaro platform builds in strong security for corporate applications and data, including: AES-256 data at rest encryption for the entire virtual machine image, including hard drive and USB copies; integrated VM firewall; data leak prevention features; granular centralized auditing; application white-listing; and isolation of corporate data from malware running on the host machine.

When asked about his specific experiences in this matter, Parris said that Kidaro allows them to control outbound data flow via printers or removable devices, and they can even lock down the ability to allow cut and paste. Because of their experience with Kidaro's impressive focus on security, Smartronix is in the process of recommending the product as an enterprise solution to several of their DoD customers.

In a recent InfoWorld TestCenter article, Kidaro was highlighted as one of the leaders in a "virtual two-horse race" for the desktop virtualization market. When asked what benefits have been personally achieved with the product, Parris said that streamlined IT control, centralized corporate application configurations and customized VPN configurations were quick wins for Smartronix. They have several corporate applications for accounting, HR, and payroll that are preconfigured with the correct application settings, and they have managed to get their complex VPN environment under control.

You can find out more information about Kidaro's products, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 10, 2007 06:13 AM

August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SWsoft Virtuozzo Customers Gain from Going Green

With escalating electric power costs and increasing pressure to reduce energy consumption, SWsoft says a growing number of service providers and IT organizations worldwide are using the company's Virtuozzo virtualization software to reduce their use of electricity and to "go green." According to Gartner Research, energy costs could soon account for more than 50 percent of the total information technology budget for a typical data center. Need a better reason to go green?

Several SWsoft customers are realizing the green potential of virtualization with Virtuozzo in significant ways:

ServInt Internet Services (www.servint.net), a leading hosting company based in the United States, estimates that their green efforts have produced a savings of as much as 85 percent in electricity usage for every hosted customer that transitions from a single physical server to a virtual server.
Host Europe (www.hosteurope.de), a large hosting company based in Germany, estimates that their virtualized hosting customers use 63 percent less electric power.
ikoula (www.ikoula.com), a hosting company based in France, estimates they can save as much as 60 percent on electricity by moving customers from dedicated to virtualized servers. The reduced power consumption also means delaying additional infrastructure investment to provide more power or space.

"Virtuozzo delivers the highest density available in a virtualization solution, enabling hundreds of virtual environments on a single physical server, and so it offers the greatest potential for energy savings," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "By using Virtuozzo to achieve their green computing goals, hosting providers can significantly reduce their energy usage while also realizing greater efficiency in their datacenter."

Posted by David Marshall on August 9, 2007 08:38 PM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

HP Looks to Linux for Tomorrow's Datacenter

Hewlett Packard outlined its vision for the next-generation datacenter and it says it is dependent on Linux and the open source community. The Linux community will continue to be an important component as more companies embrace the concept said an HP executive at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Wednesday.

HP is committed to expanding and being an all-in-one solution for those businesses that are ready to embrace the combined services plus datacenter concept. HP's next-generation strategy is to develop products and services that will offer datacenters a scalable, effective, reliable and fully automated virtual environment.

The company announced new tools and programs to help its customers take further advantage of open source and Linux in their datacenters. The offerings include the open sourcing of the HP developed Parallel Compositing Library visualization software, which enables customers to leverage previously unused compute power to visualize complex data sets. They also added Xen and guest operating system support for Debian to its recently launched HP Partner Virtualization Program, and the company broadened its pay-per-use pricing offering with Linux running on HP Integrity servers.

And if you didn't think HP was serious about the Linux community factoring into their plans, the company stated that one-third of their servers currently being shipped are Linux-based, and that they ship a Linux server every minute.

Posted by David Marshall on August 8, 2007 08:00 PM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware Fusion Virtualizes the Mac

VMware has announced general availability of its VMware Fusion desktop virtualization software for the Intel-based Mac. It lets Mac users simultaneously run Mac OS X, Windows and other Linux distributions on a single Mac system.

The software has been available in Beta since December of 2006, and VMware says that there have already been more than 250,000 downloads of the product.

The product is based on VMware's market-leading desktop virtualization platform, so it has nearly a decade of desktop virtualization leadership and expertise behind it. The software allows Mac users to take advantage of their hardware's full potential by running both 32- and 64-bit operating systems, leveraging two processor cores at the same time and using a wide variety of USB 2.0 devices. VMware Fusion is also the only Mac virtualization software available today to provide full support for more than 60 operating systems and complete power management capabilities to safeguard virtual machines when laptops are running out of battery.

Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware, said that VMware Fusion was designed for Mac enthusiasts looking for a seamless way to run Windows applications on the Mac. And it appears as though they have succeeded.

During his recent morning address, Steve Jobs remarked that the market share of the Mac is rising three times faster than the rest of the PC industry. And Apple also just announced a new line of iMacs. This could easily translate into a much larger Mac audience in need of desktop virtualization software.

VMware Fusion is now available online at vmware.com/mac, the Apple Store (apple.com), Amazon.com, Buy.com, Fry's (frys.com), Microcenter (microcenter.com) and CompUSA (compusa.com) for a suggested retail price of $79.99. Unfortunately for Parallels, VMware's software is also expected to hit Apple's retail store shelves in addition to other authorized retailers worldwide.

Posted by David Marshall on August 8, 2007 07:32 PM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtualization Security - Blue Pills and Black Hats

For those of us looking to learn or just read up on security issues, a great place to start is the Black Hat Web site or conference to find out great information around the topic of security. Even virtualization security seems to be a hot topic. In 2006, the original Blue Pill proof of concept code was presented at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. Since then, Hypervisor security and the blue pill have been talked about on numerous web sites, conferences and magazine articles. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 7, 2007 07:12 PM

August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

TechWorld Speaks With Simon Crosby from XenSource

TechWorld was able to catch up with XenSource CTO Simon Crosby in London where he was recently discussing the background to the XenSource and Symantec deal. Interestingly, they were able to get much more from Simon, as he offered up his opinions on the future of the virtualisation industry. And evidently, he launched a serious critique of VMware and even of business partner Microsoft.

Questions asked and answered include the following:

Q: How do you see the future of the virtualisation market?
A: The world has created a new Microsoft - there's a monster embedded in our industry. So the market is starting to crystallise, partly as a consequence of the way that VMware is building its company. They just want to sell more and more, and it's starting to step on people's toes.

Q: Is VMware really that horrible?
A: Unlike VMware, Microsoft doesn't compete with its channel but leaves room for an ecosystem. It's a superb platform player. Microsoft is very conscious of its scale and leaves pockets of $100m markets around for its partners. Our relationship with Microsoft is strong, will remain strong, and strengthens every day. Microsoft has been a very supportive partner.

The chink in VMware's armour is the weakness of its ecosystem - all its partners are under threat. That said, I wouldn't fault VMware entirely. VMware has grown very fast - they had to do that so I can't fault them for it, but no-one's making money out of VMware. There's a general sense of unease.

Read the rest of this great interview, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 6, 2007 08:03 PM

August 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Asigra Targets Virtualization with its 64-bit Software

Asigra claims to have the answer to the growing challenge of protecting virtualized server environments. They said that its agent-less Televaulting product is the first native 64-bit backup software for virtual machines which gives it an advantage in performance and scalability.

The company also said that today's backup and recovery methods used to protect virtualized servers do not provide the same level of capabilities unless some compromises are made, such as backing up the entire physical machine versus the individual machines.

Asigra said that some solutions offer parts of the overall solution needed for proper virtual machine backup. However, some backup at the VM level, but require users to purchase an agent for each virtual machine. Others lack support for backing up enterprise applications such as Oracle, SQL and Exchange. And others are just too CPU load intensive, resulting in degraded performance of the box.

With 64-bit, agentless Televaulting, Asigra addresses the shortcomings of the current backup and recovery methods for protecting virtualized server environments by providing the following:

Agentless backup optimized for virtualized server environments. This architecture enables users to restore individual VMs in a virtualized server set without having to restore the entire set of servers in the event of single-server data loss or corruption. The agentless design saves time in implementing the backup and recovery process, and provides much faster and more granular recovery in the event of a failure.
A pro-virtualization pricing model that is based on the amount of data to be protected, not the number of servers. Whereas many competitive backup products charge per agent or per server in order to provide server-specific backup/recovery, Asigra allows independent backup and recovery of each virtual server to deliver the most granular protection available without the excessive licensing management and cost penalty pricing issues of other solutions.
Any-to-any restore capability (P2P, P2V, V2V, V2P) gives users the ability to back up server data from one vendor and restore the data to hardware from another vendor - an important capability in mixed computing enterprise and managed service provider environments. This allows users to back up physical servers and quickly restore to virtual servers for recovery purposes. And, once the physical server is repaired, the virtual server can then be restored to the physical server. Any-to-any backup is an important capability in mixed computing enterprise and managed service provider environments.
Live VM backup allows administrators to back up VMs in the midst of production operations without disruption to production windows. Asigra's pre/post processors allow a smooth backup of a quiescent VM environment.
Fast and simple implementation and management. Televaulting is an order of magnitude more efficient and faster than other backup solutions for virtual machines with native support for 32-bit and 64-bit environments.
Centralized management of VM backup and recovery is essential in large distributed organizations that want to leverage the benefits of virtualized servers throughout the enterprise. Already the strongest remote office/branch office backup and recovery offering with centralized management a core offering, Asigra brings this capability to distributed virtual server environments whereby all backup and, more importantly, all restore operations can be managed from a single user interface without the need to physically be onsite to handle tapes.
Compliance-ready VM backup that offers policy-based management, encryption and near-instant recovery features for compliance with corporate policies and government regulations.
File-level recovery at the VM and guest OS level extends mainstream backup abilities to virtual server environments.
Bare-metal recovery and backup of data and enterprise applications such as Exchange, SQL Server, and Oracle at the VM level support DR planning.

Tom Dugan, co-founder of the VMware User Group in Philadelphia, said, "Asigra provides the most comprehensive backup offering for VMware."

Posted by David Marshall on August 5, 2007 07:40 PM

August 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Symantec Updates SRM Solution With Virtualization Support

Symantec has unveiled a new release to its Veritas CommandCentral 5.0 product family, a key component to its Storage United Initiative to help enterprises address their most pressing storage challenges with a unified, software-oriented approach.

The Veritas CommandCentral 5.0 family includes Veritas CommandCentral Storage 5.0, Veritas CommandCentral Enterprise Reporter 5.0 and Veritas Process Automation Manager 5.0. With the release of this integrated solution set, the company claims that Veritas CommandCentral becomes the only comprehensive storage resource management (SRM) solution in the market to optimize storage utilization, automate storage processes and align storage with business goals.

The proliferation of virtualization technologies introduces new challenges in storage management. Veritas CommandCentral offers the unique ability to address these challenges by providing end-to-end visibility in both virtualized server and storage environments. New in the latest release is advanced support for VMware, HDS TagmaStore and IBM SAN Volume Controller. This advanced support gives IT organizations the ability to effectively manage storage capacity at an application level in virtual environments, which hasn't been possible until now.

Average storage utilization rates across data centers are disconcertingly low, typically hovering at 30 – 40 percent, according to Symantec research. CommandCentral Storage 5.0 analyzes end-to-end storage consumption in both physical and virtual heterogeneous environments, identifies storage that can be reclaimed and enables organizations to increase storage utilization levels by up to 40 percentage points. By driving up utilization and providing organizations with flexibility and choice of storage hardware, CommandCentral Storage helps customers reduce their storage spend. This includes data center space, power and cooling costs, which are scarce resources and an increasing percentage of the IT budget.

The Veritas CommandCentral 5.0 product family is licensed per server. Veritas CommandCentral Storage 5.0 and Veritas Process Automation Manager 5.0 are now generally available. Veritas CommandCentral Enterprise Reporter 5.0 is planned to be generally available in the next 60 days. The Storage Assessment Program is available now at a fixed price of $25,000.

To find out more about the CommandCentral Storage 5.0 launch, you can check out this recorded Podcast.

Posted by David Marshall on August 5, 2007 07:24 PM

August 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtual Iron Named Windows IT Pro Editor's Best for Virtualization

If you play the "first thing that comes to mind" game, and someone asks you to name a virtualization platform, more often than not, someone will yell out VMware or specifically VMware ESX Server.

But this time, Windows IT Pro yelled out Virtual Iron when it was trying to decide on the Editor's Best Choice for the virtualization category.

Here's what Jason Bovberg of Windows IT Pro had to say:

Virtualization is the future of computing, not only for server consolidation but also at the desktop level. If you haven't already begun looking into the technology, you will soon. It's inevitable, whether you're a large corporation looking to tame bloat or a smaller company needing to simplify administration and reduce costs. If you head up a small-to-midsized business (SMB), you've probably turned first toward VMware, probably the most wellknown virtualization platform on the planet. VMware offers all the features you need, but perhaps you've been a bit intimidated by that company's pricing structure. Virtual Iron Software is positioned in the market as a strong VMware competitor—with much of the same functionality at a fraction of the price. Virtual Iron 3.1, my Virtualization Editor's Best choice, the company's enterprise-class virtualization platform, is based on the open-source Xen hypervisor and runs unmodified 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux OSs with near-native performance. Using Virtual Iron's Virtualization Manager, you can control, monitor, modify, and automate virtual resources.
To get a feel for Virtual Iron in the real world, I spoke with Paul Joncas, CEO of Meganet Communications, an ISP/managed services company with 23 employees. Meganet's environment, characterized by many standalone servers, faced mounting space, heat, and power-usage problems. Paul tried various methods to increase efficiency and eventually faced the prospect of virtualization. He told me, "We spoke with three companies, including VMware and Virtual Iron, and we zeroed in on Virtual Iron immediately, for several reasons. First, Virtual Iron offered a lot of the same features as VMware, which was great because we felt that we weren't a big enough fish for VMware. Second, Virtual Iron's pricing was certainly attractive—about $600 or $700, compared with $4000 for VMware—although price wasn't really the determining factor for us. What it really came down to was the eagerness and availability of Virtual Iron's support for even the most minute, seemingly trivial questions. We were about to move into a totally different world, from stand-alone servers to a virtualized environment, so we obviously didn't take this very lightly. Virtual Iron gave us all the attention we needed."

Today, Paul talks enthusiastically about his new streamlined server room: "We're realizing big electricity savings and heat reduction. Over the next six months, we're looking forward to further emptying out our server room and having everything running on the Virtual Iron platform."

You can read their other Editor's Best choices in various categories, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 4, 2007 08:15 PM

August 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Red Hat Launches Beta Program for Enterprise Linux 5.1

Red Hat has officially launched the Beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, and with it comes a whole list of welcomed improvements.

Virtualization was a key feature added in the RHEL 5 platform, and the virtualization support in 5.1 received a list of improvements as well.

Virtualization improvements include:

Completion of virtualization support on Itanium2 platforms
- PV (para-virtualized) and HV (fully-virtualized) Itanium2 guests are now fully supported on Itanium2 hardware (HV requires hardware support)
Support for 32-bit PV guests on 64-bit AMD64/Intel 64 hosts
Improved support for HV guests
- Hot-migration support for HV guests
- General performance improvements
- Host infrastructure for PV drivers (the actual drivers will be delivered separately in the context of the individual supported guest operating systems)
Update of the libvirt management layer

Red Hat expects the Beta period to last until the first week of September.

Posted by David Marshall on August 4, 2007 07:07 PM

August 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Launches a New Public Beta for Mac

Parallels has launched a new public beta of their Parallels Desktop for Mac product today. According to the company, the public beta includes several new features.

Coherence windows now work with Expose! This means that each individual Windows application window will appear as a separate, selectable window when you hit F9 to enter Expose. These windows also have OS X effects too, like drop shadows. You'll also be able to "stack" Windows application and Mac application windows in any order you'd like, so the experience is completely seamless.
The Image Tool is back and completely compatible with snapshotted drives. Using the image tool, users can Convert virtual hard drive format (plain to expanding, expanding to plain), Enable/disable the "undo disk" option, which will erase all changes made during a session at shutdown), Easily enlarge a virtual hard drive if you're running out of space.
Explorer, a free utility that lets you browse and work with your VM's hard drive even with the VM is off, now also works with VMs that are suspended.
iPhone support in XP and Vista.

Coherence+w+Expose.png

The public beta is free for all Parallels Desktop 3.0 users that have a trial or permanent key.

You can download the software, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 2, 2007 08:02 PM

August 01, 2007 | Comments: (