Virtualization Report | David Marshall

Microsoft opens Beta of its Offline Virtual Machine Servicing tool

David Marshall — 2008-05-14T05:05:37-08:00

Microsoft has opened up the Beta program for one of its latest virtualization tools, the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool. The tool aims to address one of the new IT challenges created by virtualization - how do I keep my offline, stored or template virtual machine images up-to-date? Virtual machines that are stored offline for a period of time are not receiving updates or patches to its operating system, applications or anti-virus solution. These images typically become out-of-date and out of compliance, and if deployed or cloned, they can either quickly be attacked, compromised or attack other network resources. While... READ MORE

Microsoft releases an integrated virtualization ROI tool

David Marshall — 2008-05-11T15:12:29-08:00

One of the hurdles keeping organizations from fully embracing virtualization is cost justification. To combat that, virtualization providers have been developing and offering their own ROI and TCO calculators, and many of them are quite good. It was just over a year ago that VMware launched its own TCO/ROI Calculator. To do it right, VMware's calculator was independently developed by a leading ROI and TCO consultancy - Alinean, Inc. Microsoft has taken a page out of VMware's book. Like VMware, Microsoft has created its own ROI Tool, and it too was developed independently by Alinean and ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts. Microsoft's... READ MORE

VMware announces a new virtualization certification

David Marshall — 2008-05-11T14:10:43-08:00

Even as competition continues to heat up in the server virtualization world, virtualization market leader VMware continues to dominate in yet another area of the technology - certifications. Love 'em or leave 'em, those pieces of paper in the IT world can sometimes help an organization track down and identify key employee candidates to fill much needed positions. And right now, it can be frustrating and difficult for an organization to find "virtualization experts", so finding potential candidates with a certification certainly helps. And VMware is further adding to their growing list of certifications. Recently, the company announced a new... READ MORE

Amazon EC2 and Sun OpenSolaris VMs together in Beta

David Marshall — 2008-05-11T06:13:00-08:00

Sun Microsystems announced the initial version of its opensource OpenSolaris operating system, previously only available in a developer preview release. The OpenSolaris operating system is available as a free download for developers to develop, test, and deploy new Web services and network applications. The new OS includes Sun's 128-bit ZFS file system which scales better and allows developers to protect their work with its instant rollback and continual check-sum capabilities. It also includes Solaris Containers so that developers can build virtualization-aware applications that can be run on a single instance of the Solaris operating system. At the same time, Sun... READ MORE

Services organizations are helping the virtualization push in the datacenter

David Marshall — 2008-05-10T14:09:43-08:00

ClearCube spins off software business to VDIworks

David Marshall — 2008-05-10T05:37:06-08:00

In January of this year, ClearCube introduced version 5.6 of its Sentral VDI Management System software. With this release, the company promoted the notion of "No Vendor Lock-Down", meaning that it would provide cross-platform support for hardware from all leading vendors and also provide vendor agnostic support for multiple virtualization technologies. This may be a growing trend. Back in October of 2007, Egenera also decided to start allowing its own management software, PAN Manager, to work with hardware platforms outside of its own Egenera BladeFrame product line. But now, ClearCube is taking things one step further. Rather than simply stating... READ MORE

Leostream's long virtualization journey reaches $3 million Series A funding

David Marshall — 2008-05-07T20:16:03-08:00

It has been reported by Private Equity Hub that Waltham, MA-based virtualization software company Leostream finally completed a $3 million Series A round of funding which was led by Meakem Becker Venture Capital. What's particularly interesting about this news to me is that I have somewhat of a personal history with Leostream. You see, Leostream is one of the oldest third-party virtualization software companies still around in this space. In the early days, VMware and Connectix were fighting it out as the two key server virtualization platforms on the market. However, neither company did a very successful job at managing... READ MORE

VMware announces new Mac desktop virtualization - Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

David Marshall — 2008-05-06T05:08:12-08:00

Mac virtualization users have been watching a very interesting tennis match between VMware and Parallels. And this time, it looks like it's VMware's turn to serve with the announcement around VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1. If there was a theme with this release it might be "More. More. More." Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 is a public beta, available for download. More good news? VMware also announced that Fusion 2.0 would be a free downloadable upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1.x users. With the latest release, VMware is adding more displays, more 3-D graphics, and more of what people have been... READ MORE

VirtualBox 1.6 - Desktop virtualization comes out of the Sun

David Marshall — 2008-05-05T18:38:30-08:00

VirtualBox 1.6 is a major update to the open source desktop virtualization platform from Sun Microsystems. This is Sun's first release of the product since acquiring it from the German company Innotek back in February. This latest version of VirtualBox 1.6 now offers full support for Mac OS X and Solaris as host operating systems. For some time now, support for these platforms was available from Innotek, however, it was only experimental. With full support available, Sun is now entering into a competitive marketplace with VMware and Parallels. New features in the 1.6 version also includes a Web service API,... READ MORE

Microsoft makes their heterogeneous virtualization management play

David Marshall — 2008-05-04T15:21:40-08:00

During Microsoft Management Summit 2008, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, outlined the company's dynamic datacenter strategy. Part of Microsoft's strategy is to expand its virtualization capabilities and to deliver automated management of heterogeneous IT environments. "At Microsoft we are helping redefine what it means to do IT management in the enterprise with the new capabilities we are announcing today," Muglia said. "By taking our knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address heterogeneous management needs across platforms, applications, hardware and virtualization, we are opening up a new level of opportunity... READ MORE

Parallels, Microsoft and Leopard - Mac users watch out!

David Marshall — 2008-05-03T15:42:53-08:00

Parallels continues to rock the Apple world. After its recent announcement that the company has surpassed selling 1 million copies of the Parallels Desktop product, this virtualization company is still moving quickly to try and capture even more of the Mac market. Parallels is now up to Beta4 on its anticipated server virtualization product. With build 1990, the company has re-introduced Leopard Server virtualization support back into the product - meaning that you can once again run Apple's Leopard Server in a virtual machine on an XServe running Leopard Server. In addition, they've improved the virtualization engine for added performance... READ MORE

I/O and storage importance in a virtual environment

David Marshall — 2008-05-01T04:43:44-08:00

Qumranet tackles virtualizing the desktop

David Marshall — 2008-04-30T19:55:53-08:00

The commercial sponsor of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), Qumranet, launched its anticipated desktop virtualization solution - Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment). The Solid ICE product is used on x86 hosts and leverages the KVM hypervisor technology. On top of that, Qumranet created its own management suite to wrap everything together. And the company's secret sauce is, well, not a sauce, but a spice. SPICE is the company's integrated remote rendering technology which connects the virtualization product to a thin client or desktop PC. The remote technology is said to be much more powerful than Microsoft's RDP, and provides instant access... READ MORE

Virtual Iron hits a customer milestone and releases a new update

David Marshall — 2008-04-30T04:42:06-08:00

Virtual Iron Software has reached a new customer milestone and at the same time released another update to their production-class server virtualization product. The company announced that its virtualization solution has been deployed in over 2,000 customer organizations. Much of Virtual Iron's growth has come from small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up about 70% of its customer base. To reach this audience, Virtual Iron says it offers comparable capabilities to VMware but in a package that is much easier to deploy and easier to afford. Both of which typically resonate well with SMBs. "There is tremendous demand worldwide for... READ MORE

Virtualization and Apple Mac sound like a winning combination

David Marshall — 2008-04-29T19:13:29-08:00

Remember the old days when Mac users and PC users used to argue about who had the better computer? Hmmm... Never mind. So maybe things haven't changed that much. But perhaps those Apple fans who swore off Windows might be coming around a bit? Or, maybe PC users are now crossing over to the other side, but don't want to give up their Windows applications just yet? Either way, it looks like virtualization software could be stepping in to try and mediate this ancient argument. Why not have the best of both worlds? Products like Parallels Desktop for Mac and... READ MORE