Year: 2006

Quoting from the Data Domain official announcement:

Data Domain, the leading provider of Enterprise Protection Storage systems for disk backup and network-based disaster recovery, today announced it has become a VMware Technology Alliance Partner, with solutions for use within VMware virtualized server environments. VMware customers are now successfully applying Data Domain?s Enterprise Protection Storage Solutions within their virtual machine environments to consolidate their Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) processes, eliminate tape and enhance the performance and reliability of their data protection systems.
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VMware virtual environments consolidate multiple server, OS and application copies into ?.vdmk? files that are typically large and need to be backed up regularly and replicated to a remote site for disaster recovery purposes. This makes them ideal candidates for the application of Data Domain?s Global Compression? technology, which eliminates the storage of redundant information to massively reduce data volume. The high level of data reduction achieved by Data Domain systems makes fast, reliable disk backup and remote replication via WAN of these large files both economically and operationally feasible. Once data volume is reduced, a number of benefits become possible:

• Backup is achieved in a dramatically shorter timeframe as .vdmk file compression is typically 40x
• Remote replication via WAN becomes possible due to reduced data volume and the 99% bandwidth efficiency increase delivered by Data Domain?s replication technology
• Faster, verifiable, more reliable restores are delivered by disk-based backup and Data Domain?s Data Invulnerability Architecture
• Reliance on tape is eliminated, tape transportation costs and associated risks are also eliminated
• Storage capacity and bandwidth costs are reduced
• Data Domain?s compatibility with leading enterprise backup software and VMware?s native support for disk-based .vdmk file backup means integration of Data Domain solutions is simple

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During the VMworld 2006 VMware finally unveiled how further the work made by Akimbi has gone, releasing the first Lab Manager 2.4 public beta.

The full list of features of the product is available here.

This build (2.4.0.153) offers in particular:

• Import Template from VMFS
  You can import a template and its virtual machine files from VMFS (ESX Server) storage. Lab Manager already allows you to import templates from SMB storage
• Export Template
  You can export a template and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network.
• Export Configuration
  You can export a configuration and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network
• Consolidate Template
  After creating multiple clones, you can consolidate the delta disks that may affect performance into one disk
• Move Storage
  Administrators can move the contents of a SAN (VMFS) storage server to another server
• Delete Storage
  Administrators can delete SAN (VMFS) storage servers from Lab Manager. This operation does not delete the files on the storage servers
• Use NFS media storage
  You can add NFS media storage and synchronize the contents of that media storage with the Lab Manager media library

You can download the beta here.

VMware expect to release RTM for December 15th.

As already mentioned at time of private beta, VMware decided to remove support for hosted solutions in this release. So SMB and Enterprise customers adopting VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server (both supported by the old Akimbi Slingshot) will be out of luck.

James Phillips, formerly Akimbi Founder and CEO and now Senior Director of Virtual Software Lifecycle at VMware, granted these customers will receive a notable incentive to move to ESX Server. But given the overall price of software and required hardware, training, and maintainance it’s more probable they will look for other solutions offered by Surgient and new startup VMLogix.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today at VMworld 2006 announced it is launching a marketplace and certification program for virtual appliances. Customers can evaluate or in some cases purchase from a collection of more than 300 virtual appliances available in the Virtual Appliance Marketplace
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ISVs certify their appliances through the VMware Virtual Appliance Certification Program that provides them with technical best practices for performance and usability, validation testing and implementation feedback. The program also ensures that the ISV fully supports the entire virtual appliance environment. Current ISVs offering certified virtual appliances include Astaro, B-hive Networks, CohesiveFT, LoadBalancer, PortWise, ProofPoint, Red Hat, Reflex Security, SpamTitan, Ubuntu, Zeus and Zimbra. Certification details can be found here…

On the corporate blog, The Console, VMware top management heartily endorsed the adoption of virtual appliances in corporate environments:

• Steve Herrod, Vice President of Technology Development, tracked the trend about virtual appliances, which are becoming the most flexible and open way to deliver complex applications.
• Dan Chu, Vice President of Emerging Products and Markets, noted how virtual appliances (based on Linux OS) free customers from Microsoft slavery, avoiding risks of sudden changes in licensing policy but avoiding at the same time complexity of Linux adoption.
• Raghu Raghuram, Vice President of Datacenter and Desktop Platforms, predicted how ubiquity of hypervisors within few years will be the key to allow industry to rely on virtual appliances, drastically reducing delivery time and management, increasing portability to unexpected levels.
• Karthik Rau, Vice President of Product Management, underlined how the operating system role is doomed to change in a virtual appliances-driven world, moving from most critical tier to a mere extension of applications.
• Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Virtual Appliances, detailed benefits for ISV and customers which can offer and use more stable applications, cutting away the biggest part of management efforts.

The virtual appliance philosophy seems pretty good. So good that even Microsoft decided to embrace it with its new VHD Test Drive program.

But while all mentioned reasons about virtual appliances are surely valid and I agree on them, there is much more unsaid about the approach which customers should carefully evaluate before starting adoption.
I’ll write a detailed essay this month about the topic. Stay tuned!

PlateSpin continues bringing innovation in virtualization industry accelerating virtual datacenter automation.

New releases of flagship P2V/V2V/V2P product PowerConvert and capacity planning PowerRecon show an even tigther integration, introducing following features:

PoweConvert 6.5

• Incremental transfer
  Enables customers to perform an initial full system replication of a physical production server into a virtual recovery environment and then propagate changes at user-defined intervals to maintain synchronicity between production and recovery environments
• Integration with 3rd party data replication tools
  Allows for effective restoration of more mission critical servers in ways not previously possible

PowerRecon 2.5

• Data exchange with PowerConvert
  Seamlessly transfer plans from PowerRecon to PowerConvert for automated implementation of a complete end-to-end optimized DR strategy

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

After 1 month of beta testing, the virtualization startup VMLogix is ready to enter the so-called virtual lab management market, challenging the market leader VMware and its unique competitor at the moment: Surgient.

The VMLogix product, Lab Manager, has same name of VMware one but at the moment has a different focus, putting more attention to SMB than enterprise customers.

This first release offers following features:

• Virtualization Support
  Comprehensive native support for Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware Server
• Physical Hardware Support
  Provision bare metal hardware effortlessly with multiple partitions in any format (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, swap, ext2, ext3), specify partition size and set partition boot order
• Automated & Manual Testing
  Seamless support for complete process automation and also flexibility to allow user intervention at all phases. Avoid tedious work with both manual and automated testing scenarios
• Synchronized Multi-Machine Tests
  Configures test scenarios involving multiple machines in varying roles, and provides test script synchronization across these machines
• Multi-Platform Support
  Supports all major Microsoft Windows platforms (MS-DOS, 95, 98, NT4, 2000, 2000 Server, XP, 2003 Server & respective service packs) and all popular Linux distributions (RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, CentOS)
• Built-In Remote Access
  Integrated remote access (Microsoft Remote Desktop/VMRC, VNC ActiveX, VNC Native Viewer) enables users to monitor and control test machines directly from their desktops and via embedded controls in their browser
• Tracking & Reporting
  Detailed logs of all system & job activities provides high degree of management and visibility into the health & utilization of infrastructure and adherence to prescribed development & QA processes
• Instant Notifications
  Email & SMS notifications are generated for events of interest (e.g. test script failures)
• Global Multi-Site Development Model Support
  Replicate, synchronize and share libraries of configurations among multiple teams, locations and even your offshore development centers and outsourcing partners
• Import & Export
  Test definitions can be exported and archived along with project source code & test scripts
• License Management
  Software and OS license usage on test machines can be monitored and compliance enforced (admin configuration option)
• Flexible Scheduling
  Test runs can be automatically scheduled for specific date/time, on periodic intervals (hourly, daily, weekly), or based on events (completion of builds) or FIFO, making it simple for teams to automate repeated runs
• Cost Allocations
  Test infrastructure usage is carefully tracked via fine grained ownership & user ids to which allows organizations to build accurate cost allocation reports by project or business unit
• Security Controls & Audit Trails
  Strict authentication (built-in, Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP) and role-based access control backed up by a comprehensive audit trails ensures system integrity
• Wake on LAN
  Have test machines powered off & on automatically, allowing idle hardware to be safely turned off, lowering power and air-conditioning costs

Support for enterprise environments will arrive in early 2007, when VMLogix will start supporting VMware ESX Server.

LabManager 2.6 is available for download here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

vizioncore just released the newest version of its flagship disaster recovery product esxRanger Professional and resources monitoring solution esxCharter.

esxRanger Professional 3.0 sports following features:

• Block-level differential backups
  Reduce both the time and space requirements of backups
• File level restore from full or differential backup
  Allow users to restore a single file without the need to restore an entire virtual machine
• Integration with VMware Infrastructure 3
  Enable administrators to upgrade to VMware Infrastructure 3 from VMware ESX Server without change of functionality
• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware VMotion awareness
  Allows seamless backup during virtual machine migration
• Archive retention policy
  Simplify management of archived data while reducing disk storage requirements
• Enterprise restore interface
  Restore a file, image or multiple images, all within the same GUI
• Script-free usage via intuitive GUI
  Allow simple management of all backup and restore tasks within the one interface

esxRanger Professional 3.0 is available immediately with pricing starting at $500 per CPU socket. The price includes one year of support. Enterprise licensing is also available.

esxCharter 2.0 offers following features:

• Bill-back capability
• Trend reports with flexible query options
• I/O performance metrics for more intelligent views
• SQL Server database for enhanced access & integration
• Intelligent alerting and automated e-mailing of reports

esxCharter 2.0 pricing starts at $299/CPU socket. The price includes one year of support. Enterprise licensing is also available.

Download them here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Quoting from the Symantec official announcement:

Symantec Corp. today unveiled Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) 5.0 for VMware ESX, bringing high availability and disaster recovery to heterogeneous data centers running virtual server software. VCS for VMware ESX automates remote failover for disaster recovery and provides management of clustered virtual and physical servers. Ideally suited to prevent downtime in case of application, virtual machine, network link, or server failures, VCS for VMware ESX centralizes cluster management in a single ESX server or across a campus or WAN.
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VCS for VMware ESX provides added protection against virtual machine or application failures, including:

• Application and resource monitoring, as well as server monitoring, which provides a higher level of availability
• Automatic recovery from application, network storage, virtual resource, virtual server, and physical server failures
• Centralized management of virtual and physical resources and servers from a single console
• Comprehensive testing for disaster recovery integrating both application failover and data replication to enable organizations to test disaster recovery without disrupting production environments

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Veritas Cluster Server for VMware ESX is scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2007. Pricing for VCS for VMware ESX starts at $1,995 per server…

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Quoting from the Acronis official announcement:

Acronis, Inc., the technological leader in storage management software announced today the launch of Acronis FullCircle, a software application that allows IT organizations to move an entire server’s data seamlessly to and from physical and virtual servers.
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FullCircle works with multiple operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Linux, and a variety of hardware and virtual servers on the market.
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Acronis FullCircle provides:

• Virtual Environment Flexibility
  FullCircle supports multiple hardware platforms and operating systems, including both 32- and 64-bit servers and VMWare, Microsoft and Parallels virtual environments
• FAST (Fast Accurate Simple Transmission) engine
  The conversion and migration engine was designed specifically for such physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical conversions. The engine is fully integrated with the Acronis disk imaging technology and can migrate systems to dissimilar hardware
• Fully customizable
  FullCircle’s wizard-based controls allow users to customize the migration process and migrate an entire system or specific files to another server
• Minimal disruption
  With FullCircle, IT has the option of migrating either live data or data at rest with either an on-line or off-line migration
• Historic Data Retrieval
  FullCircle is currently the only product that allows users to migrate historic data. Used in conjunction with Acronis True Image, which takes a snapshot of a server for backup purposes, Acronis FullCircle can take the backup image and migrate that to a new server
• Speed
  Since Acronis FullCircle automatically modifies data to meet the criteria of its new environments, migration times are reduced from days to hours and hours to minutes
• Ease of Use
  The wizard-based controls driving Acronis FullCircle enable IT directors to delegate the migration process to less skilled data center employees, which frees ups senior personnel for more strategic assignments

Pricing will be announced when the product ships in volume. It will be sold through the company’s direct sales staff and through resellers. The product is due to ship in volume in December…

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

After much wait XenSource started XenEnterprise 3.1 beta, introducing support for Microsoft Windows XP and 2003 guest OSes.

The final release is scheduled for December 2006, while extended support for Windows 2000 is expected in Q1 2007.

Pricing for XenEnterprise starts at $488 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $750 perpetual license per dual socket server.

John Glendenning, Vice President of Worldwide Sales at XenSource, claimed this release offers same performance of VMware (probably referring to ESX Server), 80% of functionalities and costing just 20% of competitor.

You can see a demo of new version here, sign up for the 3.1 beta here or request a paid pilot program here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Following VMware efforts in providing software as a service (SaaS) with its Virtual Appliances, Microsoft debuts with the new VHD Test Drive program, allowing customers to download pre-configured virtual machines for Virtual Server 2005.

Microsoft published the announcement as an interview with Mike Neil, Senior Director of Virtualization Strategy in Windows Server Division:

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This program enables Microsoft and its partners to distribute their enterprise software and applications within a virtual machine so that IT professionals can confidently and quickly evaluate Windows Server-based software. A similar program for Windows Vista will be available in the first quarter of 2007.
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We expect more than 20 partners to begin distributing their software via the VHD Test Drive Program later this quarter, including Altiris, BEA Systems, Check Point, Citrix, CommVault, Dell, FullArmor, HP, Network Appliance, Platespin, Portlock, Quest Software, SourceCode Technology Holdings, Symantec and UGS.
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Read the whole interview at source.

At the moment just 4 virtual machines are available on Microsoft VHD Download Center:

• Windows Server 2003 R2
• SQL Server 2005
• ISA Server 2006
• Exchange Server 2007

Before the launch of VHD Test Drive program the company already made available a couple of pre-configured Virtual PC virtual machines for demo:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
• Visual Studio Team System 2005 Basics Training

Andrew Dugdell posted some feedbacks about new VHD images available. Be sure to check them.

A final note to remember that if you are just a VMware user you still can use these images, converting them in VMware format (.vmdk) with Importer 2.0 or the new Converter 3.0 beta.