Year: 2006

PHD Technologies released the third version of its backup solution for VMware ESX Server: esXpress.

The new product introduces support for VMware Infrastructure 3 and the new concept of Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA): all backup tasks are moved inside a virtual machine instead of running at ESX console level.

Among other new features of esXpress 3.0:

• Multi-threaded processing of backups allows multiple simultaneous backups with minimal system impact
• Multiple backup transports and targets; ftp, sftp, scp, iSCSI, SAN, local storage and more
• VMware DRS aware and Vmotion compatible (VMs can be Vmotioned while backups are in progress)
• Virtual Center and Virtual Infrastructure Client aware
• Backup target failover combined with DRS mean no single point of failure
• Simple integration with VI3 client and VC (get feedback and issue backup commands)

The free version of the product, esXpress LE, still doesn’t work with VI3 but the new version is coming.

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

Altiris published on its community site, Juice, an interesting article describing benefits of combined use of its application virtualization product, Software Virtualization Solution (SVS), with application streaming technology from AppStream:

AppStream’s technology was originally developed specifically to deliver applications to desktops in such a way that there is no difference in behavior, interaction or performance compared to an application that is installed conventionally by CD. This includes normally installed registry entries, dlls and other system and shared files.

Now, when streaming an application virtualized with SVS, it behaves in exactly the way Altiris designed virtualized applications to run. That is, registry entries, etc. remain contained in the appropriate layers, as do any changes to these files. The full functionality and benefits of SVS layers are combined with the instant delivery and license control of streaming…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the CommVault official announcement:

…
CommVault, a leading provider of Unified Data Management solutions, today announced that it has increased its support for customers using virtualization, completing certification with VMware ESX 3.0 and extending its support for the VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) feature in the CommVault QiNetix 6.1 Unified Data Management Suite.
…
Advanced VMware support highlights include:

• CommVault integration with VMware enables unified, point-and-click management of virtual machines and physical systems
• LAN-free backup capabilities deliver simple restores
• Integrated support for VMware VCB to support consolidated backups in virtualized environments
• Robust Disaster Recovery support by protecting the VMware physical system and capture of crash-consistent disk file images
• Support for VMotion, which provides continual recovery of data, allowing administrators to move virtual servers among physical servers, speeding upgrades and enabling automatic load balancing in a server farm
• CommVault ProxyHost links VCB backups to client virtual machines and includes easy point-and-click restores of VCBs

…

Parallels is near to release its update for popular Desktop product.

In this new build, labelled Release Candidate 2, Parallels improves support for quad processor Mac Pro and Core 2 Duo iMacs, permitting to work on systems with up to 16GB RAM.

Download it here.

Meanwhile there is no sign of VMware competing product which has been announced but not even published in a beta program.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

At Storage Decisions, VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced broad industry support for VMware Consolidated Backup, a software product part of VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise edition that leverages virtualization technology to enable quick and easy backup and recovery.

Leading backup and recovery software providers CA, CommVault, EMC, IBM Tivoli, Symantec and Vizioncore have pledged support for the product to ensure their customers benefit from its robust data protection functionality…

Quoting from Enterprise IT Planet:

…
Engineers at Vizioncore are already working on the latest improvements to the system. esxRanger Professional is being further upgraded to incorporate integration with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). Mohamed states that his company’s upcoming version of the product will also enhance VCB’s capabilities. VCB is a platform that enables backups to be performed on a proxy server that essentially offloads the backup process from the host to this proxy.

As esxRanger Professional performs hot backups without any agent technology, this means that no overhead will be imposed during a backup when leveraging VCB in the next release.

“VCB will snapshot the VM and offer it on the proxy server to be backed up by backup software,” he says. “Vizioncore will release the next version of esxRanger Professional in November with the functionality to enable the launching and leveraging of the VCB proxy server process.”

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from SearchCIO:

Many businesses are deploying virtualization technology without having the skills in place to manage it properly. As a result, there are a lot of CIOs with failed virtualization project on their hands.

According to a new study from Boulder, Colo.-based research firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), of 150 IT managers polled who had deployed virtualization, only 47% said they had sufficient skills within their company to manage virtualization.

“Virtualization essentially requires an entirely new skill set,” EMA’s Andi Mann said. “When you’re talking about deploying a physical environment like Unix, you need a Unix manager and then you deploy applications on top of that. When you do virtualization you still need all that, but you need virtualization skills as well: How to connect networks virtually as well as physically, and how to connect storage virtually as well as physically.”

Mann said CIOs who are adopting virtualization need to do a skills audit. He said they should also work with their vendors and with consultants to determine what skills are going to be needed…

Read the whole article at source.

I couldn’t agree more.

I already wrote in the article Indentifying must-have IT staff skills how new virtualization professionals must be a sort of super men, proving high competencies on a range of fields, from operating systems to storage technologies, from networking to security.

But it’s also worth to say there is a notable lack of training about virtualization from actual vendors.
Availability of courses and books is insufficient and it’s a real shame both VMware and Microsoft never published a book on their own technologies.

SearchServerVIrtualization published a very good article about security implication of server virtualization adoption.

When embracing virtualization companies have to become efficient in choosing reliable hardware, in implementing disaster recovery solutions, in creating and following a continuity business plan. And more.

Read the whole article at source.

Virtual Iron scheduled a new webcast for October 3rd in partnershop with Intel:

This webcast, featuring Intel and Virtual Iron, looks at emerging solutions that leverage industry-standard and open source technologies to dramatically change the economics of virtualization. The speakers will discuss the role of new technologies like hardware-assisted virtualization, open source hypervisors and policy-based automation that make the data center more efficient and flexible while delivering new levels of ROI.

Attendees will learn about:

• Leveraging new technologies like Xen and Intel VT
• Using virtualization to create more flexible infrastructure and deliver computing capacity on demand
• Reducing the time it takes to provision and redeploy servers and applications from days/weeks to minutes
• Supporting unmodified 32 and 64-bit Windows and Linux operating systems on a single virtualization platform
• Running enterprise-class applications on virtual infrastructure
• Centrally managing virtual computers and physical servers

Register for it here.

Quoting from SearchServerVirtualization:

..”Between Microsoft Virtual Server and [VMware] ESX, there’s no comparison,” said Chris Wolf, an independent consultant and author of Virtualization: From the Desktop to the Enterprise. “Bells and whistles-wise, ESX is still miles ahead of Virtual Server,” he said.
…
Over the course of his presentation, Wolf listed several areas where Microsoft has to work to bring Virtual Server up to snuff. For example, whereas VMware supports full access to the storage area network (SAN) within each virtual machine (VM), Microsoft Virtual Server guests access the SAN through a mount point or drive letter on the host operating system. Accessing the SAN this way adds latency, Wolf claims.

Wolf also called out the latency of the two platforms’ virtual disk implementations – the .vmdk file for VMware, and .vhd for Microsoft Virtual Server. VMware published tests that showed ESX Server latency at 13% when running with virtual (rather than physical) disks. Tests performed by the Australian consulting firm Capitalhead benchmarked Microsoft Virtual Server virtual hard drive latency at 28%…

Read the whole article at source.

While the comparison could be interesting Chris Wolf is comparing Microsoft Virtual Server with VMware ESX Server: I said so many times this is not possible.
Architecture (bare metal approach and optimized file system on ESX Server, just to name a couple) and prices are 2 points big enough to prevent any comparison from any point of view.

So while he in fact said there’s no comparison, I don’t understand why he actually did it.