Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
CRN interviewed XenSource just before the official launch of XenEnterprise this week.
Despite the imminent launch the company’s CEO, Peter Levine, has surprisingly been very caution in his statements and refused to clearly declare Xen is ready for datacenter deployment in 2 different answers. This partially backs Red Hat denunciation against Novell during last 2 weeks.
Mr. Levine also eluded the question about frequency of Xen code changes in next few months.
Read the whole interview at source.
macosXrumors reports rumors about a possible agreement between Apple and VMware to permit virtualization of Mac OS X when the virtual machine is running on Apple machines.
If true VMware could then decide to support its flagship product ESX Server on Apple Xserve, which would become the only virtualization business plaform able to run any kind of OS.
Read the whole article at source.
One of the newest competitor in the application virtualization area, Trustware, is starting a new beta program for its BufferZone product, with an innovative approach: every admitted beta tester reporting bugs will have chances to ear points and, depending on collected amount, win the product full license, a whole year of support, a USB key or an iPod.
Register for the beta here.
Quoting from ITP Technology:
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“I would classify it as an emerging technology in the region,” agrees Ryan D’Souza, product manager, industry standard servers, HP Middle East. “However, in most of Western Europe and the US, it is being adopted to a much greater extent. In terms of adoption, customers in the region are not yet comfortable with virtualisation. A lot of concentration in the market is still resting in the maturity as far as going for virtualisation technology is concerned,” D’Souze said.
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“The industry, as a whole, has a lot of technologies out there, which offers virtualisation solutions, but they were very expensive in terms of acquisition. It’s also partly because there were not a lot of very in-depth technical skills to get these products deployed and used in their environment,” Nair says…
Read the whole article at source.
The Computerworld Horizon Awards were established last year to alert readers to especially cutting-edge technologies from research labs and companies that are on the horizon.
This year judges assigned awards to notable virtualization technologies:
and recognized others on Honorable Mentions:
Read the whole list of winners and honorable mentions at source.
After releasing minor updated for Workstation 5.5.1 and Player 1.0.1, VMware is now updating the brand new Server 1.0 moving to 1.0.1 (build 29996).
The new build has the only objective to introduce a very welcomed performance improvement for Microsoft Windows 64bit virtual machines on Intel EM64T architectures.
Download it here.
A thread appeared on VMware VMTN online forums revealed the company is working to ESX Server 3.0.1 and VirtualCenter 2.0.1 minor updates while aiming to introduce a major feature.
The quoted company announcement reports:
The upgrade path in the ESX 3.0.1 release will significantly reduce the upgrade downtime in going from an ESX 2.x to ESX 3.x environment for customers using VirtualCenter. Using VMotion and Relocate, customers will be able to migrate their ESX 2 / VMFS 2 virtual machines to the new ESX 3 / VMFS 3 environment one at a time without any downtime.
This seems to be a move to directly compete with just released esxMigrator, from the VMware Partner vizioncore.
But Scott Herold, Director of Research and Development at vizioncore, partecipating in the discussion seemed very supportative of the coming update and hinted about a big change in the near future:
I can’t say too much, but the future of data streaming will likely change in the VI3.X lifecycle.
Rumors are already rising: is VMware going to buy vizioncore?
Read the whole thread at source.
Update: VMware customer who leaked the news is now reporting the 3.0.1 update will require a fresh installation, preventing the in-place upgrade for ESX 3.0 installations.
Quoting from the CRN:
Virtualisation vendor VMware has created two channel incentive programmes designed to increase end-user adoption of the technology.
The VMware Purchasing Program (VPP) is aimed at supporting end-user investments in virtualisation technologies. The VMware Opportunity Registration (VOR) programme is designed to support channel partners pushing end-user investment in VMware virtual infrastructures.
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VPP provides VMware distributors with banded discounts on VMware software licence purchases and subsequent orders, when end-users place orders through VMware Authorised VIP resellers.
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For successful deals, VMware claimed it will pass a discount of up to six per cent onto the participating distributor. Resellers may then be eligible for discounts from the participating distributor.VMware added that the VOR programme also aims to support its most proactive partners, that show well developed skills around the vendor’s virtual infrastructure…
Read the whole article at source.
Is this the beginning of a channel restyling due to the free virtualization strategy as I suggested in March?
Quoting from the CNet News:
“It’s going to be generally available next week,” Levine said in a speech here at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. The major goal of the software is to make the Xen open-source virtualization software easy to use, an idea reflected in the company’s “10 minutes to Xen” tagline.
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And later, the company plans to sell more software called “extension packs” that will let other operating systems do more with Xen, Levine said. “We will build extension packs to extend Xen in Red Hat, Novell and Solaris,” he said.XenSource Chief Technology Officer Simon Crosby said two ideas for extension packs include storage virtualization to help virtual machines connect to storage systems, and high availability to help computer fire up a replacement virtual machine if another crashes…
Read the whole article at source.
