Year: 2006

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today launched VMware Infrastructure 3, the third generation of the industry-leading infrastructure virtualization software suite that empowers enterprises and small businesses alike to optimize and manage their IT environments through virtualization.
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VMware Infrastructure 3 builds upon the award-winning VMware ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VirtualCenter with VMotion technology used in production at tens of thousands of enterprises worldwide today and incorporates four new groundbreaking products – VMware VMFS, a next generation Distributed File System; VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS); VMware High Availability (HA); and VMware Consolidated Backup.
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VMware Infrastructure 3 incorporates VirtualCenter, the market-leading management product for virtualized environments for more than three years. VirtualCenter can automate and simplify the operations of a virtualized data center with several new capabilities:

• VirtualCenter is designed to handle three times the number of hosts and virtual machines under management compared to previous releases.
• Topology maps and centralized configuration of ESX Server hosts bring drag-and-drop simplicity to the management of enterprise-wide virtualization environments.
• VMware DRS and VMotion technology dynamically aggregate hardware resources into logical resource pools and are designed to optimally allocate them to applications running in virtual machines. When a virtual machine experiences an increased load, VMware DRS automatically allocates additional resources by redistributing virtual machines among the physical servers.
• VMware HA is designed to eliminate single points of hardware failure by automatically relocating and restarting virtual machines. HA is designed to provide uniform high availability across the entire virtualized IT environment without the cost and complexity of failover solutions tied to either operating systems or specific applications.
• VMware Consolidated Backup simplifies data protection by offloading backup to a centralized server. Offloading backup allows ESX Server to run more virtual machines by reducing its load and enables backup to safely occur even during production hours.
• Rich security controls, comprehensive auditing capabilities and administrative roles enable a secure, auditable operations environment where responsibilities may be delegated among different groups without compromising overall security and compliance.

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The rich capabilities of VMware Infrastructure are packaged into three editions targeted for various IT infrastructure environments:

• VMware Infrastructure Starter is an offering designed for easy adoption in small and medium businesses as well as branch and distributed locations within large companies. VMware Infrastructure Starter includes ESX Server with local or NAS storage and full management capabilities through the included VirtualCenter management agent. VMware Infrastructure Starter list price is $1000 per two processors.
• VMware Infrastructure Standard is designed for virtualizing enterprise workloads. In addition to ESX Server, it includes clustered VMFS for enterprise storage connectivity and consolidation, Virtual SMP and the VirtualCenter management agent. VMware Infrastructure Standard list price is $3750 per two processors.
• VMware Infrastructure Enterprise is designed as the core strategic IT infrastructure for the dynamic data center. It is designed to deliver significant cost savings and dramatic IT simplification through its full set of infrastructure virtualization capabilities. It includes ESX Server, VMFS, Virtual SMP, VirtualCenter Management agent, VMotion technology, DRS, HA and Consolidated Backup. VMware Infrastructure Enterprise list price is $5750 per two processors.

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VMware Infrastructure 3 has been in beta since October, 2005 and has had more than 6,400 active participants. VMware Infrastructure 3 will be available this month.

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

Summary
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 is Microsoft’s server-side virtualization product. Virtual Server has been designed to allow users a great deal of power and flexibility in hosting virtual machines in mission-critical Enterprise deployments without having to invest in additional hardware.

In this clear and concise book, Microsoft MVP Anil Desai shows how to use scripting to automate complex virtual environments. The book contains numerous scripting examples in VBScript, Visual Basic .NET and C#, and covers the automation of virtual machine creation and management. It shows software developers and network administrators how to programmatically set up virtual environments to rapidly build development and testing scenarios. The book also shows how to script entire data center virtualization environments to avoid scaling out with expensive hardware.

Advanced topics include automating Virtual Server with .NET, client-side automation with VMRC, event handling, and command-line scripts. The book also contains reference material on the Virtual Server COM API and the VMRC COM API.

This book expands on the topics covered in The Rational Guide To Managing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 by the same author.

Technical accuracy is assured by Mike Sterling, Program Manager on the Windows Virtualization team at Microsoft.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Benefits of Virtualization
• Chapter 2 – Virtual Server Architecture & Requirements
• Chapter 3 – Automating Virtual Server with VBScript
• Chapter 4 – Automating Virtual Server with .NET
• Chapter 5 – Monitoring Virtualization Using VMI
• Chapter 6 – Managing Virtual Machines
• Chapter 7 – Managing Virtual Hard Disks
• Chapter 8 – Managing Virtual Networks
• Chapter 9 – Using Scripts, Events, and Tasks
• Chapter 10 – Automating VMRC

Abouth the Author
Anil Desai, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, is a Microsoft MVP in the area of “Windows – Servers”. As an independent consultant based in Austin, TX, Anil specializes in evaluating, implementing, and managing solutions based on Microsoft technologies. He has worked extensively with Microsoft’s Server products and the .NET development platform.

Anil is the author of numerous technical books focusing on the Windows Server Platform, Virtualization, Active Directory, SQL Server 2000, and IT management. He has made dozens of conference presentations at national events and is also a contributor to technical magazines.

Read the virtualization.info review.

VMware has scheduled a misterious event for Monday 5th June, in which Diane Greene in person will lead the speech.

Nothing is known about the topic of webcast but VMware did something big, registering a new domain and a new webstreaming system. and preparing (as far as I can guess) a sort of videoclip.

It could be the publishing of statistical data of VMware Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge, the launch of Virtual Server 1.0, the launch of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0, or the launch of a new unexpected product.

Register here.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The sixth one and most interesting one, scheduled for June 29, has following summary:

Join this webcast to learn more about Windows virtualization, a new technology in Microsoft Windows Server code-named ?Longhorn.? We introduce the key scenarios for Windows virtualization and new features and improvements in Microsoft Virtual Server, including better performance. Find out how you can start adopting Microsoft Virtual Server today and transition to Windows virtualization by leveraging the unified format.

Look at it here or download just slides here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The fifth one, scheduled for June 27, has following summary:

This webcast covers scripting basics with the Component Object Model (COM) API. Learn how to use scripting to automate management tasks in a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 environment. We also provide detailed examples of how scripts can be integrated with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) to more easily manage your entire virtual environment.

Register here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The forth one, scheduled for June 22, has following summary:

If your organization is planning a branch office server consolidation, this webcast is for you. Join us to receive guidance on what you should consider before, during, and after a server consolidation, and the role virtualization can play in this scenario. Learn how to identify whether your branch office servers can be virtualized, and if there are benefits to virtualization for your scenario. During this session, we provide you with the details, tips, and tricks needed to create an effective virtualized environment. We also walk you through a step-by-step process of planning, deploying, and managing a virtual environment in a branch office.

Register here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The third one, scheduled for June 20, has following summary:

Join this webcast to learn about the virtualization of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and the differences between multi-instancing and virtualization. We provide details, tips, and tricks for creating an effective virtualization environment, and walk you step by step through the process of planning, deploying, and managing a virtual environment for SQL Server 2005.

Register here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The second one, scheduled for June 08, has following summary:

Join this webcast to learn about virtualization of infrastructure workloads such as Active Directory, file and print, and Web servers, and the benefits of mixed workload virtualization. We discuss details, tips, and tricks for creating an effective virtualization environment. During this session, we walk you step by step through the process of planning, deploying, and managing a virtual environment for infrastructure workloads.

Look at it here here or download just slides here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

For the whole month of June Microsoft scheduled a serie of webcast about Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the future Windows Server Virtualization (read the announcement and the Q&A).

The first one, scheduled for June 05, has following summary:

In this webcast we focus on virtualization technology and we offer an introduction to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. We also outline Microsoft’s vision for the technology over the next few years. This session provides a high-level overview of the different solutions that you can implement with virtualization.

Look at it here or download just slides here.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.

Quoting from the AMD official announcement:

In demonstration of AMD’s open and collaborative approach to innovation, Senior Vice President, Commercial Segment Marty Seyer detailed three complementary strategic initiatives designed to accelerate industry-wide innovation on the AMD64 platform.

• …
• “Trinity” is AMD’s strategy to uniquely link, through an open approach, security, virtualization and manageability technologies. “Trinity” is intended to enable greater flexibility and reduced costs associated with managing, securing and scaling commercial client and server platforms. Through “Trinity”, AMD will provide open and extensible software tools to OEM partners, providing a framework for enhanced IT platform management and security. Elements of “Trinity” were available in recently announced socket AM2 client platforms, with additional roll-outs expected this year.

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It’s very unclear what Trinity exactly is or will be. Analyst Day presentation doesn’t add anything more.