Year: 2006

Quoting from the Surgient official annoucement:

Surgient, the leader in virtual lab applications for automating software demo, test and training labs, today announced that its Virtual Training Lab Management System (VTMS) application will be featured in several notable presentations March 6–8 at the Training 2006 Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida.
…
Presentations and demos at Training 2006 include the following:

• Virtual Labs: The Next Frontier in Software Training
  Nancy Hensley, Surgient’s Global Training Strategist, will define virtual labs, demonstrate their use and explore the growing role of virtual labs in sandbox learning (including customer case studies).
• Virtual Labs and Distance Learning
  At the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) pavilion, Marcus MacNeill, Surgient’s Director of Product Strategy, will provide detailed case studies on companies using virtual labs to deliver innovative synchronous and asynchronous distance learning programs.
• Virtual Products and Labs
  At the E-Games and Simulations for Learning Demo Panels, Marcus MacNeill will join industry expert and author Clark Aldrich in an interactive session to demo and discuss virtual labs in the context of simulations.
• Excellence in Learning Award Winners
  The Brandon Hall Research staff will present highlights of 2005 winners in the Innovative Technology category including VTMS.

Thanks to VM Blog for the news.

While this is not strictly related to VMware it could fit the scenario pictured in my The long chess game of VMware.

Quoting from Byte and Switch:

…
But the Authentica deal also signifies a new focus on external storage security. Whereas Captiva targets ILM and Acartus archives large volumes of content, Authentica offers software for securing email documents and data on mobile devices.

By tying Authentica and Documentum together, EMC hopes to add an additional layer of security to users’ documents. An EMC spokesman tells Byte and Switch that the startup’s software will let Documentum users apply rights management policies to content, both inside and outside corporate firewalls…

Read the whole article at source.

David Berlind, a ZDNet blogger, has some very useful details about the Virtual PC Express for Vista revealed last week:

….
Virtual PC Express enables only a single VM. That is key difference between Virtual PC and Virtual PC Express. With the former you can have an unlimited number of VMs and with the latter you can only have one. Virtual PC Express [will be the version of Virtual PC that’s included] in Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate.
…
For any additional VMs on the device, customers must purchase retail (otherwise known as shrink-wrap or FPP) copies of the operating system. For the example described above, the volume licensing customer would receive the right to install one copy in a virtual machine. The customer would then purchase 2 additional retail licenses to install in the 2 additional virtual machines (making 3 VMs total). These rights are associated with volume licensing of the operating system rather than with the Virtual PC SKU and so it makes no difference whether the customer is using Virtual PC Express or Virtual PC…

Read the whole article at source.

Richard Garsthagen published an interesting suggestions page for ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 beta testers.

Actually it shows 3 tips:

• Dual booting your server between ESX 2.0 and 3.0
• Accessing your ESX 3.0 server through SSH / SFTP
• Adding existing virtual machines files to the inventory

Be sure to check this page frequently for new tips and tricks.

While still in draft, this IBM Redbook is highly expected by all ESX Server 3.0 and Virtual Center 2.0 early adopters.

Abstract

Virtualization is becoming more and more a key technology enabler to streamline and better operate data centers. In it’s simplest form, virtualization refers to the capability of being able to run multiple OS instances, such as Linux and Windows, on a physical server.

Usually the concept of virtualization is usually associated with high-end servers, such as the IBM xSeries 460 that are able being able to support and consolidate multiple heterogeneous software environments. The xSeries 460 is a highly scalable x86 platform capable of supporting up to 32 processors and 512 GB of memory and is aimed at customers that wish to consolidating data centers.

Between the server hardware and the operating systems that will run the applications is a virtualization layer of software that manages the entire system. The two main products in this field are VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Virtual Server.

This Redbook discusses the the technology behind virtualization, the x460 technology, and the two virtualization software products. We also discuss how to properly manage the solution as if they all were a pool of resources with Virtual Machine Manager, a unique consistent management interface.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Introduction
• Chapter 2 – xSeries 460 Server
• Chapter 3 – VMware ESX Server 3.0
• Chapter 4 – Microsoft Virtual Server
• Chapter 5 – Management with IBM Director

Download it here.

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of data center virtualization and management solutions, today announced support for new hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities from Intel Corporation. As a result, Virtual Iron users will gain the increased reliability and capabilities of the new Intel platform. Virtual Iron has been working closely with Intel and is already incorporating the new capabilities, called Intel Virtualization Technology (VT), into its product development and roadmap efforts…

Quoting from the Emulex official annoucement:

Emulex Corporation, the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity, today announced that Emulex has formalized participation in the VMware Community Source program…
Emulex will help drive standardization of SAN connectivity solutions for server virtualization environments.

As part of its participation, Emulex is contributing its LightPulse(R) Virtual HBA API specification, based on N-port ID Virtualization (NPIV), which enhances the overall functionality of the SAN in server virtualization environments. Emulex, in cooperation with other members of the VMware Community source program, will be a key participant in the development of a virtual HBA API. This API will enable HBAs to connect virtual machines to SANs improving fabric-based quality of service mapping to virtual machines, increasing supportability of large VMware VMotion clusters, and providing more transparent support of standard zoning tools…

Ben Armstrong explains how to run any of previous scripts on a remote Virtual Server instance:

Each script starts by creating a COM object for Virtual Server – usually with a line like this:

set vs = wscript.CreateObject(“VirtualServer.Application”)

To operate on a remote server you just need to change this line to:

set vs = CreateObject(“VirtualServer.Application”, “serverName”)

And you can then continue to script against the remote Virtual Server instance just like it was a local instance.

Read the whole post at source.

VMware is preparing customers to the arrive of its Virtual Infrastructure 2.0:

Thousands of companies already benefit from the power and simplicity of virtual infrastructure. This live 30 minute session will review the next chapter: ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0. You’ll leave our sessions knowing how the new capabilities of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 will enable you to expand deployments while further reducing complexity.

The event is scheduled for 29th March, register for it here.

Another webinar from Softricity, this time schedule for 22th March:

January 2006 Forrester Research report states, “Desktop virtualization is the future of the corporate PC.” But what exactly is application virtualization and what tangible benefits can it really have? This webinar is designed to clear up any confusion and give you concrete ways to evaluate its potential impact on your business.

Join David Friedlander, senior analyst at Forrester Research and noted expert in desktop virtualization, for a free webinar that explores the savings application virtualization can deliver in traditionally resource-consuming desktop deployment and management areas, including: application deployments, updates, patches, terminations, help desk support and server management.

In the webinar, Softricity will also unveil how its new Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI)-compliant, Return on Virtualization (ROV) Calculator from Softricity can help you rapidly and thoroughly evaluate the time and cost savings possible with the Softricity Desktop, the premier platform for enterprise software virtualization.

Register for the event here.