Year: 2006

Hi everybody.

virtualization.info would like to break the usual flow of news once a week with something funny.

I’m looking for a virtualization user, absolutely proficient in english, with a side-talent as cartoonist.

I will publish his stripe every sunday on a continuous basis, publishing the artist name and linking to his site.

If you are interested contact me at email address found in my personal site.

Thank you!

VMware knows Microsoft is going to compete against them since the Connectix acquisition time. Maybe earlier.

Quite every company in the IT world knowns that sooner or later Microsoft will invade its market segment.

Similarly every company in the IT world knowns that cannot survive competing against Microsoft without an exceptional strategy, even having an exceptional product.

VMware knows Microsoft is coming since 2003. And since that year the company management and marketing departments started to setup a long chess game (but I bet every single employee helped or wanted to in this).

Microsoft is now really near: within 2 years they will release a virtualization solution tight in every single Windows operating system out there. And to gain maximum exposure the company started to evangelize on the upcoming technology since this the first day of the year.

The so called Windows Hypervisor will exponentially diffuse virtualization awareness and adoption worldwide.

And VMware started to move its pieces.

The Palo Alto company started with horses in August 2005, promoting some Virtualization Standards and a Community Source program.

Establishing standards before Microsoft can impose its own and opening source code for the best 3rd party products integration means obtaining industry’s consensus and support, but just like an horse movement isn’t straight, and not everybody perceived what started to happen.

Both operations will be critical at a later time, appearing suddenly evident.

The second move, involving a first bishop in this chess game, took place in December 2005, when the company shaped a features-limited version of its best known product, Workstation, calling it simply Player.

Workstation is the product thanks to which VMware is worldwide beloved, where the company implements new cutting-edge features before anywhere else.

Limitations of Player are so weak and so easy to workaround, and VMware, aware of this, isn’t doing anything to limit users. This isn’t by chance…

Giving it away for free means the company is trying to establish a de-facto cross-platform standard, like Adobe did over years with its PDF Reader, reaching technology-avid users where Microsoft couldn’t follow: Linux, BSD (and soon Macintosh) and Solaris communities.

Another bishop followed the first one, in just a couple of months: in February 2006 VMware took one of its enterprise products, GSX Server, started updating it as usual but converted it in a free product, calling it simply Server.

GSX Server has same engine Workstation has but provides an uncapped capability of resources allocation and enough features to address most companies needs.

VMware Server has not same chances of Player to become a de-facto cross-platform standard from itself. But its purpose is different: to smoothly introduce VMware on a wide range of companies, reaching their research, development and testing departments, demonstrating CIOs/CTOs virtualization is reliable, efficient, performant, accessible. Better than any marketing campain ever.

When these concepts will be assimilated by IT managers they autonomously will ask for more, and will be happy to spend money for ESX Server and VirtualCenter, mainstream products VMware is currently offering.

In these days it’s easy to hear some VMware customers and fans wondering why the company should cut its sales on both desktop and enteprise markets. But history teaches us that continuing to move in the usual way cannot win against the Redmond giant.

It’s easy as well hear customers afraid that VMware will put no effort in improving Server: wrong. Server is the best indirect marketing tool the company has today. The best they will improve it, the most companies they will reach

.

Time to move pawns now: VMware launches the most exciting challenge ever in today’s IT world.

Rewarding a bunch of brillant community’s representatives with $200,000 just to produce something bringing them glory means knowing how to use viral marketing in a erudite way.

The effort to obtain money and fame will push the VMware awareness where it would be difficult to arrive in unexpected short times.

The whole amount of virtual appliances will act as a pawns army, using innovation and ready-to-go features to evangelize in place of VMware marketing brochures and events.

And as soon as all of them will be presented, VMware Server will be ready, demonstrating at once virtualization benefits in enterprises, dramatically cutting down companies approaching time.

Too romantic? It is not: Ubuntu Linux founder, Mark Shuttleworth, and O’Reilly Media founder, Tim O’Reilly, are among challenge’s judges. And this isn’t by chance… You can be sure contestants will do as much as possible to impress them.

Well, if I didn’t go wrong VMware has still to move 2 towers and a queen before Microsoft arrives. What will come from them?

A short-term move could involve extending virtualization infrastructure to serve other datacenter needs apart provisioning, like security. Some recent presentations let us understand that VMware is at least evaluating this path.

Something appearing at a later time could be breaking today’s limitations in resources provisioning. Maybe releasing with OEM partners the first physical virtualization appliance, based on ESX Server and blades architecture, where even memory can be provisioned in virtual machines in real-time. Something involving Distributed Shared Memory concept that many are running after since years.

This last hypothesis could lead us to the final move VMware could take, arriving where Microsoft will not be interested to go still for a long time: general-purpose grid computing.

Anything will happen one thing is for sure: this game is just started and VMware played great until now.

In August 2005 VMware chosen to open its ESX Server source code for better 3rd parties products integration, involving major vendors in the IT industry, with the final aim to reach common agreed virtualization standards.
The program, called Community Source, is going on and it has a site called The Virtualization Development Center.

Welcome to vmdev.net, VMware’s portal to advanced virtualization development through the Community Source Program. Members of the Community have access to source code, documentation, and other resources for collaborative development of ESX Server. You can influence the evolution of ESX Server and drive the definition of new interfaces (APIs). You can use access to source code to accelerate support for your products, or to optimize performance with ESX Server (including enhancing ESX Server to work better with your products). Source code access also enhances your ability to troubleshoot problems and improve customer responsiveness.

The Community Source Program is open to all hardware and software vendors who are interested in the delivery of differentiated product capabilities that feature deep integration with VMware’s highly functional and stable virtualization software. By building on a mature platform with widespread enterprise customer acceptance, you can deliver solutions that gain immediate commercial viability and accelerate the return on your development investment.

Thanks to Peter Erleshofer for the news.

Quoting from InfoWorld:

…
If we work together to put virtualized storage and infrastructure in sync with the trajectory of virtual systems, we’ll witness the birth of VOA (virtualization-oriented architecture) and the dying of reality as IT knows and despises it.

VOA calls to mind the use of virtualization to make SOAs (service-oriented architectures) more durable, mobile, and versatile.
…
In a safe, transitional stage that bridges SOA to VOA, virtual systems will fire up, suspend, and relocate to ensure that service requests get the fastest possible response. The first cut of VOA will reduce SOA complexity and lead time by simplifying deployment and operations architecture processes. Systems and storage become a cloud on the design diagram, and a single SOA rollout doesn’t have a discrete bill of materials…

Read the whole article at source.

Parallels is aggressively marketing out and doesn’t seem afraid at all of upcoming free VMware Server.

They will be present at Intel Developer Forum 2006, usually a good place where virtualization vendors emerge with new releases or annoncements, presenting their implementation of Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) inside Parallels Workstation 2.1, actually in beta phase.

Vizioncore esxCharter is a performance monitor tool for VMware ESX Server, to be run on host and not on guest OSes.

The last updated of esxCharter 1.0 includes:

• database backend
• reporting
• automated reporting sending
• data exporting in CSV format

The new version is available now on the official site.

Altiris is seriously entering the virtualization market focusing on applications. They are going to compete against Softricity with a product called Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) 2.0, expected for public release on 23th March.

News.com published the news of a free version for personal use:

…Altiris will focus on what it describes as a service-oriented management concept, encompassing service-oriented architectures (SOAs) as the technology backbone, products that address management processes and a service-based delivery model.
…
To help its virtualization software gain more traction, Altiris next month will offer a free downloadable tool which users can deploy to change the settings of applications on their PCs according to their personal requirements…

Read the whole article at source.

At the same time InfoWorld published a review of pre-release version giving it 8.8 points:

…
SVS worked flawlessly during my testing. I was able to record, enable, disable and reset both simple (Office Web Components) and complex (the full Office 2003 Professional suite) installation layers on the fly, with nearly instantaneous results. Each local SVS management function was replicated within the Altiris Console, allowing me to activate, deactivate, and control application layers centrally. That’s a real boon for help desk professionals trying to diagnose installation or runtime errors.

As I put SVS through its paces and enjoyed the ease of managing the software virtualization layers, I couldn?t help but think that Altiris SVS is the kind of paradigm-shifting technology that one normally associates with Operating System evolution at the platform level…

Read the whole article at source.

Thanks to Thincomputing.net for the news.

Digi International produces a network-enabled USB hub able to connect remotely any kind of USB devices: AnywhereUSB.

The company released a 7-pages document to make it works with VMware ESX Server virtual machines’ network interface.

Thanks to Peter Erleshofer for the news.

Diane Greene, President of VMware, is going to present at Morgan Stanley Semiconductor & Systems Conference, 6th March 2006.

The presentation will be webcasted and you can register for it here.

Is VMware going to shoot another big annoncement?

Quoting from ComputerWorld:

VMware, the global provider of virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, will host the first major virtualisation event in Singapore. The VMware Solution Day “Virtualise Now” event will be held on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at Raffles City Convention Centre.

VMware Solution Day creates a forum for IT and business executives to learn about VMware’s latest virtualisation solutions and features presentations from VMware Solution and Technology Partners on how companies can get comprehensive virtualisation solutions by integrating leading edge solutions…

Read the whole article at source.