Year: 2007

Quoting from the Veeam official announcement:

…the company announced that it has joined VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. This relationship will give Veeam access to VMware content and communities through VMware Partner Central, training, support and software licenses, as well as joint marketing opportunities…

With a surprising announcement, which most press magazines didn’t cover, Sun enters the VDI market with its own connection broker: Sun VDI 1.0.

Sun is already busy in the OS virtualization space since a while with its Solaris Containers included in Solaris 10 operating system, but it seems the company is now ready to invade hardware virtualization market as well.

An upcoming update for Solaris 10 in fact will introduce xVM, the Sun implementation of open source hypervisor Xen. And this new VDI seems the best complement for the new plaftorm.

Meanwhile the new solution integrates VMware Infrastructure 3 with well-known Sun Secure Global Desktop (the terminal services technology acquired from Tarantella).

Sun VDI Software will be available in October 2007, priced at $149 per user, and will install on both Solaris and Linux operating systems.

Sun is not playing the virtualization game with VMware and Xen only. The company just signed an agreement with Microsoft to improve xVM and codename Viridian upcoming hypervisors.

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

VMware has just released a bugfix update for its most popular desktop virtualization product: Workstation.

The new 6.0.1 version (build 55017) addresses some security issues and introduces support for following new operating systems:

Experimental Support

• Windows Server 2008 [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]
• openSUSE Linux 10.3 [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]
• Turbolinux 10 Server [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]

Full Support

• Ubuntu Linux 7.04 [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 [host and guest, 32bit and 64bit]
• FreeBSD 6.2 [guest only, 32bit and 64bit]

VMware also released bugfixes updates for ACE and Player, both reaching version 2.0.1 (build 55017), and Server, which reaches version 1.0.4 (build 56528).

ACE 2.0.1 introduces new also features like:

• Active Directory multi-domain
  Domain forests and other distributed domain topologies are supported by ACE Management Server.
• Bulk deployment of VMware Pocket ACE packages
  Workstation ACE Edition has the ability to run multiple deployments from the same package at the same time using a CLI feature. Refer to the VMware ACE Administrator’s Manual for more information.
• Dynamic package lifetime configuration
  You can change the package lifetime settings on managed packages. Settings can be changed before or after package creation.

Download trial version of Workstation and ACE, as well as free versions of Player and Server here.

Despite the company has been acquired by VMware, Dunes had time to release a new product: VS-O Lifecycle 1.0.

The new solution is based on well-known automation framework Dunes offers as VS-O flagship product, and leverages part of its capabilities in following features:

• Automated virtual machines provisioning and decommissioning
• Provisioning moderation and delegation
• Assisted provisioning
• Virtual machines lifecycle tracking
• Self-service web portal

Considering VMware acquisition probably this product will never be released to the general public. For this reason the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap will not be updated as usual.

It’s interesting to note that another Dunes product, the one addressing VDI scenarios called VD-O, seems disappeared immediately after acquisition announcement.

The open source OS virtualization solution OpenVZ, supported by SWsoft, is now available for Linux kernel 2.6.22.

The new version introduces support for two important features:

• PID Namespace
  PID namespace ensures that a set of processes does not see any other processes that do not belong to the same set and is an essential prerequisite for live migration.
• UID Namespace

OpenVZ patch for Linux kernel 2.6.22 is available here.

Popular virtualization company PlateSpin reaches version 3.1 of its capacity planning solution PowerRecon.

Despite the minor update numbering PowerRecon 3.1 introduces some critical features like VMware VirtualCenter integration and chargeback capabilities. In details PowerRecon 3.1 features:

• Virtual Machine Growth Reporting
  The practice of quickly and easily creating a new virtual machine to address almost any requirement can result in rapid proliferation of virtual machines. PlateSpin PowerRecon enables organizations to better monitor and manage the growth of VMware Infrastructure without having to implement restrictive IT policies or lengthy approval procedures. By providing greater visibility into how the dynamic virtual infrastructure is growing and changing, IT directors gain a deeper understanding of how many virtual machines are deployed, who owns them and how they use available resources.
• Flexible Chargeback Reporting
  Virtualization creates a pool of computing resources that can be shared across many different workloads, which need to be tracked and whose costs need to be allocated appropriately. With PowerRecon, IT organizations can track, assign or report on costs and allocate IT charges to different business units based on their actual disk, CPU and network usage per virtual machine. PowerRecon automatically converts IT resource usage data into billable values over set time periods such as monthly or quarterly, allowing IT departments to more easily and accurately charge for shared resources. Chargeback reports can be automatically delivered to business units via email in a variety of formats.
• VMware VirtualCenter Integration
  Integration with VMware VirtualCenter provides visibility into the virtual infrastructure, improving data center management and operations. Familiar virtual infrastructure terms and organizational models accelerate ramp-up time and reduce software learning curves.
• One-click Inventory Collection
  Easily obtain the latest inventory of the virtual hosts in the data center with one-click inventory refresh or schedule inventory collection at regular intervals to keep pace with a rapidly growing and changing virtual infrastructure. Capture a detailed inventory of the contents of a virtual machine to obtain a more thorough and holistic view of the virtual environment.

PowerRecon Virtual Infrastructure Edition pricing is based on a per VMware ESX Server CPU model and starts at $295 per socket.

The Inventory Edition of PowerRecon is still in place and still offered free of charge. It’s available here.

virtualization.info recognizes Accountability as one of top 10 challenges in virtualization adoption. PlateSpin efforts in this area are welcome, so the Virtualization Industry Challenges report has been updated accordingly.

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

Virtualization firm Provision Networks, focused on VDI market, releases newest version of its Virtual Access Suite (VAS).

VAS 5.9 introduces a long list of enhancements including:

• Integration with Virtual Iron (expected after companies signed an OEM agreement in April 2007)
• Integration with Wyse ThinOS
• Integration with HP ThinConnect
• Integration with Neoware Image Manager and its VDI-edition thin clients
• Scheduled virtual machines power operations (power on and suspend)
• Virtual Channel Policies (access policy to local devices for RDP connections)
• Support for Multiple Resource Pools and Data Stores
• New Linux, Solaris and Java clients

Download a trial of new VAS 5.9 here.

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

The canadian firm CiRBA, focused on capacity planning for large-scale infrastructures, released new version of its Data Center Intelligence (DCI) product.

In DCI 4.4 CiRBA introduces enhanced integration with VMware Infrastructure 3 plaftorm, allowing customers to maintain best virtual machines arrangement, and not only planning initial placement:

• VMware DRS Integration
  VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) determines motion paths for virtual machines based on workload balancing criteria, without consideration for the technical and business constraints used to determine virtual machine placement. While DRS supports affinity and anti-affinity rules to identify where systems should or shouldn’t reside, these rules must be developed and entered manually. CiRBA 4.4 enables organizations to analyze environments, factor in technical and business constraints, and automatically populate and synchronize VMware DRS rules.
• Virtualization Overhead Modeling
  The ability to accurately model workloads is critical to virtualization planning. Virtual machines create CPU overhead, and until now VMware customers had to rely on percentage-based estimates of those overhead levels. With Version 4.4, CiRBA enables organizations to accurately model VMware workloads including virtualization overhead by using an algorithm to automatically calculate CPU overhead by converting disk and network IO into projected CPU load.
• VMware VMotion Compatibility Analysis
  VMotion is a powerful capability that enables organizations to migrate virtual images between compatible servers without experiencing downtime. CiRBA has developed new rules that enable organizations to map where VMotion will and won’t work amongst servers they already own or intend to purchase.

CiRBA will release DCI 4.4 on end of September, with a licensing model based on monthly subscription.

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

After announcing new version of its virtual lab management solution, VMLA 5.3, in June, Surgient finally releases the product and, for the first time ever, allows potential customers to download a part of it (the Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System or VQMS) directly.

Download a 45-days trial of VQMS 5.3here.

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

Keeping focus on Apple market as long as possible, Parallels already releases first Feature Update for recently launched Desktop 3.0.

The new update introduces performance improvements, enhancements to Parallels Coherence Mode and a new feature called Mirrored Desktop, Documents and Media, which basically replicates Mac OS user environment inside Windows guest operating systems.

Download a trial here.