Year: 2007

With a series of announcements Vizioncore unveiled new versions for almost all its products:

• vOptimizer 4.0 (formerly Invirtus VM Optimizer)
  The product now features new management tools with reports and statistics. It also achieves virtual machines compressions up to 80%, and doesn’t require anymore to be installed inside VMs to do so.
  Vizioncore now releases this product in two editions: Desktop Edition, allowing unlimited optimizations inside a single company, and Network Edition, allowing unlimited optimizations across networks.
• vReplicator 2.1 (formerly Vizioncore esxReplicator)
  The product leaves beta stage and hits RTM status with several new features, including fail-over capabilities (including simulation) and a reporting engine.
• vRanger Pro 3.2 (formerly Vizioncore esxRanger Pro)
  This product leaves beta as well, introducing critical new features like disaster recovery capabilities through P2V migration tools, support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS), support for separate data stores and support for uncompressed backups.

All new products are available in trial version here.

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

Quoting from the Vizioncore official announcement:

Vizioncore Inc., the market leader in management tools for virtual infrastructure environments, today announced the Vizioncore Alliance Partner Program (VAPP), aimed at helping complementary technology vendors to develop tighter integration with Vizioncore’s backup, replication, monitoring and migration products. Founding members of the program include Data Domain, DataCore and EqualLogic.

VAPP members will benefit from reciprocal testing agreements and have access to a wide range of resources, including:

• Increased technical collaboration to build expertise and strengthen integration
• Free technical support to deliver higher levels of customer satisfaction
• Joint marketing programs and materials to allow partners to drive brand awareness and grow the market for virtualisation

…

Quoting from the Kidaro official announcement:

— Kidaro, a leading provider of enterprise desktop virtualization solutions, today unveiled a powerful new virtualization technology called Kidaro vDNA that enables self-cleaning virtual desktops. Kidaro vDNA virtualizes personal data and settings on the desktop, while automatically reverting the OS and applications to a stable, corporate-approved state at the beginning of every session. This approach greatly increases the security and manageability of enterprise desktops by automatically discarding malware, unwanted software, and user configuration errors from previous sessions.

…

Kidaro vDNA enables a stable, self-cleaning desktop by virtualizing and isolating two different kinds of “virtual DNA”:

• Personal data: includes end user files, passwords, configurations, bookmarks, and registry settings that make a desktop “yours.”
• Corporate desktop image: includes operating system, applications, configurations, and security tools that make up the standardized enterprise desktop.

By encapsulating and managing personal data separately, Kidaro vDNA enables the underlying virtual desktop image to be continually repaired and updated…

Kidaro vDNA technology is available immediately.

Today UK firm Leostream announces new version of its connection broker.

Unfortunately the company doesn’t provide a single line of text to clarify what’s new in this release, besides that the product is now delivered as a virtual appliance.

Also note that Leostream launched Desktop Connection Broker 1.0 in August 2006 and after one year without public updates they already reached 5.0 version.

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

virtualization.info just received a news from a trusted source revealing VMware has acquired Dunes Technology.

If confirmed VMware achieved two goals: making another step towards virtual datacenter automation, given the great flexibility Dunes VS-O automation framework offers, and further enhancing VDI offering after Propero acquisition (Dunes offers a VDI solution called VD-O since one year).

The acquisition, assuming it’s true, is expected to be announced at VMworld.

Update: VMware just confirmed the acquisition with a press announcement during VMworld 2007 keynote.

Few hours ago WinBeta broke the news Microsoft just released Windows Server 2008 RC0 to TAP customers.

Now virtualization.info has learned from trusted sources that this new version contains first preview version of new Microsoft hypervisor Windows Server Virtualization (WSV), codename Viridian.

As expected the hypervisor comes as a server role, but the surprising news is that virtualization role is available also for complete installations of Windows, not only Server Core one as originally stated by Microsoft.

This may change once started the beta program, but if it stays this way it may imply Microsoft is changing its plans for hypervisor integration, and may even consider embedding a specific version for desktop operating systems (e.g.: Vista).

Once activated the new role will reboot the machine in hypervisor mode, putting Windows operating system in the so called Parent Partition, as Viridian architecture implies.

If TAP customers have access to this preview it means general public will access beta 1 within the end of this year or early 2008.

It’s evident VMware is getting ready to exert its virtualization technologies in another application field after thin computing and datacenter automation: security.

First the company developed a new product for virtual machines patching, Update Manager, which will appear as part of upcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.5.

Then it almost silently acquired a security firm, Determina, specialized in operating system live patching, which will be integrated in future products releases.

Also, VMware is working on a disaster recovery solution, which may be disclosed at VMworld 2007.

And now Reuters reveals RSA, owned by EMC just like VMware, is working with the virtualization leader to futher enforce virtual machines security:

EMC Corp is working on security products that would work with VMware Inc software, EMC Executive Vice President Arthur Coviello said on Thursday.

…

Coviello said RSA is “working with VMware to create virtual security layers for whatever images you are trying to access in a virtual environment.”

In last few years EMC has been frequently asked why it never pursued tight integration between its subsidiaries. Maybe the storage giant finally changed its strategy.

Quoting from vnunet.com:

A group of vendors including Dell is preparing a new standard that will bridge the gap between Intel and AMD servers in virtualised environments, vnunet.com has learned.

Chipmakers currently enable the live migration of virtual machines between processor generations.

…

Such cross-generation support, however, is merely a good start, argued Sally Stevens, director of Dell’s enterprise marketing product group.

…

However, she warned that, although Intel and AMD are best positioned to allow for migrations between their architectures, it is unlikely that the arch rivals will be able to come to an understanding.

She declined to further specify the technology that will be introduced, how it will work or when it will be made available, other than saying that it will be launched “soon”…

Read the whole article at the source.

The article is referring to Intel FlexMigration technology, introduced with new quad-core Xeon 7300 line, and AMD-V Extended Migration, to appear in quad-core codename Barcellona.

After 3 years, since acquisition of Connectix, Microsoft finally releases an enterprise class management tool for Virtual Server: Virtual Machine Manager 2007, included in System Center management family.

First edition of SCVMM includes several features which definitively improve Microsoft chances to increase its market share in virtualization industry:

• Virtual machines assisted provisioning
• Centralized library for virtual machines master images, scripts and ISOs
• Integrated P2V and V2V migration capabilities (including live P2V for Windows physical targets and V2V for VMware virtual machines)
• Self-service provisioning through a web portal
• Enhanced scripting capabilities through PowerShell integration
• Tight integration with System Center Operation Manager 2007 for virtual datacenter monitoring and capacity planning
• Tight integration with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 for virtual machines offline patching
• Tight integration with System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 for virtual machines live backup

Second edition of the tool, probably called SCVMM 2007 R2, will feature support for upcoming Microsoft hypervisor, Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian), and support for VMware and Xen-based hypervisors. Such version will appear in beta as soon as Q1 2007.

This last informations comes completely unexpected and may become a major problem for all those 3rd parties vendors, which are focusing on cross-virtualization-platforms management tools since more than one year.

The news of also impacts Citrix strategy, which acquired XenSource last month, and stated several times it will focus on interoperability tools between its new hypervisor and Microsoft one.

Last but not least SCVMM 2007 brings in a very aggressive pricing model, aimed at conquering SMB market and hitting VMware strategy on this segment.

In details SCVMM 2007 will be available as licensed component of a comprehensive System Center Management Suite Enterprise (including also SCOM2007, SCCM2007, DPM2007) or as stand-alone application, licensed with a specific SCVMM 2007 Workgroup Edition available in January 2008.

The comprehensive Enterprise bundle will cost $860 / virtualization host (with unlimited virtual machines on top), while the SCVMM alone will cost $499 / virtualization host (with unlimited virtual machines on top) with a limitation to maximum 5 virtualization hosts.

A 120-days trial of SCVMM 2007 Workgroup edition will be available here shortly.

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

In a short post introducing upcoming Solaris 8 Branded Zone for Solaris Containers, Marc Hamilton, Vice President of Solaris Marketing, reveals how upcoming Sun hypervisor, based on Xen engine, will be called: xVM.

…

Of course Solaris Containers is just one of the many virtualization technologies from Sun that can help you reduce cost and complexity in your data center. Our CoolThreads servers support a hypervisor based virtualization technology called LDoms (Logical Domains) and we will soon introduce the Solaris x86 Virtual Machine (xVM) hypervisor for Solaris running on systems with x86 processors from Intel and AMD…

Read the whole post at the source.