Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
WildPackets just announced availability of its OmnyAnalysis network inspection suite.
In this new release appears a new component called OmniVirtual, which basically is a relabeling of popular OmniPeek traffic analyzer when running inside a virtual machine.
WildPackets is granting OmniVirtual support when running on VMware or Microsoft (Virtual PC only) virtual infrastructures.
Quoting from the Intel official announcement:
Intel Corporation today announced two new Ethernet controllers that facilitate high traffic flow and optimize I/O performance in such enterprise server environments as multicore Intel Xeon processor-based systems and virtualized datacenters.
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The Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller provides energy-efficient, dual-port, PCI Express-based 10GbE connectivity to handle high-speed interconnects. This product addresses the networking bottlenecks associated with server consolidation and is ideal for virtualization and such demanding enterprise applications as storage and high performance computing.
…Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller will be available for volume shipment in September…
More details about these features are available in May 2007 issue of Intel Magazine:
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Intel’s VMDq (Virtual Machine Device Queues) technology in the NIC provides multiple hardware queues and offload features that can be used to reduce the software overheads associated with sharing a single networking device between multiple VMs. Traditionally a software switch within the I/O partition which abstracts the hardware capabilities to the guest operating systems in the VMs processes the packets one at a time, sorting, classifying, and delivering the networking packets from the device to the different VMs. This introduces overheads in the transmit and receive speed paths and hence severely impacts I/O performance. By associating individual hardware queues of the NIC to specific VMs, and sorting and grouping the received packets into the VMs designated queues, these software overheads can be reduced. The enhancements in the NIC hardware also include support for transmit fairness to avoid head-of-line blocking between the VMs…
CPUs purchase is already driven by presence of virtualization enhancements (Intel VT or AMD SVM). As soon as other hardware equipment will be able to simplify virtualization tasks, it will be preferred over traditional gears.
But Intel effort in the space is not surprising just because of that: earlier this month the company announced upcoming motherboards capable to handle virtual to virtual (V2V) migrations, and so far heavily invested in multiple virtualization companies:
VMware just published list of keynote speakers for upcoming VMworld 2007 conference.
As expected first day VMware President, Diane Greene, will welcome over 10,000 attendees in Moscone Center, while her husband Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, company’s Chief Scientist, will close the event last day.
But a completely unexpected guest will perform second day keynote: John T. Chambers, Chairman and CEO at Cisco.
Chambers presence possibly means announcement of a major partnership between VMware and Cisco, which may be related to network equipment virtualization or endpoint security support.
Many customers in these years prayed to have capability to use virtual machines as routers inside VMware virtual networks. So far this has been impossible: despite Cisco proprietary IOS relies on standard x86 hardware, it still requires a dedicated EEPROM to work, which VMware doesn’t include in its virtual hardware set. Maybe Cisco is now ready to virtualize its hardware equipment.
On the other side VMware may have a deal in place with Cisco about its Assured Computing Environment (ACE) product: Cisco endpoint security solution called Network Admission Control (NAC) may work with VMware ACE as an endpoint security agent, eliminating any need to install more software inside host or guest operating systems.
In any case a partnership between VMware and Cisco may greatly enhance virtual infrastructures capabilities.
In May SYS-CON leaked some rumors about a possible acquisition of Opsware by VMware, immediately after its imminent IPO. In July Gartner mentioned again a possible interest from VMware in such acquisition.
True or not, HP was faster, getting both Opsware, focused on datacenter automation technologies (which have a huge potential in virtualization market), and Neoware, busy in thin computing market.
Quoting from the official announcement for Opsware acquisition:
HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Opsware Inc., a market-leading data center automation software company, through a cash tender offer for $14.25 per share, or an enterprise value (net of existing cash and debt) of approximately $1.6 billion on a fully diluted basis.
Upon closing, the acquisition will enhance HP’s portfolio of Business Technology Optimization (BTO) software. Combining Opsware’s solutions with HP’s enterprise IT management software will deliver a comprehensive and fully integrated solution for IT automation. Opsware is the latest in a series of strategic software acquisitions, including Mercury Interactive and Peregrine Systems, which expands HP’s leadership in BTO.
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The acquisition of Opsware is intended to extend HP Software’s capabilities to automate the entire data center – from initial provisioning of servers, networks and storage devices to managing ongoing changes and compliance requirements – with integrated process automation, removing the latency inherent in today’s IT environments.
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Following the close of the transaction, Opsware will become part of the HP Software business. At that time, HP also expects to appoint Ben Horowitz to lead the Business Technology Optimization organization reporting to Thomas E. Hogan, senior vice president, HP Software.
The acquisition will be conducted by means of a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Opsware, followed by a merger of Opsware with an HP subsidiary. The tender offer is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close before the end of HP’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2007…
Quoting from the official announcement for Neoware acquisition:
HP today announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement to purchase Neoware Inc. (Nasdaq: NWRE), a provider of thin client computing and virtualization solutions, at a price of $16.25 per share, or an enterprise value (net of existing cash) of approximately $214 million on a fully diluted basis.
The acquisition is part of HP’s strategy to expand in growth markets and further its leadership in personal computing. Acquiring Neoware is intended to accelerate the growth of HP’s thin client business by boosting its Linux software, client virtualization and customization capabilities, expanding its regional sales footprint and broadening its hardware portfolio.
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Under the terms of the merger agreement, Neoware stockholders will receive $16.25 for each share of Neoware stock that they hold at the closing of the merger. The acquisition is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and the approval of Neoware’s stockholders. HP expects the closing to occur in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2007…
Is HP working to become a 360 degrees virtualization vendor? If so the company will soon start looking at a hardware virtualization vendor to acquire. XenSource, Virtual Iron, Qumranet and innotek are alll good targets.
Quoting from the Veeam official announcement:
Veeam Software, an innovative provider of software for managing virtual servers, has named Rick Hoffman worldwide vice president of channels and alliances. Hoffman will apply more than 20 years’ experience in information technology sales management to build a strong channel and alliance network for the company, fueling its drive toward leadership of the virtualization management market.
Hoffman, based in the Dallas, Texas area, comes to Veeam from Quest Software, where he was director of global alliances. In that capacity, he managed Quest’s relationships with Accenture, Avanade, IBM, Dell, Computer Sciences Corp., EDS, HP and other international systems integrators. He came to Quest through its 2004 acquisition of Aelita Software, where he held a similar position.
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He was co-founder and executive vice president of National DataGuard Technologies, acquired by Legent Corporation in 1993. Past employers included Sequent Computer Systems and startups Panorama Software, InCert Software and Peritus Software Services…
Hoffman is not the first one leaving Quest to embrace Veeam. Before him others moved from Aelita Software after its acquisition.
After almost one year of beta testing VMware finally release first version of its benchmarking platform: VMmark.
Measuring performances in a virtualization platform is much more complex than doing the same on a traditional physical system because of many factors impacting results. One of them is workloads amount and arrangement, meaning how many virtual machines are running on the same host and which kind of applications they are serving.
For this reason VMware approach to benchmarking uses concept of tiles, groups of six virtual machines each running a typical business application, and overall score:
The unit of work for a benchmark of virtualized consolidation environments can be naturally defined as a collection of virtual machines executing a set of diverse workloads. The VMmark Benchmark refers to this unit of work as a tile. The total number of tiles that a physical system can accommodate gives a coarse-grain measure of that system’s consolidation capacity. This concept is similar to some server benchmarks, such as TPC-C, which scale the workload in a step-wise fashion to increase the system load.
Tiles are relatively heavyweight objects that cannot by themselves capture small variations in system performance. To address this, both the number of tiles and the performance of each individual workload determine the overall benchmark score.
In VMmark also metrics are collected in an uncommon way, considering client-server transactions more than raw numbers achieved in local system interaction between software and hardware:
These metrics are collected at frequent intervals during the course of the run. The standard VMmark workload is designed to run for 3 hours with workload metrics reported every 60 seconds. This means that rather than having a single number upon completion of a test run, the user will have a series of numbers for each of the workloads. However, each workload score is defined as a single number: the average of a consecutive subset of the series of datapoints for that workload.
The steady state for the benchmark is defined as the middle two hours of the three-hour run. The first and last half hours are the ramp-up and ramp-down times, respectively. The steady state is further divided into three 40-minute sections. For each of the 40-minute sections we compute the result for the tile and select the median score of the three as the score for the tile.
The resulting per-tile scores are then summed to create the final metric. Normalization allows the integration of the different component metrics into an overall score.
This approach implies benchmarkers have to setup a complex client-server infrastructure, mimicking a production environment.
As in the past VMware doesn’t allow publishing of VMmark-based analysis without a formal approval:
VMware encourages all VMmark benchmarkers to formally submit a full disclosure report of their VMmark results and supporting documentation to VMware for review and publication on the VMmark website. VMware has established the review process described below to insure that all run and reporting rules have been followed and that the disclosure includes the details needed to reproduce the result.
Any VMmark result that the benchmarker wishes to formally submit for publication on the VMmark website should provide the full disclosure report and the supporting documentation to VMware a minimum of ten (10) business days prior to the planned publication date.
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the VMmark test was not run in full compliance with these rules, VMware will not accept that result for publication and the benchmarker must not use that result in any public disclosure.
On top of that VMware put severe restrictions on how VMmark can be used to compare other benchmarking approaches or other benchmarked platforms:
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Comparisons of VMmark metrics and submetrics to any other benchmark metrics are not allowed. VMmark utilizes other benchmarking software as load generators and produces results which are not comparable to the original benchmarks’ metrics.
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Competitive comparisons using VMmark results in academic or research papers are not allowed.
Download VMmark free of charge here.
It will be interesting to see how other vendors (XenSource, Virtual Iron and Microsoft mainly) will react to this methodoly which is not stardard and severely restricted.
VMmark is a remarkable work trying to address a growing need in the virtualization industry, but without a broad acceptance and against a solid technical opposition, results it will generate may be useless for customers.
This is the reason why VMware (along with SWsoft, IBM, Sun, and others) is also working with SPEC to develop a standard benchmarking framework, which will hopefully grant customers more unbiased results.
Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:
XenSource, Inc., the leader of the open source Xen virtualization project, and a provider of enterprise virtualization solutions, today announced that it has signed an OEM agreement with Symantec to embed Veritas Storage Foundation, Symantec’s industry-standard storage management software into XenEnterprise, and collaborate on delivering enterprise-class HA/DR and backup technology to XenSource customers.
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By working with Symantec, XenSource will enhance XenEnterprise to address key customer needs in three areas:
- Unified Server and Storage Virtualization
XenSource will embed Veritas Storage Foundation within XenEnterprise to provide customers seamless storage management for major server and storage array and enable advanced storage functionality, including utilization optimization, dynamic multi-pathing and point-in-time copies.- Resiliency and Business Continuity
XenSource will develop XenEnterprise HighAvailability, a new product which will be tested for certification by both Symantec and XenSource, to provide failover of virtual machines, ensuring business continuity for enterprise applications.- Data Protection and Backup
To provide protection for critical applications running within XenEnterprise virtual servers, Veritas NetBackup will be jointly tested for certification.…
Starting as early as this fall, XenSource products will include key storage management products from Symantec, and joint customers will benefit from the ability to leverage the complete, enterprise-class storage stack from Symantec, which will be fully integrated, certified, and supported with XenEnterprise…
After Linux kernel becoming ready for Xen, Veritas Storage Foundation integration is the biggest achievement so far for XenSource.
The next one, the launch of XenSource HA, is expected somewhere in Q4 2007, will be offered as an optional feature (like VMware does) and at a very aggressive price (lower than VMware one).
Update: John Bara, Vice President of Marketing at XenSource, recorded a 5-minutes video to add more details about this agreement and future evolutions.
From his corporate blog Simon Crosby, Co-Founder and CTO at XenSource, announces a major goal achieved in the Xen project:
Today is an important day in the history of the Xen project. Linus has just merged the XenSource patches into upstream for release as part of the 2.6.23 kernel.
About a year ago, XenSource, the Linux kernel community and VMware set out to develop a common interface into the Linux kernel that would allow for optimal execution on a hypervisor, taking advantage of paravirtualization – the key innovation of the Xen project that will also be adopted into Solaris 10, and that can be expected in the forthcoming Windows Server, Longhorn.
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VMware’s implementation of the paravirt_ops API is already in upstream, and VMware has now offered beta level support for this in their VMware Player and desktop products, though they have yet to announce commercial support.
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This work will allow future Linux distro kernels to simply base of kernel.org, and automatically inherit Xen support, without needing to pull the Xen paravirtualization patches into their kernel as a separate effort.
Read the whole post at source.
Quoting from 24/7 Wall St.:
If there is such a strong interest in the VMWare IPO, it is amazing how short sellers have been increasing their bets against EMC Corp. In July, short sellers increased their bets to 40.918 million shares in the short interest. In June, the short interest reading was 36.374 million shares. The overall short interest also rose at the NYSE: Based on information received from members and member organizations, short interest increased to 12,950,726,148 from 12,467,283,409 as of June 15, 2007.
The reading from May to June was actually a decline in the short interest, as the May reading only showed 38.93 million shares. In May to June, there was a lack of data that had been coming out of the company and some of that uncertainty may have led to short sellers being confused. Shares were also rising. The short interest increase this month is likely earlybird arbitrage players trying to make early bets. It could just be traders betting that after a huge run that the best had been seen in EMC and that profit taking could come into play after earnings next week. Who knows for sure, but this will be one to watch…
Read the whole article at source.
VMware is preparing to introduce a minor update of its Infrastructure 3 and started from VirtualCenter, reaching version 2.0.2 (build 50618).
This new build introduces several bug fixes and a new security permissions system for licenses called License Administration:
VirtualCenter Server 2.0.2 release now provides granular control over ESX Server and VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) license redistribution and allocation. This option lets administrators restrict access to the license server, so only specified hosts can obtain licenses. It is also possible to specify the number and type of licenses that should be granted to particular hosts.
ESX Server 3.0.2, already supported by just released Lab Manager 2.5, is not yet available at the moment, and it will be probably released in a short timeframe.
Download VirtualCenter trial here.