Year: 2007

Microsoft started embracing virtual appliance concept in November 2006 launching its VHD Test Drive Program, after VMware introduced the concept in February 2006 with an unprecedented marketing campaign.

VHD Test Drive Program has been limited so far to Microsoft products because of Windows re-distribution license, but something just changed and Quest Software is one of the first partners offering a Windows-based virtual appliance on the market.

Quest Software is not new to virtualization, controlling the popular US vendor vizioncore, and it’s now embracing the virtual appliance concept to simplify trial of its management solutions for Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and 2007.

Quest is not the first company supporting Microsoft in this new initiative. Among others Altiris, BEA Systems, Check Point, Citrix, CommVault, Dell, FullArmor, HP, Network Appliance, Platespin, Portlock, SourceCode Technology Holdings, Symantec, SplendidCRM Software, UGS and VLabSource are expected to release their solutions in virtual appliance form.

Quoting from SearchServerVirtualization:

Mike Neil, Microsoft general manager for virtualization strategy, is “surprised” that IT organizations are so eager to virtualize their desktops. While Microsoft has moved quickly to meet users’ demands in this area — by changing Vista licensing, for instance — Neil thinks most virtual desktop technologies are not ready for adoption by mainstream IT.

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I’m somewhat surprised at how quickly companies are investing in these technologies without the proven track record. It may be a little bit of the tail wagging the dog scenario, where the company is making the decision to centralize due to various problems and then thinking about virtualization for solving those problems, rather than the other way around.

We were fairly nimble in reacting with the [Vista for VDI] licensing. Feedback from customers has been positive. We didn’t know exactly what would be the model and how this was going to congeal, so we did it in a way to be flexible and let the customer make those choices. We’ll see how that settles out in the market…

Read the whole article at source.

VMware seems to have completely opposite opinion on this, since acquired Propero just before its IPO.

Almost silently VMware introduced in the new ACE 2.0 virtual printing technology provided by its partner ThinPrint (time for another acquisition after Propero one?)

Sentillion quickly answers new threat in a similar way:

Sentillion vBusiness, a division of Sentillion, Inc., today announced a free add-on module for its vThere desktop virtualization solution, that enables a remote user to print securely from inside a vThere virtual desktop image to any printer accessible from the underlying host, both locally connected and networked. This is all accomplished by establishing a secure communication channel between the image and the host, without the need to use or configure USB devices and print drivers within the image. In addition and in contrast to other virtual machine products, vThere’s patent pending Print Driver software provides “universal” support for all printers, without having to download or install any additional drivers.

…

Sentillion’s vThere Print Driver software is available for download at www.vthere.net and is included as part of vThere’s standard pricing ($125 per user).

InfoWorld published a brief but interesting review about DXtreme 2.0 for Windows, the first optimization solution for virtualization platoforms from US startup InovaWave.

DXtreme 2.0 achieved a 8.8/10 score, and InfoWorld reviewer published following conclusion:

InovaWave has performed some neat magic with DXtreme, significantly ramping up VM disk I/O through a combination of intelligent caching and predictive block retrieval. It’s limited to 32-bit Windows host platforms now, but 64-bit versions are on the way. If coming versions maintain the performance and broaden the application, DXtreme will be high octane fuel for any virtualization infrastructure.

Read the whole review at source.

It’s worth to note interview reveals InovaWave is working on DXtreme versions for VMware ESX Server and Xen.

Quoting from SearchEnterpriseLinux:

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RHEL 5.1 will bring hardware virtualization feature improvements, paravirtualized drivers, the Xen 3.0.5 hypervisor and features like non-uniform memory access (NUMA) topology and loopback removal. Also, 5.1 will support live moves of virtual machines in clusters, along the lines of the functionality of VMware’s VMotion…

Read the whole article at source.

RHEL 5.1 is expected this fall, followed by 5.2 version planned for early 2008.

Xen 3.0.5, mentioned in the above article, has been renamed Xen 3.1 last week.

With launch of Workstation 6.0, VMware completely revamps feature set currently deployed in all company products, from Player to ESX Server, so that introduced innovations dramatically unbalance comparison with VMware Server.

In some enterprise scenarios this comparison is not even suitable, considering key differences in this two products, but lastest Workstation releases are exposing a serious amount of server-like capabilities, so that customers may start evaluating both for smalles deployments.

To simplify decision process virtualization.info today releases a new version of its feature comparison between these two solutions.

Download VMware Workstation 6.0 vs VMware Server 1.0 here.

Two years since first release, VMware finally release second version of its virtualization product aimed at security market: Assured Computing Environment (ACE).

The biggest, and most welcomed, news about ACE 2.0 (build 45731) is partial integration with just released Workstation 6.0: now security managers will be able to create and manage ACE virtual machines directly inside Workstation 6.0, just upgrading their product to Workstation 6.0 ACE Edition.

Large deployments of ACE virtual machines will be manageable through the ACE 2.0 Enterprise Edition, providing just like its predecessor, a console to deploy, update or delete applied security policies.

Beside Workstation 6.0 integration, ACE 2.0 also introduces other 2 very interesting main features:

• capability to run secured virtual machines from a USB key (Pocket USB)
• capability to remotely fix security problems on ACE virtual machines thorugh a Help Desk web application (available as virtual appliance or a Win32 GUI tool)

But ACE 2.0 includes several other capabilities, like:

• Support for more host operating systems (Linux)
• Support for extended security policy (snapshot control, etc.)
• Support for virtual printers (through inclusion of ThinPrint .print Virtual Desktop Engine)

Download a trial of ACE 2.0 Enterprise Edition here.

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

Six months since first announcement, VMware finally release newest version of its most popular product: Workstation.

The new Workstation 6.0 (build 45731) introduces several new features aimed at becoming the first tool for several class of IT professionals:

• Software developers can count on new integration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Professional and Team System editions) and Eclipse 3.2 integrated development environments, so that at debug time software is automatically injected and run in a new virtual machine, and on new Record/Replay feature, able to replicate every single event happened in virtual machine’s file system and memory, allowing users to get live in any moment.
• QA engineers can count on impressively extended virtual hardware, specially for complex networking scenarios, since every virtual machine can now expose up to 10 virtual network cards.
• Security managers can count on integration with enterprise desktop management tool Assured Computing Environment (ACE), which exposes a remarkable set of security controls for deployed virtual machines.
• IT administrators can count on new automation capabilities, thanks to VIX APIs adoption (already seen in VMware Server 1.x) and new headlless mode (to run virtual machines in background without a running GUI), and on new management tools, thanks to introduction of VNC remote display protocol support at host level (no need to setup Microsoft RDP or other management solutions inside each virtual machine).

But VMware released even more capabilities in this new release which are worth to check:

• Support for new guest operating systems (Windows Vista)
• Experimental support for para-virtualized guest operating systems (only VMware VMI 3.0 specifications)
• Support for extended virtual CPUs (up to 2 CPUs per VM, no more experimental)
• Support for extended virtual memory (up to 8GB RAM per VM)
• Support for extended virtual networking (up to 10 virtual switches and up to 10 NICs per VM)
• Support for dual-monitor host configurations
• Support for USB 2.0 devices
• Support for cross-platform drag & drop
• Support for Intel VT (no more experimental)
• Experimental support for extended VM recording capabilities (Record/Replay)
• Support for VIX APIs (C/COM/Perl languages only)
• Integration with VNC server
• Integration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Eclipse IDEs
• Integration of VMware Player 2.0
• Integration of VMware Converter 3.0
• Partial integration with VMware ACE 2.0 (capability to create and manage ACE virtual machines)

Download a trial here.

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

Update: New Workstation 6.0 introduces several remarkable improvements to virtual hardware and feature-set, making a little harder to decide which solution is better compared to free VMware Server 1.0.

To simplify this evaluation virtualization.info released a Feature Comparison. Check it here.

Six months since first announcement, VMware finally release newest version of its entry level desktop virtualization solution: Player.

The new Player 2.0 (build 45731), available as stand-alone products or integrated with new Workstation 6.0, introduces few interesting new features:

• Support for new guest operating systems (Windows Vista)
• Support for USB 2.0 devices
• Support for Shared Folders
• Experimental support for 2 virtual CPUs

Download it here.

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

Less than two weeks ago, after release of S-1 Registration Statement for imminent VMware IPO, virtualization.info broke the news of Propero acquisition, is a UK company (with a US subsidiary) active in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) space since early launch of VMware VDI Alliance in April 2006.

VMware is already offering a VDI solution since a while under the name of Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM), but only through its Professional Services channel.

Today SearchServerVirtualization News Director, Alex Barrett, published a short report on just finished VMware Analyst day, during which Karthik Balachandran, Senior Consultant at VMware, disclosed VDM offering, currently in 1.1 version, will reach version 2.0 by the end of the year, integrating Propero technology.

It’s worth to mention that so far (13 days after virtualization.info breaking news) not a single major news magazine reported the Propero acquisition.

Probably in wait of official press release kindly sent to their mailboxes, prestigious journalists are not bothering doing any research for this news (and probably many others), believing is much easier to manipulate an official announcement to have a fast 500-words article.

Few virtualization blogs went not farther away, just reporting an anonymous confirmation of this acquisition, without any reference to original story from virtualization.info.

Beware of what you read…