Year: 2007

VMware continues progresses towards massive release of Workstation 6.0, Player 2.0 and ACE 2.0, all together in a single package for the first time.

All products just reached release candidate status (build 44426) but the only recognizable new feature appears on ACE, which introduces the Virtual Printer device:

VMware ACE includes a virtual printer that allows users to print to any printer available to the host computer from applications inside a virtual machine without installing additional drivers in the virtual machine.

(this new capability depends on ThinPrint .print Virtual Desktop Engine, natively integrated in ACE, as revealed by Warren Ponder, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at VMware, in his blog)

New detail emerges about ACE editions: for the first time release notes clearly refer to a Workstation ACE Edition and an ACE Enterprise Edition.

Documentation provides further informations about Workstation ACE Edition role detailing that is:

The software used by the ACE administrator to create virtual machines and package them for distribution to ACE end users.

This may mean that customers will not have two different ACE versions, but just that Workstatioan will be able to create ready-to-go ACE virtual machines, something impossible to do with Workstation 5.5 and ACE 1.0.

Enroll for Workstation 6.0 beta program here or for ACE 2.0 Enterprise edition one here.

Despite recent delays announced for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 RTM and Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) public beta, Microsoft just published a new build for SP1, this time labeled as release candidate, which introduces just bug fixes.

Enroll for the beta here.

Tracking return on investment for virtualization projects can be a hard job. Very often companies are unable to track cost saving in power, cooling and space saved for dismanted physical servers. Other times they forget to put virtualization training price (considering classroom cost and and learning time) in the equation.

For this reason any tool able to simplify calculation is much appreciated.

VMware just released a new online, free TCO calculator for virtualization platforms. Despite it only provides comparison over 3 years timeframes, it’s pretty flexible and includes all costs newcomers tend to overlook. Plus it includes capability to save and recall any analysis, as well as receiving a complete PDF report through email.

Access it here.

It’s worth to note that working a little on it this tool can be applied also on different virtualization vendors’ offering. Strongly recommended.

Quoting from the Symantec official announcement:

Symantec Corp. today announced the release of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 7.0, the latest version of its complete and fast Windows system recovery solution.

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With this release, Backup Exec System Recovery adds significant performance improvements and adds support for Microsoft Vista, x64-bit platforms, VMware ESX Server, and Microsoft Virtual Server.

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Providing support for the growing virtual environment market, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery delivers seamless conversion of physical recovery points to virtual formats (P2V) as well as conversion of virtual systems back to physical environments (V2P) for VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, VMware Workstation, and Microsoft Virtual Server. Administrators can choose to convert entire systems at once or selective volumes at a time.

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Estimated pricing for Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 7.0 is U.S. $1,095 per server and $69 per workstation. Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers customers may purchase the new Backup Exec for Windows Servers System Recovery Option for $695. All product components are scheduled to be available in late April through Symantec’s worldwide network of distributors and resellers…

Download a 30-days trial here (Server Edition) or here (Desktop Edition).

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software and Provision Networks today introduced a new bundled, server-hosted, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that targets the challenges of managing, securing and maintaining today’s Windows-based, enterprise desktop infrastructure.

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Pricing for the joint solution starts at $120 per desktop license and is available immediately through both Virtual Iron’s and Provision Networks’ distribution channels, which include over 400 resellers and channel partners worldwide…

Check a short recorded demo of Provision Networks connection broker working with Virtual Iron plaftorm here, or download a 5 Virtual Desktops trial here.

Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:

Marathon Technologies Corporation, the leading provider of automated, fault tolerant-class availability solutions for virtual and physical environments, today announced a strategic and technology-based partnership with XenSource, the leader in infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open source Xen hypervisor.

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The partnership with XenSource supports v-Available, Marathon’s initiative designed to drive the convergence of high availability and virtualization technologies. Marathon applied its 12 availability patents and over 14 year experience in engineering availability software solutions to the development of v-Available. With this new initiative, Marathon is aiming to fill significant gaps in current high availability offerings for virtual environments…

Marathon and XenSource are working together to deliver a series of products, the first expected in the second half of 2007, but fundamentally the announcement is stating Marathon HA solution for operating systems, everRun, is going to be supported inside XenSource virtual machines.

After months of work and a lot of issues about benchmarking comparisons (mainly with XenSource), VMware finally releases first public beta of VMmark benchmarking method, introducing some interesting changes since first announcement at VMworld 2006 last November:

• Reduction of the memory footprint from 7GB per tile to 5GB per tile
• Replacement of the database workload with SysBench running against MySQL
• Distribution of an XML-based open-source benchmarking harness for STAF/STAX

To simplify creation of workload tiles VMware is distributing Linux ones (web server, database server and file server, all based on Novel SUSE Enterprise Linux 10) and a detailed benchmarking guide for creating Windows ones and performing the whole measurement.

Enroll for the beta here.

From the corporate blog Mike Neil, General Manager of Virtualization Strategy at Microsoft, announces a delay on the much awaited Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) public beta, expected so far for WinHEC 2007, and of Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 general release:

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The public beta of Windows Server virtualization will ship in the second half of 2007, not in the first half as previously disclosed. The final version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1 now will be available in Q2, not Q1 as previously stated. In the interim, customers and partners can download a Release Candidate (RC) version later this month – this is code complete and an update to the current beta 2.

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So, you ask, why the schedule change to the beta of Windows Server virtualization? The primary drivers are around meeting our internal goals for performance and scalability. In an IT environment of ever-growing multi-core processor systems, Windows Server virtualization is being designed to scale across a much broader range of systems than the competition. We’re designing Windows Server virtualization to scale up to 64 processors, which I’m proud to say is something no other vendor’s product supports.

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Windows Server virtualization remains on schedule – to be released within 180 days of the release of “Longhorn.”

Today we’re also updating the delivery schedule for the service pack of Virtual Server 2005 R2. It’ll be available later this quarter. In this instance, we required some additional time to test the new operating systems that will be supported with the service pack of Virtual Server R2. We’ve added support for three additional operating systems – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Solaris 10 and the recent CTP build of Windows Server “Longhorn.”…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the Microsoft official announcement:

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For Software Assurance customers using Windows Vista Enterprise, we’re adding two new ways to license and deploy the operating system. They are:

• The license right to use Windows Vista on diskless PCs
• The availability of a subscription license called Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD) which allows customers to use Windows in virtual machines centralized on server hardware

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The license to use diskless PCs is available at no charge for Windows Vista Enterprise customers – it’s essentially a change to the existing Software Assurance license, providing customers more flexibility. VECD is available to Software Assurance customers for an annual, per-device subscription fee. The fee varies based on whether your business is licensing PCs or thin client.

Microsoft also published a whitepaper about the new VECD license which every hosting provider should read:

This white paper introduces Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop, a way of licensing Windows Vista for deployment in a centralized, virtualized setting. It then examines how Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop may be deployed using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 along with other Microsoft software and technologies. It examines two common deployment scenarios, followed by considerations and recommendations for deploying Virtual Server in support of such solutions. It concludes by examining the key benefits of implementing Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop on Virtual Server and presenting additional sources of information on the topics discussed in the document.

And finally Brian Madden added some interesting thoughts about this licensing change here.

vizioncore released second version of its high-availability solution for VMware Infrastructure 3, esxReplicator.

New features included in this version are:

• Support for VMware Infrastructure 3 (including VMotion and DRS)
• Support for VMware ESX Server 3 hot addition (including storage and networking)
• Integration with esxRanger Professional 3

Download a trial of esxReplicator 2.0 here.

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