Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
In July VMware released a must-read 51-pages paper that is definitively worth a read: Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4.0.
The document, which is continuously updated, doesn’t just describe all the aspect of the product (CPU, memory, storage and network) that should be checked to troubleshoot performance. It also provides a much needed troubleshooting methodology:
So far the Microsoft customers that wanted to convert their physical boxes into Hyper-V virtual machines had to buy and use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and its physical to virtual (P2V) migration tool.
Or buy and use a third party P2V migration tool like the ones offered by Novell/Platespin or Quest/Vizioncore.
Other less expensive (free in some cases) tools allow to perform the P2V migration as well but they usually don’t permit to convert the machine while it’s running.
Now there’s a free tool that performs a live migration: Disk2VHD.
Just in case you don’t fill overwhelmed by dozen of proprietary remote desktop protocols and RDP enhancements, here’s a new one: Ericom Blaze.
The company launched it last month, claiming impressive performance:
Clearly Blaze is not a new protocol but rather an RDP enhancement that can compete against the Quest/Provision Networks Experience Optimization Pack (EOP).
Last week Novell released version 3.7 of its capacity planning tool PlateSpin Recon.
This new version focuses much on storage (local disks as well as FC/iSCSI arrays), tracking its usage over time in physical and virtual machines.
Even if the available documentation doesn’t clarify much about the new feature, the effort in this area is always welcome because of the strong investment in storage required to build a virtual infrastructure.
Recon 3.7 also introduces support for AIX workloads.
This is probably the only tool on the market able to analyze AIX machines and include them in the capacity plan.
A couple of months after its first minor update, Vizioncore is ready to introduce Virtualization EcoShell 1.2.
The tool, used in conjunction with Quest PowerGUI, is a powerful environment to develop and execute complex scripts, so far just for VMware VI 3.5 and vSphere 4.0.
This new minor update, available in beta, introduces a major change, which clarifies once again how Vizioncore will slowly open its product portfolio to VMware competitors: the support for Hyper-V.
Specifically, Virtualization EcoShell 1.2 introduces a Hyper-V PowerPack, which allows administrators to manage individual Hyper-V installations using PowerShell.
In July VMware attempted to win those Virtual Iron customers left in the cold by Oracle with an aggressive discount program.
Now it seems that VMware has to defend against a similar move from Citrix, which launches today the Open Door program.
The rules are simple:
The Project Open Door promotion will be effective worldwide from October 1 – March 31, 2010. Customers who decommission five or more VMware vSphere 4 or VI3 servers and replace them with XenServer or Hyper-V plus the Citrix Essentials solution, receive the following:
- A free five incident support pack (5 by 8 hours) for every five servers converted
- A voucher for six hours of online training for every five servers converted
- Free migration tools for seamlessly transferring virtual machines from VMware to XenServer or Hyper-V
The attempt doesn’t seem particularly aggressive and in normal circumstances we won’t cover it on virtualization.info. But there’s one thing that makes the announcement worth the mention: Citrix is investing its support and training money even if customers switch to Hyper-V (plus Essentials).
Oracle announces today the release of it hypervisor Oracle VM 2.2.
There are two major new features in this new build: the first is that it’s based on Xen 3.4, the second is that it introduces storage connection and provisioning APIs.
Xen 3.4 includes the base code that Citrix is using to develop its upcoming client hypervisor XenClient.
This means that Oracle is potentially able to do the same, which would make sense.
A client hypervisor is mostly needed for offline VDI, and offline VDI is mostly needed for an end-to-end VDI strategy. Oracle could easily offer such end-to-end VDI strategy now that Sun kindly provided the connection broker and the thin clients.
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By now every virtualization.info reader knows that VMware and Citrix are completely focused on competing in the VDI space rather than on “simple” server consolidation.
For now most of the discussion is mostly around their connection brokers (and their remote desktop protocols), but in a matter of months it will be extended to their application virtualizations solutions and their upcoming client hypervisors.
Now, a question: What is one of the most viewed threads on the VMware VMTN forums dedicated to the connection broker View?
Answer: A thread titled “What made you chose VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop”, which was started at the end of April and so far collected almost 3,000 views.
The thread is full of interesting comments. Of course it’s impossible to say if all of them come from real customers. For sure many come from well-known VMware users.
Also, not every comment, even the genuine ones, reports correct information. Nonetheless the sum of them contributes to clarify the customers sentiment about both products, and most of all about VDI as a technology.
Some of the things they said so far are well worth a mention here and should be considered along with the architectural reference blueprints that both VMware and Citrix released so far (our emphasis):
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Last week Microsoft and Red Hat announced the certification of their operating systems, Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), on each other virtualization platforms, Hyper-V and KVM.
It is a major announcement in many ways.
First of all, customers that have Windows/Linux mixed environments finally have a decent choice.
Side by side with Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux, now Hyper-V (both R1 and R2) supports RHEL 5.2, 5.3 and the new 5.4.
More importantly, Microsoft and Red Hat validated the use of Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2 as guest operating system on the KVM implementation that comes with RHEL 5.4.
In 2007, when Citrix, one of Microsoft’s strongest allies, acquired XenSource, a startup whose success depends on an open source product (the Xen hypervisor), nobody really believed the move would benefit the community in any way.
The major concerns were that, over time, Citrix would abandon the development of Xen to focus on a proprietary hypervisor, that Citrix could try to influence the Xen development to provide an indirect advantage to Microsoft and/or that Citrix could use its influence on the Xen project to damage all the competitors that were relying on it (at that time Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Sun and Oracle).
After the XenSource acquisition, some major vendors (Red Hat and IBM for example) and individual contributors lost interest in the Xen project and started to focus on KVM (IBM effort, Red Hat effort). Possibly because of this relationship between Citrix and Microsoft, possibly because Citrix has never been an open source champion.
Of course VMware did all its best to facilitate the exodus from the Xen project.
