Year: 2009

As announced a couple of weeks ago, just before its conference, the Synergy 2009, Citrix opens the new beta program for its free hypervisor XenServer.

Unlike we suggested in our previous article, the new version, codenamed Project George, is numbered 5.5 and not 5.1.

As already said the new product includes the following features:

• Active Directory integration. Specify the AD domain to use for authentication by the pool and use your AD credentials to connect to the pool via XenCenter and ssh. You control which AD users/groups are allowed access.
• Workload balancing. Guest and host performance metrics are used to create star ratings for individual VM placement and balancing recommendations for resource pools to achieve optimal performance.
• LVHD. Fast cloning and snapshots are now supported on all SR types through integration of our software VHD stack and LVM-based Storage Repositories (SRs)
• Snapshot support in XenCenter. Create and manage disk snapshots from within XenCenter.
• StorageLink integration. CLI-only support for a new StorageLink Gateway SR that adds native standards-based support for HP MSA, HP EVA, EMC Clariion, and NetApp storage arrays over iSCSI and Fibre Channel with optional automated initiator/fabric/array management.
• Expanded guest OS support. RHEL 5.3, Debian Lenny, and SLES 11 Linux guests.

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One thing Microsoft never made clear in the last few years was its virtualization strategy for the consumer market.
Yes, if we talk about the client side of an enterprise infrastructure, then we know that Microsoft has big ambitions, and it’s working to push both App-V (formerly SoftGrid) and MED-V (formerly Kidaro Managed Workspace) through its MDOP bundle for Software Assurance customers. But nothing has been said so far about what options will be available for the millions of consumers that want to run a virtualization product on top of their Windows Vista and Windows 7 boxes.

Yes, Microsoft offers VirtualPC, a product that is not seriously updated since a long, long time.
The latest version, VirtualPC 2007, is dated February 2007. To arrive there Microsoft took 4 years, during which it only released service packs for VirtualPC 2004 that introduced minor enhancements.
The company even cancelled the Mac editon of VirtualPC in August 2006.

It doesn’t surprise that prosumers look at VMware Workstation or Sun VirtualBox, and maybe Citrix XenWorkstation (if it really exists).

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The article appeared on WorksWithU may be the first documented case of a company deciding to adopt KVM instead of VMware or Citrix hypervisors.

To be fair the scenario described by the author is at the lowest limit of the SMB range: a mere two virtual machines for a single virtualization host.
Yet, it’s interesting to read the reasons behind the choice to go for KVM on Ubuntu rather than VMware ESX or Citrix XenServer:

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One week ago Oracle announced the acquisition of Sun surprising customers, partners, analysts and even the companies employees.
Many projects inside Sun are being discussed right now and some may be just cancelled.
Reading the messages flowing around social network sites like Facebook or Twitter, it’s easy to see how fear, uncertainty and doubts are spreading across the Sun ranks.

One of the most important projects that Sun has in place and that may be negatively impacted by this deal is the release of xVM Server, the Xen-based hypervisor that Sun originally announced in September 2007.

The launch of the hypervisor has been delayed several times. The last update from Sun suggested a tentative first release in Q2 2009.
Potential customers already know that such release would miss some key features like Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN support. For that Sun suggested to wait an update in H2 2009.

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Lately Parallels has been very silent. The company must be fully busy in developing the new version of Parallels Desktop for Mac to stop the VMware conquer of the Apple market share, and in finalizing the long awaited Parallels Server Bare Metal.

Anyway a major news about the firm was published earlier this week on Kommersant, a Russian business magazine.
The article (Google Translate from Russian to English) reports that the investment fund Almaz Capital bought 5% of the Parallels stake for about $11 million.
The stake was previously owned by Fund Insight but Parallels bought it back to sell it again to Almaz Capital.

The article also reveals three interesting additional details:

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As we said in the previous post the Speakers, the Agenda and the Panels, the virtualization.info’s Virtualization Congress will happen in just one week in Las Vegas, co-located with the Citrix Synergy 2009 at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino.

As some readers may remember, the conference program will include a particular general session on May 6.
During this slot we’ll present on stage up to six early stage start-ups that just came out of stealth mode or that just released their first product on the market.

Following the successful approaches used by Demo and TechCrunch conferences, we asked these companies to briefly present on stage their brand and then show the juice technologies they are about to offer.
For the attendees, it’s a great opportunity to see what will come out in the coming months and to reconsider their virtualization strategy accordingly.

Today it’s a great pleasure for me to announce that Data Gardens will launch and present on stage its first product for this first edition of the Virtualization Congress: Syntropy.

DataGardens changes the way businesses provide IT services across multi-site data center environments. Its products reduce the cost of IT provisioning and administration, while increasing productivity, utilization, and resiliency. DataGardens software systems extend conventional virtualization services including virtual machine migration, high availability, and load balancing, so they can be leveraged across multiple distributed sites. This unique capability enables DataGardens to offer solutions for remote IT provisioning, multi-site resource sharing, business continuity, and consolidated multi-site backup.

If you didn’t check the agenda it’s definitively time to do it and book a last minute flight to join us there.
(and just in case you need some help to justify the trip, here’s a toolkit ready for you)

See you in a week!

Here we go. In just one week we’ll have the first edition of the virtualization.info’s Virtualization Congress in Las Vegas, at the MGM Hotel, in co-location with the Citrix Synergy 2009.

I think we are safe to say that the list of speakers we lined up for the event is remarkable.

Some of the biggest and most respected names in the virtualization community will speak on stage about planning, designing, implementing and maintaining virtual infrastructures.

The Virtualization Congress line-up includes professionals like:

• Brian Madden (one of the most accredited expert worldwide in desktop and presentation virtualization)
• Christofer Hoff (the leading, independent voice about security in virtualization and top virtualization blogger in 2008 for virtualization.info)
• Mike DiPetrillo (the reckless and straight-forward unofficial voice of VMware, another top virtualization blogger in 2008 for virtualization.info)
• Richard Jones (a top analyst from one of the most concrete firms tracking the virtualization space today, the Burton Group)
• Ron Oglesby (author of the best-seller book VMware Infrastructure 3 Advanced Technical Design Guide)
• Ruben Spruijt (one of the most respected voices in the application virtualization market, thanks to his independent comparisons about features and performance of the leading products in this space)
• Scott Lowe (top virtualization blogger of 2008 for virtualization.info and author of the upcoming Mastering VMware vSphere 4.0)
• Stephen Beaver (author of several books about virtualization since 2005, one of the restless moderators at the VMware VMTN forums)

With such top-notch speakers it’s easy to guess that the expectations for the agenda are probably very high. Hopefully we’ll not disappoint you with sessions like:

• Best Practices for Designing and Implementing Large Scale Virtualization Projects [VC102]
• Hypervisor Competitive Differences: What the Vendors Aren’t Telling You [VC103]
• Lessons from the Real World: Storage in Virtualized Environments [VC104]
• Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro: The Complexity and Insecurity of the Cloud [VC105]
• My Cloud or Yours? The importance of standards-based virtual infrastructure management [VC111]
• Storage Considerations for Virtual Desktop Deployments [VC203]
• The Real Cost of VDI [VC112]
• Virtual Infrastructure Management: Challenges and Best Practices [VC107]

And just to be sure that there’s will be some fireworks at the end of each conference day, we have three panels with bright and competitive minds moderated by an uncomfortable host: me, Alessandro Perilli.

• I was there when Desktop Virtualization went Mainstream [VC301]
  Panelists: Ian Pratt (Chairman at Xen.org), Dr. Gaurav Banga (CTO at Phoenix Technologies), Alex Vasilevsky (CTO at Virtual Computer) and David Greschler (Director of Virtualization Strategy at Microsoft).
• Securing the Virtual Data Center (on Earth and on Clouds) [VC302]
  Panelists: Christofer Hoff, Michael Berman (CTO at Catbird) and Dave Schackleford (CSO at Configuresoft).
• The Future of Virtualization – VC303
  Panelists: Richard Jones, Simon Crosby (CTO at Citrix), Brian Duckering (Sr. Marketing Manager at Symantec and Tim Wegner (VP at Stratus Technologies).

See you in a week in Las Vegas!

On April 9 virtualization.info published an article titled How Microsoft and VMware use virtualization internally, detailing how the two competitors use their own virtualization products inside the company.

The details about the Microsoft internal case study appeared in a public TechNet article that raised a number of critics on how poorly the vendors seems to use Hyper-V.

One of the Microsoft employees involved in that article, David Lef, Microsoft IT Technology Architect, wrote to virtualization.info giving additional details about the adoption of virtualization inside Microsoft:

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Something must be happening at Redmond if Microsoft for the first time ever decides to roll out a VDI strategy that doesn’t include Citrix as the exclusive partner.

It’s a well-known thing that Microsoft and Citrix are deeply in love with each other, sharing similar hypervisor architectures, a common roadmap, and marketing and sales resources to carry on their virtualization strategies and erode the VMware market share.

It’s true that in 2010 Microsoft will introduce a basic connection broker (called Remote Desktop Connection Broker) in the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2, but the reality is that the Microsoft sales force recommends XenDesktop as the solution of choice for any VDI scenario. At least so far.

Today Quest announced a major deal with Microsoft to integrate its vWorkspace (the former VAS acquired by Provision Networks in November 2007) with Hyper-V, App-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

It’s great success for Quest/Provision Networks which is now validated to the eyes of customers as much as Citrix in VDI scenarios. Yet, the big question is: why Microsoft has changed its strategy?

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Last week VMware announced for the third time its upcoming platform vSphere 4.0, that will replace VMware Infrastructure 3.5.

The company already announced the platform at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas and VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes, providing a huge amount of details about the new features and components on stage and on the corporate website.
Nonetheless, VMware decided to announce the product a third time with an on-site and online launch party, despite the actual bits are not yet available for download or purchase.

A very few amount of things were communicated during the on-site and online announcement (the recording is available here): the new product tagline, the pricing and the availability.

Let’s start from the new tagline: the company marketing decided to drop the Virtual Data Center Operating System (VDC-OS) label, revealed in September 2008 with the first announcement, to embrace a much more hyperbolic Cloud Operating System (Cloud OS).
In May 2006 virtualization.info published a piece titled The long chess game of VMware, suggesting that the virtualization vendor may want to move away from a direct competition with Microsoft as soon as the software giant would be able to compete on virtualization.
The article pictured a scenario where VMware moves in a direction where Microsoft may not follow for several years: the general purpose grid computing space.
Here we go. Exactly three years later, VMware prefers to call the architecture cloud computing instead of grid computing (the technical differences between the two approach are not relevant in this discussion) but the strategy is being fully executed.

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