Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
In March VMware acquired a number of products from its parent company EMC for $200M, all parts of the Ionix infrastructure management portfolio, and all coming from acquisitions of small technology firms happened between 2006 and 2009.
Now VMware is rebranding the products and adding them to its already wide product portfolio:
Arkeia Software is a US vendor focused on disaster recovery. It’s flagship product, Network Backup, is a backup/restore engine that features agents for multiple applications, databases, file servers and storage arrays in the physical world.
Arkeia also supports all the three major virtualization platforms: Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX.
The company just updated the product to introduce support for vSphere, by leveraging the vStorage API.
While Network Backup is only capable to perform a full backup for Hyper-V virtual machines (through the Volume Shadow Service), on vSphere it can also do a block-level incremental backup thanks to the VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology and Raw Device Mapping (RDM) support.
The product supports the vApp packaging and integrates with the vCenter Server GUI.
The restore process can be managed through a web management interface:
Earlier this week Red Hat released beta two of its Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, the first Linux distribution of the company that completely replaces Xen with KVM as virtualization platform of choice.
The first public beta appeared at the end of April and at that time Citrix, which is the main supporter of Xen, suggested Red Hat customers that invested in Xen to look elsewhere, including the Oracle Enterprise Linux. Oracle in fact, is another key supporter of Xen, used as the foundation of the Oracle VM virtual infrastructure.
Red Hat says that RHEL 6.0 may have a third beta, according to The Register.
The version of KVM included in current beta introduces the following features compared to what’s available in RHEL 5.5:
So far Citrix released a number of interesting resources about its VDI platform XenDesktop, including a Modular Reference Architecture and a Performance Assessment and Bandwidth Analysis for Delivering XenDesktop to Branch Offices.
Coupled with independent comparisons of its features, like the Burton Group’s Virtual Desktop Evaluation Criteria or the PQR’s VDI Smackdown, these resources are precious to understand the Citrix’s offering.
Now the company adds one more piece, by releasing a Design Handbook:
Citrix has just hired Roland Wartenberg, the SAP Chief Virtualization Evangelist.
Wartenberg has been in SAP since 1997, covering multiple roles.
In 2006 he developed the virtualization strategy for the SAP Labs division.
Wartenberg has been actively involved in pushing the company’s marketing message about virtualization through the many SAP Virtualization Week events arranged around the world.
He will start at Citrix in a couple of weeks, in charge of the the strategic alliance with SAP.
After the departure of Ron Oglesby, now in Unidesk, Dell loses another key member of its virtualization team: Paul Rad.
Rad has been at Dell for more than 10 years. During this timeframe he covered multiple roles, including the Chief Architect of the first Dell | VMware | EMC Virtualization reference architecture in collaboration with Ed Bugnon and Dino Cicciarelli, before EMC acquires VMware in 2003.
In his last position, Data Center Virtualization Practice Executive, he developed intellectual property (including patents about virtualization and clustering solutions) and led the virtualization practice.
Rad already landed at Rackspace, as its new Vice President of Technology and CTO of Enterprise Cloud Division.
Yesterday VMware announced that it has hired Jeff Casale as its new Senior Vice President and General Manager of Americas business.
Casale had a very long career in EMC which started in 1998, when he was the Vice President of Europe, in charge for France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and South Africa.
Casale will report to Carl Eschenbach, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations.
In January 2010 VMware released a free web management console called Go.
The product, supporting ESXi hosts only, is a hosted platform that the vendor offers to SMB customers.
Go allows to initialize and patch ESXi hosts, create and operate virtual machines, check the VMs patching level connecting to the Shavlik Technologies service, but customers have to grant to VMware the privilege to analyze the way they interact with the console.
VMware never release any public information about the level of adoption of this tool, and this the first time it gets an update.
The new version is able to perform a Virtual to Virtual (V2V) migration from VMware Server to ESXi, an interesting move considering the hints that the former platform will be discontinued by June 2011.
Just a few days ago VMware hired Scott A. Key away from Citi.
Key has worked at Citi for many years, covering different roles, including the Chief Architect for the Consumer International business.
He spent the last three years at the financial institution as Senior Vice President of Virtualization.
While at Citi, Key also wrote a column here at virtualization.info: Managing the Virtual Infrastructure.
VMware appointed him as its new Director of Solutions Marketing for the Financial Services Industry and virtualization.info wishes him the best for this new job.
July 7, 2010 I’ll be at the VirtualDays 2010 conference in Florence, Italy, hosted by In20, performing the opening keynote about the state of the industry and the emerging trends.
During the morning the three major virtualization players will present their solutions. It will be a typical VMware vs Microsoft+Citrix face-to-face on server and desktop virtualization.
During the afternoon there will be sessions from IHVs and ISVs that offer key products complementary to virtualization: IBM, EMC, Cisco, Pllar Data Systems, CommVault, Axel and Fujitsu.
Italy doesn’t host many independent events about virtualization so this is a welcome opportunity for customers to compare the message and the offerings.
If you plan to attend feel free to stop by after the presentation.
Alessandro