Year: 2012

Yesterday VMware announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2012.

Total revenue for the Q1 was $1.055 billion, up 25% from Q1 2011.

Looking in detail the informations provided we can see how license revenue has a growth, over Q1 2011, of 15% compared to a 35.3% growth for software maintenance.

Professional services, always at the end of the chain of revenue, grew a good 32.9% from $61 million to $81 million.

• Revenues for the first quarter were $1.06 billion, an increase of 25.1% from the first quarter of 2011, and 24.8% measured in constant currency.
• Operating income for the first quarter was $217 million, an increase of 41% from the first quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $344 million, an increase of 36% from the first quarter of 2011.

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VMware published a technical paper titled: Integrating VMware View and VMware ThinApp with Citrix XenApp which describes how to integrate an existing Citrix XenApp installation with VMware ThinApp and VMware View.

The discussion is focused on the presentation of ThinApp virtual application through XenApp Servers to users on VMware View virtual desktops.

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It seems can come to an end the disputed battle between Microsoft and OnLive about its Desktop as a Service offering based on Windows 7, where OnLive has been accused of clear violation of Microsoft’s licensing model.

As OnLiveFans.com, the presumed official community, reports, OnLive quietly switched from Windows 7 to Windows 2008 as base system for its DaaS service, this decision would smooth any divergence with Microsoft because Windows 2008 can provide remote desktop services by design with the appropriate CALs available via Microsoft’s SPLA program.

First, it means that OnLive is now on a level playing field with the rest of the DaaS providers. Windows Server 2008 R2 can be provided as a remote desktop for users via RDS CALs, and the RDS CALs are available via Microsoft’s SPLA program. So this is something that anyone can get access to.

Writes Brian Madden in his article.

What users are wondering to know now is how will be solved the problem of the applications, particularly of Microsoft Office licensing that still remains under accusation by Microsoft.

Microsoft has announced the availability of a the beta of the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Tool (MVMC), which is able to convert VMware Virtual Machines to the Microsoft Hyper-V standard. The tool is provided as a so called solution provider. Unfortunately the tool doesn’t support Windows Server 8 yet, but Microsoft states that it’s working on supporting Windows Server 8 in the near future.

The tool can convert VM’s and VMware Virtual Disks (VMDKs) from vSphere 4.1 and 5.0 to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, uninstalling the VMware tools and installing the Hyper-V integration services while converting. It also supports offline conversion from VMDK to the Microsoft VHD format. MVMC also includes a Command Line Interface (CLI) to do the conversions.

The following guest Operating Systems are supported:

• Windows Server 2003 SP2
• Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 7

In recent times many companies are in the condition to plan the introduction of a second virtualization platform or even to have already the need to manage more than one.
Causes may be the most disparate: licensing costs, independence from a single vendor, processes optimization, etc.

Approaches to cross-virtualization also can be of different types.

There are three approaches that you can take to having one cross platform virtualization management strategy:

• Assemble as management stack from best of breed third party solutions that support both of your virtualization platforms. For example, performance and capacity monitoring vendors like VKernel (now part of Quest Software), SolarWinds, VMTurbo, and Zenoss all support multiple virtualization platforms. Application Performance Management vendors like AppDynamics, New Relic, BlueStripe, Correlsense, and ExtraHop Networks tend to be agnostic of the underlying virtualization platform. Most backup vendors like Veeam support more than one hypervisor as well.
• Standardize upon Microsoft SCOM as your management console, and then use plug-ins to SCOM (management packs) to support other virtualization platforms. For example you can use the Veeam nworks product to manage your VMware environment from within Micrsosoft SCOM. You can use the BlueStripe plugin to SCOM to manage all of the applications deployed across both VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms.
• Use Hotlink, to extend the reach of vCenter to Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer.

Today VMware announced changes to its executive management team:

• Carl Eschenbach has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer and Co-President. Eschenbach previously served as VMware’s Co-President, Customer Operations.
• Raghu Raghuram has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure and Management. Raghuram previously served as VMware’s General Manager and Senior Vice President.
• Mark Peek, VMware’s Chief Financial Officer and Co-President, Business Operations, has decided to take a new opportunity as Chief Financial Officer of Workday, where he currently serves as a member of their Board of Directors. Peek will stay with VMware until June 1, 2012. VMware announced the start of a selection process for a new CFO.

VMware also announced that financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 are expected to broadly meet or slightly exceed the range of financial guidance it provided January 23, 2012.

VMware Labs, a division of VMware devoted to publish free community-driven tools, has worked hard over the last months on the topics of analysis and benchmarking of virtual environments.

Among these tools, called “flings“, stand out I/O Analyzer, ESX System Analyzer and the recent vBenchmark.

The fling summary reports as follows:

Have you ever wondered how to quantify the benefits of virtualization to your management? If so, please consider using vBenchmark. vBenchmark measures the performance of a VMware virtualized infrastructure across three categories:

• Efficiency: for example, how much physical RAM are you saving by using virtualization?
• Operational Agility: for example, how much time do you take on average to provision a VM?
• Quality of Service: for example, how much downtime do you avoid by using availability features?

vBenchmark provides a succinct set of metrics in these categories for your VMware virtualized private cloud. Additionally, if you choose to contribute your metrics to the community repository, vBenchmark also allows you to compare your metrics against those of comparable companies in your peer group. The data you submit is anonymized and encrypted for secure transmission.

We suggest you to learn more reading the Infoworld article by David Marshall.

Veeam has launched a free edition of its well-known management solution for VMware (Hyper-V support is planned for Q2 2012): Veeam ONE.

Compared with the full version the free edition counts, as main limitations, a maximum of 7 days of historical performance data, 24 hours on configuration changes data and limitations on the number of customizable reports.

For a complete list please refer to the specific data sheet.

Veeam ONE Free Edition is a risk-free way to experience firsthand the many benefits that Veeam ONE brings to virtualization management. With no restrictions on the number of vCenter Servers and ESX(i) hosts you can manage, Veeam ONE Free Edition lets you see how 24×7 monitoring, management reporting and more can improve the performance and availability of your virtual environment.

And when you’re ready to exercise all the powerful capabilities of Veeam ONE, upgrading to the full version of Veeam ONE is as easy as simply installing your purchased license key.

In March VMware published a document called VMware View 5 Evaluator’s Guide.

The document, intended for IT Professionals interested in desktop virtualization, guide the reader through an evaluation installation of the product and is subdivided into four main parts:

1. Key New Features of VMware View 5
2. Description of VMware View Components
3. Setting Up a View Evaluation Environment
4. Evaluation Tasks

From the paper introduction:

Overview of VMware View Functionality
VMware View enables users to be productive on their computer desktops when connected to the network or when offline, between network connections. View desktops run on clients of all flavors: Windows, Macintosh, thin and zero clients, iPads, and Android tablets. View desktops run on clients of all flavors:
Windows, Macintosh, thin and zero clients, iPads, and Android tablets. VMware View offers exceptional user experience and performance over a LAN or WAN. Your organization may have already adopted VMware server virtualization technology. By extending your existing server-based deployments, VMware View delivers the benefits of virtualization to the desktop. VMware View offers easy-to-use management and seamless integration with the vSphere virtual infrastructure platform.

Quest Software Inc. has announced its new program suite for VMware, called vFundamentals, that offers  backups, capacity planning and resource management for virtualized environments.

With a declared price of $995 per CPU this new bundle includes Quest vRanger Pro and VKernel’s vOps Server Standard Edition.

Packaged with the needs of small- and mid-sized businesses in mind, vFundamentals provides virtualization and systems administrators with a cost-effective, scalable solution that requires minimal customization and can be put into production quickly, enabling them to protect, manage and optimize their growing VMware virtual environments.

Here you can find the press release.