Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
Lately it’s been a busy time for Docker, after disclosing the availability of its orchestration tools and the acquisition of SocketPlane, the open-source project that automates the deployment of applications inside software containers announced to have acquired Kitematic, an open source project that allows the automatic installation and set up process of Docker, providing an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) for running Docker containers on the Mac.
VMware has released a paper titled: "How VMware Mirage Complements and Extends Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager". The paper, which contains 28 pages details how VMware Mirage, VMware’s centralized image management solution for Windows desktops complements Microsoft’s Enterprise Client Management solution System Center Configuration Manager.
The Mirage and SCCM systems can coexist independently in the data center without interfering with each other. Mirage can enhance functionality in an SCCM environment by:
VMware has released a paper titled: "VMware Horizon 6 Storage Considerations". The paper which contains 36 pages takes a close look at the most important questions and challenges that face anyone tasked with designing a new Horizon 6 deployment.
The paper focuses on performance, capacity, and operational considerations of the storage subsystem because storage is the foundation of any virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementation. The paper also provides relevant considerations for App Volumes, Mirage, Workspace Portal, and Virtual SAN.
In October last year, Microsoft announced that support for Docker container virtualization in its next version of Windows Server through the Windows Server Containers technology. Today Microsoft announced several new products to support these container virtualization techniques.
Firstly Microsoft announced Hyper-V Containers which is an isolated container deployment option ensuring that container cannot impact the host OS or other containers running on the same host. Hyper-V containers will offer an extra deployment option next to the already available Hyper-V virtual machine and the earlier announced Windows Server containers.
Oracle last week announced the availability of a beta for version 5.0 of its type-2 virtualization platform VM Virtualbox. VM Virtualbox, which was originally developed by InnoTek became part of the SUN portfolio in 2008, when Sun acquired InnoTek and its assets. When Oracle acquired Sun in 2009, the VM Virtualbox became part of the Oracle portfolio. When that happened, a lot of people wondered if Oracle would continue development on the VM Virtualbox product, since Oracle is not a virtualization product vendor per se. Today we can conclude that development on the product is still very active.
On March 25 Red Hat announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2014.
Total revenue for the first quarter ended February 28, 2015 was $464 million, with an increase of 16% from the same quarter last year. Looking at the financials details we can see that subscription revenue was of $405 million, up 15% year-over-year, full fiscal year subscription revenue was $1.56 billion, up 17% year-over-year in U.S. dollars year-over-year, or 19% measured in constant currency. Operating cash flow of $217 million, up 18% year-over-year, full fiscal year operating cash flow of $623 million, up 15% year-over-year.
Oracle has released a new version of its virtualization platform VM Virtualbox. Version 4.3.26 is considered a maintenance release which can be installed on top of version 4.3. The update improves stability and fixes regressions.
Some of the changes as detailed in the changelog:
VMware has released a paper titled: "Virtual SAN 6.0 Performance: Scalability and Best Practices". The paper which contains 23 pages investigates how VMware Virtual SAN performs and scales for multiple workloads, Virtual SAN caching tier designs, and Virtual SAN configuration parameters. The paper provides guidelines on how to get the best performance for applications deployed on a Virtual SAN cluster.
Parallels today announced a new version of its container and hardware virtualization platform Virtuozzo. Appearantly the product was renamed earlier to Parallels Cloud Server, but with this version Parallels decided to rename the product back again to its orginal name Virtuozzo (to be precise it was named Virtuozzo Containers earlier).
Virtuozzo is installed directly on the server hardware and does not need any operating system to function. Once it is installed, Virtuozzo allows you to create virtual machines and Containers.
VMware last week released version 6.1 of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Server Based Computing (SBC) platform Horizon. Version 6.1 is the follow up of version 6 which was released in June last year.
Version 6.1 provides the following new features and enhancements: