virtualization.info Editors

If you live in Netherlands and work with VMware technologies you may be interested in an upcoming that promises to be very interesting: on December 12 the VMware User Group will unwrap its fourth conference and this year expects up to 500 attendees.

This is a technical event with three parallel tracks where speakers from VMware, sponsors and VMUG members will take the stage to cover three topics: server virtualization, VDI and 3rd party utilities (everything around VI3).
Note that most presentations will be in Dutch language.

The price is fair, 99 Euros, so go on and register here.

Today we’d like to introduce a new resource: the virtualization.info Buyer’s Guide.

Our Buyer’s Guide is composed by a (growing) collection of matrixes that compares many features of many products in the same category.
Every few months we’ll update the matrixes by updating the feature-set and adding new products.

We decided to start with the two most popular categories: bare-metal virtual machine monitors (VMM), or what we traditionally call hypervisors and their management consoles, or what we may call virtual infrastructure managers.

The vendors included so far are Citrix, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Virtual Iron and VMware.

As you’ll see the matrixes are incomplete and this is one of the reasons why we call this a beta for now.
Finding the technical specifications for every product on the market (even the most popular ones) is incredibly complex and involving the vendors to retrieve the missing details has been painfully slow so that at a point we decided to go on just by ourselves.
On bottom of every matrix you’ll find an email address where to send the missing data to complete the table if you want to help (of course also corrections and feedbacks are welcome).

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By now even the stones know that most virtualization vendors are shifting their focus on a new scenario to pitch: from server consolidation to desktop consolidation (aka hosted desktop environment aka virtual desktop infrastructure aka VDI).
Consolidated player and just born startups are all competing for a slice of the VDI market which is supposed to be rich and with endless potentials.

So far Microsoft carefully avoided to join the party evaluating the market too immature to massively invest in.
As part of a consolidated strategy the company preferred to leave the early opportunity for some brave partners, in this case Citrix, Quest/Provision Networks and Ericom.

Now something has changed as Microsoft has just announced the intention to offer a VDI connection broker as part of its Terminal Services product.

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At the end of October on its official blog Microsoft finally detailed when it will relaunch the technology acquired by Kidaro Technologies in March.

Kidaro offered a security wrapper for desktop virtualization platform called Managed Workspace that Microsoft planned to offer as part of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). But besides a name change (from Managed Workspace to Microsoft Enteprise Desktop Virtualization or MED-V) nothing happened so far.

The formal relaunch is expected somewhere in the first half of 2009 but Microsoft is now adding that a first MED-V beta will be ready for the first quarter of that year.

Microsoft also announced that App-V, its application virtualization and streaming solution once known as SoftGrid, will support 64bit virtualized applications in H1 2010.
The beta testers will be able to access the bits in early 2010, while those customers adhering the TAP program may have it in late 2009.

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Announced at VMworld 2008, the Vizioncore P2V migration tool (coming from the Invirtus acquisition last year) vConverter 4.0 is finally available.

This new major release introduces important capabilities and it’s clear that, like PlateSpin (now acquired by Novell) also Vizioncore is fully reshaping the message to associate P2V migration to disaster recovery:

• Continuous P2V migration
• Incremental image replication
• User profiles library (for reusing the same credentials over time)
• Raw Device Mapping
• Availability as virtual appliance (for P2V/V2V migration in COS-less platforms)

Download a trial here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Just one month after hitting version 2.0, VKernel is ready to deliver a new minor update for its Capacity Analyzer (formerly Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer).

The only new thing is the capability to schedule the generation and delivery of the reports.

It’s clear that VKernel is still enjoying the startup phase of its corporate life, when new features are added as soon as customers demand for them and the product releases can be up to one every month.
This approach of course makes happy the early adopters and supporters, but may scare away big prospects.
The fast and furious release schedule will certainly end up as soon as the company reaches a critical mass.

Download a trial of Capacity Analyzer 2.1 here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

This week Microsoft releases a new version of its free capacity planning tool called Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP).

Now the tool can discover and map which virtual machines are served by which virtualization host, meaning that Microsoft is working to extend the product capabilities to already virtualized environment for “continuous capacity planning”.

The new 3.2 version is available here, free of charge as usual.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Somebody at VMware has just published an informal (but nicely edited) video showing in action the experimental feature Distributed Power Management (DPM) that the company introduced with VI 3.5.

It shows how four physical servers are powered on, one after another, during the day to address the increasing workload demand, while VirtualCenter manages to distribute over 100 virtual machines among them.
At 5pm, when most of the corporate workforce goes away, the VMs are moved back to the first server and DPM turns off the other three servers.

If you never saw the thing in action it may worth a look:

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This week Vizioncore announced the appointment of a well-known figure in the Xen world: Roger Baskerville.

Baskerville was Director of EMEA Channels in XenSource before the acquisition and then was the Regional Director of Server Virtualization for Northern Europe at Citrix.
His new role at Vizioncore is Vice President of EMEA.

Baskerville certainly knows the potentials of XenServer in Europe. Maybe Vizioncore is finally opening its product portfolio to more virtualization platforms than just VMware: if the company is now targeting Citrix customers Baskerville was probably one of the best persons for the job.

The application virtualization startup InstallFree (see virtualization.info coverage here) announced this week the appointment of two key executive for the Europe: Rashied Akrum and Carina Rozendaal.

Rashied Akrum joins InstallFree as Vice President EMEA while Carina Rozendaal takes the role of Senior Director of Sales & Marketing EMEA.

Both comes form SoftGrid, acquired by Microsoft in 2006, and can certainly bring some valuable experience in the new company.
The former SoftGrid CEO, David Greschler still works in Microsoft as Director of Virtualization Strategy, so the relationship between InstallFree and the software giant may further improve.