virtualization.info Editors

The interest raised by the upcoming security interface that VMware calls VMsafe is notable.

Besides the company’s partners that work to use the new APIs, there are other entities that try to replicate the capabilities in other hypervisors.

One of them is Bryan D. Payne, Research Scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, that is maintaining with some fellows a very interesting project on the Google Code repository: XenAccess.

The team is developing a library to allow the analysis of multiple Xen virtual machines from a special domain (from where 3rd party security products can observe):

When running multiple domains (or virtual machines) using the Xen hypervisor, this library will allow a privileged domain to view the runtime state of another domain. This technique is known as virtual machine introspection.

The current software focuses on memory access, but also provides proof-of-concept code for disk monitoring.

A paper describing the solution in details is available here.

It’s interesting that one of main reference for this work is a paper from Mendel Rosenblum, the VMware Chief Scientist, that developed the idea behind VMsafe in 2002.

XenAccess is in the work since 2007 and seems to proceed very slow.
Maybe the arrival of VMsafe will boost the development.

The much awaited hypervisor that Sun is developing since over one year, xVM Server, is a step closer today.

The company’s Vice President, Steve Wilson, announces the opening of the Early Access program and unveils one product’s features: the web management console.

The additional screenshots that Wilson posted on his corporate blog also reveal that the hypervisor will be able to create virtual machines with multiple vCPUs:

You can require access to the EA program by sending an email here.
(attention: telling Sun that you come from virtualization.info doesn’t necessarily provide you a priority pass)

When Symantec made its first acquisition in the virtualization space, buying Altiris in 2007, the strategy of the company wasn’t exactly clear.

Altiris was mostly known for its management suite so the Software Virtualization Suite (SVS) product could easily be put in end of life.
But when Symantec also acquired the application streaming startup AppStream in 2008, an already tested and appreciated addition to Altiris SVS, it was clear the company focus on the virtualization market.

While the customers were waiting for an application virtualization and streaming solution resulting from the merge of two above, Symantec surprises buying a third firm, nSuite, for an undisclosed sum.

nSuite offers several products including a VDI connection broker called DBC.
With its acquisition Symantec clarifies that it doesn’t just want to deliver the applications but also the virtual desktops.

The approach is interesting but seems still incomplete.
If the company really wants to dynamically provision the whole computing stack it still misses the control of the virtual machines.
It wouldn’t surprise too much if Symantec would announce the acquisition of a hypervisor (and there are not many still available on the market at this point).

It’s not a secret that VMware has a special attraction for Linux. Unfortunately the sentiment in these years didn’t seem reciprocal:

• it took two years before the company could slip its paravirtualization interface into the Linux kernel
• the community, including notable representatives, questioned VMware about its use of the open source code
• the company is still unable to offer a Linux version of its key product VirtualCenter, despite the users ask it aloud

With much irony, now that it’s guided by a former Microsoft general, this relationship is improving so much that VMware is even welcome as member of the Linux Foundation.

The company didn’t unveil its plans for Linux, but there’s a remote chance that VMware could open the source of one of its products, Server, now that its flagship hypervisor ESX is free.

In May 2008 VMware announced a new certification for virtualization architects: the VCDX or VMware Certified Design Expert.

To get the new title, virtualization professionals have to hold the VCP certification, pass an Enterprise Administration Exam (which includes live labs), pass a Design Exam (which includes simulations) and finally present and discuss a project, covering both the design and the implementation.

The VCDX is now available for the brave ones that want to try it.

For the ones that still have to pass the VCP exam there are some news as well: the mandatory class VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure is still mandatory but at least it can be attended online.

VMware in fact released new e-learning facilities, Live Online and Flex Online, where students can attend several classes (including the one above).
The Flex Online offering is specially interesting as it allows to attend the class over 2 weeks, maybe during after-hours or weekends.

VMware just launched a new partner program for the system builders: with the new program the national or local OEMs will be able to sell the entire line of VMware products.

With the move VMware may greatly extend the number of certified systems on the market, attracting the smaller company that produces hardware for the SMBs.

Before the OEMs the company targeted the ODMs in June, allowing them to release on the market certified components.

The entire effort aims at reducing the time required to include new systems in the strict hardware compatibility list.
The process can be long and resource-consuming both for VMware and its partners so that the competitors like Microsoft highlights it as a remarkable downside of the ESX architecture.

It’s obvious that owning VMware grants some benefits to the parent company EMC, but so far they never appeared too evident.
Now EMC decides to show some muscles and prove that the investment on VMware wasn’t limited to its acquisition in 2003.

On Tuesday the company announced its new enterprise storage array, the CLARiiON CX4, which features a series of features specifically VMware.

Chad Sakac, Senior Director of VMware Strategic Alliance, is becoming the new public face of EMC through its personal blog and wrote a long insight about the strategy behind the new CX4:

…in the VMware environment my main interest is in the UltraFlex I/O modules.

Why are these important?   The following are true statements from where I sit, and lead (at least for me) to a couple obvious conclusions of where datacenters are headed:

• Any x86 workload can be virtualized, and what can be done, will be done (we’ve shown only a small sampling of that here, here, and here)   There’s too many good reasons to do this.   This will include all sorts of workloads that even on their own, have a heavy I/O impact.  Put them together and it’s straight addition.
• Consolidation ratios are only going to increase.    With Intel (and in this cycle, AMD to a lesser extent – but I’m sure they will come out swinging) making a quad core proc for $250 now, and setting clear expectations for 8-core and more in 2009, and memory innovation to come, we will quickly move from 10:1 to 20:1 (I would argue we’re already well past that!) to 40:1 to 100:1 and beyond. 
• BTW, please think about what that sort of hyper-consolidation future implies about: 1) Memory Page Sharing (aka memory dedupe) and about those that CAN do it (VMware) and those that can’t (Hyper-V and Xen); 2) whether you care that you can do live, non-disruptive movement of VMs when you have 100 on a single host – is that going to become more important, or less?
• The bottleneck is moving to the I/O layer (both the network and storage transport and the back-end).   This is particularly acute on network and IP storage today (again, know that I’m an IP super-fan, and no-fanboi of FC for it’s own sake) – where many, many GbE interfaces off a single server are common, and blades once again come into vouge, not for power/space/density issues (VMware makes the only question power/space/density per VM the question) – but rather for IO aggregation/virtualization/management reasons.
• Above all, flexibility is paramount (i.e. the ability to non-disruptively adapt to unforeseen changes) with things like Vmotion and Storage VMotion – and those constructs will increasingly appear in all parts of infrastructure.

Now, making storage built for VMware is only part of EMC’s strategy – our view is that everything needs to adapt to a world where nearly every host is a hypervisor, and every app is a VM or VM appliance.   This affects infrastructure operations (backup/recovery/DR, etc), management (understanding and adapting to pervasive mobility, PtoV mapping and relationships) and skillset (we’re at 400 VCPs and still adding at 50/quarter)…

Please note that this is the only major announcement that EMC made at the Pacific Crest Technology Conference.
The company didn’t unveil any acquisition, merge or spin-off as rumored few days earlier.

Oracle continues to keep a very low profile on the virtualization market, silently improving its free-of-charge hypervisor based on Xen: Oracle VM.

After a much criticized launch in November 2007 (mostly because of the closed support policy that the company currently adopts), the product jumped to version 2.1.1 in March 2008.

The company now announces the so-called Oracle VM Templates, the Oracle version of the well-known virtual appliance concept that VMware pioneered at the beginning of 2006.

The first four pre-configured virtual machines offered are:

• Oracle Database 11g
• Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Oracle’s Siebel CRM 8
• Oracle Enterprise Linux

All of them can be downloaded here.

The US startup rose from the the ashes of InovaWave, Hyper9, has just completed its second round of funding:

Hyper9 Inc., the leader in search-based software for managing dynamic virtual environments, today announced that Maples Investments and Managing Partner Mike Maples Jr. have made a strategic investment in Hyper9. This investment complements Hyper9’s July 2007 Series B round of funding, which was led by Matrix Partners with follow-on from Silverton Partners…

The US startup Qumranet is growing and is now ready to welcome aboard a Vice President of Sales and Channels, Craig Bauman, coming from Altiris.

With nearly 20 years of high tech sales experience, Bauman joins Qumranet from TriActive, a
venture- based pioneer in SaaS for systems management, where he was executive vice pesident in charge of worldwide sales and service channels.

Prior to joining TriActive, Bauman was an enterprise sales director at Microsoft responsible for sales of the Windows enterprise management products in the U.S. and Canada driving sales
growth. Bauman was also a key stakeholder in driving Microsoft’s acquisitions of AssetMetrix and Softricity.

Additionally, he has held sales leadership roles at Altiris (now Symantec) assisting in the
successful IPO and helping to grow the company from $10 million to $200 million revenues, along with a 300 percent increase in partner-led sales.

The first thing that Bauman will go is starting a new Partner Program.