virtualization.info Editors

VMware just announced the release dates for two of its newest products: Stage Manager, expected by May 19, and Site Recovery Manager, available within 30 days from today.

The choice to split its virtual data center automation offering in three different products (Lab Manager, Stage Manager and Lifecycle Manager) was not welcome by several customers.

Somebody saw the move only driven by profit and would rather prefer to see the features that these products offer as a premium option for VirtualCenter (like VMotion or DRS). A more natural fit since all of them depends on VirtualCenter in any case.

Maybe VMware is listening and changing its mind since will soon sell two bundles.

The first, called IT Service Delivery, offers together Lifecycle Manager with one of the other two: Lab Manager or Stage Manager.

The second, called Management and Automation, instead will include all the three above plus the much expected Site Recovery Manager (SRM).

Is it a sign of a future re-union into a single suite?

It’s evident that Desktone has some numbers. No other virtualization startups so far closed monumental partnerships as soon as it left the stealth mode like this one.

On April 21, at company launch, one of the biggest US phone carrier, Verizon, revealed the plan to deliver virtual desktops managed by the Desktone platform.
Today, at company Partner Program launch, one of the biggest OEM in the world, HP, beaten Verizon on time and announces the deal as the first partner.

It’s worth to highlight that currently Desktone is only supporting VMware Infrastructure 3.x as the back-end hypervisor, so the startup fortune is the VMware fortune right now. But there are clear plans to support XenServer (also because Citrix is an investor) and Hyper-V.

Recently ZDNet published a skirmish of words between Ian Pratt, Xen founder and chief architect, and Benny Schnaider, CEO of Qumranet (supporting the development of KVM), about the destiny of Xen and the right to be called hypervisor of KVM.

While the debate itself is not too much interesting, one of the reactions that it provoked is much more.

Anthony Liguori, Software Engineer at Linux Technology Center, contributor for both Xen and KVM ( and of Debunking Blue Pill Myth fame), used his personal blog to provide some interesting perspectives of why KVM was preferred over Xen for the integration in the Linux kernel:

…

Xen is a hypervisor that is based on the Nemesis microkernel. Linux distributions ship Xen today and by default install a Linux guest (known as domain-0) and do their best to hide the fact that Xen is not a part of Linux. They’ve done a good job, most users won’t even notice that they are running an entirely different Operating System. The whole situation is somewhat absurd though. It’s like if the distributions shipped a NetBSD kernel automatically and switched to using it when you wanted to run a LAMP stack. We don’t ship a plethora of purpose-built kernels in a distribution. We ship one kernel and make sure that it works well for all users. That’s what makes a Linux distribution Linux. When you take away the Linux kernel, it’s not Linux any more.

…

When people talk about Xen not being merged into Linux, I don’t think they realize that Xen will *never* be merged into Linux. Xen will always be a separate, purpose-built kernel. There are patches to Linux that enable it to run well as a guest under Xen. These patches are likely to be merged in the future, but Xen will never been a part of the Linux kernel…

The consulting firm Login Consultants just opened the beta program of the first benchmarking tool for presentation virtualization: Login Virtual Session Index (VSI).

The product will measures the performance of a remote desktop session served by a Microsoft Terminal Services  / Citrix XenApp server or a VDI virtual machine.

To run the tool it’s required to have a 4 tiers infrastructure: a domain controller for the authentication a file server for logging user sessions, a server to host the TS/XenApp/VDI service and a workstation to launch the user sessions.

The firm is also working to introduce support for application streaming.

Enroll for the beta here.

Rob de Veij published a small Microsoft .NET application to address a big challenge: the mass upgrade of VMware Tools.

Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.x, RVTools is able to list the current version of all VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine and update them to the latest version.

Download it here.

Thanks to Duncan Epping for the news.

Surgient, the US-based startup focused on the virtual lab automation market since 2003, loses today its historical Vice President of Marketing: Erik Josowitz.

Josowitz, which was the public face of Surgient since the early beginning, will continue to work for a while in the company as strategic advisor, will be replaced by Craig Parks.

Parks comes from a completely different industry, covering the Chief Marketing Officer role in Biophysical Corporation since 2005.

So far Surgient didn’t release a press announcement about the take-over and Erik Josowitz profile is still in place.

Update: Surgient just published an official statement about the take-over.

virtualization.info has learned that Mike Grandinetti, Chief Marketing Officer at Virtual Iron, left the company recently.

Grandinetti, in Virtual Iron since the beginning in 2003, was the public face of the company.
His role is now covered by the new Chief Strategy Officer Tony Asaro, appointed this March.

Before Grandinetti also Alex Vasilevsky, co-founder and CTO, left the company in December 2007.
The company management team was further reshuffled in October 2007 with a new CEO, Ed Walsh, and a new Vice President of Sales, John McCarthy.

In January 2008 VMware, a hardware virtualization company, acquired an application virtualization startup called Thinstall.
The plan is to use the Thinstall technology to stream virtualized applications on the virtual desktops that VMware spawns through its connection broker: the Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM).

So fare VMware has been pretty fast in rebranding the Thinstall Application Virtualization Suite: the beta program for the new version is open since end of February and the testers can already download the beta 2.
The final version of the product, temporarily called Project North Star, is expected for the H2 2008.

The only information missing so far was the final name that VMware wants to use.
Now Micheal Keen, Director and Senior Solutions Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Alliance Technologies, reveals that the final name is ThinApp.

Duncan Epping further validates the news reporting that a former Thinstall employee confirmed.

The choice is interesting considering that Citrix just renamed its Presentation Server product in XenApp.

Microsoft just opened the beta program for a new tool, the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool, which aims addressing a concrete challenge: keep updated a large amount of virtual machines stored in a VM library and acting as templates for cloning operations.

Since these virtual machines are not supposed to be powered on the task is challenging.

To solve it, the new Microsoft tool uses PowerShell, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2007 and a patch management product between Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007.

Thanks to PowerShell scripts, each VM is powered on by SCVMM and temporary deployed on a virtualization host available. At that point the patch management procedure is started and the VM is powered off as soon as it completes.
The last step implies moving the patched VM back to the Library.

This process is identical to the one performed by the new VMware Update Manager (VUM) included in VI 3.5.
Unfortunately, in both cases, there are major issues in case the administrator has applied the Sysprep to the VM: as soon as the virtual machine starts the Sysprep mini-setup starts as well, customizing the VM.

Enroll for the beta program here.