virtualization.info Editors

VMware is expected to refresh its VMware Infrastructure 3.5 in Q2 2008.

The new release introduces a difference in the naming convention used for minor builds: instead of something like VI 3.5.1, VMware will use the label VI 3.5 Update 1 (build 82663).

The updates included in the Update 1 are unknown at the moment but its distribution is imminent. The company mistakenly published the download page ahead of time, giving a clear date for the distribution: April 10, 2008.

More details will be published as soon as possible.

As expected, HP and VMware starts today the distribution of the new lightweight hypervisor ESX Server 3i:

The option is available for an additional $495.

Dell should start distributing the hypervisor as well in early April, but the big difference is that Dell may give it away for free.

The ESX Server 3i option is about to become a standard in every major OEM server configuration page, since VMware plans to use the new architecture as the main one in the hypervisor’s future versions.

Anyway the product is also already available as stand-alone package, ESX Server 3i Installable, for those customers that want to use it with their existing equipment (only Dell 2950 and HP DL380 G5 supported at the moment).

As most readers already know now, virtualization.info is preparing its first independent conference about hardware/OS/application virtualization technologies: the Virtualization Congress 2008.

With this event, we challenged the industry asking big players and young startups to give innovative lectures, with meaningful demonstrations and no marketing slides.

We are not ready to show the detailed agenda yet, but we are glad to announce that Citrix is the first to accept the challenge.

Simon Crosby, CTO of Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix, will present on stage:

The Virtualization Congress 2008 will take place in London, October 14-16, 2008.

The Early Bird ends April, 30, so go on and register here:
http://www.virtualizationcongress.com/registration.htm

Today at 6pm PST VMware is expected to release the beta 2 of VMware Server 2.0.

The first beta, running since four months already, introduced limited innovations.

The long time between the two betas may imply that VMware reconsidered its plans and worked to bring in major capabilities in this new build.

Update: Due to a last-minute bug VMware postponed the release to today, March 28, early afternoon.

Second update: While the beta 2 is not yet available, virtualization.info obtained the list of new features included in the new milestone (build 84186):

• Inclusion of VMware Remore Console
• Introduction of a multi-level access control
• Support for virtual machines automatic power-on
• Support for USB 2.0 devices
• Revamped virtual hardware editor

Final Update: the feature list above is confirmed. The beta 2 is available here.

The final version of VMware Server 2.0 is planned for Q3 2008.

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

Phoenix Technologies just announced the BeInSync acquisition.

BeInSync is a company providing P2P technology to perform only backup and syncronization of local files.

This has nothing to do with virtualization technologies today, but this may change over the long term.

The press release confirms that the product will be integrated into their upcoming PC 3.0 platform and the biggest part of it is the new hypervisor HyperCore.

Depending on which kind of integration Phoenix is planning, it’s possible that BeInSync will be used to update the virtual machines hosted by HyperCore and not just the documents inside the guest OSes (Microsoft Windows and the custom environments AppSpace and ManageSpace).

If so Phoenix may be building an interesting alternative to the VDI approach.

Despite the drop of SWsoft brand, Parallels focus on the OS virtualization technology (and the hosting market where it’s the most successfully) is still very strong.

The Register reports that the company acquired ModernGigabyte in January 2008.

ModernGigabyte produces ModernBill, an automated billing system for hosting providers that Parallels will integrate into its Plesk Control Panel.

This is only the last acquisition that Parallels completes in the hosting space. Before ModernGigabyte the company also acquired Sphera, Ensim and PSOFT, in September 2007, as well as WebHost Automation, in December 2007.

No acquisitions instead in the server virtualization market where much heavier investments will be required to win the competition, and where the company should enter soon with its first hypervisor: Parallels Server.

Some rumors also say that Parallels may launch its IPO this year.

Configuresoft is the last of a long series of vendors which extended the capabilities of its management tools to monitor/manage VMware virtual machines.

Configuresoft offers a product called Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) which is able to store and apply configuration settings for IT services on a large scale deployment.

The company just announced an ECM module for VMware environments.

No mention about which VMware product (and which version) is actually supported, the availability timeframe or the price.

Quoting from the F5 official announcement:

F5 Networks, Inc., the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program as a Select Partner. Through this alliance, F5 gains the use of VMware testing software, marketing tools, and technical support for technology integration between the two companies.

…

With this alliance, F5 will have the opportunity to develop tighter product integration and interoperability with VMware solutions, such as demonstrating F5 Acopia solutions’ unique ability to complement VMware Infrastructure 3 in NAS environments, expanding the ease of provisioning, increasing availability of virtual machines, and optimizing the performance of VMware solutions on NAS…

It’s interesting to see how some vendors, far away from hardware virtualization, are recently joining VMware TAP program.

It’s easy to understand the reasons moving security firms: the just announcement VMsafe is big enough to refocus the entire security industry. But the reasons moving other vendors in other industries are less evident at today.

VMware may have to say much more than expected about networking and storage.

When VMware launched ESX Server 3.5 in September 2007 it also introduced a parallel architecture for its hypervisor: 3i.

The main difference between traditional ESX Server and the 3i version is the lack of the Console Operating System (COS), the customized Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution that VMware uses to manage and give access to a series of features in the hypervisor.

ESX Server 3i doesn’t really drop the RHEL-based COS but replaces it with a much smaller distro called BusyBox, tailored to provide a minimal set of services.

The modifications that VMware introduced into ESX Server 3i along with the adoption of BusyBox allowed to produce a small-footprint hypervisor with doesn’t need installation: just like ubiquitous LiveCD distribution slike Knoppix, it boots from a CD, a USB key or a new Solid-State Drive (SSD) and is ready to go.

At launch time VMware executives reported in different occasions that over time the 3i architecture would replace the traditional one, so that newer versions of ESX Server wouldn’t come in two different editions.

VMware didn’t provide any roadmap for the take-over but a new interview with Raghu Raghuram, Vice President of Products and Solutions at VMware, published by RedmondMag seems to imply that it’s about to happen sooner than later.

Raghuram says that the 3i architecture will become mainstream over the course of this year, which may just mean that VMware expects a major adoption of ESX Server 3i during the 2008. But it also may mean that the company is preparing to release an ESX Server update with 3i architecture only.

The second speculation seems more likely considering that ESX Server 3i is on the market since just three months, and it would hardly replace most of the existing installations in the upcoming nine months.

Dell published a new tool which aims at simplifying the capacity planning and purchase process for those customers embracing virtualization: the VMware ESX Server Virtualization Advisor.

The tool asks several questions about which kind of goal a customers is trying to achieve with virtualization but it fails miserably where it should help the most: providing guidance.

The complexity of questions a customer has to answer implies a full and solid understanding of hardware virtualization technologies, along with remarkable experience to recognize subtle differences between certain options. But as soon as a customer already has such skills the Dell advisor becomes useless.

It’s a pity that the information gathering phase is so complex because the overall platform is a step in the right direction: it provides a list of servers and storage to buy, each one with a detailed configuration, along with a basic diagram to interconnect them.

Capacity planning remains one of the biggest challenge in virtualization adoption. Dell has to do much more than that to automate the process.