virtualization.info Editors

Quoting from the HP official announcement:

HP today introduced a solution that eases the management of desktop environments and lowers costs by reducing the need to over-provision IT resources.

The HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides customers with a cost-efficient desktop environment by consolidating many physical desktop PCs onto a single server that is centrally hosted and managed within the data center. The solution combines HP hardware and management software with services and partner components, such as VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
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As a member of the VDI Alliance program, HP’s offering leverages Virtual Desktop Infrastructure from VMware.
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The solution also includes HP Systems Insight Manager and ProLiant Essential tools to unify management of virtual and non-virtual machines. To meet their storage needs, customers can use HP StorageWorks storage area network, network attached storage and HP Modular Smart Array direct attached storage solutions.

HP Services completes the offering with VMware Capacity Planner assessment, installation and startup, consulting and integration, educational and financial services, and hardware and software technical support…

Quoting from the Wyse official announcement:

Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing today announced a new “Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization” including key hardware and software components to enable enterprises to quickly evaluate the benefits of desktop virtualization and terminal services architectures.
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The Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization includes:

• 25 Wyse S10-VDI-Edition Thin Computers The S10-VDI Edition delivers all the security of a stateless device, with a built in, self-updating operating system that can quickly find and connect with the virtual desktop server.
• 25 licenses for Wyse Device Manager – Wyse infrastructure management software
• 2 days of Onsite Consulting

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The Wyse Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is priced at an estimated customer price of $9,995…

Quoting from the NEC official announcement:

NEC Corporation today announced the launch of a new Virtual PC-Class Thin Client System. The new system includes the next generation of Thin Client computing device, the US100, which provides a high level of IP telephony and video processing quality in the smallest thin client footprint.

The device is designed to achieve the impressive multimedia performance through the employment of NetClient, the advanced system-on-a-chip solution that incorporates leading-edge technologies from NEC and ServerEngines? LLC.

The new system also features VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure pre-installed and pre-integrated with NEC systems through collaboration established under the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance program…

The solution is composed by the thin client US100 (costing approx. $439) and 2 possible management stations: the NEC Express5800/VPCC Virtual PC Server, if you don’t already have VMware Infrastructure 3, supporting up to 20 thin clients (costing approx. $16,176), or the NEC Express5800/VPCC Management Server, which act as middleware between thin clients and existing VMware Infrastructure 3 (costing approx. $3,301).

All products are expected to hit the market on December 15th.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced the winners of the first-ever Virtual Vanguard Awards. The awards recognize VMware customers who have best employed VMware Infrastructure to create innovative, high-ROI and leading-edge IT strategies. The winners represent achievements in four categories:

• Best Overall ROI and Operational Benefits
  This award showcases the company that has seen the quickest and largest ROI using VMware technology. The entries were judged on the overall impact of costs avoided, time-to-ROI or operational benefits-not the largest or quickest ROI in terms of absolute numbers. The judges also looked at the effect of virtualization on total IT budget, operational performance and/or corporate bottom line.

  Winner: IndyMac Bancorp

• Most Comprehensive VMware Infrastructure
  This award honors the most comprehensive VMware Infrastructure deployment based on a combination of total size and on amount of total infrastructure virtualized. The judges looked for customers utilizing virtualization technology in multiple ways across their IT infrastructure, from desktop to data center and from development to production, and have virtualized at least 50 percent of their development, staging and production environments.

  Winner: Phoenix Insurance Company

• Most Critical Application in Production
  This award recognizes the most mission-critical application running on VMware Infrastructure. ?Mission-critical? was defined by the consequences of application failure: Should this application become unavailable for any noticeable length of time, the impact on the applicant?s company would be serious. Examples of such serious consequences might include loss of revenue, broken service-level agreements, customers unable to pay bills or place orders, violations of regulatory compliance rules and compromised security.

  Winner: Tescom

• Vanguard Award for Innovation
  his award honors customers who have taken virtualization to new levels, leveraging the technology to push the envelope and create unique, innovative solutions to IT challenges.

  Winner: Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

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Quoting from the Cassatt official announcement:

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Cassatt will extend support to the latest version of VMware?s products, VMware Infrastructure 3, in the next version of Cassatt Collage?, a software platform that automates the management of data center resources to improve application service levels. XVM will support VMware Infrastructure 3 in the next release of the product later this calendar year.
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Cassatt will offer a pilot program for customers interested in early access to XVM support for VMware Infrastructure 3…

Quoting from the Emulex official announcement:

Emulex Corporation today announced the availability of its LightPulse Virtual Host Bus Adapter (HBA) technology for VMware Infrastructure environments, delivering enhanced SAN management capabilities.
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Emulex’s LightPulse Virtual HBA technology is supported for use with VMware Infrastructure servers that use Emulex 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs and is fully interoperable with industry leading fabric switches from Brocade, Cisco, and McDATA. The LightPulse Virtual HBA technology will be generally available for VMware Infrastructure in the first half of 2007.

By providing unique features implementing its N-Port ID Virtualization, Emulex’s Virtual HBA technology enables server virtualization solutions to seamlessly deliver SAN management Best Practices, such as zoning and LUN mapping, to simplify storage administration and lower cost of ownership…

Quoting from the Compellent official announcement:

Compellent Technologies, a provider of affordable and modular enterprise storage solutions, today announced it has been added to the SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware Infrastructure 3.

Compellent?s Storage Center? SAN has passed compatibility testing requirements to become a part of VMware?s list of supported storage platforms…

Quoting from the Data Domain official announcement:

Data Domain, the leading provider of Enterprise Protection Storage systems for disk backup and network-based disaster recovery, today announced it has become a VMware Technology Alliance Partner, with solutions for use within VMware virtualized server environments. VMware customers are now successfully applying Data Domain?s Enterprise Protection Storage Solutions within their virtual machine environments to consolidate their Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) processes, eliminate tape and enhance the performance and reliability of their data protection systems.
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VMware virtual environments consolidate multiple server, OS and application copies into ?.vdmk? files that are typically large and need to be backed up regularly and replicated to a remote site for disaster recovery purposes. This makes them ideal candidates for the application of Data Domain?s Global Compression? technology, which eliminates the storage of redundant information to massively reduce data volume. The high level of data reduction achieved by Data Domain systems makes fast, reliable disk backup and remote replication via WAN of these large files both economically and operationally feasible. Once data volume is reduced, a number of benefits become possible:

• Backup is achieved in a dramatically shorter timeframe as .vdmk file compression is typically 40x
• Remote replication via WAN becomes possible due to reduced data volume and the 99% bandwidth efficiency increase delivered by Data Domain?s replication technology
• Faster, verifiable, more reliable restores are delivered by disk-based backup and Data Domain?s Data Invulnerability Architecture
• Reliance on tape is eliminated, tape transportation costs and associated risks are also eliminated
• Storage capacity and bandwidth costs are reduced
• Data Domain?s compatibility with leading enterprise backup software and VMware?s native support for disk-based .vdmk file backup means integration of Data Domain solutions is simple

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During the VMworld 2006 VMware finally unveiled how further the work made by Akimbi has gone, releasing the first Lab Manager 2.4 public beta.

The full list of features of the product is available here.

This build (2.4.0.153) offers in particular:

• Import Template from VMFS
  You can import a template and its virtual machine files from VMFS (ESX Server) storage. Lab Manager already allows you to import templates from SMB storage
• Export Template
  You can export a template and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network.
• Export Configuration
  You can export a configuration and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network
• Consolidate Template
  After creating multiple clones, you can consolidate the delta disks that may affect performance into one disk
• Move Storage
  Administrators can move the contents of a SAN (VMFS) storage server to another server
• Delete Storage
  Administrators can delete SAN (VMFS) storage servers from Lab Manager. This operation does not delete the files on the storage servers
• Use NFS media storage
  You can add NFS media storage and synchronize the contents of that media storage with the Lab Manager media library

You can download the beta here.

VMware expect to release RTM for December 15th.

As already mentioned at time of private beta, VMware decided to remove support for hosted solutions in this release. So SMB and Enterprise customers adopting VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server (both supported by the old Akimbi Slingshot) will be out of luck.

James Phillips, formerly Akimbi Founder and CEO and now Senior Director of Virtual Software Lifecycle at VMware, granted these customers will receive a notable incentive to move to ESX Server. But given the overall price of software and required hardware, training, and maintainance it’s more probable they will look for other solutions offered by Surgient and new startup VMLogix.

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

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today at VMworld 2006 announced it is launching a marketplace and certification program for virtual appliances. Customers can evaluate or in some cases purchase from a collection of more than 300 virtual appliances available in the Virtual Appliance Marketplace
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ISVs certify their appliances through the VMware Virtual Appliance Certification Program that provides them with technical best practices for performance and usability, validation testing and implementation feedback. The program also ensures that the ISV fully supports the entire virtual appliance environment. Current ISVs offering certified virtual appliances include Astaro, B-hive Networks, CohesiveFT, LoadBalancer, PortWise, ProofPoint, Red Hat, Reflex Security, SpamTitan, Ubuntu, Zeus and Zimbra. Certification details can be found here…

On the corporate blog, The Console, VMware top management heartily endorsed the adoption of virtual appliances in corporate environments:

• Steve Herrod, Vice President of Technology Development, tracked the trend about virtual appliances, which are becoming the most flexible and open way to deliver complex applications.
• Dan Chu, Vice President of Emerging Products and Markets, noted how virtual appliances (based on Linux OS) free customers from Microsoft slavery, avoiding risks of sudden changes in licensing policy but avoiding at the same time complexity of Linux adoption.
• Raghu Raghuram, Vice President of Datacenter and Desktop Platforms, predicted how ubiquity of hypervisors within few years will be the key to allow industry to rely on virtual appliances, drastically reducing delivery time and management, increasing portability to unexpected levels.
• Karthik Rau, Vice President of Product Management, underlined how the operating system role is doomed to change in a virtual appliances-driven world, moving from most critical tier to a mere extension of applications.
• Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Virtual Appliances, detailed benefits for ISV and customers which can offer and use more stable applications, cutting away the biggest part of management efforts.

The virtual appliance philosophy seems pretty good. So good that even Microsoft decided to embrace it with its new VHD Test Drive program.

But while all mentioned reasons about virtual appliances are surely valid and I agree on them, there is much more unsaid about the approach which customers should carefully evaluate before starting adoption.
I’ll write a detailed essay this month about the topic. Stay tuned!