virtualization.info Editors

Yesterday Iain Mulholland, Director of VMware Security Response Center, posted a VMware Security Note on Power of Partnership and VMware Security & Compliance official blogs.

Mulholland announced the public posting, on April 23, of a single file, containing VMware ESX source code and commentary from the period between 2003 and 2004.

The company has not officially reported which products could be compromised from this code leak or who might be the origin of the publication.

Due to ESX complexity what is clear is that the level of risk is directly related to what kind of information are contained in the published code.

If the code leaked was more service console level, versus the hypervisor or virtual machine manager (VMM) level code, then this is probably no big deal. However, if the code contains some of the more proprietary stuff, then it is a potential security risk — as well as a competitive risk if someone like Oracle, Red Hat, or Microsoft can capitalize on it.

Said Chris Ward, vice president of consulting and Integration at Greenpages, as crn.com reports.

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Coinciding with the release of Windows Server “8” Beta, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services documentation team has written a set of Test Lab Guides intended for the evaluation and deployment of Remote Desktop Services provided by the new Windows platform.

Following you can find direct links to resources:

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On April 17 Virsto Software has announced that is shipping Virsto 2.5 for Windows Server Hyper-V.

With this release Hyper-V gains a 100% software storage abstraction layer with advanced storage capabilities becoming a storage hypervisor.

What Virsto has set as its goal is to improving storage utilization and performance providing VM storage self-provisioning, automated storage space reclamation and “high-performance” thin provisioning.

In the press release Virsto Software claims a potential 90% increase in existing physical storage utilization and up to a 99% acceleration in virtual machine provisioning and management saving up to 70% in storage costs.

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This month Microsoft introduced a couple of add-ons to Windows Software Assurance.

The most notable is the introduction of a new Windows license called Companion Device License (CDL) for Windows 8, this license works alongside Software Assurance to support Bring Your Own PC scenarios.

What is perplexing is the fact that this type of license covers all the personal (non-licensed) devices that an employee could bring to work with the purpose of access to a Windows desktop that the company has fully licensed.

• Companion Device License: For customers who want to provide full flexibility for how employees access their corporate desktop across devices, we are introducing a new Companion Device License for Windows SA customers. For users of Windows Software Assurance licensed PCs this optional add-on will provide rights to access a corporate desktop either through VDI or Windows To Go on up to four personally owned devices.

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Yesterday Solarwinds announced the release of a new version of its IT Management Software, Solarwinds Virtualization Manager.

Inherited from the acquisition of Hyper9 this product has been developed and now introduce, in this release, Hyper-V support allowing the management of heterogeneous virtual data center from a single console.

Virtualization Manager offers integrated VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V capacity planning, performance monitoring, VM sprawl control, configuration management and chargeback automation and integrates with SolarWinds Storage Manager for a deeper analysis of the storages.

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Yesterday VMware announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2012.

Total revenue for the Q1 was $1.055 billion, up 25% from Q1 2011.

Looking in detail the informations provided we can see how license revenue has a growth, over Q1 2011, of 15% compared to a 35.3% growth for software maintenance.

Professional services, always at the end of the chain of revenue, grew a good 32.9% from $61 million to $81 million.

• Revenues for the first quarter were $1.06 billion, an increase of 25.1% from the first quarter of 2011, and 24.8% measured in constant currency.
• Operating income for the first quarter was $217 million, an increase of 41% from the first quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $344 million, an increase of 36% from the first quarter of 2011.

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VMware published a technical paper titled: Integrating VMware View and VMware ThinApp with Citrix XenApp which describes how to integrate an existing Citrix XenApp installation with VMware ThinApp and VMware View.

The discussion is focused on the presentation of ThinApp virtual application through XenApp Servers to users on VMware View virtual desktops.

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It seems can come to an end the disputed battle between Microsoft and OnLive about its Desktop as a Service offering based on Windows 7, where OnLive has been accused of clear violation of Microsoft’s licensing model.

As OnLiveFans.com, the presumed official community, reports, OnLive quietly switched from Windows 7 to Windows 2008 as base system for its DaaS service, this decision would smooth any divergence with Microsoft because Windows 2008 can provide remote desktop services by design with the appropriate CALs available via Microsoft’s SPLA program.

First, it means that OnLive is now on a level playing field with the rest of the DaaS providers. Windows Server 2008 R2 can be provided as a remote desktop for users via RDS CALs, and the RDS CALs are available via Microsoft’s SPLA program. So this is something that anyone can get access to.

Writes Brian Madden in his article.

What users are wondering to know now is how will be solved the problem of the applications, particularly of Microsoft Office licensing that still remains under accusation by Microsoft.

Microsoft has announced the availability of a the beta of the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Tool (MVMC), which is able to convert VMware Virtual Machines to the Microsoft Hyper-V standard. The tool is provided as a so called solution provider. Unfortunately the tool doesn’t support Windows Server 8 yet, but Microsoft states that it’s working on supporting Windows Server 8 in the near future.

The tool can convert VM’s and VMware Virtual Disks (VMDKs) from vSphere 4.1 and 5.0 to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, uninstalling the VMware tools and installing the Hyper-V integration services while converting. It also supports offline conversion from VMDK to the Microsoft VHD format. MVMC also includes a Command Line Interface (CLI) to do the conversions.

The following guest Operating Systems are supported:

• Windows Server 2003 SP2
• Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 7

In recent times many companies are in the condition to plan the introduction of a second virtualization platform or even to have already the need to manage more than one.
Causes may be the most disparate: licensing costs, independence from a single vendor, processes optimization, etc.

Approaches to cross-virtualization also can be of different types.

There are three approaches that you can take to having one cross platform virtualization management strategy:

• Assemble as management stack from best of breed third party solutions that support both of your virtualization platforms. For example, performance and capacity monitoring vendors like VKernel (now part of Quest Software), SolarWinds, VMTurbo, and Zenoss all support multiple virtualization platforms. Application Performance Management vendors like AppDynamics, New Relic, BlueStripe, Correlsense, and ExtraHop Networks tend to be agnostic of the underlying virtualization platform. Most backup vendors like Veeam support more than one hypervisor as well.
• Standardize upon Microsoft SCOM as your management console, and then use plug-ins to SCOM (management packs) to support other virtualization platforms. For example you can use the Veeam nworks product to manage your VMware environment from within Micrsosoft SCOM. You can use the BlueStripe plugin to SCOM to manage all of the applications deployed across both VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms.
• Use Hotlink, to extend the reach of vCenter to Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer.