virtualization.info Editors

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.

Today VMware announced changes to its executive management team:

• Carl Eschenbach has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer and Co-President. Eschenbach previously served as VMware’s Co-President, Customer Operations.
• Raghu Raghuram has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure and Management. Raghuram previously served as VMware’s General Manager and Senior Vice President.
• Mark Peek, VMware’s Chief Financial Officer and Co-President, Business Operations, has decided to take a new opportunity as Chief Financial Officer of Workday, where he currently serves as a member of their Board of Directors. Peek will stay with VMware until June 1, 2012. VMware announced the start of a selection process for a new CFO.

VMware also announced that financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 are expected to broadly meet or slightly exceed the range of financial guidance it provided January 23, 2012.

VMware Labs, a division of VMware devoted to publish free community-driven tools, has worked hard over the last months on the topics of analysis and benchmarking of virtual environments.

Among these tools, called “flings“, stand out I/O Analyzer, ESX System Analyzer and the recent vBenchmark.

The fling summary reports as follows:

Have you ever wondered how to quantify the benefits of virtualization to your management? If so, please consider using vBenchmark. vBenchmark measures the performance of a VMware virtualized infrastructure across three categories:

• Efficiency: for example, how much physical RAM are you saving by using virtualization?
• Operational Agility: for example, how much time do you take on average to provision a VM?
• Quality of Service: for example, how much downtime do you avoid by using availability features?

vBenchmark provides a succinct set of metrics in these categories for your VMware virtualized private cloud. Additionally, if you choose to contribute your metrics to the community repository, vBenchmark also allows you to compare your metrics against those of comparable companies in your peer group. The data you submit is anonymized and encrypted for secure transmission.

We suggest you to learn more reading the Infoworld article by David Marshall.

Veeam has launched a free edition of its well-known management solution for VMware (Hyper-V support is planned for Q2 2012): Veeam ONE.

Compared with the full version the free edition counts, as main limitations, a maximum of 7 days of historical performance data, 24 hours on configuration changes data and limitations on the number of customizable reports.

For a complete list please refer to the specific data sheet.

Veeam ONE Free Edition is a risk-free way to experience firsthand the many benefits that Veeam ONE brings to virtualization management. With no restrictions on the number of vCenter Servers and ESX(i) hosts you can manage, Veeam ONE Free Edition lets you see how 24×7 monitoring, management reporting and more can improve the performance and availability of your virtual environment.

And when you’re ready to exercise all the powerful capabilities of Veeam ONE, upgrading to the full version of Veeam ONE is as easy as simply installing your purchased license key.

In March VMware published a document called VMware View 5 Evaluator’s Guide.

The document, intended for IT Professionals interested in desktop virtualization, guide the reader through an evaluation installation of the product and is subdivided into four main parts:

1. Key New Features of VMware View 5
2. Description of VMware View Components
3. Setting Up a View Evaluation Environment
4. Evaluation Tasks

From the paper introduction:

Overview of VMware View Functionality
VMware View enables users to be productive on their computer desktops when connected to the network or when offline, between network connections. View desktops run on clients of all flavors: Windows, Macintosh, thin and zero clients, iPads, and Android tablets. View desktops run on clients of all flavors:
Windows, Macintosh, thin and zero clients, iPads, and Android tablets. VMware View offers exceptional user experience and performance over a LAN or WAN. Your organization may have already adopted VMware server virtualization technology. By extending your existing server-based deployments, VMware View delivers the benefits of virtualization to the desktop. VMware View offers easy-to-use management and seamless integration with the vSphere virtual infrastructure platform.

Quest Software Inc. has announced its new program suite for VMware, called vFundamentals, that offers  backups, capacity planning and resource management for virtualized environments.

With a declared price of $995 per CPU this new bundle includes Quest vRanger Pro and VKernel’s vOps Server Standard Edition.

Packaged with the needs of small- and mid-sized businesses in mind, vFundamentals provides virtualization and systems administrators with a cost-effective, scalable solution that requires minimal customization and can be put into production quickly, enabling them to protect, manage and optimize their growing VMware virtual environments.

Here you can find the press release.

Symantec Corp. has announced Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware vSphere, the product optimizes storage I/O performances and availability providing path management and failure protection.

VMware edition also integrates with VMware vCenter Server to provide administrative and monitoring capabilities within the VMware environment.

Key Features

• Provides storage path failure protection and fast failover.
• Spreads I/O across multiple storage paths for maximum performance.
• Enhanced I/O load-balancing algorithms
• Real-time path performance metrics

Key Benefits

• Deep visibility from VMware environment reduces configuration errors and enables better decisions.
• Visibility into storage array attributes, enabling workload assignment to the right tier and type of storage
• Detailed path performance metrics available within VMware vCenter
• Datacenter I/O visualization provides insight into I/O demands of individual guests
• Broad compatibility list enables choice of storage vendors without compromising on manageability

Symantec has also announced, in the press release, an agreement with NetApp, Inc. to resell Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware to take advantage of the sales channel offered by a comprehensive NetApp storage solution.

Today McAfee announced a new agentless deployment option for McAfee Management for Optimized Virtual Environments (MOVE) AV solution which is designed to integrate with VMware vShield Endpoint.

“McAfee MOVE AV provides McKesson with comprehensive and consistent malicious code protection for our virtual environment,” said Patrick Enyart, senior director, McKesson Information Security, Security Operations. “As we continue to adopt emerging technologies, particularly cloud computing solutions, implementing McAfee MOVE AV provides us with additional security in our virtual environment. The solution makes sizing and deployment simpler and ensures that every system is deployed with the same level of protection.”

McAfee wants to achieve the goal of providing comprehensive protection without affecting the performance of virtualized environments with particular attention to VDI and server infrastructures managed via VMware technologies.

McAfee MOVE AV deployment options are centrally managed and reported by McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO).

For more information we recommend reading the press release.

Microsoft today announced the release of a public beta of version 5 of it’s Application Virtualization product App-V. It also announced today the release of the public beta of a new user environment management product called User Experience Virtualization (UE-V). Both products will be part of a new version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), available for Software Assurance users.

With this last product Microsoft decided to fill a gap which up till now was filled by Microsoft partners like Citrix, Appsense, Immidio, Liquidware Labs, Quest, Res Software and others. For these partners it will be harder to provide additional value now that Microsoft will provide this solution with MDOP.

Up intil now Microsoft’s solution for user environment management was called User Profile Virtualization, which was actually a combination of Roaming Profiles and Folder redirection. This solution isn’t very suitable though in environments where users access traditional desktops, terminal servers, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and other devices using the same account.

With UE-V Microsoft states:

Regardless if it is a rich desktop or a hosted VDI desktop, a traditional application or a virtual application, UE-V enables a personal, consistent Windows experience across devices, matching each person’s unique work style for increased productivity anytime, anywhere. UE-V integrates with our Microsoft Desktop Virtualization products and can be deployed with System Center Configuration Manager, as well as third party management tools.

While the roaming profiles with folder redirection solution the UE-V solution will apply settings when applications are opened, and save that settings when the applicaitons is closed, in contradiction to the User Profile Virtualization which loads settings at logon and saves them at logoff. For UE-V to work another agent needs to be deployed, (when will Microsoft release one mangement agent?). Settings location templates, which are XML based are used to tell the agent which applications should store their roaming information from thefile system and registry to a network location. Templates can be generated with the UE-V generator tool.

For more information about UE-V, see this post on the Microsoft Springboard series blog.

App-V 5.0. promises deeper platform integration, allowing App-V applications to work more like traditional installed applications. App-V 5.0 will will allow for local application store to be turned off, reducing disk requirements.

App-V 5.0 will also introduce a new web-based management interface based on Silverlight, and introduces support for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 which is now in public beta.

For more information about User Environment Management (UEM), we recommend reading the UEM Smackdown paper, written by Ruben Spruijt which can be downloaded via BrianMadden.com

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On April 2 VMware released his iOS App related to Project Octoups.

Its description, extremely succinct, suggests how VMware wants to keep a low profile on this new project.

Project Octopus enables secure, anywhere access to files from any device. Users can share and collaborate on their files with anyone inside or outside the company.

The App is only available to members of the Octopus private beta, but the few screenshots available push to an immediate comparison with the Dropbox App.

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