History

Photo Credit: Peter C. Brandt – Getty Images

I just wanna remember here 11 September 2001.

Quoting from Storage Pipeline:

Hewlett-Packard is adding to the virtualization capabilities of its server line through a technology and marketing agreement with SWsoft.
Under the deal, signed last week, HP channel partners will be able to sell and install SWsoft’s server virtualization technology with HP’s Itanium-based Integrity servers and other platforms, said Kurt Daniel, managing director at SWsoft, Herndon, Va.

The two companies have put in place joint technology development and joint marketing programs, Daniel said. “No other vendor supports 64-bit Itanium like us,” he said. “And HP is pushing hard on its Itanium strategy.”

The SWsoft technology not only allows server partitioning, it provides the ability to automatically provision servers and migrate applications from one virtual server to another, Daniel said.

Virtualization is becoming important to customers as more and more look to consolidate server infrastructures, said Chris Case, president of Sequel Data Systems, an Austin, Texas-based HP-exclusive solution provider.

“Almost every customer is asking about virtualization,” Case said. “We can call on almost any account, ask if the customer is looking at server consolidation, and 75 percent of the time they say yes.”

Sequel already is a VMware solution provider and is in the process of being enterprise-certified, Case said.

Most of the solution provider’s VMware sales are tied to HP’s x86-based or AMD-based blade servers, he said.

While AMD Opteron-based servers running Linux are the hot combination today, Case said Sequel is migrating customers from HP’s Alpha-based servers to Itanium-based Integrity servers, which could present some good opportunities for virtualization technology. “We will be watching to see what HP does with it,” Case said.

Daniel said he expects the initial push from the joint HP-SWsoft agreement to focus on direct sales, but the channel will be a critical part of the sales strategy going forward.

Aside from the SWsoft deal, HP also sells VMware’s server virtualization software.

Quoting from the Asigra official announcement:

Asigra, the technology specialists in agentless distributed backup and recovery software for network computing, today announced that its Televaulting for Enterprises software now supports remote backup for VMware environments, enabling VMware customers to dramatically slash their cost of enterprise data protection with an innovative pricing model, simplified deployment and unmatched functionality under VMware. Televaulting also supports turnkey disaster recovery configurations and server consolidation.

According to Tom Dugan, co-founder, of the VMware Technology Network Group in Philadelphia, PA, “Asigra Televaulting is the only backup application that allows any-to-any data backup and restore in VMware environments, giving users the ability to back up from a server from one vendor and restore the data to hardware from a different vendor. This unmatched VMware backup capability enables unique advantages for Asigra users and service providers.”

Along with its “any-to-any” backup and restore capabilities for VMware, Asigra Televaulting also provides full functionality for backup of live virtual machines, enabling virtual machines to be migrated for dynamic load balancing, zero-downtime maintenance, consolidation of multiple hardware servers onto a single sever with multiple VMware virtual machines, or adding new server or storage hardware to scale performance and/or capacity.

“The level of flexibility provided by Asigra allows eSource to deliver a much more efficient data infrastructure,” said John Williams, director of technical services for eSource, a Pennsylvania-based IT services provider. “This increased efficiency not only improves network performance, but reduces unnecessary capital and operational expense for the customer.

“Asigra Televaulting for Enterprises is an elegant solution to the issue of excessive license costs for large-scale VMware sites,” said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “The combination of a robust backup engine and the capacity-based pricing model makes Asigra an appealing choice for any organization that is dealing with excessive backup/recovery licenses.”

Asigra Televaulting is also the only backup software that allows incremental backups of VMware environments. VMware virtual machine data is typically contained within two files on the host server or workstation. Other backup software is limited to backing up the entire files, including data that hasn’t changed since the last backup session. Asigra allows the backup of only changed data within those two files so that the backup – and restore if required – takes only a matter of minutes.

Additionally, Asigra solves a backup cost problem for VMware customers. Traditional backup software vendors charge a license fee based on the number of servers hosting the backup application. Customers are forced to pay a separate license fee for each VMware virtual machine in use, even though the virtual machines are deployed on a single hardware server.

Asigra eliminates this cost penalty for backup of VMware environments with an agentless architecture and “pay-as-you-grow” pricing structure where customers only pay for the amount of the compressed data capacity they are protecting with Asigra, regardless of the number of VMware virtual machines involved. The agentless Asigra technology makes file-level data protection possible on each Intel server running under VMware, regardless of whether the host operating system is Windows, Linux, Solaris or NetWare. The full range of backup functionality is enabled for each VMware deployment with Asigra, allowing message-level restores for Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and Lotus Notes servers. Asigra Televaulting can also easily and quickly restore data after a decentralized server consolidation into a new virtual infrastructure under VMware.

“The high cost and limited functionality of traditional backup software present roadblocks to reliable data protection for VMware users,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president of Asigra. “Asigra Televaulting eliminates those risks and reduces costs with a highly functional backup solution that is simple to deploy, use and manage even in complex VMware installations.”

Asigra’s Televaulting is a comprehensive software solution that allows businesses to implement distributed data protection featuring grid-based performance and capacity scaling, utility service provisioning, and the ability for advanced WAN optimization techniques including common file elimination and compression that conserves bandwidth and storage by transmitting multiple copies of files only once. Security is hard-coded into the solution to provide AES encryption for data while “in-flight” and “at-rest.”

Televaulting eliminates many backup pain points through technology that is designed for enterprise-wide centralization, built from the ground up to perform on a global level. It is tested and certified compatible by leading infrastructure providers not to take the place of data center backup software, but complement it for multi-site backup and recovery. Business benefits that differentiate Asigra’s offering from other backup solutions include true regulatory compliance, reduction in worldwide IT management expenditures, and compounded reduction of both hardware/software capital and enterprise-wide license costs. Asigra also offers a “pay-as-you-grow” compressed-capacity-based licensing model, allowing users to pay only for storage under management. The initial implementation capacity is based on the amount of compressed data to protect. After that, customers are charged per compressed terabyte of additional storage.

In my last post about Workstation 5.5 I mentioned 3 cool new features coming:

• Full support for 64-bit host and guest OSes
• Experimental support for 2-ways Virtual SMP
• Convertless support for Microsoft VMs

Now VMware opened the new beta build 16325 to everybody and I can talk about the enhanced features and the main new ones:

• Experimental 2-ways Virtual SMP confirmed for any dual-core CPU
  (in this case VMware doesn’t warn about any performance degradation, as they did for HyperThreading CPUs)
• The Virtual Machine Importer is now integrated with VMware Workstation and can import also Symantec LiveState and Ghost images
• Snapshot can now be created and managed by command line interface
  (this means we can start producing backup scripts easily)
• Virtual hardware autodetection is now extended to floppy, sound adapter, parallel and serial port

You can read other release notes here: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/releasenotes_ws55.html

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that customers purchasing the VMware P2V Migrations Jumpstart service will receive the VMware P2V Assistant product for free.

The VMware P2V Migrations Jumpstart service is an on-site consulting workshop that offers customers a proven methodology supported by VMware and its partners to move and consolidate existing physical servers into VMware virtual machines. P2V migrations are ideal for customers involved in server consolidation or legacy migration projects where recreating existing servers is not feasible or practical. The VMware P2V Assistant is an enterprise-class migration tool that lets users migrate existing physical systems ranging from Windows NT 4 to Windows Server 2003 into VMware virtual machines.

“Without VMware, migrating these machines would have taken months to years because we’d have to start from scratch,” said Suraj Dalal, senior systems engineer at Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. “With VMware, it took only hours, and our systems and configurations were preserved as-is. VMware P2V Assistant really makes life so much easier.”

VMware P2V Jumpstart adoption has increased by more than 500% year-over-year through June 2005 . Moreover, the number of VMware VAC partners offering Jumpstart services has increased by 67% since the start of this year, and VMware partners now account for more than 60% of all customer P2V Jumpstarts conducted.

“The success that VMware and VMware’s Global VAC Partners are having with VMware P2V Jumpstart is further evidence that enterprise customers are moving their data centers broadly into VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Jeffrey Engelmann, executive vice president of marketing at VMware. “As more than 10,000 enterprise customers have migrated their server environments into VMware virtual infrastructure, VMware P2V Assistant has become the most effective, well-supported and risk-free way to convert physical servers into virtual machines, thereby benefiting customers with a way to extend the life of critical applications, replacing older hardware with state-of-the-art systems and gain substantial hardware and IT operating cost efficiencies.”

“More enterprise customers are adopting VMware virtual infrastructure than any other solution we offer,” said Mike Strohl, president of Entisys. “A critical component to the successful and efficient deployment of VMware is P2V Assistant, which is the best P2V offering available to customers.”

“VMware’s decision to include a P2V Assistant license at no cost in conjunction with Jumpstart services makes it easier for enterprise customers to pilot and deploy virtual infrastructure,” said Mike Reilly, managing partner at Foedus “A P2V Jumpstart is backed by both VMware and Foedus’ proven services methodology and is something that our customers have and will continue to benefit from.”

For more information on VMware P2V Jumpstart services, visit www.vmware.com/services/consulting.html.

Some of you may remember the russian team Parallels. These guys were hired by the german NetSys GmbH to develop a new server virtualization product to compete with VMware Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC.
The product launched on January 2004 was called TwoOSTwo.

TwoOSTwo lived just 4 months then disappeared without any notice. Few weeks after it reapperead on May 2004 with the new name of SVISTA. Apparently the Parallels team was still developing TwoOSTwo/SVISTA, even without mention on their site.

Now, more than one year later, the Parallels team is back, launching theri last product: Parallels Workstation 2.0.

Features Parallels Workstation 2.0 offers are very similar to ones of TwoOSTwo and SVISTA. Even the release number remember us where their previous works stopped.
Need I to suspect Parallels Workstation 2.0 is a fork of TwoOSTwo or SVISTA?

You can investigate from yourself since the product, actually in beta, is already available for download at this location: http://www.parallels.com/en/download

The VMware MCT Program isn’t dead, even if not widely publicized. Few weeks after the Workstation 5.0 launch the Vmware team sent this email to known Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCT):

Recently we announced the availability of VMware Workstation 5, powerful desktop virtualization software for software developers/testers and IT professionals who want to streamline software development, testing and deployment in their enterprise.

Out of appreciation for your continued support of VMware, we would like to offer you a free upgrade to Workstation 5.

New features and enhancements in Workstation 5 include:

– Multiple snapshot and snapshot management capabilities
– Enhanced multi-tier configuration support (Teams feature)
– Support for selected 64-bit host OSs and 64-bit extended CPUs
– New 32-bit guest and host OS support

To get your free upgrade to Workstation 5, please do the following:

1. Go to the VMware web store at http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore.
Under Workstation 5 Upgrades, click the “Upgrade Now” button.

2. Enter your current Workstation serial number- most likely; this will be the serial number you received when you were originally approved for a free VMware Workstation. Be sure to select that you would like the Electronic Download Distribution for the product. Click “Continue”, and proceed to checkout.

3. At checkout, enter your discount code XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX and click the “Update Cart” button to receive your free upgrade.

Please note that I masked the discount code cause I’m not sure if it’s individual. If I eventually discover that the code is unique I’ll update this post.

If any MCT is interested I strongly suggest you to wait till Workstation 5.5 is released.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that VMware Workstation 5, the fifth generation of its powerful desktop virtualization software, received three prestigious awards within the first three months of being released: eWEEK Labs Analyst’s Choice award, PC Magazine Editors’ Choice award and Redmond Magazine’s Most Valuable Product award.

For more than six years, millions have been using VMware Workstation to accelerate software development, testing and deployment and increase product quality. With Workstation, enterprises are able to create a library of virtual machines for x86 operating systems including Windows, Linux, Netware and Solaris x86 that resemble production environments. These virtual machines can then be rapidly provisioned to developers and QA teams so they spend more time developing and testing software and less time configuring the required environment.

VMware Workstation 5 received the eWEEK Labs excellent ratings for its ease of use, feature set and interoperability. eWEEK Labs Senior Writer Anne Chen wrote: “In eWEEK Labs’ tests, VMware Workstation 5 provided a solid platform on which to run multiple operating systems, especially with its marked improvements in memory management. We appreciated the new features, such as the ability to take multiple snapshots, and improvements, such as easier duplication of existing virtual machines.”

Chen continued: “In tests, VMware Workstation 5 showed it would be a good fit for organizations looking to run multiple operating systems on a single machine. By doing so, IT managers can increase productivity while lowering costs for tasks such as software development and testing, technical support and training.”

PC Magazine Labs Lead Analyst Neil J. Rubenking wrote: “A developer who needs to test products under different platforms, a support specialist who must duplicate the caller’s configuration, a software tester who wants to start each test with an identical configuration-all can benefit from VMware Workstation. Version 5 adds some highly noteworthy new features and performance enhancements.”

Redmond Magazine Contributor Jeremy Moskowitz wrote: “VMware Workstation 4.5 was already excellent. It was fast, solid and had all the features I needed to get the job done. Version 5 comes replete with a gaggle of essential new tools and some whiz-bang features.”

Moskowitz continued: “VMware Workstation 5 is a rising superstar in the virtualization world, and the one to beat on the road to virtual stardom.”

VMware Workstation 5 pushes the envelope with new features that address the needs of enterprises building multi-tier applications. The new features in Workstation 5 combined with memory-sharing technology previously available only in data center-class VMware ESX Server make it possible for enterprises to provision multi-tier applications and simulate real-world deployment scenarios on developer desktops. Enterprises can thus offer unmatched flexibility to their development and QA teams.

“We’re honored to have received such strong endorsements from these respected independent reviewers,” said Karthik Rau, director of product management at VMware. “These awards continue to validate VMware’s technological leadership and commitment to innovation in the virtualization software market.”

Today Novell announced the upcoming release of SuSE Linux 10.0, expected for October.
SuSE Linux 10.0 will embed Xen as the official announcement reports:

…
SUSE Linux 10.0 also will preview select advanced technologies for the Linux enthusiast, such as Xen virtualization and iFolder for file access anywhere, that will be available in future versions of Novell’s enterprise Linux products.
…

Notice the “preview” and “enthisiast” words: Novell seems to advice Xen integration will not be too smooth.

Quoting from XenSource official announcement:

XenSource, the leading provider of enterprise grade virtualization solutions based on the Open Source Xen hypervisor, today demonstrated the industry’s first implementation of a secure hypervisor at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF). The solution is an integration of the Open Source industry standard Xen hypervisor with the market leading Open Source Snort Intrusion Detection System. By embedding security capabilities into the hypervisor, XenSource has given the CIO a powerful new ability to implement the same security policies across the virtualized enterprise, independent of the operating system. Moreover, the hypervisor can ensure that even legacy guests that have not been patched will be protected. Xen can even prevent a compromised virtual machine from attacking other virtual or physical servers in the enterprise by blocking its network traffic.

“Intel is pleased to see companies like XenSource taking the initiative to provide enterprise class security features for virtualized environments,” said Diane Bryant, VP and general manager of Intel’s Server Platform Group. “As hardware and software virtualization solutions continue to evolve, you will see greater synergies between features like Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Active Management Technology and secure virtual machine monitors like XenSource is offering. These types of developments support Intel’s advanced technology roadmap and our vision of providing increased value through platform solutions”

“XenSource is actively working with Xen ecosystem partners to deliver added value virtualization solutions to F100 enterprises,” said Nick Gault, President and CEO of XenSource Inc. “Our customers view XenSource as uniquely capable of supporting their production needs for virtualization of all operating systems. Moreover, adoption of a ubiquitous Open Source virtualization solution has the benefit of delivering dramatic new benefits in security and manageability to the enterprise. ”

“We’ve heard a lot about open hypervisors recently,” said Simon Crosby, VP Strategy for XenSource, “but this demonstration shows how third party ISV solutions such as firewalls, virus scanners and intrusion prevention can be quickly and easily integrated into the hypervisor to deliver important security benefits to the enterprise. By adopting an open industry standard for virtualization, the Xen ecosystem is delivering benefits that closed source, proprietary hypervisors never could.“

The demonstration shows how a security feature set embedded in the I/O path on the Xen hypervisor successfully prevents a VM that has not yet been patched to remove a security vulnerability from being compromised. When the security capabilities in the hypervisor are turned off, the vulnerable guest, a hosted on-line stock trading application, is quickly overcome by standard attack tools, and compromised. The security policies in the hypervisor are managed consistently across all servers, and apply to all guest operating systems, including Windows and Linux.

This is a great news! Snort is a point of reference in the intrusion detection market and its adoption at hypervisor level can add a fundamental security level to any virtual environment IT manager should build in any case.
Snort can intercept incoming threats like exploits and viruses, alerting or even blocking them.

Now I expect to see soon an honeypot engine integration in Xen so when Snort detects an incoming attack it can be redirected to the honeypot virtual machine.

Update: I wonder what will happen of this project now that SourceFire has been acquired by Check Point…