VMworld Europe's News Barrage
VMworld Europe, in Cannes, France, is the focus of the virtualization community this week. While it's 4,400 miles away from me, it still is a source of important news for the virtualization community. Here are some highlights of partner and product announcements thus far at the show:
VMware and Fujitsu-Siemens have
announced that a new version of FlexFrame for SAP will provide a cost-efficient infrastructure for VMware-based environments. Fujitsu-Siemens computers are not marketed in the USA, so the news is more relevant to the attendees from the region.
VDI has taken a big step forward with the announcement of the VMware Client Virtualization Platform. This functionality allows Intel Core 2 and Centrino 2, combined with Intel vPro technology, to run a bare-metal client hypervisor and hook into VMware View. VDI has been a tough puzzle to put together for many organizations from the device perspective; this is definitely something worth checking out.
The vCenter Server Heartbeat feature was announced and will be available in March 2009 to provide continuous availability of the vCenter Server system. This complete solution will maintain the vCenter Server application, as well as the database via replication to another Windows Server. This feature has a relatively high price tag of just under $10,000 for an existing vCenter Server installation, or just under $13,000 for a new purchase of vCenter Server.
Wyse Technology announced that its entire line of devices natively support VMware View for VDI implementations. This is important, as selecting a device is one of the challenges faced in VDI. Wyse devices are nice in their central management by FTP server if configured. (By the way, be sure to check out this free tool to craft the FTP configuration files for Wyse devices -- this is simple and slick.)
VMware released vCenter Server 2.5 update 4. This update provides some fixes as well as enhanced guest OS customizations for Windows Server 2008 and a performance overview plug-in that consolidates CPU, disk, memory and disk information across multiple charts. This may be a precursor to ESX 3.5 Update 4, much to the liking of current customers frustrated by product issues of Update 3.
No discussion would be complete without something pulled out of the cloud. VMware announced the vShield Zones security appliance for comprehensive protection across a diverse computing environment. The security appliance would be a feature to the VDC-OS, and makes an important contribution to Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations for compliance. Like other new products at prior VMworld events, vShield Zones is available for test drive in the hands-on labs at the show.
There is likely more to come from the show across the pond. Please
send me a note with your reaction to these announcements.
Posted by Rick Vanover on 02/25/2009 at 12:47 PM