Well, Microsoft is going to launch at least one new product during its GLOBAL LAUNCH WAVE! As reported by yours truly yesterday, Windows Server 2008, formerly Longhorn, was
RTMed, which means it should be available by the Feb. 27 kickoff date. And did you notice my understated sarcasm with the all caps? It's hard to call something a "Launch Wave" when a total of one product is being released. I guess that's why they replaced the "Launch Wave" hyperbole with the el-lame-o slogan
"Heroes Happen Here".
So, on Feb. 27, they'll announce the existence of three products: Windows 2008, Visual Studio 2008 (released last year) and SQL Server 2008, which was pushed back to much later this year. One has already shipped and one won't be available for months. Kinda lessens the excitement, doesn't it?
On the other hand, Windows 2008 is exciting, for a number of reasons. For my money, the two coolest features are Server Core and the beta version of Hyper-V. Server Core is Microsoft's first effort to control feature bloat, allowing you to install a pared-down version of the OS with only the specific functionality you need. Linux, of course, has offered this ability for years; nice to see Microsoft finally catch up.
And then there's Hyper-V. Contrary to some media reporting out there, Hyper-V is not based on the Xen open source hypervisor; it is a proprietary Microsoft hypervisor from the ground up. But it will interoperate well with Xen, by all accounts. I haven't used it yet, but we will have an in-depth review in our inaugural issue of the magazine. Look for it.
If you're using Hyper-V, I'd love to hear from you on what you think about it. Especially if you're also using another hypervisor.
Posted by Keith Ward on 02/05/2008 at 12:48 PM1 comments
Now comes our first detour off the virtualization path. As I mentioned in my first-ever blog entry, this is mostly about virtualization, but not all.
If you hate jazz, don't waste any more time reading this. If you love jazz, welcome, my friend! This list will be nothing new to you. If you're just getting into jazz, I wanted to give you a list of my favorite albums, and something to get you started on your own jazz journey. So now, I hereby offer my first bloglist: Keith's Top 5 jazz albums of all time.
1. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis. Generally regarded as the greatest jazz album of all time -- with good reason, I might add. Miles was, is, and always will be, the best. Sorry, no arguments allowed. Favorite song: Freddie Freeloader.
2. 'Round About Midnight, Miles Davis. Notice a trend here? Just a hairs-breadth below Blue, but that's not exactly an insult. Davis, Coltrane, Garland (Red, not Judy), Chambers, Philly Joe Jones. What's not to love? Favorite song: 'Round Midnight.
3. Straight, No Chaser, Thelonius Monk. Monk and Duke Ellington are IMHO the two greatest jazz composers ever. Monk's complexity was astonishing. Favorite song: Straight, No Chaser.
4. Time Out, Dave Brubeck. Founder of 'West Coast' jazz. One of the great jazz drummers in Joe Morello, and the most famous jazz song of all time in Take 5. Hey, there's a reason my column on the back page of the print mag is called Take 5. Favorite song: Take 5. Duh.
5. Jazz at Massey Hall. The greatest instrumentalists of the bop era -- Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus -- jam out in this extraordinary live session. Favorite song: A Night In Tunisia.
Remember that this is only a starter list, and only reflects my tastes. It killed me to leave out albums from the likes of Art Blakey, the Duke, Count Basie, Clifford Brown and others, but you've gotta cut off the list somewhere.
One other note: a great way to pique a child's interest in jazz is to fire up Joe Cool's Blues, an album of Peanuts music from the Marsalis family. Kids will instantly recognize the main Peanuts theme. From there, you can lead them into more exploration of this incredible field of music.
To answer the inevitable question: Where's Coltrane's A Love Supreme? Great album, but not one of my top 5. I must admit, I don't listen to it nearly as much as Blakey, Davis, Ellington or Monk. Maybe that says something bad about me.
Posted by Keith Ward on 01/29/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Are you a Xen developer with "deep open source experience" and "low level C programming" skills? Do you have a desire to start getting paid mega-bucks for your vast skills? Yes? Then VMware
wants you! You might have what it takes to join the Core Technology Group. The world could be your oyster, whatever that means!
Maybe "Tom M" will even interview you!
Posted by Keith Ward on 01/24/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Had a briefing this morning with
Veeam Software, a startup that focuses on extending the functionality of VMware in a number of ways. They have products that improve on VirtualCenter's reporting, monitoring, configuration and (coming soon) backup capabilities. The company, led by legendary Russian entrepreneur Ratmir Timashev, is coming out with a host of new product versions, along with new products, in 2008.
One of the coolest things about this job is that most of these companies are brand new, with brand-new products (aside: kind of strange wording, isn't it? Ever hear of a "brand-old" product?). My boss Doug Barney put it really well when he said that they're really "inventions." It's not like coming out with a new database app; many of the products I've taken briefings on, and have been reading about, have never been seen before, will do things that have never been done before.
Look at what Xsigo's doing with I/O virtualization, as another example. If you're an IT admin, wouldn't you love to have one or two cables coming out of your ESX server, rather than 10? It's truly a brave new world.
Posted by Keith Ward on 01/24/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Welcome to this historic moment, and congratulations. You are reading the first-ever blog entry for
VirtualizationReview.com! OK, maybe not so historic, but pretty doggone cool, wouldn't you say? No? OK, then how about something else to waste your time with, rather than actually, you know, working. Word!
I'm Keith Ward, editor of Virtualization Review magazine, quite literally (as I write this in late January 2008) the only print publication dedicated solely to coverage of IT virtualization. And this is my blog.
The blog will cover the virtualization space, and whatever else I feel like writing about. That is to say, I'll be concentrating on virtualization-related stuff, but I'll also take (perhaps frequent) detours into other stuff that interests me. Could be what Microsoft's doing with Windows Server 2008. Could be airplanes. Could be jazz. Could be basketball, or what college my 16-year-old daughter will be visiting next as she tries to decide where to go.
In other words, this is, like jazz, free flowing, improvisational and unpredictable. I'll probably be posting often, so come on back now, y'hear?
Now for just a little bit of virtualization-related stuff. As you're probably aware, there's a lot of confusion about virtualization; definitions are blurred, and it's often hard to grasp exactly what is being virtualized where when you're reading about a new product. One of the best quickie resources I've seen for clarifying the virtualization stack comes from Dan Kusnetzky, principal analyst and president of Kusnetzky Group, a consultancy that does a lot of virtualization-related work. Dan does a terrific job of separating out the various layers of the virtualization stack in a blog post here. It's a good place to start if you're looking to sort out the confusion.
Posted by Keith Ward on 01/23/2008 at 12:48 PM7 comments
I really think this whole issue about Windows Update, that I
reported on yesterday, is being overblown. At first, I too was flabbergasted that Microsoft would update anything on a user's computer without notifying or asking permission of said user. The initial press reports had the same amazed tone. But after talking with Shavlik's Eric Schultze, who knows a lot about this stuff, and reading Nate Clinton's explanation, I'm persuaded that it really isn't that big a deal.
Yes, Microsoft should have said something about it. But I'm fully convinced it wasn't nefarious activity on their part. And it makes sense if you think about it -- how is Microsoft supposed to keep you updated about its own update software? It needs the update so that updates work properly. Whoa -- better not think about this too hard.
Also, Microsoft has nothing to gain by surreptitiously updating computers; just look at the negative feedback from this one episode alone, and you can see what would happen if a large-scale campaign of unauthorized updates was going on. I'm convinced it's a communication lapse, nothing more.
Besides, the real spies are in Massachussetts. I'll be watching closely when my beloved boys travel to Foxboro on Oct. 28.
Posted on 09/14/2007 at 12:48 PM0 comments
It just feels good to have another reason to hate
"Clippy," doesn't it?
Posted on 09/14/2007 at 12:48 PM7 comments
I use a 17" MacBook Pro (2GB, Intel Dual Core, OS 10.4.10) as my main work computer. I'm having ginormous problems getting this thing to work with my VPN so I can get to corporate e-mail. I keep getting an "Error 51 cannot connect to the vpn subsystem with the Cisco VPN client..." message. Thus, I have to use Outlook Web Access to get my e-mail. OWA is OK for when you're on the road and all, but trying to use it day-to-day for e-mail is a fate worse than death.
Suggestions welcome, encouraged, demanded, begging on my hands and knees for, before I go ballistic and start looking for small animals to kill. I'm here.
Posted on 09/14/2007 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Uncle Walt has
registered his verdict on "user-friendly" desktop Linux -- the Ubuntu distro -- and finds it wanting for the average user.
The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, the planet's most influential personal technology columnist, says that the OS is too quirky right now. He pointed to a lack of drivers for various audio/visual functionality as a big sore spot, along with general flaky behavior, as when his volume control went MIA every time his review Dell laptop woke from sleep.
There's no doubt, however, that Linux is getting more average-user friendly, and hopefully this largely negative review will convince Ubuntu developers to keep at it.
(Side note: could the video of Mossberg be ANY MORE BORING? It's just Uncle Walt talking into the camera. No cutaways of the OS in action, nothing to break up the monotony of his droning on. C'mon, WSJ: you've got the funds to do better than that. Hint, hint: pretty soon, we will be doing better than that.)
Posted by Keith Ward on 09/14/2007 at 12:48 PM6 comments