Calling All Vendors

Products are broken out by category. Find the best fit, and tell us about your offering. The Guide is coming out in November, so time's a-wastin'. I would like this to be as complete as possible, and a one-stop resource for readers. To make it that, we need your help.

Go here for the form.

Posted by Keith Ward on 10/03/2008 at 12:48 PM1 comments

Coming Soon: Sept./Oct. Issue of Virtualization Review

Our cover story is about VMware, and where the company goes next. With the extraordinary amount of management turnover, how will it respond? Will the virtualization leader stay that way, or is it hearing footsteps from Microsoft, Citrix, Novell, Sun, Red Hat et al.? Is Paul Maritz the right person for the job? We'll try and answer those questions.

In another feature, Executive Editor Tom Valovic examines in detail the virtual desktop infrastructure segment of the virtualization industry. There's lots of smoke surrounding the technology, also known as hosted desktop; how much fire is there? Tom looks at those issues and surveys the key players.

Yours truly looks at Microsoft's virtualization offensive from a management point of view. Why should you consider Redmond's solutions? What separates its offerings from the competition? I take on those questions.

Freelancer Rick Vanover did a yeoman's job reviewing three virtualization planning products, giving the pros and cons of each. Included in his product roundup are CiRBA's Data Center Intelligence, Novell's PowerRecon, and VMware's Capacity Planner.

We also have our usual columns from Virtual Advisor Chris Wolf, who discusses the strengths and weaknesses of various virtual storage options, and Virtual Architect Greg Wolf, who does some myth busting about Hyper-V.

We also have full coverage of VMworld, Microsoft's recent announcements about Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager, Oracle's Virtualization play, Cisco's virtual strategy and more. Whew! Sounds like an issue stuffed as full of goodness as a Thanksgiving turkey.

I hope you're all enjoying the print magazine (as well as the Web site, of course). I wanted to pass along one very nice compliment I got at VMworld about our last issue (about planning a virtual environment). One attendee said he opened the magazine, started reading through it, and grabbed a highlighter and started marking it up; ";You know a magazine is good when you start doing that,"; he said to me. As an editor, you can't get higher praise than that. I hope you will all continue to pass along compliments, and even more importantly, suggestions as to how we can make Virtualization Review magazine even better. I'm listening.

Posted by Keith Ward on 10/02/2008 at 12:48 PM5 comments

Hyper-V Server Arrives

Anyway, Microsoft made a couple of announcements yesterday that I had to mention. First is that Hyper-V Server is available now. Go here. Microsoft made it available yesterday afternoon, less than a month after the official announcement last Sept. 8. Hyper-V Server is a standalone hypervisor, meaning that you don't need to have Windows Server 2008 to get it, as is the case with Hyper-V.

Some requirements you'll need to keep in mind before downloading:

• It's still 64-bit only
• It requires virtualization-aware CPUs from Intel and AMD
• You can't manage it from a Windows XP machine; you'll need Vista SP1. On the server side, it can be managed from Hyper-V Manager in Windows 2008 or System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

Speaking of VMM 2008 (which is a subset of System Center), it is not available yet in finished form. An e-mail from Microsoft yesterday said it will be released to manufacturing (RTM) "by the end of October." I was a little surprised by that; I kinda assumed the two would be released together, since they were announced at the same time. Of course, VMM 2008 is a significantly more complex product, so maybe it's to be expected.

On the other hand, the Sept. 8 announcement made it clear that VMM 2008 would be available within 30 days, which would give Redmond six days from now to get it ready. I don't necessarily think it's a red flag if that deadline isn't hit -- this is Microsoft, after all. Still, it makes one wonder if a snag was encountered. I asked Microsoft officials directly about this when I learned of it at a recent pre-briefing. They indicated nothing was wrong, and things were going according to plan. I'll take their word on it for now; if, however, VMM 2008 slips out of October, I'll get a lot more suspicious.

Posted by Keith Ward on 10/02/2008 at 12:48 PM6 comments

The Next VMworld Already?

VMware announced this morning that VMworld, the gigantic virtualization party, will be heading back to Cannes, France next Feb. 24-26. The first VMworld Europe was held there earlier this year. (Side note: Don't you think your faithful editor has to attend that show? Purely for news-gathering reasons, of course.)

Here's a quote from CEO Paul Maritz from the press release: "Our first VMworld Europe was a defining moment for the company. This event allows customers in one of the most advanced markets in the world, to get their hands on the best virtualization technology on the planet."

Actually, I have to say I wish the VMworld we just finished up was a little more defining. There was lots of vision, with little in the way of specifics. That should probably be expected, given that Maritz still has that new-company smell. The announcement said that at the Cannes show the company will go into more detail about the three main initiatives -- Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS), vCloud and vClient -- unveiled last week. I'm hoping we know a lot more about them before that show.

Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing, told me at the show that all the products to make those visions concrete, shipping technologies will be released next year, giving VMware serious time pressure. Of course, that pressure existed anyway in the form of new competition.

Now the serious work begins, under new management. Maritz was wildly successful at Microsoft; can he bring the same magic to VMware?

In the meantime, I'm interested to hear your impressions of VMworld. What did you like best? Least? What's your impression of the new initiatives? I'll post a feedback blog as soon as I get some good stuff. E-mail me. If you don't want your name used, please let me know; otherwise, I'll assume it's OK to post your first name.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/25/2008 at 12:48 PM3 comments

Cool Stuff on the Floor

Reflex Security, out of Atlanta, is a company we're reviewing in an upcoming issue. I found out something very interesting from CTO and founder Hezi Moore. Reflex was the very first virtual appliance for VMware. As in the first, ever. It's a crowded marketplace now, but Reflex was there first. Anyway, its virtual security appliance has obviously been around a long time (in virtualization-industry years). One of the cool things the appliance does is "revision control." What that means is that you can see previous versions of what your virtual infrastructure looked like. It's like a snapshot. It allows you to go back in time and see what changes have happened, and may allow you to pinpoint problems based on changes made. Very slick.

San Jose-based Bay Microsystems makes a hardware device that bridges geographically remote datacenters, allowing VMs to be migrated across those datacenters in an almost live fashion. Called Wide Area Virtualization, the solution can deliver throughput of 800MB per second over distances greather than 12,000 miles, according to the company's press release. It sounds much like the cloud computing initiative VMworld execs discussed this week, only it's available right now. There are obvious uses here in disaster recovery and host providers.

One area of virtualization you probably haven't considered is printing. Maybe you should, argues ThinPrint. If you've got a highly distributed environment, with users constantly on the move and using multiple devices, it makes sense to have virtualized printers. It makes for much easier for administrators to have centralized printer management. ThinPrint, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, offers a solution to a problem that many companies have but is often not a high priority.

Hyper9, which I've mentioned briefly once before, gave me a full demo at the show. What immediately struck me was the Google-like searchability. You use the window just like Google to find information about your VMs. Since you already know how to search like that, the learning curve should be pretty shallow. I'm told that Hyper9 will be commercially available in December, and that the company will provide a free version of the product, without any restrictions. That's good news for those of us who like free.

This, of course, is a tiny sample of the vendors on the floor. I was quite impressed with the variety and volume of vendors. A high percentage of the products are cutting-edge, and show the kind of ingenuity I often find among the virtualization crowd. I've been to many of Microsoft's TechEd shows, and I liked this exhibit floor more. So many wicked cool ideas, as my colleagues in Framingham, Mass., might say.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/18/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments

VMworld Wrap: Day 2

The reality is that nothing VMware announced is "new", in the sense that we haven't seen it before. The idea of VDC-OS is to make the entire datacenter -- not just server components like CPU, RAM, and so on -- a big pool of resources, all tied together by this umbrella technology. That includes network and storage components.

There are many companies, of course, that offer storage virtualization, and a number that offer network virtualization as well (and VLANs, as you know, have been around forever). I like the idea of one general coordinating all that, and that's what VDC-OS promises to be. Not new, not earth-shattering stuff. Pretty low on the "sexy" scale. If you think about it, though, VMware has never been a sexy company. It's really an engineering outfit, and even though a new release of VMware Infrastructure is exciting for IT admins and the like, it's not like a new iPhone coming out, or even on the level of the new Chrome browser. Those are things everyone can immediately understand and relate to. Nonetheless, it's a strong step forward, and ultimately moves the bar higher for Microsoft. VMware obviously wants to keep its multi-year technology lead over Redmond, and has done that.

I've talked to lots of VMware employees this week, and many have remarked with chuckles over Microsoft's pledge to have Live Migration available in 2010. "Yes, we're glad they'll have our 2006 technology available by the beginning of the new decade" is the sentiment.

Didn't hit the Las Vegas Speedway event Wednesday night. I had every intention to, but the lack of sleep over the last several days started to catch up with me. I went back to my hotel (Hard Rock), ordered a pizza, dialed up "Iron Man" on the 42-inch HDTV in my room, and had a grand old time until I fell asleep at about 9:30. I did miss going 140 mph in a car, but "Iron Man" and pizza is a pretty good substitute.

One more note about Microsoft: some bloggers have noted that it was giving out $1 poker chips at the show, along with a slogan slamming WMware as being a bad deal. At the Maritz press conference Tuesday, a reporter brought the chip up and asked Maritz about it. He recalled his time in Redmond, when he was the No. 3 guy, and companies would pull the same kinds of cheesy stunts at Microsoft shows. He said he saw it then as a type of "desparate" tactic to get attention, and he still feels that way, even when it's Microsoft doing it. It's hard to disagree with him.

How was your Day 2? Let me know.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/18/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments

Wrapping VMworld, Day 1

- Paul Maritz' keynote, which I wasn't enthused about, still was an important event because it was his first public appearance as the new VMware leader. What I did like were the two question and answer sessions he had -- one with attendees, and one for the press. At those, he answered questions forthrightly. When he didn't know the answer to a question, he didn't try to tap dance around it; he said he didn't know. It's OK to not know things.

- The Venetian Hotel, where the conference is being held, is big. Really, really big. I must've walked five miles today. And the general session room, where the keynotes are held, is cavernous. It looks like you could put more than 10,000 people in there, easy.

A few things I learned, that I didn't know before today:

• VMware, at least for now, won't help you with Hyper-V. "At this point in time, we don't support hypervisors other than our own. We're not religious about that," Maritz said, adding that VMware would consider it if there was enough customer demand.
• Microsoft sees App-V, its application virtualization product, to be more of an opportunity in the market than virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
• VirtualCenter (soon to be vCenter) may one day be available on Linux. "VirtualCenter needs to be platform agnostic," Maritz said during one Q & A session. He wisely gave no timeline.
• VMware is considering making ESX open source. Maritz said "discussions have been held" about the topic.
• VMware's first VMworld, four years ago, had about 1,500 attendees, according to a P.R. rep. This year it has about 15,000. You don't need to be a math genius (which I ain't) to figure out that attendance has increased ten-fold in four years. I think that's a staggering figure, and says volumes about how virtualization has captured the IT public's imagination.

More coming today.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/17/2008 at 12:48 PM3 comments

Notes From the Keynote

Herrod was more animated and more outwardly enthusiastic. He didn't get into any more specifics in terms of products or deliverable dates, but he did talk more about the technology behind VDC-OS, cloud computing and VMware View.

It's worth noting that there was exactly one spontaneous outburst of applause during the two keynotes: it was when Herrod announced that VirtualCenter (now vCenter) had been ported to Linux, in the form of a virtual appliance. I guess it's not a terribly pro-Microsoft crowd. Herrod, in fact, went even further than that, saying vCenter will eventually be available on any device, including my iPhone (something Executive Editor Tom Valovic still doesn't have yet -- right, Tom?)

Other tidbits:

• On one wall was a table with a rack full of headsets. The headsets were translators to Japanese and Chinese. It didn't look like almost any were actually taken. I've heard, though, from VMware PR reps that there are about 90 journalists attending the show, and a large contingent is from overseas.


• I agree absolutely, 100 percent with analyst (and all-around good guy) Dan Kusnetzky's take on the loud and obnoxious music, light show, fog machine -- Fog machine! What is this, Phantom of the Opera? -- etc. that preceded both keynotes. Too much, VMware. Way, way too much.


• More evidence of the age in which we live: a blogging-specific row, containing two tables. Hilarious. Good for the bloggers, I'm sure, but a little strange that they're now a recognized breed (although I guess that includes me, too).

More blogging goodness coming.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/17/2008 at 12:48 PM4 comments

Dissecting VMware's Strategy

The first is the idea of the Virtual Datacenter OS, or VDC-OS. It's a technology that, to put it in Maritz' words, makes your datacenter "one giant computer." Everything is a pool of resources, including CPUs, RAM, services, storage, I/O, network, and so on. In a way, it's similar to what ESX and XenServer from Citrix already do. The new stuff, as far as I can tell, is extending the virtualization beyond the servers and into network, I/O and storage. Those services are already offered by third parties right now, so I don't know if this new architecture will incorporate what those vendors offer, or if it will replace what they're offering.

It should be noted that I'm not sure I fully grasp VDC-OS beyond that point. I've heard the discussion twice now, and continue to grapple with the concept. In a way, it's like the first time I heard a discussion of Microsoft's .NET strategy. This was at Comdex (remember that show?) in 2000. After hearing Microsoft's presentation, I said to myself, "What did I just hear?" I asked a guy sitting near me, who worked for a very large ISP at the time, if he got it. He told me he'd listened to the presentation twice and still had no idea what .NET was about.

I guess I'm fuzzy on it because Maritz offered no specific products to enable VDC-OS. No details on availability. No cost information. No demonstrations of the technology. I'm sure we'll be hearing much more about it soon, but right now that's about all I can give you.

The second of the three new pillars is "vCloud." It's cloud computing with a twist. VMware promises an "internal cloud" that can hook up with external clouds and form a little cloud community. Cloud computing is a buzzword right now, probably even hotter than "virtualization." I'm not sure that you can even have an "internal" cloud; I think of a cloud as services offered by a third party that is remote from users and your internal datacenter.

Again, there wasn't much in the way of details offered in the way of products, pricing or roadmpas, so I don't know what form VMware's implementation will take. Maritz did note that more than 100 cloud operators have signed on to the initiative, so it's creating some excitement among the hosters.

What interested me most was the client aspect. Maritz said, correctly I believe, that "users don't want their lives held hostage by a particular device ... how do we make sure that our environment belongs to us, and not the device?" he asked.

He had an answer, called VMware View. View, the successor to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), will "install application and the environment to an individual." That data and information, Maritz continued, "belongs to an identity, not to a device." And VMware will offer management tools "to help assemble those environments." That means, of course, thick and thin clients, but also PDAs, smart phones and other non-PC form factors.

One advantage he mentioned, that will be welcome news to help desks and system administrators is that View will "take IT out of the business of provisioning laptops."

Given my infatuation with my iPhone, I was intensely interested in hearing about how my "stuff", as George Carlin might say, will follow me around, including being available on my phone. In fact, an iPhone was one of the devices shown on a slide about View's possibilities (a point I made to Tom, as I continue my crusade to get him to pony up for the phone.)

So, that's my snapshot analysis. Does yours differ? Tell me.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/16/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments

What VMware's Maritz Did Not Say

Paul Maritz' keynote this morning wasn't anything we didn't report on before. He basically reiterated all the points VMware released yesterday, which reporters were briefed on last week. What I found more interesting was what he didn't say.

VMware is facing crises from all sides, both inside and out; from Microsoft, from Citrix, Virtual Iron, Red Hat, Sun, HP and all the rest. Stock prices have gone from the mountiantop to the ocean floor in just a few months. Top-level execs are leaving at an alarming rate. Everybody even vaguely familiar with this industry knows these issues.

Yet Maritz completely ignored them. Not a single mention of Microsoft. He alluded to Redmond a couple of times -- once to poke fun at the Seinfeld-Bill Gates commercials. He didn't attempt to compare VMware offerings with their Microsoft counterparts. He didn't mention the financial struggles or executive exodus. He didn't reassure attendees that "hey, we're going through a tough time, but we'll get though it, and come out even stronger on the other side." No real rah-rah cheerleading.

This was obviously a choice. And I can understand the thought behind it. "Let's focus on who, and what, we are." Mentioning those challenges will just remind folks of their problems, when this is supposed to be a big, week-long party (in that way, it's similar to the Democratic and Republican conventions). It seems to me it might have been wiser, however, to attack the doubters and naysayers head-on; to take a strong stance and say how VMware's superior products will crush the upstart competitors.

In all, I found the keynote to be extremely bland. I can't recall one memorable line. Maritz could have juiced the crowd up, or at least have said some provocative things. He did none of that. He could have tried to go for it on fourth down. Instead, he played it safe and punted.

What do you think? Agree or disagree on Maritz' keynote? Let me know.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/16/2008 at 12:48 PM8 comments

Off to Vegas

Keep checking back to stay up-to-date on what's happening. If you e-mail me this week, don't expect a quick answer; sorry about that. My schedule is jam-packed. If you see me around the Venetian, please stop me and say Hi.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/14/2008 at 12:48 PM4 comments

Sun Shines Its Light on Virtualization

xVM Server is the hypervisor, while Ops Center is the management framework. Ops Center manages physical -- and now virtual -- machines, much like Microsoft's Sytem Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, coming within the next 30 days.

Sun is definitely a company to watch here. It has an end-to-end solution offering something that not even VMware, Microsoft and Citrix can: physical servers. If you're a shop tethered to Sun servers, you now have no need to try out ESX, Hyper-V, XenServer, Virtual Iron, Red Hat, and so on. You can, of course, but it's not a necessity anymore. In a way, it's the same reason Microsoft has high hopes for Hyper-V; once you install Windows Server 2008, you have built-in virtualization. And when you drop a new Sun box into your datacenter (or use older servers), you've got virtualization without ever downloading a single byte from the Internet. Are you going to try what comes in the box first, then move on to comparisons? Most likely.

There's another Microsoft parallel here as well. Just as Hyper-V is tuned to work seamlessly with Windows 2008, xVM is tuned to work with Sun hardware. xVM is Xen based, but has been specially modified to work better in a Sun environment than anywhere else (although it can be used with Windows, Unix and Linux, too). That's because many elements of Solaris, Sun's operating system, are folded into xVM (as Editor in Chief Doug Barney reported in a recent issue.)

So now there's more competition for VMware. It's interesting to see a new attack vector against VMware opening up from vendors, which Microsoft's General Manager of Virtualization Mike Neil alludes to in our story:

"VMware is in a tough situation," Neil said, "because they're not an operating system provider. All the operating system providers -- Red Hat, Novell, Sun, Microsoft -- are providing virtualization solutions as part of their offerings. There's no real magic here; everyone is going to have that capability."

Hmm. Is VMware in a tough situation here, without an OS of its own? That's a good question. It has seemed to do pretty well without one thus far, leading me to wonder if this is more FUD than anything. What say you?

In the meantime, Sun has taken its first real steps toward a comprehensive virtualization platform, including a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offering. It will be interesting to see if the company can break out beyond its Sun base and into the more general virtualization market. If you're using xVM and/or Ops Center, let me know your experiences.

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/11/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments