Microsoft Tests Virtualization Interop

The products -- Citrix XenServer, Novell XEN Virtual Server and Sun xVM -- were installed, along with Hyper-V RC1, on servers in the Microsoft Partner lab. Of course, the notable omission here is VMware. That makes sense for competitive purposes, since Microsoft and Citrix have ganged up against VMware. For users of VMware who would like to know if they can use pieces of Hyper-V or Xen in their environments, it won't have much value.

Here's what they're trying to determine, according to the entry:

"In this way we will be able to mix and match the different virtualization environments to test cross-platform interoperability from both virtualization and application point of view."

Note also that all of those products use the Xen hypervisor, but some other major Xen vendors, including Virtual Iron and Red Hat, aren't included. Quite frankly, I have no idea if that means anything or not. Any readers with insight into the Alliance, please contact me and provide some context.

In any event, it will be interesting to read about the results coming out of the tests. Microsoft said the future will bring further tests with more complexity.

Posted by Keith Ward on 06/04/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments

How-To Column Debuts

He's also an outstanding writer. It's rare to find the combination of technical expertise and writing skills that Chris brings to the table. When you find those people, you hold on to them.

Starting in May, Chris has an exclusive column on our Web site. When I approached him about writing for the Web, I told him I was looking for "hands-on" coverage of a topic.

Chris said that he'd love to do a column like that, with one caveat: he didn't want to write a column on how to install ESX, for example. The kind of stuff you can find in the manual doesn't interest him as far as topics go. "I like to do different kind of things," he told me. As an editor, that's music to my ears. "You da man!" was my approximate response.

That first column is up, and it's a doozy. It shows you, step by step, how to run XenServer 4.1 from a USB drive. Why would you want to do this? Here's one good reason, from Chris' column:

"This is useful if you are testing multiple hypervisor solutions and do not want to multi-boot the hypervisors on local server storage."

Makes sense to me. It gives you a way to evaluate XenServer as well, since XenServer Express Edition is free (a great, great decision by Citrix, by the way. You may recall that Express Edition was a suprise product, a new SKU when XenServer 4.1 was released.)

I think you'll get a lot out of Chris' how-to columns. Look for them twice per month, starting in June.

Posted by Keith Ward on 06/02/2008 at 12:48 PM1 comments

It's Official: Hands Off of Xen

In a nutshell, Citrix says "The name Xen is ours. Hands off." Here is the key sentence (emphasis in the original):

"All uses of the Xen Marks are reviewable by Citrix who, acting in the interests of the Xen community and in the interests of protecting the value of the Xen Marks themselves, expressly reserves the right to revoke permission to use the Xen Marks."

Again, it's amusing to use language like "acting in the interests of the Xen community." If you're in the non-commercial, open source Xen community (developers and users both), do you feel like it's in your interests? Maybe so -- perhaps you'll feel more comfortable using a Xen-branded product knowing it's been developed (or at least tested and released) by Citrix, rather than some open source Xen effort with code from who knows where. It will cause a differentiation in that regard, and that could be a good thing.

I have a hunch, however, that if you gave veritaserum, the truth-forcing potion from the "Harry Potter" books, to Citrix execs, and had them rewrite that phrase, it might come out a little different. Something like the following:

"All uses of the Xen Marks are reviewable by Citrix who, acting in the interests of Citrix alone and Citrix' profit margin, expressly reserves the right to revoke permission to use the Xen Marks."

Finally, as suspected, you'll be in trouble for using Xen at the front of a name. Here's what I wrote earlier:

"It seems that naming conventions with "Xen" at the beginning are the ones that will be targeted. Thus, you can develop products around Xen all you want. Just don't call them "XenSomethingOrOther" -- that will likely bring the courier to your door with a certified letter."

Here's what Citrix says:

"However, because of a desire to avoid confusing customers, and to preserve the Xen Marks for all community members going forward, no other commercial or non-commercial software products can be called "Xen_____," (or any other similar appellation) without the express written permission of Citrix."

Hey, it's nice to occassionally be right with my predictions! In my previous blog, I asked for your thoughts on this, and didn't get any responses. Does this mean you don't care one way or another? Tell me now.

Posted by Keith Ward on 06/02/2008 at 12:48 PM5 comments

Aternity: The Value of User-Centric Monitoring

One thing I don't hear as much about is the end user experience. All this virtualization technology is extremely cool from a geek's point of view, but ultimately, IT's primary job is to keep users happy. That's the philosophy behind an intriguing 2005 startup called Aternity. Their product, Frontline Performance Intelligence, sees the network from the user's point of view, rather than being datacenter-centric.

For example, let's say a group of users in your Boise branch are having problems with Outlook. Since Frontline Performance Intelligence is monitoring application and desktop performance (for instance, how long it takes to open apps, how long it's taking to send and receive e-mail, and so on), it knows right away that there's a problem, and alerts the help desk -- maybe even before the calls start flooding in. Its analytics are already at work, trying to determine the root of the problem. Ah, it looks like an Exchange Server misconfiguration is the culprit. The help desk springs into action and solves the problem, rather than spending a half hour, hour or more researching the issue.

Pretty cool, huh?

I haven't seen Frontline Performance Intelligence in action, but I love the concept and different way of looking at things the company takes. Definitely worth watching.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/30/2008 at 12:48 PM5 comments

This Is Not a XenBlog Entry

Citrix has decided to clamp down on what it calls "widespread and unregulated use" of the Xen trademark. Naturally, this is to protect the general public as well as Citrix. From a blog posting by Stephen Spector, Senior Program Manager of Xen.org:

"This is for the benefit of all those in the Xen community who distribute and contribute to the open source project, and not just for the benefit of Citrix."

All those in the Xen development community who believe that, please raise your hands. OK, I see one guy, way in the back, with his hand halfway up. Glad we got that settled!

Sorry about the heavy sarcasm, but it's hard not to be cynical about this. Whenever a company says "hey, it's for everyone's benefit, not just ours," I get the same reaction as when a ball player leaves one team for another that dumps a truckload of cash on his doorstep and says "It's not about the money." Of course it's about the money. And it's hard to believe that non-Citrix Xen developers feel greatly benefited now that Citrix has decided to tighten up its trademark policy.

A little background for the Xen uninitiated (more detail is available here.) Xen is the name of an open source hypervisor. Its main project, XenSource, was bought last year by Citrix for $500 million. XenSource no longer exists as a brand; it's now the commercial product XenServer (the latest version of which is 4.1). However, development around open source Xen continues; the main Web site is Xen.org. The project is now part of the Citrix empire, but operates autonomously, with its own Advisory Board, which determines trademark policy among other functions.

Commercial Xen, which are products developed by Citrix, include XenApp, XenDesktop, the aforementioned XenServer and so on. It seems that naming conventions with "Xen" at the beginning are the ones that will be targeted. Thus, you can develop products around Xen all you want. Just don't call them "XenSomethingOrOther" -- that will likely bring the courier to your door with a certified letter.

Citrix is spending many, many millions of dollars developing a comprehensive suite of virtualization products, and it makes good business sense to protect its brand. It's also important to point out that Citrix has put a lot of resources into Xen.org, which weren't available before.

I just wish it had decided on a different name than Xen as the centerpiece of that brand, since Xen is still a vibrant open source project, and Citrix looks like it will continue to appropriate that name.

Do you like this direction in the Xen name? If you're a developer, is this no big deal? Are you concerned that the name "Xen" will eventually be wholly owned by Citrix, and the open source hypervisor will have to adopt a new name? Or is this much ado about nothing? Tell me.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/27/2008 at 12:48 PM3 comments

Virtualization Jobs: Hot To The Touch

A new report from tech job site Dice.com states that jobs requiring VMware experience are up 40 percent in six months, with more than 1,500 postings. "Right now, only a handful of jobs call for Hyper-V knowledge, but we'll be watching to see if demand for this skill grows once the product is released," says Dice executive Tom Silver in the report (hat tip, Alessandro).

For some reason (likely a general lack of subject knowledge), Silver left out Xen. My search this morning found 68 jobs that ask for Xen experience, almost 10 times the number calling for Hyper-V skills (just seven).

A Dice news story from last December discusses the exploding market:

"The advantages virtualization delivers are simply too compelling for administrators and CIOs to ignore. As the technology continues to integrate itself into all aspects of IT infrastructures, the need for professionals who understand the technology will only increase. For those willing to embrace a technology that is rapidly evolving, the opportunities are there for the taking."

Sounds about right to me. Those figures are only going to increase in the future, so it would behoove admins to work with virtualization as often as possible. In addition, we're starting to see a rise in certification offerings from the big vendors. VMware, for instance just announced a new, high-level certification, the Certified Design Expert (VCDX) on VMware Infrastructure 3. Cerfitication-crazed Microsoft will certainly have certifications around Hyper-V (and likely around virtualization in general), and Citrix has plenty as well.

My theory on certifications is that they have value as long as they come after experience. In other words, work with a product for months or years before getting certified. If you reverse the order, you run a significant risk of being seen as a poser who can pass tests but not do jack in the real world. I have experience in this, in case you're wondering. I've been an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) on Windows NT and Windows Server 2000. Although I had the title, and some experience in IT (with NT, as an application specialist for a very large media company), my Windows 2000 cert was purely paper, as by that time I'd gone back into journalism, and got the credential at a boot camp for the story referenced earlier.

A certification with relevant experience is a potent combination, and will likely give you an edge in your job hunt. And uber-geeks can always use a couple of extra letters after their name, right?

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/22/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments

Hyper-V Moves to RC1

RC2, according to Microsoft, is feature complete. The upgrades are very minor in nature. It includes support for an older OS, Windows Server 2004 SP4, along with better mouse integration with some Linux installations, and a streamlined install process for Windows Server 2008 Integration Components. One thing to note: If you're also using the first beta of Microsoft's Virtual Machine Manager, which was released late last month, you don't want to upgrade to Hyper-V RC1 (the previous release was RC0), as they're incompatible.

The first Hyper-V RC came out March 19, making it almost exactly two months between updates. The initial beta surprised industry watchers when it came out last December, several months ahead of projections.

For those wondering about the stability and performance potential of Hyper-V, it's interesting to see that two important subsections of Microsoft's Web site, MSDN and TechNet, are running on Hyper-V. An entry on the Windows Virtualization Team Blog gives some insight on the process. From the blog:

"Our production testing began in early February 2008, when we installed the Hyper-V role on two physical servers, with each hosting three VMs running MSDN. Production load on these six VMs progressed from a cautious 1 percent to 20 percent very quickly and smoothly. During the next six weeks, we tested various amounts of load and VM combinations to better understand the performance characteristics and scalability of the product and the site. MSDN was also deployed directly onto matching physical servers to compare VMs against physical performance, scale, and stability with the same load characteristics.

In an effort to push the site and Hyper-V to their performance limits, we replayed production IIS logs by using the Web Capacity Analysis Tool (WCAT) to understand the upper range performance and scale characteristics."

Very cool stuff. Microsoft is well known for dogfooding (is that a word?) its own stuff, and it looks like Hyper-V has exceeded expectations so far. How many Microsoft products can make that claim?

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/20/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments

Citrix Releases XenDesktop

XenDesktop is Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure product, and a direct competitor to VMware's VDI. Other companies such as HP, Sun and Microsoft all have, or are developing, VDI solutions, but the industry leader is clearly VMware VDI.

It's been known for a long time that XenDesktop was coming. There is some new news, however; mainly that there are some additional versions not anticipated, including a free one. It's the Express Edition, and can handle up to 10 users. Also announced were new Enterprise and Platinum editions, which include a licensed version of XenApp in the bundle. Platinum Edition, according the Citrix press release, "... adds extensive optimization, security, monitoring and end user support benefits." The specific technologies weren't detailed, however. (For the differences between desktop virtualization, application virtualization and PC virtualization, see my column here.)

XenDesktop, as I see it, is the first clear, major competitor to VMware VDI. The products mentioned earlier from HP and Sun aren't promoted that heavily from the companies, which still focus more on server virtualization. The next big play is likely to be from Microsoft, and Citrix is getting out ahead of Redmond's offering by at least a few months (the final release of Hyper-V is still looking like an August deliverable).

Given how closely Citrix and Microsoft are promoting their virtualization interoperability, though, don't be surprised to see a lot of complementary technologies between the two VDI offerings. Do expect to see all their guns aimed at VMware, which has been their M.O. thus far. They feel, probably with a lot of justification, that VMware is so strong here that combining forces is necessary.

I love the idea of the Express Edition. Not only does it give SMBs a real VDI product, but it gives enterprises something they can test on a small scale before rolling out in a big way. And admins are more likely to do that, given its price tag. As Homer Simpson once said: "No payments per month? Yeah, I think we can swing that!"

(Side note: for a great description of the differences between VDI and more traditional approaches like Terminal Services, see Brian Madden's article here.)

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/20/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments

Virtualization Book Recommendations - Not

Why? Not because they're poorly written or incomplete, but rather because both are badly out of date. "Best...Book Period", while with a more recent publication date of November 2007, was the more disappointing of the two. The main reason is that a huge section of the book discusses Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. VS 2005 has been largely obsoleted by Hyper-V, meaning that almost a third of the book is useless for most of us. If you're still using VS 2005 (which just got an update), and will continue to do so, it's probably worth picking up. But I was hopeful that a book published at about the same time Hyper-V was released to beta would have more information about the new, and less about the old.

For the VMware-specific book, I should have checked the publication date more closely. After all, 2005 is the Jurassic period for virtualization. I have to say that I'm a little surprised Syngress, the publisher, would still be selling something so out-of-date. Take the third page of the book, for example. The authors note that by "the second half of 2005", ESX will support four-way virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing. You don't say!

Again, this is not a knock against the authors, their technical knowledge or writing skills. It also is very, very hard to keep current with virtualization, given how quickly the technology is changing; I don't envy book publishers in this space.

Maybe with revised editions, the books would be of more value. But if you're looking for books covering this space, I'd suggest looking elsewhere, at least until more current versions are available. Last week, I ordered "Mastering VMware Infrastructure 3" from Sybex. It was published this year, and covers the latest edition of VI. I'll report back on this after I've gone through it.

What books have you relied on to educate you on virtualization? What do you use as sourcebooks? Let me know.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/19/2008 at 12:48 PM6 comments

Virtual Server 2005, Virtual PC Updated

The main reason for the releases appear to be adding support for more OSes. They both support three Windows Vista versions -- Ultimate, Business and Enterprise -- and Windows XP with the just-released (and headache-inducing) Service Pack 3. They also both now support Windows Server 2008 Standard, but Virtual Server goes much beyond with its server OS support, adding support for WS 2008 Core, WS 2008 Datacenter, WS 2008 Enterprise and WS 2008 Small Business Server.

The announcements, while not a surprise, were also barely a blip on Microsoft's radar. Microsoft's Virtual PC blogger, Ben Armstrong, released the information; as of Friday morning, it wasn't even on the Virtualization Team Blog. That may not have any significance, but it may also be an indicator of how quickly Hyper-V has eclipsed Virtual Server on Microsoft's virtualization totem pole.

Although Virtual Server 2005 is in limited use, it still does have a user base. It's good that Microsoft isn't forgetting them completely, but if I were a heavy Virtual Server user, I'd be wondering how much longer my infrastructure's going to be supported. If you're in that category, it would be wise to be making plans to your switch to Hyper-V now (assuming you want to stick with Redmond solutions.) That, of course, means planning how quickly to decommission all your 32-bit servers, as Hyper-V only runs on x64 boxes.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/16/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments

A Satisfied Virtual Iron Customer

"We deployed VI in January and migrated 12 of our servers onto the platform. In the past four months, each node has locked up once, taking the virtualized servers on it down, as well, with no automatic move to a different node - VI is still trying to figure out what happened.. Aside from that, I have been very pleased, and certainly appreciate the much lower price tag."

I followed up with Tanya and asked if the lockups resulted in any lost data. Here's what she said:

"No, we didn't lose anything except uptime. As soon as I identified that a node was down, I was able to migrate the VMs to a different node and bring them right up. I haven't lost any data; I think my issues are actually with the Virtual Manager, but that is by no means an expert opinion."

We have a review of three commercial server consolidation products -- VMware ESX, Virtual Iron and XenServer (Citrix) -- coming up in our May/June issue. Our reviewer, Peter Varhol, liked VI, saying it does about 80 percent of what VMware does, for less money (get a free subscription here).

It sounds like Tanya's happy with her VI environment. I'd love to post more comments from readers about their experiences with their virtualization solutions. Please e-mail me and tell me your story.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/15/2008 at 12:48 PM5 comments

Through Thick and ThinApp

And, or course, the virtualization blogosphere is tackling the name change: did VMware deliberately choose a name similar to arch-nemesis Citrix's app virtualization product, called XenApp? Some, namely the always-entertaining and informative Brian Madden, are yawning.

I tend to lean toward Brian's point of view, for the most part. I think it's much more likely that VMware is calling it ThinApp because it was formerly called Thinstall, not because they're trying to trade on any buzz created by Citrix's naming scheme.

I will disagree with Brian on one aspect. I think he's a little too dismissive of XenApp's chances in the market. Writes Brian:

"frankly VMware could call this thing "NoApp" and it would still be faster and way easier to use than Citrix's XenApp streaming capability. And really, how much does this name change cost VMware to "copy" Citrix? I'll bet that it's a lot less than $500 million! A thousand bucks says the name ThinApp is around longer than XenApp."

I can't comment on how well ThinApp works vs. XenApp, since I haven't used either product; I'll defer to Brian's voluminous knowledge on this. But I'd be careful before burying Citrix. For one thing, they should know a lot more about the basics of application delivery than VMware -- insight hard-earned from years of product development. That's a great store of knowledge to leverage. As such, I would expect them to quickly catch up, functionality- and usage-wise, to ThinApp (no guarantee of this, of course, especially if XenApp is as far behind as Brian implies.)

But Citrix isn't some Johnny-come-lately. Like VMware, they have a lot of smart, creative people over there. They also have tons of resources to throw at this, and you can be assured they'll be going full out. As we see again, that $500 million purchase (of XenSource by Citrix last year) is looking like the best thing that could have happened to Xen.

A beta 2 release of ThinApp (which is still going by its codename, North Star, on WMware's Website) is available here.

Posted by Keith Ward on 05/12/2008 at 12:48 PM4 comments