Scott Lowe
blogged
recently about a problem with VMware's ESX 3.5 Update 3. VMware's
KB article
says that VMs "may unexpectedly reboot when using VMware HA with Virtual Machine Monitoring on ESX 3.5 Update 3".
The problem affect ESX, ESXi (the free, embeddable version of ESX), and VirtualCenter (now known as vCenter). The article does not say that earlier versions were affected. The article was last updated on Dec. 5, and no further updates have appeared.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/18/20082 comments
Free stuff is always good, especially in a recession. But free stuff that makes your virtual networks more secure should make you sit up and take notice.
To that end, Catbird Security today released Compliance Enforcer, a free tool that inspects up to five virtual networks for security issues, and will quarantine suspect virtual machines (VMs), taking them off the network. I had a chat this afternoon with Catbird CEO Michael Berman, who was naturally excited about Enforcer.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/16/20080 comments
I visited the University of Maryland, College Park, yesterday to look at a VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure, also called desktop virtualization and hosted desktop) solution in one of their departments. I'll be writing about it at more length soon, but for now I wanted to include some interesting tidbits.
I met with Jeff Cunningham, director of information systems for the Agricultural and Natural Resources department, who had an entire room set up with Pano Logic devices. Cunningham is a long-timer there, having been around for 25 years now. And he's tremendously excited about the promise of VDI for his department, and for the school.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/11/20082 comments
I'm doing a lot of reporting now for a story for sister publication
Redmond Channel Partner
magazine, and crack Editor in Chief Scott Bekker. As I did in my previous blog on VDI, I wanted to pass along some insights I've stumbled into as related to the channel partner market in virtualization.
- First, server consolidation is still the point of entry for most businesses getting into virtualization. No big surprise there, but it's good to check with actual channel partners out there doing this stuff every day. It's easy to get into a "convential wisdom" mindset and assume things are currently happening the same way they've been happening for the last quarter, six months or two years. Especially in an environment changing as rapidly as virtualization.
- Virtualization services will be a much more lucrative area than selling virtualization products.
- There is a lot of growing interest among companies in VDI. The vendors I've spoken to uniformly agree that more questions than ever are being asked about it, and lots of small pilot tests are starting to occur in organizations of all sizes.
- The TCO and ROI predictions for virtualization are very real (unlike what so often happens in IT). It's also quick.
- There are huge upsell opportunities in virtualization. Once the benefits of server consolidation are seen, it takes no time at all for companies to explore other areas of cost and efficiency savings with virtualization. In other words, if you're a virtualization consultancy or service provider, getting your foot in the door normally leads to that door swinging wide open after a few minutes.
- VMware is still, clearly, the leader of the virtualization pack. While almost all companies are aware of what Microsoft, Citrix, Sun, Red Hat, et al. are doing, VMware continues to be the first choice -- and it's not close at this point.
- The recession -- anecdotally -- hasn't hammered the virtualization community yet. And given the nature of cost-savings associated with it, it may escape a lot of the blows that are likely to rain down on other areas of IT.
- VMware's relationships with its channel partners is improving markedly. Part of that can be explained by the presence of CEO Paul Maritz, who learned the importance of those relationships during his time with Microsoft, still the channel partner gold standard.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/11/20085 comments
I recently asked for your
feedback
on how ready for prime-time VDI is. Martin Ingram, VP of Strategy for AppSense, has written a thoughtful response, one worth sharing with you in full. Note that AppSense makes destkop virtualization products, so they talk to customers in this space every day. Here's what he had to say:
"My take on this debate is that while I can plot the technology future for client virtualization for about the next 5 years that is not really the point. There are already some groups of users where the currently available technology is fine, there are other groups that need capabilities that are not yet ready. The decision on when to implement is going to be based on when the technology is mature enough for each type of users and will show real benefits.
Over time we will see virtual desktops become the obvious solution for greater and greater proportions of users. As items on Brian's list (and other capabilities) get delivered the applicability of virtual desktops increases but this is not a question of "Do nothing until...". I see this progression is already underway at the customer organizations I talk to."
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/04/20080 comments
Phil Koster, a systems engineer who blogs under the name "Joe, the Consultant," has an informative
post
up about VMware issues. His basic premise is that VMware has made VI so easy to set up, that it's easy to not know your stuff and miss a bunch of important factors, like storage, security and networking. You need to learn how this works (or at least RTM) in order to have a properly functioning VI environment. Good stuff.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/03/20086 comments
Looking back over
this
week's
blogs
, it seems Tom and I have
VDI
on the brain. And it's only been made worse by today's announcement from VMware of
VMware View 3
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/02/20083 comments
Brian Madden has an interesting
discussion
going about virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI,
also known as hosted desktop). His premise is
that while Citrix is generally thought to be ahead
of VMware in the VDI space, owing much to its
work with Presentation Server (now XenApp) over
the past 15 or so years, VMware's recent announcements
about VMware View and vClient will help it take
the lead, with Citrix trailing.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 12/01/20082 comments
Behold the power of the blogosphere! Last week I reported, along with a number of
other
bloggers, that several important Symantec products aren't supported on VMotion, VMware's technology that moves virtual machines around with no downtime.
I missed it at the time, but a couple of days later, Symantec changed its tune and now does give "best effort support" to Symantec AntiVirus Clients and Symantec Endpoint Protection Clients.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 11/25/20080 comments
Thanksgiving, for those of us in the U.S., is a couple of days away. Thus, our blogging output will drop, essentially, to zero for the next few days (blame it on
tryptophan
). For probably my last blog of the week, I'd like to list some of the things for which I'm thankful -- both of the virtualization and non-virtualization variety.
I'm thankful that there's more choice than ever in the virtualization space. Hypervisors are plentiful and free, letting you choose which one, or ones, work best for your environment. In addition, new companies are springing up almost daily to add to the smorgasboard of good stuff. The competition will only make things better.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 11/25/20082 comments
Regular readers of this blog will know that I was
enthused
about the latest version of Parallels for Mac, which allows you to create a Windows environment on your Mac. Well, if you've started using it, you may be less enthused than me, since there are some problems that are affecting customers.
I got an update from Parallels last night informing me that "Some of Parallels' customers had difficulty upgrading to 4.0," the latest version. A new build is available for download, so if you're having issues, try using this latest rev.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 11/25/20089 comments
Our inaugural
Virtualization Buyer's Guide
is out, as of today. I've gotten some excellent feedback on this guide -- as far as I know, the first of its kind devoted exclusively to virtualization products.
A number of folks have asked me when it's going to be released, and if it will be in a PDF format. The answers are a) Right now, and b) Yes. It's in our Tech Library, which features white papers and special reports from all the magazines in our group, including Redmond magazine, Redmond Channel Partner Magazine, Redmond Developer News and more. Note that free registration is required.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 11/21/20082 comments