Long time, no blog. Sorry about that; I've been out of town a number of days on various job-related projects, and catching up on the work I missed while I was out on the other days. I wanted to tell you about one of those projects.
Yesterday I was in Baltimore, MD, at an elementary school that's using an extremely interesting virtualization technology. The school, Windsor Hills Elementary, has 200 students. Like most schools, they're struggling with funding. In order to get more computers in the classroom, they're using a device from nComputing that allows up to three computer stations to share the resources of one desktop. The device is a little black box, about the size of a modem, with a big "X" on top. The devices are hooked up, via standard ethernet, to a half-size PCI card added to the host desktop. The devices have a monitor, keyboard and mouse plugged into them. They are responsible for virtualizing the desktop image, pulling it from the host, and pushing it out to the workstations.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/17/20087 comments
First week on the job and I¡¦m truly excited to be joining Virtualization Review as Executive Editor, working to help fulfill the strong vision that Keith has for this publication. I came to VR from market researcher IDC, where I was involved, among other things, in looking at the business models and trajectories of emerging markets and the impact of IT hardware and software development on selected vertical markets.
One thing that has struck me about virtualization is the level of excitement around this new technology in all its manifestations. I¡¦ve been in the industry for a while and have seen many technologies come and go. But when measured against this perspective, the buzz around virtualization is pretty phenomenal. This is a technology and a market that has legs. I believe that tracking the trendlines that will drive this market through the twists and turns to come will be crucial to understanding its future direction. These trends will determine not only which vendors will have the best price/performance on an individual basis but also --- more importantly -- the business models and go-to-market strategies models that will shake out for applying virtualization across the spectrum of enterprise systems and solutions that exist today.
To help our rapidly growing readership get a better handle on these trends and developments, Keith has asked me to guide the development of our news and products section section, Upfront. In this section, we¡¦ll be looking at a host of different issues including but not limited to pricing models, the need for security, and the development of new management tools on the vendor side
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/08/20082 comments
VMware, apparently deciding that shorter is better, has truncated the names of its two hypervisors. The hypervisors formerly known as "ESX Server" and "ESX 3i" have been re-christened simply "ESX" and "ESXi".
No formal announcements of the name changes were made. An entry on the VMware Technology Network (VMTN) blog by VMware employee John Troyer contained the only company reference to the changes.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/07/20082 comments
It's a question increasingly asked these days: how does the Xen open source hypervisor compare with VMware's hypervisor, ESX Server, in terms of performance? One big reason it's asked is because of Xen's much lower upfront cost -- if it's in the same ballpark as ESX in terms of speed, that could have a big impact on a company's buying decision.
A preliminary answer is that Xen compares favorably in some ways, but in others it falls well short of ESX Server. That, at least, is the verdict of load testing done for the BriForum conference in Amsterdam last October. BriForum is run by Brian Madden, an independent virtualization and application delivery expert with a popular Website.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/04/20087 comments
Interesting
tidbit
from Alessandro Perilli over at Virtualization.info about VMware executives selling some shares. The list included President and CEO Diane Greene who, according to the report, sold some at the end of January 2008, and Carl Eschenback, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations, who did the same thing in early March.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/03/20086 comments
I spent a portion of my morning learing about Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and found it to be...shall we say...lacking.
Certainly, it's a good value: As Homer Simpson would say, "No payments per month? Yeah, I think we can swing that!" Here's the background: the computer my kids use has Vista as the OS. There are a number of programs they use that haven't been updated for use with Vista (shocking, I know), so I wanted to load XP in a virtual machine (VM) and have them use the programs (mostly simple games) in the XP VM.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/03/20086 comments
If you don't know
Andrew Kutz
, you need to. He's a developer who writes (among other things) utilities for VMware. I haven't personally used any, but many in the industry swear by them. He's one of the smartest folks in the industry, and understands virtualization in a way few others do.
Kutz is also a prolific author who blogs frequently about virtualization topics, with a special emphasis on VMware. He's writing an article for Virtualization Review magazine for our next (May/June) issue about embedded hypervisors vs. packaged ones -- specifically ESX Server vs. ESX 3i. He definitely isn't afraid to say what's on his mind, and he told me that he "has a lot to say about embedded hypervisors." Should be very interesting.
Posted by Keith Ward on 04/02/20084 comments
My
blog item
yesterday quoting Citrix's Simon Crosby brought a quick response from a VMware employee. The e-mailer wanted to remain anonymous, but I can tell you a few things about him: He's been with VMware for more than three years and "has extensive experience in large scale data centers running production VMware environments including many from the Fortune 100." Note: I have not edited his comments; they appear as he sent them to me.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/01/20084 comments
Hiya, gang! I wanted to let you know that we're starting to put new features on the Web site now, including content from the launch issue of the magazine. One of the most exciting features is the debut of our Virtual Advisor columnist, Chris Wolf. You can find his premier column
here
. It's about virtualization licensing -- which companies are doing it right, and other companies that are, shall we say, behind the learning curve a bit.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/01/20081 comments
VMware's Lifecycle Manager is officially
available
. It's basically a lifecycle and chargeback product, allowing admins to trace a virtual machine's (VM's) creator, owner and death date (i.e. when it's scheduled to be decomissioned. Aren't you glad humans don't come with similar information?)
Having chargeback ability is nice; with VMs so easy to create, it's equally easy to lose track of which department is using what, making chargeback a real business challenge. Since I'm not a big fan of rewriting press releases, I'll quote at length VMware's release about some of Lifecycle Manager's core functions:
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Posted by Keith Ward on 04/01/20082 comments
As a technology journalist, I'm used to marketingspeak: you know, the kind of language you find in press releases -- "Our new product is a game-changer!" Or, "This is a big win for customers!" Or, "Our company, the leader in _____ (fill in with any technology)." It sometimes gets wearying, which is why I enjoy talking to Simon Crosby of Citrix.
Simon says what's on his mind, doesn't pull punches and isn't afraid of anyone -- least of all VMware, the market leader in virtualization. For example, when talking about the new embedded hypervisor for HP servers -- HP Select Edition -- Crosby compares it VMware's ESX 3i, which is also an embedded hypervisor. "ESX 3i is just a disaster, and we love it," Crosby told me in an interview last week.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/31/20083 comments
So now I've got my HP DL360 G5
set up
, and I'm starting to load hypervisors on it. I thought I'd walk you through what I'm experiencing, as it may provide some insight that you may find helpful -- or perhaps you can get a few good laughs at my expense (you know what they say: As long as you're reading...)
One note: This is quite literally my first time working with virtualization. I've been reporting on it for almost a half-year now, and am getting comfortable with understanding what it is and how it works. But there's nothing like getting your hands greasy to fully grasp its abilities. What I'm saying is that these steps are probably very basic for many of you, and I may be stating what seems ridiculously obvious. But as this is my first foray into this world, it's all new to me.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/25/20084 comments