Hopefully the VMware YouTube saga has now seen its last chaper. Scott Drummonds, the VMware employee who posted a highly provocative YouTube video showing Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor repeatedly crashing under a workload, has publicly apologized for the matter.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/11/20098 comments
Life is good these days if you're doing Microsoft-based virtualization. System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) R2 is at the Release Candidate (RC) stage.
With the upgrades in Hyper-V R2 for greater scalability, it makes sense that the management piece be able to handle all that. Some of the things admins will be looking forward to most include support for Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/09/20092 comments
In an effort to set the record straight, I have an update on the VMworld controversy that I wrote about earlier this week. In my last post, I quoted a VMware employee who said that the rules restricting booth space for major competitors (specifically, Microsoft and Citrix) at their shows were similar to VMware's (i.e. 10' X 10' booths).
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/04/20091 comments
There's really only one word that can properly describe Microsoft's push on Windows 7: breathtaking.
Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will be available on Oct. 22. That is truly remarkable, given Microsoft's track record of OS release delays (Vista, anyone?) It's also accomplishing another of Microsoft's unstated aims -- making people forget about the aforementioned Vista. Soon, Redmond hopes, Vista will be a dim memory, a pothole on the long Windows road.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/03/20099 comments
I wanted to follow up with my VMware rantings by mentioning something VMware's Mike DiPetrillo pointed out on Scott Lowe's blog about this fiasco. Mike says:
For what it’s worth, the VMware booth has always been restricted to a 10×10 at every Microsoft and Citrix event as well. And you want to know where some of this “industry standard” language came from just grab one of their exhibitor agreements. Not saying if things are right or not but this isn’t just a VMware thing.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/02/20094 comments
One thought occurred to me as I was writing the last blog about VMware's attempts to restrict competing vendors at VMworld.
VMware CEO is Paul Maritz. Paul Maritz is the former No. 3 at Microsoft, and a key player in the late-90s U.S. Department of Justice anti-trust trial. It was Maritz who allegedly made the famous threat about "cutting off Netscape's air supply." It's important to note that Maritz has denied saying it (an Intel executive during the trial said he heard Maritz make that statement during a meeting), but it played a key role in the case.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/01/20096 comments
NOTE: Please click here to read an updated post on this topic.
VMware continues to suffer hits to its image by doing dumb things. First it was the YouTube fiasco, in which a VMware marketeer who didn't identify himself showed a no-context video of Microsoft's Hyper-V crashing everywhere. Now, it's appearing to stifle competition at its "industry" show, VMworld.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 06/01/20097 comments
A blog entry in The Motley Fool speculates that Cisco could be eyeing Citrix as a possible acquisition.
Although they provide no data or sources to back up their statements, it could be a good arrangement for Cisco. Citrix is developing some serious virtualization wares, but is having some trouble making significant inroads in that market. Having the brand recognition and marketing muscle of Cisco would certainly help Citrix' profile.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 05/22/20092 comments
Some of you have been following my recent purchase of a laptop for virtualization, and attempts to solve attendant problems. Well, I thought I'd cured the disease with an OS reinstall, but no such luck. The bluescreens and system freezes returned. Because of that, I'm returning my Studio XPS to Dell and getting an identical replacement unit.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 05/22/20093 comments
vSphere, in case you didn't get the memo, is now in general availability. That makes it a pretty big day for the virtualization community.
vSphere, formerly known as VMware Infrastructure, is exciting from a technology viewpoint. One thing that many techies are looking into are the claims of incredible I/O. Scott Lowe is reporting that EMC (VMware's parent company) and VMware are seeing "350,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS)." Those are mind-boggling numbers, even in a specially-tuned environment. Of course, your mileage will likely be much lower than that, but it does show us what's possible, and that the goal of a 100 percent virtualized environment isn't that far off (and, in fact, may be here now).
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Posted by Keith Ward on 05/21/20091 comments
I've been doing a lot of reseach, reporting and writing for an upcoming cover story on bare-metal client hypervisors, and the more I dig into this topic, the more I'm becoming convinced that they could well be the key to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
A number of major vendors are developing them, including VMware, Citrix and Red Hat. There are already several on the market, from Virtual Computer (although in a "controlled release" program that requires an invitation) and, interestingly, from Phoenix Technologies -- yes, that Phoenix, the BIOS guys.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 05/19/20096 comments
Microsoft has published a list of upgrades with
Hyper-V R2
, and I've got to say it's one impressive list. Although Hyper-V is still behind ESX (and further behind vSphere), it's clear that Microsoft has listened to its users and added the most-requested features (something that doesn't always happen, despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary).
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Posted by Keith Ward on 05/14/20091 comments