So, which of the hypervisors is fastest, in terms of raw performance? That's what we set out to determine in the
latest issue
of the magazine.
We could have looked at many different hypervisors, but decided to limit our testing to three -- ESX from VMware, XenServer from Citrix, and Microsoft's Hyper-V. One of the reasons was space -- in a print magazine, you simply don't have the real estate to make a story as long as you want.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/09/200910 comments
Brian Madden has an interesting
post
on what he sees as the real value of client hypervisors. It's a good read.
His basic theory is that while running multiple OSes on a desktop or laptop will be nice, the most important functionality will be the ability to run your Windows OS on multiple devices, including your smartphone or cellphone. He's right, I think.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/09/20096 comments
The Feb./March issue of our magazine is out now, and on the Website, so I wanted to give everyone an overview.
First, I've made a change to our news/reviews section of the magazine, which is called Upfront. I've moved much more into product reviews, since virtualization still has that new car smell, and many (or most) of you haven't used these product before. It's not like trying out another IDS system for Windows, after all.
We have three of them this month: Reflex security, VMware's ThinApp application virtualization offering, and Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. And while you're at it, let me know what you think of this new focus on products vs. news coverage and analysis. My rationale is that the nature of print magazine doesn't lend itself to that kind of coverage anymore, since it's all Web based.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/06/20091 comments
So, Gartner
says
that virtualization sales will continue to increase.
Um, this is news how?
"Virtualization helps organizations to cut costs, better utilize assets, and reduce implementation and management time and complexity, all of which are crucial in this economic environment," says a Gartner research director. Wow. What bold, fresh analysis. I'm glad Gartner's around to enlighten us.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/05/20095 comments
There's so much happening in virtualization these days that it's easy for stuff to slip through the cracks. New hypervisors, for instance, are still coming out. But, to my shock, one long-promised hypervisor is still waiting for its grand entrance:
Sun xVM Server
.
I didn't even realize this until yesterday, when I was doing research for an unrelated story. I guess I simply assumed that such a fundamental part -- the fundamental part -- of any vendor's virtualization strategy would be one of the first products released. But my assumption was wrong.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 03/03/20094 comments
If you follow virtualization at all, you probably know who Chris Wolf is. Chris is a virtualization analyst for Burton Group, and for my money, the most knowledgeable analyst in the industry. That's why I wanted him as a columnist for
Virtualization Review
magazine, and was delighted that we were able to snag him.
Earlier this week at VMworld Europe in Cannes, France, Chris gave a fascinating session on hypervisors. The basic idea was to compare hypervisor readiness for enterprise computing. A hypervisor had to have certain capabilities to be considered worthy in areas like high availability, networking, management and storage. He compared four hypervisors: VMware's ESX, Microsoft's Hyper-V, Citrix' XenServer 5, and Virtual Iron's Xen-based hypervisor.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/27/20097 comments
CANNES, FRANCE -- Oh, how I'd love to be writing that dateline for real! No, I'm still here in the States, in my humble hovel in northern Maryland, rather than gazing out at the Riviera. But I can dream, can't I?
Oh well, on to business. Our fabulous "Everyday Virtualization" blogger, Rick Vanover, has given a nice overview of announcements at VMworld Europe, and I wanted to follow up with some basic analysis of my own. (BTW, if you're not a regular reader of Rick's blog and articles here, you'd be wise to add it to your bookmarks. It has a real-world flavor you don't often find in this industry.)
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/26/20095 comments
You may have heard that Citrix, in what can only be described as an exceptionally bold move -- and risky, calculated gamble, all at the same time -- is now
giving away
a new version of its XenServer hypervisor that has capabilities way beyond the typical free hypervisor.
Among the goodies in this version are its version of live motion, called XenMotion, which also incorporates multi-node resource sharing; management for an unlimited number of servers and VMs; and integrated storage management, among other stuff. Wow; that's a lot of virtualization power, and is now free for the taking.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/24/20096 comments
I need to turn to you, knowledgeable readers, for help in answering some questions. In a followup to yesterday's
announcement
by Red Hat about its virtualization roadmap, I asked the company some questions about the new Enterprise Hypervisor.
Specifically, I wanted some details about how KVM would work as a standalone hypervisor, since my understanding is that it's hosted inside the Linux kernel (i.e., a Type II hypervisor). The response I got from Navin Thadani, senior director, virtualization business at Red Hat, threw me for a bit of a loop. He says KVM is a bare-metal hypervisor (also known as Type I), and even tries to make the case that Xen is a hosted hypervisor. Here's his comment in full:
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/24/200917 comments
Lots and lots of virtualization news
this week. I'll break it all down in separate blog entries, to keep things manageable.
First, let's take a look at
Citrix
Essentials
. The way to think about this is that it's another version of the
Terminal Services/XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) relationship. Citrix and
Microsoft have carved out a partnership unparalleled in this industry. They make
a product that basically does the same thing: provide remote access to
and delivery of an application (TS and XenApp, in this case). TS is more
for smaller shops; XenApp is the enterprise version, adding functionality that
makes it a better fit in the datacenter.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/23/20090 comments
It's well known that going green saves money as
well as dwindling resources. But how much green, of each kind, is saved?
If
you're not the math type, never fear -- several vendors offer "green calculators"
that will do the hard work for you. While doing some research for a sister
publication, I came across a number of different calculators for finding out how
much green you can save through virtualization, and other common-sense steps.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/18/20090 comments
The recent
speculation
that Cisco is eyeing VMware for a buyout led
Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov to contact me with a response. Beloussov is one of
the real smart guys in this industry, with a proven track record going back many
years. It's worth listening to what he has to say. Here's his take:
If there’s any truth to the rumor that Cisco is pursuing VMware, I
believe it's unlikely that either VMware or EMC would be sold at the speculated
prices. VMware is performing well and growing quickly, so there's no rush to
sell when the markets are down. It is also unlikely that EMC would sell VMware
separately, as VMware is the main growth engine and largest technology asset for
EMC. On the other hand, Cisco is unlikely to want to own EMC's high-end storage
business.
With that in mind, if a deal
does go through, Cisco will become a dangerous competitor to IBM, HP, Dell and
others, which would create complications that need to be considered. However,
Cisco has done an amazing job of integrating various assets -- I found its
recent integration of telephony companies very impressive. If Cisco did come
to own VMware and/or EMC, the IT industry would change a lot, but it would
have a positive impact on Parallels, as we're an ideal partner for IBM, HP,
and Dell, among others.
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Posted by Keith Ward on 02/18/20091 comments