Hyper-V: Taking it on the Chin?

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/05/20108 comments

Not So Secret Change Agents

While surfing around some of my favorite blogs, I came across the latest effort from Amy Newman, managing editor of ServerWatch and Enterprise IT Planet, and a very bright virtualization mind.

Amy's Dec. 16 blog is entitled "5 Ways Virtualization Will Change in 2010," and she starts by forecasting that virtualization will move downmarket and become more "grizzled."

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/17/20092 comments

IT Shops Have Cloud Homework To Do

The good news is, many IT departments have in place the resources and infrastructure required to develop enterprise clouds. The bad news is, a lot of their IT counterparts who would presumably like to develop clouds are not yet at the point where they're ready to commit.

That's one scenario discussed in a recent whitepaper from GlassHouse Technologies entitled "The CIO's Guide to Cloud Computing." The whitepaper (which you can sign up to get here) refers to the power of "IT transformation" capabilities as an edge that enterprises who want to deploy private clouds before embracing public clouds can employ. These enterprises can lean back on their experiences with SLAs, demand-forecasting that powers rapid or real-time provisioning, and automated billing/chargeback systems as useful aids to private cloud building.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/15/20092 comments

Victory over Virtual Sprawl?

In an attempt to describe the ramifications of this condition -- and win new customers -- Embotics, which sells a product called V-Commander -- produced a white paper entitled "Understanding Virtual Sprawl," in which the causes and cures for this malaise are layed out for readers.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/09/20093 comments

NetApp, Microsoft Up The Ante

Renowned for its Network Attached Storage (NAS) products, among others, NetApp said its new deal with Microsoft deepens product collaboration and technical integration, while extending joint sales and marketing activities to customers worldwide.

Under terms of the new agreement, the two companies will collaborate and deliver multifarious technology solutions that "span virtualization, private cloud computing, and storage data management," enabling customers to increase data center management efficiencies, reduce costs and improve business agility.

There is plenty of fertile ground for the two to till. When it comes to virtualization, while some people may look at current industry revenues and say, "That's a company, not an industry," there is nothing but positive growth on the horizon. For its part, private cloud computing may be the biggest, baddest technology ever to shoot off the charts before anyone knew just exactly what the heck it is. And judging by the number of new products coming out, the data center management movement is more like a freight train than a bandwagon.

As part of the new strategic alliance agreement, NetApp and Microsoft will expand product collaboration and technical integration activities, including the following areas:

• Virtualized infrastructure solutions based on Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center, and NetApp storage systems. According to the companies, these solutions will provide reliable data availability and streamlined data management, and can help maximize server and storage utilization by using 50 percent less storage compared to a baseline of traditional storage.
• Storage and data management solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server that improve communications and collaboration, enable faster, better-informed decision making, and greatly accelerate software development and testing.
• Efficient and flexible cloud computing and hosted services that provide integrated data protection, always-on data access, and a flexible, cost-effective infrastructure.
  

In addition, relying on its global presence, Microsoft and NetApp will enable customers to experience firsthand the value of joint solutions at Microsoft Technology Centers around the world, as well as at industry events. The two firms will also reportedly participate in engagements with channel partners and "industry-leading" systems integrators.

What it all comes down to is two companies that are already clicking -- NetApp is the 2009 Microsoft Storage Solutions Partner of the year -- are combining their vast resources and practiced innovation skills to target a ripe marketplace with lucrative potential.

Question: Is virtual storage hot or not?

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/08/20092 comments

What Readers Think

Here's what Gregs had to say about the Citrix Open Desktop Virtualization program I blogged about:

Maybe this is a case of the best defense being a good offense. Citrix knows the desktop and has a array of ready partners in this area. Still, I don't think there's a lot of desktop virtualization going on out there - certainly nothing compared to server virtualization. Are any significant desktop virtualization projects actually moving forward?

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/03/20090 comments

Are Two Hypervisors Better than One?

There is what I call a lot of "soft" information circulating throughout virtualization nation relating to the acceptance and growth of this technology. Depending on who you talk to, and what form of virtualization you are discussing, we have either reached some level of wait-and-see skepticism, settled into a state of mature stability or cleared the decks for skyrocketing growth.

One common notion is that where VMware doth dwell, no infidel hypervisor shall tread -- in other words, VMware shops are impregnable fortresses that are happily locked into ESX and not looking for any directly competitive products. Another notion would have us believe that some portion of VMware stalwarts are open to overtures from Microsoft regarding a possible dalliance with Hyper-V, but not Citrix, whose technology they admire from afar, but don't want to invite into their virtualization living rooms, as it were.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/01/20095 comments

Let the Battle be Joined!

This is starting to look like the Union and Confederate armies massing their troops in the farmlands of Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg.

With the announcement of its Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization program to further escalate (that's war talk for "bring it on") large-scale enterprise virtual desktop deployments, Citrix claims it now has an arsenal (my word) of more than 10,000 products from over 200 vendors that have been validated as ready to deploy (to arms!) in production environments with the recently launched XenDesktop 4.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/19/20094 comments

AutoVirt to the Rescue

From a virtualization perspective, the AutoVirt platform frees IT departments to execute physical to virtual server transitions without disrupting user access to data. It embodies a complete set of logic that is activated by user-created policies that automate their physical-to-virtual transitions. In this environment, users are able to implement virtual technology and reduce the number of physical servers they need to manage.

Specifically, AutoVirt announced the launch of a trade-In program for customers of Brocade's StorageX and NetApp's VFM file management products, which are now scheduled for end-of-life. Customers that wish to replace their current StorageX or VFM products will receive a 50 percent discount off an AutoVirt software perpetual license and one year of free product support. This offer applies to any of Brocade's StorageX, File Lifecycle Manager (FLM), MyView, and File Management Engine (FME) products, as well as versions of those products offered by resellers, including the NetApp Virtual File Manager (VFM) product suite, IBM StorageX, and Hitachi StorageX.

Brocade has stopped developing and distributing new feature releases and upgrades. In addition, customers will see annual maintenance costs rise 10 percent each year until support is completely discontinued in 2012.

Customers interested in learning more about AutoVirt's StorageX Trade-In Program should go here, where they can also find a link to Brocade's original end-of-life announcement.

According to Toigo, "I would also encourage folks to look at Novell Storage Manager (NSM) and some of the products from Crossroads Systems.  And, isn't this a cautionary tale we should be considering as we examine some of Cisco's woo in the hardware-centric data management space?”

Question: How much of a leg up does AutoVirt's virtualization capabilities give it against the competition? Let me know by posting here or by e-mailing me.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/17/20095 comments

Impact: If Oracle/Sun Merger Doesn't Happen

While I was in LA, several folks were again making observations I had heard while I was with some financial analysts in Wall Street a couple of weeks back.  Everyone keeps saying that problems have cropped up in the Sun acquisition by Oracle.  If true, and if for some reason the acquisition does not take place, the recent layoffs by Sun would likely leave the company non-viable when the dust settles. 

If you are a Sun shop today, that might mean something to you.

What impact would the failure of Sun and Oracle to complete their merger have on the virtualization market? And if you're a Sun shop, are you worried or coming up with a game plan for a worst-case scenario? Let me know what you think here or by e-mail.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/17/20091 comments

Sun Desktop Virt Strategy Taking Shape

With all din over what The Big Three are up to with desktop virtualization and VDI, it's easy to miss out on what some of the other players are doing. Sun is a prime example. It just announced the availability of Sun Ray Software 5, which the company says enhances virtual desktops and helps increase data center efficiency.

Sun describes the new software as a secure, cost-effective solution that "delivers a rich, virtual Windows, Linux or Solaris operating system desktop to nearly any client device, including Windows PCs and Sun Ray clients."

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/12/20091 comments

Hyper-V, We've got a Problem (Actually Three)

That was pretty much the end of the good news, as Bittman went on to discuss a couple of pretty significant problems obstructing the future of Hyper-V. The first one is faced not only by Microsoft, but also Citrix, Red Hat and all the other aspiring virtualization platform vendors: How do you make inroads into VMware's rock-solid user base?

When it comes to large enterprise customers, he said there is very little hope because the "vast majority" of them have very little interest in switching. "Even small businesses that we survey who have already started with VMware have little to no interest in switching," Bittman commented.

That is problem one, and the smaller of the two. Problem two is a bigger, architectural problem that he was told about by R2 beta users. As he explains it, in a Hyper-V environment, every physical host has a copy of Windows that is used as the parent OS. It manages the I/O drivers and is home to any management agents that are installed.

"If I want to use PowerShell, I'm also using the parent OS for that," he declares, "so what you end up with is one big, fat, single point of failure."

And that's not the end of it. Enter problem three: Every time it's necessary to patch the parent OS, it is also necessary to take down all the VMs.

"In a small environment, if I've got 100 virtual machines running on 10 or 20 servers, it's not a big deal. But in an environment with thousands of VMs -- and I've got clients who are pushing 10,000 virtual machines -- having to take down those hosts to patch the OS is not an option."

Which is sweet music to VMware's ears.

Question: Did Microsoft commit a major faux pas in the design of Hyper-V? Comment here or e-mail me.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/10/200925 comments

Following Up on Crosby's Comments

In the wake of Citrix CTO Simon Crosby revealing to Alessandro Perilli of virtualization.info that Citrix would be "shortly fully sourced" (see "Citrix to Open-Source XenServer"), I got to wondering how his perhaps loose-lipped comment was playing internally at Citrix, and how the company was dealing with it. Upon searching the Citrix site, I came to the conclusion that the company was dealing with it by ignoring it. That could be a function of just sort of hoping that the whole thing would go away, or maybe Citrix was thinking that it simply wasn't important enough to spin one way or the other.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/05/20092 comments

Small Businesses, Big Prospects

I recently had an interesting, fact-filled conversation with Tom Bittman, a VP and distinguished analyst for Gartner, who had just returned from the company's Gartner Symposium, where he was force-fed so much good info that his head was in danger of exploding when we spoke. Fortunately, he made it through our conversation without any untimely cranial events.

Although we hit on several topics, including private cloud computing (in a show of hands, 75 percent of Symposium attendees said they viewed it as a core technology), Citrix ("They are literally caught between a rock and a hard place"), and interoperability (when VMware sees it is in their interest), I'm here today to talk about Bittman's take on the dynamics of virtualization adoption at small businesses with 100 to 999 employees.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/03/20090 comments

Citrix to Open-Source XenServer

Crosby spilled the beans after reacting to Perilli's piece about Citrix joining the Linux Foundation. Following is Crosby's full statement: "XenServer is 100 percent free, and also shortly fully open sourced. There is no revenue from it at all. That is strategically aligned with our goal to increase market share, get directly to customers and also provide Citrix customers with virtualization built into our core products as a core capability, so every XenApp customer has free support for XS built into their XenApp entitlement, ditto for XenDesktop. Our positive revenue comes from Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V, which adds all of the automation functions for management of virtualized environments and self-service virtual lab and stage management. This is a substantial business, growing rapidly, but also offers customers value through inclusion in the value-added stacks (Enterprise/Platinum editions) of XenDesktop and XenApp. It is therefore not possible to make a direct head-to-head comparison with VMware, which doesn't have a competitor to XenApp, and whose competitor to XenDesktop doesn't scale at present."

One other piece of fallout: Crosby claimed that XenServer costs VMware $300 million per year in lost revenue -- which is a good chunk of change for a company with $740 million in combined revenues from its U.S., international and services operations (these numbers reported last week. Click here for details).

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/29/20096 comments