These are heady days at VDI zero-client device maker Pano Logic, which has just landed $20 million in a Series C round of financing led by VC firm Mayfield Fund. Flush with money, Pano Logic openly published their hardware specs, and perhaps reeling just a bid with hubris, dared other vendors to remove the kimonos from their own alleged zero client solutions. Shockingly, none did, the cowards.
I like Pano Logic. They're cheeky, and even though they are still not showing up everywhere, it's certainly not because they haven't been out on the stump, shamelessly shilling for themselves.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 03/01/20103 comments
A year ago, Ruben Spruijt and Jeroen van de Kamp started Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) and released their independent, non-sponsored performance analysis that compared VMware ESX 3.5, Citrix XenServer 5.0 and Microsoft Hyper-V 2008. That comparison was designed to measure how the three hypervisors performed when running Windows XP and Vista virtual machines for Terminal Services and VDI environments.
According to Alessandro Perili of virtualization.info, the test was so valid that Citrix adopted the VRC methodology for measuring its XenDesktop 4 performance.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/25/20106 comments
It was with a certain measure of dismay that I viewed Gartner's January acquisition of The Burton Group. Non-GAAP financial measures aside, I felt like Burton was being marginalized just a little bit because -- even though I'm sure Gartner stressed the importance of Burton remaining objective and independent in its views -- now there is just a slight possibility that Gartner might want to stick its hands in Burton's cookie jar. Sooner or later, it's bound to happen, and when it does, maybe a Burton analyst will quit, followed by a big brouhaha, followed by a return to normalcy, until it happens again. At that point, it won't seem like quite such a big deal, and nobody will get all that exercised. Why bother?
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/18/20107 comments
Thanks to my colleague Jeff Schwartz for sending me the following interesting and unique VDI item.
A Canadian company named Userful Corporation says that since 2002, it has been offering a Linux desktop virtualization product called User Multiplier, that allows one PC to support up to 10 independent users simultaneously. All the users need are their own monitors, keyboards and mice. The product features automatic configuration and offers multimedia capabilities such as full-screen/full-motion video.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/16/20100 comments
In a new study of 1,500 IT executives and virtualization gurus scheduled to be released this week, VDI is all about a positive user experience, reducing TCO, and finding management products that can look into what's going on with VDI networks. And oh, by the way, most survey respondents agreed that 2010 will be a "watershed year" for VDI. The survey was done by Xangati, which specializes in providing visibility into physical and virtual infrastructures.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/11/20103 comments
Nobody can say that Leostream isn't aggressive when it comes to marketing its Connection Broker product, the latest version of which, 6.3, has just been released. CEO Michael Palin likes to paint his company as the champion of desktop virtualization users at large customer companies.
"It's all heterogeneity," Palin declares. "It's all about the maximum use of existing physical infrastructures to make projects less risky and expensive. We're doing this with very complicated environments."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/09/20101 comments
Initially, Hyper-V was criticized for not offering live migration. It took a while but with the introduction of Windows Server 2008 R2, that capability was added, if not with much gusto, as it is still necessary to live-migrate one VM at a time, which lags behind VMware's ability to perform multiple concurrent migrations.
Does it really matter? Yes and no according to Mark Davis, co-founder of Virsto (as in "virtual storage") Software, which is scheduled to unveil its first product Feb. 16. "It matters," he says, "but people rarely use it. They're still getting used to doing it. It's tedious, slow and more work."
Tedious, slow and hard work are not concepts that Davis admires. The mere fact that he is now on his sixth startup indicates pretty clearly that he likes to get things done and then move on to whatever's next. He has gone from being a tech guy with an eye for the market to being a go-to guy for new ideas and products.
Although he's still mum on revealing exactly what Virsto is unveiling Feb. 16, he does talk freely about how virtualization is "breaking" storage, how people are retrofitting physical storage for use in the virtual world, and how the lifecycle of VMs is different from that of their physical counterparts.
Davis -- who speaks articulately with the energy of an overwound wind-up train -- had a lot more to say at lunch the other day that we should probably keep a lid on until the 16th, but I promise you we will work up a review of version 1.0 as soon as the ribbons are cut.
In the mean time, if you like a good tease, go to virsto.com.
Is live migration happening out there, or not, and if it is, does it matter whether you're moving one of multiple VMs at once? Let me know what you think at [email protected] (preferred) or comment here.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/02/20105 comments
In a newly released -- and largely gloomy -- Gartner EXP CIO survey that predicts IT budgets will "essentially be flat in 2010," there is good news for virtualization, which is ranked as the No. 1 2010 "Top 10 Technology Priority" for business process improvement, which itself is the No. 1 "Top 10 Business Priority." Talk about cachet.
It gets better. Gartner goes on to laud virtualization's "value-creating productivity," which it shares with No. 2 cloud computing and No. 3 Web 2.0. Specifically, says Gartner, at a time of "multiple budget cuts, delayed spending, and increased demand for services with reduced resources," a technology transition it taking place from an emphasis on "heavy" owner-operated solutions to "lighter-weight services-based, and social media technologies, including virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0 social computing." Whoa.
According to Gartner, "These technologies, implemented properly, create the opportunity for IT to change its role and the operational performance of the enterprise. Asymmetric technologies like virtualization, cloud and Web 2.0 enable companies to get out from under a front-loaded, heavy investment model that limits IT's agility and flexibility."
It's nice to see virtualization get the kind of notoriety that comes with being bundled with cloud computing and Web 2.0 -- two industry-wide tech stars and top-of-mind topics. Now, instead of being viewed as pick-and-shovel technology, virtualization may start being viewed as integral to the sleek, lighter-weight new generation of asymmetric computing. Going uptown!
Does virtualization need a new image? E-mail me at [email protected] (preferred) or comment here.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/28/20101 comments
I must confess that in my blog of last Thursday, I was making a bit of a joke about the relative scarcity of virtualization pros, the validity of maintaining any kinds of statistics on specific virtualization job opportunities, and the overall state of the undersized virtualization job market.
Bill Reynolds of Foote Partners, whom I mentioned, responded to my comments by noting that he did a quick search on Foote's IT salaries and found virtualization skills, responsibilities, knowledge or experience mentioned in 12 of 145 job openings. "For all of these jobs, virtualization work, whether desktop, storage, servers, applications, data center, is a portion of what they do," Reynolds says.
He further confirmed what I jokingly declared when he described how Foote has been surveying full-time virtualization jobs, "but at the moment it's pretty new, and there aren't enough of these around to get any statistical validity."
Ever-vigilant, Foote has created two categories of virtualization skills: certified and non-certified. According to him, employers are definitely paying workers specifically for virtualization skill specializations. "We are tracking premium pay for 424 certs and skills in our IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index, Reynolds states, adding, "It can be part of salary or any number of cash bonuses -- performance, retention, sign on, etcetera."
So hey, there may not be many virtual pros per se out there, but it sounds to me like anybody who knows their way around a VM or a VDI may have a leg up on the competition. How long before we have vice presidents of virtualization?
Question: What workplace advantages to you have because of your virtualization knowledge and/or experience? E-mail your answers to me at [email protected].
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/26/20101 comments
The good folks at Dice.com, who preside over all things IT salary, have issued a press release saying, "After surging 10% last year (Did anybody notice?), virtualization salaries were on average flat year-over-year at $84,777." The release goes on to note that on a national basis, virtualization tech workers are making $78,845. Moreover, it makes the not-so-startling claim that dissatisfaction among IT pros "soared" to 38 percent from 32 percent over the past year. If you allow for a 6 percent margin of error in that computation, the "soared" thing looks sort of weak. However, Dice seems to be making this dubious claim with tongue planted firmly in cheek, adding parenthetically that their PHDs "tell us this is statistically significant!"
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/21/20106 comments
I'm curious to know what you think about the following two paragraphs:
At the end of the day, the bulk of the servers that are being virtualized under the crop of current hypervisors don't need hypervisors at all. If analysts are correct, the preponderance of servers that are being stacked up in hypervisor hosting environments are file servers and low-traffic web servers. Consolidating file servers can be accomplished using another virtualization product that gets little mention in the trade press -- something called the file system.
File systems, which are one of nine layers of virtualization commonly seen in contemporary distributed computing platforms, provide the means to consolidate access to multiple physical data repositories using the metaphor of a file folder or library. If a file server is getting long in the tooth, simply move its contents to a file folder bearing the server's name in a larger server system.
Is this simply common sense or is the writer glossing over the facts with superficial simplicity?
Comment here or send your comments to me at [email protected].
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/19/20105 comments
This much we know: HP and Microsoft announced a three-year agreement calling for the two computer industry giants to invest the tidy sum of $250 million in products and projects -- including Microsoft's still-emerging Azure Cloud service -- that will put them high atop the data center stack by the time the dust settles.
Less officially, we also know that the deal aligns HP and Microsoft squarely against the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition, unveiled this past Nov. 3 and composed of Cisco and its prime-time partners VMware and EMC. They too want to own the data center via extended links to cloud-based customers.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/14/20100 comments
Back in early November, I started talking to Citrix about interviewing any VMware defector who was dumping VMware to sign up with Citrix under the aegis of "Project Open Door," which Citrix says offers "advanced virtualization management, along with free support, training and conversion tools to customers switching servers from VMware ESX or vSphere to Citrix XenServer or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V."
Backing up for a second, the Oct. 14 release they sent me announcing Project Open Door included quotes from eight users, six of which never mentioned VMware in their brief comments. Of the remaining two, one said blandly, "It is clear to us, for perhaps the first time there is some stout competition to VMware." The other finally came up with some warmed over beef, declaring, "After careful comparison between XenServer and the the VMware technology we had been using, we found XenServer offered all the features we needed, at a fraction of the price. By decommissioning our VMware servers and replacing them with XenServer, we have not only lowered costs, but also gained capacity to support more users on each server and eased the management of the system."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/12/20103 comments
Looks like I hit a nerve with "Hyper-V: Taking it on the Chin?" Reader responses were split between supporting and condemning Hyper-V, with very little middle ground, so they made for interesting reading.
Christopher Whitfield started the brouhaha with an in-depth defense of Hyper-V, saying it is "solid...really solid, and once the security folks get into the fray, the battle may go further against VMware."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/07/20103 comments
Take a read of Jon William Toigo's piece entitled "Au Contraire -- I Beg Not to Differ," just posted to the site. It takes a good hard look at the pros and cons of virtualization that will make you think twice before you virtualize your next server. I look forward to your comments.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/07/20101 comments