Virtualization Planet

Adrian Simays—Virtualizing Exchange 2010 with Hyper-V and EMC

When talking to people who aren't very familiar with Hyper-V they tend to say things like "most companies are probably using Hyper-V for some basic testing" or "it is for smaller companies since Hyper-V isn't ready for the enterprise".  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Not only does the market data prove otherwise (Hyper-V continues to see substantial growth) but companies including Microsoft are standardizing their business on Hyper-V.  See my fairly recent post on Hyper-V scalability testing we conducted on a 16 node cluster for further proof.

Well SherWeb is another example of how Hyper-V can be used in an Enterprise deployment.  SherWeb is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivering on-demand applications to customers over the internet.  SherWeb supports over 70,000 Exchange mailboxes and is the process of offering Exchange 2010 services including up to 25GB mailboxes!  They also host over 6,000 Sharepoint users as well as CRM hosted offerings.  And for server virtualization?  Hyper-V R2.  That doesn't sound like a small test environment to me. 

For their storage infrastructure, SherWeb uses a CLARiiON CX3 and CX4 SAN, EMC Powerpath and virtual provisioning to manage all of this data.

So what does this mean?  SherWeb is just another example of a growing list of companies who are using Hyper-V to virtualize their enterprise data.  So when do you start believing?

Visit the EMC customer success story website for more information on this case study.

Between The Lines—AOL's Garlinghouse talks 'startarounds,' calls Yahoo Sybil

“The first part of fixing a problem is admitting the problem. At AOL we have a big F-ing problem,” says Brad Garlinghouse, president of consumer applications at AOL.

Chad Sakac—EMC - Journey to the Private Cloud Award Nomination

Each and every day, our customers and partners are heroically driving innovation and success through the use of virtualization as the foundational step to achieving the benefits of cloud computing.

This is a chance for us to THANK and showcase EMC customers and partners as leaders at VMworld 2010.

EMC Journey to the Private Cloud Awards winners will receive an honorary award from EMC and be recognized among their peers during an EMC Customer Appreciation event at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, August 30 – September 2, 2010. Additionally, winners will receive complimentary passes to VMworld 2011.

NOMINATIONS ARE DUE NO LATER than August 16, 2010. Please visit the EMC Journey to the Private Cloud Awards 2010 Nomination Form to recognize EMC customers and EMC partners.

CRITERIA

A panel of EMC, VMware and third-party experts will judge each of the nominations and select an EMC “Journey” Award winner for each of the five categories based on the following criteria:

  • Innovation – Do the results reflect new capabilities or significant improvements in the realm of virtualization and cloud computing for your business?
  • Value – Does the product represent a cost-effective solution? Can the ROI and business value be easily justified?
  • Performance – Does the product perform to the degree that the solution improves overall data center operations?

Results must have been generated through the use of EMC and VMware technologies during the period of September 1, 2009 – August 1, 2010.

CATEGORIES FOR ENTRY

The “Journey” Awards 2010 were created to honor customers and partners that have deployed EMC and VMware technologies to ease their journey from physical to virtual and, in time, private cloud infrastructures. Customers are leveraging these technologies to further innovation, value and data center performance. We are accepting customer and partner nominations in five categories of EMC Journey Awards including:

Technology Excellence – Achieving Savings, Efficiencies and Agility in the Cloud

  • Recognizes customers that have successfully driven results in operational efficiency, business agility, and energy efficiency/space savings through virtualization and the adoption of unique solutions aimed at effectively managing their physical, virtual and private cloud infrastructures.

Technology Excellence – Paving the Way to the Cloud

  • Recognizes those organizations that have successfully accelerated the adoption of cloud computing through IT operations and staff education.

Partner Innovation– Groundbreaking Cloud Computing Solution

  • Recognizes EMC partners that have raised the bar in delivering innovative solutions, product integrations and applications to help customers adopt and navigate their virtualized architectures.

Best Cloud Computing Collaboration Partner

  • Recognizes those partners that have worked alongside EMC to build solutions to improve overall data center performance and operations.

Cloud Computing Visionary Award

  • Recognizes an IT leader who has demonstrated extraordinary thought-leadership and vision, paving the way for private cloud adoption for their organization.

Chad Sakac—So whats EMC doing at VMworld 2010?

I’m going to keep updating this this post as things get closer and closer – but there’s already a ton our customers and partners can start planning for…

You can get the summary at the video below…

  

For those of you who can’t make VMworld Americas, but will be at VMworld Copenhagen – no worries – we’ll be mirroring the bulk of this there as well!

You can register using the EMC link and get the EMC discounted rate!

image

If you want detail on sessions, hands-on-labs, those face-melting demos and more – read on!

First of all – sessions.   There are 20+ sessions that are led by EMC, or have EMC participating in a support role.  As of 7/29, many of the date/times are not final, will update this post as they are finalized.  We’re furiously working on the content, demos and more.  

Look we know that people don’t want vendor commercials.  They want content that is technical, practical and helps them get it done.   This year, end-customers voted for the sessions – except the partner session and the platinum keynote – all the other sessions are things YOU voted for.  I’m working to make sure the content are “vendor commercial free zones” (at much as I possibly can).   The only ones that weren’t voted on by attendees were the ones we get as a diamond (top tier) sponsor.   We submitted almost a hundred, and a lot of good ones got rejected – but I’m very pumped about the ones people picked.

There’s something there for everyone – so start to make sure you put these on your show calendar.   You can go to www.vmworld.com to find them and start planning.

The EMC super session has built a bit of a reputation of being a demo extravaganza, and this year will be no different.   What WILL be different is that Pat Gelsinger (EMC’s COO) will be doing it with me (more accurately, I’ll be the demo guy, and he’ll be the guy with the juice :-) For those of you who haven’t met Pat, he’s a rock star.   Having come up in the engineering ranks of Intel as one of the many key folks in the development of the 486, Pentium, Xeon, Nehalem and Westmere.  He was the most senior engineering leader at Intel before joining EMC.  I’ve seen him in action, and you wouldn’t believe the positive change he drives.

Session number Session title Presenters Type Date/Time
TBD Infrastructure Technologies Purpose Built for the Private Cloud Pat Gelsinger, Chad Sakac Super Session  
TBD VCE – What’s the latest, and what’s to come TBD Super Session  
BC7950 Shrinking RTO/RPO’s of VM Replication using WAN Optimization Fred Nix Breakout Session  
BC8089 Using VMware Site Recovery Manager with EMC Replication Technologies for Application Disaster Recovery Steve Hegarty Breakout Session  
EA7061 Creating an Internal Oracle Database Cloud Using vSphere Jeff Browning Breakout Session  
EA7726 Virtual Machines Outperforming Physical Machines - Crossing the Performance Barrier Scott Drummonds with David Korsunsky (VMware) Breakout Session  
PC8051 Infrastructure Technologies to Long Distance VMotion – What Is “VM Teleportation”? Chad Sakac Breakout Session  
SE8520 Panel Discussion - Private Cloud - Virtualization Security and Compliance, Meeting PCI Standards Bret Hartman, moterated by Allwyn Sequeira (VMware) Panel Session  
SP9646 Application Deployment, Considerations, and Use Cases with Vblocks Hari Kannan, Brian Ho, Vas Mitra (VMware) Breakout Session  
SP9647 Enhanced Business Continuity with Application Mobility on Vblocks Across Datacenters Bala Ganeshan, John Kennedy (Cisco), Ravi Neelakant (VMware) Breakout Session  
SP9820 Getting the Most Out of Your Storage Infrastructure with Client and Server Virtualization Chad Sakac Breakout Session  
SP9821 Backup with Deduplication: Accelerating the Journey to 100% Virtualization Daniel Budiansky, Mike Zolla Breakout Session  
TA6944 PowerCLI Is For Administrators! Alan Renouf, Luc Dekens (Eurocontrol) Breakout Session  
TA7171 Performance Best Practices for vSphere Scott Drummonds, Kaushik Banerjee (VMware) Breakout Session  
TA7962 Modern Networking in a Virtualized Environment Nicholas Weaver Breakout Session  
TA8101 Virtual Storage and VMware vSphere: Best Practices and Design Considerations Scott Lowe Breakout Session  
TA8133 Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware Chad Sakac Breakout Session  
TA8623 Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge Chad Sakac, Adam Carter (HP), Vaughn Stewart (NetApp) Panel Session  
SE9600 How to Attest Host Platform Security for Cloud Deployments: A Technology Preview from VMware, Intel, and RSA Robert Polansky, Richard Brunner (VMware, Steve Orrin (Intel) Breakout Session  
SE8195 Managing Security Compliance for VMware Virtualization Nirav Mehta Breakout Session  
TBD Customers Sound Off! Making Backup & Recovery Better Tony Asaro (analyst) Panel Session  

Second – announcements.    Do you really think I’m going to give them all away?   :-)   We have many incredible announcements of new technologies, products and capabilities – I can’t wait!

Third – the booth.   This year, we’re trying something a little different.  We’ll have sections that don’t focus on products, but rather customer challenges.  Also, as a nerd, I know what people want.  It will be covered by nerds (vSpecialists) and product experts to help.   I also pushed the team to step up the “everything is real”….

While there will be (of course) the always awesome VMware Hands-On-Lab (HOL) powered by the VMware GETO crew that we will be supporting (along with many of VMware’s partners), we wanted to have a Hands-on-Lab specifically for VMware/EMC customers, since the VMware HOL naturally focused on VMware stuff in a vendor-neutral way.   While we will be using View 4.x extensively both locally and remotely there will also be a boatload of gear right there.   This will give customers a chance to play with the technologies live, and ask any question they would like while they actually drive the technology itself.  We are working to have a series of “hands-on challenges” for people to compete against each other.

image

In addition – we know how important our partners are.  Last year, the EMC partner pavillion was a huge hit, so we’ve expanded it this year.   You’ll be able to see EMC partners who integrate and extend the solutions – right there.

You can find us right at the entrance to the right, beside the Cisco booth.  There will also be a full blown VCE booth.

 

image 

Third – the swag.  This year, the best giveaway of course are iPads.   But there’s always not enough prizes – so… we’ve dialed it up to 11 :-)  We’ll be giving away an iPad every hour when the exhibit hall is open!   In addition there will be other prizes, as always.  Come by, and register to win!

image

Fourth – it’s all about the customer.    Customers make the world go around.  We have a series of customers who will be sharing their stories about how they have leveraged VMware and EMC together.    You can come and share YOUR story!   Most of the EMC executive team will be there also talking with customers and analysts.

image

And of course – I’ve already mentioned it here, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the customer appreciation party.  It’s going to rock… Find it at Temple 540 HOWARD ST (2 blocks from Moscone Center), Tuesday August 31, 2010 6:30-10:30pm.   It’s invite-only – so reach out to your EMC/EMC partner sales teams – they owe you one :-)   Ask them to talk to Britanny Coulson.   We’re still finalizing the details on the other party – the vSpecialist+VMware SE/PSO+Cisco Datacenter SE+VCE Solution Architect vGeekfest…

image

So much to do… so little time…

I… CAN’T… WAIT!!!!

Mike Laverick—A funny experience with Windows 7, Sysprep and View 4.5

I had a funny experience this week. Earlier I completed my upgrade to vSphere4.1 (I think the change is not related, but not 100% sure…). I was inspired to get back to work on my guide on View 4.5. But when I started to create new Window 7 desktops I got a weird error which [...]

Vaughn Stewart—Myth Busting: Storage Guarantees - Part II

I hope many of you read my recent post: Myth Busting: Storage Guarantees wherein I raised questions around the storage savings guarantee from EMC. The basic question is how can they deliver greater storage savings with fewer technical capabilities and use cases than what is available from NetApp. I believe this is a fair question and was hoping for some information sharing.

Now I don't expect most to be storage experts and to help raise the level of understanding I created the following chart.

Simply put, when one understands the technologies, their capabilities, and the parameters where each technology can be enabled; such a claim doesn’t appear to hold water.

As I have in the past, I extended an invitation to EMC to review the chart and to educate the public as to how the storage savings in their guarantee can be accomplished.

Unfortunately the only response (or compliment) the post received was from Chuck Hollis who shared a less than complimentary comment of "chartsmithing" in reference to the accuracy of the contents in the chart.

Honestly, I'm a bit concerned that the technical folks at EMC may have been asked to not engage in technical discussions. It appears as they want to share that all storage technology is the same, but are deafly silent when asked to elaborate. In my opinion, this behavior is like saying another hypervisor on the market today has the same capabilities as VMware ESXi, and one shouldn’t be concerned with the differences.

To me, the lack of dialog speaks volumes…


The Lone Standout

To my surprise I recently learned of and read the post “Lies, Damn Lies, and Marketing…” from Richard Anderson, an engineer at EMC.

I commend Richard for his efforts and sharing his insight, and his level of professional courtesy. The post begins by verifying the content of the chart...

“As presented, Vaughn’s chart (below) is technically factual (with one exception which I’ll note), but it plays on the human emotion of Good vs Bad.”

&

“As far as keeping things factual, some of the EMC and NetApp features in this chart are not necessarily shipping today (very soon though, and since it affects both vendors I’ll allow it here).”


Houston, We Have Agreement

It is always great to see eye-to-eye with a competitor, however brief the mutual agreement may last.


Agreement over

At this point in the post Richard begins to change the subject of the discussion by modifying the measurement of storage savings technologies available on EMC arrays to one of stating that a SAN array and a unified array are two different types of storage controllers and thus this is an incorrect comparison.

“The first and biggest problem is the chart compares EMC Symmetrix and EMC Clariion dedicated-block storage arrays with NetApp FAS, EMC Celerra, and NetApp vSeries which are all Unified storage systems or gateways. Rather than put n/a or leave the field blank for NAS features on the block-only arrays, the chart shows a resounding and red NO, leading the reader to assume that the feature should be there but somehow EMC left it out.”

Technically speaking, Richard’s point is correct; however, his application of this distinction is unrelated to the topic of storage savings capabilities.

Comparing the storage savings capabilities that are available with SAN deployments CAN be directly compared, such as with a NetApp Unified FAS Array and a Traditional EMC SAN Array. In order to do so one must only look at the SAN capabilities. I believe I have done this in the original chart.

“I’ve taken the liberty of massaging Vaughn’s chart to provide a more balanced view of the feature comparison.”

&

“The goal if my post here really is to show how the same data can be presented in different ways to give readers a different impression.”

(click on chart to view at full size)



From what is shared I have a two comments. First - Zero Space Reclamation is the ability to reclaim data which has been deleted in a VMDK or LUN but still resides in the guest's file system. This is not the same capability as compression.

Second - Some of NetApp & EMC's largest customers have vSeries in front of Symmetrix DMX, Symmetrix VMAX, and Clariion and receive full support from both companies . This statement is simply untrue (but it's understandable why it's not promoted).


Myth Busted

I do truly desire to have open discussions around technical differences in amicable ways, and I am very appreciative of Richard’s efforts. I believe he has expanded the conversation.

To show my gratitude and willingness to share information I have integrated Richard’s feedback in version 2 of the storage savings capabilities chart and made it easy to understand by separating the features by where they support SAN & NAS.

(click on chart to view at full size)


From the chart it appears that a vendor shouldn't simply make a claim, like 20% additional storage savings, and when asked to support the claim avoid explaining how the savings are provided. There's too many holes in the feature set. EMC and NetApp are technologies companies, it is our goal to advance storage technologies and this advancement is only available through open dialog.


Things which may appear similar are not necessarily the same

Stating storage savings technologies are equal between EMC & NetApp is like stating that all hypervisors provide the same functionality as ESX/ESXi.

Such a comparison is somewhat true when considering the hypervisor, we all agree all hypervisors provide the ability to run more than a single system (or guest) on a host. Yet such a statement is myopic in nature and misleading as it leaves out the reasons why customers select a hypervisor (shared infrastructure, app availability, ease of management, etc) and when these features are understood and viewed with greater perspective it becomes clear to see why ESX/ESXi has such a dominance in the market.

Hopefully this post helps raise the level of understanding relative to storage savings capabilities in the market today.

One housekeeping note, whenever I discuss a non-NetApp technology there's a chance I may have an error. Please note should this happen, it is not intentional. If you find that I have any incorrect info let me know and it will promptly be corrected.


Between The Lines—Facebook IPO: Does Zuckerberg really need Wall Street on his back, too?

A report today says that a Facebook is in no rush to go public and that an IPO likely won’t come until 2012.

Server Virtualization News—VMware discount program offers volume deals

VMware says its new Volume Purchasing Program is like a frequent flier program for virtualization. The VMware discount program offers customers between 4% and 12% off.

Add to digg Add to StumbleUpon Add to del.icio.us Add to Google

VMware - Hardware virtualization - Frequent-flyer program - Emulators - Intel x86 Architecture

Between The Lines—Study: Death-grip antenna problems unique to iPhone 4

A new study of the iPhone 4’s antenna problems revealed that the issues are unique to the iPhone 4

VMware—VMworld 2010 Fun Run

VMworld 2010 Fun Run

The VMworld 2010 Fun Run is on! It will take place on Sunday, August 29 at 5:00 p.m. starting at Crissy Field in San Francisco. All registered VMworld attendees and their spouses are invited!

 

It doesn't matter whether you run every day or don't run at all. The relatively flat course takes you along the beautiful San Francisco Bay with a full view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands.

 

No need to bring a camera, VMware's very own Luke Kilpatrick will be photograping the event. Come to have a great time and get over your jet lag before VMworld kicks off.

 

The important information:

 

What: 5k out-and-back course
When: Sunday, August 29th at 5:00 p.m.
Where: Crissy Field, San Francisco
Who: VMworld 2010 attendees and spouses
How: Registration and further information to come out next week.

 

 

Stay tuned for more information; until then, enjoy the view from Crissy field:

 

crissy-fields-header.jpg

 

 

 

 

          -The VMworld Team
       Download VMware Products  | Privacy  | Update Feed Preferences 
         Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

virtualization.info—Citrix will lead the desktop virtualization market says Morgan Stanley

Last week virtualization.info reported about an analysis released in June by Goldman Sachs which forecasted a neat leadership of Citrix over VMware in the desktop virtualization market by 2013. Apparently Goldman Sachs is not the only one to believe so.

Even earlier than that, at the end of May, in its own intelligence report Morgan Stanley forecasted the desktop virtualization market revenue at $1.5B by 2014 and the market share breakdown in this way:

We identify large enterprises, govt, and education as the target segments, leaving SMB penetration as upside, and est. penetration of ~13% (47M PCs) to be virtualized by 2014, out of an estimated total installed base of 370M. We assume pricing declines 8%/year and that VMW and CTXS maintain 80% share through 2014.

…

we believe CTXS will likely hold the lion’s share of the market at 48% in 2014 vs. 36% for VMW. This implies a $735M rev. opportunity for CTXS in 2014, and $300-500M of potential rev. upside over the next 4 years.


…

we believe VMW’s View product is evolving and the gap with XenDesktop will close over time. While some of the desktop rev. is in CTXS cons., and cannibalizes XenApp, it’s largely accretive to VMW, and could add $1B to $1.5B to cons. over the next 4 years.

The two reports are surprisingly similar in terms of market share. This means that while VMware is a recognized leader in the server virtualization market, well ahead of competition says Gartner, it can’t persuade investment firms about its capability to execute in the desktop virtualization space.

The events of the last months didn’t help the company to change this perception: VMware delayed its client hypervisor, Client Virtualization Platform (CVP), several times at the point that the project seems indefinitely postponed now; its Desktop Business Unit lost the Vice President and General Manager, Jocelyn Goldfein; and the company’s top executives suddenly are very skeptic about the future of VDI, to the point that they can’t forecast the adoption rate by the end of 2011.



Labels: Citrix, VDI, VMware

virtualization.info—Citrix announces Q2 2010 earnings, only 1/3 of XenDesktop customers use ESX now

Earlier this week Citrix announced its Q2 2010 financial results.

The company announced $458M in total revenue, with more than $100M in cash flow.

New license sales were $149 million, up 15% from last yearLicense updates increased 13%.
Tech services grew 35%, online SaaS revenue (from the GoTo business unit) was $89 million, up 18% year-on-year.

In the Americas region Citrix revenue grew 17% from last year, in EMEA 11% year-on-year, and in APAC 31%.

Easy to expect the company reports a major growth for the XenDesktop business: in Q2 Citrix closed 18 transactions for over $1M each, 13 for over $18M and some for $5M. Some of these deals have more than 25,000 seats. 
During the quarter 3,500 customers purchased XenDesktop: 1,000 are new customers, the others are XenApp customers that used the XenDesktop Trade-up program.

This conversion of existing XenApp customers is especially interesting: Citrix reports that 20% of renewable XenApp licenses in Q2 were instead converted in XenDesktop licenses. In Q1 2010 the conversion rate of renewable XenApp licenses was 10% only. Plus, the average XenDesktop deals are 3x bigger than the XenApp ones. 
If the trend continues one may envision a future where XenApp as a stand-alone product doesn’t exist anymore.

Another very interesting point is that only 1/3 of the XenDesktop customers now use VMware ESX as the backend hypervisor. Unfortunately Citrix doesn’t specify the XenServer and Hyper-V breakdown.

Overall, The XenDesktop revenew is equal to $290M, 15% more than last year.

For Q3 Citrix expects total revenue to be in the range of $450M to $460M.
For full year 2010 the company instead expects total revenue will be in a range of $1.81B to $1.83B.

During the call Mark Templeton, Citrix CEO, claimed that Xen is now powering 2/3 of all public clouds worldwide, including of course Amazon EC2.
Of course he also mentioned how part of these Xen installations are being converted in XenServer installations, including the one that powers The Rackspace Cloud.

Templeton also reports that Citrix has now more than 460 cloud providers that signed up to deliver the Citrix Cloud Solutions framework.

During the Q&A session Templeton also provided a juicy comment on competition, specifically about Quest:

Question from Bhavan Suri – William Blair & Company L.L.C.
And then just one quick question on competition on the desktop virtualization side — and I’m not even going to talk about [indiscernible] (1:09:21) anymore – but have you seen Quest at all and do you know they’ve also been highlighted quite effectively as a big Microsoft partner in the VDI space, and how should we think about Microsoft’s relationship with them vis a vis you, and how you guys, whether you run into them or not competitively?

Answer from Mark Templeton
Well, first of all, I don’t have total visibility, and with that as a caveat, I’d say anecdotally, Quest gets considered in some cases but they get eliminated very early on. And I’d say when it comes to the strategic conversations, as they go up to the executive suite and these conversations are really about the kinds of business initiatives I talked about, technology things and some of the things I said in the prepared comments. Quickly, everyone drops out because this full range of virtual app models and virtual desktop models are really required to end up with a strategic kind of engagement with the customer. So that’s how the competitives look and our win-loss rate is remarkable on the win side, in the high-90s, 90 percentile, and the losses are miniscule.

Thanks to Seeking Alpha for the earnings call transcript.



Labels: Citrix

Between The Lines—Poll: Is there still a place for dedicated e-readers like the Kindle 3?

Amazon unveiled the Kindle 3 this week with a few minor improvements and a much better price tag. But do customers still want dedicated e-readers? Take the poll.

Between The Lines—Comcast exec: NBCU deal will accelerate 'anytime, anywhere television'

Comcast is determined to get “anytime, anywhere television” right and the NBC Universal acquisition is designed to accelerate the application of innovation without worrying about negotiating friction between distribution and content partners.

VMblog—ScaleMP Experiences Record Growth in Q2

ScaleMP, a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, today announced that the company experienced record growth in the quarter ending June 30, 2010 and has secured $2.4 million in new funding. Additionally, ScaleMP doubled the number of new customer deployments from the previous quarter including growing commercial customers to more than 50 percent of quarterly sales. ...(read more)

virtualization.info—Quest acquires Surgient

In March 2009 virtualization.info published an article titled Quest uses Surgient, why not acquire it? suggesting that such acquisition would fit the Quest expansion plans and would be the natural evolution of a pre-existing relationship between the two.

Quest answered today to that question by announcing in fact the acquisition of Surgient for an undisclosed sum.

Surgient is one of the very first startups that populated the (almost empty) virtualization ecosystem in 2003.
The company initially launched a hosted virtual lab automation (VLA) solution. In 2008 it changed its business model, allowing customers to install the product on premises and reshaping its strategy to market the platform as a VM lifecycle solution rather than a VLA solution.
In 2010 Surgient changed again: it dropped the concept of VM Lifecycle Automation entirely and fully embraced the private cloud automation hype.

Quest will include Virtual Automation Platform (VAP) in the Vizioncore portfolio. There, the Surgient technology will be probably merged with another orchestration product that Quest owns: vControl, launched in September 2009.

Both Surgient and Vizioncore brands will disappear in one month from now, as Quest already announced the plan to rename the former as Quest Software Desktop Virtualization Group starting September 1st.

The acquisition is expected to be closed within the Q3 2010.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.



Labels: Acquisitions, Quest, Surgient, Vizioncore

virtualization.info—Dell and HP to resell Oracle VM

Yesterday Oracle announced a major deal with Dell and HP: the two OEMs will certify and resell the Oracle VM virtual infrastructure, along with Oracle Solaris x86 and Oracle Enterprise Linux.
Those customers that will buy Dell’s and HP’s Oracle solutions will have full access to the Oracle Premier Support.

It sounds odd considering the Oracle’s tagline adopted after the acquisition of Sun, Software. Hardware. Complete., to push the idea of an end-to-end computing stack available from a single vendor. But it’s understandable that this is an attempt to increase the Oracle VM market share.
And, market share or not, Oracle VM Server now officially becomes the fourth hypervisor available out-of-the-box in industry standard servers, side by side with Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX.

It will be interesting to see how this will impact the Oracle presence one year from now.



Labels: Alliances, Dell, HP, Oracle

virtualization.info—Microsoft releases Linux Integrated Services 2.1 for Hyper-V

In April Microsoft announced the beta program for the Linux Integrated Services (LIS) 2.1 for Hyper-V.
Among the many new features, the package introduced support for up to 4 vCPUs inside Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) guest operating systems.

Yesterday Microsoft finally released it.

Besides the 4 vCPUs support for SLES 10 SP3 and 11, as well as for RHEL 5.2-5.5, LIS 2.1 also includes:

  • Driver support for synthetic devices
    LIS 2.1 supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
  • Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V
    Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

  • Timesync
    The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.
  • Integrated Shutdown
    Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
  • Heartbeat
    Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.
  • Pluggable Time Source
    A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

The first version of Hyper-V was released two years and one month ago. The first version of LIS (formerly called Integration Components for Linux) was released in September 2008.
While Microsoft may have had just a few inquiries for this feature, it’s still true that the company is trying to compete against VMware in the enterprise market where companies need high performance virtual machines for both Windows and Linux guest operating systems. it’s absolutely stunning that Microsoft took two whole years to introduce 4 vCPUs support for Linux VMs. Hopefully customers won’t have to wait another two to have 8 vCPUs support.

Also, Microsoft didn’t provide any update about its plan to submit LIS to the Linux kernel maintainers for inclusion in a future release.



Labels: Microsoft

virtualization.info—VMware validates end-to-end FCoE configuration from Cisco and NetApp

A couple of days ago VMware officially validated an end-to-end Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) hardware configuration provided by Cisco and NetApp.

The solution includes Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches and NetApp FAS3100 and FAS600 series SANs, now included in the vSphere 4.1 hardware compatibility guide.

To be fair, the three companies already presented a hardware configuration that could support end-to-end FCoE n December 2009, with a paper titled Designing Secure Multi-Tenancy into Virtualized Data Centers.
In that document anyway FCoE was suggested as an optional alternative to standard Ethernet or Fibre Channel, which doesn’t imply VMware was supporting the protocol at that time.



Labels: Cisco, NetApp, VMware

VMblog—LPI Launches Enterprise-level "Virtualization" Exam

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization, launched the "Virtualization and High Availability" exam elective for their LPIC-3 certification program. The LPI-304 exam is the third available elective for LPI's enterprise-level LPIC-3 certification program for Linux professionals. Due to demand for this exam LPI will be hosting two special exam labs in August for this new release: FrOSCon 5 (Sankt Augustin, Germany) and LinuxCon Brazil (São Paulo, Brazil)....(read more)

VMblog—Dell and HP to Resell Oracle VM

Oracle today announced Dell and HP will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on their respective x86 platforms. This is a major announcement for Oracle considering the company has been promoting the idea of a single vendor providing your entire end-to-end stack. However, this also signifies another shift, adding Oracle's hypervisor to a very small list of supported and packaged hypervisors on HP and Dell equipment puts Oracle VM up there with VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. ...(read more)

virtualization.info—Linux Professional Institute launches Virtualization and High Availability exam

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) just announced the LPI-304 exam, titled Virtualization and High Availability.

The exam is elective for the vendor-neutral Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC)-3 and includes virtualization (Xen, KVM, OpenVZ, VirtualBox), load balancing, cluster management and cluster storage.

Interestingly, LPI has assigned a weight of 10 to the questions about virtualization theory and the ones about Xen, while just 7 to the ones about KVM, and just 3 to the questions about other solutions (OpenVZ and VirtualBox).

Like every other LPI exam, the LPI-304 is available at Prometric and VUE testing centers.



Labels: LPI, Training

Between The Lines—Will cloud computing economics add up for Microsoft?

Microsoft at its financial analyst meeting made the case for being a cloud computing leader and argued that its economic prospects will improve as information technology shifts to an on-demand model.

Between The Lines—Smart Planet: Fighting deadly parasitic infections with a UV flashlight

Using fluorescent dyes and a simple ultraviolet flashlight, Ellen Beaulieu, a medicinal chemist at SRI International has created a test to detect parasitic infections in human beings.

Ben Armstrong—Linux Integration Services v2.1 Now Available



Over on the virtualization team blog – Mike Sterling has just announced the availability of the Linux Integration Services v2.1.  And there is a lot to announce here.  Along with the previous support for our high performance virtual storage and network adapters – this release brings in the following new features:

  • SMP Support: All supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors per virtual machine.
  • Integrated Shutdown: This means that you can finally shutdown Linux virtual machines directly from the Hyper-V / SCVMM management consoles – without needing to login to the virtual machine first.
  • Time Synchronization: Linux virtual machines will now have their clocks updated to deal with things like “saved states” just like Windows virtual machines.
  • Heartbeat: The virtual machine heartbeat allows you to confirm that Linux is still running and responding inside the virtual machine.

These integration services are supported on the following guest operating systems:

  • Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3
  • Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5

You can download the integration services here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eee39325-898b-4522-9b4c-f4b5b9b64551

Cheers,
Ben

Chad Sakac—How good is YOUR VDI kung-fu?

A really great EMC partner, Nexus IS, has built a really cool VDI centric lab where customers can really see and learn.

As a partner of many technology leaders – you’ll get a chance to see this across many vendors, and compare VMware View and Citrix.

They run these on an ongoing basis, and if you’re in the central US, and thinking about client virtualization – you should check it out.  If you’re near Minneapolis/St. Paul and Wed, August 18th, 2010 – 10-4pm works for you…  Register at the link below… it will be worth your while!

image

Chad Sakac—Upcoming August EMC/VMware Webcasts

Customer feedback on these keep getting better and better, so we need to continue to dial it up!   August is dominated by vSpecialists, including our very own Scott Baker, the inimitable Scott Lowe, and Tee Glasgow.   Brian Henderson is too cool to be a vSpecialist (he really is very, very good :-) and will be covering Exchange 2010 on Private Cloud models.

I’ve asked these to always be technical, and focused.   Give me feedback on the content, the sessions, and what you want to see next….

As always – same bat time, same bat channel – every thursday at 8am pacific, 11am eastern.

You can register for any any all – in one convenient place – right HERE.

Building Blocks for a 100% Virtualized and Protected Data Center

Thursday, August 5, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 BST

Hosts: Scott Baker, Technical Marketing Manager, EMC and Jim LaFollette, Sr. Systems Engineer, VMware
Hear a discussion on the integrated technologies from EMC and VMware that can be used to create a 100% virtualized and protected data center.

Disaster Avoidance with VMware vSphere and EMC VPLEX

Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 BST

Host: Scott Lowe, VMware-Cisco Solutions Principal, EMC
Find out how: EMC VPLEX differs from other storage platforms; active-active storage in multiple data centers enables new operational models; and vSphere and VPLEX together can allow you to live-migrate workloads between data centers.

vCenter Plug-ins from EMC

Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 BST

Host: Tee Glasgow, Senior vSpecialist, VCE Strategic Alliance, EMC
Discover how EMC plug-ins for VMware vCenter deliver the visibility, provisioning, and management of EMC storage from the vCenter interface - giving you more integration and capabilities than any other storage vendor.

Getting Microsoft Exchange 2010 into the Private Cloud

Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 BST

Host: Brian Henderson, Technical Marketing Manager, EMC
Learn best practices and hear alternative scenarios for cloud rollouts that will help you make the right storage, virtualization, and replication decisions for your organization.

VMblog—Microsoft's Linux Integration Services v2.1 Now Available

Today, Microsoft announced the availability of the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services for Linux Version 2.1. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—Court rejects class action status for Intel antitrust suit

Intel today won a key ruling in an antitrust case when a Delaware court rejected the request to grant the case class action status, according to reports.
Intel is accused of wrongfully offering discounts to manufacturers, which led to inflated prices. But the court said that the plaintiffs could not show that consumers were harmed by [...]

VMblog—ChangeBASE AOK launches VMware ThinApp application compatibility Plug-in

ChangeBASE AOK, the world leader in automated application compatibility testing and remediation, today announces the first VMware ThinApp Plug-in to aid enterprise application compatibility in a virtualized environment. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 potential marketing pitch: 'I'm a phone too'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave analysts a glimpse at the software giant’s marketing around Windows Phone 7. The plan: Let Windows Phone 7 ride shotgun with Windows 7. The punchline: “I’m a phone too.”

Between The Lines—Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 marketing pitch: 'I'm a phone too'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave analysts a glimpse at the software giant’s marketing around Windows Phone 7. The plan: Let Windows Phone 7 ride shotgun with Windows 7. The punchline: “I’m a phone too.”

Between The Lines—Real cuts losses amid restructuring, still misses analyst estimates

Real Networks’ second-quarter loss was narrowed but the company, which is in the midst of a restructuring, still missed Wall Street’s estimates.

Vaughn Stewart—Grab a Discounted VMworld Full Conference Pass from NetApp

NetApp is providing a discount for the purchase of a full conference pass for individuals attending either VMworld in San Francisco or VMworld in Copenhagen. The NetApp discount reduces the price from $1745 to $1495 (USD) and € 1150 to € 950 (Euro).

You should also be aware of additional discount rates available from VMware for VMworld Alumni, students and faculty (aka educational rate), government employees, and VCPs.

You can take advantage of the NetApp when you register for VMworld via this URL:

http://www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa?sponsorCode=NAPP

Simply use one of the following codes when completing your purchase:

San Francisco 
code: NETAPP_EB_US2010
Copenhagen code: NETAPP_EB_EMEA2010

Once you register, don’t forget to sign up for a one-on-one meeting with a NetApp vExpert in our Genius Lounge!


Update: According to Nick Howell the NetApp discount can be applied retroactively, so anyone who has already purchased a full access pass can still receive the discount by sending an email request to: VMworld2010Registration@vmware-events.com.


Between The Lines—McAfee acquires tenCube; Second quarter mixed bag

A day after Symantec’s earnings bombed, smaller rival McAfee reported a mixed second quarter and acquired a mobile security firm, tenCube.

Between The Lines—Coinstar sees growth in DVD business; adds Blu-Ray to Redbox offerings

Coinstar says the DVD business is continuing to grow and, as such, it has raised its financial forecast for the rest of the year and announced the addition of Blu-Ray disks to its Redbox DVD rental kiosks

Vaughn Stewart—Attend VMworld 2010 and have a one-on-one meeting with a NetApp vExpert

One of the best parts of attending VMworld is the wealth of information shared in breakout sessions, hands-on labs, and in vendor booths. This year NetApp is making our vExperts and subject matter experts available for one-on-one meetings and/or demos for attendees of VMworld 2010 in San Francisco!

We expect these spots to go quick so if you're interested discussing the following topics I'd suggest you hit the NetApp Communities and request your meeting today!

  • VDI & VMware View on NetApp (View integration, hardware assisted cloning, dedupe, FlashCache, etc)
  • vCloud & Orchestration (vCloud integration ponts, orchestration partners & partner capabilities, etc)
  • Solutions from the Cisco, NetApp, & VMware Alliance (LDVM, SMT, E2E FCoE, and more)
  • Virtualizing Enterprise Business Applications (Best practices, Snapshot backups, SRM, data mobility, etc)

P.S. Rumor has it if you're not already a member of the NetApp community, you might want to join before attending VMworld. ;^)


Chad Sakac—vSphere 4.1 Cross-EMC support whats the good/bad/ugly?

UPDATE July 18th, 2010: a bit more info on Site Recovery Manager & Avamar…

Whenever there is a major VMware release, a common question from EMCers, EMC customers, and EMC partners is: “what is supported day one, and what will break if I upgrade?”

Any vendor who tells you “nothing will break” is either:

  1. lying (lying maliciously)
  2. delusional (lying, but unintentionally) – if you’re a competitor that piles on to this post, remember I have most competitor’s products myself, and I’ll call you on it :-)
  3. a one-product company

As soon as you have a broad portfolio – getting everything to line up is impossible.  As we near major VMware releases, as the “face for VMware inside EMC”, I rally across the product teams to make sure we’re aligning.   We all work hard, and push as much as possible – but inevitably there are little time gaps.    They are all on eLab and the VMware HCL – but I’ve found it’s useful to have it integrated in one place. 

So – I’m taking the high road here and being as explicit as possible – even with gaps.  

Read on for details, but in a nutshell – core storage support is a rock on day one, and almost everything else lands within Q3, with some Q4 stragglers.

BTW – also getting the inevitable “can I get a Vblock with vSphere 4.1?”.  That one is a firm NO right now.   Remember – the core idea of a Vblock is that it’s all integrated and tested so you don’t need to.   That means that by definition it will always lag any given component a little bit – and that’s a GOOD thing.   Of course, expect an update soon :-)

Remember everyone – always test before putting anything into production!!!!

Read on for details…

  • Storage:
    • Platforms = YES.  Day 1 support is perfect – and you can see it here.   Every EMC storage platform target (Iomega, CLARiiON, EMC Unified/Celerra, Symmetrix and VPLEX) is on the VMware HCL day one across all protocols.  This was a chunk of work – so thank you from me to the VMware and EMC teams that made that happen.
    • VAAI support:   VAAI support doesn’t come from a “plugin”, it is a function of the array target’s responses to SCSI commands, so in other words, it’s a firmware/array software thing.   EMC’s committed VAAI support is right around the corner on the CLARiiON CX4, EMC Unified in the FLARE 30 update, and in Q4 on EMC VMAX in the Enginuity 5875 update.  You can read more about that here. 
    • PowerPath/VE = YES.   There are some caveats here – PowerPath/VE 5.4.1 (GA today) works – but management and updates via VUM were broken (you fall back to CLI based updates/management).  Also, vSphere 4.1 ESX completed it’s certification testing, but ESXi did not in time.  RPQs are being accepted on ESXi.   PowerPath/VE 5.4.2 (which lifts all caveats listed earlier) is Q3.
    • EMC Replication Manager = NO.   Replication Manager will support vSphere 4.1 in Q3.
    • Recoverpoint = YES.
  • Site Recovery Manager:
    • With vSphere 4.1, you need to use SRM 4.1, but this time, VMware did a great job getting SRM updated near synchronously with vSphere 4.1
    • Very good news on this one – all EMC’s SRAs are certified and posted.
  • vCenter Plugins
    • UPDATE 7/29/2010 – EMC Virtual Storage Integrated 3.0.1 has shipped, and fully supports vSphere 4.1   You can download it, and the docs on Powerlink here:

    Home > Support > Software Downloads and Licensing > Downloads T-Z > Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)

    and the Release Notes from Home > Support > Technical Documentation and Advisories > Software ~ T-Z ~ Documentation > Virtual Storage Integrator > Virtual Storage Integrator for vSphere > 3.x.

      •  EMC Virtual Storage Integrator = NO.   EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (currently at v3.0) supports vSphere 4 (including update 2).  The next release (v3.0.1) which along with vSphere 4.1 support also includes support for various other new things is targeted for the end of July, so very close.   v3.1 targeted for Q4 has LOTS of goodies (I can’t wait!!)
    • EMC NFS Plugin = NO.  The next release which along with vSphere 4.1 support also includes merges block storage management for a Unified platform plugin (see below) and various other goodies.  It’s scheduled for the end of Q3.
    • EMC CLARiiON Plugin = NO.   The next version of the plugin is folded into a Unified platform plugin (see above)
  • Backup
    • Data Domain = YES.   Data Domain is an easy yes, as it’s independent from VMware from an interop standpoint.
    • UPDATED: Avamar = NO.   Testing seemed to show some issues in some restore scenarioes with vSphere 4.1.   SP3 is close, and will support vSphere 4.1.   There will be an Avamar Virtual edition which with either be concurrent, or lag by just a few weeks.
    • NetWorker = NO.   NetWorker 7.6 SP2 – is where NetWorker gains integration with VADP, and is supported with vSphere 4.1.  Target is Q4.
  • RSA
    • Envision = NO – support arrives in Q3
    • SecureID = NO – support arrives in Q3
    • DLP = YES – no vSphere dependency

Thanks – if there’s something you’re curious about, comment, and I’ll work to get the answer!

VMblog—Quest Software Catapults into Private Cloud Automation Market with Acquisition of Surgient

Quest Software, Inc. today announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Surgient, Inc., a provider of private cloud automation software. The Austin, Texas-based company’s Surgient Platform enables organizations to deploy and manage secure cloud infrastructures to gain business agility and reduce costs. With the Surgient Automation Platform, organizations can create robust and secure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds that may be shared across the organization. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2010. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—DOJ sues Oracle over GSA contract

The Department of Justice has sued Oracle for defrauding the government out of “hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.”

VMblog—Quest Software Reports Second Quarter 2010 Results

Quest Software, Inc. today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2010. Total revenues were $186.1 million, a 13.3% increase compared to the prior year’s second quarter revenue of $164.3 million, while license revenues grew 25.1% to $77.1 million. Total revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2010, were $357.3 million, an 8.3% increase compared to $329.9 million for the same period in 2009. Operating margins increased to 17.7% and 15.9% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2010, respectively, as compared to 13.0% and 12.1% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2009, respectively. On a non-GAAP basis, operating margin was 24.1% and 22.7% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2010. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—YouTube increases video upload limit to 15 minutes

YouTube is upping its game - and video time limits - for non-partner customwers.

Server Virtualization News—Dell, HP to resell Oracle VM

In a surprising move, Oracle hardware rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard have certified and will resell Oracle VM on their x86 servers.

Add to digg Add to StumbleUpon Add to del.icio.us Add to Google

Dell - Hewlett-Packard - Oracle VM - Oracle - Oracle Corporation

virtualization.info—Storage vMotion vs SAN Replication

Duncan Epping at Yellow Bricks yesterday posted a brief but very interesting article about the best approach to pursue when a company is about to replace its SAN arrays: Storage vMotion or SAN Replication.

Epping breaks down the pros and cons of both approaches:

SAN Replication

  • Can utilize Array based copy mechanisms for fast replication (+)
  • Per LUN migration, high level of concurrency (+)
  • Old volumes still available (+)
  • Need to resignature or mount the volume again (-)
    • A resignature also means you will need to reregister the VM! (-)
  • Downtime for the VM during the cut over (-)

Storage vMotion

  • No downtime for your VMs (+)
  • Fast Storage vMotion when your Array supports vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) (+)
    • If your Array doesn’t support VAAI migrations can be slow (-)
    • Induced cost if VAAI isn’t supported (-)
    • Only intra Array not across arrays (-)
  • No resignaturing or re-registering needed (+)
  • Per VM migration (-)
    • Limited concurrency (2 per host, 8 per VMFS volume) (-)


Labels: VMware

virtualization.info—Virtual Computer appoints its SVP of Marketing

The US startup Virtual Computer earlier this week announced its new Senior Vice President of Marketing: Andrew McKay.

McKay is the co-founder and former Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Attivio, a software company focused on enterprise search solutions.
From 2002 to 2006 McKay has been the Vice President of Sales, Technical Sales and Product Marketing at Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), acquired by Microsoft in early 2008.



Labels: Leadership, Virtual Computer

Server Virtualization News—VMware shops reluctantly plan the move from ESX to ESXi

Users still on VMware's ESX hypervisor prepare to make the switch to ESXi, but not without trepidation. VSphere 4.1 is the last VMware release to support the ESX Linux-based management console.

Add to digg Add to StumbleUpon Add to del.icio.us Add to Google

VMware - VMware ESX - VMware vSphere - Hypervisor - Emulators

Between The Lines—Microsoft's stump speech: We're leading the cloud parade

Microsoft’s operating chief Kevin Turner set out to position the software giant as a cloud computing leader with a broad portfolio that rivals such as Google, Salesforce.com, Amazon and VMware can’t match.

Between The Lines—Best Buy, Clearwire team up on 4G

Best Buy and Clearwire are teaming up to offer 4G connectivity beginning in 2011.

Between The Lines—Top 25 Android apps: The best of the best

Android now has over 70,000 apps to choose from. TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner shows you 25 of the best ones to download.

Between The Lines—IBM picks up data compression company Storwize

IBM has acquired Storwize, a privately held company that focuses on data compression.

Between The Lines—Citrix: Desktop virtualization is snowballing

Citrix reported a better-than-expected second quarter in part because of its XenDesktop virtualization software.

Mike Laverick—Chinwag with Mike… Daniel Eason [Episode 22]

This weeks chinwaggee is Daniel Eason – I know Dan from attending the User Group in London. Plus I follow his blog and tweets. He’s  currently an IT Infrastructure Architect from the UK working for airline. His main specialisms are within the key areas of a Datacentre Infrastructure, and this covers technology such as Virtualisation [...]

Between The Lines—Motorola's second quarter better than expected

Motorola reported a better-than-expected second quarter and said its enterprise mobility business did well. The company also said that it expects to gain smartphone market share with the Droid X launch.

VMblog—Enterprise-Grade Virtualization Management Now Available for Xen and KVM

Managing open source hypervisors, including Xen and KVM, became a lot easier today with the release of ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise edition from Convirture Corp. ...(read more)

VMblog—Citrix Reports Second Quarter 2010 Financial Results

In the second quarter of fiscal 2010, Citrix achieved revenue of $458 million, compared to $393 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2009, representing 17 percent revenue growth. ...(read more)

Between The Lines—Apple's iPad muscle flex: Setting the stage for a showdown with publishers?

Apple’s rejection of a subscription app by Time Inc. is an example of a possible showdown that could be brewing between publishers and Apple over control of valuable subscriber data.

Mike Laverick—Vendorwag with Mike – DoubleTake with Ian Masters [Episode 21]

“This week’s “Vendorwag” is with the folks at Double-Take Software. Specifically, with Ian Masters of DoubleTake. Ian is UK Sales and Marketing Director at Double-Take Software, and has been advising organisations on their requirements for business continuity, disaster recovery and backup for over a decade. He has a wide background in the virtualisation, storage and [...]

Between The Lines—Comcast CEO Brian Roberts gives Netflix its due

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has a healthy respect for Netflix and said the cable giant has to get better to thwart the threat to its video on demand offerings.

Vaughn Stewart—End-To-End FCoE: ONLY available from Cisco, NetApp, & VMware

Today the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance (IVA) of Cisco, NetApp, and VMware announced the industry’s first certified end-to-end Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solution for VMware cloud deployments and virtual infrastructures.

This certification is a significant milestone in the evolution and maturation of FCoE and converged 10Gb Ethernet networks. The adoption of this architecture reduces the total number of storage networking devices and the network cabling required within a data center drivingmeasurablecost savings in both CapEx and OpEx.

Cisco, NetApp, and VMware are currently the ONLY networking, storage, and virtualization vendors providing a joint certified end-to-end FCoE solution that includes the CNA (FCoE initiator), network (Cisco Nexus 5000 series) and storage target (NetApp FAS Unified Arrays) with VMware (vSphere).


On Certification

The validation of the End-To-End FCoE design was completed as a part of the VMware Hardware Certification Program and is currently listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide.

(click to view at full scale)


Support for deployments build on architecture is provided jointly by Cisco, NetApp, and VMware.

The Flexibility In Today's Announcement

We have so many 10GbE & FCoE deployments with Cisco & VMware it was hard for me to fathom that the VMware certification was just recently completed. I should point out, that the NetApp & Cisco support has been in place for quite some time. Recalling the existing install base has compelled me to expand upon today’s announcement with particular emphasis on items relevant to FCoE architectures and support statements.

In an ideal world all IVA deployments would comprise of net-new compute, network, and storage devices; however, most companies don’t have the resources available to coordinate the amount of change required to implement one oflarge or even modest scale. It is in these types of engagements where the flexibility of our architecture truly shines.

One of the most desirable features of Cisco, NetApp, & VMware IVA deployments is the unprecedented level of flexibility provided in the joint architecture. Many are unaware that we currently support End-To-End FCoE deployments for both the UCS B-Series & UCS C-Series Unified Computing Platforms along with more traditional server and blade server platforms. In all of these cases vSphere and a Cisco Nexus 1000V switch are required. In a similar fashion we also support the use of traditional storage arrays when they are virtualized with NetApp vSeries.

Though this flexibility we are able to accelerate customers’ adoption of cloud computing, by allowing them to build a scalable architecture which adapts to their business demands such as requests for additional services, data center asset depreciation schedules, etc.



More Details Around End-To-End FCoE Connectivity

The certification announced today applies to deployments based on Cisco USC C-Series unified compute servers and traditional server/blade servers where the FCoE connectivity is based on a model of direct connections from the hosts to Nexus 5k switches.

As you may be aware, today the UCS B-Series is challenged with end-to-end FCoE connectivity due to a lack of support for FCoE initiators northbound from the USC 6100 Series Fabric Interconnect to the Nexus 5k switch. This limitation is slated to be addressed in the not-to-distant future; however, it has been one which has required customers to have to consider dual-fabric topologies.

To clarify a dual-fabricrefersto twodiscretenetworks comprised from a Nexus 10GbE Ethernet fabric and a MDS Fibre Channel fabric. Note, I should add that FC-only storage arrays also force the use of dual-fabric deployments. The continued use of thesetraditionalarrays after support for FCoE initiators is added to the UCS 6100 will still require the existence of dual-fabric topologies (or one tovirtualizethem -- ahem... vSeries hello?)

Engineers from Cisco, NetApp, and VMware have eliminated the need to deploy a dual-fabric topology with a fully supported configuration that we refer to as an End-&-End FCoE design.In this design we leverage Fibre Channel uplinks between the Fabric Interconnect and the Nexus in order to eliminate the need for FC switches.

(click to view at full scale)

Again, this issue is temporary and will be resolved; however, don’t let it force you to deploy dual-fabrics or hold off on adopting converged 10Gb Ethernet. The End-&-End FCoE configuration has been tested & validated by Cisco & NetApp and you can find the support statement in the NetApp Interoperability Matrix (IMT) on NOW.


I hope I haven't confused anyone by expanding the conversation of end-to-end support for FCoE by raising the issue around the UCS B-Series and how we have addressed it with an end-&-end config. the purpose for including the B-Series is our joint adoption of B-Series in IVA solutions is significant and we can deliver supported, single fabric architectures today. The future of cloud computing is converged 10Gb Ethernet.


The Perspective From Our Partners

I want to share with you these quotes from four of our key IVA solution partners regarding today's announcement and IVA based solutions.

(note we have over 70 IVA partners today)

Brendon Jarvis, General Manager of Strategic Growth, Empired Limited

“Empired is excited by the collaboration of Cisco, NetApp and VMware with the industry’s first end-to-end FCoE solution for virtualized environments. These vendors form an integral part of our business today. With these key partnerships, Empired is able to provide a clear vision to our customers and offer solutions that accelerate business agility and enable a truly dynamic infrastructure platform. Empired is committed to this relationship and we are pleased to be collaborating with Cisco, NetApp and VMware to help deliver the value and simplicity of an FCoE solution to our dynamic data centre customers across Australia and Asia Pacific."

Rob Christ, founder and director, Databasement

“Vital to our solution is a unique service-oriented infrastructure based on the Cisco, NetApp, and VMware offering, that includes all server, storage, and networking hardware and software to facilitate sharing, reuse, and dynamic resource allocation. The announcement that VMware has validated Cisco and NetApp end-to-end FCoE in virtual environments will help us consolidate our data center infrastructure so we can achieve greater efficiency, performance, and overall cost savings.”

Bob Olwig, vice president of Corporate Business Development, World Wide Technology

“VMware’s certification of Cisco networking with the NetApp Storage FCoE solution is significant for our customers who are demanding an end to the complexity and headaches associated with a myriad of cables, multiple interface cards, and switches. World Wide Technology is laser-focused in helping customers integrate disparate technologies in complex physical and virtualized environments. We are very pleased to be working with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware, which have delivered the industry’s first FCoE solution that squarely addresses data center customer requirements.”

Mark Hilz, president and chief operating officer, INX

“A validated end-to-end FCoE solution from virtualized server through the network to the storage arrays will help our customers drive a level of consolidation, virtualization, and automation that up until now was not possible. The collaboration among Cisco, NetApp, and VMware continues to yield technology advancements that accelerate business agility and delivers on the promise of enabling a dynamic virtualized data center.”


In Closing

As more enterprises move towards a flexible cloud architecture; the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance of Cisco, NetApp, and VMware will continue to collaborate with our solution provider partners, systems integrators, and service providers to help customers accelerate their journey to the cloud. A cloud architecture built on converged 10GbE for FCoE and NFS seems to be ideally suited for Cisco and NetApp to provide the physical foundation.


Between The Lines—Amazon unveils new Kindle; Assessing the e-reader fallout

Amazon launched its next-generation Kindle, which is faster, lighter and smaller. The move sets Amazon up for the holiday shopping season and puts pressure on rivals, notably Barnes & Noble as well as Sony, to create next-generation devices.

Footnotes