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Wed, 28 Jun 2006

Sparked by VMware's acquisition of Akimbi (his review of the product), Bob Roudebush has some interesting thoughts on the state of the virtualization market in his article The Virtualization Market - A Real-Life Game of RISK? He's got a number of very salient quick takes on the dev/test market, management tools, and the desktop experience. And here's another future look at how 'virtual is better than real':

The biggest untapped market for virtualization has to be leveraging virtualization as part of the end user experience on the desktop. VMware's ACE product was the first to focus on this, but no one company - even VMware - has seemed to get any traction. The potential opportunity for an interesting solution to problems like mobile workforce empowerment, workstation security, etc. is enormous. The shear numbers dictate that a successful solution could yield impressive financial returns.

What if users could run their browser in a seamless window running as part of a background virtual machine that was isolated from the corporate network? What if the applications and user date for a workstation PC were somehow virtualized so that users could move easily between different pieces of hardware?...

via Sharing out Enterprises and SMBs virtualization market at virtualization.info, where Alessandro has further thoughts on the state of the market. See also The virtualization market towards monopoly? and The long chess game of VMware.

Tarry is also on to something with his post on VMware's Strategy: Customer Centric Innovation, but I'll wait for his follow-up for further comment.

posted by jtroyer at: 15:26 | | | permanent link

TechTarget always has great IT content, but is a bit of a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Here's some recent collections of good virtualization coverage.

• Server Virtualization: Getting Started Guide. Includes Quick Start, Glossary, and random articles.
• Open Source Topics: Virtualization Platforms
• Open Source Topics: Virtualization Platforms: Expert Advice. Good articles, including a new 2-parter from virtualization.info's Alessandro Perilli on "How virtualization can improve security." part 1, part 2
• Open Source Topics: Server virtualization basics
• Open Source Topics: Managing virtual environments

posted by jtroyer at: 15:12 | | | permanent link

Tue, 27 Jun 2006

Damian of ozvms keeps the articles coming with a short overview of Distributed Resource Scheduler, a new feature in VMware Infrastructure 3.

VMWare DRS is a new technology that will automatically move Virtual Machines around your cluster of ESX 3.0 servers to their optimal location based on complex rule sets and user defined resource pools by utilising VMotion technology. This article will provide an overview of the technology and allow you to make an informed decision on the benefits DRS can provide to you and your business.

Also check out his configuration notes for ESX 2.x on IBM HS20 blades.

Update: He's also posted a similar short overview on High Availability for VMware Infrastructure 3.

posted by jtroyer at: 17:28 | | | permanent link

Damian of ozvms has an insomia-driven quick P2V primer and reminder to remove non-present devices.

From Mark Wilson on PlateSpin:

My problem is that I can't just wipe my hard disk and start again. The Lifebook is joined to a corporate domain and has VPN client software installed so that I can access the network from wherever I happen to be. That's where virtualisation comes in... I thought that by performing a physical to virtual (P2V) conversion, I could run my Windows XP build inside a virtual environment on a Windows Vista or Linux host.

From KV2 blog on the clean slate approach to Windows maintenance:

If you're anything like me, there's a good chance that your XP system is slow as hell and things don't work properly anymore. Sure, it used to be nice and fast when the computer was new and XP was fresh, but you just had to keep installing and uninstalling all that software, didn't you? ... There is no easy solution to the problem, but there's a way for you to reinstall Windows without losing productivity. All you need is a decent backup software such as Acronis TrueImage and some virtualization software such as VMWare Workstation.

previously on VMTN blog: P2V conversion using NTBackup and Geert Baeke on P2V.

posted by jtroyer at: 13:00 | | | permanent link

Mon, 26 Jun 2006

Two recent entries from Billy Marshall:

Is VMTN the next AppExchange?

Service Oriented Architectures, SaaS, and Virtualization are all the rage now because they give us hope that the innovation chokehold of the standard OS is about to be broken. When applications can work together on the same server quickly and easily without days, weeks, and months of integration and untold days, weeks, and months of care and feeding as part of the maintenance cycle, all of us will get more value from our software application vendors. I hope that VMTN is remarkably successful as a virtual appliance marketplace because that success will reflect the death of the innovation drag created by the "standard OS."

Virtualize ASAP, Then What? I think Billy is holding virtual appliances to a higher standard than physical appliances, but still some good thinking in this direction:

Virtual appliances will truly become an interesting form factor when application companies shoulder the burden of lifecycle management for all of the components that make the virtual appliance a complete solution. If a virtual appliance only provides the value of a snapshot in time for the system components, it is only really valid for demonstrations and trials. Fortunately, Linux and open source offer application ISVs a perfect OEM license that enables absolute control of the customer experience throughout the application lifecycle.

posted by jtroyer at: 14:59 | | | permanent link

Scott Herold pops his head up at vmguru.com for another episode of 'VMware Server to the Rescue,' entitled Restoring an ESX 2.X Virtual Machine on VMware Server:

With VMware's pending release of VMware Server new opportunities for low cost disaster recovery are becoming available for enterprise environments. Many organizations are looking for a low-cost alternative to building a parallel VMware ESX Server infrastructure at a disaster site. VMware Server is adding an additional level of recoverability to virtual machines that would typically be ignored or delayed in the event of a disaster.

Taking a backed up virtual machine from VMware's ESX Server isn't as simple as restoring the data to a destination VMware Server system and powering it on. There are slight differences in the VMDK data files that need to be addressed before the virtual hard drive is in a format that is readable by VMware Server. The best part of the solution is that it can be done with a simple text editor.

posted by jtroyer at: 14:27 | | | permanent link

Fri, 23 Jun 2006

Damian Murdoch has collected his articles about VMware into a new blog and site, ozvms, "Australia's Premier Virtualisation Community," which will also have information on Austrialian VMware user groups.

He starts strong with two recent articles. Disaster Recovery Options with VMWare ESX Server:

Virtual Infrastructure 3 is a more than just a leap and a bound ahead of ESX 2.x and the competition. The options that is has now are things we have been wanting and needing, so VMWare has listened to the feedback people gave. But one frustrating thing is how the Disaster Recovery aspect of VMWare has not really changed. In fact I think it has been neglected, and let me explain.

Disaster Recovery in ESX 2.x was no easy achievement if you wanted to setup failover to another site with minimal data loss. There are lots of different ways to perform a disaster recovery setup with VMWare and below I will outline a few. If you are looking for ideas on how to do DR with ESX then this may help you.

VMWare Consolidated Backup:

A few people have asked me exactly what VMWare Consolidated Backup is and what it can do. This article will try and explain exactly that. ... VCB looks like a great product and it will only get better. Keep in mind one thing though, it is not a point and click backup and restore interface and it is not backup software. It is backup ENABLING software. The major backup software vendors are in the process of writing integration kits to work with VCB and this is where it will come into it's own.

via About Virtualization

posted by jtroyer at: 13:49 | | | permanent link

Mike Laverick at RTFM Education has written an unofficial upgrade guide for those of us moving from ESX Server 2.x and VirtualCenter 1.x to VMware Infrastructure 3.

This guide is designed for people who already know ESX 2.x and VC 1.x very well. It based on the "delta" two-day training that can be optionally attended for those people with prior experience. It also contains additional information beyond that course.

This guide is certainly NOT for novices or new-users!

Although I've chosen to call this an upgrade guide, it's by no means a definitive statement on upgrading. For that you need to read VMware documentation. I also view this guide as upgrade of skills as well as software.

It is not a comprehensive guide to ALL the differences -- just the primary ones. I hope to make this guide gradually more comprehensive, and cover all new features. As you might gather there's a lot marginal GUI like changes which are not included.

The emphasis here is on the Virtual Infrastructure Client used with VC. Command-line options are introduced when it is quicker/easier or the only way to carry out a task. It's not intended as a comprehensive guide to the Service Console.

It is highly recommended to attend the "delta" course, and read VMware documentation. Try to view this guide as a quick "how to do" guide with quick "Executive Summaries" at the beginning of module.

posted by jtroyer at: 13:32 | | | permanent link

Thu, 22 Jun 2006

Geert Baeke (another Dutchman a Belgian on the VMTN blogroll over there on the right of your screen) walks us through a comparison of the VMware Infrastructure 3 High Availability feature compared with the current capabilities of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 in this article:

Already for a while now, Microsoft supports host clustering for Virtual Server 2005 R2. This article tries to compare these features to VMware ESX 3.0 high availability and VMotion. More and more, Microsoft is using these features in pre-sales talks with customers. If you, as a potential customer, are not aware of some of the details, you might end up thinking that Microsoft's offering is equal to VMware's. This article will show it is not. Of course, you have to match what is offered to your needs. Depending on those needs, Virtual Server 2005 R2 might be a good fit.

Geert gave the genesis of this article on Monday in this post in the VMTN Forums:

I have been to a Microsoft presentation today for a large customer that is thinking to virtualize quite a lot of servers (100s-1000s). Their mind was clearly set for ESX 3 but that was until Microsoft came along. ... When he started to talk about hot migration, the MS expert said it was the same as VMotion because memory contents is copied between the physical hosts and that VMotion was less flexible because it requires a dedicated Gb connection. :-) I thought that was quite funny.

To which Paulo Miereles had this response:

The easyest, dumbest test? Copy a (largish) folder full of files from a VMware VM to elsewhere, throught the network. Now VMotion it. See? Nothing to see here - it just keeps on copying. Now, try doing the same with Virtual Server...

Another similar one: play a movie stored on the VM, with the player configured not to cache streams. VMotion the VM, and you won't even notice a hickup. Now, try Virtual Server...

posted by jtroyer at: 13:30 | | | permanent link

Wed, 21 Jun 2006

Blogging has been light while we rolled out the new VMware Infrastructure 3 and published the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge entries. Both of these projects offer plenty to keep you busy this summer.

In other places around the virtualization blogosphere...

After the VI3 launch, VMware's Steve Herrod gave a peek into performance gains with VI3 as well as the VMware QA process. Over at the Console, VMware's Dan Chu explains how customer demand drove VMware to add virtual lab automation, configuration management, and self-service provisioning to its software lifecycle offerings.

In the meantime, I hope you've been checking out the blogroll on your right. These experts come from all over the world, and are all long-time VMware users who have great insight into the way the virtual world is developing.

• Alessandro Perilli in Italy is a one-man firehose of virtualization industry information. He published an insightful interview with VMware's Raghu Raghuram this week. His meticulous Virtualization Industry Roadmap is also worth keeping bookmarked. He's looking for sponsors -- it's a cheap way to get in front of most of the virutalization world, both vendors and end users alike.
• David Marshall in Texas also filters the virtualization trade press every day at VMblog, with more of his personal commentary at the InfoWorld Virtualization Report. His new book, Advanced Server Virtualization, is also worth checking out. (Watch this space for a chance to get your hands on a copy.)
• Bart Korsten in the Netherlands, along with his About Virtualization blog, just launched the VMwiki to start to capture all the 'must read' and 'best practices' documentation he can gather about the new VMware Infrastructure 3.
• Tarry Singh, also in the Netherlands, is the Hunter S. Thompson and Lester Bangs of the virtualization blogging world, and puts out a multimedia torrent of virtualization strategies at TarryBlogging. His multi-part series on setting up an Oracle Real Application Cluster virtual testbed is a great tutorial.
• vmJim of vmwarez blogs from Kansas, has put out some nice virtual appliances, and has recently been running some interesting polls (60% of his respondants will upgrade to VI3 within 3 months).
• Mike Laverick of RTFM Education is a long-time VMware trainer, has written an enormous amount of supplementary VMware documentation, is a community moderator at the VMTN Forums, has a newsletter that's worth getting, and is also looking for some corporate sponsorship.

The list is getting long, so I'll stop here, but do check everybody out. The virtualization world moves so fast that these blogs are an essential tool to everyone -- business person or technologist -- trying to figure out what your options are today, what are best practices, and where the industry and technology are headed.

posted by jtroyer at: 17:49 | | | permanent link