Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Robin Wauters

Xen Updates Trademark Policy Update

by Leave a Comment

As you most probably know, Citrix has updated its Xen Trademark Policy last week “for the benefit of all those in the Xen community who distribute and contribute to the open source project”, in order to restrict unauthorized usage of the term ‘Xen’ in company and/or product names going forward. We think the policy makes all the sense in the world, but not everyone agrees with us on that.

Anyway, the company yesterday released a Word document carrying the final wording of the policy. You can download it here. Note that the FIT (Faithful Implementation Test) discussed in the document is still being worked on by the Xen Advisory Board.

Update: the PDF version has also been put up.

A Closer Look At VMware Financials

by 1 Comment

Zachary Scheidt over at Seeking Alpha penned an excellent analysis of the current financial situation VMware is in. Scheidt correctly notes the corrent virtual monopoly the virtualization industry’s poster child holds, and dissects the company’s latest earnings releases.

A small excerpt:

In addition to the $438 million in revenue, the company announced an increase of $88 million in its deferred revenue which is essentially revenue the company has received for service not yet performed. The total is now $641 million which should help to stabilize future revenue as the company can draw on this balance during future periods. In fact, a Credit Suisse analyst had an interesting theory stating that this quarter was helped significantly by the company drawing on this deferred revenue base instead of new business actually driving the strong revenue number.

Read the whole article.

Sun xVM VirtualBox Downloads Pass The Five Million Mark

by Leave a Comment

Sun Microsystems today announced that Sun xVM VirtualBox, the free and open source desktop virtualization software it acquired by taking over its maker innotek earlier this year, has surpassed five million downloads in just 18 months.

Sun xVM VirtualBox

The press release touts the xVM VirtualBox 1.6 software to be the first free hypervisor to support all major host operating systems (OS), including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris and OpenSolaris. Sun unveiled xVM VirtualBox 1.6 earlier this month. Currently downloaded more than 10,000 times a day, the new version includes more than 2,000 enhancements and full support for Mac OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris host operating systems. It also features newly added support for high performance virtual devices, improved scalability and Web services for remote administration.

xVM VirtualBox software is a key component of Sun’s xVM virtualization and management software portfolio, which includes Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM Server, expected for release in the Summer of 2008, and the Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software.

VMworld Europe 2009, Feb 24-26 in Cannes, Opens Pre-registration

by Leave a Comment

Richard Garsthagen, Senior Evangelist for VMware in EMEA (see the interview we did with him at the last VMworld Europe), has announced in a blog post that VMworld Europe 2009 will again be held in Palais de Festivals in Cannes (the same pace of where the film festival is) from Feb 24 till 26.

The pre-registration page has already been opened up, in case you’re interested in enrolling quickly and getting regular updates about upcoming announcements.

Xiotech Introduces Virtual View, Aims To Simplify Storage Management in VMware Infrastructure Environments

by Leave a Comment

Xiotech today announced Virtual View, a new add-on for its ICON Manager user interface that aims to simplify storage monitoring, management and provisioning tasks in virtual environments. Virtual View enables administrators to manage storage in their VMware infrastructure environments from a single interface. Users can have a global view of the three storage layers (array, VMware ESX and virtual machine) from a single console and then automate configuration across all layers.

Xiotech

The Virtual View plug-in expands the Xiotech’s ICON Manager interface, enabling administrators to explore and map all VMware ESX hosts, storage relationships and properties in a unified view. As a result of Virtual View’s tight integration with the VMware APIs, it can automate the creation and expansion of virtual disks; logical unit number (LUN) assignments; and datastore creations for ESX systems and clusters.

You can watch a Flash demo of the capabilities of Virtual View here.

Xiotech’s development platform for storage management is based on Web services. As a result, Xiotech says it can add new management capabilities faster using industry-standard technology and more easily integrate storage services from other vendors.

Xiotech announced the latest version of ICON Manager in October 2007 with the release of its Magnitude 3D 4000 storage system. ICON Manager is built on a Web services platform and features capabilities as Server View, which simplifies storage provisioning for servers, and Intelligent Provisioning, which enables automatic storage provisioning without the risk of over-subscription.

Microsoft Hyper-V RC1 Now Available Through Windows Update

by 1 Comment

A little over a week ago, Microsoft announced that Hyper-V (RC 1) was available through MS Download Center. The company has now let us know that the first Release Candidate for the much anticipated hypervisor is now also available on Windows Update.

“To install the update open the Windows Update control panel and click “View available updates” under the “Install Updates” button. Then check the Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950049) and click install.”