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

Robin Wauters

Desktone Introduces “Desktop Virtualization As A Service”

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Desktone today announced the Desktone Virtual-D Platform, designed to enable service providers to offer hosted, subscription-based virtual desktops.

Desktone

From the press release:

Desktone’s solution helps enterprises quickly realize the full benefits of centralized virtual desktops without having to build and deploy the infrastructure internally. It dramatically reduces desktop TCO, transforming computing costs from fixed CAPEX to variable OPEX. Service providers benefit from optimizing use of their data center assets while delivering a new highly scalable, value-added service to customers.

The Virtual-D Platform aims to simplify large-scale virtual desktop provisioning and management, enable greater protection of corporate desktop assets, and deliver more consistent and reliable desktop service levels – all while reducing desktop total cost of ownership by $300-$800/desktop/year.

Desktone’s DaaS model consists of two distinct tiers: enterprise and service provider. The Virtual-D Platform integrates all VDI functionality while separating the enterprise and service provider tiers. This allows enterprises to manage a virtual desktop environment supported by physical resources owned and maintained by a third-party, and that reside either at the enterprise or at a service provider.

The Virtual-D Platform is already available as part of a hosted service through authorized Desktone partners. Enterprises can click here for more information. Service Providers who are interested in delivering Desktone-enabled DaaS can click here.

[Source: InformationWeek]

Hyper-V Quick Migration Breaks Network Connections, Says VMware

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Check out the following demo by Blip.tv account ‘VMware TV‘, expressing the difference between moving a VM from one physical server to another with downtime (Hyper-V Quick Migration) and VMware’s Vmotion, which offers zero downtime when transferring virtual machines.

Keith Ward over at Virtualization Review picked up the demo and writes about what happens in the video:

“The demo shows a Quick Migration of a Windows Server 2003 VM from one physical machine to another. At the same time, a Microsoft Dynamics client is trying to access a database residing on the VM. Through a constant ping of the VM, we can see how a) the connection to the VM is dropped for a time, and b) how the Dynamics client fails in its attempt to get the database information (an error box pops up, showing a TCP failure). Shortly thereafter, another popup informs us that the VM has actually been deleted. It’s re-started a few moments later.”

To be balanced, here’s what ‘Jeff’ recently posted on the Windows Virtualization Team blog:

After my last blog I received almost two dozen email telling me that VMotion was far superior for unplanned host downtime and that it was a much better HA solution because it could live migrate virtual machines. I’ve heard this fallacy espoused for many years and, folks, this simply isn’t the case.

In the case of unplanned downtime, VMotion can’t live migrate because there is no warning. Instead you must have VMware HA configured and the best it can do is restart the affected virtual machines on other nodes which is the same as what is provided with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Failover Clustering.

Here are a couple of quotes from VMware’s own document, Automating High Availability (HA) Services with VMware HA.

Page 1 paragraph 2 states:

Using VMware HA, virtual machines are automatically restarted in the event of hardware failure…

Page 8 states:

How does VMware HA work?

VMware HA continuously monitors all ESX Server hosts in a cluster and detects failures. An agent placed on each host maintains a “heartbeat” with the other hosts in the cluster and loss of a heartbeat with the other hosts in the cluster and loss of a heartbeat initiates the process of restarting all affected virtual machines on other hosts.

HA monitors whether sufficient resources are available in the cluster at all times in order to be able to restart virtual machines on different physical host machines in the event of host failure.

The point being VMware HA and Hyper-V with failover clustering accomplish the same thing: virtual machines are RESTARTED on another node. No better, no worse. If you still don’t believe me, find one of your ESX Servers and go pull out the power plug. (Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

So what do you think about all this?

Motorola Joins Investors Behind VirtualLogix (Update)

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According to PC World, Motorola has joined Cisco, Intel and Texas Instruments in funding mobile virtualization company VirtualLogix (see our previous coverage). Update: the official release went over the wire.

VirtualLogix logo

VirtualLogix lets a user access two separate operating systems on the same handset with its VLX for Mobile Handsets product line – allowing them to share some resources like memory, but also keeping other areas, such as applications, securely apart.

Today, the company plans to announce that Motorola is a new investor in the company. Motorola is interested in VirtualLogix primarily for its mobile phones, but has also expressed an interest in using it for virtualization in its network equipment, reportedly said Peter Richards, CEO of VirtualLogix.

More when the official announcement comes in!

Update: the official word is in, but doesn’t provide much more details. Motorola made the equity investment through Motorola Ventures, its strategic capital arm, without disclosing the size of the investment.

Motorola joins VirtualLogix’s current investors Atlas Venture, Cisco Systems, DFJ Esprit, Index Ventures, Intel Capital and Texas Instruments. The company raised $16 million in series B last July, and got an extra (undisclosed) equity investment from Texas Instruments last December. The total amount invested in the company so far is $28 million, and the company says it is open to more strategic investors joining the club.

Noteworthy, however, is the comment that was added by our media contact, which shows Motorola’s ambition:

“Motorola is rising to the challenge of competing against competitors like the iPhone to develop disruptive new handsets, that will be less expensive to develop, while providing a much richer user experience. Virtualization can give one phone two different personalities, making it possible to switch between work functionality and fun applications, even between plans and accounts on one device.”

[Source: SMS Text News]

IBM Snaps Up Storage Provider Diligent Technologies

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IBM today announced it has acquired Diligent Technologies, a privately held storage “de-duplication” technology company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts with research and development located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Diligent’s technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed, but The Register picked up rumors the deal was in the $200 million price range.

Diligent develops in-line data de-duplication software that is integrated with server and storage infrastructures to help organizations significantly reduce the amount and cost of physical storage required in data centers. From the press release:

Data de-duplication is an emerging technology that organizations are investing in today and Diligent’s innovative technology provides a single solution to support data protection, archive and data-retention applications – all while maintaining the integrity of the data.

The Diligent acquisition will be an important part of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth. The new model is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

The acquisition of Diligent maps to the overall IBM enterprise strategy of developing more efficient, cost effective data centers and will further extend IBM’s storage portfolio.Combined with IBM, Diligent’s data de-duplication technology and solutions will:

  • address the unique data de-duplication requirements of enterprise clients for maximum in-line performance, scalability and data integrity;
  • complement clients’ installed backup/recovery applications (e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager and others);
  • reduce the amount of time required to backup and recover information;
  • enable the economical electronic transmission of back-up and archive data from primary to remote disaster recovery sites;
  • reduce the amount of physical storage required to help reduce costs and energy consumption

“Diligent’s data de-duplication software is a critical technology that will be integrated into the IBM Storage portfolio to further extend our information infrastructure strategy, allowing our clients to eliminate redundant data and streamline the infrastructure required to support their business – which can result in dramatic improvements in data center efficiency,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage. “Diligent’s industry-proven data de-duplication offerings are exceptionally suited for mid-range and enterprise clients, uniquely combining in-line performance, scalability and data integrity and extends IBM’s strong portfolio of strategic offerings that will help our clients reduce infrastructure costs, improve energy efficiency in the data center, and enable them to fully utilize their information on demand.”

Diligent will become part of the IBM System Storage brand of offerings.

Earlier this month, IBM announced its intent to acquire FilesX, a provider of continuous data protection software for mission-critical applications and remote offices.

Diligent, which has secured close to $47 million in funding, previously served as EMC’s Israel research and development lab before being spun-out from the storage firm in 2002.

YuuZoo Deploys Virtual Iron Solution To Streamline IT Infrastructure

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Virtual Iron today announced that YuuZoo, one of the world’s premier, mobile content aggregators, is deploying Virtual Iron’s solution across its content management system and mobile content distribution platforms in Singapore and the US. The company expects significant benefit from the software, including reduction of its server environment by almost half, streamlined management of its computing environment, easy provisioning and set-up of systems for new users, and cost-efficient business continuity capabilities. YuuZoo is working with ICSP Solutions out of Singapore to deploy the Virtual Iron solution.

YuuZoo

“We tested out pretty much all of the virtualization offerings before ICSP introduced the Virtual Iron solution,” said Anthony Cacciola, CTO for YuuZoo in Singapore. “The Virtual Iron feature set is comprehensive yet easy to use and manage. This is a solution that can deliver on our needs now and continue to meet them as we grow and expand our virtualization initiative.”

YuuZoo has built a global distribution network that enables personalized distribution of wireless value-added services and advertising to billions of mobile end users, offering wireless content owners and developers, advertisers and media companies exciting new revenue possibilities. The YuuZoo network includes access to more than 200 leading wireless carriers, portals and wireless phone manufacturers in over 50 countries across the globe, enabling a reach to more than half of the world’s 3 billion mobile subscribers. The upstream media network includes hundreds of leading wireless content developers and owners giving YuuZoo one of the world’s largest content libraries designed specifically for mobile phone use.

The company currently supports about 50 internal users in four offices and mobile applications located in four different co-location sites using 40 servers in its Windows/Linux environment. Working with ICSP Solutions, Virtual Iron and Dell, YuuZoo expects to reduce its number of servers to eight. In addition to the savings on servers, the company also expects significant reductions in its power, cooling and space requirements. Using two Dell blade server (4 Blades each) SANs and Virtual Iron, YuuZoo has also been able reduce its co-location space from four sites to two, significantly reducing its hosting costs.

Virtual Iron combines an open source hypervisor with advanced virtualization services and policy-based automation capabilities. It also includes an automated X2V conversion software solution that enables customers to easily migrate workloads (data, applications, and operating systems) across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures in any direction. Virtual Iron also takes full advantage of the latest hardware–assisted virtualization capabilities from Intel and AMD to deliver near native performance. The software offers large memory support (up to 128 GB), large SMP capabilities (up to 8 virtual CPUs) and the ability to virtualize server platforms with up to 32 physical CPUs.

[Source: VMBlog]