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The End of Neverland, What Neverland ?

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Stop the presses, RedHat and AMD just announced the end of Neverland.

The big News seems to be that RedHat and AMD managed to do Live migration of a virtual machine between 2 different CPU Vendors.

Now given my age and my starting alzheimer, LinuxKongress 2005 in Hamburg seems like ages ago,
As a speaker giving my Automating Xen Deployments talk early on the first conference day , I flew in the day before the conference and I needed some network connectivity so I sneeked into Ian Pratt’s tutorial about Xen. I remember sitting between Heinz Mauelshagen and my colegue Peter Leemans, Heinz was playing with SMP guests on a non SMP host and tried to figure out the limits.

If I recall correctly at the end of his session Ian was explaining Live Migration and demoing it by migrating a small virtual machine around between laptops of people in the front rows of the audience , Laptops from different architectures and from there started a discussion about CPU feature checking.

I asked around and some people actually remember parts of the discussion and the demo.

So for me , when RedHat and AMD claim today they have achieved in something new that was Never going to be implement they are either focusing on nitty details, like migrating from 2 brand new CPU’s to each other and forgetting the fundaments already existed for ages or just trying to get some positive news out of the door. In which they succeeded.

But I`m looking out for the next step in virtualization , not just mashups of things we’ve all been doing before, or things that are really similar to existing things.

Hyperic Releases HQ 4.0, Hires Former Salesforce Exec

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Hyperic today announced HQ 4.0, the next evolution of its systems monitoring and management application. The new release addresses the growing needs of businesses embracing Amazon cloud services to create affordable and scalable IT deployment strategies.

With today’s release, Hyperic HQ is the first software that enables the modern enterprise to monitor its Amazon Web Services securely alongside internal infrastructure. It is also the first enterprise-class monitoring and management software offered for deployment and payment directly though Amazon Web Services.

Datacenters have a fixed capacity for handling application traffic at any given time and distribute resources to match average peak capacity. Businesses deploying in Amazon’s cloud now have access to unlimited number of resources, and pay only for the services they need at any given time. To remain cost-effective, operations teams need to frequently tune web and application server capacity to match fluctuations in demand.

Hyperic HQ 4.0 addresses this need for a new generation of monitoring and management tool that will help enterprises adopt cloud computing strategies with confidence, by better equipping operations teams to perform repetitive management tasks more efficiently. Traditionally, installing a new server and deploying it into production was a lengthy process that took place over days or weeks. Now, with cloud providers like Amazon offering the ability to rapidly deploy servers in minutes and pay by the hour, companies need a way to ensure consistent monitoring oversight of their web operations that is just as fast and flexible.

In developing the new release, Hyperic has drawn upon its extensive experience in providing the automation and visibility needed to maintain application performance in datacenters using virtualization software. Hyperic HQ currently manages over 3,500 VMware and XenServer virtualization deployments. Also referred to as “private clouds,” these environments consist of both physical and virtual servers, and typically support high rates of change as virtual servers are easily added, subtracted or moved to improve server utilization and maintain service levels.

The new Hyperic HQ 4.0 release starts by streamlining the process of adding new software resources into management. After auto-discovery registers the new resources into inventory, a new process of server cloning allows all configuration profiles for log data collection, security and services checks to be immediately applied. Coupled with global alert templates for resource types, the entire system of monitoring and rules for warning of performance problems can be incorporated in under a minute.

In addition, the release also addresses additional areas of concern for virtualized and cloud-based deployment including security, application management and capacity planning. A new server communication protocol allows agents monitoring external resources to always initiate communication with the HQ Server in order to meet to security protocols and operate across firewalls. Despite the uni-directional communication, the agent still maintains a full range of capabilities including the ability to update and run diagnostics remotely, and issue corrective control actions such as a service restart or running garbage collection to free memory.

Additionally, a new capacity planning function automatically analyzes historical performance and projects the future resource trends of any given management metric. This function allows users to quickly assess and predict future trends, and proactively manage capacity needs to anticipate demand or conserve costs.

Also part of the 4.0 release, Hyperic HQ Enterprise 4.0 will be available as a fully configured system on Amazon’s Web Services. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) preconfigured for Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is expected to be available later this month. The new distribution will be available directly on Amazon’s DevPay service for a low initiation fee and a monthly charge based on the amount of management data being collected to the HQ Server. A familiar arrangement to businesses looking to embrace the cloud, there will be no contract term and users will simply pay for how much value they are deriving from the Hyperic HQ Enterprise application.

Hyperic also announced the appointment of Matthew Stodolnic to the newly created company position of vice president of marketing. Stodolnic, who joins the Hyperic executive team after seven years with Salesforce.com, will be responsible for the company’s overall marketing strategy and further expansion into cloud computing.

Veeam Releases Configurator 2.0 for VMware ESX

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Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware ESX Server environments, today announced general availability of its Veeam Configurator version 2.0.

The new version is significantly different from 1.0, offering new ways to boost VMware administrator efficiency in the areas of ESX server provisioning and configuration management. Veeam Configurator 2.0 automatically discovers ESX and ESXi configurations across the enterprise and creates Veeam host profile templates. These templates can then be applied to groups of VMware hosts, and periodic scans can uncover inconsistencies and allow administrators to enforce defined templates to ensure policy compliance. The templates can also be used to quickly provision a new or re-build an existing ESX host.

Veeam Configurator helps to ensure that ESX and ESXi host configuration complies with corporate policies and standards across the entire VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3). With Veeam Configurator, administrators can quickly and easily discover the current settings for all VMware hosts, review and adjust the captured configuration sets as needed, and use that information to define their baseline configuration templates. Veeam Configurator host configuration templates are applicable to groups of VMware hosts simultaneously from a central console. At any time, administrators can run the Configurator scan and receive detailed reports of exactly which hosts match the templates, which do not, and where the differences lie.

Veeam Configurator 2.0 is available immediately, with North American pricing starting at $250 USD per socket. Special introductory pricing of $150 per socket is available through the end of 2008.

Lanamark Launches VReady, A Free Virtualization Readiness Assessment Service

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Lanamark, a global provider of virtualization capacity planning and IT assessment software, today announced Lanamark VReady, a virtualization readiness assessment service to help enterprises jump-start virtualization projects without upfront costs. The service enables customers to capture desktop and server workload trends, measure data center utilization and determine warranty coverage of existing servers.

Lanamark VReady allows enterprises to create a free readiness assessment, monitor desktops and servers for up-to ten business days and then obtain a VReady Assessment Report with a summary of data center trends. The report also provides information on the age and warranty coverage of servers so that customers can assess the risk of continuing to run workloads on potentially out-of-warranty hardware. To accelerate virtualization projects, customers can then upgrade to an in-depth VAssessment service delivered by Lanamark Solution Providers.

Egenera Ships PAN vmBuilder Software 2.1

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Egenera today announced the general availability of PAN vmBuilder, version 2.1. PAN vmBuilder software seamlessly integrates Citrix XenServer virtual machine management technology, allowing administrators to fully manage virtual and physical server environments unencumbered by the complexities of individual management tools.

Integrated seamlessly into PAN Manager software by Egenera, PAN vmBuilder allows customers to easily allocate both a full or a portion of a server based on the needs of the application or service. This approach completely eliminates the complexity of managing virtual machines and physical servers with disparate tools — freeing up IT staff for other projects.

PAN vmBuilder software by Egenera is available immediately and is offered as an add-on to PAN Manager software by Egenera, which is available across multiple hardware platforms.

AppSense Releases Environment Manager 8.0 For Personalizing Virtual And Physical Microsoft Platforms

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AppSense, provider of user environment management solutions for large-scale environments, today announced that its newly released Environment Manager 8.0 leverages Microsoft server technologies, providing a scalable and efficient way to personalize both virtual and physical desktops across the enterprise.

The only enterprise solution that enables standardized virtual desktop environments to be fully – and automatically – personalized, AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 accelerates virtual desktop adoption by rapidly configuring desktops and applications with a user’s personal and policy settings without administrator intervention.

By decoupling both policy and personalization data from the desktop, managing them independently and applying them on-demand, AppSense’s user environment management solution lets IT use a combination of desktop and application delivery methods—such as desktop virtualization, presentation virtualization, streamed applications and local and provisioned desktops—and easily and transparently migrate large groups of users from physical to virtual desktops.