Virtualization.com

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

KVM Lives On At Red Hat, So Now What?

by Leave a Comment

Over a year after the first big Open Source Virtualization acquisition, Citrix Acquiring Xensource, the next industry shaking acquisition is a fact. Red Hat has reeled in Virtualization startup Qumranet, While RedHat had already announced that they were going to support both KVM and Xen in their product range , taking over Qumranet for some people sounds like a really strange thing to do , afterall apart from its work on KVM as the underlying opensource component of their product, Qumranet is a pretty proprietary software company.

Qumranet understood that the Bare Metal Low Layer virtualization layer was not going to bring them any money any day soon. There were going to be different Free and free alternative Virtualization layers out there anyhow so why keeping theirs secret rather than having it flourish as a community product and contribute back to the linux kernel community while at it.

On the other hand the products of Qumranet were closed, altough based on Linux their business was in selling a VDI solution to bigger customers. The question now becomes how this kind of product range will fit into RedHat’s tradidional Open Source offering. Red Hat has a long history of opensourcing everything they do. Obviously there is Redhat Linux, Jboss but also
the proprietary directory server they bought from Netscape which they opensourced . Sometimes it takes a while, like with their Satellite product, but they have a good track record here. So most parts of the SolidIce product line will be opensourced , but will they grow a community ?

Lots of people ask themselves if RedHat was interrested in the VDI infrastructure or did the just want to have the KVM Kernel developers on board. The fact is that they have a direct entry into managing Windows desktops , a market previously closed for themAnd that makes it an interresting move. As of now, managing a windows box is just managing a file on a Linux server, easy to copy, easy to replace.

With RedHat clearly preferring KVM over Xen in the future. What’s going to happen with Xen in the other distributions.
The 451 group reports that
“Novell insists Xen is its hypervisor of choice and it remains committed to the virtualization software and project.”,
but as we all know .. Novell will be working on other interoperability challenges too.

With Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux being a RedHat derivate the future of Virtualization in Unbreakable becomes an interresting topic.
Oracle clearly choose the Xen platform as their favourite virtualization technology earlier. And given the fact that it will be hosting the next
North American Xen summit , Oracle seems to plan on continuing to build their platform on Xen.

To close of there’s also the question of people at Qumranet, Qumranet was cofounded by serial virtualization enterpreneur Moshe Bar who previously had also cofouned Qlusters and Xensource What’s he going to do , will he stay around at RedHat or will he refocus to his other startup Sullego.

In a couple of weeks Xensource will celebrate it’s first anniversary at Citrix , let’s see what happens then …

Alternative Technology to Distribute and Offer Support for Oracle VM

by Leave a Comment

Alternative Technology, an Arrow Electronics company and specialty distributor of thin-client/server-based computing, edge infrastructure, virtualization, storage and security solutions, today announced that they will distribute Oracle VM software and sell Oracle VM server virtualization support for both Oracle and non-Oracle applications.

Oracle VM software is available to download for free and consists of open source server software and an integrated Web browser-based management console. Oracle VM provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for creating and managing virtual server pools, running on x86 and x86-64-based systems across an enterprise. Users can create and manage virtual machines that exist on the same physical server but behave like independent physical servers. Each virtual machine created with Oracle VM has its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage and operating system. With Oracle VM, users have an easy-to-use browser-based tool for creating, cloning, sharing, configuring, booting and migrating virtual machines.

Backed by Alternative Technology and Oracle’s world-class support organization, solution providers now have a single point of support for their customers’ entire virtualization environments including the Linux operating system, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Application software. Customers who want to deploy Oracle products in a faster, lower cost server virtual environment can now use Oracle VM and subscribe to Oracle VM support.

Avnet Technology Solutions Introduces Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Solution, Based on VMware Technology

by Leave a Comment

Avnet Technology Solutions, an operating group of Avnet, today announced a comprehensive solution to assist partners in targeting the emerging virtual desktop market in the US and Canada. Avnet Technology Solutions’ new solution combines VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software with the services and enablement resources needed to develop market expertise and effectively implement virtual desktop environments. Partners can use virtual desktop solutions to help their customers improve manageability, increase control and enhance the security of their enterprise desktops. The centralization of desktop management through virtualization also helps companies more effectively leverage their IT resources.

Avnet’s new solution is based on VMware VDI, which includes VMware Virtual Desktop Manager and provides simplified management and secure provisioning of virtual desktops and manages user access to the virtual desktops from a wide range of devices such as Windows, Linux and Mac computers, and thin clients. By deploying the VMware platform, partners can extend business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities to their customers’ desktops and streamline desktop management to reduce operating costs, increase control and deliver complete desktop environments with greater application compatibility.

Virtualization Congress 2008: Cancelled, Or Merely Postponed?

by 6 Comments

When the industry blog Virtualization.info announced its first event, the completely independent Virtualization Congress 2008, back in March, we wrote that it would prove to become one of the most interesting events of the year. The congress was to be held from 14 to 16 October at the ExCel centre in London.

Now it seems the event has been postponed, at least according to the event website. VMblog earlier reported that the event was actually cancelled due to ‘low registration numbers and a tough macro-economic climate’. It couldn’t have helped a lot that there was a similar event going on in London only 2 weeks before Virtualization Congress, namely VM08, which to date has not been cancelled and seems to have much of the same topics and sponsors as the congress did.

We have an e-mail in for a confirmation and more clarity on the matter, we’ll update this post as soon as we get a response.

UPDATE: we got an e-mail back saying “the number of delegates that were registered when we decided to cancel (around 300) was too low to match the sponsors expectations and cover the conference costs expenses. Thus we decided to cancel this edition.”. The event has effectively been postponed, with no clarification on a later date so far.

Whatever the reason may be behind the cancellation / delay, we would like to give Alessandro Perilli, who writes about the industry with great passion and knowledge, a heads-up. Organizing an event of this size is no easy feat. Next to blogging, I organize a conference of my own about the European Web 2.0 industry (Plugg) and I know how stressing it can be and how much effort, time and money goes into the organization prior to the event.

We wish Alessandro all the best for the future.

Microsoft Bashes VMware With A New Website; “Get The Facts” Revisited?

by 3 Comments

Thanks for reading us. We are bundling all our VMworld 2008 coverage in one handy page, go check it out now for more reports and videos!Hyper-V flyer team at the VMworld entrance The Venetian

Microsoft had people dressed up like medieval Venetian models at the hotel entrance of last week’s VMworld conference in Las Vegas. They distributed dollar chips and flyers to anybody wearing a VMworld bag, with on it the website address VmwareCostsWayTooMuch.com, which led VMware customers and partners to a landing page, on which the headlines all redirect to the Microsoft Hyper-V portal.

The guerilla marketing tactics actually worked, with coverage from publications like NetworkWorld, ZDNet Blogs, Channel Marker, Virtualization Information,  Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog, and others.

We ignore whether this smear marketing stunt was inspired by the US presidential campaign, but it was certainly not the first time Microsoft engages into heads-on advertising. Last time around it was targeted against Linux. However, we were never aware of Microsoft distributing any leaflets with GetTheFacts.com at the entrance of LinuxWorldExpo or LinuxTag. It is also quite funny to observe that Linux distributions (starting with SUSE) are now supported as Guest Operating Systems on Hyper-V and that Redmond advertises this feature extensively.

Microsoft even provides integration components and technical support for customers running select Linux distributions (limited to SUSE for the moment) as guest operating systems. IF history repeats itself, VMware can be reassured that in a few years this type of Microsoft campaign results in supporting a competing technology.

It took the VMware conference staff a little while to get notified about the leaflets and some more time before they got the hotel staff at The Venetion to stop the flyers from being handed out at the entrance of their annual user conference, attracting over 14.000 attendees to Las Vegas. It is estimated at least 4.000 flyers were distributed in the elapsed time.

Flyer front side and One Dollar Chip

The distributed 1 dollar chips were actually valid inside The Venetian Casino. This guerilla marketing initiative has cost at least 4.000 dollars in casino money, but the website and distribution must have cost a lot more.

It is hard to believe The Venetian did not make the connection between selling a few thousand ‘Dollar chips’ to Microsoft and concurrently renting their entire event facilities and rooms to VMware. Especially with those video cameras and security personell all over, it can be assumed Microsoft had obtained some sort of permission before handing out those free chips at the hotel entrance.

What do you think about this remarkable anti-VMware propaganda? Does it make MS look desperate as the new kid on the hypervisor block? Does it suit a multinational that runs entirely on ‘expensive‘ licenses to attack a ‘partner’ at its annual user conference over that very cost element? Do the facts that they present on their marketing website actually make sense? What boomerang effect can they expect? How would Microsoft react if Sun would hand out flyers at the gates of TechEd or DevDays with a catchy URL: GetOfficeForFreeAndStopPayingMicrosoft.Com. We look forward to seeing who will register that available domain. 🙂

As we all know, hypervisors are a commodity nowadays and just like Xen and Hyper-V, it must be said that ESX comes free of license cost too. At Virtualization.com, we like to think the value and related cost are no longer in that free naked hypervisor, but in the integrated management and extended tool sets that surround it.

If you were among those first 4.000 VMworld attendees, feel free to tell us how much you made with your Microsoft dollars on the gambling tables and if that was enough to cover/upgrade a VMware license?

Teksys Acquires Technology Made Simple Assets

by Leave a Comment

Earlier this year, UK-based LAR Teksys was acquired by private equity investors Alan Watkins and Kevin Lewis, who revealed the firm would be making a number of acquisitions to build its business.

Teksys has made good its acquisition spree promise by acquiring the assets of Technology Made Simple (TMS). The acquisition of the VAR, which is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a VMware partner and an HP Platinum Partner was made for an undisclosed sum.

More information is available at Channel Register.