Virtualization.com

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

Sun Offers Early Access to xVM Server, Public Version Coming Soon

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Sun Microsystems has begun an early access program for its xVM Server hypervisor, a key component of its upcoming virtualization product line, and intends to make a publicly downloadable version available within about a month, according to a blog post last week by Steve Wilson, VP of xVM at Sun.

Update: see RedMonk’s Michael Coté review and demo the xVM Server hypervisor.

“Given that we’re getting very close to shipping, it’s time to give everyone an update on progress and do a more in-depth sneak peek at features than I’ve done in the past.  First, a quick reminder about what’s included in the xVM Portfolio so you can see where xVM Server fits.  The picture below shows how this fits together.  We have xVM VirtualBox for small scale desktop virtualization, and VDI as a management layer that scales out to very large-scale desktop consolidation projects. Then, on the server side, we have xVM Server as the software to virtualize a single server, and xVM Ops Center as the management tool for large scale virtual and physical data center.  xVM VirtualBox, xVM Ops Center and VDI are all commercially available today and rapidly being deployed by customers.”

Sun Microsystems

IGEL Technology Announces Certification For VMware Virtual Desktop Manager

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Igel Technology recently announced certification for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager, VMware’s connection broker, on IGEL’s Microsoft Windows XP Embedded range of Universal Desktops.

The software is available recently as a partial update for IGEL’s Windows XP Embedded models, and allows customers deploying VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to deliver an enhanced user experience.

IGEL Windows XP Embedded based Universal Desktops add additional unique benefits to VMware VDI hosted PCs. They contain many digital services above the standard Microsoft RDP, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. For example, most models come with built-in Java Runtime Environments, terminal emulation and PDF readers, allowing users to deliver certain server-based applications outside the virtual connection. This helps organizations reduce server load and enhance the desktop experience. In addition, all models come with a ThinPrint client, allowing organizations to implement sophisticated print management in VMware VDI environments as well as IGEL’s Multiscreen Agent, a free-of-charge server-side software application, designed for multi monitor environments, that allows users to maximize applications to dedicated screens even with a spanned VMware virtual desktop.

Surgient Partners With Capgemini, IPO or Acquisition Imminent?

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Capgemini, provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, announced today that Capgemini Financial Services USA has signed an alliance agreement with Surgient.

“By partnering with Surgient, we can now offer clients access to environment configurations through a centrally managed, shared service, eliminating manual provisioning work and delivering much higher utilization of expensive pre-production infrastructure. The results expected are shorter response times, reduced costs and ultimately, better business support,” said Charlie Li, vice president of the Quality Management and Testing Practice at Capgemini’s Financial Services Strategic Business Unit. “Delivering quality applications is closely tied to performance and reputation — and with this innovative virtualization solution, we can help global firms become more agile and better focus on their frontier application strategy in meeting their diverse and growing business needs.”

Meanwhile, VMblog points to a month old article on Austin Business Journal about Surgient, speculating about a future IPO or acquisition.

Surgient apparently hit its stride this year after tweaking its sales approach last summer, allowing companies to buy licenses for its virtual lab management software. President and CEO Tim Lucas says the growing popularity of virtualization gave Surgient the boost and a chance to double its revenue this year.

Lucas expects revenue to exceed $20 million for 2008.  And the company has recently signed 20 large customer deals, including German tech companies SAP AG and Siemans AG.  “We’re profitable now and cash flow is funding the growth of the business,” he says.

A report by The 451 Group cites HP and Borland Software as possible buyers of the Austin company. Lucas agrees that acquisition is a possibility but says an initial public offering could be considered as well.

Surgient

Symbio Adds Ericom’s Virtualization Solution To Boot Appliance and Boot Stick

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Symbio Technologies, provider of what they call “green” stateless computing, announced today that it has added Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect client to its Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick after signing technology licensing and reseller agreements with Ericom Software.

Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect provides secure local and remote access to enterprise mission-critical applications running on a broad range of Microsoft Windows Terminal Servers, Virtual Desktops (VDI), Blade PCs, and legacy hosts. PowerTerm WebConnect is a platform and hypervisor agnostic solution that enables organizations to standardize on one solution for the management and delivery of server-based applications and virtual desktops.

Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick users can deploy Ericom – or any other software loaded on their server. The Symbiont boot products, which are available from Symbio Technologies’ global network of value-added resellers, support virtually any type of computer, using their own operating system to power the hardware and connect users to terminal servers.

Symbio Technologies

Ericom Software

Update On ESX 3.5 Issue: A Letter from Paul Maritz

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New VMware CEO Paul Maritz has issued an official statement about the major bug plaguing customers who had updated to ESX / ESXi 3.5 Update 2 and experienced a serious problem yesterday due to a mistake in the licensing code.

The letter in full:

“Last night, we became aware of a code issue with the recently released update to ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (Update 2).

When the time clock in a server running ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2 hits 12:00AM on August 12th, 2008, the released code causes the product license to expire.  The problem has also occurred with a recent patch to ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2.  When an ESX or ESXi 3.5 server thinks its license has expired, the following can happen:

  • Virtual machines that are powered off cannot be turned on;
  • Virtual machines that have been suspended fail to leave suspend mode; and,
  • Virtual machines cannot be migrated using VMotion.

The issue was caused by a piece of code that was mistakenly left enabled for the final release of Update 2.  This piece of code was left over from the pre-release versions of Update 2 and was designed to ensure that customers are running on the supported generally available version of Update 2.

In remedying the situation, we’ve already released an express patch for those customers that have installed/upgraded to ESX or ESXi 3.5 Update 2.  Within the next 24 hours, we also expect to issue a full replacement for Update 2, which should be used by customers who want to perform fresh installs of ESX or ESXi.

I am sure you’re wondering how this could happen.  We failed in two areas:

  • Not disabling the code in the final release of Update 2; and
  • Not catching it in our quality assurance process.

We are doing everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  VMware prides itself on the quality and reliability of our products, and this incident has prompted a thorough self-examination of how we create and deliver products to our customers.  We have kicked off a comprehensive, in-depth review of our QA and release processes, and will quickly make the needed changes.

I want to apologize for the disruption and difficulty this issue may have caused to our customers and our partners.  Your confidence in VMware is extremely important to us, and we are committed to restoring that confidence fully and quickly.

Thank You,

Paul Maritz
President and CEO
VMware”

LinMin Releases Bare Metal Provisioning 5.2, Includes API

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LinMin, makers of the LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning solution, today unveiled Release 5.2, featuring a new API, single-command installation, numerous feature enhancements and support for the provisioning and imaging of additional platforms. The API is designed to allow customers and partners to integrate LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning into environments that presently cannot do bare metal provisioning of Microsoft Windows, Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora or Asianux on physical systems or virtual machines.

“Having a best-of-breed provisioning and imaging solution was a great starting point, but being a standalone product didn’t maximize the potential of LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning. Now, with the new LinMin API, customers can optimize IT resources (physical, virtual and human) around business processes, not the other way around,” said Laurent Gharda, CEO and founder of LinMin Corp. “LinMin’s ability to install applications and management agents during the provisioning process is even more valuable with the API, bringing a closed loop process to customers’ existing environments: automatically select an appropriate and available physical or virtual system, invoke the LinMin API, and after the system is provisioned, these agents identify themselves to their respective management, monitoring, policy enforcement, availability, compliance and other applications that then take control of the system. This is IT application integration at its best.”

The API offers both a graphical user interface that can be integrated into other Web-based applications, and a traditional programmatic interface, giving customers maximum flexibility.  The example GUI can also be used as a “teaching mechanism” with the option to view in real time the API-compliant commands that get issued to and the responses received from the LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning server.  This enables software developers to quickly develop API calls with real-time debugging, reducing implementation times.

Once integrated with LinMin via the API, third party, internally-developed or open source software can create, maintain and delete system provisioning roles (e.g., Red Hat application server, Novell SLES database server, Windows Web server or Ubuntu office desktop) and assign them to specific physical systems or virtual machines, along with pre-determined networking and security settings based on business rules unique to each customer.

LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning 5.2 also introduces a fully automated installation process. With a single command, LinMin detects all networking attributes, then downloads, installs and configures a database, network services and other required software components, and presents to the administrator a fully configured provisioning and imaging server in about 5 minutes.  LBMP 5.2 also supports the provisioning of additional platforms, including 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, Novell SLES10 SP2, CentOS 5.2, Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04.1 release.  LinMin provisions over 50 different versions and architectures of Linux and Windows.

LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning is priced at $250 for up to 10 client systems, $1,000 for up to 100 client systems and $1,875 for up to 250 clients systems. Annual subscriptions are also available for $100, $400 and $750 respectively.

LinMin Corp.