Virtualization.com

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

VMware Online Store Now Has Academic Discounts on Workstation and Fusion

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For current students, prospective university students, or academic faculty and staff, VMware has just made it easier to purchase VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion at an academic discount. Through the all new academic portal, students can get a discount to up to 50% off the commercial list pricing if they purchase VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion for personal use.

Previously, the only way to get access to VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation at their academic prices was to purchase at an outlet like a campus book store that happened to stock the software.

EMC Shares Up On VMware Spin-out Rumors

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Update: you might want to read this article about VMware co-founder Diane Greene leaving VMware before you read this post. Come back, though 😉

Financial analyst Thomas Curlin of RBC Capital Markets upped his rating on the EMC stock to “Outperform” from “Sector Perform”, even as it trimmed the stock’s price target from $21 to a more modest $19. The focus of his call: the prospects for a spin-out of the company’s stake in VMware.

Curlin notes that the company can spin out VMware to shareholders with minimal tax implications starting in early 2009. In his research note, Curlin writes:

“Management recently has suggested it does not plan to spin out VMware, but if the stock remains at current levels, we believe it could be forced to do so by activist shareholders. This possible scenario is a key aspect of our recommendation upgrade as it provides downside protection in a challenging macro context.”

Curlin figures that EMC is trading at a value of about $6.25 ex its stake in VMW; but he thinks the non-VMW business is worth $10-$14 a share. Shares of EMC closed at $15.05.

[Source: Tech Trader Daily]

Going to CloudCamp London?

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In exactly 10 days, on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 from 18h30 to 20h00, the second edition of CloudCamp will take place at The Crypt, Clerkenwell Green, London. The first CloudCamp unconference took place in San Francisco on 25 June 2008 and was attended by over 300 cloud computing enthusiasts, practitioners and visionaries. 200 plus are expected to attend the London event, which is being organised to provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing.

CloudCamp London will follow the popular “Open Space” format, encouraging an open exchange between presenters and participants. Attendees may propose and lead sessions on any area of interest to them. In addition, CloudCamp will feature “Lightning Talks” in which presenters expound on topics of interest in dense ten minute bolts. Following the camp, “CloudBash” a networking opportunity with drinks and pizza, compliments of our generous sponsors!

CloudCamp London corporate sponsors include CohesiveFT, FlexiScale, Excelian, GigaSpaces, Skills Matter, Amazon, Enomaly and Google.

Unfortunately, Virtualization.com will not make it to this event, but if you’re covering it in words, pictures or video, be sure to let us know!

IDC Research Shows Strong Server Virtualization Adoption in Europe

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According to ONStor, Europe’s lagging in storage virtualization adoption. Recent research from IDC, however, shows the pace of adoption of virtualized servers is incredibly rapid among organizations that are using virtualization, with 35% of servers purchased in 2007 being virtualized and 52% of those bought in 2008 expected to be so. 54% of those not using virtualization expect to do so in the next 18 months.

“Virtualization use has exploded since our last survey of the European market,” said Chris Ingle, consulting and research director, IDC’s Systems Group. “Both large organizations and smaller businesses are using the technology for a wider range of applications and for business critical projects. As use of virtualization grows the challenges around managing complexity, finding skills and software licensing become more apparent”

Further Findings Include:

  • Organizations are increasing their virtualization of x86 systems for core business applications, although the majority of virtualization is still for test and development and for network server applications. Expertise and skills are the biggest barrier to virtualization adoption.
  • Growth of virtualization as a strategy remains strong, rising from 46% of the base to 54%. What is interesting is that virtualization is growing as a datacenter strategy in itself rather than as part of other projects. This supports the view that virtualization is increasingly seen as a standard for a wide range of workloads.
  • VMware is the clear market leader in providing virtualization technology with 82% of the sample using VMware. Despite high levels of Linux use, only 3% of the sample were using Xen as their virtualization platform. Microsoft was used by 13% of the sample base with various Unix technologies and mainframe accounting for 14%.
  • 59% of implementations have fewer than four VMs or partitions per physical box. The largest growth area for virtualization use over the past year, particularly in small and medium businesses, is improving disaster recovery, backup, and enhancing availability.
  • Availability of skills and application vendor licensing are the factors causing most problems for virtualization users. 23% of virtualization users report that their application vendors’ licensing is still not meeting their needs and 33% of large businesses report that it limits use of virtualization.
  • Despite seeing virtualization as a vital tool for their business, the majority of organizations do not measure benefits and use virtual infrastructure in the same way they do physical infrastructure.

The IDC study was first carried out in 2007 and has been repeated in Q1 2008 with a larger sample of organizations and a wider range of questions.

NeoAccel Debuts VMware Version of Its SSL VPN-Plus, Support for More Coming

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NeoAccel has announced the VMware version of its flagship product, SSL VPN-Plus.

NeoAccel’s offering of SSL VPN-Plus under VMware consist of 3 separate options:

  1. SSL VPN-Plus & NAC-Plus running on an existing VMware Server platform;
  2. SSL VPN-Plus Evaluation Virtual Appliance for the VMware Player;
  3. Globally Managed SSL VPN-Plus Farm for ASPs/MSPs/ISPs.

All versions of SSL VPN-Plus on VMware are fully functional SSL VPN-Plus gateways purposefully built as a zero administration IPsec replacement. Standard features include clientless & full access clients, End Point Security, GUI administration, Mobile VPN, Secure Desktop support and more. NeoAccel plans to expand its virtualization offering by making SSL VPN-Plus available for other virtualization architectures in the near future.

NeoAccel’s SSL VPN-Plus is a 3rd-Generation VPN featuring patented ICAA and TSSL technology that integrates encryption and specialized TCP/network switching into the kernel level of an operating system and eliminating TCP-over-TCP meltdown performance degradation. The company says it delivers the performance of first generation VPNs (IPSec) with the ease-of-use of second generation VPNs (SSL VPN) to provide an in-office, wire-speed connection across any network environment. SSL VPN-Plus is an enterprise grade solution with a standard feature set that includes: End Point Security, Full Access Client, Portal Access, and Granular Access Control. Windows XP/Vista/CE Mobile, Linux, and Macintosh clients are fully supported.

Chelsio Communications’ 10GbE Adapters Get VMware ESX 3.5 Hypervisor Certification

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Chelsio Communications, provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adapters and ASIC solutions, today announced that its single- and dual-port 10GbE adapters are now certified for the VMware ESX hypervisor and have been added to the VMware ESX 3.5 Hardware Compatibility List.

With this certification, Chelsio offers VMware customers low-latency adapters for high-performance computing in virtualized environments. Chelsio’s adapters are powered by T3 ASIC technology, designed for virtualization at the silicon level and enabling line-rate performance for transmit and receive.  Chelsio’s T3 architecture delivers a high volume of transactions per second., and its customers are able to use the same drivers for any host bus, any physical media, any offload protocol, and any number of ports and speeds of Ethernet.  In addition to VMware virtualization support, Chelsio’s T3 technology provides support for RDMA, iSCSI, TOE, Traffic Management and packet classification.  This enables Chelsio’s customers to future-proof their systems.