IBM

VirtualLogix’ VLX for Network Infrastructure Now Available for Power Architectures

April 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VirtualLogix today announced that its VLX for Network Infrastructure is now available for Power Architecture based processors. Using VLX virtualization software, multiple operating systems may run simultaneously on shared hardware, “enabling networking and telecommunication equipment manufacturers to inject new functionalities into existing product lines and extend product lifecycles – while slicing costs by consolidating existing products into a multifunction system”.

According to the company, VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, speeds the adoption of rich open source software by combining Linux with real-time operating systems on shared hardware without compromising the system’s deterministic realtime behavior.

“This seamless integration is due to the advanced capabilities of VLX that allow multiple guest operating systems to run simultaneously in a number of different configurations based on performance and security criteria. As a result, users can extend the lifetime of existing designs by adding extra partitions to run upgraded or new features and consolidate functionality. By simplifying the hardware design, organizations reduce bill-of-materials and development costs, and reduce power consumption.”

New VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, features include:

Real-Time Virtualization – allows developers to run a combination of guest operating systems including Linux and a customer’s choice of real-time OS while keeping the real-time performance characteristics of their overall system.
Consolidation of hardware platforms – developers can consolidate Linux and mission-critical environments onto a single hardware platform, reducing system complexity and product bill-of-material costs.
Introduces support for Freescale’s popular PowerQUICC processors – includes support for the Integrated Communications and Host Processors from Freescale as well as the 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors from IBM.

[Source: VMblog]

Transitive Welcomes IBM Platform Unification

April 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Transitive Corporation, a US-based provider of cross-platform virtualization software that enables the execution of applications across diverse computing platforms, today welcomed IBM‘s unification of its former System i and System p enterprise server families into a common Power Systems product line.

The company claims this unification represents a significant market expansion for the PowerVM Lx86 solution that was developed for IBM by Transitive. PowerVM Lx86 is available for all of IBM’s new Power Systems models, which offer POWER6 processors, simplified pricing, increased application choice and reduced energy and administration costs.

The IBM platform unification means that customers using previous System i servers can boost performance and energy efficiency by moving their mission-critical workloads to the new systems (including cost-effective blade options) while continuing to use the same applications and operating systems they have depended on for two decades. These customers can also take advantage of IBM’s PowerVM virtualization — which allows them to create up to 80 virtual partitions per server — as well as using the PowerVM Lx86 cross-platform virtualization solution to run thousands of additional mainstream Linux/x86 applications on the very same Power Systems servers.

“IBM continues to work very closely with Transitive to address the needs of customers interested in reducing server sprawl and saving money by consolidating multiple diverse workloads onto Power Systems servers,” said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. “By making PowerVM Lx86 available to the unified Power Systems customer base, the universe of applications that can easily be consolidated by these customers increases beyond AIX, i and Linux on Power native applications to include virtually all Linux/x86 applications as well.”

[Source: Marketwire]

IBM Unveils Research Initiative PHANTOM, Aims To Protect Virtual Servers Better

April 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

IBM recently announced a breakthrough in safeguarding virtual server environments and introduced new software to help businesses better manage risk. The company said the advances can provide businesses with substantial improvements in securing information, applications, and IT infrastructures around the globe.

IBM, the company that pioneered the concept of virtualization with its mainframe systems, is tackling the security issue with Project PHANTOM, an initiative that’s so secret that IBM won’t even say what the name means. This is part of the announcement that was made:

IBM’s PHANTOM initiative aims to create virtualization security technology to efficiently monitor and disrupt malicious communications between virtual machines without being compromised. In addition, full visibility of virtual hardware resources would allow PHANTOM to monitor the execution state of virtual machines, protecting them against both known and unknown threats before they occur. It is also designed to increase the security posture of the hypervisor — a critical point of vulnerability; because once an attacker gains control of the hypervisor, they gain control of all of the machines running on the virtualized platform. For the first time, the hypervisor — the gateway to the virtualized world and all that lays above it — can be locked down.

Ars Technica had a call with the people at IBM. The company was still not willing to talk in any detail about it, but I did learn some important information that answers the questions I raised in my original post, which I’ve included below in its own section.

For starters, PHANTOM is not one particular technology, but rather a widespread research initiative within IBM that will eventually result in a range of products, services, best practices whitepapers, etc.. The initiative was started two years ago as a collaboration among various hardware and software groups within IBM, and has since expanded to embrace some third parties whose identities IBM isn’t revealing just yet. The internal groups involved in the initiative include IBM’s X-Force Threat Analysis Service (a division of IBM’s Internet Security Systems), IBM Watson research center, and the server platform groups behind the z- and p-series servers, among others.

IBM stressed to me that the initiative will produce results for a wide variety of hardware/software combinations, including x86 systems, Windows, Linux, POWER, and others. So the scope of PHANTOM, broadly defined, includes all virtualization platforms, products, and services.

Clearly, whatever else it is, PHANTOM is also extremely ambitious. It’s also still mostly under wraps, so we’ll have to wait for more announcements before giving further details.

IBM / Cisco Eyeing Acquisition of Citrix?

April 9, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Good thing we have a ‘Rumors’ category to assign to this type of speculations: several news outlets are running a story about Citrix possibly being an acquisition target for Cisco or IBM.

A late April fool, or plausible?

Nasdaq traders bid up Citrix stock Tuesday on takeover rumors that have either IBM or Cisco purchasing the application delivery vendor.

Citrix’s stock went from a low of $30.60 Tuesday to a high of $33.75. Rumors of Citrix being purchased fueled the higher trading prices, says Jeffrey Gaggin, an enterprise software analyst for Avian Securities. Gaggin cautions that he has no way of knowing whether the rumors hold any truth.

But it would make sense for IBM or Cisco to purchase Citrix because Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource last year made it a strong player in the virtualization market, Gaggin says.

TheStreet adds the following financial analysis:

But even at what seems like a bargain price, Citrix isn’t cheap: With a market cap of $6 billion and expected revenue growth of 17% to $1.63 billion this year, the stock could command a fair premium, taking the potential buyout price north of $7 billion, assuming a premium of 15%.

IDC analyst Stephen Elliot sees some rationale for IBM and Cisco to go after Citrix. IBM could make the XenSource hypervisor its preferred brand and could better compete against VMware and Microsoft. This would run counter to H-P’s strategy, which has professed to being indifferent on the hypervisor question, Elliot said.

On Citrix’s side, IBM would lend “a lot more credibility” to the XenSource virtualization platform and provide development resources. “There are a lot of opportunities,” Elliot said.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

HP’s Ann Livermore On Virtualization

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

In an interesting interview with ZDNet UK, HP’s Ann Livermore, who heads the company’s Technology Solutions Group, talks about the difference between HP and IBM and touches upon virtualization.

A highlight:

What is HP’s take on virtualization, and where do you think the barriers are that stop people getting the maximum value from it?

Livermore: A lot of people associate virtualization with the server, and what really needs to be done by customers is to virtualize the entire data center, the servers, the storage, the networking, and the applications. And the first problem customers run into when they start doing that is: “How do I manage this thing? When I have physical servers sitting there, virtual servers and in a mixed environment, what do I do?”

The software we provide is to manage both the physical and the virtual servers through a single pane of glass, a single set of software, and actually create the equivalent of a logical server environment that is being managed. We believe one of the biggest impediments has been: “How do I manage this thing once it is in production?” With our software, you are able to visualize it, plan the changes, and actually make the changes in the environment.

Do you see a slow transition to virtualization?

Livermore: Yes, and most are going to find that the transition from physical to virtual is slow enough that they are going to have to manage both for a while.

But you do see virtualization on the desktop becoming more popular?

Livermore: Absolutely. We believe that for security reasons, for performance reasons, cost reasons, any of those can be compelling reasons for a virtualized desktop–or a thin-client accessing the services you need from that device.

Could this be ideal for blades?

Livermore: PC blades can be an implementation of virtualization. HP made an acquisition a year ago of Neoware for our PC business to give us the capability to have a virtualized client environment. So we feel good about our blade business. Half of all virtualized environments are blades, so when people are thinking of virtualizing, very often they end up with a blades environment. That places us in a strong position.

[Source: Cnet News – Newsmaker]

Dell Reportedly Plans To Give Away VMware ESX Server 3i For Free, World Keeps Turning

March 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters 4 Comments

According to The Inquirer, it appears Dell is considering to stop charging VMware ESX Server 3i licensing fees on its PowerEdge servers to its customers. This was reportedly said by VMWare’s Senior Product Marketing Manager Martin Niemer and comes two weeks after the virtualization vendor announced it would start embedding the 32 MB hypervisor across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM servers.

This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as VMware had added to the previous announcement that hardware vendors would be able to choose which premium they would charge to end customers, if any. Expect the other hardware vendors to follow suit and drop the prices for including the hypervisors significantly (or even zero) if Dell comes through, especially with the sharp-priced Microsoft hypervisor Hyper-V on its way.

But don’t expect this to have a serious impact on the whole VMware reseller channel’s bottom line, as some blogs are proclaiming already. The real money is in the enterprise offering and upgrades anyway, and the smaller distributors and resellers have other advantages when it comes to SMB offerings besides pricing.