virtualization

Avnet Launches VirtualPath University

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Avnet Technology Solutions, an operating group of Avnet, announced a dedicated training program called VirtualPath University for value-added resellers in the United States. Based on Avnet’s HealthPath University and GovPath University programs, VirtualPath University provides partners with virtualization market understanding, knowledge, technology drivers and tools.

VirtualPath University is designed to shorten the ramp-up time for partners to develop virtualization practices and help them quickly begin generating demand for their expertise. The three-day training program educates partners on:

The fundamentals of understanding virtualization and its place in the market
Business trends affecting the IT marketplace
How virtualization solutions fit into the IT fabric of companies
The features and compelling business benefits of virtualization solutions
Aligning virtualization solutions with business challenges and pain points

The class work will be supported by a step-by-step interactive toolkit. This toolkit outlines each component of the virtualization sales cycle and includes resource information on how to execute more effectively on the workshop concepts.

VirtualPath University is one of many resources available through Avnet’s VirtualPath Practice, a portfolio of services, programs, technology, and tools designed to provide partners with the resources needed to succeed in virtualization and consolidation.

The first VirtualPath University class is scheduled for September 8-10 in Roseland, N.J.

Reflex Security Introduces Reflex Virtual Security Center

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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Reflex Security, a virtualization security management company, today announced the availability of Reflex Virtual Security Center (VSC), which aims to provide heightened visibility and control for virtualized environments. Reflex VSC provides a single authoritative visual interface to secure the virtual data center.

According to the company, its solution is the industry’s first to take the approach that without the ability to visualize both the logical and physical elements of the virtual infrastructure, effective and efficient security cannot be achieved. Reflex VSC increases the visibility of an organization’s virtual infrastructure so it can be properly secured, enabling organizations to align virtualization security solutions with real business objectives.

Reflex VSC invokes best practice methodology by first discovering the entire virtual environment to determine the security controls needed to fully secure the infrastructure with Reflex VSA. This approach dramatically simplifies and automates the security of VMs, while reducing the potential for improper configurations.

Recognizing customer need for cross-functional centralized security controls for their virtual infrastructure, Reflex VSC harnesses the power of virtualization to simplify and automate routine activities such as security deployment, policy configuration, and event correlation and reporting. With Reflex VSC, operations and security teams have a single authoritative visual interface to administer, secure, and monitor the dynamic virtual infrastructure. This results in better network and event visibility for a faster and more effective security response. Through extensive real-time and historical visual reporting, Reflex VSC gives administrators the tools they need to efficiently meet stringent compliance requirements.

Through the combination of visibility and revision control provided by Reflex VSC, Reflex VSA has been enhanced, giving administrators the insight required to understand, monitor and secure dynamic virtual environments. The combined functionality provides a broader view of virtual infrastructure which can stop threats earlier on in the environment. Together, Reflex VSA and VSC provide the ability to view alerts and events in context to the virtual infrastructure.

Reflex VSC is available now and is included in the purchase of Reflex VSA.

[Source: Marketwatch]

Diane Greene’s Potential Payout Nearly $50 Million USD

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Diane Greene was recently abruptly ousted from the top spot at the very company she co-founded, VMware.

Greene, 52, had been CEO of the company since she helped start it in 1998 along with 4 others, including husband and current Chief Scientist Mendel Rosenblum. Her salary, according to a July 2007 employment agreement, was $750,000. Her salary in 2007 was $583,333 and her total compensation for the year was $8.6 million.

Another interesting caveat: according to VMware’s proxy statement, Greene could be paid a bonus of $491,678 and her stock options may vest early, which could increase the value of her potential payout to $47.5 million or even more.

[Source: SF Business Times]

VMware

VMware (VMW): Second-Quarter 2008 Results (Updated)

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

VMware reported its second-quarter 2008 results today, with an earnings conference call which was followed closely after the abrupt removal of Diane Greene two weeks ago (see our ‘the week after‘ post too for reference). Don’t feel too bad for her, we’ve just reported on her potential payout, which could be well over $50 million USD.

These are the results that were just announced, in bullet points:

Net income of $52.4 million, or 13 cents a share, compared with $34.2 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier.
Revenues for the second quarter were $456 million, an increase of 54% from the second quarter of 2007. Update: this is below Wall Street analysts expectations and estimates, who projected $458,6 to 460 million in revenue – (which the company also projected in April but revised later on). Shares going down.
GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $61 million, compared to $47 million for the same period last year.
Non-GAAP operating income was $112 million, an increase of 52% from the second quarter of 2007.
GAAP net income for the quarter was $52 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, compared to $34 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2007.
Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $92 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, compared to $52 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2007.
Cash exceeded $1.5 billion and deferred revenue was $721 million as of June 30, 2008.

Second quarter U.S. revenues grew 43% to $240 million from the second quarter of 2007. International revenues grew 68% to $216 million from the second quarter of 2007 driven by strength in Europe and Australia.

Software license revenue grew 39% to $284 million from second quarter of 2007. Service revenues, which include support, subscription and professional services, were $172 million, an increase of 85% from the second quarter of 2007.

As for the financial outlook:

2008 revenues are targeted to grow approximately 42% to 45% compared to 2007. Update: this is rather modest.
Third quarter 2008 revenues are targeted to be within a range of approximately $462 to $468 million. Update: Analysts were projecting revenue of $497.3 million
Third quarter GAAP operating margin is targeted to be between 11% and 13%. This guidance includes stock-based compensation, employer payroll tax on employee stock transactions, amortization of intangible assets and capitalized software development costs which are targeted at 9% of projected revenue.

VMware is hosted a conference call today reviewing its results and discussing its financial outlook. The call was scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. PT/ 5:00 p.m. ET.

A noteworthy statement from Paul Maritz in the call was also the fact that VMware intends to make VMware ESXi completely free. The free version, officially called ESXi 3.5, will be available to download starting July 28. Maritz believes this approach to virtualization will help bring more customers into the VMware fold and make virtualization technology ubiquitous.

VMware

Emulex First HBA Vendor to Support Sun’s Solaris Containers

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Emulex recently announced that its LightPulse Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) now offer Virtual HBA technology within Solaris 10 Operating System environments. Enhanced capabilities such as virtual port management, available via Emulex’s HBAnyware management suite, are designed to enhance the overall functionality of Solaris Containers.

“Once again, Emulex is demonstrating leadership in the area of virtualization by providing enhanced capabilities for virtualized servers within Solaris environments,” said Scott McIntyre, vice president of customer marketing, Emulex Corp. “Emulex pioneered Virtual HBA technology and is the only HBA vendor to support Sun’s Solaris Containers for virtualized server environments.”

Emulex’s family of 4Gb/s and 8Gb/s HBAs support Virtual HBA technology, which allows users to effectively virtualize the HBA functionality so each virtual machine running on a server can independently access its own protected storage. Coupled with Solaris Containers, Emulex Virtual HBA technology, which leverages the NPIV standard, also allows customers to maintain usage of SAN management tools and best practices, such as fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking.

“Working with Emulex to support its Virtual HBA technology provides Solaris customers with a robust virtualized server solution that delivers the most enhanced capabilities available today,” said Michael Wojnar, Networking Product Line Marketing Manager, Sun Microsystems.

“This collaboration is critical because of the high correlation between virtualized servers and networked storage, and ensures that our customers deploying Solaris Containers now have a superior solution.”

Server virtualization and blade server deployments continue to be a major driver for increased Fibre Channel SAN adoption. Leveraging Emulex HBAs with its next generation management suite, HBAnyware, provides customers with enhanced virtualization features, such as virtual HBA management across all major operating system platforms including Microsoft, VMware, Linux/Xen and Solaris. Further, customers may now leverage the benefits of NPIV management functionality within a centralized single console. Online boot from SAN and enhanced diagnostics features also enable unmatched scalability and efficient management capabilities.

“We looked at the capability of the Emulex Fibre Channel HBAs and management tools and saw features that were not available from other suppliers,” says Steven Ham, Senior Windows System Administrator at Home Interiors & Gifts, Inc. “With the HBA management tools, we get discovery and dynamic configuration capabilities that would otherwise require additional investment in tools running on other SAN components.”

In an effort to educate customers and channel partners on Emulex’s connectivity solutions and enhanced HBAnyware management suite functionality, Emulex is offering a series of whitepapers and webinars.

For details, visit: http://www.emulex.com/solutions/san/index.jsp.

[Source: VMblog]

Azure Uses Intel Virtualization Extensions To Counter Malware

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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Paul Royal, principal researcher at Damballa, has developed a new tool called Azure, which takes advantage of the virtualization extensions in Intel‘s chips to evade the virtual machine and sandbox checks malware authors often include in their ‘work’. Because the extensions exist at the hardware level, below the level of the host OS, the malware doesn’t have the ability to detect Azure, allowing researchers to analyze its behavior unimpeded.

“The whole point is to get out of the guest OS so the malware can’t detect you and attack,” said Royal. “Intel VT doesn’t have the weakness of in-guest approaches because it’s completely external. Others use system emulators, but to get everything exactly right in terms of emulation can be tricky.”

Royal plans to release the source code for Azure at the upcoming Black Hat conference in Las Vegas and will make the tool available for download, as well. Royal said he is still working on features that he plans to add to a future version of Azure, including a precision automated unpacker and a system call tracer.

Intel’s virtualization technology (VT) is a set of extensions added to some of the company’s chipsets that help implement virtualization on the hardware, rather than the software level. VT is designed to help enterprises make better use of their hardware resources and save energy.

[Source: SearchSecurity]