VMWare ESX Server

Veeam Launches ProPartner Program For Resellers And Consultants

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware ESX Server environments, yesterday introduced a new program designed to support and enhance the virtualization practices of its value-added resellers, systems integrators and consultants. Dubbed Veeam ProPartner, the program includes a members-only online portal with access to NFR license keys, discounts on Veeam software for resale, lead qualification support, direct access to Veeam engineering and support resources, co-marketing support programs, and a partners-only knowledge base that should grow over time.

“Virtualization represents great opportunity for those who know the technology and can help IT organizations plan, implement, manage and exploit its promise,” said Rick Hoffman, Veeam vice president of channels and alliances. “By joining the Veeam ProPartner program, they can make the most of every virtualization engagement for themselves and for their clients. More than 30,000 IT professionals already know us for our innovative, award-winning products, so Veeam makes a natural add-on to every VMware project.”

According to the company, benefits of Veeam ProPartner include:

Increased margins on every VMware engagement
Market-ready offerings to build a virtualization practice. For example, partners can use Veeam Reporter to do regular health checks.
Deal registration
NFR keys to put Veeam’s software in partners’ labs
Expedited support and access to engineering
Access to educational resources, including a partner-only knowledgebase
Joint marketing programs and opportunities
A direct link to Veeam’s world-class development team for ongoing dialogue

[Source: VMBlog]

Microsoft Management Summit 2008: Birth Of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 Beta

April 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

At the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 in Las Vegas, the Redmond-based software giant released its virtualization management platform, now named System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, into public beta testing. The release comes well within the 60 to 90 day window Microsoft promised after the public beta delivery of its ‘Viridian hypervisor’, now formally known as Hyper-V. So where’s the beef?

The new platform enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.

Microsoft’s hypervisor and virtualization management platform will likely be used predominantly by Microsoft-centric customers in Windows-centric environments (for your reference: Microsoft owns about half of the server OS space so that’s not too bad a proposition), but support for VMware ESX will be welcomed by many as well (VMM 2008 connects to Virtual Center’s public web service APIs to provide support for most day-to-day administrative tasks on VMware, including VMotion), although most critics are already pointing to the lack of live migration capabilities in SCVMM 2008.

A number of partners, including Brocade, Dell, EMC, Emulex, HP, NetQOS, QLogic and Quest, announced they will deliver management packs enabled for PRO. These management packs enable partners and customers to integrate their domain-specific knowledge directly into Virtual Machine Manager and further integrate physical and virtual management.

[Source: Virtualization Review]

Microsoft To CIOs: “Virtualization Is Too Expensive”

March 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

At the European CIO summit, Barbara Gordon, Microsoft’s EMEA VP for Enterprise Sales stated that Microsoft sees price as a differentiator in the virtualization market.

“What I hear is that users need to take out cost from their environments and virtualization is the credible approach. You have to ask if virtualization today is delivering cost effective value? And that it justifies the costs that are being charged?” She added, “Price is a differentiator. Existing players are quite expensive. Microsoft can add value to this market with a server play and an application play.”

Asked if the Microsoft Hyper V would have different versions that would offer different levels of functionality similar to those offered by VMware Gordon would not be drawn, according to Australian PC World.

“The time of individual point products is lessening. Our approach will be take a look at the environment, and make sure that the right virtualization functionality fits that environment. The fact is that it is the technologies that work well together and have good functionality that will let the user spend time adding value. So we’ve got a very broad offering.”

Martin Niemer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at VMware (yes, also the one that said Dell would soon start shipping servers with VMware ESX Server 3i included free of charge, said:

“We’re not seeing any signs that customers don’t understand all of the issues associated to moving to virtualization. They understand that what it comes down to is that even the hyper visor is zero cost, which Hyper V won’t be, the question is how many virtual machines can you run on a server. If you can’t run that many you still have to run it on two servers and that doubles your cost. That’s really going to be the decision point. It depends on what users want. If you want basic partitioning you can buy a server with a Vmware ESX 3i integrated hyper visor or buy a foundation version of ESX. And if you want additional functionality such as high availability you can buy a slightly more expensive licence.”

Niemer said he didn’t foresee Vmware being forced to adjust its pricing when Hyper V came to market.

We’ll see.

Website Tip: VM4All.com

March 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

A small pointer to an online resource you may find to be very useful: courtesy of Eric Sloof from The Netherlands, you can browse a complete repository of VMware tools at VM4All.com, including their licensing terms, description, creator credits and link to download / maker.

From the about page:

VMware’s virtualization technology has become the industry standard for virtualization in the enterprise. More and more people are writing software based on the SDK and created a lot of little handy tools. On the other side there are some larger company’s who also created all kinds of applications to support VMware ESX server and Virtual Center. The vm4all.com website provides a complete list of all these tools and applications.

PINS Virtualizes Its Data Center With Q-layer and VMWare ESX Server

February 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

PINS, a Dutch hosting and managed services provider, today announced that it has entered into a partnership with Q-layer, enabling the hosting provider to launch a Virtual Private DataCenter solution, based on Q-layer’s virtualization technology and using VMware’s ESX server technology.

With the Virtual Private DataCenter (VPDC) software from Q-layer, PINS’ customers are now able to build and manage a virtual environment including virtual servers, firewalls, switches, storage and software appliances. The virtual private datacenter comes with a “drag & drop” web interface. The Q-layer datacenter abstraction layer translates this environment into actual resources in the datacenter and executes instant provisioning using customizable workflows.

“PINS is renowned for being the first to launch winning new technology.”, said Jan Willem des Tombe, CEO of PINS, “The Q-layer Virtual Private DataCenter concept allows us to provide a new level of flexibility to our customers and partners, while leveraging the performance and stability of VMware ESX.”

From the press release:

PINS already offers web and application hosting based on VMware ESX. The VPDC offering based on Q-layer is the next step in the evolution and overcomes the complexity of automating the provisioning of the whole hosting stack including servers, network and storage. This is needed to build a real-time infrastructure.

PINS will bring the VPDC model to market in three flavors: one for end-users that require full self-service provisioning of servers and other services, one for resellers enabling them to setup server environments with the click of a button and one for managed customers where PINS engineers will build the environment for the customer.

“We are proud to have been chosen by PINS for its next-generation hosting platform.”, said Niko Nelissen, VP Business Development of Q-layer. “Both companies share a vision on how datacenter services will be operated in the future and how virtualization helps in building a real-time infrastructure with instant availability of all services”.

VMWare To Embed VMware ESX 3i Hypervisor Across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM Servers

February 27, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Today at VMWorld Europe 2008 (watch our video reports), VMware announced agreements to embed the VMware ESX 3i hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM. System providers are expected to begin shipping servers embedded with the VMware ESX 3i hypervisor within the next 60 days.

From the release:

“We are very excited to be partnering with Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM to proliferate virtualization and fast-track customers on the path to running a self-managing virtual datacenter,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “Customers can now get VMware pre-integrated and pre-configured for the hardware platform of their choice for immediate standalone server consolidation. As customers want to expand their adoption and get more value from virtualization, they can upgrade from the ESX 3i hypervisor to VMware’s complete datacenter virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3).”

“VI3 provides automatic load balancing, business continuity, power management and the ability to move a virtual machine across physical machines with no service interruption. In addition, customers who are already using VI3 can plug-and-play virtualization-enabled servers into their datacenters to dynamically and automatically expand the pool of resources (CPU, memory, and networking) available to meet their changing business requirements.”

Greene and other VMware executives highlighted the new VMware ESX 3i agreements with representatives from Dell, HP and IBM during today’s VMworld Europe general session keynote presentations. The presentations will be available via a recorded web cast (http://www.vmware.com/go/europe-webcast ) by 3:00 p.m. Central European Time and 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today.