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VMware ESX

Tripwire ConfigCheck Now VMware ESX 3.0 Compatible

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Remember Tripwire ConfigCheck, the nifty free utility that rapidly assesses the security of VMware ESX hypervisor configurations compared to the VMware Infrastructure 3 Security Hardening guidelines? Well, Tripwire today announced the availability of Tripwire ConfigCheck for VMware ESX 3.0.

“The massive popularity of Tripwire ConfigCheck speaks loudly to the market need for solutions that address the knowledge and skills gap in managing virtual infrastructure. With this latest release, we leverage the best practices of VMware’s hardening security guidelines for 3.5 and 3.0.x environments increasing the overall value of the utility,” said Mark Gaydos, Tripwire VP of Marketing.

In addition to offering immediate insight into unintentional vulnerabilities in virtual environments, Tripwire also provides a remediation guide containing the necessary steps to return both VMware ESX 3.0 and 3.5 hosts to a known, secure state.

BlueBear Says Kodiak and Koala Can Unchain Virtualization from Data Centers

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We’re going to let you discover what the Washington-based startup BlueBear is trying to do with Koala (“the world’s smallest, most powerful virtualization-ready server”) and Kodiak (“the industry’s only application that’s both hypervisor-agnostic and cross-platform”) for yourself on their fun and informative website.

Here’s the takeaway:

Kodiak is largely built on Adobe AIR, is deployable on Windows, Mac and Linux, provides native support for VMware and Xen servers (Hyper-V support planned), comes with a visual map user interface, and allows unlimited consoles. Not only is it free of cost, its soon to be shared SDK coupled with Adobe’s Flex IDE allows high extensibility for end-user customization. Watch the teaser video here.

We’d use it if only for the fun names and cool website copywriting (“written and optimized from scratch by actual bears, …”), but unfortunately, it’s invite-only so far.

[Source: Flex RIA]

Microsoft To Release System Center VMM 2008 Soon

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Diane Prescott, Product Manager, System Center at Microsoft posted an article on the official SC blog today sharing that the launch of the next version of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is imminent, specifically in Q4 2008. The beta was formally introduced by the company end of April 2008.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 will be available as a stand-alone product, while the current version only comes bundled with Server Management Suite Enterprise. Prescott also said something about the pricing structure:

“[SCVMM 2008] will follow the licensing model set forward by the SMSE. It will be sold as a per-device enterprise server management license (ML) and will include rights to the management server. Because we’ll be selling the VMM 2008 enterprise server ML on a per-device basis, which makes sense in the context of virtualization, we’ll be targeting a price which will be approximately 10-15% less than the SMSE at that time it’s generally available. Additionally, because of the new value and functionality being added to the various System Center offerings over the next year, including VMM, Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, we will be implementing a price increase to the SMSE of approximately 10-15% in the same time frame. We’re still working on the specifics regarding the pricing and licensing of VMM 2008 and the SMSE and we’ll have further details to share in early August.”

Next to support for Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008 will also offer management capabilities for VMware ESX environments, allbeit through VirtualCenter.

Microsoft

Citrix Aims To Make Creation of Hypervisor-Independent Application Workloads Easier with Project Kensho

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Citrix today announced “Project Kensho,” which will deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads. These tools will allow application workloads to be imported and run across Citrix XenServer, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX environments.

Citrix boasts this implementation will solve a multitude of interoperability issues between virtualization platforms while allowing automated provisioning and management of applications, rather than just virtual machines. Users will be able to easily install and use any OVF packaged application workload regardless of which virtualization platform they use – whether it be XenServer, Hyper-V, or ESX.

“XenServer delivers the benefits of fast, free, ubiquitous and compatible virtualization, whether from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware,” said Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. “Project Kensho highlights the Citrix commitment to interoperability for virtualization, while maximizing price/performance and richness of features at the virtual infrastructure level.”

The OVF specification was originally co-authored by Citrix and VMware, with contributions from Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft. The companies then jointly submitted the draft to the DMTF standardization process.

Project Kensho will support the vision of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, helping customers transform static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers” for the best performance, security, cost savings and business agility. The tools developed through Project Kensho will be integrated into Citrix Workflow Studio based orchestrations, for example, to provide an automated, environment for managing the import and export of applications from any major virtualization platform.

A technical preview of Project Kensho tools is expected to be available for free download in September 2008.

Clusterscale Releases ClusterLoad ESX, Virtual Appliance for Traffic Management and Load Balancing

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ClusterScale, provider of load balancing, open source, traffic management and database clustering appliances, today announced (PDF) the launch of its new virtual appliance, ClusterLoad ESX Virtual Appliance.

ClusterLoad ESX VA offers all the functionality of its hardware counterparts, while lowering demands on the data center, with the added environmental benefits that come with this. The virtual appliance manages application traffic, inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load balances them across the application infrastructure. The product has passed VMware’s VA Certification program. The product has additional management tools to make installation and configuration quick and easy.

ClusterLoad ESX VA allows you to package a fully configured and optimised software stack in a virtual server format that can be quickly deployed on top of VMware ESX. The software is simple to install on Windows, Mac and Linux and does not have any adverse effects on the host operating system, providing greater flexibility and maximum system utilisation by consolidating multiple environments into a single server, workstation, or PC.

With fewer systems required for the same tasks, ClusterLoad ESX VA claims it delivers:

  • Simplified resource management increasing IT efficiency.
  • Decreased disaster recovery time.
  • Greater systems reliability and availability reducing corporate risk and real-time losses from downtime.
  • Lower hardware acquisition costs with increased utilisation of the machines you already have.

ClusterLoad ESX VA runs on true 64 bit processors with a VT (Virtualisation Technology) extension and is fully optimised for VMware ESX and VMware Server.

Prices for the product start from £3,995 for a single virtual appliance and £5,595 for the pair.

[Source: VMblog]

Clusterscale

Exclusive Video: VMware In A Nutshell, By Product Marketing Manager John Gilmartin

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So what’s VMware all about now on a technology level, now that their stock went tumbling and their CEO has been replaced? John Gilmartin, Group Manager, Product Marketing at VMware answered our questions on virtualization in general and their strategy and product portfolio in particular.

After defining virtualization and virtual machines, John dives deeper into what drives prospective virtualization customers (infrastructure consolidation, high availability, business continuity, disaster recovery?). He also shares more on their recently announced VMsafe initiative, which allows trusted partners to ‘peak’ into a Virtual Machine and identify threats from the outside of the operating systems and the applications they try to protect.

John underlines that VMware is offering features far beyond the basic data center consolidation needs; such as life cycle management, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), automated provisioning, fail over, disaster recovery and optimize the management tasks for a virtual infrastructure.

All this is part of VMware’s from-desktop-to-datacenter portfolio and makes VMware feel confident and well positioned to compete with Hyper-V from Microsoft.