VMware ESXi

Microsoft Announcements: Hyper-V Server To Compete With ESXi, Windows Server 2008 R2 Will Sport Live Migration Feature

September 8, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Microsoft is doing a big virtualization splash today with their much-hyped ‘Get Virtual Now’ event in Washington. The Hyper-V 1.0 hypervisor was officially released, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, unlike the launch of a new version (free of charge) dubbed Hyper-V Server 2008. It’s a standalone server virtualization tool that enables firms to consolidate Windows and Linux workloads onto a single physical server.

You guessed it: it’s direct competition to VMware ESXi, and it’s going to make waves. The new product will be supported by the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, to be released within 30 days as well.

Another surprise: the next version of Hyper-V which will be included with Windows Server 2008 R2, will have a live migration feature, something Microsoft was often criticized for because it lacked it. According to Mary Jo Foley, the release is slated for 2010.

Microsoft

Check Point Ships VPN-1 Virtual Edition

August 19, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Check Point Software Technologies today announced VPN-1 Virtual Edition (VE) and claims it is the first company to provide unified security management for both physical networks and virtual applications.

Virtualization of multiple servers into a single appliance creates an entirely new type of environment that requires new ways to protect segregated applications and information from one another without the use of physical security appliances. Check Point’s VPN-1 VE restores the separation and security of applications as if they were still located on separate servers. VPN-1 VE also integrates completely into a customer’s overall Check Point security infrastructure, making it possible to manage Check Point appliances and software for open servers, “Secured by Check Point” appliances and VPN-1 VE from a single interface — reducing the cost and strain of management.

Check Point lists the following benefits for VPN-1 VE:

Secures virtual environments with a preconfigured solution that is tailored for VMware ESX or ESXi environments to help ensure an easy, optimal deployment
Eliminates the need for additional security appliances to protect virtual applications, thereby lowering costs
Integrates with the same unified interface as other Check Point security gateways
Strengthens auditing, compliance and risk management with unified logging for the entire security infrastructure, including virtual environments
Enables quick deployment for provisioning or disaster recovery

Check Point VPN-1 VE is available immediately and can be purchased through the Check Point worldwide network of VARs as well as from VMware directly. Pricing can be consulted here.

Check Point Software Technologies

VMware Releases Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2, ESX and VirtualCenter Get Upgrades, ESXi Now 100% Free

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

VMware has released Update 2 for Infrastructure 3.5, listing a whole set of updates and features. At the same time, the company has made the license for ESXi completely free, as announced last week during the earnings call.

These are the highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3 (free evaluation here):

Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware’s memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX, virtual machine density can be maximized with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest degree of ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008.
Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations by automatically configuring server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter will not permit the addition of hosts which cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster.
Storage VMotion – Storage VMotion from a FC/iSCSI datastore to another FC/iSCSI datastore is supported. This support is extended on ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 1 as well.
VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes.
Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks without snapshots opened in persistent mode.
192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

As for the hardware enablement and management:

8Gb Fiber Channel HBAs – Support is available for 8Gb fiber channel HBAs. See the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
SAS arrays – more configurations are supported. See the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
10 GbE iSCSI initiator – iSCSI over a 10GbE interface is supported. This support is extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1, ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Embedded and ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Installable as well.
10 GbE NFS support – NFS over a 10GbE interface is supported.
IBM System x3950 M2 – x3950 M2 in a 4-chassis configuration is supported, complete with hardware management capabilities through multi-node Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) driver and provider. Systems with up to 32 cores are fully supported. Systems with more than 32 cores are supported experimentally.
PMI OEM extension support – Execution of IPMI OEM extension commands is supported.
System health monitoring through CIM providers – More Common Information Model (CIM) providers are added for enhanced hardware monitoring, including storage management providers provided by QLogic and Emulex. LSI MegaRAID providers are also included and are supported experimentally.
CIM SMASH/Server Management API – The VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API provides an interface for developers building CIM-compliant applications to monitor and manage the health of systems. CIM SMASH is now a fully supported interface on ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
Display of system health information – More system health information is displayed in VI Client for both ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
Remote CLI – Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) is now supported on ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESX Server 3i. See the Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide for more information.

VirtualCenter 2.5 update 2 adds full support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures based on VMware tools heartbeats. This release also extends support for clusters containing mixed combinations of ESX and ESXi hosts, and minimizes previous configuration dependencies on DNS. It also extends support for alarms on the overall health of the server by considering the health of each of the individual system components such as memory and power supplies. Alarms can now be configured to trigger when host health degrades.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 provides the ability of creating a clone of a powered-on virtual machine without any downtime to the running virtual machine. Therefore, administrators are no longer required to power off a virtual machine in order to create a clone of it. Also, you can now automatically authenticate to VirtualCenter using your current Windows domain login credentials on the local workstation, as long as the credentials are valid on the VirtualCenter server.

This capability also supports logging in to Windows using Certificates and Smartcards. It can be used with the VI Client or the VI Remote CLI to ensure that scripts written using the VI Toolkits can take advantage of the Windows credentials of your current session to automatically connect to VirtualCenter.

VMware

Forbes Interviews Paul Maritz

July 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Forbes interviewed newly appointed VMware CEO and Microsoft vet Paul Maritz after last night’s earnings call. To read the full interview, click here. This is the most interesting excerpt as far as we’re concerned:

Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor, software that separates hardware from operating systems and applications inside computer servers, is virtually free. How do you plan to compete with that?

We don’t see the need to lower our price points. But that said, we created lower price SKUs for our customers.

Hyper V is really just one layer and it corresponds to our ESXi. Our customers no longer pay for that. What they pay us for is the software that sits on top of that. Microsoft is not there yet. They don’t have the virtual infrastructure suite that we have.

What strategies from Microsoft will you use at VMware?

When you reach the size that VMware’s reached, in order to capitalize on opportunities, you have to be able to operate on multiple fronts. Find elements [that have made VMware successful], reinforce them and fill in with other tactics and tools. Create the ability to have empowered teams that can execute on multiple fronts. They just need to take their game up to the next level. I spent five years at Intel before Microsoft. I’m well schooled in Andy Grove’s doctrine that only the paranoid survive.

VMware Seals New Partnerships with Original Design Manufacturers

June 3, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

At Computex Taipei 2008, VMware announced new relationships with original design manufacturers (ODMs) ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan, adding to VMware’s current relationship with Supermicro announced in February 2008.

The relationships aim to enable channel partners and system builders to make virtualization available to a broader range of customers by certifying a wide range of one-, two- and four-socket server systems as well as blade servers for the VMware virtualization platform. The vendors are certifying their server systems for the VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor, with certified systems expected to be available later this year.

“Working with the ODM community, we are helping our channel partner and system builder ecosystem bring new options for offering the transformative business advantages of VMware virtualization to a broader range of customers. Organizations of all sizes will benefit from these new relationships, particularly small and medium businesses looking for cost-effective ways to get more value from their investments, better protect their systems and data, and improve staff productivity,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware.

VMware ESX and ESXi are certified on server systems from Supermicro and available immediately. VMware ESX and ESXi are expected to be certified and available on server systems from ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

Dell Gets Down & Busy With Virtualization

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

As expected, Dell today announced its broadest lineup of dedicated virtualization solutions ever. More than a dozen new servers, tools, and services aim to simplify the deployment and management of virtualization in enterprises of any size.

“Virtualization is quickly moving beyond hypervisors and hardware consolidation,” said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group. “Enterprises are looking for a broad array of servers, storage and services designed specifically for virtualized environments. Having been a leader in the first wave of virtualization, today we are signaling our intent to lead the second.”

Dell comes out with updated on-line tools, new e-commerce capability and expanded factory integration. With the updated Virtualization Advisor tool, customers have more options for building validated configurations online for virtualization deployments before purchase.

Through Dell.com/VMwareNow, customers can now upgrade PowerEdge servers purchased with VMware ESXi 3.5 to full VMware Infrastructure 3 enterprise licensing in a single click. Dell will also offer in coming weeks factory integrated VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition across a broad range of PowerEdge servers, including the PowerEdge 2950, R900, 1950, 2900, M600 blade and M605 blade.

The PowerEdge R805 offers 2X the memory and I/O capacity of Dell’s previous generation 2 socket servers. With a choice of VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition integrated hypervisors, the PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers can deliver the optimal platform for virtualized environments.

Dell EqualLogic storage arrays offer new advanced SAN-aware integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized environments at no additional cost in management tools.

Dell and Egenera are making virtualization and data center automation a reality beyond the blade chassis. The Dell PAN system is built on PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers and Dell/EMC storage, with Citrix XenServer and factory integrated as a complete, turn-key solution that consolidates and virtualizes server compute-resources into an entire Processor Area Network to be managed like hard drives in a SAN. The Dell PAN system can deliver rapid provisioning and re-deployment “in minutes”.

Dell today announced the expansion of its virtualization services to include:

Virtualization Simplification Workshop – for customers looking to determine which options are the most suitable for their specific business needs today, their technical environment and to meet future growth.
New Virtualization Operational Assessment and Process Automation accelerates selection of the right virtualization technology for their needs and define processes and tools to automate the management of virtualized environments.
New Virtualization Healthcheck – reviews existing virtualized production environments to identify technology, process and people issues impeding virtualization scale out and provides an actionable, results oriented plan.
Expanded Virtualization Assessment – taking into account multi-vendor virtualization considerations, advanced storage options, as well as green IT data center energy efficiency improvements.
Dell PAN Accelerator Service – integrating a full Processing Area Network within the customer environment to help ensure production readiness.
Expanded Design and Implementation Services – which features the latest Virtualization technologies, in addition to best-of-breed disaster recovery tools and techniques.
ProSupport Remote Advisory Services – fast access to technical experts for consulting on virtualization implementations.

These offerings are available today from Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services.