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Google Loses Engineering Director To VMware

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After nearly 5 years with the company, Engineering Director Mark Lucovsky has left Google for a role with VMware, TechCrunch has learned.

Before Google, Lucovsky worked at DEC and then Microsoft for 16 years, eventually gaining the title of “Distinguished Engineer.” He had been the principle architect on Windows NT, which would eventually evolve into Windows XP. Lucovsky was also the architect of Microsoft’s Hailstorm project to port older Microsoft products into .NET.

A famous anecdote recounted on TechCrunch:

But Lucovsky may be best known for the role he played in a complete and utter meltdown that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once had. As the NT architect, Lucovsky was clearly pretty vital to Microsoft, so when he went in for a meeting with Ballmer in 2004 to let him know he was leaving, you can be sure the CEO was a bit on edge.

“Just tell me it’s not Google,” Ballmer reportedly said according to court documents (for a case surrounding another Google ex-Microsoft hire). When Lucovsky said it was Google, Ballmer allegedly picked up a chair and threw it across the room.

VMware Debuts vCenter AppSpeed, vCenter Chargeback and vCenter Lab Manager 4

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VMware today announced advancements in virtualization management with the general availability of two new products: VMware vCenter AppSpeed and VMware vCenter Chargeback. VMware also announced today a major release of VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4. These new products simplify and automate key IT processes such as application performance monitoring, chargeback, and management of dev/test environments to increase IT productivity in the datacenter – delivering more value to customers as they scale out their virtual environments.

Generally available today, VMware vCenter AppSpeed provides service-level reporting and proactive performance management for multi-tier applications running in virtual machines. AppSpeed gives IT administrators visibility into how application performance depends on the different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructure. Easy to install and non-intrusive, VMware vCenter AppSpeed discovers, monitors, and reports within minutes of installation/download, helping customers:

  • Increase application performance and uptime
  • Troubleshoot and resolve performance issues more quickly, saving hours of administrative time
  • Virtualize more machines at a faster rate

VMware vCenter AppSpeed is available for $1250 per processor.

Also generally available today, VMware vCenter Chargeback ensures accountability across the business by allocating and reporting on costs associated with the use of virtual infrastructure. With VMware vCenter Chargeback, multiple factors such as cost-based models and fixed costs can be mapped to datacenter resources and then applied across cost centers to ensure proper business alignment. VMware vCenter Chargeback helps customers:

  • Provide business units with a clear view into resources consumed and their associated costs – enabling “showback” of valuable information, even for organizations not yet ready to chargeback to the business
  • Automatically create detailed billing reports that can be submitted to business units within an organization
  • Transition the IT environment from a cost center to a value center

VMware vCenter Chargeback is available for $750 per processor.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4, first introduced in 2006 and now in its fourth generation, provides IT with the ability to create and manage an internal cloud for dev/test, providing higher service levels to users through self-service access to resources needed for development, test, staging and deployment of complex, multi-tier applications. With VMware vCenter Lab Manager, IT can give users on-demand, role-based access to a shared library of pre-configured multi-VM environments, eliminating the need for repetitive system setup and teardown, while enabling IT to maintain security and full administrative control.

The new features in VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4 include:

  • Unification with VMware Stage Manager, creating a single solution to encompass multiple use cases including streamlined application delivery from development to production; simplified release management; and better training, support and online demo environments.
  • Next-generation network fencing capabilities to better support teams working on multiple instances of extremely large-scale application environments
  • Support for both ESX and ESXi form factors to give IT administrators more deployment choices for internal cloud resources.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager helps IT reduce dev/test infrastructure costs and administrative overhead, while providing users with improved team collaboration, accelerated workflows, and faster time to market for new or updated applications. VMware vCenter Lab Manager is available for $1,495 per processor.

VMware Makes It Easy For Virtual Iron Customers To Migrate To vSphere 4

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VMware yesterday announced that it is offering existing Virtual Iron customers an easy way to migrate their Virtual Iron deployments to VMware vSphere 4.  In light of news reports that Oracle will discontinue development of existing Virtual Iron products, the VMware offer gives companies a cost-effective way to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4, and provides customers a clear virtualization roadmap that will help meet their needs as their business grows.

The VMware offer gives Virtual Iron end customers who have a current license and support contract compelling savings on VMware vSphere 4 and VMware vCenter Server. More specifically, eligible Virtual Iron end customers receive aggressive discounts off the list price on the below products and services:

  • VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard
  • Support and subscription (SnS) on VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard

Proof of a current Virtual Iron license and support contract will be required to qualify for the VMware offer. Promotional pricing is limited to the number of Virtual Iron licenses supported by a current support agreement. The offer is valid through September 30, 2009.

VMware vSphere 4 delivers Virtual Iron customers the unparalleled efficiency and performance   required to run critical applications in large scale environments, uncompromised control over application security and service levels, and unmatched flexibility of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.

VMware vSphere 4 also delivers “Always On IT” for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and remote and branch office (ROBO) IT environments. With VMware vSphere 4, smaller IT environments can achieve zero-downtime application availability, enterprise-class data protection, disaster recovery and simplified management at an affordable price point.

5nine Software Tells You How VMware and Hyper-V Stack Up

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5nine Software today announced the latest versions of its virtualization migration planning solution, 5nine P2V Planner 2.0 and 5nine P2V Planner Free Edition 2.0. The updated software adds P2V VMware planning to the existing P2V Hyper-V virtualization planning capabilities and now delivers side-by-side comparative analysis of Hyper-V and VMware migration plans from the technology, TCO and ROI perspectives.

5nine P2V Planner offers the following features:

— Automated P2V Hyper-V and P2V VMware Migration Planning — Performs sophisticated analysis of the current data center and provides multiple Hyper-V and VMware migration plans depending on particular customer requirements. Optimized placement of virtualized workloads is based on business requirements, technology (memory, storage and CPU utilization, security), and TCO and ROI.

— Side-by-Side comparison of Hyper-V and VMware Migration plans — Enables creation and side-by-side comparison of VMware and Hyper-V virtualization migration plans. It takes into consideration multiple factors including software licensing costs, memory and CPU utilization, clustering and average consolidation ratios for both virtualization technologies.

— Agentless Data Collection — Automatically discovers and collects hardware inventory, utilization data and application performance metrics in a non-intrusive manner without installing agents. It also allows importing this information from an Excel or XML file.

— Simple-to-Use — The product was designed to be used for projects of all sizes — from small virtualization pilots or SMB projects to large enterprise projects with hundreds of servers, hosts and virtual machines (VMs).

— Integrated TCO and ROI Reporting — 5nine P2V Planner creates a variety of technology assessment, workload, and TCO and ROI reports for each migration plan, for easy comparison of Hyper-V and VMware migration plans and decision making.

— Ongoing Value — Whether your P2V migration project is complete or ongoing, the Planner continues to provide value by optimizing the workloads and resource utilization in a virtualized data center.

5nine P2V Planner Free Edition 2.0 is available immediately and is free for any Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESX and vSphere environments 5nine P2V Planner is also available immediately, with North American pricing starting at $59.00 USD per physical server.

Release: PDH Virtual Patch Downloader 6.0

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced availability of Patch Downloader 6.0, a new freeware solution to simplify patch downloading for various VMware ESX versions. Patch Downloader is the fifth free virtualization utility to be offered by PHD Virtual as part of its longstanding commitment to the virtualization community.

Patch Downloader v6.0 eases the pain of downloading patches for various ESX versions from the VMware support site by automating the process for users that cannot use the VMware Update Manager. Now, rather than downloading each patch manually through a Java Download manager, VMware administrators can simply select the version of ESX from the Patch Downloader drop down menu, and select the file repository (including folder, drive map, SMB share, etc.) to download the patches to. The new freeware solution will list all of the available patches and information about the patches including severity of the problem it corrects, what the impact on VM/Host uptime is, and a description of the problem fixed.. Downloads of selected patches are performed with a simple click making it easy to keep the ESX patch repository up to date.

Patch Downloader joins PHD Virtual’s suite of other free VMware ESX utilities which include:

· VMNetBac 1.2.0 – VMNetBac allows customers to backup and restore the network configuration of a virtual machine. VMNetBac is a quick recovery tool to minimize the risk of losing network configurations when intrusive or mass-upgrade type tasks are performed.
· Virtual SAN 1.0.0 – This Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN. It utilizes, otherwise unused, local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise-level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA.
· SnapHunter 0.5.3 – SnapHunter is an ESX 3 Service Console utility which reports back on the Snapshot status of virtual machines from multiple ESX Servers.
· KS QuickConfig 1.3.0 – KS QuickConfig is a Windows GUI utility that reduces the time needed to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3 servers, and to eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations.

Also available on the PHD Virtual website is a full-featured trial download of the company’s award winning, scalable esXpress data recovery and data protection solution for virtual IT. esXpress v3.5 uniquely uses the virtual environment to backup itself without requiring any additional hardware or software, making it the most scalable and cost effective VMware backup solution on the market.

Uptime Software Upgrades VMware Monitoring and Reporting Tool

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uptime software has announced the latest version of its systems management software, up.time 5. Through close collaboration with VMware and its vSphere and vCenter Orchestrator offerings, up.time’s new capabilities aspire to change the way enterprises manage, measure, and monitor their VMware infrastructure.

up.time represents a leap forward for companies that need to drive both performance and cost-savings from their VMware infrastructure, while ensuring a consistent quality of service. It does this by providing IT managers with an unobstructed view of the datacenter to efficiently manage distributed applications and global services levels, while maximizing enterprise-wide IT resources. The solution’s ability to span both physical and virtual realms has helped hundreds of customers achieve new levels of performance and render immediate cost savings. QuickPlay Media, a customer dedicated to providing solutions that manage the business of mobile video for the world’s leading communications providers, is one example.

The new capabilities announced today– advanced visibility, deep VMware metrics and reporting, automated problem resolution and incidence avoidance –raise the bar for managing VMware performance with:

  • Increased VMware efficiency though dramatic increases in VM density and optimized VM workloads.
  • Automated incidence avoidance that reduces manual find/fix by automatically heading off reoccurring problems before they happen. Deep and seamless integration with VMware vCenter Orchestrator® makes building out automated problem avoidance workflows easy, providing advanced capabilities for SMB and Enterprise companies. This dramatically reduces Mean-Time-To-Repair and required resources, while increasing performance and productivity.
  • Fast problem isolation and resolution through intelligent alerting, easy pinpointing of root cause, and automated actions that can eliminate recurring outages in the future.
  • Rapid VMware infrastructure growth requiring fewer resources by delivering an easy-to-use consolidation, monitoring, optimization, and automation solution, all while helping reduce VM sprawl.
  • Improved visibility and manageability of the entire infrastructure from a single console, including virtual and physical infrastructures and applications, and across multiple datacenters.

An enterprise version of up.time is available for a risk-free 30 day evaluation download here –  (a Virtual Appliance is also available for download here. uptime software’s world-class support services are free during this evaluation period to help customers drive value in their environments.