The Virtualization Practice

Posted By Mike on March 9, 2010

Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server – globally available from March 1, 2010 – is a “shared resource computing solution designed for educational institutions”.  It is a Presentation Virtualization solution based on Windows 2008 server, and sharing codebase with Remote Desktop Server (i.e. the product formerly known as Terminal Services). It is designed to deal with a specific market requirement in Education: the sharing of a single desktop computer by multiple students.  The anticipated use case involves installation of “zero client” devices – typically USB-connected devices that offer connectivity for mice, keyboards and monitors.  It also can be used to persuade people no longer to share Windows XP licences in ways that are “a bit dodgy”.  The press is full of “yes this really works, there is enough power on a PC for more than one user”, which given the recent increases in processing power will hardly come as a shock those who remember 50 Citrix users on an NT4 server in 2000, or indeed a dozen vt52 terminals into the back of a PDP11 in the early 1980s. (more…)

Topic:  Presentation Virtualization,  SMB Virtualization | 1 Comment »
Tags: Microsoft, MultiPoint Server, nComputing, Open Source

Posted By Texiwill on March 8, 2010

I talked extensively to Hyper9 to determine if their product would be a good fit for the SMB, as most of their marketing literature is geared towards helping to manage thousands of VMs not necessarily 100s of VMs. My thoughts before talking to them is yes it would be useful, but after talking to them, I discovered some key facts that would help an SMB decide on whether or not to invest in Hyper9 which is a tool to allow you to query the VMware virtual environment for issues as well as general information. (more…)

Topic:  SMB Virtualization,  Virtualization Management | No Comments »
Tags: Hyper9, Hyper9 Trending

Posted By Bernd Harzog on March 4, 2010

For at least the last year, VMware has made it very clear that it views virtualization as a catalyst that will enable the delivery of a new management stack into the enterprise, and that VMware intends to be the vendor of that management stack. This is obviously in competition with the vast majority of the software vendors who are currently in the VMware ecosystem as well as in competition with existing systems management vendors.

(more…)

Topic:  Business Agility,  Cloud Computing,  Data Center Virtualization,  Performance Management,  Virtualization Management | 1 Comment »
Tags: EMC, Ionix, VMware

Posted By Texiwill on March 4, 2010

While at RSA Conference I visited the RSA Innovation Sandbox and noticed that three out of ten finalists were virtualization security vendors:

• Altor Networks
• Catbird Security
• HyTrust

Altor Networks won the Innovation Sandbox contest and all that goes with it. Congratulations to them, but Altor’s win is actually a win for all virtualization security players. It shows that virtualization security is extremely important to the data center as well as moving forward to the cloud. (more…)

Topic:  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: Altor Networks, catbird, HyTrust, Innovation Sandbox, RSA, VMSafe

Posted By Texiwill on March 3, 2010

The Cisco-VMware-NetApp (CVN) was discussed on the Virtualization Security Podcast as it pertains to Secure Multi-Tenancy (SMT). This is a major concern that was also discussed at RSA Conference 2010 within the Cloud Security Alliance Summit. The question still remains how to achieve this goal however. CVN is a very good start, but as we discussed on the podcast is missing some key elements listed below:

• How to define and identify of the various administrator roles: Application Admins, IaaS Administrators, and Cloud Administrations. (more…)

Topic:  Cloud Computing,  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: Cisco, CVN, NetApp, Secure Multi-Tenancy, SMT, Virtualization Security Podcast, VMware

Posted By Mike on March 2, 2010

The acquisition of 3Tera by Computer Associates signals an intent to move beyond traditional Systems Management, into something that may almost be viewed as Operating System: a layer of software called AppLogic that sits above the virtualization stack, and provides a consolidated abstraction against which composite applications may be built within the Cloud.  Essentially the AppLogic layer deals with the nuts and bolts of configuring and connecting virtual machines, all you do is choose from a menu of virtual appliances you want, and use a visual interface to show how the appliances interconnect at a software level. (more…)

Topic:  Cloud Computing,  Data Center Virtualization,  Virtualization Management | No Comments »
Tags: 3Tera, CA, Cloud, Computer Associates, Eucalyptus, Open Source

Posted By Texiwill on March 1, 2010

HyTrust has announced Series B Financing in the amount of $10.5 Million with participation from Cisco, Granite Ventures as well as existing investors Trident Capital and Epic Ventures. This is very good news for HyTrust. While the Series B Funding was not much of a surprise given that HyTrust fits into the Virtualizaiton Security within its own niche. What is surprising is that Cisco is one of the backers of this innovative product. (more…)

Topic:  Data Center Virtualization,  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: Cisco, Funding, HyTrust

Posted By Bernd Harzog on February 26, 2010

VMware and EMC today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for VMware to acquire certain software products and expertise from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of servers and applications in a virtualized data center.

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will acquire all technology and intellectual property of FastScale, Application Discovery Manager, Server Configuration Manager and Service Manager and will maintain engineering, marketing, sales and support operations in the United States, Europe, Israel, India and Australia. As part of the agreement, EMC will retain the Ionix brand and have full reseller rights to continue to offer customers the products acquired by VMware.

(more…)

Topic:  Data Center Virtualization,  Performance Management,  Virtualization Management | No Comments »
Tags: EMC, Fastscale, Ionix, VMware

Posted By Texiwill on February 25, 2010

When I first interviewed Reflex System’s CEO he had a desire for the vTrust^TM VMsafe-Net driver be the defacto standard for all such VMsafe-Net drivers. While others may not agree with this desire and will create their own VMsafe-Net drivers, TippingPoint is the first to integrate into Reflex’s VMC product to leverage the vTrust VMsafe-Net Driver and puts Reflex System’s on the second step of the path for vTrust^TM to be the defacto standard. At the same time TippingPoint adds an Intrusion Protection System to the Reflex System VMC family of products with Tipping Point vController. (more…)

Topic:  Virtualization Management,  Virtualization Security | No Comments »
Tags: Reflex Systems, TippingPoint, vController, VMSafe, VQL, vTrust

Posted By Bernd Harzog on February 24, 2010

We categorize the vendors that do performance and availability monitoring for virtualization and cloud computing into four categories:

• Resource and Availability Monitoring – This is primarily about taking data from the hypervisor vendor (most often the VMware vCenter API data), storing it, trending it, reporting on it, analyzing it, and alerting on it.
• Infrastructure Performance Management – This is primarily about understanding the end-to-end response time of the virtual/physical infrastructure from the guests to the spindles and back again as requests for work are placed upon the infrastructure by applications.
• Applications Performance Management -  This is about understanding how applications are performing from a response time perspective. Some of these solutions go deep and provide code level root cause information, others focus on a broader set of applications from end to end.
• Transaction Performance Management – This is about following the response times of transactions through a complex n-Tier applications system. (more…)

Topic:  Cloud Computing,  Performance Management | 1 Comment »
Tags: AppDynamics, Application Performance Management, BlueStripe FactFinder, New Relic