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Det senaste inläggen från branschens vassaste bloggar
- Amazon S3 Now Hosts 100 Billion Objects - Amazon Web Services has quietly passed an interesting benchmark: the company's S3 storage service now hosts more than 100 billion objects. 2010-03-09 22:09
- Cisco Unveils High-Capacity CRS-3 Routers - Cisco Systems (CSCO) today unveiled CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS), which has a capacity of up to 322 Terabits per second. The company says the CRS-3 could enable "the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second." 2010-03-09 18:36
- Lillie: Mobile Growth to Have ‘Profound Impact’ - The mobile revolution is coming. and the world's infrastructure isn't ready yet. That's the clear message from Equinix CIO Brian Lillie, who says new devices like the iPad are making mobile video a reality. 2010-03-09 18:12
- The Next Generation of Data Center Networking - This white paper from IDC focuses on helping companies understand how to get the most out of existing data center assets, including insights on strategies and networking technologies that will can make your data centers more dynamic. 2010-03-09 16:00
- Roundup: News from Data Center World - The main program of Data Center World gets underway this morning with a keynote presentation by Equinix CIO Brian Lillie. A number of companies have released news in association with the show, including Wright Line, Bick Group and the AFCOM Data Center Institute. 2010-03-09 15:00
- OpenGate Targets Hot Spots for Switches -
Data center cooling specialist Opengate Data Systems today introduced a new cooling product focused on addressing "hot spots" associated with networking equipment. 2010-03-09 14:00 - Emerson Launches Aperture Resource Manager - Emerson Network Power is introducing Aperture Integrated Resource Manager, a new tool to help data center managers improve efficiency and better manage capacity to extend the lifespan of existing infrastructure resources. 2010-03-09 13:45
- Data Center Jobs: Thomson Reuters - At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Thomson Reuters, which is seeking a Senior Facilities Coordinator - Data Center. 2010-03-09 13:30
- Generators Installed at Yahoo NY Site - Diesel generators are big and powerful, and attract lots of attention during tours and installations. Last Friday three 2 megawatt generators were installed at the new Yahoo data center under construction in Lockport, New York. 2010-03-08 16:58
- Washington Tax Break Proposal Nears Decision - The push to restore a key tax break for data center projects in some areas of eastern Washington state is coming down to the wire, and the measure is encountering some challenges as it nears the finish line. 2010-03-08 14:27
- White House Plans Innovation Prize Platform - The government plans to release a Web-based platform for federal agencies to use prizes and challenges to crowdsource innovative approaches to government problems.
2010-03-09 22:35
- Sony Sets Aggressive 3D TV Target - If the company hits its sales goals -- 2.5 million 3-D televisions and 67% more TVs overall -- its TV business will be profitable for the first time in seven years.
2010-03-09 22:11
- VA Halts Access To EHR System - The administration is addressing a bug that caused its VistAWeb e-health records system to return incomplete data.
2010-03-09 21:46
- Microsoft Fixes Eight Bugs, Warns Of IE Zero-Day - A light Patch Tuesday brings word of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
2010-03-09 21:39
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2010-03-09 21:39
- Cisco Unveils Next Gen Carrier Router - The $90,000 CSR-3 switch is positioned as a flagship enterprise product capable of handling high demand for video on 100G networks.
2010-03-09 21:21
- Global CIO: BMC CEO On Rogue Clouds, Oracle - CEO Bob Beauchamp talks trends in data centers and IT management.
2010-03-09 20:35
- Microsoft Unveils MSN Redesign - Revamped home page features a more prominent Bing search engine and direct integration with Facebook.
2010-03-09 20:17
- Newegg Axes Supplier Over Fake Intel Chips - Some Core i7 processors received from the supplier were counterfeit, online retailer says.
2010-03-09 20:00
- Mariposa Botnet Malware Found On Vodaphone HTC Magic - The phone was bought by an employee of Panda Security, who spotted the malware.
2010-03-09 19:57
- Cast Iron Launches Cloud Integration Platform - Combining data synchronization with process-support and mashup capabilities, OmniConnect addresses on-premise-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud integration.
2010-03-09 19:42
- Air Force Taking Bids For Network Services - Vendors can submit proposals for up to $460 million in awards from the $24 billion follow-up to the Air Force's Network Centric Solutions procurement program.
2010-03-09 19:28
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2010-03-09 19:28
- Sun's Open Source Chief Quits - Ten-year veteran Simon Phipps leaves the company on the heels of Oracle merger.
2010-03-09 18:30
- Avaya, Polycom Expand Video, Voice Partnership - The partnership will cover the joint development and marketing of integrated video, voice, and collaboration solutions.
2010-03-09 17:19
- 80% Say Internet Access A Right - Nearly half of those surveyed in an international poll said they did not think they could cope without the Internet.
2010-03-09 16:17
- EMC Offers Email Compliance App - SourceOne Email Supervisor is designed to help companies meet legal compliance requirements for electronic documents.
2010-03-09 16:04
- HP Offers iPad Alternative - Apple won't have the tablet computer market to itself for long as Hewlett-Packard and others plan Windows 7-based slates.
2010-03-09 15:32
- Cloud Connect: A Convergence Of Expertise - The Cloud Connect conference March 15-18 will feature leaders of the NoSQL movement speaking on how to handle large data sets in the cloud.
2010-03-09 14:40
- IDC: 2010 PC Shipments Mostly Mobile - Portables such as ultrathin mobiles and WiMAX-enabled machines will account for more than 60% of all PC shipments, researcher predicts.
2010-03-09 14:00
- Global CIO: Ballmer's Cloud Commitment Makes Microsoft Relevant Again - Column about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's speech at the University of Washington in which he declared his company's full and unconditional commitment to cloud computing.
2010-03-09 14:00
- Guerra On Healthcare: Vendors Vie For Platform Space - Vendors duke it out at HIMSS conference in bid to provide the healthcare platform that everyone wants.
2010-03-09 14:00
- Q&A: MicroStrategy COO On BI Performance, Mobility - Chief Operating Officer Sanju Bansal talks about smartphone capabilities, analytics, dashboards, and the dirty secret in business intelligence: slow query response times.
2010-03-09 14:00
- IBM Reloads Enterprise Branding - IBM Reloads Enterprise Branding
2010-03-09 13:39
- Google Debuts Public Data Explorer - The company's latest visualization experiment lets users create their own charts and graphs using public data.
2010-03-08 23:55
- Verizon Delivers 100G In Optical Fiber Trials - The company also said its Long-Term Evolution network could see peak download speeds of 40 to 50 Mbps.
2010-03-08 23:08
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2010-03-08 23:08
- Navy Awards $1.75 Billion IT Contracts - Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman will build a shipboard and onshore IP network to replace legacy and outdated software and hardware.
2010-03-08 22:41
- Energizer Removes Infected Battery Monitoring Software - The company says that it is working with U.S.-CERT to determine how the software on its servers became infected.
2010-03-08 22:23
- Intel Probing Bogus Processors - The chip maker is investigating reports of potentially counterfeit i7 920 packages in the marketplace.
2010-03-08 21:17
- GAO Knocks Federal Cybersecurity Plan - The Government Accountability Office says the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative is poorly coordinated and unmeasured and recommends changes.
2010-03-08 21:09
- IBM Opens Beijing Energy Lab - Big Blue's newest facility in the People's Republic will focus on solutions for utility companies and related industries.
2010-03-08 21:05
- Cisco Quits WiMax Radio Business - The decision to cease making WiMax base stations gives a boost to Cisco's Long-Term Evolution portfolio.
2010-03-08 20:50
- Google Buzz Stung By Lawsuit - The company broke privacy and data protection laws, the complaint alleges.
2010-03-08 20:25
- Avaya Updates UC Suite - With the release IP Office 6.0, Avaya seeks to bring unified communications within reach for cost-conscious small businesses.
2010-03-08 19:00
- RSA: Cybersecurity A Joint Fed, Industry Effort - Government officials turned out in force last week to lay out federal cybersecurity policy and encourage greater public-private partnership.
2010-03-08 18:50
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2010-03-08 18:50
- Space Shuttle Debate Goes Ballistic - Obama to defend plan to kill the shuttle as GOP Senator introduces bill that would save the program.
2010-03-08 18:19
- Infogroup To Be Acquired For $460 Million - Private equity firm CCMP would like to buy the company, which specializes in research and custom databases for marketing purposes.
2010-03-08 18:18
- Storage Market Posts Growth In 4Q - Much of the increase was driven by open networked storage.
2010-03-08 17:15
- Server Den: IBM Reloads Enterprise Branding - IBM will adopt "Smarter Systems for a Smarter Planet" as its data center marketing moniker, putting distance between today's "dynamic infrastructure" and the me-too catch phrases used by competitors.
2010-03-08 16:29
- Fed Emergency Communications Center Struggling - A GAO report outlines challenges facing the Emergency Communications Preparedness Center, including a lack of authority, and an inability to prove its value to stakeholders.
2010-03-08 16:18
- RCN Targeted In $1.2 Billion Acquisition Bid - The digital, video, voice and high-speed Internet service provider has a business unit that delivers fiber data transport services to large commercial customers.
2010-03-08 15:45
- Teradata Boosts Data Warehouse Appliance Speed - Built-in speed enhancers include a subsystem that increases processor interconnect bandwidth by 2.5 times over previous generations of the appliance.
2010-03-08 15:34
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2010-03-08 15:34
- RightNow Challenges SaaS Vendors On Pricing - Software-as-a-service vendor RightNow challenges other on-demand suppliers to get on the cloud pricing model.
2010-03-08 14:40
- iPad In Starring Role At Oscars - First commercial for Apple's new tablet-style computer debuts during the Academy Awards broadcast.
2010-03-08 14:06
- Software Patching Too Much Trouble For Most - Software Patching Too Much Trouble For Most
2010-03-08 13:47
- HIMSS: Healthcare Technology Roundup - At the HIMSS healthcare IT show, HIT vendors and medical pros reviewed the latest in clinical equipment, electronic health records systems, and more.
2010-03-06 13:00
- Global CIO: BP's Extraordinary Transformation Led By CIO Dana Deasy - BP CEO Tony Hayward told top managers the company had become a "serial underperformer." Here's how CIO Dana Deasy and the IT teams answered the challenge.
2010-03-06 06:02
- PPM Gets Your Projects In Line - Project portfolio management is about process and behavior than tools.
2010-03-06 06:01
- Opportunities, Challenges Of UC In Healthcare - Unified communications can solve some of the unique challenges faced by healthcare centers. We help CIOs make the business case.
2010-03-06 06:01
- CIO Profiles: Patricia A. Coffey Of Allstate Insurance And The Society For Information Management - The tech VP's pet peeve? Don't tell her "That's not my job."
2010-03-06 06:00
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2010-03-06 06:00
- Practical Analysis: Are You Neglecting Your WAN? - Web apps and consolidated data centers are adding pressure, and video will bring even more. It could be time to explore new options.
2010-03-06 06:00
- Google Buys Maker Of Microsoft Office Plugin - By acquiring DocVerse, Google is paving the road to cloud computing.
2010-03-05 23:48
- Virtualization Short Take #36 - Welcome to Virtualization Short Take #36, the latest collection of virtualization-related news, posts, and tidbits that I've found interesting or useful. Enjoy!
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-03-09 16:04
Virtualization Short Take #36 - Links for 2010-03-08 [del.icio.us] -
- VMware Labs
The VMware Labs site contains some unofficial and unsupported (but quite cool) tools from VMware engineers.
2010-03-09 09:00
- VMware Labs
- VMware ESX, EMC CLARiiON Arrays, and Multiple Protocols - The ESX CLARiiON arrays support both Fibre Channel and iSCSI natively, but there are a few provisions that are applicable in a VMware ESX/ESXi environment.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-03-05 12:01
VMware ESX, EMC CLARiiON Arrays, and Multiple Protocols - Links for 2010-03-04 [del.icio.us] -
- Gift Idea - Speck SeeThru Satin Soft-Touch Hard Shell for MacBook Pro
This is an attractive hard shell for my MacBook Pro. - Information Storage and Management
This book provides in-depth information on information storage topics like protocols, storage virtualization, replication, security, and administration. It's written by a team of authors from EMC.
2010-03-05 09:00
- Gift Idea - Speck SeeThru Satin Soft-Touch Hard Shell for MacBook Pro
- PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0 - During a recent PoC, I did some work on PXE booting VMware ESX for an unattended installation. Here are some notes on the process I used.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-03-03 00:20
PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0 - Congrats to HyTrust - HyTrust has had a busy week, full of announcements and press releases. Here's a summary of the activity.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-26 06:05
Congrats to HyTrust - A Potential Use for the iPad - Although I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the hype around the iPad, I think that I have found one use case that will be fairly helpful for me.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-23 04:49
A Potential Use for the iPad - On the VCDX Defense - It's been a long journey since I first started pursuing VCDX, but here are some thoughts on the defense process and the results of my defense.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-20 04:06
On the VCDX Defense - Links for 2010-02-17 [del.icio.us] -
- Backing up your COMSTAR storage configuration
This blog post describes how to back up COMSTAR configuration information. - James O'Neill's Blog - The “Joy” of Regex Part 1
This is a post, by a Microsoft employee, on using regexes (regular expressions, originally from the UNIX world). - How to Flush the DNS Cache in Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris 10 UNIX & MAC OS X Operating Systems: « Zero.Increment {0++}
This article describes how to flush the DNS cache in Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X.
2010-02-18 09:00
- Backing up your COMSTAR storage configuration
- A Collection of UCS Posts - There's been quite a few good Cisco UCS posts published recently; I thought it might be handy to post a list of some of them here.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-18 08:03
A Collection of UCS Posts - Virtualization Short Take #35 - This is Virtualization Short Take #35, the latest installation in the Virtualization Short Take series. Located herein is a collection of various virtualization-oriented resources. I hope you find something useful!
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-18 07:38
Virtualization Short Take #35 - Links for 2010-02-15 [del.icio.us] -
- TruePower Power Outlet With Built in USB Ports
This wall outlet, installable in any standard wall socket, features two USB ports for charging devices.
2010-02-16 09:00
- TruePower Power Outlet With Built in USB Ports
- VMware vSphere Pro Video Training - Train Signal has already released a video training course for VMware vSphere 4.0. Now they've expanded the training material with the Pro Series, an expanded set of training that covers advanced topics.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-12 04:18
VMware vSphere Pro Video Training - Partner Exchange 2010 Session TECHDV0721 - This session was a two-hour session that covered many different aspects of security within a VMware View environment.
This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org. Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies.
2010-02-12 00:10
Partner Exchange 2010 Session TECHDV0721 - Links for 2010-01-25 [del.icio.us] -
- DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/CalDav/LDAP Exchange Gateway
DavMail is a tool that enables protocols like IMAP, SMTP, LDAP over WebDAV for compatibility with Microsoft Exchange Server.
2010-01-26 09:00
- DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/CalDav/LDAP Exchange Gateway
- Links for 2010-01-24 [del.icio.us] -
- Cisco Nexus 1000V Software Installation Guide, Release 4.0(4)SV1(1) [Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches] - Cisco Systems
This page has installation guidelines for the Cisco Nexus 1000V.
2010-01-25 09:00
- Cisco Nexus 1000V Software Installation Guide, Release 4.0(4)SV1(1) [Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches] - Cisco Systems
- Links for 2010-01-15 [del.icio.us] -
- Linux Virtual Machine Tuning Guide : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin
A collection of tips for tuning Linux VM performance in VMware vSphere environments.
2010-01-16 09:00
- Linux Virtual Machine Tuning Guide : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin
- Next vSphere to introduce memory compression and I/O resource management? -
Almost one month ago, immediately after the VMware Partner Exchange conference, TechTarget published a scoop about some new features that may appear in the upcoming version of vSphere, expected later this year.
The list includes:
- Transparent Memory Compression
This will avoid swap when RAM is overcommited by compressing a set of target pages to a special region. VMware measured the latency of this technique as a hundred times better than the latency of swapping on rotating disks. - IO-Resource Manager (IO-RM)
This will allow the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to assign shares based on disk performance. The more shares a virtual machine will have, the higher priority it will get in accessing a shared VMFS volume. - Eight concurrent live migrations
Next version of VMotion will raise the default limit of concurrent live migrations from two to eight.
2010-03-09 16:14
- Transparent Memory Compression
- Addressing network bottleneck in virtual infrastructures with 10Gbit Ethernet -
The imminent launch of Intel octal-core CPUs (codename Nehalem-EX) and servers with up to 48 cores (powered by AMD codename Magny-cours CPUs) will dramatically increase the virtualization hosts density but will highlight how the network layer is becoming one of the weakest point of high-capacity virtual infrastructures.
Anandtech just published a very interesting article on this topic, testing the performance of a couple of copper cable 10GBase-CX4 network interface cards against the popular quad-port gigabit NICs we use today in most virtualization hosts.
The benchmark measured dual-port Intel PRO/1000 PT Server adapter (82571EB) against a Supermicro AOC-STG-I2 dual-port 10Gbit/s Intel 82598EB and a Neterion Xframe-E 10Gbit/s.
Both NICs were tested with VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1 and CentOS 5.4 guest OSes with appropriate drivers.
While NICs tested by Anandtech are not the lastest available on the market, the research still is a valuable reading for most virtualization administrators.
2010-03-09 15:45
- Tool: vmClient -
The well-know virtualization professional (and blogger) Eric Sloof just released a tool called vmClient.
vmClient is a minimal management console that appears as an empty window frame.
It features a menu bar where the virtual machines hosted by any VMware vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi host are listed.
Each virtual machine in the list can be powered on/off, suspended and restarted. When the user tries to connect to them, the empty vmClient frame gets populated by the VMware MKS console (VNC) session with the guest operating system.
2010-03-09 15:06
- Tool: Archipel -
Archipel is a new open source virtual infrastructure management system based on the libvirt libraries and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, formerly Jabber).
Still in early stage, the tool supports KVM, Xen, OpenVZ and VirtualBox and it’s currently able to operate single virtual machines and VM groups, displaying performance statistics about them.
The interesting twist is that, thanks to the XMPP engine, this console provides instant notification about VMs status to any chat client that supports the (almost) standard protocol.
This means that virtual infrastructure administrators can query virtual machine status through their IM program of choice (like Google Talk or Gmail Chat for example).To do so, each virtual infrastructure entity, including hosts and virtual machines, appear as an IM contacts, with its list of “friends”.
Every management task can be executed through chat messages, and geographically distant virtual infrastructures can communicate through remote XMPP servers.2010-03-09 14:31
- Microsoft publishes a (beta) Infrastructure Planning and Design guide for dynamic data centers -
Microsoft just published the beta version of a new Infrastructure Planning and Design guide.
Titled Dynamic Data Center, this 43-pages blueprint on what Microsoft defines “a combination of automation, control, and resource management software with a well-defined topology of virtualization, servers, storage, and networking hardware”.
The guide is divided in five main parts:
- Determine the Dynamic Data Center Scope
This part helps to define the scope and determine the workloads that will be included in the Dynamic Data Center project. It’s divided in three steps: - Determine the proposed initial workloads for the Dynamic Data Center.
- Select the workload fault-tolerance approach (including Load Balancing, VM-Level and Host-Level Clustering, as well as Application-Level Fault Tolerance).
- Determine the initial size of the Dynamic Data Center.
- Design the Virtualization Hosts
This part helps to design hosts that meet the capacity, performance, placement, and fault-tolerance requirements of the organization. It’s divided in three steps: - Group the workloads
- Design the host’s Hardware configurations
- Determine host connectivity requirements
- Design the Software Infrastructure
This part helps to design the software infrastructure in a way it can provide directory and authentication services, virtual machine management, configuration management, software distribution/inventory/patch management, event monitoring and collection, remote desktop services and hardware management. - Design the Dynamic Data Center Storage
This part helps to design the storage infrastructure in a way it meets requirements of capacity, performance delivery, fault tolerance and manageability. It’s divided in four steps: - Design the storage system
- Design the host storage connections
- Design the storage switches
- Select the backup approach
- Design the Network Infrastructure
This part helps to design the network infrastructure to accommodate the requirements accumulated throughout previous steps. It’s divided in three steps: - Design network switches
- Design the hardware load balancers
- Design the firewalls
What the guide doesn’t cover instead is:
- Utility service providers or hosting companies offering cloud computing, cloud computing platforms, cloud platform services, or cloud infrastructure services.
- Windows Live™ network of Internet services or other consumer-oriented, cloud services.
- Microsoft Online Services or other third-party software-as-a-service organizations delivering Microsoft infrastructure technologies.
- VM guest planning is a complex topic, and although it informs the scoping in this guide, it is considered a related but separate exercise from planning the Dynamic Data Center infrastructure.
Now, while this document is a good starting point to plan and design what Microsoft calls a dynamic data center, it’s nowhere near the level of completeness that a customer need to design his infrastructure from scratch. And yet, it’s a great way to envision how massive is the investment that any company has to dedicate to data center design.
After reading this document, any customer would recognize some value in the emerging unified/fabric computing trend that companies like Egenera and Cisco are leading.
2010-03-09 13:53
- Determine the Dynamic Data Center Scope
- Benchmarks: Rock Webserver on vSphere 4.0 on HP DL380 G6 -
While Intel prepares to launch its first octal-core CPU (codename Nehalem-EX) , which will potentially trigger a price increase in vSphere licensing, VMware publishes a new benchmark on current Xeon 5500 servers.
This time the company focuses on high throughput web performance, running the SPECweb2005 benchmark against a HP ProLiant DL380 G6 machine equipped with two quad-core Intel Xeon X5570 CPUs @ 2.933GHz and 96GB memory.
The system above, powered by vSphere 4.0, run four virtual machines with 4 vCPUs and 21GB vRAM each, hosting a copy of paravirtualized 64bit Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 plus Rock Webserver and Rock JSP server.
Such system, thanks to paravirtualization drivers, the VMware NetQueue technology, the Intel VMDirectPath technology (part of VT-d) and the Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AF network interface cards, recorded a benchmark score of 62,296, equal to 85% of native performance.
The four VMs were able to serve from 60,000 to 100,000 simultaneous users:
2010-03-09 13:03
- Is VMware about to announce some vCloud news? -
At the beginning of January virtualization.info published a long overview about the VMware’s approach to cloud computing, covering the vCloud APIs, the vCloud Express implementation and the five partners that are currently offering it.
One of them, BlueLock, just sent an email to its customers announcing that its vCloud Express offering will (tentatively) move from beta to general availability (GA) on March 25.
As far as we know none of the other providers is out of beta yet (this article will be updated if necessary).
So, while it’s entirely possible that BlueLock wants to be the first to announce vCloud Express GA, it’s much more likely that all the early adopters will make GA announcements in the same timeframe.
And this may mean that VMware is about to release some additional information or bits about its cloud computing platform. Like for example a version 1.0 of the APIs, or the public version of project Redwood, the software that will allow customers to migrate their virtual machines from their private virtual infrastructure to public clouds like the BlueLock one.2010-03-08 22:21
- Parallels introduces support for Google Chrome OS in Desktop 5 -
With an unexpected move, at the end of last week Parallels announced support for the upcoming Google operating system, Chrome OS, in its Desktop 5 for Mac.
While it’s entirely expected that consumers use desktop virtualization platforms to test new operating systems, it’s pretty uncommon to see a vendor that officially supports a beta product that is not widely deployed like Windows.
Considering the long beta cycles that Google products have (sometimes years), the effort to support multiple beta builds will be remarkable for Parallels.
The first stable release for Chrome OS is not expected to arrive before the second half of 2010.
2010-03-08 19:48
- Neocleus signs an OEM agreement with BigFix -
Neocleus is a US startup that entered the virtualization market in May 2008 without much fanfare (see virtualization.info coverage).
At that time, their Xen-based client hypervisor, Trusted Edge, was pitched as a secure endpoint platform that could be enriched by 3rd parties applications.Two years after that, Neocleus still doesn’t get any significant traction despite many customers are well aware of (and very interested on) the client hypervisor concept because of its potential to deliver VDI in offline mode.
One reason for this lack of interest is that so far the startup made extremely complex to exactly understand the details of its product and to access it (the whole “drop us an email” argument doesn’t work well for a technology that is completely new and that faces severe skepticism about performance and hardware support).So at the beginning of last week Neocleus announced a shift in its go-to-market strategy, with the release of NeoSphere, a version of Trusted Edge, that can be OEM’ed and extended by PC lifecycle management (PCLM), security and help desk vendors.
The first customer is the management vendor BigFix, according to Brian Madden.Interestingly, every reference about Trusted Edge disappeared from the corporate website except a mention inside the original press announcement.
2010-03-08 19:33
- VMware buys back $400M in Class A shares -
Last week Reuters and other news outlets reported that the VMware’s board approved a plan to buy back $400M in Class A shares.
The operation will happen over the months, through the end of 2011.
EMC said it has no intention to modify its ownership of the subsidiary, keeping it at around 80%.
In another note, the VMware’s CFO, Mark Peek, sold 15,000 shares at an average price of $46.72 a share in mid-February.
2010-03-08 18:53
- PCoIP vs HDX, Essentials sales volume, System Center vs vSphere: marketing war never ends -
New month, new rebuttals in virtualization-land.
Evidently, virtualization players still consider the marketing skirmish very helpful to increase sales (virtualization.info has a slightly different opinion) so this March we have VMware leading three major campaigns against competitors.Two of them are defensive, one is not:
- VMware View PCoIP vs Citrix XenDesktop HDX
- Volume of Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V sales
- Cost of managing Microsoft Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere
PCoIP vs Citrix XenDesktop HDX
At the beginning of February Citrix sponsored a competitive analysis performed by Miercom.
The 7-pages report compares protocol performance of Citrix XenDesktop 4 (with ICA/HDX) and VMware View 4 (with PCoIP) and these are the conclusions:In a comparison of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) implementations, Citrix XenDesktop 4 provided better overall performance when compared to VMware View 4
XenDesktop 4 used 64% less bandwidth than View 4 with PCoIP for typical tasks
Flash video was delivered with an average of 65% less CPU usage, 89% less bandwidth, and excellent Quality of Experience by XenDesktop 4 compared to View 4
Overall, XenDesktop 4 uses system resources more efficiently and is capable of scaling more effectively
VMware answered last week, informing that they were not contacted by Miercom and that they have no insight about how test were conducted.
Of course VMware offered its point of view on each point,At this point customers just have to decide which company has the nicest logo and which guy has the brightest smile to believe to one set of claims over the other.
Luckily, Brian Madden jumps in and provide an impartial, long, detailed analysis that definitively is worth a read.
Volume of Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V salesAt the beginning of March, a blog independently run by VMware employees published interesting speculations about the sales volume of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V.
The article, written by Michael Hong, Senior Product Marketing Engineer, suggest that Citrix so far sold a very, very low number of Essentials for Hyper-V, because he apparently was the first one to recognize a major bug in the Workflow Studio setup.
Workflow Studio is part of the Essentials suite and the issue Hong encountered prevents its installation, but the Citrix support didn’t solve the issue and closed Hong’s support ticket without reasons.
Hong also notes that Citrix doesn’t have more than a bunch of posts on the its support forum about Essentials for Hyper-V.
For sure readers can’t wait to hear what Citrix has to answer on this…
Cost of managing Microsoft Hyper-V vs VMware vSphereThis is an old classic.
At the beginning of March VMware decided to cover a cost comparison table that Microsoft recently published.The table compares several vSphere editions against a System Center bundle called System Center Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD), showing how the Microsoft way is significantly less expensive than VMware offering (at least half the price):
Of course there are a number of issues in the comparison that VMware pointed out.
In some cases VMware is completely right in highlighting how Microsoft doesn’t detail enough the difference between implementations of the same feature (vSMP support for example).
In other cases VMware wants Microsoft to drop comparison between some features because they are too different (VMware DRS vs Microsoft PRO for example) but here’s the a lot of room to debate.While totally misleading, the sense of those marks is more like “We have this feature. The customer can use it in some way”.
Is it possible to pretend that a simple comparison table like this one (or the ones that VMware produces) offers an insightful qualitative analysis of implementation cost for each listed feature?
The customers that are looking for such in-depth side-by-side analysis aren’t going to research more on their own? Are they supposed to make their purchase decision just looking at this chart?This is way the whole “my product is better than yours” marketing effort is a complete waste of time.
2010-03-08 13:06
- VMware launches Labs -
VMware just launched a new online facility called Labs.
It seems a sort of R&D website that exposes company’s engineers pet projects before they turn into real products, similarly to what other companies like Microsoft and Google do.
At the moment Labs hosts ten projects, all released as Technology Previews, under open source licenses, without any support and without any indication about future inclusion in the VMware product portfolio.
Some of them, like the previously covered VMware Guest Console, are extremely interesting:
- Apache Pivot
Like most modern development platforms, Pivot provides a comprehensive set of foundation classes that together comprise a "framework". These classes form the building blocks upon which more complex and sophisticated applications can be built. - Dynamo RIO
DynamoRIO exports an interface for building dynamic tools for a wide variety of uses: program analysis and understanding, profiling, instrumentation, optimization, translation, etc. Unlike many dynamic tool systems, DynamoRIO is not limited to insertion of callouts/trampolines and allows arbitrary modifications to application instructions via a powerful IA-32/AMD64 instruction manipulation library. DynamoRIO provides efficient, transparent, and comprehensive manipulation of unmodified applications running on stock operating systems (Windows or Linux) and commodity IA-32 and AMD64… - esxplot
Esxplot is a GUI based tool that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode. The program loads files of this data and presents it as a hierarchical tree where the values are selectable in the left panel of the tool, graphs of the selected metrics are plotted in the right panel.
Esxplot allows you to "browse" the contents of these somewhat unwieldy files. You can plot up to 16 metrics on the same canvas and export the graphs to a gif, jpg, png or bmp file format. Subsets of the data can be worked with by using the regex query box which will produce a subtree that can be browsed or exported as a csv file which can, in turn, be loaded into esxplot, PERFMON or Excel… - Onyx
Onyx is a standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script. - SVGA Sonar
VGA Sonar is a demo application for SVGADevTap. SVGADevTap is a user-level library that communicates with the VMware SVGA guest driver to provide low-latency notifications of changes to the screen. Sonar was designed to use the devtap API to visualize application drawing patterns by rendering a scaled-down view of the desktop replacing pixel data with color-coded rectangles. As applications update the screen, Sonar presents it's scaled version of the screen using colors to denote different types of rendering commands and whether this rendering caused a visible change to the screen… - vApprun
…vApprun, these features becomes available to both Workstation and Fusion users. The vApprun tool implements the same vApp/OVF feature set as the vSphere 4 release. Thus, Workstation/Fusion can be used as a development environment for advanced OVF packages, and it can be used to evaluate and test OVF packages on your desktops and laptops… - vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA)
VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) - vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices. - VMware Guest Console (VGC)
A new management console able to independently monitor and manipulate files and processes inside any guest operating system. See virtualization.info coverage. - VI Java
vSphere Java API is a set of Java libraries that sits on top of existing vSphere SDK Web Services interfaces. It provides full managed object model and run-time type checking, resulting dramatic productivity boost. - Virtual USB Analyzer
The Virtual USB Analyzer is a free and open source tool for visualizing logs of USB packets, from hardware or software USB sniffer tools. As far as we know, it's the world's first tool to provide a graphical visualization along with raw hex dumps and high-level protocol analysis.
Thanks to NTPRO.NL for the news.2010-03-08 11:09
- Apache Pivot
- VMware working to control guest OS applications with new Guest Console -
A few minutes ago a couple of videos of a new VMware product called Guest Console (VGC) surfaced.
Guest Console, currently in Technology Preview phase, is a new management console able to independently monitor and manipulate files and processes inside any guest operating system.
It can connect to any guest OS, it doesn’t matter if the VM is hosted on ESX, Server and Workstation.
Once connected to the host, VGC provides a task manager, a file system explorer, a snapshot manager and a virtual machine manager that work with Windows and Linux guests.With these tools an administrator can perform simple tasks like ending a running process or start a new program, as well as more complex things like copying the same file to multiple guest OSes at the same time.
In similar fashion, it can manipulate snapshots of multiple virtual machines at the same time or store the information coming from multiple guest OSes for inventory purposes.Here’s the videos:
Thanks to Eric Sloof for the news.2010-03-05 18:24
- Vizioncore vFoglight to support Hyper-V in H1 2010, XenServer within year’s end -
Exactly one year ago the Quest subsidiary Vizioncore made clear its decision to extend the focus to hypervisors from Microsoft and Citrix.
At that time the company announced the upcoming support for Hyper-V and XenServer in the new vControl enterprise management console.Twelve months later, according to ComputerWorld, Vizioncore is getting ready to further support VMware competitors and unveils that its performance monitoring product, vFoglight, will support Hyper-V by mid-year and XenServer within the end of 2010.
2010-03-05 17:40
- VMware loses its Director of Community Program -
One of the biggest assets VMware has, excluding of course its product portfolio, is its VMTN Forum facility, which hosts a large and incredibly active community of professionals that quite often are more knowledgeable, faster and way more efficient than the company’s paid support.
Any new customer that wants to learn VMware technologies inside out, well beyond what the official training class can provide, should consider investing at least 6-9 months just to follow the threads on the VMTN board in passive mode.
There’s a large number of VMware employees that contributed the success of VMTN. The first one that comes to mind for sure is John Troyer, Senior Social Media Strategist, who definitively is the VMware front man for everything related to the community.
Behind the scenes there’s at least another one: Robert Dell’Immagine, Director of Community Program, who just left VMware after almost six years.
Dell’Immagine joined the security vendor Qualys, where he’s covering the same role since February.
2010-03-05 17:18
- PHD Virtual appoints its new CEO - UPDATED -
Exactly one year ago, PHD Virtual Technologies (formerly PHD Technologies) lost its CEO Sridhar Murthy.
In the last twelve months the company was led by its Executive Chairman Joe Julian, former Senior Vice President of Americas Sales and Global Accounts at Veritas Software.
PHD Virtual Technologies yesterday announced that the former CEO of Shunra Software, Thomas Charlton, joined the company as new Chairman and CEO, thus replacing both Murthy and Julian.
This is the third CEO the company has since its launch in March 2006.
The most interesting thing is that the press release explicitly says that Charlton was chosen by Insight Venture, the VC firm that invests in both Shunra and PHD Virtual.
2010-03-05 19:43
- Altor Networks secures $10 million in new round funding -
The security virtualization startup Altor Networks announced this week a new round funding, $10M, led by DAG Ventures, Juniper Networks, Accel Partners and Foundation Capital.
Accel and Foundation already led the previous one, equal to $6M, in April 2008.
It’s not clear if this is the second or third round: the company claims it is the second one, but the $6M announcement says:
…today announced it has secured a $6 million second round of financing led by Accel Partners and Foundation Capital
2010-03-05 16:38
- Pano Logic secures $20 million in Round C funding, signs OEM agreement with Fujitsu -
Last week Pano Logic announced its third round funding, equal to $20M and led by Mayfield Fund.
As result, Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha will join the company’s Board of Directors.
With this investment, the startup raised more than $40M. The previous round, $18M, was led by Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs.
Pano Logic revealed that its sales tripled in 2009 and while its revenue may just get better this year, the startup is seeing increasing pressure from bigger firms that embrace the idea of a zero client for thin computing and VDI environments.
Dell, for example, just announced its own zero client: the FX100.The good news is that Pano Logic just closed an OEM agreement with Fujitsu.
Simply dubbed Fujitsu Zero Client, the OEM’ed product is available starting this month in every country where Fujitsu operates, as far as we understand.2010-03-05 16:25
- HyTrust gets money from Cisco, executive from VMware -
Last week the virtualization security startup HyTrust announced its second round funding: $10.5M, led by Granite Ventures and Cisco.
The first round was equal to $5.5M, provided by Trident Capital and Epic Ventures.
Only Len Rand, Managing Director at Granite Ventures and former General Manager of Strategic Marketing and Global Alliances in Intel, will take a seat on the HyTrust Board of Director. Nobody from Cisco.
On top of this, HyTrust also announced that Jim Gannon, the former Director of Global Accounts at VMware, joined the company as its new Vice President of Sales.
2010-03-05 15:37
- Reflex Systems partners with TippingPoint -
The virtualization startup Reflex Systems may have changed its go-to-market strategy, focusing more on virtual infrastructure management than on security, but it didn’t forget its roots.
Exactly one year ago the company hired a former ISS executive, Preston Futrell, as new Vice President of Sales, in September 2009 launched a new version of its new flagship product that features a VMware VMsafe-certified policy compliance enforcement engine, and now it closes a deal with TippingPoint, a well-known player security market.
TippingPoint, a subsidiary of 3Com, which was recently acquired by HP, offers a popular line of intrusion prevention systems (IPS).
The partnership allows TippingPoint to include Reflex VMC in its Security Virtualization Framework, a bundle of products (Digital Vaccine Labs, vController, Security Management System and of course the IPS appliances) that enforces segmentation between virtual machines and supports separation of duties between the different teams that manage the virtual infrastructure.2010-03-05 15:23
- Release: VMware Workstation 7.0.1 / Player 3.0.1 -
At the end of January VMware released a couple of minor updates for its desktop virtualization platforms for Windows and Linux: Workstation and Player.
For some reasons we missed this product update, so we are reporting about it now.The new build (227600) is primarily for bug fixing but it also introduces support for a number of guest and host operating systems:
- Windows Server 2008 R2 (host and guest)
- Windows Vista SP2 (host and guest)
- Ubuntu 9.10 (host and guest)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (host and guest)
- CentOS 5.4 (guest only)
- Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 (guest only)
2010-03-05 14:55
- Release: VKernel Capacity View 1.0 -
After releasing Capacity Modeler to counter the new VMware CapacityIQ, last week VKernel released another free tool to keep the virtualization community engaged.
This one is called Capacity View. It is an extremely simple dashboard for Windows that summarizes the virtual infrastructure elements (data centers, clusters, hosts, virtual machines, resource pools, data stores), the resources allocation (both physical and virtual) and the amount of alerts that VMware vCenter is raising at any given moment.
The approach is quite brilliant: under each alert group (Performance Problems, Available Capacity and Over-allocated Resources) there’s a link to a relevant product that VKernel sells.
Many administrators may desire to monitor the virtual infrastructure with this single-window, essential console during the day, jumping on the fully-featured vCenter control panel only when it’s truly needed.
And while they may have no interest in the other VKernel products, there’s a daily reminder that those products exist under their nose. This is more than enough to develop a strong brand awareness and instill doubt that those products may be actually useful.
2010-03-05 00:26
- Release: Convirture ConVirt 2.0 -
ConVirt (formerly XenMan) is an open source management console that supports multiple hypervisors, including Xen and KVM.
Originally started in 2006, the product was relaunched in March 2009, demonstrating a significant potential.One year later, the company behind ConVirt, Convirture, releases version 2.0, which once again features notable capabilities:
- new architecture
made of an AJAX web front-end which supports multiple administrators and a back-end data repository for the entire virtual infrastructure - performance trends reporting
capability to produce interactive charts about historical information in the data repository - template compliance tracking
capability to track how much a virtual machine changed from its original template and to flag discrepancies - datacenter-wide monitoring
both storage and network resources can be monitored from a single console rather than checking each host configuration
The company is still offering the product as open source, but it’s also trying to monetize it with the introduction of an Enterprise Edition (currenty in beta).
This product will add to the open source edition the following capabilities:
- dynamic resources allocation (through the use of resource pools)
- high availability (through hosts and virtual machines fail-over)
- virtual machines backup (both scheduled and on-demand)
- network and storage automated configuration (VLAN and SAN setup across multiple hosts)
- role-based access control
- alerting and email notification
- CLI and APIs
2010-03-04 23:49
- new architecture
- Release: VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 -
Last week VMware released a patch specifically for the version of Update Manager (VUM) that is included in vSphere 4.0 Update 1.
The new version (build 231675) is needed to fix a couple of bugs affecting capability to upgrade the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch and the time required to scan and patch hosts in a cluster.
Thanks to Yellow Bricks for the news.2010-03-04 23:14
- Release: VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0.1.1 -
Last week VMware updated its disaster recovery solution Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to version 4.0.1.1 (build 236215).
The new version is primarily for bug fixing and features enhancements. There are no new capabilities. Yellow Bricks published the complete list.
This version of SRM supports storage replication adapters from:
- 3PAR
- Compellent
- Dell | EqualLogic
- EMC (for CLARiiON, Symmetrix, Celerra and RecoverPoint)
- FalconStor
- Fujitsu
- Hitachi
- HP (for EVA, LeftHand and XP)
- IBM (for DS, SVC ad XIV)
- LSI
- NEC
- NetApp (both NAS and SAN products)
- Sun (acquired by Oracle)
2010-03-05 16:02
2010-03-09 22:35
