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Roundup: DataPipe, Peak 10, Equinix, APC
September 1st, 2009 : John RathHere’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:
- DataPipe rolls out 3PAR services. Utility storage provider 3PAR announced Monday that Cloud-Agile partner DataPipe now offers differentiated virtual private array (VPA) and disaster recovery (DR) services as a part of their Stratosphere cloud services, which are powered by 3PAR Utility Storage. DataPipe’s cloud platform leverages VMware and 3PAR to offer a managed, secure virtualized service. “We now have the opportunity to expand our cloud service offerings in the areas of security and compliance to increase the value we offer our customers,” said Michael Parks, Chief Technology Officer for DataPipe. The 3PAR ASSURED product allows DataPipe to use remote copy, data replication, DR and automatic data backup to end users. The 3PAR SECURED product offers isolated, secure virtual private array servies.
- Peak 10 deploys VMware vSphere 4. Data center operator Peak 10 announced the delivery of Private Cloud Infrastructure Solutions, via VMware’s vSphere 4 platform. The platform offers customers pools of virtualized resources that federate between on and off-premise environments on-demand and with ease. By using vSphere 4 Peak 10 customers can maintain the integrity of their data and applications, while migrating to the cloud platform. Peak 10’s leadership team are in San Francisco this week attending the VMworld 2009 conference. Enhancements allowed from Peak 10’s vSphere 4 platform include twice as many virtual processors per virtual machine, four times the memory, three-times increase in network throughput, and additional SAN tiers available for high-end databases.
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VMworld Upfront: Early Headlines
August 31st, 2009 : Rich MillerVMworld 2009 is just getting underway in San Francisco. Here’s a roundup of early product launches and some previews:
- VMware Launches vCenter: Says new family of products”provides customers with a framework for policy-centric, SLA-driven management across dynamic infrastructure, enabling IT to operate more efficiently as an internal service provider.”
- VMware Launches VMware Go: Intros web-based service that will make it easier for first time SMB customers to get started with virtualization.
- VMware to Sep Up Automation Game: Larry Diganan of ZDNet advances Vmware’s rollout of the vCenter automation and management suite.
- Xen Cloud Platform to Be Launched: Alessandro at Virtualization.info provides details on the Xen Cloud Platform open source tools that will launch this week.
- Circle of Expertise has photos about how Citrix is marketing at its rivals’ conference.
- VMWorld Spoilers: Krishnan at Cloud Avenue also previews the Cirtix/Xen offering, along with the VMware Go service.
- Challenging Microsoft with a New Technology: The NY Times takes the broad overview as an intro to the VMWorld hubbub. Curiously, this ran inside the business section in the print edition. Steve Lohr has a companion piece on the Bits blog.
- VMware Launches New Virtualization Products: TechCrunch also briefly notes the debut of vCenter.
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Parallels Sees IPO, Not Acquisition
August 27th, 2009 : Rich MillerVirtualization and automation software maker Parallels hopes to go public via an IPO in about two years, CEO Serguei Beloussov recently told Bloomberg News. But Beloussov also says the company has been “casually” approached about a potential acquisition by both Microsoft and IBM. Beloussov obviously didn’t bite on either of those offers, but tells Bloomberg he would consider a bid at a “significant premium.”
Defining that premium for a private company isn’t easy. But Microsoft makes sense as an acquirer, according to Virtualization.info: “Microsoft now has every piece of the virtualization stack: the Hyper-V hardware virtualization engine, the App-V application virtualization engine, a VDI connection broker, the security wrapper MED-V,” writes Alessandro Perilli. “The only missing part is the OS partitioning technology, and Parallels is the only enterprise company that offers it at today. So unless Microsoft changed its plans or what to develop it from scratch, Parallels is the company to acquire.”
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Does the Cloud ‘Break’ Virtualization Licensing?
July 24th, 2009 : Rich MillerThere’s ongoing discussion of whether enterprise companies will make the leap to the cloud. But what about virtualization licensing? Is virtualization licensing “broken” when it comes to the cloud? Steve O’Donnell tackles the subject over at The Hot Aisle, discussing the forumulas used by virtualization vendors to bill for their software.
The whole thing is a mess and no vendor seems to have got it completely right. The key issue is to strike a fair balance between the intellectual property rights of the vendor to be rewarded for their investment in development and support of the code and the customers need to operate in a flexible way that minimizes their operational costs. In the end market forces will prevail and we will see much more flexible approaches like server farm licensing for large scale applications like SharePoint, Oracle Databases, and SQL Server. Part of the problem is fair licensing is hard for the vendor to implement in the cloud.
See the full article at The Hot Aisle, and read more on the topic at ZDNet.
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Andreessen-backed Startup Targets Cloud
June 29th, 2009 : Rich Miller
A new cloud computing startup funded and advised by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz plans to help enterprise companies deploy and manage applications in the cloud. webappVM is a Redwood City company building a “self-monitoring application cloud” for web applications that will provide enterprise-style app management capabilities to public and private clouds. The company is backed Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures as well as Andreessen and Horowitz, who recently raised $300 million to fund early-stage investments.webappVM was previously known as OSS-1701, and was founded in May 2008 by CEO Issac Roth and CTO Tobias Kunze Briseño. Roth most recently worked as director of product management at the Wily Computing business of Computer Associates, while Briseno was a senior development manager at Lycos Europe.
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Web Host Hacked Via Virtualization Tool
June 9th, 2009 : Rich MillerVirtualization security risk is a topic that has often been discussed in worrisome “what if” scenarios. It looks like “what if” just became reality for customers of a UK web hosting company. The Register reported yesterday that VAserv.com was trying to recover 100,000 customer web sites that were wiped out when intruders gained root access to their system, apparently through a zero-day exploit in virtualization management software.
VAServ.com director Rus Foster told the Register that the company’s servers were exploited through a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs. Many of the deleted accounts were on an unmanaged service that didn’t provide backups.
UPDATE: There’s a sad and shocking new twist. The head of HyperVM developer LXLabs has been found dead in a suspected suicide. The Times of India has an article on the death of LX Labs ownerKT Ligesh that suggests the executive may have been troubled about issues unrelated to the VAServ issue. Reuven Cohen shares some memories of Ligesh.
Read more about the VAserv story at The Registerfor more. For additional perspectives on virtualization-related security, see coverage at CNet , Network World and Burton Group.
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Virtualization: The Recession-Proof Project?
April 28th, 2009 : Rich MillerThe difficult economy has many IT managers playing defense, as companies cut costs and scrutinize every project. “All of the conversations in IT have shifted, and now have a financial component,” said Barb Goldworm, president of Focus Consulting. “Budgets are tight, and everyone has to have a business case. So IT has had to once again become conversant in financial metrics like TCO. If it’s not critical to your business, it’s getting put on hold.”
But it’s still possible to get approval for virtualization projects that can transform your IT operations, according to Goldworm, who spoke at last week’s Blade Systems Insight conference in Las Vegas. She said virtualization projects not only pay their way, but offer significant hero points for managers who can execute.
“Virtualization is one of those projects that is not getting back-burnered because it saves dollars,” said Goldworm. “This is the place where IT gets to be the good guys and contribute to the bottom line. This is where IT gets to change its perception in the organization.”
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Roundup: VMware Launches VSphere 4
April 21st, 2009 : Rich MillerVirtualization market leader VMware (VMW) today unveiled VSphere 4, the cloud-focused next-generation of its infrastructure management software. VMWare describes VSphere as “the industry’s first cloud operating system, transforming IT infrastructures into a private cloud — a collection of internal clouds federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service.”
“By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services.” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware.
Here’s a roundup of some of the analysis and commentary about VSphere 4.
- The Register: “The vSphere stack embodies a strategy and product set that VMware used to call the Virtual Data Center Operating System, or VDC-OS. Now, says Bogomil Balkansky, vice president of marketing at VMware, it goes by the name Cloud OS.”
- The Wall Street Journal: “VMware said that for large data centers, the new products will cost from $795 to $3,995 per server, depending on what features the customer wants. As part of the announcement, VMware said it is also selling a small-business product that Mr. Maritz called “always-on, IT in a box,” which permits a small business with just a few servers to create a virtual data center.”
- eWeek: “In short, VMware wants to become the system of choice to run enterprise data centers, and further, to enable these complex systems to reach out and touch others in order to gain business advantages.”
- Network World: “VSphere will let customers create a single computing pool consisting of as many as 32 physical servers and 2,048 processing cores, 1,280 virtual machines (VM), 32TB of RAM, 16 petabytes of storage and 8,000 network ports, according to VMware.”
For further reading, check out VMware’s VSphere resources and Webcasts, which links to lots more information.
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The Challenges of Data Center Virtualization
April 21st, 2009 : Kevin NormandeauVirtualization brings the potential to deliver dramatic savings in terms of server count, footprint, power consumption and cooling requirements for data centers. For all its advantages though, virtualization also brings some unique challenges:
- Overall power consumption will be lower, but highly variable.
- There will be fewer servers, but each one will be more critical than ever.
- Applications can be dynamically reallocated at will, but the support infrastructure cannot do the same.
- The data center footprint will be smaller, but overall efficiency might still be suboptimal.
The good news is that there are practical and affordable ways to address these challenges and improve data center efficiency in the process. This paper from Eaton in the Data Center Knowledge White Paper Library looks at some of the power-related challenges and technologies that can address them.
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