The VMware Express, a data center on wheels that will offer demos of virtualization technology.

VMware is going on the road to showcase its virtualization technology. And it’s bringing all its equipment with it in a rolling mobile data center packed with gear from Cisco Systems, NetApp, Dell Xsigo and parent EMC Corp.The VMware Express is making its debut at this week’s VMware Partner Exchange Event. The Express will be crossing the U.S. and Canada to bring VMware demos to customers, but the exact schedule of apeparances hasn’t yet been worked out.

The road show follows on the example of Sun Microsystems, which put its Blackbox data center container on a truck and stopped outside industry events and customer sites in the U.S. and Europe. The 2007 road trip helped familiarize many data center professionals with containerized data centers, and was good for a few photo ops along the way.

Rather than using a shipping container to house its demonstration equipment, VMware (VMW) has opted for a trailer. The approach is similar to that taken by APC with its InfraStruXure Express, a fully mobile data center in a 53-foot long trailer. The challenges of this form factor: when packed with gear, the trailer is heavy. This also is a challenge for some fully-loaded 40-foot data center containers, an issue cited by HP in its recent decision to offer a lighter, cheaper 20-foot version of its HP POD container.

A view of bey.comthe Intergate.Columbia data center complex built by Sabey Corp. in Wenatchee, Washington.

Sabey Corp. has obtained a Gold LEED certification for the shell and core for Building B of its Intergate.Columbia  complex in Wenatchee, Wash., while tenant VMware has received a Platinum LEED certification for the critical infrastructure for its data center in building B.

Platinum is the highest rating possible under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings overseen by the US Green Building Council, while Gold is the second-highest rating. The VMware data center is one of just seven LEED Platinum data centers.

Building B at Intergate.Columbia is a 188,000 square foot facility supported by 22 megawatts of utility power. Sabey Construction was the general contractor for both VMware’s tenant improvements and for the core and shell.

In its announcement today, Sabey noted that the LEED standard was designed primarily for office buildings, and that data centers with LEED certification often have a high ratio of office to data center floor. VMware’s premises are comprised of just 15 percent office space, with 85 percent dedicated to data center operations.

Construction of the shell, core and critical infrastructure for Building B, from grading to commissioning, was completed in approximately 9 months.   

Sabey’s data centers are located in the Pacific northwest and designed to take full advantage of the area’s natural climate to capture energy savings. “The climate enables evaporative economizer cooling for most of the year,” said John Ford, Director of Technology Real Estate for Sabey. “That alone accounts for 50 to 70 percent energy savings.”

Sabey also incorporates hot aisle encapsulation into its designs to isolate hot and cold air within the facility, as well as an overhead cooling design that drives improved use of space by removing the raised floor.

Seattle-based Sabey recently said that it will expand its data center operations beyond the Pacific northwest through a partnership with National Real Estate Advisors.

VMware to Acquire Zimbra. Virtualization leader VMware announced a definitive agreement to acquire Zimbra, a leading vendor of email and collaboration software, from Yahoo Inc.  With over 55 million mailboxes, Zimbra products offer a full enterprise feature set to small and large environments, with on-premise or hosted service options.  “Over the coming years, we expect more organizations, especially small and medium size businesses, to increasingly buy core IT solutions that deliver cloud-like simplicity in end-user and operational experience,” said Brian Byun, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Services, VMware. Under terms of the agreement Yahoo! can continue to use Zimbra technology in services, but VMware will purchase the technology and intellectual property.  Yahoo acquired Zimbra for $350 million in 2007.  The acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010.  Financial details were not disclosed.

Akamai Implementation for Autotrader.com. Akamai Technologies announced that AutoTrader.com has implemented a number of Akamai services to support the growth of its online business.  Akamai said its Dynamic Site Accelerator and Web Application Accelerator have shown a 2X improvement in performance, enabling the site to load twice as fast as before and data center traffic offload exceeding 80 percent.  Mark Tuttle, Senior Manager of Engineering at AutoTrader.com said “having Akamai in place enables us to provide valuable information to our consumer quickly and reliably, without worrying about whether our infrastructure could scale to cope with the increasing user demands.”

Peak 10 Selected by Volunteers of America. Managed Service provider Peak 10 Inc. announced that it was selected by Volunteers of America of Florida to protect mission-critical data.  The national, non-profit group will use the Peak 10 Tampa campus as a disaster recovery secondary site.  Kathryn Spearman, president and CEO for the group said “while we can take the necessary precautions to protect our mission-critical data in-house, it is never truly protected unless it is replicated and overseen by a trusted partner like Peak 10. We can now focus on our top priority, which is serving our Florida communities.”  Peak 10 recently announced an expansion of its credit facility from $60 million ot $95 million.

Raritan Digital KVM Switch Adds Embedded Encryption. Raritan announced the first digital KVM switch with an embedded Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 certified encryption module.  Meeting both U.S. and Canadian mandates for cryptographic-based security systems the KVM switch will encrypt session traffic consisting of video, keyboard, mouse, virtual media and smart card data.  The FIPS 140-2 module will be embedded in the Raritan Dominion KX II switch.  The Dominion KX II switch offers 256 bit and 128 bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) of keyboard, video, mouse and virtual media data, strong password support, password aging, per-port authorization and built-in authentication capabilities.

• First, some resources from the partnership. Chuck Hollis from EMC points to PrivateCloud.com, the new information hub created by the VCE partners. There’s also several posts on Cisco’s blogs. 
• Mark Bowker from Enterprise Strategy Group wonders whether IT will buy into the “shared vision” put forth by Cisco, EMC and VMware. “Vblocks are a great example of a platform that delivers a top to bottom, integrated solution to enable businesses to hit the ground running, but it remains to be seen if IT will consume infrastructure in this manner,” he writes. “IT is accustomed to procuring a bunch of individual pieces and bolting them together (sometimes with super glue and duct tape).”  
• The Cisco Subnet at Network World sees storms ahead. “The danger is that VMware may have wounded its relationships with HP, IBM and several other partners. Cisco already did that earlier this year when it rolled out UCS. If anything, the coalition has created even more division between data center compute, storage, networking – and now virtualization – vendors. Tensions mount with each partnership as groups of vendors mill around nervously, trash talking and brandishing their hardware and software.”
• Scott Lowe raises a number of questions about the alliance. Among them: “Does this new coalition signal a move away from the ‘arms-length’ relationship between EMC and VMware, a move that some (competitors, notably) have been talking about for some time? If so, what danger does that put VMware in with regards to storage relationships?”

• Indeed, the announcement seems to have prompted quite a bit of discussion on storage blogs. Marc Farley at StorageRap sees potential culture conflicts ahead. “There is a lot of risk with vBlock for both EMC and Cisco,” he writes. “Certainly, its an opportunity for Cisco and EMC to expand their markets, but sharing is hard for companies with voracious appetites and flattening revenue streams.”
• Martin Glassborow at StorageBod mentions the competitive landscape with VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V. “Iit’s worrying when Microsoft could hold up their hypervisor as an example of infrastructure neutrality and whisper ever so quietly but insistently, ‘How neutral is VMware, think of the risk of being locked into their hardware and software…they are no more open than us!’”
• Virtualization.info also sees partner issues. “VMware is taking a lot of risks with this move,” writes Alessandro Perilli. “HP alone sells 36% of all virtualized servers. And it has EDS. Dell just acquired Perot Systems, which is one of the biggest consulting arms in the world to sell the VMware-centric Dell virtualization portfolio.” 
• EMC’s Chad Sakacs steps up to the questions about VMware’s independence and offers an insider’s view. “EMC understands that we cannot hug VMware too closely,” he writes. “They must be able to partner openly.VMware is, and will continue to be, an independent company, that makes it’s own independent decisions, and openly partners with those that partner with them. ”
• At GigaOm, Stacey Higginbotham takes a broader view of the impact on cloud computing. “Today’s announcement divides compute clouds into those built on commodity gear and those that aren’t, as well as showcases the split between how folks plan to deliver private clouds for enterprise customers,” Stacey writes. “The choices made at both the hardware level and when a company is determining how private it wants to be will affect the economics of cloud computing profoundly.” 

An example Vblock infrastructure package will offer Cisco Unified Computing servers and MDS switches (in the two left-hand cabinets) and EMC Symmetrix-VMax hardware (at right).

Seeking to leverage the collective strength of their partner ecosystems to forge a leadership position in enterprise cloud computing,  Cisco, EMC and VMware are bundling their hardware and software in a turn-key solution for enterprise customers.

The three companies today outlined their shared vision for a Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) powered by an “infrastructure package” called Vblock. They also unveiled Acadia, a long-rumored joint venture to provide implementation services for private clouds built using Vblock.         

Vblock brings together Cisco’s Unified Computing System, EMC’s Symmetrix V-Max storage and VMware’s VSphere platform in three packages that allow customers to run anywhere from 300 to 6,000 virtual servers. Vblock includes a security framework from RSA, which is owned by EMC.   

Build, Operate and Transfer
Acadia offers a “build, operate, and transfer” roadmap for companies who want to implement Vblock while working closely with vendors and hosting partners. Intel will be an investor in Acadia, which will begin customer operations in early 2010.

Contrary to some early rumors, Acadia will not offer a hosted solution based on Unified Computing technology.

“Acadia does not aim to be in the hosting business, but rather to help IT organizations to accelerate their journey to pervasive virtualization and private cloud computing while reducing their operating expenses,” Cisco said in a statement.

“The systems built will be based on Vblock, and will either reside in the customer’s data center, or could reside with the customer’s SI (system integrator) or hosting partner,” the statement continued. “Acadia’s goal is to work with SIs and service providers to complement their services. After building, Acadia will operate the system for a year or two, but not long term, then when the customer is ready, will transfer operations to the customer, SI, or service provider.”

Hosts, Integrators Express Support 
Several leading players in the manged hosting and IT infrastructure field have worked closely with Csco and VMware, and welcomed today’s announcement.

“We believe the pre-integrated Vblock integrated packages from VMware, Cisco and EMC will accelerate the market for cloud to new and existing enterprise customers,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer for Savvis (SVVS), which has been an early adopter of Cisco’s Unified Computing.

Another provider expressing enthusiasm was Terremark (TMRK), which recently sold a 5 percent stake to VMware. “The new business model being forged by this venture
provides a simplified solution that will help to streamline the procurement of cloud infrastructure for our current and prospective customers,” said Marvin Wheeler, chief strategy officer for Terremark.

• VMware Opens Washington Data Center.  Virtualization giant VMware announced Tuesday the opening of a new green IT data center in East Wenatchee, Washington.  VMware expects to save $5 million per year due to $4 million in energy savings and $1 million in location consolidation costs.  A LEED platinum certification from the Green Building Council is pending.  Green technologies employed at the Washington data center include Hydroelectric power, an economizer strategy to take advantage of free air cooling, containment methodology and virtualization technology (of course).  VMware is targeting a PUE of between 1.2 and 1.5. “By utilizing a non-proprietary datacenter design, the facility is one that virtually any enterprise or government agency can build,” said CIO Mark Egan. “And we are committed to using the lessons learned in the design and development of our datacenter to help our customers achieve similar benefits.”  Last May VMware bought a 5% stake in Terremark, who was featured in the keynote by VMware CEO Paul Maritz at VMWorld 2009.
• Equinix Develops Carrier-Neutral Ethernet Exchange.  At the ITU Telecom World 2009 conference in Geneva Equinix announced a global carrier-neutral Ethernet services platform, aimed at creating new and expanded Ethernet serivce opportunities for carriers.  Equinix has partnered with Alcatel-Lucent in this venture.  “Equinix’s new carrier neutral Ethernet exchange program is a natural extension of its existing IP interconnect offerings and gives a competitive edge to customers already interconnecting in Equinix POPs/carrier hotel locations,” said Alcatel-Lucent President Basil Alwan. The Equinix solution is designed to automate the process of interconnection agreements between carriers and enable them to seamlessly interconnect with multiple Ethernet carriers that have complimentary footprints through a centralized switching fabric.  Alcatel-Lucent recently had their next generation optical transport solution deployed by First Communicaitons, an integrated telecommunications carrier based in the Midwest.  The solution was a part of a DWDM high capacity, low latency network from Chicago to New Jersey.
• Limelight introduces next-generation global network. On Monday Limelight Networks introduced XD, the next generation of the company’s global network Platform.  Along with XD,  Limelight (LLNW) announced three new services that take advantage of Adaptive Intelligence to provide advanced levels of control, performance and insight into real-time delivery conditions. ”With XD, we are combining network innovations and advanced software to actively manage each object delivery in real-time on a per-connection basis, ensuring a brilliant user experience across a wide variety of devices, even under extreme and changing network conditions,” said Limelight co-founder and CTO Nathan Raciborski said

• 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.

• Equinix hosting annual Asia Peering Forum. Equinix announced Monday that it is hosting the annual Asia Peering Forum in Bangkok, from August 31st to September 2nd.  The south east Asia market has been growing in popularity and the peering forum offers a place to match network service providers with content providers, looking for interconnection strategies.   A key speaker at the event will be former Equinix senior network engineer Louis Lee.  Lee is the Chairman of the Address Council, The Address Supporting Organization, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ASO) and he will provide an update on the current global policy proposals that relate to IP addresses and AS numbers.
• APC by Schneider Electric joins Microsoft System Center Alliance. APC has joined the Microsoft System Center Alliance to enhance and provide support for critical physical infrastructure monitoring and management through the integration of APC InfraStrucXure Central with System Center Operations Manager 2007.  The integration of the two products will give managers the ability to view and manage physical infrastructure, including power, cooling, physical space and security, as well as a comprehensive view of servers, applications, and clients within the data center.  APC’s Alistair Pim said ”Linking the physical and server environments with the APC Management Pack through Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 allows customers to better understand the impact of physical layer changes on business applications.”

• ReadWriteWeb: “It might seem strange for a company focused on cloud computing and virtualization to buy up one whose core is enterprise application management. But according to a blog post by VMware CTO Steve Herrod, the aim of this acquisition is to provide a comprehensive platform as a service (PaaS), which can be run either in datacenters or external service providers. In other words, VMware wants to place itself alongside platforms such as Force.com or the Google AppEngine, but with a stronger focus on enterprise applications.”
• The New York Times: “‘The role of the traditional operating system is changing,’ said Paul Maritz, the chief executive of VMware, during a conference call to discuss the deal. Mr. Maritz argued that software developers pay less attention to operating systems than they used to and focus instead on software development systems like SpringSource that help them write code. So, VMware wants to capture the attention of more developers and convince them to build in tools tied to its virtualization software. ‘Down the road, this will help transform VMware into being much more than it is today,’ Mr. Maritz said.”
• ComputerWorld: “‘VMware’s been moving beyond the hypervisor,’ said Maritz during a conference call Monday afternoon after the purchase was announced. ‘We want to make virtualization more application-aware … and the internal and external clouds significantly simpler to manage.’”

• The Register: “The acquisition should also help VMware tap an army of open-source programmers already building web and enterprise developers with Spring, plus Apache and Groovy and Grails, for the cloud. By leveraging this developer base, VMware will also hope it remains relevant with those buying virtualization technology and faced with ‘free’ alternatives from Microsoft and open-source.”
• GigaOm: “So now VMware can take SpringSource’s Java tools and community and use that to pitch a platform to both company’s customers, who are likely already comfortable with both SpringSource’s Java platform and VMware for virtualization. For enterprise customers, such a platform-as-a-service offering combines two trusted brand names. Plus, many of them already have built applications using the SpringSource framework, so moving them over to a SpringSource-based platform in the cloud may be an easier step.”
• Elastic Vapor: “My read is: #1 Hyperic is about to get shut down. It’s an unneeded asset for VMware, and #2, SpringSource becomes a focus point in VMware’s cloud strategy, a strategy that sees itself becoming the key point of interchange when deploying to the cloud, be it an infrastructure focused offering or platform offering. VMware wants to be in the middle and now they will be. (Cloud Interoperability is now more important then ever).”

“VMware has worked closely with Terremark for years, and during that time it has distinguished itself as a leader in delivering VMware virtualization, security, and business continuity to customers of all sizes and in all industries,” said Dan Chu, Vice President of Emerging Products and Markets. “This investment in Terremark underscores the importance of this partnership and our belief in their ability to leverage our technologies as part of the VMware vCloud initiative to develop reliable and scalable cloud computing solutions.”

“VMware is the recognized leader in virtualization and a driving force behind the evolution of cloud computing,” said Manuel D. Medina, Terremark’s Chairman and CEO. “VMware’s powerful technology is a key component of our suite of virtualized offerings, including our Enterprise Cloud platform. This investment in Terremark is an indication of the confidence VMware has in our Company and we are proud to have such a strong show of support from this long-term, strategic partner.”

Terremark also released earnings after the bell. We’ll listen in on the conference call and update with more details later.

“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.