Alessandro Perilli over at Virtualization.info authored an interesting blog post before the start of VMworld 2008, including some speculation on his part that the next-generation of VMware's ESX hypervisor -- ESX 4.0 -- may possibly be announced at the show.
VMware did reveal some information about new ESX features during VMware CTO Dr. Steve Herrod's keynote on Wednesday morning, including some of the features that Perilli speculated would be in the next revision of ESX.
Here's a partial excerpt from Perilli's post listing some of the expected features in ESX 4.0:
64-bit kernel and console operating system (COS)
clustered VirtualCenter Servers
ESX hosts profile management
cross-hosts virtual networking
8-way virtual SMP
virtual machines fault tolerance across multiple hosts
You can see the rest of the speculated list of features here.
While VMware didn't officially announce ESX 4.0, what does the new VDC-OS product roadmap mean for the ESX branding strategy? I'm sure ESX 4.0 and VDC-OS will be a hot topic of discussion at the Virtualization Congress next month in London. - posted by
Jeff James
Being a late arrival, the day 2 keynote was my first impressions of the conference as a whole. And all I can say is - this thing is huge. At 14,000 plus attendees VMWorld 2008 is way bigger than this year's TechEd, even bigger than the old TechEds of the past. That familiar sea of moving bodies missing from the past TechEds is all right here.
The conference also exudes an air of newness, excitement, and immediacy. While the keynotes have focused on VMware's future vision, the majority of sessions have been focused on learning about VMware's current technology. The practical focus of the sessions makes them a great learning tool. Here the attendee take away is clearly linked with VMware’s current technology.
Today's keynote by Steve Herrod focused on several of VMware's new technologies. Steve gave an overview of the concept behind VMware's new Virtual Data Center OS and then turned to cover some of VMware latest VMware technologies consisting of:
vCompute vStorage vNetworking vClient
A couple of the key take aways for me included the announcement that VMware will be delivering a Linux version of the Virtual Infrastructure Client (which was greeting by a round of spontaneous applause). There was also a demonstration of VMware's new Fault Tolerance technology. VMware Fault Tolerance takes up where the VMware HA product leaves off. VMware's Fault Tolerant makes a shadow copy of a VM and keeps it in sync with the original VM using a technology called vLockStep. If the primary VM fails the shadow VM can assume its functions with the same instruction boundary that the original VM was executing. There was also a very cool demo of no touch vApp application deployment on the new vClient platform. vClient makes VDI possible by pushing VMs to a client hypervisor. The client hypervisor is like ESX server for your desktop or laptop system. If an application change is made to the linked clone master the client hypervisor prompts the user to shutdown while the delta change is streamed to the client. In the demo Google's Chrome was added to 25 desktops and a managed laptop in just a few seconds.
From an attendee standpoint I can't remember seeing more iPhones at any one place… There's definitely some kind of link going on here! - posted by
Michael Otey
Despite the fact that VMworld 2008 is an event organized by VMware (and parent company EMC), Microsoft has a presence here, albeit a subdued one. It's easy to see why Microsoft passed on a more significant show presence: With Hyper-V now available and Microsoft's own Get Virtual Now marketing campaign underway, it makes sense to focus on their own virtualization initiatives.
Michael Otey and I met with Mike Neil, General Manager of Virtualization Strategy at Microsoft, to talk about Microsoft's latest virtualization products and to see what Microsoft thought of VMware's recent product announcements. While VMworld 2008 is a show primarily about VMware and its partners, Neil stressed that the majority of people that run VMware products are Microsoft customers, so Microsoft's involvement at VMworld was a reflection of that fact. Neil also mentioned that the launch of Hyper-V and the Get Virtual Now campaign were promoting Microsoft's growing portfolio of virtualization products, so there wasn't a pressing customer need for a larger Microsoft presence at VMworld.
Neil also introduced us to Microsoft customer Dominic Foster, an IT Professional from MaximumASP, a Web hosting company. Foster said that he switched his company's IT platform to Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V, and is also using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM2008) to help him manage and deploy servers. Foster liked how easily Hyper-V integrated with other Microsoft products, including Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Microsoft Exchange. "Using Virtual Server we were getting a 3 to 1 server consolidation ratio on lightly-loaded servers, and 8 to 1 on loaded servers," says Foster. "With Hyper-V we're getting a 4 to 1 ratio on lightly-loaded machines, and a 10 to 1 ratio on heavily loaded servers."
As pleased as Foster was with his adoption of Hyper-V, he did mention several areas of improvement that he hoped Microsoft would address in the near future, including live migration (a feature slated for inclusion in Windows Server 2008 R2) and physical to virtual (P2V) automation. Foster mentioned PlateSpin as a vendor that has developed a product (PowerConvert) that provides P2V migration automation functionality.
VMware and Microsoft have traded shots over their respective approaches to hypervisor design in the past, and we asked Neil for his updated perspective on the debate. VMware claims that their hypervisor design -- with key drivers located inside the hypervisor -- is a superior approach, while Microsoft contends that keeping drivers in the parent partition is a more acceptable solution. VMware claims that having drivers outside the hypervisor leads to security and performance issues, but Neil disputes that assessment. "It's a bit of a facetious argument," says Neil. "We have customers that are already running their mission critical apps on those drivers, so we have confidence in our approach."
One interesting meeting Jeff James and I has this afternoon was with Milton Bumpus President of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The DMTF has developed a number of management standards including Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM). Their newly released Open Virtualization Format (OVF) enables standard packaging and deployment of virtual appliances. OVF offers customers independence from the virtualization platform and provides easy deployment of virtual applications. With OVF virtual machine images along with a digitally signed manifest are packaged together in a .ova file. The manifest describes any required hardware platform and the virtual machine image is compressed for efficient distribution. The OVF virtual application can be deployed to Microsoft, VMware, and other virtualization platforms that support the OVF standard.
VMware's upcoming client hypervisor will be a key component of VMware’s future vClient technology. Like ESX Server, the client hypervisor is a bare metal implementation that runs directly on the system hardware. Unlike ESX Server, the upcoming client hypervisor will run on desktop and laptop systems. It will also provide support for important desktop capabilities like 3D graphics, audio, and USB 1.0 and 2.0 support. The client hypervisor is expected to be available sometime in 2009.
This morning at VMworld 2008, VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz used his keynote address to discuss the history of VMware and outline VMware's future product roadmap, including VDC-OS, vCloud, and vClient. VMware expects more than 14,000 attendees and 200 sponsors and exhibitors to attend VMworld 2008, a significant increase over VMworld 2007.
Maritz began his keynote by discussing the history of VMware, noting that 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of the company. Maritz described the three principal approaches to business IT over the years: centralized, or server-based computing; traditional desktop, or client-side computing; and an integration of of both approaches into what Maritz described as the best of both worlds. Maritz stressed that VMware has segment-leading products in both client virtualization (VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion) and server virtualization (ESX Server), which prepares the company well for the future of virtualization. "We're looking at big, fundamental changes in business IT," said Maritz. "The industry is fundamentally moving away from a device-centric model into one that is application, information, and user-centric."
Key to VMware's future strategy is what the company calls its Virtual Data Center OS, or VDC-OS. Maritz said that VDC-OS will allows IT organizations to combine hardware resources (such as servers, network, and storage) into a common pool, or an "on-premise cloud." VDC-OS has three main components, including:
Infrastructure vServices: Allows aggregation of hardware resources into a unified pool. Resources can then be allocated to applications on an as-needed basis.
Application vServices: Provides for consistent security and scalability to applications regardless of what OS or architecture they're running on.
Cloud vServices: Federates capacity between on-site and external cloud resources. According to VMware, a traditional OS is optimized for a single server. VDC-OS is designed for an entire data center, and supports "the full diversity of any application written to any OS, from legacy Windows applications to modern distributed applications that run in mixed operating system environments."
VMworld 2008: Paul Maritz Keynote Slideshow
Maritz also touched upon VMware's new desktop virtualization strategy, focused on the vClient Initiative that is "aimed at delivering universal clients...that follow users to any end point while providing a rich personalized experienced that is secure, cost effective and easy for IT to manage." The first phase of that initiative will be part of the newly-announced VMware View
product family. Maritz stressed that improving the client experience was a priority for the company, and mentioned that improved 3D hardware support and an extension of client virtualization technology to non-PC format factors -- such as mobile phones and PDAs--was also in the works.
The final piece of VMware's new product vision is vCloud, a new initiative design to provide tools, technologies, and guidelines to streamline cloud computing efforts and enable on-premise and off-premise clouds to work together more easily. “Until now, businesses have faced too high a hurdle to realize the benefits of cloud computing, including wholesale disruptive infrastructure and application changes,” Maritz said in a statement released before his keynote. "The VMware vCloud Initiative brings together industry innovators to deliver enterprise-class cloud computing for any customer and any application."
For the latest news from VMworld 2008, visit the Windows IT ProVMworld 2008 blog.
In a world where comic book-inspired films like The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Spider-Man routinely break box office records, it should be no surprise that comic books and graphic novels have surged in popularity.
The marketing team at VMware must be similarly enthralled by comic book fare, as every bit of marketing material in evidence -- from the program guide to hall signage -- resembles comic book artwork. (See my blurry camera and digital camera photos for evidence of said artwork, below.)
VMware isn't the only major technology firm to embrace a comic book motif. Remember the excellent Google Chrome online comic book, created with the help of comic guru and Understanding Comics artist/author Scott McCloud? Quite a few people have spoken highly of the Google Chrome comic, and a few people I've bumped into here at VMworld mentioned the same. VMware's marketing collateral looks eerily like McCloud's work, so I hope McCloud is either A) getting a cut of the VMworld attendee registration fees, or B) helped VMware develop the concept in the first place.
But wait--there's more to this that makes the mind spin. Why the similarity between what VMware and Google are up to on the marketing front? If these two industry giants are sharing marketing ideas, what's next? Like Google, VMware is talking about computing in the cloud often these days. And yes, the fact that VMware's "Virtually everything is possible" slogan is enclosed in a cloudy thought bubble isn't lost on most people. (Clever, but perhaps a bit too obvious?)
Regardless of whether VMware is aping Google or attemping to appeal to Generation X (or Y? or maybe Z?) with their colorful VMworld marketing efforts, I never imagined that I'd be talking about virtualization and Scott McCloud in the same sentence. Strange new world, eh?
Windows IT Pro Technical Director Michael Otey and Senior Editor Jeff James will be reporting live from the VMworld 2008 show floor in Las Vegas next week, and we’ve created a new blog to corral all the posting into one location.
We’ll be posting our thoughts about VMworld 2008 several times a day. Look for more posts early next week, followed by regular updates as the show unfolds.
Do you plan on attending VMworld 2008 yourself this year? We'd like to invite you to stop by the Windows IT Pro booth (#359) to get the opportunity to meet our editors. Our marketing team has also told us they'll be giving away a digital camera, an iPod Nano, a Zune media player, and some other goodies to show attendees. See you there!
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Neil also introduced us to Microsoft customer Dominic Foster, an IT Professional from 
VMware and Microsoft have 
But wait--there's more to this that makes the mind spin. Why the similarity between what VMware and Google are up to on the marketing front? If these two industry giants are sharing marketing ideas, what's next? Like Google, VMware is talking about computing in the cloud often these days. And yes, the fact that VMware's "Virtually everything is possible" slogan is enclosed in a cloudy thought bubble isn't lost on most people. (Clever, but perhaps a bit too obvious?)
Regardless of whether VMware is aping Google or attemping to appeal to Generation X (or Y? or maybe Z?) with their colorful VMworld marketing efforts, I never imagined that I'd be talking about virtualization and Scott McCloud in the same sentence. Strange new world, eh?
