Hyper-V 3: A Windows Server 2003 Remix?
Posted by Chris in Microsoft, Server Virtualization, VMware on September 20th, 2011
Remember the days of Windows NT Server? I was among the many who mocked it as a serious data center server operating system. Then came Windows 2000 Server, and perceptions began to change. With the release of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft turned the tide of server OS dominance in the data center, placing Microsoft on a path to where the majority of servers would run a Windows OS. What initially seemed like a pipe dream became reality, and I was among many who were wrong about Microsoft’s chances as a dominant server OS vendor.
That takes us to last week’s (Read more...)
VMworld 2011: If Amazon is the Benchmark…
In a recent Gartner field search study, two early internal IaaS cloud adopters noted that if Amazon was the benchmark by which they are measured in terms of cost, then they had to make tough decisions regarding best-of-breed vs. good enough. In particular, the two clients cited whether deploying a third party virtual switch (i.e., Cisco Nexus 1000V) was absolutely necessary, especially if the cost made the internal cloud less competitive with Amazon. These organizations weren’t doing apple-to-oranges comparisons either. They came up with a per-VM cost broken down by both infrastructure and management/operations software. The cost of operational software (Read more...)
VMworld 2011: Dancing on Citrix’s Doorstep?
Posted by Chris in Citrix, Client Virtualization, VMware, vmworld on September 6th, 2011
VMware recorded a pretty humorous video that was unveiled at this week’s VMworld North America conference. A few minutes into the music video, VMware folks are literally shown dancing on Citrix’s doorstep (outside the Citrix office in Santa Clara). While this could be taken as a simple competitive prank, multiple conversations I’ve had with VMware’s end user computing team led me to believe that the dance was more of a metaphor for VMware’s confidence in their product portfolio. At the Gartner Catalyst North America 2011 conference, VMware announced that View 5.0’s PCoIP protocol enhancements would reduce bandwidth by up to (Read more...)
VM/Cloud Mobility Town Hall at Catalyst
Posted by Chris in Cloud, Virtualization, cat11 on July 20th, 2011
Kyle Hilgendorf and I will be hosting a Twitter Town Hall at next week’s Gartner Catalyst Conference. Attendees at the conference will be able to participate in the open Q&A and white boarding session. In addition, we’re looking for folks to submit questions via Twitter as well. The topic is a good one – we’re talking about VM and cloud mobility. We spent a lot of time this year with early internal/private cloud adopters and learned a lot about problems end user organizations have with mobility. We’ll be sharing those finding not only in our Catalyst sessions, but in (Read more...)
Catalyst 2011 User-Centric Computing Track Speaker Line-up
Posted by Chris in Citrix, Client Virtualization, VMware, Virtualization, quest on May 10th, 2011
The speaker line-up for Catalyst 2011’s user-centric computing track has been finalized and I wanted to take a moment to share it with you. A prominent CTO has called Catalyst “the most intellectual conference in all of IT,” and if you haven’t attended Catalyst before, there are plenty of great reasons to get there this year. We have extensive coverage of server- and client-virtualization, cloud computing,and many other hot topics. The rundown of sessions in the user-centric computing track is listed below. I hope to see you there!
Application Delivery in a People-Centric World
Chris Wolf
A common theme has (Read more...)
Is VMware a Provider or Enabler?
Posted by Chris in Cloud, Server Virtualization, VMware on April 12th, 2011
Today VMware announced the launch of Cloud Foundry – a cloud service that makes it easy for developers to get started with VMware’s Open Platform-as-a-Service (Open PaaS) offerings. VMware CTO Steve Herrod offered good insight into VMware’s plans for Cloud Foundry in this post. In case you missed it, last week Steve Herrod blogged about VMware taking over operations for EMC’s Mozy cloud-based data protection service.
So in the past week, VMware has quietly announced that it will host two cloud service offerings. I say “quietly” because there were no press releases or the usual fanfare. VMware has long (Read more...)
Windows 7 Update Breaks VMware View Client: An Important Lesson In BYOD
Posted by Chris in Client Virtualization, VMware on February 10th, 2011
Many customers I talk to are interested in supporting a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) delivery model. A thought frequently echoed by customers is that allowing users to access their applications on their terms improves mobility and leads to greater productivity. In addition, when personal devices become little more than a tool to access IT applications centrally stored in the data center or in the cloud (e.g., SaaS), we also realize the following benefits:
- Security: Data is physically secured within the data center instead of locally stored on a client endpoint device
- Business continuity: Users are no longer tethered to a single (Read more...)
Hybrid Cloud Mobility: Converting the VM is the Easy Part
Posted by Chris in Cloud, Server Virtualization, VMware, amazon on December 21st, 2010
This week Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been in the news for offering a tool that imports VMware VMs to the Amazon cloud. You can read the announcement on the AWS blog here.
While this is a good and important step for Amazon, the announcement reminded me of a conversation I frequently have with clients – when it comes to mobility, converting the VM is the least of your worries.
In some use cases such as training, the underlying hypervisor may not matter. However, for most production roles hypervisor parity remains important today. For starters, consider test and development. (Read more...)
Oracle Broadens x86 Virtualization Support, but Work Remains
Posted by Chris in Citrix, Cloud, Microsoft, Oracle, Server Virtualization, VMware, Virtualization, amazon on November 10th, 2010
Today EMC’s Chad Sakac blogged about a significant update to Oracle’s support policy for VMware ESX environments – Oracle no longer explicitly excludes Oracle RAC from being virtualized. It should also be noted that Oracle’s support is limited to “issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware.” In other words, if it’s not a known bug, customers may be asked to reproduce problems on the bare metal.
Like Chad, this is an issue I have blogged about repeatedly over the last couple of (Read more...)
PCoIP vs. ICA/HDX: A Simple Experiment
Posted by Chris in Citrix, Client Virtualization, VMware, vmworld on October 21st, 2010
Last week I traveled through various parts of Europe, while stopping for two days in Copenhagen for VMworld Europe. With eight days of travel, I thought it would be a good opportunity to test the feasibility of working from a server-hosted virtual desktop while traveling abroad. I run both Citrix XenDesktop 4.0 SP1 and VMware View 4.5 in my office lab in New Jersey. Accessing virtual desktops over the local area network using my Wyse Zero clients offers nothing short of an outstanding experience. I connect to my XenDesktop systems using the Wyse Xenith and connect to View using the (Read more...)
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