VMworld got off to a strong start yesterday, with the Paul Maritz keynote setting an early tone for the day’s events. I used twitter to add commentary to the keynote and plan to do the same today for Steve Herrod’s morning keynote. Below is a summary of my thoughts/tweets on the day 1 keynote.

• VMware’s clear goal is to provide a complete platform for cloud-based computing. I’m hopeful that VMware will spend more time helping customers build internal clouds, which focuses on their immediate needs. Public clouds, while intriguing, is a future initiative for most Burton Group clients.
• Paul Maritz and VMware talk about vSphere as an enabler for choice; however, “choice” is a subjective word. To VMware, choice means choice of cloud providers. To others, choice means choice of virtualization platforms.
• vSphere is a foundation for internal cloud, but to keep it in perspective, it’s just the foundation at this point. VMware and its partners need to build the walls. Improvements such as tighter integration between DRS, DPM, orchestration, and security zoning (i.e., vShield Zones) need to be made. vSphere APIs need to further evolve to communicate logical and physical zoning restrictions from either vShield Zones or VMsafe-enabled appliances to management and automation tools.
• I was glad to see Maritz bring up context switching and its impact on x86 virtualizaiton. Many virtualization consolidation planning tools miss analyzing applications with high context switching and don’t consider it when determining VM placement. This oversight in planning tools can cause post-deployment performance problems.
• Martiz clearly demonstrated his command of the VMware product suite and partner integration avenues. He’s a very technical CEO and his knowledge resonates well with the VMware user base.
• The IBM demonstration of vSphere integration with hardware-assisted virtualization active power management was impressive. Many of our clients are looking at exploiting the Enhanced Intel SpeedStep and Enhanced AMD PowerNow! hardware technologies to save on power and cooling costs.
• Maritz highlighted the importance of chargeback and service catalogs in cloud computing, and I agree. I discussed the importance of both of these technologies in the blog post “Cloud and the Wal-Martification of IT.”
• vCenter Chargeback is a good first step, but I think it falls short of giving IT the complete picture of available capacity. Awareness of factors such as security zoning restrictions is required before vCenter Chargeback will accurately forecast available capacity across an enterprise ESX infrastructure.
• Paul Maritz discussed the concept of a virtual data center. Burton Group agrees with this, as we’ve had virtual data centers in our hardware infrastructure as a service (HIaaS) reference architecture for several months. You can learn more about it here.
• VMware’s running tally of more than 1,000 service provider partners is impressive, but I would like to see increased guidance for customers on how to build out internal clouds.
• VMware submitted the vCloud API to the DMTF – a first step toward making the vCloud API an industry standard. That being said, VMware’s competitors would need to adopt the API for it to be a true standard. A standard with one implementation isn’t a true standard, but rather is a proprietary technology, but with good marketing.
• I liked the vCloud Express demo, but would also like to see a service interface on the front end. I like the option of provisioning a server, but would also like to see a demo of the vCloud Express showing an interface that makes sense for the application developer or business professional.
• Rod Johnson did a tremendous job with the SpringSource demo. Giving application owners an interface to provision an app locally, or to an internal or external cloud was spot-on. IT service delivery requires IT operations to give application owners and individual business units interfaces that they understand. Hyperic is also a key part of an integrated VMware cloud stack and is a technology VMware shops should begin working with in their labs.

That’s it for day 1. I’ll post analysis of the Steve Herrod keynote next.