Citrix Open Sources Their VHD Implementation February 20, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, XenServer
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Simon Crosby announced that Citrix has open sourced their optimized VHD support. This means that XenServer’s robust VHD implementation is now available to any developer under the BSD license. In case you don’t already know, VHD is the same virtual disk technology Microsoft uses in Hyper-V, and which Microsoft is using even more extensively in future versions of Windows.
In my opinion, this is an excellent move. It addresses the perception of failing to give back to the open source community, and it puts what appears to be a valuable piece of technology into the open source world. Making XenServer’s VHD implementation available for other open source developers to use in their projects puts VHD on the fast track to being the de facto virtual disk standard. Assuming that other virtualization platforms adopt VHD support—and I’m not sure why many of them wouldn’t adopt VHD support, except for VMware—we’ve now removed a huge barrier to interoperability. That’s a good thing.
Not being a lawyer, I’m a bit worried about the compatibility of the BSD license—which is generally regarded as quite generous—and the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, but I’ll leave that for others to hash out.
It will be interesting to see if Citrix also open sources some of their other XenServer-related technologies. Time will tell…
More information can be found here.
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [19.02.09] February 19, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Data Center Management, Storage Virtualization & Storage, desktop virtualization.Tags: Datacore, VMware, Citrix, Vizioncore, Symantec, HP
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Symantec to Release Endpoint Virtualization Suite in Spring (more)
Vizioncore Elevates their Virtualization Monitoring Tool, vFoglight, to a New Level (more)
Citrix puts XenDesktop 3 on every HP Blade PC (more)
DataCore’s Storage Virtualization and Business Continuity Software Solutions are VMware Ready Certified (more)
Cisco Project California [Part III - the release] February 18, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Cisco, EMC, HP, i7, IBM, VMware
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Cisco has been working on entering the servermarket for over the past months with their project California. The final product will probably be released to the public on March 16th in the States, this news surfaced in the shades of rumours about Cisco taking over EMC or VMware (recently Cisco has increased it capital with 4 billion USD through external financing).
Specs of the new blades servers that surface: include Intel Core i7 processors, 192GB Memory, PCI Express connectivity (providing access to Cisco Unified Fabric Architecture with direct communication between the blades and the storage servers. There will be a tight integration with VMware (Cisco owns around 1,6% of VMware at present), but it remains unclear if the VMware solution would be OEMed in the product
More on the following pages [InternetNews]
Virtualization Design Module available February 17, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Data Center Management.add a comment
Lanamark has announced the general availability of the Lanamark Server Virtualization Design Module which integrates into the Lanamark Suite. The module is aimed at helping solution providers in the design and the planning of virtualization solutions across Citrix, Microsoft, Paralles, Virtual Iron and VMware.
Some features:
- advanced optimization capabilities ofr server configuration and workload placement
- determines the number of virtualization software licenses required
- facilitates planning P2V and V2V conversions
- What-if scenarions against side-by-side comprehensive TCO calculations
The module supports servers, blades, storage arrays and HBAs from Brocade, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, Qlogic, Sun and Xiotech. (more)
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [04.02.09] February 4, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, File Virtualization, I/O Virtualization, Memory Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, datacenter, desktop virtualization.Tags: 3D graphics, Citrix, Clustered Systems, fanless cooling system, HDX, McAfee, SaaS, XenDesktop
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McAfee launches internal division which will focus on SaaS, the division has the goal to increase the number of applications which the company will offer as a SaaS concept.
Citrix releases Citrix HDX with XenDesktop 3.0, which enhances multimedia, video, voice, 3D graphics and “adaptive orchestration” that sense the underlying capabilities in the data center (more)
Clustered Systems is developing a fanless cooling system for servers using a cold plate, which contains a tubing system filled with liquid coolant. By removing fans and dedicating more power to processors, the company says its product will support power densities of up to 80 kilowatts per rack (more)
New release of Citrix XenDesktop imminent February 4, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, XenDesktop
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Citrix will shortly release (on February 13th) a new version of Citrix XenDesktop, this new release will incorporate the following additional advantages:
Generic USB device support
Smartcard credential support for CAC
Enhanced multimedia support for Windows Media streams
End user desktop restart
Portable Profile Manager (management of centrally stored profiles, consistent enduser experience
Minimed storage when using single image provisioning with persistent images
Improved scalability of XenServer pools for XenDesktop deployment
In short, XenDesktop will reduce the TCO by 40%, it offers centralized desktop lifecycle management, offers increased business agility and security. Project Indepenced, which will offer to capability to take offline a VM, will not be integrated in this release. Pricing starts from 45 USD for an annual license (runtime: 12 months) or 75 USD for a perpetual license.
Community-articles on the imminent release of XenDesktopo 3.0:
[eweek.com article] - [DABBC.com article]
Aberdeen reports on advantages of virtualization but keep business-critical applications physical February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Aberdeen
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In a new benchmark research report by Aberdeen Group, “Virtual Vigilance: Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments,” it was revealed that organizations conducting server, desktop, and storage virtualization projects are experiencing 18% reductions in infrastructure cost and 15% savings in utility cost. The report also found that organizations that are trying to improve the performance of business-critical applications in physical environments are more likely to experience performance improvements as compared to their peers that are looking to achieve the same goals — only in virtualized environments (the report can be found here)
“Even though organizations could experience significant cost savings from conducting virtualization projects, these benefits could diminish if they don’t have capabilities in place for effective management of application performance. One of the key challenges for these organizations is that the effective management of application performance in virtualized environments requires a set of capabilities and functionalities that were not required when these organizations were looking to achieve same performance goals in physical environments. Understanding what these capabilities are is making the difference between success and failure of virtualization projects as measured from business prospective,” said Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen.
Green-IT enabling software: virtualization vs. power management solutions February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: green, power management
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Computer Associates commissioned a research on the future of Green-IT and the implications for software management solutions, the full report can be found here.
One of the key findings is actually somewhat suprising. In the US companies look more at using virtualization and consolidation software in order to go green, while in the UK more companies look at server and PC power management software.
When looking at “green-it enabling software” virtualization offers the capabilities for reduced power consumption, increased usage of devices (resulting in less ‘harm to the environment’ in the production-chain) and increased flexibility. When looking at green-it from a power management solution (as the report reports for the UK) it might offer some advantages but the issues remain that only 1/3 of the hardware resources are used, user devices are well-oversized (who needs 12 USB connectors, 7 card-readers and a HD of 500GB in its laptop?) and older devices do not have state of the art PSUs.
Power Management Solutions are more a break-fix solution while virtualization is a more strategic-fix solution as it will offer in the long term much more advantages not only on ‘greenyness’ but also on maangement, compliancy and availability. A recent thin client project has shown, that the investment in thin clients offer a pay-back timeframe of 6 months (under the condition that the backend is alrady available).
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [03.02.09] February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, File Virtualization, I/O Virtualization, Memory Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, datacenter, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, EMC, Gartner, Independence, Lanamark, Memory Virtualization Platform, Microsoft, mRemote, Netapp, Parallels, Remote Desktop, RNA networks, RNAmessenger, Solid State Disk, View Open Client, Visionapp, VMware, Xenocode
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It has been a while since we posted the last ‘virtualization & cloud industry news”, our excuses for this, here are the most important announcements:
Following project Independence of Citrix (a baremetal client hypervisor in collaboration with Intel), VMware released its open source VDI client: VMware View Open Client. VMware hopes to maximize its return by focussing thin client vendors, these thin clients will form an important number of all installed devices according to Gartner. So the battle moves from the server-side to the desktop. (more)
EMC and Microsoft extend their collaboration into 2011 (more)
Following the European Code of Conduct for Data Centers, the Green Grid initiative will be announcing on the 4th plans to develop a new metric for data center productivity and a data center 2.0 design guide.
RNA networks specializing in memory virtualization software (transforming server memory into a shared network resource) announced the launch of its Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) and first product, RNAmessenger, based on the MVP (more)
The partnership between Xsigo and Dell will result in additional I/O ports on PowerEdge servers on the fly without the need for extra network interface cards, providing increased I/O virtualization. (more)
Parallels will preview its new hypervisor which was initailly scheduled for 2006 on its Summit 2009, furthermore its new orchestration product (Virtual Automation) will also be previewed.
Visionapp has released Remote Desktop 2009 with additional support for Citrix ICA, VNC, SSH, Telnet and HTTPS furthermore there are features of mRemote included in the new release (more)
Lanamark specializing in virtualization capacity planning and IT assessment software, the availability of Lanamark Suite 2009, including support for monitoring Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX, supplements server information with power consumption, form factor, age and warranty metrics, and simplifies capacity planning with significant user experience and reporting automation enhancements. (more)
XenoCode has released Virtual Application Studio 2009 building further in the application virtualization market (more)
Texas Memory Systems and NetApp partner on solid state disk
Virtualization Olympics: Vendor bitchslapping event February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: ESX, Hyper-V, XenApp, XenServer
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Following our post on December 19th last year on virtualizing XenApp on XenServer, VMware and Citrix are at it again. VMware recently posted an article on the performance of XenApp on ESX and XenApp on XenServer.
It may not be a suprise that the VMware findings were boldly in favor of ESX and not in favor XenServer. It would be one step to far in this world that vendors confirm that their product might not be a good a fit to virtualize a specific application. Following the VMware post, Simon Crobsy (CTO Citrix) took his pen and opened the virtualizing-olympics with the following statement and challenge:
So I’ve decided to issue an open challenge to VMware CTO Stephen Herrod: Steve, it’s time to rein in the monkeys behind the keyboard, end VMware’s indefensible EULA restrictions and allow independent performance comparisons of your products with others, by third parties with a vested interest in accuracy and independence.
Both posts resulted in a flood of responses of the virtualization-community, but there are some general correct remarks in all these responses from the community:
- Why virtualizing XenApp? It obviously performs better natively (even proven by the VMware tests)
- Benchmarking should be done by independent companies/organization like http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net (2 experience system engineers working with Citrix and VMware)
- Selecting a virtualization platform for your XenApp, if you decide to do so it is not only abou performance, decissions will aslo be influenced by investement in the virtualization layer, automation, management, …
One thing however keeps me wondering … why virtualizing everything? Todays server come (in most cases) with 2x 4 cores, offering 8 cores which enables you to provide XenApp to more than a decent number of users. When adding virtualization to the stack for sure you will lose some performance (wether it is hyper-v, xenserver or esx).
I strongly believe that for those users that haven chosen to work with XenApp as a strategy a minimum number of XenApp servers should be physically, use a virtualized XenApp as escape-mode when something goes wrong. Furthermore keep in mind that when it comes to automation you might require an automatic launch system to rollout new servers in second.
Perhaps both CTOs need to read a report released by Aberdeen today on the advantages of virtualization and what about business critical applications, a quote from a researcher: (full report)
“Even though organizations could experience significant cost savings from conducting virtualization projects, these benefits could diminish if they don’t have capabilities in place for effective management of application performance. One of the key challenges for these organizations is that the effective management of application performance in virtualized environments requires a set of capabilities and functionalities that were not required when these organizations were looking to achieve same performance goals in physical environments. Understanding what these capabilities are is making the difference between success and failure of virtualization projects as measured from business prospective,” said Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen.
