Well, just finished up with the opening keynote by Paul Maritz at VMworld 2009. They had a similar theme to VMworld Europe 2009 from last February. Lots of Hello and Goodbye phrases. My favorites: Goodbye Commodore 64, Goodbye Dial-up, Hello Kitty, Hello Microsoft (okay, I made the last one up but a lot of the phrases seemed the results of a meeting in a conference room for keywords). :)
Still, for me, the keynote was only fair. The primary reason for this is that a good portion of the keynote were slides and concepts that were introduced at VMworld Europe 2009 and that VMworld has been talking about since. There really wasn’t anything new or significant shown during Paul’s keynote. Maybe they are tying to save things for tomorrow’s keynote. Also, the whole presentation didn’t seem as energized as the keynotes at VMworld Europe 2009 and VMworld 2008. Maybe it was the early start, as I was still trying to wake up half-way through.
Paul laid out the virtualization journey, which progress from levels of virtualization and the savings that you derive from it. It’s a good concept, very similar to our Dynamic Datacenter message that we’ve been talking about for while.
In the first key focus area of the keynote, VMware is being positioning as a Virtual Datacenter Operating System, a virtualization platform, with all the APIs and links to provide access to the virtual machines. Paul also said that vSphere took 2 years to create, more man-years invested than any Windows OS release he oversaw when he was at Microsoft.
This brings up an interesting issue with VMware marketing. When presenting concepts of integration, power, and services, they are big and powerful, an operating system. When we talk about security and patching, they are super small, not an operating system. You really can’t have both and at some point, they are going to have to decide which VMware they, the strong platform for the future of Virtualization and Cloud or the small, dedicated software, without significant features or footprint.
The other major focus area was expanding the capability of vCenter beyond just VMware, providing insight into the physical hardware with integration with things like IBM and HP, and the insight into applications with SpringSource.
I think the thing to remember is Microsoft already does all of this and more. With Operations manager, we integrate with physical hardware, power monitoring, and other insight to provide that Physical and Virtual management, all from one console. From within Operations Manager now, you can integrate that critical in-guest knowledge that VMware is just starting to talk about.
Most importantly, VMware hasn’t tied any of that information with a Live Migration capability, which we can do with the Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) feature of VMM. You can link all the parameters, physical hardware, OS installation, application and service level, that Operations Manager can monitor with actions that lead to Live Migrations and Optimizations. That’s rebalancing VMs and hosts based on Applications and Service loads, which is really what you need to do. Performing optimizations based on VM load only is not a dynamic datacenter.
That’s all on the keynote. I’ll be heading to several sessions today so look out for blog and tweets on those sessions. Don’t forget, follow me on twitter (@edwinyuen) for a chance to win a ZuneHD!
So we’ve just wrapped up day 2 at VMworld. I certainly have to say that day 2 went much better than day 1. I met so many great people down on the show floor. Since I’ve been to the last four VMworlds (US and Europe), I’m not surprised that so many at the show don’t know that much about Microsoft Virtualization. It’s great to just talk with people, no demos, no slides, just techies talking shop so to speak.
I was able to attend two sessions today. First, I went to EA3605 - Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications. Overall, the session was okay. It might have been expected but the session was a lot more about VMware features than really how to virtualize Tier 1 apps, or what are key issues, concerns, or even best practices on how to virtualize Tier 1 apps. It was much more of a product promo than an informational discussion.
Still, there were some interesting facts posted in the session. One slide showed that 73% of customers are using x86 virtualization for critical apps. That wasn’t that surprising. What was surprising was a later slide, showing specific applications and what percentage of customers were virtualizing those applications in production. The numbers surprised me. While some apps (SQL Server for example) were above 50%, many were below that, some well below. Those applications included (Exchange, DB2, and SAP). Is that what people are seeing in their deployments?
Another interesting note in that sessions was how virtualization was helping the application lifecycle, speeding deployment. To me, deployment is the easy part of the application lifecycle. Application deployment is one area that has a lot of technology. It’s the monitoring, updates, and retirement of applications that is difficult. That’s where systems management and even application virtualization can really play a part. I know I keep harping on it but without in-guest knowledge of the application, how can you say you manage the entire application lifecycle?
The other session I went to was VM3103 - How VMware Reduces Cost per Application and OpEx Costs. I was hoping to hear some details on the testing methodology of the Taneja paper, one I’ve written about before, or possible new results. Unfortunately, I got a lot of slides with graphs with little details, of which half the time they were covered by a big text box saying how much the ratios are.
Sure I can see how the methodology might works but there are some weird assumptions:
If you want more details on the study, you can read this whitepaper on the whole subject.
I’ll write more in the morning, especially about some of the neat technologies I saw on the expo hall. Don’t forget to keep following my tweets (@edwinyuen) for information about the show and a chance to win a ZuneHD! If you are at the show, stop by both and say hi. See everyone tomorrow.
Day 3 is my last day at VMworld 2009. This day went really well but somehow, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed when compared to previous VMworlds, but more on that later.
First, there was Stephen Herrod’s keynote today. Certainly, Stephen is a great speaker and it was interesting than the previous keynote. Still, it had the same issues as Paul’s keynote, which is that much of the content was shown before or not really new. They talked about PCoIP, with the Teradici protocol in software (at least they actually showed the software this time). However, much of what they showed in relation to desktops, View, and employee-owned IT has been done by Citrix before, some of it years ago. It might be cast as new, with a new name or term, but the basic concepts and end user results are already there with Citrix and even with the new Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Then we saw the big mobile demo. There was a tweet a couple days back, hinting at a big deal between VMware and a phone company. Didn’t happen. It was very disappointing. They showed a Visa app, running on Android, on top of Windows CE. Cool concept but showing Android running on a old, Windows CE build is not that neat. Where was Windows Mobile 6, Blackberry, or iPhone? Sure they support ARM but what about next gen chips like the nVidia Tegra or Qualcomm SnapDragon? Also, what was up with that phone. At first, I thought it was a toy. It was the size of a netbook. If you have a full size tablet stylus for a “phone” demo, something isn’t right.
Next, there was a big discussion of how long VMware has had VMotion (6 years), all these stats, how mature it is (we get the message, you’ve had it while). I think the big question is why, after 6 years, is VMotion still tied to HW only. They showed off “future” integrated with Disk IO. We can do all that and more, with the PRO feature of VMM. At MMS 2009, we showed physical hardware failures and CPU power usage driving Live Migrations. With our inbox and partner solutions, we can do Live Migrations based on HBA congestion, application parameters, and even service level monitoring.
That’s the key to really using Live Migration/VMotion. VMware can talk all day about app level insight and what they will have in the future. We’ve been doing that for longer than VMware has had VMotion and we’ve already linked it to Live Migration, something they aren’t even talking about.
I did go to the open Q&A with Paul Maritz and company. Someone asked the question about the restrictions on Microsoft and Citrix. Tod Nielsen responded that while it was perceived that VMworld was an industry event, it really never was. He said it really is a show about VMware and they can set the rules of what people can see. It was a really fair, reasonable response. I just wished they would have cleared up that “mis-perception” months back, so everyone was on the same page.
This all relates to my final point, which was really my first point, on being a little disappointed in the show. This is my first VMworld as an attendee. I was always a speaker. Going to actual sessions, I really never actually saw a demo. Most of my sessions were people reading Powerpoint slides to me. I even had one session where the demo was a very long video and the speaker just narrated the video. Often, when an important point came up, the speaker would say “I don’t want to go into details” and I wanted to scream “Please, I want more details”. There was just too much sales pitch, not enough actual technical information. I know this wasn’t all sessions but it was for me.
And this leads to my biggest disappointment. In the past, when we were sponsors, Microsoft would get a session to present the Microsoft story. it’s always been VERY well attended. What was really great about it was most of the audience were not familiar with Microsoft Virtualization and they got a great starter on our products. We could then follow-up one on one to answer questions. This year, we had to the first level conversation in the booth only. Then, you add on that there are comparison sessions without equivalent sessions from the competitors. All in all, I really think it really makes it hard for customers to really learn about everyone’s products and how they compare for themselves.
My question to everyone is did you miss not having a Microsoft or Citrix session? Would having a session help you learn more about Microsoft Virtualization? If we can’t do a session at VMworld 2010, where would you want to see a session on Microsoft Virtualization? A Microsoft show? A Citrix show? A new, independent show?
Let me know by comments here and by my twitter (@edwinyuen). I also want to thank all the hundreds of new followers on twitter. I appreciate your time and good luck on winning the ZuneHD. I wish I could win it myself. Have a great show and keep following me on this Blog and Twitter. I promise to keep it informative even after VMworld.
First off, I wanted to apologize for the lack of postings to my blog. I’ve been a little under the weather of late. Still, I saw this article and thought that it brought up some important points about virtualization and small and medium businesses (SMBs).
While the article headline is a little over the top, the actual post and the reference document it links to brings up important themes. This line in the article sums things up well.
In fact, if there’s such a thing as “over-virtualization,” an SMB server room is where you’re most likely to find it. Schultz says that in some cases, SMBs may actually be virtualizing to an unhealthy degree. These smaller businesses sometimes find themselves “going on a craze of trying to over-consolidate, and trying to over-optimize, to the (detriment) of performance.”
Again, it all goes back to understanding why businesses should virtualize and how much virtualization they need. I’ve said it again and again, that too much focus is on implementing virtualization and not enough on planning virtualization.
Does this mean that SMBs should not virtualize? Absolutely not. I think that SMBs may benefit the most from virtualization. The difference is to actually plan and use virtualization to benefit you, not have you benefit virtualization and virtualization vendors.
For those who use IBM hardware, there is some great news today. IBM has released the Microsoft Assessment Planning Tool for IBM, which is based on the existing Microsoft Assessment Planning Tool. This tools provides specific guidance on how to consolidate and virtualize workloads on IBM System x and BladeCenter servers. If you use IBM systems, you should check this out. You can get the tool from
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/docdisplay?lndocid=SYST-MANAGE&brandind=5000016
Note, this page is full of IBM resources for Microsoft Systems Management Solutions, including IBM PRO packs for Virtual Machine Manager.
I saw another article from Brian Madden site’s (which I saw via Twitter) which asks the question that many VDI adopters forget, which is Who controls the new virtual desktops? Is it the Server team or the Desktop team? Traditional IT has been very easy to delineate in terms of responsibility, usually by function or hardware. VDI (and virtualization in general) really blurs those lines of responsibility. A Brianmadden.com user quoted in the post sums up the issue pretty well
"Desktop people don't own the server hardware. The one BIG issue in my mind that no one talks about…is that the desktop IT guys have very little control and leverage over the infrastructure that runs their desktops when it comes to VDI. With VDI, the desktop IT team simply owns and controls the content inside the VM - the VM itself and everything under it is locked away from the desktop IT team."
The issue is more complex than just adjusting responsibility of IT groups. Virtualization is clearly creating new configurations and situations that have to be dealt with. This issue really isn’t going away, as we integrated storage & networks, desktops & clouds. I think the most important thing to remember is that we need to leverage virtualization to make IT better. It’s a key technology but it’s just a technology. It’s not a business process or model. We should virtualize to make IT more efficient, not just virtualizing for the sake of virtualizing.
Don’t forget. Virtualization works for the benefit of IT. IT doesn’t work for the benefit of Virtualization.
For more news, follow me on twitter @edwinyuen