For those of us interested in virtualization, we now have a new definition of white paper, to say the least. It appears the Dan’s pre-VMWorld 2006 blog was good enough to qualify and package as a white paper. Not only did Mike Neil reject VMWare’s claims today, but there have been many questions in the press about the motivation of the white paper. At best, it’s been mixed reviews for the white paper.
Yesterday, TechWorld wrote:
VMware's complaints come across as self-serving however. The company's grown organically by developing software products that people want to buy, not by whinging about how its competitors are doing stuff that limits its market. That's capitalism. And you can expect Microsoft to be as aggressive as it can -- while, one hopes, remaining within the law -- and to use all the weapons it has available. So to complain when it does it smacks of disingenuousness. What did VMware expect when it started prodding the grizzly bear -- one that's know for its voraciousness -- all those years ago? That it would turn over and go to sleep? Just what are customers supposed to make of it? Will it help with buying decisions? It might even delay them, as potential buyers reconsider whether the advent of Microsoft might open up the shortlist.
VMware's complaints come across as self-serving however. The company's grown organically by developing software products that people want to buy, not by whinging about how its competitors are doing stuff that limits its market.
That's capitalism. And you can expect Microsoft to be as aggressive as it can -- while, one hopes, remaining within the law -- and to use all the weapons it has available.
So to complain when it does it smacks of disingenuousness. What did VMware expect when it started prodding the grizzly bear -- one that's know for its voraciousness -- all those years ago? That it would turn over and go to sleep?
Just what are customers supposed to make of it? Will it help with buying decisions? It might even delay them, as potential buyers reconsider whether the advent of Microsoft might open up the shortlist.
Today’s Computerworld article quoted a Windows customer:
Bruce McMillan, manager of emerging technologies at Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Marietta, Ga., is using Windows servers in a VMware virtualized environment. McMillan has read the white paper posted by VMware and said he thinks it "is there as a means to help educate people about what's going on." But he said he hasn't run into the issues outlined in the document. And just because Solvay is using virtualization technology, McMillan added, "it doesn't mean we're going to buy less [Windows] licenses."
Bruce McMillan, manager of emerging technologies at Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Marietta, Ga., is using Windows servers in a VMware virtualized environment. McMillan has read the white paper posted by VMware and said he thinks it "is there as a means to help educate people about what's going on."
But he said he hasn't run into the issues outlined in the document. And just because Solvay is using virtualization technology, McMillan added, "it doesn't mean we're going to buy less [Windows] licenses."
Many of the points cited in the white paper are industry-wide issues, much bigger than this apparent turf battle. Is VMWare out to change the entire software industry's practices? Or perhaps it’s nervousness over an upcoming IPO?
Computerworld also hit on some of these industry-wide issues a few months back:
a few of Dattilo’s vendors, such as Hyperion Solutions Corp. and Business Objects SA, have begun supporting virtual machines since he started working with the technology. As for the others, Dattilo says that most software vendors’ support organizations will still work with his staff on problems, but he hasn’t had any so far. Nordin says the fact that some software vendors still don’t support applications on virtual servers is evidence that the market still isn’t fully mature. “Those types of issues have been long resolved in the MVS, VM and Unix space,” he says, adding that server virtualization products “need to get going.” With Red Hat, SUSE and Microsoft embedding hypervisors into the Linux and Windows operating systems, however, application vendors will have little choice but to support it, analysts say. Software vendors aren’t the only ones who’ve been slow to support their products running in virtual servers. Jon Elsasser, CIO at The Timken Co. in Canton, Ohio, says IT staff resistance to deploying homegrown applications on virtual machines has stopped some projects. “Some internal application-support personnel are a bit leery of it,” Elsasser says, but he expects attitudes to change over time.
The resulting press coverage from the virtualization licensing announcement acknowledges that virtualization software challenges all current licensing and support agreements - not just Microsoft’s, but all commercial software vendors. It’s interesting to look back at some of those industry quotes and customer comments, and then contrast them to VMware’s points.
Another interesting aspect has been the comments from attorneys and those who study the law. While VMWare isn’t going here, it’s interesting that reporters have already gone down this road. Today’s Computerworld article also quotes a law school professor:
VMware would have to demonstrate that Microsoft's actions are having a significant impact on competition, increasing costs and lowering quality, Gavil added. "They would have a lot to prove," he said.
Gavil’s comment brings to mind the recent InternetNews headline, “Gartner: Server Growth Up 8.9 Percent in 2006”. And Professor Gavil seems to suggest that it’s reasonable to consider industry figures to determine competition. Such as a recent Forrester report showed server virtualization software is growing at a dramatic rate compared to the server market itself.
The research firm surveyed about 1,770 enterprise and smaller companies and found that use of server virtualization grew from 29% in 2005 to 40% in 2006
Queue the voice over to Leonard Nemoy in "In Search Of..." It was always one of my favorite shows.
Patrick
[Feb. 28 update: InfoWorld goes so far as to call the white paper FUD]
Hi, Mike Neil here. It’s been a while since I've posted. To update you, I now oversee the development teams, plans and strategy for our virtualization software - both the desktop and server. In this role, I’m really fortunate in that I get to meet with a broad range of customers and partners. I value these meetings because the discussions and input helps validate my thinking and our planning, and other times it challenges some of my thinking and our planning.
Along those lines, a couple weeks ago I had a conversation with a reporter from the NY Times. The reporter’s questions challenged the rationale behind some of our thinking and decisions relative to virtualization. So in many ways it was like the customer and partner meetings I attend on a weekly basis. But unlike these meetings, a reporter wields the power of the pen. And it goes without saying that a NY Times reporter carries a big pen.
I know some of our customers and partners, after reading the Times' article, may wonder about our goals and strategy with respect to virtualization. I shared much of this with the reporter, but invariably the reporter couldn’t print all my comments. But it’s important for customers to understand our broader goals and strategy, and then from there some of the more specific issues. So I wanted to share my thoughts on this.
My team's ultimate goal here is the help customers’ IT systems become more self-managing and dynamic. We know that customer effort to deploy and configure IT systems often means change is too costly and too slow for IT to keep pace with the changing business needs. Virtualization software is just one technology – which is just one piece of the formula - that helps customers gain more control of their IT systems, and enable business to respond faster and stay ahead of the competition.
The people I work with are making broad investments to offer customers a set of virtualization products to become more dynamic. These investments span multiple disciplines and range from the desktop to the datacenter. These investments – in the areas of the platform, management, applications, interoperability and licensing -- fuel our virtualization strategy. I’ll touch on each now.
Platform: resource management has always been part of operating systems, be it mainframe, UNIX and more recently x86-based operating systems. Today, vendors such as Sun, Novell and Red Hat incorporate virtualization into their x86 operating systems. Even a few weeks back we saw KVM added to the Linux kernel. Our desire is to bring hypervisor-based virtualization to Windows Server – and a wider range of customers - with Windows Server "Longhorn." We’re adding some innovative functions to Windows Server virtualization (aka, Viridian), like live migration, support for up to eight virtual processors, and hot add of resources such as disk, networking, memory and CPU, so customers have more flexible and dynamic deployment options for all their workloads.
Management: we want to make Windows the most manageable virtualization platform by enabling customers to manage both physical and virtual environments using the same tools, knowledge and skills. No other virtualization platform provider is delivering this. Today customers can use MOM and the management pack for Virtual Server. We’re extending the virtual infrastructure management capabilities with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which will allow customers to increase physical server utilization, centralize management of virtual machine infrastructure and quickly provision new virtual machines. And it’s fully integrated with the System Center product family so customers can leverage existing skill sets.
Applications: Application virtualization provides a finer grained solution compared to virtual machines, and it’s really more suited for the enterprise desktop environments. It’s really about making application deployment more cost-effective via centralized management. SoftGrid allows customers to more easily deploy and update applications.
But there’s a greater significance here. When SoftGrid is combined with its streaming delivery mechanism, customers can turn any Windows program into a dynamic service that follows users wherever they go. Integration into the Microsoft management infrastructure means that these application services can be administered using policy-based management with existing tools. And in my mind’s eye, I see a time when application virtualization will allow customers to easily move to an on-demand computing / services model for the hundreds of thousands of Windows applications built by partners, customers and Microsoft.
Interop: this area of our strategy has been well documented as of late. Be it the Novell agreement, the XenSource agreement, moving the VHD license under the Open Specification Promise, and certainly running/supporting Linux guest VMs on Virtual Server. But these are just the higher-profile examples. We’ve also done more subtle items to enable and support interoperability. For example, the APIs for Virtual Server 2005 have been available publicly since day 1 on MSDN. And much of the preliminary details on Windows Server virtualization (part of Longhorn) APIs were shared at WinHEC last year, in the included documentation shared with each attendee. And like other Windows APIs, we plan to publish these publicly at beta. We’re doing this because in the end customers with mixed environments expect it all to work together.
Licensing: this was one of the bigger challenges a couple years back – figuring out how to provide customers and partners more cost-effective, flexible and simplified licensing for server virtualization. Similar to licensing software for multi-core servers, virtualization licensing has been, and continues to be, a challenge for the overall software industry due to licensing models based on hardware. As we know, virtualization allows new and more dynamic uses of software that were not possible in a hardware-only model. A couple years back we moved from installation-base licensing to instance-base licensing for server products. Since these updates, the market has grown … as I mentioned in the Times’ article. And just last week, with the release of SQL Server 2005 SP2, we announced expanded virtualization use rights to allow unlimited virtual instances on servers that are fully licensed for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. I’m sure licensing for virtualized environments will continue to evolve for us and the industry.
Along those lines, there’s been much written about the EULA for the home editions of Windows Vista. But what hasn’t been well reported is where we have made advances. The primary use cases here are with business customers and enthusiasts. In Windows Vista Enterprise edition we allow the user to have 4 installs of Windows in VMs and they can install and use Vista Business Edition in a VM. Virtualization is a new technology for consumers, and one that isn’t mature enough yet from a security perspective for broad consumer adoption. But for the enthusiasts and early adopters we do provide Vista Ultimate to be used in a VM. As an example we have researched these issues with current virtualization hardware architectures. One area that is clear is that our security and data protection features can potentially be subverted by a malicious virtualization layer. We’re working with the hardware and software industry to improve the security of virtualization technologies and we will evolve our licensing policies as virtualization becomes more widely used on client systems.
So these are the major parts of our virtualization strategy. It’s a means to an end; the end being help customers’ IT systems become more self-managing and dynamic. Does this mean everything will be virtualized in 5 years? Not likely due to continuing innovation at the hardware and software level, and the fact that no solution applies to everyone. That said, virtualization will become the default setting in the operating system – whether that’s Windows or other OSes in the market. I feel confident that this strategy will provide customers with the most integrated solutions and the most cost-effective platform.
Thanks for reading.
Mike Neil
GM, virtualization strategy
As a number of sites and blogs have reported, last weekend we posted another Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of WindowsServer “Longhorn” to the Microsoft Connect site for our TechBeta participants. The February 2007 CTP is another milestone on the march to Beta 3, which is still on track for the first half of this year, and it includes a number of enhancements to existing server roles and features, plus some UI changes – most notably in the Server Manager tool. MSDN and TechNet subscribers also will be able to get the February 2007 CTP from their Subscriber Downloads site in the next few days.
Just to set expectations correctly, a CTP build represents a snapshot of our development process rather than a full beta, so CTP releases are generally meant only for testing and evaluation. The technical term for this is “tire kicking”. CTPs are a great opportunity for the broader community to see our progress as we integrate new features and functionality, but progress being what it is, we’ll sometimes see new functionality bringing new bugs into the mix. For example, in the February 2007 CTP, there is an issue with Windows SharePoint Services failing to install as a result of a late-breaking change we made to the integrated database engine. Note that this is not an issue with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which has already shipped, and we’ll make sure this bug is fixed by the next CTP.
Likewise, there are some other issues that we already know about (which is why they’re called “known issues”), such as the mysterious disappearance of the Group Policy Management Console and the WDS Transport Deployment role service. Don’t worry – the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew have been assigned to the case and both items will be back in time for Beta 3. Also, there is a bug when installing some roles in Server Manager, where the application crashes before installation is complete. The installation of the role has been successful but the configuration may not have been applied. To fix this, just restart the computer and then reconfigure the installed roles using the appropriate management tools. Again, this will be fixed in Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 3.
Of course, there are lots of positive things to talk about as well, including the fact that Windows Firewall is on by default for new installations; there is now a separate, fully-configurable Application Server role; and we’ve added a bunch of new role services and features including (get ready to cheer) Remote Server Administration Tools (hurray!). These tools allow you to manage the roles and features on another Windows Server “Longhorn” box – up until now, you had to install those roles and features on the local server before you could get the tools to perform remote management. Only a few tools are provided with this build (Active Directory Certificate Services, IIS 7.0, Terminal Services, Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing), but there are more on the way.
Finally, for you Server Core fans out there (and who isn’t?), you’ll be excited to hear that Print Server and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services are now available roles for Server Core installations. And with more roles and features available to add to your Server Core installation, it will be handy to have the new oclist.exe command line utility that keeps track of which roles and features are installed.
This build also marks the appearance of many of the various editions in which we will release Windows Server “Longhorn”. The list of editions shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people, with Windows Server “Longhorn” Standard, Windows Server “Longhorn” Enterprise, and Windows Server “Longhorn” Datacenter, each being available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. One other change where the SKUs are concerned is the availability of a separate Windows Server “Longhorn” for Itanium-based Systems edition. This is different from what we did with Windows Server 2003, where we had separate Itanium versions of the Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs, but as disclosed before, this edition will focus primarily on the Application Server and database workloads.
We expect to release one more CTP before Beta 3 and we hope to have it soon. In the meantime, feel free to post a comment and let us know how we’re doing.
David.
Windows Home Server has reached the Beta 2 milestone! While previous releases have been tested by 1000+ Microsoft employees and some of our hardware and software partners, we are now starting to invite a broader group of external testers to participate in Beta 2.
People interested in participating in Beta 2 can register here so we have their names as we steadily expand the program. We can't guarantee you'll be invited to participate right away (or at all), but if you're interested get yourself registered. Most consumers will ultimately buy Home Server as an integrated hardware/software solution that's very plug and play, e.g. the HP MediaSmart Server. Beta 2 is software only, of course, meaning beta participants will need to install and configure a server operating system. Beta 2 participants will also need a dedicated machine for Home Server - Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM and two or more internal hard drives with at least 300 GB primary system hard drive is recommended - and at least 2 client PCs and a broadband connection.
You can participate in the Beta 2 dialogue on the public Windows Home Server Forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer The Windows Home Server team and other participants will answer questions and provide insights there.
Joel
The hand writing was on the wall, and EMC finally did it.
EMC announced its intention to sell approximately 10% of VMware via an initial public offering (IPO) of newly issued VMware stock. EMC will retain ownership of the remaining shares of VMware, and has no intention of spinning out or otherwise divesting this ownership interest.
As today's eWeek article suggests, EMC shareholders [I'm not one of them] were looking for greater returns. EMC's CEO explains more of the thinking with Fortune.
Here are some of my initial thoughts on this news:
What are your thoughts?
Patrick O'Rourke