TechEd EMEA Day 2

Hello again from Berlin.  As many of you probably saw on TV (or in the streets), it was an amazing celebration for the fall of the Berlin Wall.  As for TechEd, day 2 has been amazing.  I think that the thing everyone I’ve spoken to at the show is how friendly everyone is at the show.  TechEd EMEA has always been one more of most community friendly shows and this years show really feels like friends and colleagues getting together, not just a show where you see others who might use the same technology. 

I think the decision to move the show to Berlin really worked out.  The weather is a little cold for most people (though not me, growing up in Minnesota) but everyone has been very positive and it makes the show not just enjoyable but really fun (and I’m sure the beer availability helps out too :) ).

Today, I had my session with Jeff Woolsey of Hyper-V, doing Hyper-V R2 and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 overview.  It was a packed crowd, with literally every seat in the room taken.  Like I do for most of my session, Jeff and I asked the crowd, before we started, how many people run VMware and how many people run Hyper-V.  The number of hands raised were very close, almost identical.  This is a dramatic difference from two years ago, especially from my first TechEd EMEA where literally everyone used VMware and I could count the number of Hyper-V users on my finger (out of an audience of 400+).  It really made my proud of the work everyone at Microsoft Virtualization has done over the last three years.

For those who are at the show and want to learn more about Virtual Machine Manager, I’ll be doing an Interactive Session on Thursday, 1330 in Interactive Theater 4 – Green.  I’ll be doing more demos from my demo rack and going into details on advanced VMM features.

I’ll write my wrap-up of TechEd EMEA on Thursday.  Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show. 

Also, we are still running two promotions now, one for TechEd attendees and one that is open for everyone.  The TechEd attendee contest is our twitter promotion for our resident SMB Expert, David Mills.  Just sign up to follow David (@dmills_ms) and all new followers are entered to win a Archos 5 Media Player.  We’ve already given two players away and there are still two more players to give away.  For more information, see the details here and here

The other promotion is our blogging contest.  Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic.  Not part of the System Center Influencers program?  Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join.  More details for this contest here.

That’s all from Berlin today!  I hope to actually get to see more of the city before I leave and I look forward to talking to everyone at the show.

Greetings from Berlin

Hello again.  Right now, I’m in Berlin for TechEd EMEA 2009, which is really exciting as Monday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It was also Day 1 of TechEd EMEA.  Despite a down economy, it’s a sold out show with over 7,000 people.  If you want to follow the show, you can do so virtually at the TechEd EMEA website.

Today, I did some interesting press interviews and spent most of the rest of the day talking to other attendees.  If you are actually at the show, come check out my session, SVR205, on Tuesday at 1330.  Jeff Woolsey and I will be covering Hyper-V and VMM overview.  Plus, I would love to get a chance to meet some people.

The keynote for the show was in the afternoon and it had two killer demos.  The first, was an incredible demo of Exchange 2010, which hit General Availability today and is ready for download.  Even though I’ve been on EX2010 and Outlook 2010 for a while, I learned several things from the keynote.  Plus, I can’t stop raving about the new Ignore thread features, which once and for all gets rid of the “Please don’t reply all or please remove me from this thread” e-mail threads we get this time of year.  The other demo was a great System Center demo by Jeff Wettlaufer, which really seamlessly brought together what the suite of System Center applications can do.

On the downside, yes, I didn’t really get the IT dream videos either.  And yes, there probably should have been more developer content.  Still, overall, I think the keynote (especially the demos) set a good tone for the show.

A couple more things from Berlin.  First, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen), as I’ll be actively tweeting from the show.  Second, we have another twitter contest.  This time, if you are a TechEd EMEA 2009 attendee, all you have to do is start following my close friend David Mills (@dmills_ms).  We will be giving away an Archos 5 PMP each day, winners coming from all of David’s new followers.  You can get more details on the contest here and here.  Finally, we have a new blogging contest with System Center.  Through our System Center Influencers program, we will be awarding $100 Visa gift cards each month for the next 6 months, to the best blogs related to that month’s topic.  Not part of the System Center Influencers program?  Just send e-mail to SCNETSUP@microsoft.com to join.  More details for this contest here.

That’s all from today!  I’ll write more tomorrow and if you are in Berlin, make sure to stop me if you see me for a chat!!

FPWEB.net Case Study

I’m back with another great case study.  This time, it’s Fpweb.net, a Sharepoint hosting provider.  Fpweb.net switched from VMware ESX to Microsoft Virtualization, resulting in so many benefits by using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager that I can’t list them all.

But I do want to highlight some of the cost savings and competitive advantages Fpweb.net has gained:

- Saved $100,800 in licensing costs over the VMware solution

- By virtualizing 115 servers, it avoided an increase in data center rental costs of $180,000 a year

- FPweb.net provisions virtual machines 60% faster—which is key to getting new customers up and running quickly

Without a doubt, it’s probably best to hear it directly from the customer:

“There’s no question that consolidating servers and making more efficient use of resources is a win-win situation. Hyper-V gets us there more cost effectively than any other virtualization technology.”

“Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is primed for large-scale data centers like ours. The Datacenter license includes unlimited virtualization rights. Compared to VMware, which requires a license for each virtualized operating system, we are able to scale our virtualization solution at no extra cost.”

“In hosting, the biggest obstacle to customer service is time: customers want us to stand up their solutions and perform migrations, upgrades, and other services right away. Using Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to automate server management, we gain time in the data center to hit the ground running and wow customers from the outset.”

Like I’ve written before, we have a great repository of case studies covering all the different Microsoft Virtualization technologies, not just Hyper-V.  If you are interested in Virtualization, I strongly suggest you take a look.

Microsoft Site Recovery Solution Launch

Hi, I’m Jim Schwartz, Director of Virtualization Solutions at Microsoft and I’m writing as a guest on Edwin’s blog today. 

Despite tough times, an Enterprise Strategy Group study shows that 31% of businesses surveyed said DR will be their main driver for Virtualization in 2009. This shows a continued shift as IT Pros who look beyond test/dev and basic server consolidation scenarios in deploying virtualization technologies.

Having a plan to deal with worst case scenarios like disasters and widespread system outages presents technical and business challenges--application and data availability need to be maintained; however, deployment and operational costs are always an issue. Virtualization has been a game changer for many companies seeking to mitigate impact to critical applications and data. Businesses previously unable to justify end-to-end site recovery are finding solutions now within reach.

This week Microsoft is launching a comprehensive solution to help customers implement cost effective, end-to-end site recovery programs. Built on proven capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 and the System Center management suite, Microsoft is helping IT Professionals leverage Windows Server Hyper-V and Failover Clustering along with tools like Virtual Machine Manager to deliver cost effective site recovery.

The Microsoft Site Recovery Solution ecosystem is ramping with a broad range of storage replication partners like Double-Take Software, EMC, HDS, HP delivering solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft Cluster Resource DLL. With cluster integration IT Professionals can deploy streamlined and operationally effective site recovery.

You can learn more about the Microsoft Site Recovery Solution by joining the Microsoft team and Enterprise Strategy Group on Thursday, November 5th at 10:30am Pacific for a webcast Building Effective and Highly Available Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft Virtualization This webcast looks at key drivers for site recovery solutions and reviews practical deployment considerations (you can view the recorded version of the webcast after the 5th). Microsoft and select partners will also be demonstrating Site Recovery Solutions at TechEd, so if you plan to be in Berlin during the week of November 9th, make sure to stop by the Virtualization Solutions kiosk in the Technical Learning Center.

Jim Schwartz
Director Virtualization Solutions, Microsoft Corporation

System Center Essentials 2010 Beta Preview Video

Just a quick blog post for now.  The TechNet Edge video site just posted a video blog that David Mills and I did, with a preview of the new System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 Beta.  What’s really exciting about SCE 2010 is that in addition to the existing great Small and Medium Business (SMB) systems management capabilities of SCE, SCE 2010 now includes the virtualization management capabilities of Virtual Machine Manager.

That means that SMB customers and can soon buy one product that has software deployment, systems updates, monitoring and virtualization management, all in one tool designed for mid-sized businesses.  For more information on SCE 2010, check out the SCE website.

Posted 30 October 09 07:27 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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Lab Validation Report for Hyper-V

We just published a Lab Validation Report for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which was written by Enterprise Strategy Group.  This report goes over the installation and configuration of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and management of those servers with Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

More importantly, the report reviews the performance of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in comparison with physical systems, so you can compare how applications might run in a virtualized environment.  If you are interested in some Hyper-V performance numbers, download the report.

Virtualization Case Study of Jefferson County Schools

Hello Virt Planet!

When I meet with customers and partners about Microsoft Virtualization, I often get asked about similar companies or case studies.  We have a great resource of case studies on Microsoft Virtualization but I am going to start highlighting some of the new ones, as they come out.

The first one I wanted to highlight is for Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky.  The Jefferson County Public Schools wanted to contain server sprawl and centralize an IT infrastructure that was spread across 155 schools. And like many organizations, they needed to cut costs.

They did look at VMware, but decided to go with Microsoft. Jefferson Country’s implementation used Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (and moving to Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V) and System Center products like Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Operations Manager 2007.

I’ve cited a couple of quotes from the customer that stood out for me and that I think will resonate with many of you:

“The money required for licensing a VMware solution, more than $100,000 for a solution on our scale, could be better used to support district initiatives that improve classroom learning or value-added IT projects, such as building offsite disaster recovery capabilities… With Hyper-V, we have already saved $200,000 in hardware costs, and that’s just by targeting our oldest physical servers.”

“Using Cluster Shared Volumes, we don’t have to pre-allocate a tremendous amount of storage upfront for each one of the virtual machines: instead we can allocate as we go. That’s huge for us because otherwise we would have to pay for and set aside a lot of storage that may not be used for six months or a year.”

Webcasts on Virtualizing SQL and other MS Applications

Just a quick post today (there are more coming I assure you!).  We have a series of webcasts coming up on best practices on virtualizing Microsoft applications.  Check out this blog entry on the list of webcasts

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/10/22/upcoming-webcasts-on-virtualization-best-practices.aspx

On Thursday, the first webcast is on virtualizing SQL Server.  If you want to virtualize SQL Server, this is a can’t miss webcast.

Posted 28 October 09 06:04 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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News: Pricing Comparisons, Red Hat, and More

Hello everyone!

It’s been a little bit of time since I last posted but I promise to post more regularly, as soon as I get back from my vacation in Hawaii :). 

This week, I wanted to cover some new news and some items I tweeted about but didn’t blog.

  • I wrote a new post, Virtualization Reality: Why Microsoft® Virtualization Solutions Deliver Value When Compared to VMware® on my other blog, from the Because It’s Everybody’s Business site.  It covers how the Microsoft cost comparisons are done and a view on the VMware cost calculations.
  • We have just announced that Microsoft and Red Hat have completed certification on each others products.  If you want to run Red Hat on Hyper-V or MS applications on Red Hat KVM, you want to read this post.
  • There is now official documentation for migrating a cluster from Hyper-V to Hyper-V R2.  Hans Vredevoot wrote up a great list of links for migrating Hyper-V clusters.
  • Windows Virtual PC and the associated Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 has been Released to Manufacturing (RTMed).   Ben Armstrong announced this on his blog.
  • I still see a lot of misrepresentations about Hyper-V and whether it’s a bare metal hypervisor.  There is a great post from Netapp on what the misconceptions are and why Hyper-V is really a bare metal hypervisor.

Thanks everyone.  Look out for more posts upcoming and you can always follow me on Twitter (@edwinyuen).

How does VDI impact the responsibilities of Server/Desktop teams?

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

New IBM tools for Microsoft Virtualization

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.

When and how should SMBs Virtualize?

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.

Posted 21 September 09 05:07 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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VMworld Day 3 Recap: End of line for me

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.

Posted 03 September 09 07:31 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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VMworld Day 2 wrap-up

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:

  • Here’s the big one.  The methodology assumes that if you run out of memory for Hyper-V, you buy a whole new server.  Huh?  I would buy more memory.  And please don’t say you can’t add more memory.  Even the test bed used BL460c G6s that support 64GB of RAM.
  • Dual Quad Core 32GB server – $8,000???  Dual Quad Core 16GB - $4,000?  I thought that might include the OS cost but then the actual scenarios charts break out the OS cost separate
  • The methodology also said to include all the management costs.  What about the 3rd party SW costs?  The Microsoft suite includes Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, and Data Protection Manager.  Where are the equivalent costs on the VMware side?  What about OS monitoring?  Application Management?  Most of those charge a per agent, per VM cost. 
  • Where are the details on the test?  The fact that the “real world" SQL servers were 1GB VMs with 512MB SQL loads?
  • Why would you continue to add more SpecJBB VMs to the server, even though SpecJBB throughput was reached?  To prove that you can overload the server?  Okay, maybe, but why then test for overload dropoff in the performance?  That doesn’t tell you VM density.  It just shows that you can keep added VMs for no reason other than to drive performance down, not add it.  Who does that in the production?

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.

Posted 02 September 09 07:13 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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VMworld Day 2 Start – Keynote Thoughts

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!

Posted 01 September 09 06:45 by eyuen | 0 Comments   
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