Almost one month ago, immediately after the VMware Partner Exchange conference, TechTarget published a scoop about some new features that may appear in the upcoming version of vSphere, expected later this year.

The list includes:

• Transparent Memory Compression
  This will avoid swap when RAM is overcommited by compressing a set of target pages to a special region. VMware measured the latency of this technique as a hundred times better than the latency of swapping on rotating disks. ...
  
  
• Addressing network bottleneck in virtual infrastructures with 10Gbit Ethernet
  

  

  The imminent launch of Intel octal-core CPUs (codename Nehalem-EX) and servers with up to 48 cores (powered by AMD codename Magny-cours CPUs) will dramatically increase the virtualization hosts density but will highlight how the network layer is becoming one of the weakest point of high-capacity virtual infrastructures.

  Anandtech just published a very interesting article on this topic, testing the performance of a couple of copper cable 10GBase-CX4 network interface cards against the popular quad-port gigabit NICs we use today in most virtualization hosts.

  The benchmark measured dual-port Intel...
  
  

• Tool: vmClient
  

  The well-know virtualization professional (and blogger) Eric Sloof just released a tool called vmClient.

  vmClient is a minimal management console that appears as an empty window frame.
  It features a menu bar where the virtual machines hosted by any VMware vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi host are listed.
  Each virtual machine in the list can be powered on/off, suspended and restarted. When the user tries to connect to them, the empty vmClient frame gets populated by the VMware MKS console (VNC) session with the guest operating system.

  The guide is divided in five main parts:

  • Determine the Dynamic Data Center Scope
    This part...
    
    
  • Benchmarks: Rock Webserver on vSphere 4.0 on HP DL380 G6
    

    

    While Intel prepares to launch its first octal-core CPU (codename Nehalem-EX) , which will potentially trigger a price increase in vSphere licensing, VMware publishes a new benchmark on current Xeon 5500 servers.

    This time the company focuses on high throughput web performance, running the SPECweb2005 benchmark against a HP ProLiant DL380 G6 machine equipped with two quad-core Intel Xeon X5570 CPUs @ 2.933GHz and 96GB memory.

    The system above, powered by vSphere 4.0, run four virtual machines with 4 vCPUs and 21GB vRAM each, hosting a...
    
    

  • Is VMware about to announce some vCloud news?
    

    

    At the beginning of January virtualization.info published a long overview about the VMware’s approach to cloud computing, covering the vCloud APIs, the vCloud Express implementation and the five partners that are currently offering it.

    One of them, BlueLock, just sent an email to its customers announcing that its vCloud Express offering will (tentatively) move from beta to general availability (GA) on March 25.

    As far as we know none of the other providers is out of beta yet (this article will be updated if necessary). ...
    
    

  • Parallels introduces support for Google Chrome OS in Desktop 5
    

    

    With an unexpected move, at the end of last week Parallels announced support for the upcoming Google operating system, Chrome OS, in its Desktop 5 for Mac.

    While it’s entirely expected that consumers use desktop virtualization platforms to test new operating systems, it’s pretty uncommon to see a vendor that officially supports a beta product that is not widely deployed like Windows.

    Considering the long beta cycles that Google products have (sometimes years), the effort to support multiple beta builds will be remarkable for Parallels.

    ...
    
    
  • Neocleus signs an OEM agreement with BigFix
    

    

    Neocleus is a US startup that entered the virtualization market in May 2008 without much fanfare  (see virtualization.info coverage).
    At that time, their Xen-based client hypervisor, Trusted Edge, was pitched as a secure endpoint platform that could be enriched by 3rd parties applications.

    Two years after that, Neocleus still doesn’t get any significant traction despite many customers are well aware of (and very interested on) the client hypervisor concept because of its potential to deliver VDI in offline mode.
    One...
    
    

  • VMware buys back $400M in Class A shares
    

    

    Last week Reuters and other news outlets reported that the VMware’s board approved a plan to buy back $400M in Class A shares.

    The operation will happen over the months, through the end of 2011.

    EMC said it has no intention to modify its ownership of the subsidiary, keeping it at around 80%.

    In another note, the VMware’s CFO, Mark Peek, sold 15,000 shares at an average price of $46.72 a share in mid-February.