The Cultural Impacts

The last post covered cost models and changes needed to adopt virtualization, this post will cover the cultural change aspect of the technology within a company.

As typical with technology, change is constant but always a battle as many people do not embrace it.  Virtualization has been one of the biggest changes in technology in several years.  The reason is that virtualization touches so many different technology disciplines.  This one technology causes change in server, storage, network, data centers, software management, etc.  Therefore, virtualization is a very disruptive technology, but for...

Cost Models and Chargeback's

Continuing from the last post covering data metrics, a solid cost model is needed to sell the program and saves from virtualization. The company needs to see a significant save to offset the investment and disruption from virtualization.

Most corporations have a cost model in place for technology, some purchase hardware and software centrally and charge the businesses via a rate card based model. Other models allow the businesses to purchase the hardware and software and charge centrally for shared services like network, email, etc.

Regardless of the model in place, virtualization cost...

Update: The article below has been temporary removed after that some VMware distributors and the company itself have indicated how some statements are far from reality.
We removed the article to have time to further investigate and correct our mistakes, if any, without spreading false information.

We can confirm now that it’s not true that a VI 3 Standard license plus a-la-carte vMotion and Storage vMotion can’t be moved to a vSphere 4 Standard license while retaining those features.
VMware clarifies this with a footnote at this URL:

In the last two years pretty much every major vendor in the IT industry rushed to develop a rich VDI portfolio and roadmap. Each of them did its best to acquire promising startups, to announce new and highly efficient remote desktop protocols, to sign partnerships with OEMs for the next generation thin client.

From VMware to Citrix, from Sun to Quest, from HP to Verizon.
Even TV vendors like LG want to be part of the VDI game.
Everyone but...

Ten days ago Red Hat announced that its new, much awaited, virtualization offering based on KVM was in beta and that the beta program was oversubscribed.

The reality is that, as far as we know, Red Hat never announced the beta program or the details of its implementation of the Qumranet technology (acquired in September 2008), and never gave the opportunity to sign for it to the general public.
Still today there not a single bit of information about what Red Hat did...

As part of its renovation plan, in October 2008 PHD Virtual (formerly PHD Technologies) acquired the software division of a popular UK consulting firm, Xtravirt.
The company rebranded the Xtravirt tools and offered part of them for free in March, hoping to attract a large number of prospects that could be also interested in its flagship backup product called esXpress.

After a break to release a long overdue new version of esXpress, PHD is back on its plan to distribute for...

Yesterday in a public webinar VMware announced the upcoming release of Studio 2.0, the environment to author OVF packages that the company launched in September 2008.

The new VMware Studio 2.0 is remarkable in terms of new features.

The first most important is that it will support the new generation of virtual appliances (VAs) that VMware calls vApps.
The vApp is a concept that VMware introduced for the first time at VMworld 2008, and it implies a new metadata layer wrapping the virtual...

Citrix is working to raise the interest around its commercial offer called Essentials now that XenServer is free of charge.

As part of the effort the company is releasing a free 6-hours training online course (CEX-100-1W).

The course includes the following topics:

• Introduction to Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5
  XenServer and Essentials overview
  XenServer and Essentials benefits
...


• VMware announces Code Central
  

  

  With the first post in a new corporate blog, VMware unveiled the existence of Code Central, an online facility where its community can upload and exchange scripts for the various VMware SDKs.

  VMware has a special interest in seeing what kind of automation the virtualization professionals want to have now that its vCenter Orchestrator has been released as a free module of vSphere 4.0.

  Orchestrator is powered by the technology that VMware acquired by Dunes Technologies in September 2007.
  The...
  
  

• Release: VMware Fusion 2.0.5
  

  

  While opening the beta program of the next Fusion major release, VMware also keeps updating the current product which now reaches version 2.0.5 (build 173382).

  Fusion 2.0.5 is mainly for bug fixes but it also extends the support to the following host and guest operating systems:

  • Host OSes
    Mac OS X 10.6 codename Snow Leopard (32bit only, experimental)
  • Guest OSes
    Mac OS X 10.5 (on new Intel Xeon 5500...