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Citrix Synergy Day 2 Keynote

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | No comments

The Citrix Synergy Day 2 keynote starts about 8:40 AM with Pat Gelsinger of Intel, a figure becoming increasingly visible at events such as this conference. He starts his talk with a review of IDC statistics on the pressures and forces that are shaping IT, which is much a review of what John Gantz said yesterday.

At least the keynote is a bit more technology focused than yesterday’s keynote.

Gelsinger shares that Intel’s vision is 100% virtualized, and Intel’s engineers and technologists are driven toward eliminating all of the overhead involved in virtualization. That lead into a discussion on the Xeon 5500 processor. Gelsinger then moves into an on-stage demo of a Xeon 5500-based server versus an older server to demonstrate the vast performance improvement that the Xeon 5500 CPUs provide.

Next, Gelsinger moves into a discussion of how Intel is addressing client-side concerns. As with servers, Intel’s vision is that every client have some sort of virtualization built-in; this will fulfill what Intel calls the “Dynamic Virtual Client”. This is a lead-in to Intel’s vPro technology. Continuing Intel’s development, they will in 2010 introduce a 32-nm platform that builds upon the technologies found in vPro and enables the Dynamic Virtual Client. What is the Dynamic Virtual Client? It looks surprisingly similar to Citrix’s description of how user profiles, applications, operating systems, and hardware are decoupled. The Dynamic Virtual Client falls in the middle between thin clients and “managed rich clients”. The Dynamic Virtual Client is a set of hardware that enables any form of end-user experience: application streaming environments, client-side virtual environments, OS image streaming environments, or completely server-hosted environments.

Early customer examples of the Dynamic Virtual Client is Providence Health and a large financial firm (Gelsinger would not disclose the identity of the customer, but the picture said “Stock Exchange”). I’m not so sure that these customer “success stories” have as much to do with Intel and Intel technologies as it is based on technologies like application streaming, OS streaming, and the use of VDI and thin clients.

Gelsinger then introduces Ian Pratt, VP of Advanced Products at Xen.org. Pratt and Gelsinger start discussing the Intel and Citrix collaboration on XenClient, the new name for Project Independence (as announced yesterday). Pratt, of course, would like to see Xen slimmed down far enough to be embedded on the motherboard of every system that comes out of the factory. Pratt moves into a demonstration of a client hypervisor, where the hardware is running two virtual machines: a personal desktop and a professional desktop. In the demonstration, Pratt shows off Windows Vista with the full Aero experience running inside a virtual machine. Pratt then switches to the professional desktop, which is completely isolated and separated from the personal desktop.

This is a very different vision of client virtualization than VMware has shared. In what I’ve seen of VMware’s idea of client virtualization, it’s really only about virtualizing a single OS instance—not multiple OS instances. This demonstration—which I assume is a demonstration of XenClient—is, in my opinion, a more powerful, albeit more complex, view of client virtualization.

Naturally, the demonstration wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t also show off some of the other products and technologies announced here, so Pratt shows off Citrix Dazzle.

With regard to security, Gelsinger and Pratt discuss and explain how XenClient leverages Intel Trusted Execution to guarantee the integrity of the hypervisor and the client OS images, and how it uses Intel VT-d to improve performance. Pratt then demos how XenClient can “punch” applications from one VM into another VM to provide greater security and protection. The demo showed Pratt running an application from the professional desktop seamlessly inside the personal desktop—denoted by a green border around the window—and how that application is protected against potential malware running in the personal desktop. The technology looks a great deal like the Kidaro demonstrations that Microsoft provided last year at Tech-Ed 2008.

XenClient will be available before the end of the year.

With that, Gelsinger ends his portion of the keynote, and Mark Templeton takes the stage again.

Then Pratt comes back on the stage to show off how XenClient running on a MacBook Pro, and then shows Microsoft Outlook running in a seamless window under Mac OS X. This is quite similar to Parallels’ Coherence or VMware’s Unity mode, but is clearly quite new to the Citrix virtualization crowd. However, it makes me wonder how Apple feels about Citrix virtualizing Mac OS X with a bare metal Type 1 hypervisor. As far as I know, the Mac OS X EULA only permits the virtualization of Mac OS X Server, not the client version.

Templeton then takes center stage again to discuss data centers and clouds. To be effective in providing SaaS—a form of cloud computing according to Templeton—providers must have flexibility, economics, automation, and pay-as-you-go. Templeton compares the economics of “the cloud” by comparing the costs of resources for organizations such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, and Salesforce.com against those same costs for enterprise organizations. (I’m not so sure this is a valid comparison, but that’s OK.)

Templeton sees data centers evolving in four steps: consolidated data center, dynamic data center, self-service data center, and cloud-extended data center. The industry is currently in the first step of that evolution. To share some of the announcements around the cloud-extended data center, Templeton introduces Wes Wasson, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix.

Wasson jumps right in with some announcements:

  • Citrix is announcing a sister product to the NetScaler MPX, the NetScaler VPX product. The NetScaler VPX is a virtual appliance that runs on standard x86 hardware on top of XenServer. This gives organizations the power of the NetScaler MPX as a virtual appliance. To help drive innovation around the NetScaler VPX, Citrix is offering the opportunity to win $10,000 to show the world what’s innovative and possible with NetScaler VPX.
  • Citrix re-affirms that XenServer 5.5 will continue to be free. The new version adds new guest support, new support for backups, and other key features.
  • Citrix is also announcing Citrix Essentials 5.5 for XenServer or Hyper-V. New features include dynamic workload balancing, which sounds like the equivalent of VMware DRS; expanded storage integration via StorageLink and a new “Citrix Ready Open Storage” program; and automated stage management.

Wasson introduces Peter Blum, who performs a demonstration of the new automated stage management functionality found in Citrix Essentials 5.5. Some of this functionality, if I recall correctly, is OEM from another organization (VMlogix, I think?). Blum starts out with a demonstration of the Lab Manager functionality within Citrix Essentials. One nice piece showed off was integration between Dazzle and Lab Manager to provide greater self-service functionality for end-users.

Wasson moves into a couple of cloud computing announcements:

  • Citrix Cloud Center (C3) was announced last year (I covered it here). This week, Citrix is announcing the addition of NetScaler VPX to Citrix C3 to provide flexibility and multi-tenancy.
  • Citrix is also announcing the addition of virtual switching technology to XenServer. (Citrix is notoriously quiet about this announcement…odd. No details?)
  • Citrix is enabling virutal applications and desktops as a service, and enabling pay-as-you-go functionality in Citrix C3.
  • Citrix and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are announcing a partnership and a Citrix C3 Lab that combines Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Citrix C3, and a series of blueprints that provide deployment guides, configuration notes, architectural overviews, best practices, etc.

Wasson leaves the stage and Templeton returns. Templeton returns to yesterday’s vision: transforming data centers into delivery centers, and delivering desktops and applications as a service.

Templeton shows the videos from the Citrix Innovation award finalists—Emory Healthcare, HDFC, and Tesco. After watching the videos, Templeton announces that the winner of the Citrix Innovation award for 2009 is Emory Healthcare.

At this point, the keynote transitions into a customer panel moderated by John Gallant of Network World. I’m wrapping up coverage of the keynote.

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Citrix Synergy Day 1 Keynote

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 1 comment

In advance of speaking at Virtualization Congress 2009 on Thursday, I’m attending Citrix Synergy. The Internet connection here in the main conference call is unavailable, so I’ll publish this as soon as I have connectivity back to the site.

The keynote starts with Garr Reynolds, an associate professor at Kansai Gaidai in Japan. I’m a bit unsure why he is on-stage getting the keynote started, but it’s a good presentation. After leading the audience through a self-introduction in Japanese, Garr Reynolds launches into a discussion of simplicity, the beginner’s mind, and nakedness (no, not that kind!), all centered around “thinking differently”. He asks a couple of good questions and makes a couple of good points: Is simplicity the same as easy? No, because easy would be doing the same thing. Doing the same thing is easy? What is simplicity? It is not stupid, it is actually quite difficult. Simplicity is not the same as simplistic. Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.

Reynolds now moves on to the second part of his talk: the beginner’s mind. It means losing the fear and taking a risk. That is the basis of the beginner’s mind. We need to lose the fear of being wrong so that we can come up with something original. In Zen thinking, we need to make a decision and let the rest go. In the words of Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

Finally, Reynolds moves on to nakedness. Specifically, “shizen,” or naturalness. It means being open, honest, transparent. After a brief discussion, he moves back to the key themes and wraps them together into a closing idea around using these themes to seek continuous improvement.

John Gantz of IDC now takes the stage. Gantz is the Chief Research Officer for IDC and will be speaking about renaissance and crisis. Gantz believes that the economic crisis holds opportunity for IT to “sharpen its swords” and figure out the best ways to use technology to “do more with less.” As he continues on with his presentation, it’s more of the same. In my opinion, there’s nothing being presented here that hasn’t already been said. We already know that we will have the same or fewer staff to deal with more servers, more mobile users, more data, and more information. That’s nothing new, to be honest.

After a 20 minute coffee break, the MGM/Mirage CTO gets on the stage, sells and pitches the MGM Grand for a bit, and then very briefly discusses MGM/Mirage’s use of Citrix products. He then introduces Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix.

Templeton’s vision is to deliver every desktop and every application, and to turn every data center into a dynamic delivery center. Today’s discussion will focus on users and desktops; tomorrow’s discussion will center on data centers, servers, and clouds. Templeton mentions the Citrix Innovation Award and the finalists: Emory Healthcare, HDFC, and Tesco. Next he shows the video from Tesco that describes how they use Citrix products and solutions. Tesco’s story of virtualizing their data center is impressive, but not terribly innovative in my opinion.

Templeton lays out a discussion on how consumer-oriented computing, coupled with Web 2.0, now has a steeper technology innovation curve than enterprise computing. Templeton challenges the idea of traditional computing and traditional ways of thinking. Why does the enterprise think that the network must be owned and controlled end-to-end? Why do enterprises think that the company must own and control endpoints? According to Templeton, the computing industry is full of dead ideas, and those dead ideas are driving the industry closer to extinction. Much in the same way the mainframe was eclipsed by the personal computer, today’s enterprise computing environment will be eclipsed by consumer computing and “thinking differently” if we don’t change. The fight is between the momentum of consumerization versus the inertia of dead ideas.

Templeton shares some math around complexity; reducing parts can have a very significant impact on the reliability of the overall systems. What if the number of parts in the enterprise could be reduced? The reliability of enterprise systems could be improved.

Next, Templeton explains how he thinks that the DirecTV model—controllers connected to receivers over a delivery network that operates independently of content and endpoints—is the right model for the enterprise network. Controllers in the network work with gateways and repeaters in the delivery network to connect to receivers on various endpoints.

With that, Templeton introduces the video for Emory Healthcare, the next finalist for the Citrix Innovation award.

Now it appears we will get into the real meat of today’s presentation, as Mark Templeton delves into a discussion of IT’s costs in supporting users and endpoints. According to Templeton, you can’t think of buying desktops or installing applications; you have to think differently and think of delivering desktops and delivery applications from a virtualized controller at the head (the data center). The desktop now becomes a set of components that can be isolated and separated. This allows organizations to independently deliver, on demand, user profiles, applications, and desktop operating systems. Clearly, XenApp is a leading component in delivering applications independently of the desktop operating system. He mentions the recent announcement by SAP of using XenApp on XenServer to deliver applications to SAP users. With over 200,000 customers worldwide, Citrix calculates that about 25 million unique applications are being delivered to 100 million users daily.

XenDesktop is another key component of Citrix’s vision of delivering desktops, applications, and user profiles. According to Templeton, XenDesktop delivers the best user experience on the broadest range of devices across the widest selection of delivery networks. Collier County Schools, who presented Templeton with Citrix’s first PO for XenDesktop last year at Synergy, provided an update on where things stand one year later. But why isn’t Citrix talking about more XenDesktop customers? Apparently Citrix has closed, with the help of CSC, a deal for 40,000 users worldwide. Templeton did not, unfortunately, disclose the identity of the customer.

Mark Templeton again refers to the partnership, or project, between Citrix and Intel regarding the developoment of a client hypervisor that would provide a solution for disconnected mobile users. He is, of course, referring to Project Independence. It’s new name is XenClient. (Not unexpectedly, Pat Gelsinger will discuss the Xeon 5500 and XenServer tomorrow.) XenClient is intended to be everywhere, will plug into the rest of the Citrix architecture, and will be free.

Templeton now moves into a discussion about delivery. He seems to knock VMware by saying that virtualizing desktops is not the same as virtualizing servers because “it’s all about the experience.” Citrix HDX technologies is the solution to delivering applications across LAN, wireless LAN, Internet, and 3G networks regardless of the application type. He shows off HDX vs. “the other guys” by showing a series of videos comparing HDX against other delivery protocols. According to Templeton, HDX delivers a high-fidelity experience using only 1/10th of the bandwidth compared to other protocols. With that lead-in about HDX, Templeton shows the video for HDFC Bank, the third candidate for the Citrix Innovation award.

Templeton charges the audience to move away from thinking in traditional fashion to instead think of IT as publishing resources to which users can subscribe. This goes back to the DirecTV model, and it is a natural lead-in for Templeton to discuss Citrix Receiver. Citrix Receiver is described as a universal client for IT service delivery. Citrix Receiver allows IT to advertise services, using existing infrastructure, to which users can subscribe from a full range of endpoints across a variety of delivery networks.

Next up is a demo of Citrix Receiver. Templeton shows off Citrix Receiver running on both Windows Vista as well as Windows 7. In fact, the Windows 7 desktop is actually a remote desktop hosted on XenDesktop in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The demo was actually quite impressive—you probably would not have been able to guess that the desktop was a remotely hosted desktop. “Is it live, or is it HDX?” That’s Templeton’s question about just how well HDX works.

One new component is required on the back-end to help support this infrastructure: Citrix Merchandising Server. This component keeps clients updated, schedules plug-in distribution, advertises new services, centralizes operations, and handles reporting and logging. Merchandising Server is actually a set of virtual machines intended to run on top of XenServer (can you say virtual appliance?).

Citrix Receiver for Windows 1.0 is available today, and is free. Citrix Receiver will be coming to the iPhone, and Templeton provides a demo of Citrix Receiver on an iPod Touch over a Wi-Fi connection. The iPod is connecting to a Citrix head-end hosted on the Amazon EC2 cloud. The iPhone Receiver also offers a feature called Doc Finder, which makes it easier to find and open documents on the iPhone. The next demo actually shows a 3-D animation running on the iPhone. This is pretty impressive.

Demo accounts are available for users to use their iPhones to connect to the EC2 cloud and experience Citrix Receiver for themselves. The Citrix Receiver for the iPhone is available today on the App Store, and it is free. Windows Mobile and Symbian phones will be supported in the future, as well as Android-based phones through a partnership with Open Kernel Labs and the OLK4 Hyper-cell hypervisor.

Templeton next announces Citrix Dazzle, a self-service “app store” for employees and IT resources. It builds upon Citrix Receiver to provice self-service discovery and access to applications that are delivered via Citrix infrastructure. The Citrix tagline for Dazzle is “Putting the personal back into personal computing”. Dazzle puts an iTunes/App Store interface on top of the applications that are being published and delivered by the same head-end services that drive Receiver. It’s an interesting take, but I’m not yet sold on the idea.

Dazzle will be available later in the year, and yes, it will be free.

With that, Templeton closes the keynote—after an astounding four hours—and reminds everyone that tomorrow’s keynote will be focused on servers and the data center.

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Marathon everRun 2G and everRun VM Lockstep

Monday, April 20, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 6 comments

I first wrote about Marathon Technologies and their everRun VM product last September just prior to the start of VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas, NV. Back at the start of 2009 I also mentioned Marathon’s joint development agreement with Microsoft and the intended plan to bring everRun VM to Hyper-V environments.

Today Marathon announced the availability of their everRun VM Lockstep product, which brings full circle the product announcement from last September. This product, which runs only on Citrix XenServer, puts into place the “three levels” of availability that Marathon has often spoke of:

  • Auto-restart high availability (XenServer HA)
  • Component-level fault tolerance
  • Full system-level fault tolerance

With full system-level fault tolerance, Marathon is able to provide organizations with the ability to protect applications with the highest levels of availability, eliminating downtime due to physical server failure. If a physical server fails, the virtual machine continues running on another physical server without any disruption.

The announcement of everRun VM Lockstep gives Marathon and Citrix a slight edge over competitor VMware, whose similar VMware Fault Tolerance offering has been demonstrated and discussed extensively but has not been officially announced. Given that Marathon expects everRun VM Lockstep to be available within 30 days, they may also have an edge over VMware in getting their product to market as well. Marathon everRun VM Lockstep will run on the free version of Citrix XenServer.

At the same time, Marathon is also announcing everRun 2G, the successor to Marathon’s everRun HA and everRun FT products for Windows Server environments. Marathon everRun 2G combines and extends the functionality of the previous generation of products, allowing organizations to provide high availability to any Windows application without modification or scripting. Like everRun VM, everRun 2G will offer “dialable” availability ranging from automated HA to full system-level fault tolerance.

Like everRun VM Lockstep, everRun 2G is expected to be available within the next 30 days.

Visit the Marathon Technologies web site for more information.

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It’s Official: XenServer Available for Free

Monday, February 23, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 7 comments

Although word of this announcement was leaked last week, today Citrix made the announcement official: Citrix XenServer will be available to customers free of charge. Although I was briefed by Citrix on this news the day before word broke, I assured Citrix that I would honor my word and not discuss the news until the embargo expired.

As I understand it, there are actually three parts to the announcement:

  1. XenServer 5 will be available free. According to the information shared with me by Citrix, this won’t be a stripped down version of XenServer, either: this is supposedly the equivalent of XenServer 5 Enterprise Edition, so functionality like live migration, Active Directory integration, and a centralized management console are all included.
  2. Citrix will be unveiling a new product line called Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V. This is a management product that provides automated lab management, dynamic provisioning, StorageLinkTM technology to leverage advanced storage functionality, and advanced high availability (but only when used with XenServer). Citrix Essentials will manage both Hyper-V and XenServer, and is intended to integrate with Microsoft System Center and other high-level management frameworks.
  3. Finally, Citrix is extending their relationship with Microsoft around virtualization. Microsoft will be recommending Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V as the management platform, and Microsoft will be adding support for XenServer in System Center.

In addition to these moves, it is my understanding that Citrix will be more aggressively moving more of their XenServer-related code into the open source community. The first of these moves has already been announced, and I am assured by Simon Crosby that more code is slated to be open sourced in the coming weeks and months.

So what’s my take on this announcement? I’ve already stated that I’m glad to see Citrix giving back to the Xen open source community, from which they’ve benefited so greatly, and I’m looking forward to the continued movement of XenServer-related code into the open source community. The StorageLinkTM stuff looks pretty cool, and if Citrix can actually deliver on it then they’ll be back on par with what’s slated to be in the vStorage APIs from VMware. (Wonder who will deliver first?) Citrix Essentials looks interesting, but it’s really too early to tell just yet. The cross-platform approach is nice, and a welcome acknowledgement of the heterogeneous nature of the data center, but as a new product it will take some time to establish itself in the market.

That leaves only free XenServer. There’s no question that XenServer receives far less attention than Hyper-V, despite the fact that it’s been around far longer than its Microsoft cousin. Now that XenServer is available at no charge, this will open the door of many more customers who may not have previously considered the Citrix product. That will likely increase uptake of the product in the SMB market, but I doubt that it will make a significant impact in the large enterprise market, where VMware’s flagship products still rule. The other effect of the announcement will be on other Xen-based virtualization solutions, like Virtual Iron, who now have to compete with Citrix on a completely different playing field. I would not be surprised to see a number of these smaller players exit the game, either by acquisition or bankruptcy.

The real question here is this: what will VMware do? VMware continues to pour R&D dollars into the development of its hypervisor and surrounding applications, and only makes limited versions of its bare metal product available for free (ESXi). Will this push VMware to make “full” ESXi available for free? Or will VMware continue to believe, as they have in the past, that the hypervisor is still not a commodity, and therefore continue to charge for it? I suspect that their path will be the latter and not the former, and it will be justified by the presence of features like Storage VMotion and VMware FT that have yet to be replicated by any other vendor. While I have my concerns about that approach, only time will tell if my concerns are justified.

UPDATE: The Citrix press release is available here.

UPDATE 2: As shared by David Marshall, it turns out that the automated lab management functionality of Citrix Essentials is being OEM’ed from VMLogix.

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Citrix Open Sources Their VHD Implementation

Thursday, February 19, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 3 comments

One sticking point I’ve had with Citrix since the XenSource acquisition has been the perception of a failure to give back to the open source Xen community. Note that I said perception. It appeared, following the XenSource acquisition, that Citrix was all about using open source Xen as a base but failing to return any of enhancements they made to the code base. No, I don’t have any concrete examples; again, this was the perception.

It appears that Citrix is now taking steps to remedy that perception. In a blog entry posted last night, Simon Crosby announced that Citrix has open sourced their optimized VHD support. This means that XenServer’s robust VHD implementation is now available to any developer under the BSD license. In case you don’t already know, VHD is the same virtual disk technology Microsoft uses in Hyper-V, and which Microsoft is using even more extensively in future versions of Windows.

In my opinion, this is an excellent move. It addresses the perception of failing to give back to the open source community, and it puts what appears to be a valuable piece of technology into the open source world. Making XenServer’s VHD implementation available for other open source developers to use in their projects puts VHD on the fast track to being the de facto virtual disk standard. Assuming that other virtualization platforms adopt VHD support—and I’m not sure why many of them wouldn’t adopt VHD support, except for VMware—we’ve now removed a huge barrier to interoperability. That’s a good thing.

Not being a lawyer, I’m a bit worried about the compatibility of the BSD license—which is generally regarded as quite generous—and the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, but I’ll leave that for others to hash out.

It will be interesting to see if Citrix also open sources some of their other XenServer-related technologies. Time will tell…

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Sanbolic Optimizes Melio FS, Adds Virtualization Support

Friday, January 9, 2009 in Microsoft, Storage, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Back in June, I wrote about Sanbolic and Melio FS as a workaround for the “one-VM-per-LUN” limitation that Hyper-V’s Quick Migration imposes. By running Melio FS on a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V host, users could put multiple VMs in the same LUN and still use Quick Migration. At the same time, Sanbolic was also announcing that they were supporting the use of Melio FS, their clustered file system, inside Windows Server-based VMs running on VMware ESX.

In September, Sanbolic announced that they would be supporting Melio FS in VMs running on Hyper-V. This expanded their clustered file system support so that VMs running on either VMware ESX or Hyper-V could use Melio FS for shared storage access.

Yesterday, Sanbolic added support for running Melio FS in guests on Citrix XenServer, bringing support for their Windows-based clustered file system to VMs on all three major virtualization platforms. In addition, yesterday’s announcement also indicated that Sanbolic was adding support for the Windows Server 2008 R2 beta, and that Melio FS had been optimized for block objects like virtual disk files and databases. The full press release is available here as a PDF file.

Clearly, Sanbolic wants to protect the value of Melio FS as Microsoft prepares to enter the clustered file system market with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV), included in the R2 beta. It’s unclear to me whether CSV is going to be limited to virtualization only, addressing the “one-VM-per-LUN” issue, or whether Microsoft will also support CSV in other applications. By optimizing Melio FS for shared access to objects like virtual disk files and by extending support to run Melio FS in VMs on all the major platforms, Sanbolic hopes to establish Melio FS as a “de facto” standard in Windows-based clustered file systems.

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Marathon to Bring EverRun VM to Hyper-V

Friday, January 9, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Today, Marathon Technologies announced an expanded development and marketing agreement with Microsoft Corporation designed to bring fault tolerance and high availability to a wider audience. As I understand it from talking to the folks at Marathon, the ultimate goal of this new agreement will bear fruit in two key areas:

  1. First, Marathon will expand support for Windows Server 2008 on its existing EverRun VM solution for Citrix XenServer. Today, that product provides support for Windows Server 2003 on XenServer.
  2. Second, EverRun VM will be supported with a future version of Hyper-V, bringing the same fault tolerance and high availability features available today with XenServer to Hyper-V.

Marathon and Citrix made some announcements about EverRun VM and XenServer HA around the timeframe of the XenServer 5 announcement at VMworld. I wrote about that here and again here. Have a look at those articles for more information about how EverRun VM functions today in a Citrix XenServer environment. It is anticipated that EverRun VM on Hyper-V will look and behave in exactly the same fashion as today’s XenServer variant.

What Marathon is ultimately seeking to achieve is feature parity between EverRun VM on XenServer and EverRun VM on Hyper-V, as well as to provide a single management layer for manipulating fault tolerance and high availability regardless of the underlying virtualization layer. At some point, the idea of pairing XenServer and Hyper-V in a fault-tolerant pair might get explored, but that will strictly be driven by just how cozy Citrix and Microsoft become.

The Windows Server 2008 support for EverRun VM on XenServer—this is the ability to use EverRun VM to provide component-level or system-level fault tolerance for Windows Server 2008 guests—is expected in the first half of 2009. No dates were provided for a version of EverRun VM that will work with Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V.

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You’ve Got to be Kidding Me

Monday, December 15, 2008 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 24 comments

Via jtroyer on Twitter, I learned of this post comparing Hyper-V and VMware ESX.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a VMware fan, but as others in the virtualization industry know I also recognize that VMware is not a “one size fits all” solution. There are many places where other virtualization solutions, Hyper-V included, may be a better solution for the customer. It really all depends upon the customer’s needs.

That being said, I do have a few questions for the owner of this particular post:

  • It’s a subtle point, but there is a distinction between “free” and “available at no additional charge”. I take vendors to task for this all the time. Hyper-V isn’t free; it’s available at no additional charge.
  • What in the world is “para metal” virtualization? I’ve heard of bare-metal virtualization (the kind that VMware ESX, Xen, and Hyper-V all perform) and paravirtualization (the kind that VMware ESX and Xen can perform; I don’t think Hyper-V does yet). Is “para metal” virtualization a blend of the two?
  • Identical servers are not required in order to support VMware HA. They are required for VMotion. I would strongly suspect that Hyper-V will have similar requirements or will require hardware support like AMD-V/Intel FlexMigration when it’s live migration feature arrives in 2010.
  • Just because VMware ESX can do memory overcommit doesn’t mean you have to use it. It just gives you the flexibility to use it when you need it.
  • I’m sorry, aren’t Microsoft Windows Server 2008, NTFS, and Windows Failover Clustering every bit as “proprietary” as VMware ESX, VMFS, and VMware HA? Am I missing something here?
  • VMware ESX installs just fine on x64 processors from both AMD and Intel. I have four x64 AMD servers sitting in my lab that are happily running both 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems.
  • Since when the hypervisor layer not containing any drivers—i.e., having your I/O drivers reside in the parent partition—have anything to do with direct hardware access by the guest OS? Unless I’m mistaken, these two items have nothing to do with each other. And the jury is still out as to whether having your I/O drivers in the parent partition, an approach used by both Hyper-V and Xen, is really a better approach.

Did I miss anything?

UPDATE: VMware blogger Jason Boche has also responded. Good points, Jason!

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Where is Bluebear Going with Kodiak?

Friday, November 7, 2008 in Linux, Macintosh, Virtualization by slowe | 61 comments

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I broke the news on Kodiak, but since my first post on Kodiak back in August, Bluebear has seen quite a bit of coverage around the Internet. Fellow virtualization blogger Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks has discussed Kodiak a number of times (here are only a few):

Bluebear’s Kodiak!
Bluebear’s Kodiak, what’s all the fuss about…
Kodiak 0.02 coming out real soon…

That’s not to mention coverage by virtualization.com, Reuters.com, and numerous other bloggers, experts, and analysts.

But where is Bluebear headed with Kodiak? What is their vision? Well, I don’t speak for Bluebear, but I did want to share some insight I’d gathered during a conversation with one of the Kodiak developers. I was curious to know how VMware’s announcements of cross-platform vCenter Server and cross-platform VI Client at VMworld 2008 would affect Kodiak. Perhaps because of VMware’s market leadership, most people see Kodiak as only a cross-platform VI replacement. The truth is, according to my information, Kodiak’s true value lies elsewhere. While it can be viewed as a VI Client replacement, and while it does bring cross-platform functionality to the table, there’s more to it than just that. Thus, cross-platform support by VMware—while sorely needed for quite some time—shouldn’t really impact Kodiak all that much.

So what is the value of Kodiak beyond cross-platform support? Good question! Here’s a couple of points I gathered from of our conversation:

  • Multi-hypervisor management: One stated goal for Kodiak has always been to provide the ability to manage multiple, different hypervisors—not only ESX and ESXi, but also Xen, VirtualBox, etc. This is an area that only Microsoft is dabbling in with SCVMM, which will manage Hyper-V and ESX (via VirtualCenter only). Kodiak can manage ESX directly or via VirtualCenter.
  • Management via visualization: I don’t know if this is what drove Bluebear to use Adobe AIR or if it’s a result of using Adobe AIR, but the idea behind managing virtualization with Kodiak is more through visualization than anything else. Bluebear wants users to be able to respond quickly to potential issues by making it possible to see those potential issues instead of waiting for a notification or an e-mail that something’s wrong.

I’m sure that Bluebear has all sorts of super-secret stuff in the works that will further differentiate their product from VMware’s cross-platform VI Client, even though the two products aren’t intended to directly compete.

And, of course, this doesn’t take into account Bluebear’s hardware side, aka Koala, which doesn’t get nearly the same amount of attention as Kodiak. Personally, I’m kinda hoping that the Koala will end up affordable enough for me to pick one up, as I could surely use it to host various virtual servers at home for media streaming, home automation, etc. But I digress…

Anyway, I think I have a pile of beta invites for Kodiak, so if anyone is interested post a comment here and I’ll see what I can do. Then you can take a look at the product yourself—keeping in mind that it is a very early beta—and see what you think about the future of Kodiak.

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Virtualization Short Take #21

Monday, November 3, 2008 in Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Virtualization Short Take #21 is a collection of press releases, news announcements, and other links that have been collecting in my inbox over the past couple of weeks.

  • CohesiveFT has announced VPN-CubedTM, which is touted as “an encrypted virtual private network (VPN) enabling customer-controlled security inside a single cloud, across multiple clouds, and between clouds and private infrastructure.” The full press release is here. Security within and between clouds is a key challenge that has yet to be addressed by any vendor, so if CohesiveFT’s claims are true then they have something quite useful on their hands.
  • Leostream and eG Innovations have apparently teamed up to give eG Innovations better visibility into the Leostream Connection Broker software. I would direct you to a web site that provides full details about this announcement, but eG Innovations’ news/press release page hasn’t been updated since the middle of September. Oops. (Update: The site has been updated now after being completely unavailable earlier today, 11/5/2008. Apparently eG moved their web site and ran into a few problems making sure the latest content was migrated. Oops again.)
  • vmSight has published a survey about virtualized desktops based on information gathered during VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas. More information about the survey and a link to the actual report itself is available from vmSight’s web site.
  • Research firm Ideas International has prepared a “functional evaluation” of the three major server virtualization platforms on the market—VMware Infrastructure 3, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5.0. The evaluation is available here, but readers must register for a free account in order to actually see the results.

That’s it for now; this time around it’s short and sweet. Feel free to add your comments with any news or links you found useful recently. Thanks!

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