Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

I'm more of a vocals guy and so badly wanted to play this. You can join Justin's lessons to learn it right from the beginning on his site (which I've added into my favorites). Check out this vid. (Good Job Justin!) Check out Justin's site today! Work on the slower version if you want: Acoustics: Live: Original Vid:

This article walks through several scenarios and yet another attempt to warn users. Why they used the title "VMware: the..." is something I can't comprehend. In many ways this article is repetetive. Oddly enough, then, when we recently asked readers which tech buzzword they most despise, virtualization came in a strong second, just behind SOA. One in four respondents threatened bodily harm to the next salesperson who mentioned it, and 20 percent said they didn't realize expected benefits. Still, virtualization is here to stay, and that's a good thing despite its apparent image problem. Whether you use Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware, Xen or another package, virtualization delivers a raft of benefits, from better use of physical assets to improved management of applications to the ability to divvy up resources across machines in a way that the sum of a virtual assigned resource--such as memory--exceeds actual physical memory. Using virtual machines may reduce phys...

Seriously if you're an admin, you know there is a lot more to performance than an underlying layer. Virtualization is the magic wand = wrong App will live happily ever after = do they now? I have cron/scheduled tasks jobs running What about those Virus scanners? Do they know you're benchmarking your VM? Questions, Questions... Well anyways this article got analysed by Slashdot users as media continues to thrash VMware's product by running outdated products, beta products and in many cases also beta benchmark tools! Original article says: The purpose of this article is to explore the performance impact of virtualization on a web application that uses typical development methodologies. The goal is to give administrators some idea of the performance impact that virtualization will have on their applications as they become loaded - and how it is different from the native servers. For our reference application, we will use the ASP.NET Issue Tracker System, part of the Microsoft ...

These results show that ESX Server not only achieves higher throughput than VMware Server for a single VMmark tile (6 workload VMs) but also exhibits better scalability when a second tile is added. This behavior is a natural consequence of the different virtualization approaches taken by the two products. VMware Server runs on top of a heavyweight, general-purpose host operating system, which manages the hardware resources. Read the article.

It is good to see the Windows Server Division coming out and saying it all. Especially when press starts publishing inaccurate news. Yesterday, IT Pro magazine (UK) posted an article about Longhorn and Windows Server virtualization (codename Viridian), and it contained errors about the timing of Windows Server virtualization and Longhorn. In this case, the reporter wasn't aware of the product milestones we announced at last year's WinHEC, and once shown what we announced last year, he admitted the error of his ways. As you'll recall, at WinHEC (May 2006) we announced the planned RTM timeframe for Windows Server virtualization as "within 180 days of the release to manufacturing of Windows Server Longhorn." The transcript from Bob Muglia's MMS 2007 keynote yesterday will be posted, and he reiterated the RTM timing of Longhorn (2nd half 2007) and Windows Server virtualization. Check it out.

Thats exactly what this guys is talking about. I like the way Brad Shimmin of Current Analysis describes service virtualization: it's a process "where bandwidth emerges from the mist and vanishes just as mysteriously in response to provisioning rules and service-level agreements." He also is watching the growing convergence between SOA and virtualization. He describes the challenge this way: "With so much talk recently about automated biofeedback monitoring and business rules within rules, you might think that an enterprise stands as much of a chance of optimizing its service-oriented architecture applications as it does launching a Saturn V rocket. And you'd be right." Read here.

Interesting development this. Microsoft will include EMC's Smarts network-monitoring technology in future versions of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, software used for end-to-end IT systems monitoring. EMC is also developing network management and root-cause analysis management packs that will be used in existing and future versions of System Center Operations Manager. Read the rest .