Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Hu talks about it here: I believe the next step is capacity virtualization, or thin provisioning. This year Hitachi introduced the USP V which added Dynamic Provisioning on top of the capability to virtualize external storage. Dynamic Provisioning is the ability to provision physical storage when it is actually used, not when it is allocated. It eliminates the waste of allocated but unused capacity which some estimate to be 60% or more of the average storage allocation. It can also eliminate that waste from all the copies that are usually made for backup cycles, business continuance, data mining, development and test, and data distribution. This type of virtualization also enables a volume’s capacity to be automatically leveled across many spindles of RAID protected disks, which reduces management complexity and distributes the I/O load across many more physical disk arms in order to compensate for limitations of larger and slower disks. See Hu's blog

"Oracle has not certified any Oracle software on VMware virtualized environments," the company said in a statement. Thus, "Oracle support will assist customers running Oracle software on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS without virtualization, or can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running VMware. If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the appropriate solution on the native OS without virtualization. If that solution does not work in the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMware for support." In other words, customers can expect Oracle's help only if they can prove that a bug is totally unrelated to the virtualization platform they are using. Link

Engineering teams from Neterion and VMware have worked closely to mutually optimize support of 10 GbE in ESX, now offering near-line rate 10 Gbps performance at parity with native Linux or Windows operating systems. This was demonstrated at VMworld in San Francisco when Neterion, IBM and VMware jointly ran virtualized machines at 10 GbE speeds comparable to servers running single, non-virtualized applications. Many network intensive tasks, such as VMware's VMotion, require a large network pipe to allow the nearly instantaneous migration of virtualized applications. As the datasets of these applications grow larger, Gigabit Ethernet will not be sufficient. Neterion's 10 GbE adapters remove this network bottleneck, enabling a new class of I/O-intensive applications to be virtualized. "VMware ESX 3.5 is the breakout play for the 10 GbE industry as it is the first major virtualization OS to support 10 GbE," noted Dave Zabrowski, president & CEO of Neterion. "Nete...

I didn't get an invite but I'm sure you are out there watching it. Check out the Agenda! and Brochure here .

Four new packages are now available to help smaller companies manage virtualized environments that have up to 30 Terabytes of storage capacity. The entry level solution for companies with less than 5 Terabytes of storage begins at a list price of $12,500. These packages can be purchased only through value added resellers or system integrators that are members of the Akorri Optimize Partner Program. In addition, a downloadable BalancePoint demo is available free of charge at: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1084. "We are seeing rapid adoption of virtualization technologies such as VMware among small and medium sized enterprises," said Tom Joyce, President and CEO at Akorri. "These companies need best-in-class tools to help them get the most out of their virtualization investments. Akorri's new packaging and pricing for SMBs and SMEs gives IT managers at these companies access to our BalancePoint software for the first time." Link

Another *.ppt or is it really worthwhile something. I on one side am excited with all these developments, but I just hope that consumers are seeing this as the beginning on an era and decide wisely! The new Brocade DCF architecture provides several tangible and significant advantages compared to alternative approaches, including: -- The Brocade DCF is a policy-based, application-driven architecture. It adapts and responds to the changing needs for managing applications and data. It also helps ensure that important data center services -- such as data security, encryption, backup, and replication -- are automatically available based on defined policies, and that they do not encumber the infrastructure when not in use. -- The Brocade DCF simplifies and optimizes important new technologies such as server virtualization. The vast majority of virtual servers connect to networked storage, and Brocade is using its deep storage networkin...

Definitely! "My personal opinion is there's not enough confidence for the big boys to play. I don't think they'll get small businesses turning over their data to outside vendors. Yet," said Francis Poeta, president P&M Computers, Cliffside Park, N.J. "Google will pick up some share. The same people who will do Google [Apps] will do the storage. They'll catch maybe 5 percent of small businesses, which is a lot of people, but those people in the $1 million and above aren't going to do it." Poete said if customers were ready for that model, IBM (NYSE: IBM ) and others would have established successful programs by now. Link

Novell and other industry partners helped create an open source implementation of the the System Virtualization standard for Linux, and Novell ships this implementation with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. Novell’s ZENworks VM Builder, VM Warehouse and VM Orchestrator products are designed to manage Virtualization technologies that support the same standard. ZENworks VM Builder is a DMTF Common Information Model (CIM) based service that provides automation for building VMs to a specification derived from the System Virtualization standard, and ZENworks VM Warehouse is a CIM based service that provides version control for both Virtual Machine configuration settings and operating system image files. ZENworks Orchestrator deploys VMs to production servers based on a declarative specification of VM requirements encoded also in CIM format, that allows deterministic matching of service-level (VM) requirements with available infrastructure capabilities - Orchestrator deploys VMs to capable h...

Raphael is working really hard to set up the stage and has the stuff ready. I will be speaking at the Strategy day and will speak about: 11:00 deploying virtualisation in my company: choices, transitions, futur proof solutions (Correct me if I'm wrong, Raphael) Anyways check out the list and they do have an impressive list of sponsors. Wanna sponsor the event? It's very simple, check out the deal: 1000€ financial support gives: - stand for the whole duration of the event (2 days) - visibility on the website (left side column) - short description on the website (see http://www.profoss.eu/events /october-2007-asterisk/?tab =sponsors ) - same description in the folder distributed to participants - flyer in the welcome pack given to each participant - 1 A4 page about your company in our press release (see http://www.profoss.eu/document s/Profoss-Asterisk-file_en.pdf ) - if possible, inclusion in all our communications and ads Hurry as time is running out! Contact me on my gmail...

My RSS radar caught this news some days back, which Ashlee accidentally, I don't believe it though as they let it get sucked by the RSS monkey, published and then took it back. But now it is out there, as if we missed it in all that virtualized mayhem ;-) Come Dec. HP will offer Scalent's V/OE (Virtual Operating Environment) software as an option with the c-Class blade server systems. Basically, this means HP customers can tap V/OE to handle tasks such as adding, swapping and failing over between blades. As a result, you end up with blade systems that have some pretty high-end recovery and provisioning tools. Scalent has primarily focused on aiding customers in the x86 market with so-called high availability and disaster recovery tasks. The company's software makes sure that the right hardware jumps in to take over jobs when a system fails. The Scalent code can manipulate Windows, Linux, Solaris and VMware/Xen servers. Link

In 2008 I predict that the traditional netsec vendors will soon wake up from their state of denial and pre-announce products capable of protecting and partitioning highly fluid VMs. As I said previously, virtsec will force a division in security solutions between the dynamic and the dead. The vision of a virtual fabric of blade processors protected at every possible traffic point with an IPS requiring manual tuning (and increasing throughput requirements) and custom hardware is an IT nightmare capable of completely undermining the sizable gains enabled by virtualization. Check out Greg's post here

This just came in! Accelerating Need for Virtualization Management Fuels Demand for Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications AUSTIN, Texas—November 27, 2007 — Surgient, the leader in Virtual Lab Management Applications for software testing, training and evaluation, today announced that it achieved record growth in the third quarter of 2007. With a record number of new deals in the third quarter, including the company’s first seven figure license deal, Surgient is on pace for 60 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Surgient third quarter bookings grew to almost three times the bookings for the same quarter in 2006. Surgient signed several new customers, including Genesys Labs, Halliburton Landmark Graphics, Raymond James, Serena, Ultimate Software and Vontu. The company saw repeat business from BMC, CA, Dell, EMC, Information Builders, Kana and Target Corporation. The companies selected Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications to accelerate software development, deployme...

I am going to comment before I post links and other inflammatory remarks/comments of furious users/clients(?): Fact VMware is the market leader today! That will not change in the coming years that fast! VMware is leading this innovation, don't underestimate that! They will lead the change There is no robust solution and advanced enough to take VMware in the next year or so! Fiction VMware is going down! VMware is too expensive! C'mon Oracle sells its hot product RAC for rather exhorbitant prices and it was the king product for Oracle and sol the most. They are innovating database clustering and no one has challenged them yet. Reality People need to get their job done People need to save money People need to put money to do other useful things People need choices, yes they do, but viable choices Don't spread fear, talk facts! Globalization is coming ...and so is Virtualization! I have spoken about virtualization at large but you have to decide if you want to hang on to fact ...

Well this place is getting crowded for sure! Cute to see that the site is setup in Joomla and all. ManageIQ™, the emerging leader in the management and automation of virtualized computing environments, today unveiled the Enterprise Virtualization Management™ (EVM™) suite. EVM delivers the insight, control, and automation enterprises need to address the challenges of managing virtual environments, which are far more complex than physical ones. Patent-pending technology provided in the EVM Suite enables enterprises with existing virtual infrastructures to improve visibility and control, and those just starting virtualization deployments to build and operate a well-managed virtual infrastructure. “Enterprises are just beginning to realize the full impact virtualization is having on management – particularly configuration management.” said Joseph Fitzgerald, Co- Founder and CEO of ManageIQ. “It's becoming increasing clear that in order to fully realize the value of virtualization, new ...

Examiner carrying the numbers: Mirroring the increases, VMware, Inc. ( VMW ) outpaced all value drops by falling approximately 7.25 percent, with Franklin Resources, Inc. ( BEN ) and The Charles Schwab Corporation ( SCHW ) dropped by 2.75 and 2.25 percent respectively. The current stock is just above $ 70. Google discussions are already talking about this phenomenon of the commoditization of the hypervisor (meaning ESX as far as VMware is concerned). Some comments: - the earnings were a large sign of what is to come for this stock - the earnings were pretty much in line with what analysts expected(ofcourse they beat estimates) earnings coming close to what analysts expected showed that this stock was already aligning to market fundamentals and would become affected normally by market turbulence. Is this a good investment? I would be very careful on jumping into it now. Will it be like google? I don't think so. I use ESX and it's awesome, but for the price and with the numbe...

I will be chatting with the Sun's CTO tomorrow and will get more insights on sun's strategy. We need an open source, robust and independent solution. And Sun might just provide us that! Sun xVM Ops Center, a physical and virtual resource management stack, will be available for download next month, Schwartz said. Officials at Sun had previously said a second version of xVM Ops Center will ship in mid-2008. Both versions will run on Linux- and Solaris-based systems across x64/x86 and Sparc systems. Later versions will support Windows, Sun said. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Sun’s announcement is part of a drive by large vendors to build virtualization offerings on top of the Xen project. See the rest!

Shreck predicted that non-Oracle sites will continue to turn to established virtualization technology from companies such as VMware, Microsoft Corp. or Citrix Systems Inc. Oracle, he said, lacks the systems management capabilities and independent software vendor partner relationships needed to create a virtualization platform for the masses. “I don’t think Oracle can keep up” with the virtualization capabilities of market leader VMware, or even Microsoft and Citrix, Shreck added. Oracle’s decision not to support its own software running on the virtualization servers of other vendors may give it an advantage in its installed base, users noted. But people should not forget this, Oracle doesn't care about "generic" virtualization, they are concerned about their own Oracle RAC and Grid project. This is giving Oracle a platform to build its grid upon, obviously they should tie-up with VMware, Citrix and other vendors, but you never know, maybe they have something we still have...

Well "The Register" has been calling, while Tucci said recently that he had no plans to get rid of VMware. This post is very interesting regarding the VMware and EMC relationship. EMC is getting hurt housing the "A-player". Assuming EMC owns 86% of VMW that would be 11.46 per share of EMC. This would imply that EMC should be trading at near 33.18. But since EMC is currently at 18.45 we can conclude using reductio ad absurdum that EMC must not own any of the VMW shares. Well, VMware may have ben asking for it, and EMC might just do that! Read at Seeking a

Had a really good talk with David Lynch, VP Embotics. We shared some similar visions about the data center. Funny when I checked David's resume, he's too been a sailor or has had something to do with the maritime industry. ( Check out the executive board ). My impressions of the telephonic conversation: Embotics is a solid, well funded private company. These guys seem to know pretty well what they are coming out with. They are still doing a private beta with select customers and are gaining tremendous insights (Geez, I can imagine!) on its role within an organizations. What I liked about David was that he engaged me in a conversationalist style, we are all stuck in this hyped-up hypervisor age. Microsoft and all other guys are jumping in with their products, but we need to address serious issues around the virtualized data center (partial or full). I am very curious to check out the embotics product, when it hits the market, for now, check out the interview: Me: Please tell us...

Check out my blog at ITtoolbox. Here I talk a bit about What our next generation data center will be like. I also talk about some myths that people have about open source And how thanks to Virtualization it really won't matter what you run! An excerpt: Myth #2: Its free, I'd rather pay for what I buy No it ain't. It may be cheaper but it definitely is not free. You download the software, ou modify it and you do all sorts of things with it, BUT it remains a product that you need to get support. Just like Windows or Oracle database. In fact, Oracle is a better example, its an open source, right? The Linux versions such as Oracle VM or Enterprise Linux. You can test them and there is a long EULA which we all agree and click blindly. But you don't need the license code or anything, you can put it in your data center and nobody would notice right? WRONG! People won't notice but you'd have a huge application running on it in no time and you'd be stuck to that ...

A product manager was interviewed by SearchStorage.com team: VMware's ESX Xerver 3i embeds the hypervisor in server hardware. Is there any chance we could see that happen in storage hardware as well? Jon Bock: Generally, storage systems today don't run applications like the hypervisor. We've seen some things starting to get to that level, like some of the things our partners, like LeftHand Networks, are doing with their virtual storage appliance. There's going to be a use case for that -- it makes sense to deploy that way for performance reasons and because an embedded hypervisor creates a smaller attack surface for security purposes. As storage vendors have begun porting applications to virtual appliances, the storage market has become aware of the performance hit added by the additional hypervisor layer. How is VMware working to address that? Bock: We've been working to optimize the performance of VMs [virtual machines] as long as we've been shipping them. No...

BT is engaged in an ongoing drive to reduce its carbon footprint, using innovative technology to improve environmental sustainability. BT has already reduced emissions by 60 per cent between 1996 and 2006, and now aims to extend that reduction to 80 per cent by 2016 ­ the equivalent annual carbon emissions produced by 143,000 cars. BT began the project with an assessment of 90 legacy data centres. Combined, these data centres had 11,000 server racks powered by an average of 3,000 watts per rack and 25,000 physical servers. VNUnet.com

Go see their products: The EnSpeed VM Software provides the capability to run unmodified guest OSes such as Windows, in a cluster of Physical Machines (VMM Servers). The following Enterprise grade features are provided, all on Physical Machines with Direct Attached Storage, i.e. no SAN or NAS hardware is required. High Availability Backup for VMs to failover to a secondary VMM, should the primary VMM server fail – all without SAN or NAS external storage. Live Migration of powered up VMs from the primary VMM server to the backup VMM server. VM Snapshots -- enables full backups, without powering off the VM Daily Incremental backup of VMs – without powering off the VM. The EnSpeed VM Family of software consists of the EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) server and EnSpeed VM Orchestrator. The EnSpeed VMM server is a Xen based Virtualization server that is installed on bare hardware, i.e. it does not require a ho...

I've blogged about it here: But many of you may also fall prey to the "glory of virtualization" and ready to push you data center into the virtual world, in the hope of pleasing your CxO. You may not achieve a completely virtualized data center in the beginning. IT managers and Infrastructure managers are not ready to put their "mission-critical" applications such as e-mail, databases, crm , company portal etc on a virtualized platform. Obviously we always had an answer to that: high level load-balancing and clustering. But the IT managers who are not well averse with the developments in the industry can be blinded by such "hype" and are prone to succumbing to their "bounded awareness" by taking their applications/OSs into the virtual world and forgetting about crucial issues like hypervisor security, server sprawl, ILM (VMLM), existing siloed ( siloed does not necessarily have to be a derogatory connotation, it does however impact the agilit...

Richard Muirhead writes about it: Today’s virtualized data center environment is like an F15 airplane, wonderfully flexible but at the same time dangerously unstable if not managed properly. The F15 is widely recognized as one of the most maneuverable fighter jets ever built. But flexibility comes at a price and the only way you can control it is by having very good computer systems supporting the pilot flying the plane. Similarly, the challenge of complexity is ever present in today’s IT environments and the drive towards virtualization is only increasing that challenge. But rather than being cowed by complexity, an enlightened IT organization takes control of it, using the latest tools and techniques – and that includes application dependency mapping. Get it here.

This one is a typical example of a heterogeneity that will remain till hypervisor won't be sold anymore as a cool thing. Anyways, to put it simply: Not every business unit looks at Virtualization as a saviour to their woes, they also look in direction of optimizing the existing data silos and to extract maximum business value from that optimization without any extra management overhead that virtualization may incur. Instead, Fidelity National selected Hewlett-Packard's proprietary Integrated Archive Platform (formerly called RISS) that created a new information silo within Fidelity National. From a pure consolidation and virtualization perspective, it was incompatible with the company's existing storage infrastructure and introduced a new management interface. But with it, Fidelity National could grow incrementally, buy on a quarterly basis and meet its compliance objectives while eliminating the day-to-day management problems that competing products introduced. Information...

"For years, the complexity of traditional storage has hindered workflow efficiency and created costly bottlenecks in enterprise operations, relegating IT to a business's overhead costs," said Brett Goodwin, VP of Marketing & Business Development, Isilon Systems. "However, in today's enterprise, the virtual data center - with its dramatic ease of use, cost-efficiency and performance - is absolutely necessary to turn the opportunities of today into the breakthroughs of tomorrow. To satisfy this business imperative, Isilon's clustered storage systems create a single, highly scalable, high performance, shared pool of storage, delivering a truly clustered and virtualized storage solution to transform IT from business overhead to strategic weapon." Press Release

Key Brocade Storage Area Network (SAN) products support Access Gateway, an N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)-based technology that enables multiple virtual servers to share and connect over a single physical interface. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager uses these Brocade-enabled SAN connections for easier application mobility, increased availability and greater system reliability. According to Tom Buiocchi, vice president, worldwide marketing, Brocade, "Virtualisation is fundamentally changing the data centre. Brocade has partnered with Microsoft to deliver optimised blade server and server virtualisation solutions that improve asset utilisation in evolving data centres." Read the rest

"There's a battle going on for the pole position on the physical system," said Pete Lindstrom, Burton Group senior analyst. "The idea here is you want to be first and at lowest level for some level of control. On the client, you can make things more secure through virtualisation, and since Phoenix can launch its hypervisor before everything else, it appears to have that pole position." Phoenix envisions up to 20 light apps running inside the BIOS, enabled by its HyperCore hypervisor. You can check your email, browse the Web or launch a media player without burning through your battery life. Phoenix is banking on software vendors seeing the market potential and developing HyperSpace-friendly offerings. Security apps, such as your antivirus product of choice, resistant to compromise and getting updates before malware gets a shot at your laptop, could be among the those running on HyperSpace. Techtarget Australia

With the introduction of the Leostream® VDI client in its new Windows XPe image, IGEL® Technology now offers virtualisation support across its entire thin client product range of 20 different models spanning 3 operating systems. Reading, England, 21st November 2007 - IGEL Technology today announced its latest Windows® XP Embedded firmware upgrade enhancing the broadest and most powerful range of thin clients on the market. The firmware allows full virtual desktop access via the Leostream Connection Broker. Any organisation using virtual PC’s based on VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) standard can now use any Windows XPe model from IGEL’s award-winning product line. Windows XPe gives users a very broad range of digital services and full Microsoft compatibility to compliment their virtual desktop. The image contains Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft Media Player, PDF readers and Java on most models, allowing users to deliver certain server-based applications outside th...

It is a big 146 page document with loads of powershell scripts. Get it here.

Seanodes today introduced a new and revolutionary storage product that enables organizations to make underutilized internal application server storage available for the first time as a high-performance virtualized storage pool. With an architecture designed for high performance computing and enterprise environments, Seanodes' new software architecture gives IT managers the ability to easily avoid the overwhelming cost and complexities of conventional SAN and NAS network storage architectures. Seanodes' new Exanodes(TM) software transforms the storage components inside commodity application servers into high-end virtualized storage pools, enabling businesses to quickly identify and take advantage of underutilized internal storage capacity. Implementing Exanodes dramatically reduces management costs, minimizes the need for additional external network storage arrays, saving data center floor space and reducing power consumption, opening a whole new category in the Storage space: S...

Well you should discuss every other development that happens around you. Obviously the disruptive ones are hard to ignore. Anyways here's what they have to say: “Virtualization is not for everybody but it needs to be part of the discussion” said Monty Blight, vice president and general manager of Managed Services at Peak 10. “Businesses who utilize virtualization typically experience greater efficiency in hardware use, higher rates of availability, reduced scheduled downtime and easier server management.” Blight and Peak 10 thought leaders have employed various mediums to engage and educate the business community about the wide-ranging benefits of virtualization. In addition to authoring an opinion editorial, Blight moderated a virtualization webcast series earlier this year. To view the opinion editorial, click here. To view the virtualization webcasts, click here. Rest of the article here.

As part of news announced last week regarding its virtualization-enabled Windows Server 2008 and its new standalone Hyper-V Server software, Microsoft also unveiled its Server Virtualization Validation Program. The program, which will become available next June, is intended to help companies using Windows Server in conjunction with third-party server virtualization platforms get support if technical problems arise, according to a posting late last week on Microsoft's official Windows Server division blog. The program allows companies such as VMware Inc., or Xen provider Citrix Systems Inc. "to self-test and validate a specific virtualization stack (hardware + hypervisor) to provide customers out-of-the-box support for Windows guest OSes," Alessandro Perilli, an Italy-based consultant, wrote on his Virtualization.Info blog. Previously, Microsoft would only try to support Windows Server users using non-Microsoft virtualization if they paid for pricey Premier Support, accord...

Both Dell and Virtual Iron have a CEO on a war-footing. That helps companies define their "next-level" strategy much faster than the ones who aren't ready for change. The news snippet: Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure software, announced a new worldwide authorized reseller agreement with Dell Corporation. Dell will work through Virtual Iron's distribution channel and resell the software to end-users as part of an extensive portfolio of server virtualization and storage offerings. Dell servers provide an ideal platform for Virtual Iron and virtualization is a key component of Dell's scaleable enterprise strategy that aims to help customers cost-effectively scale, improve utilization and simplify IT operations. Virtual Iron simplifies enterprise server virtualization with a comprehensive solution that is easy to use and easy to afford. Many of Virtual Iron's existing cust...

Pacific Crest’s Brent Bracelin this morning launched coverage of VMware (VMW) with a Sector Perform rating, asserting that the company’s $33 billion market cap already “factors in optimism about VMware’s dominant position in an untapped $6 billion market and its potential to become a multi-billion franchise.” Bracelin cautions that the “virtual computing wars should intensify in 2008,” with new offerings from Microsoft (MSFT), Citrix/XenSource (CTXS), Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and SWsoft. Bracelin advises waiting for a pull back to build a position; he notes that the shares trade for 17x 2008 revenues, and are up 190% since the VMW IPO, even after a sharp pullback in the last several weeks. Link

This is what this news item has to say. Companies are custom-coding too much in the hope of making a quick exit from VMware's VI to another cheaper infrastructure that provides the functionalities of HotMigration and Resource scheduling capabilities. Quoting As such, Mosso isn't devoting too many resources into developing its environment around VMware. Instead, it will use "the basics like VMotion and DRS" and try not to custom-code too much of the environment. "We've tried not to tie our system too directly to VMware, because we might potentially switch it out for Xen," Bryce said. The company recently finished evaluating Citrix XenServer and will soon evaluate Oracle VM , Bryce said. With Xen-based virtualization platforms, Bryce said, the philosophy is to provide "the engine and the access, on which you are free to do whatever you want." The company is also "talking to VMware to help us develop more advanced features, although I ...

There is lot more to virtualization and as it seems, they are not always the good things: What I could gather from this post was: If you are purely cost-driven and don't care about the planet, then you will go for cheaper Linux servers instead of trying to manage those difficult Windows machines. That seems to be cheaper than buying VMware. Management overhead: It is an added burden to organizations to adopt a technology and to suddenly teach their staff to start leaning new skills and technologies. It is great for a system admin, but all the more difficult to make it happen. Measurability and accountability is very crucial. IT managers who can't get a grip on that have a lot to lose. But virtualisation may introduce a hidden cost: management overhead. Symantec field systems engineer Chris Bowden says managing a virtualised environment takes new skills and understanding. The same tasks remain, such as software compliance and patch management, but they are handled differently. ...

Glenwood , Md. —November 19, 2007— Fortisphere, a provider of enterprise virtual machine lifecycle management software, today announced that it has closed $10 million in series A round funding. The round was co-led by Fairhaven Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. The company will use the funding to further product development, grow its sales team and increase its market visibility. “IDC predicts that the virtualization market will reach $11.7 billion over the next four years and that by the end of this year, about half of the world’s 4.2 million servers will be virtualized,” said Paul L. Ciriello, managing partner, Fairhaven Capital Partners. “While this dramatic growth has resulted in cost and operational gains for companies, it has also triggered a need for data center management tools purpose-built for virtualized environments. Fortisphere fills this urgent market need by providing a unique means for organizations to more efficiently manage their virtual mac...

The global economy is like an elephant, it is coming in terms with its center of gravity. One legged elephant, meaning US, that it has been, is now finding it's other legs in Europe, China and India. It needs time but it eventually will settle down. A lot of markets will suffer, a lot of inflation and in some cases, over-heated economies might flirt with deflation as well, but it will settle down. Anyways, I blog about it a bit, from my own experiences, on ITtoolbox: We are going in a recession. I have been screaming about it for quite some time. I have been born and brought up, as a professional, in this increasingly flattening global economy. I draw an analogy of global economy being an elephant which has been an big fat beast standing on one thick leg, the US economy. What is happening now is that this elephant is unfurling its other three legs. They are Europe, China, India (feel free to disagree with the legs analogy with me here). This is obviously creating a lot of unrest, i...

Got this from Scott some days back, forgot to post it. It is dated today so I am not really late! Rewriting the rules for enthusiast computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today unveiled its new platform codenamed “Spider”, with the first true quad-core processor supporting scalable graphics for The Ultimate Visual Experience™. The AMD Spider platform combines the introduction of AMD Phenom™ quad-core processors , ATI Radeon™ HD 3800 Series graphics processors with Microsoft DirectX ® 10.1 support, AMD 7-Series chipsets with CrossFireX™ and AMD OverDrive™ software. The AMD Spider platform is a major milestone on the path to Accelerated Computing, AMD’s vision for platform-level acceleration through co-processing. “AMD is the only company committed to delivering The Ultimate Visual Experience across all the screens of your life,” said Dirk Meyer, president and COO, AMD. “The AMD Spider platform embodies our approach to platform-level innovation and delivers a highly-advanced, feature-rich enthus...