Liquidware Labs Addresses VDI Assessments with New Performance Metrics | The Virtualization Practice

Liquidware Labs Addresses VDI Assessments with New Performance Metrics The Virtualization Practice:

David Bieneman, the founder of VizionCore has joined up with J. Tyler Rohrer formerly of the VMware VDI team and the team from VMsight lead by Jonathan Alexander to create a new company – Liquidware Labs. Liquidware Labs is focuses upon two aspects of the problem listed above. The first aspect is to define a methodology (Assess–>Design–>Deploy–>Manage) for VARs and service providers to use in VDI projects, and the second is to provide a toolkit that implements much of this methodology in software.

Quorum BC-V: Disaster Recovery for the SMB | The Virtualization Practice

Quorum BC-V: Disaster Recovery for the SMB The Virtualization Practice:

One of the major benefits of virtualization for enterprises has been that through virtualization disaster recovery (DR) has become much easier and more cost effective to implement. This occurs because virtualization allows the entire environment for a server to be containerized in a VM which is nothing but a file that can easily be copied to a different location and brought up if servers in the main data center fail for some reason.

However when it comes to an SMB realizing these benefits, several factors still stand in the way. The first is that most SMB’s do not have the funds to virtualize their entire operation just to get the benefits of DR. Next is the fact that just virtualizing the servers does not really provide for DR, additional software is still needed to periodically update backup images, update backup data in databases, and most importantly replicate the most recent backup images to an off site location in case the primary site really does suffer a catastrophic event. The combination of these costs, processes, and logistics has kept real DR out of the reach of many SMB’s.

Cloud Computing and the End Run around IT – Here We Go Again - The Virtualization Practice

Cloud Computing and the End Run around IT – Here We Go Again The Virtualization Practice

I think the early uses of Cloud Computing by enterprises (or any company with a significant IT department) will be again by users, departments, and business constituents who have some of their own reasonable level of technical expertise and who will find that they can bring up “tactical” or prototype business applications on external clouds much more easily than they can in the internal labs (even the ones based upon virtualization) offered by their internal IT departments. Cloud Computing offers these business constituents the opportunity to experiment with technology solutions that might fit various business cases and scenarios without having ask, explain, fill out forms, and wait for a response from IT. External Cloud vendors are structuring their entire businesses around being easy to work with on a technical and business level. Therefore, I think that Cloud Computing will be the basis of the next big end run around IT and IT’s structure and processes.

EMC Announces Acquisition of Configuresoft | The Virtualization Practice

EMC Announces Acquisition of Configuresoft The Virtualization Practice

On 5/27, EMC announced that it was acquiring ConfigureSoft one of the two leading independent vendors of configuration, change, and compliance management software (the other leading independent vendor being TripWire). The stated goal of the acquisition is to “Empower Customers to Automate Visibility and Control Across their Physical and Virtual Data Centers”.

Virtualization Management – Enabling Dynamic Business Services - Virtualization Management Solutions

Every leading edge IT organization is trying to provide effective IT services to its business constituents, in less time and at a lower cost. As tools for managing virtualized environments evolve, these tools will become the vehicles through which IT organizations deliver agile IT and business services to business constituents. This will occur as virtualization management tools evolve to allow the virtual environment to be provisioned, scaled, managed and priced in manners completely different from how this was done for the previous physical environment.

VMware, Citrix Xen, and Microsoft Hyper-V. Managing a Mix and Match Virtualization Platform Environment - VMware News Resources

Enterprise IT shops will increasingly move to a multi-virtualization platform environment. Most enterprises will have more than one virtualization platform. In many cases, more than one product will be used within the implementation of one virtualization system. This will place a premium upon the proper use of cross-platform management tools.

Cloud Computing, Virtualization, and VMware - VMware News Resources

This is my article up on DABCC.com about Cloud Computing, Virtualization, and Paul Martiz's Keynote at VMworld.

There Are No Free Hypervisors – Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware ESXi will all Cost you in the End - Virtualization News Resources

VMware has just made VMware ESXi “free”. Citrix makes a big deal out of the fact that its Xen hypervisor is “free”. Microsoft’s Hyper-V is included in Windows Server 2008, so it is “free”. However, none of these products is really free; you will pay for all of them in various ways.

Virtualization Management: vmSight Detailed Product Review

Detailed product review of vmSight, a performance and access management solution for virtualized desktops on the VMware, Citrix Xen and soon Microsoft Hyper-V platforms.

Microsoft Hyper-V Virtualization: Resistance is Futile (Almost)

Hyper-V does not mean the end of VMware. On the contrary, it means a dramatic growth in the entire virtualization market – enough growth so that Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix will all prosper in their own ways.