VMware - 53

VMware announced that it has filed a 10-Q for the second quarter of 2007 with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).  A summary of the company’s second quarter financial information was disclosed earlier this year in the company’s S-1 registration statement.  The 10-Q, which includes detailed information for the quarter ending June 30, 2007, is available online.

I hope you have enjoyed VMworld 2007. This year's event featured more than 10,800 attendees and 147 sponsors and exhibitors this year, compared to 7,000 attendees and 82 sponsors and exhibitors last year. There were also more than 250 breakout sessions and 100 hands-on labs to participate in, making VMworld 2007 the most exciting and interactive conference devoted to virtualization. But it’s not over yet. VMworld.com now extends the success of the VMworld conference to an online virtualization destination open to anyone to learn and share what they know about virtualization. VMworld.com is an independent virtualization resource available 24x7. While not a replacement for the unique face-to-face networking opportunity of the conference, you can now get access to valuable information and conference sessions, talk with vendors, get tips and tricks from other virtualization users, and hear the latest virtualization buzz every day online. Access the latest resources and information you need to make informed decisions about implementing virtualization.

The IT research firm Ideas International released  a new evaluation that compares the technical capabilities of four x86 virtual machine platforms (VMware Infrastructure 3, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, Xen with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Xen with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1). The evaluation compares the quality of  40 different functional details in these systems, organized across five categories: performance & scalability; availability; storage Integration; manageability, and deployment considerations. The results of this evaluation are public, and they can be browsed online using a web-based collaborative mechanism. This interface allows visitors to weight the importance of functions covered in the evaluation to arrive at a customized comparison of these VM platforms reflecting their needs. It is also possible for users to contribute their own ratings of individual functions, should they choose to agree or disagree with our "expert" analysis.

VMware's acquisition of Determina, a supplier of vulnerability protection software, could improve virtualisation security, analyst firm Gartner has predicted. Gartner identified two technologies from Determina that could boost VMware's built-in security. The first, the Determina Memory Firewall, is designed to protect an operating system and applications against unauthorised memory and program control-flow manipulation. It will protect against attacks such as heap and stack overflows, buffer overflows, and similar techniques used by hackers.

Author: Cliff Saran over at ComputerWeekly

Will virtualization save the planet ? Since lots of people are worried about the greenhouse effect and the eco system in total more and more companies are offering Energy-efficient products and services. Sun recently announced their Eco Optimization Kit and Eco Virtualization services. Sun's Eco Innovation portfolio of products and services is the industry's most innovative and open energy-efficient solution to these, and many more challenges. Now, going green is the smart and safe way to drive higher profits. It's good for business and good for the planet. I was curies what sort of technique  Sun is using to do this and finally found the answer on the offerings page. Virtualize now with Solaris Containers or VMware ESX Server on a Sun Blade product, the only blade servers with up to double the memory and I/O of competing x64 blades or rack mount servers and at half the cost. Save 25% (up to $5,750) on VMware ESX Server licenses purchased along with a Sun Blade starter kit. It’s going to be a healthy planet after all.

Everyone can make a mistake and build a virtual machine on a Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2. Soon you will discover that you made the wrong choice ;-) and want to convert this virtual machine to the VMware VMDK virtual disk format. Arne Fokkema the Dutch ICT-Freak created a little how to and I translated his document. With the latest version of Winimage (8.10) you can convert the VDH virtual disk format to a VMDK virtual disk file. In this case we are going to convert a Longhorn Beta 3 (Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2) virtual machine to a VMware virtual machine.

Last Friday I discovered that the new version number of ESX server will be 3.5 but (except for the nfiniBand support) didn’t know anything about the new features this version would contain until I red the article from Alessandro Perilli over at virtualization.info.  He has a well informed source within the VMware beta program. On his site you can find the complete list with disclosed features from the ESX3.1 and ESX 3.5 realease.

After two successful meetings in 2005 and 2006 The Dutch VMware User Group announced  it’s time for a third one!  They would like to invite you to attend the 2007 VMware User Group meeting on the 7th of December. With over 1700 members this year’s event will become massive. Join the Dutch VMUG and learn best the practices and optimal use of VMware products, get answers, advice, tips, and suggestions from experts, discover new ideas and gain insight about Virtual Infrastructure, receive special information about new VMware products, network with other technical professionals and be part of the leading edge of VMware users. Keep a close watch to the Dutch VMUG website and stay tuned.

Some software vendors like Vizioncore, Invirtus and Mellanox Technologies have a VMware Community Source co-development contract. Mellanox Technologies is pleased to announce the availability of the InfiniBand adapter support package for VMware ESX 3.5 Beta 2, comprised of VirtualCenter 2 version 2.5 and ESX Server 3 version 3.5. So the next version is VMware® ESX 3.5 instead of ESX 3.1.

John Troyer over at Vmware posted a new article on the VMTN Blog. Is that so special you could ask? The answer is yes. John is a SR. Product manager and manages VMTN Online so you can find new posts of him frequently but this post is special because it mentions the vm4all.com website. :-) You can find the complete article here.