VMware Global Alliances Blog

Posted by Bob Goldsand
Alliances Partner Architect

The question of whether mission-critical databases could be virtualized on the VMware platform was emphatically answered “yes” when we released VMware vSphere 4.0 in 2009. Since then, we have consistently rolled out features that support database virtualization and make management easier for database administrators (DBAs). For example, with the introduction of vSphere 5 this summer, DBAs now have the ability to scale up to 32 virtual CPUs. Since adding this new critical functionality, the question has become: “What database workloads can’t be virtualized on vSphere?”

To ensure that vSphere remains the best platform for virtualizing databases, we recently teamed up with strategic partner NetApp to assist a joint customer considering virtualizing its Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure. Together, VMware and NetApp participated as extended team members in the virtualization journey of Green Mountain Power (GMP), the second largest utility provider in Vermont servicing more than 100,000 customers. GMP is a leader in wind and solar power generation.

The GMP Initiative to Virtualize Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure

GMP was in the process of rolling out the Oracle Utility Suite, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Fusion Middleware and the Business Intelligence (BI) Suite. This comprehensive upgrade was an excellent opportunity for both VMware and NetApp to get a first-hand understanding of the customer’s virtualization path. Over a six-month period, VMware and NetApp participated in all phases of GMP’s Oracle project, including the initial design and review, deployment, functional testing, acceptance testing and ultimately, its move to production.

During the project with GMP, VMware and NetApp quickly learned that how to virtualize Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure on vSphere isn’t the question our customers are wrestling with internally. Both NetApp and VMware have published ample best practices documents, as well as tips and tricks white papers on these subjects. Rather GMP and other customers want to better understand why they should virtualize and what level of support they can expect for their Oracle implementations. What GMP learned is outlined in the following lessons:

Lesson 1: Oracle Supports VMware Solutions and Provides Excellent Support

GMP could not have accomplished such a dramatic transformation without Oracle support. During the project, GMP opened up more than 40 service requests with Oracle support and was never denied support or asked to reproduce issues in a physical environment. Any specific questions related to virtualization were correctly directed by Oracle to VMware. Listen to senior DBA, architect at GMP, Nayab Saiyad, discuss the excellent support he received during GMP’s transformation.

 To understand the VMware Support Policy with Oracle see the VMware Support Policy.

Lesson 2: Successful Virtualization Initiatives Require Executive Sponsorship

The GMP management staff includes visionaries that are supportive of the company’s journey. Unlike selecting a server, virtualization is a strategic objective at GMP and choosing an established vendor whose core competency is virtualization was a key consideration. VMware and NetApp worked closely with executives and technical personnel to provide them with logical and factual information that explained the benefits of virtualization—including expected capital and operational expense savings—and the realities surrounding Oracle solution support. Like we do for any customer, VMware provides extended Oracle support as part of its existing support agreement at no additional cost.

Lesson 3: Limited Resources Don’t Have to Limit the Environment

The GMP project was and is still quite complex. In just six months, GMP went from an almost 100 percent physical environment to approximately a 70 percent virtualized environment on vSphere. The ability for GMP to quickly backup and provide data protection to its Oracle environment is significantly increased because it has virtualized its Oracle environment using VMware and NetApp solutions. With the company’s limited resources, it is unlikely it would ever be able to effectively manage such a robust Oracle environment without its Oracle applications and databases running on VMware and NetApp technology. 

But this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for Episode II and more lessons learned during a very difficult time…

VMware is a Gold Sponsor of the Making the Case for Cloud: The Next Steps online conference to be held on  December 7, 2011 at 06:45 AM EST.

Nine out of ten IT professionals believe that cloud computing will be the primary IT delivery model by 2015. And according to the 2011 Role of CIO Report, 66% of senior IT executives still need to learn more about the cloud than they do now.

In this free, online conference, several industry experts will offer guidance on how to:

• Explain cloud and rationalize its business value
• Prepare your network for the cloud
• Plan for and manage security breaches and compliance concerns
• Anticipate legal considerations before signing a contract
• Get the most out of cloud SaaS services

 This one-day event offers unparalleled thought leadership for CIOs, risk officers and compliance professionals on strategies for extending security and compliance to the cloud. Register today!

Posted by Brian Forbes
Sr. Director, Global Alliance Marketing

It’s been a little over a month since we launched our Global Alliances blog and I’m looking for your feedback. My team and I appreciate the suggestions we’ve gotten so far, but we’d like to hear from some more of you about topics that you’d find interesting related to how we’re working with strategic partners.

Conferences are timely, but what would you like to hear about our attendance at events? Would you like to know more about what is happening behind-the-scenes with relationships? Would you like more technical detail?

To give you an idea of where we are headed… Stay tuned for more soon about joint customers using specific solutions, joint reference architectures, relationship expansions, and more. 

In the meantime, let my team and me know what we can do in this forum to keep you informed and help you meet objectives. Post a comment or Email me directly.

Posted by Matthew Paul
and Rishi Manocha of Dell

In this edition, we are blogging about another great duo: Dell Server Management and VMware vCenter^TM  Server.

In December of 2010, Dell introduced our virtual appliance, called the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter (DMPVV), which bridged the physical and virtual gap by integrating key physical server management capabilities into vCenter Server. DMPVV delivers a “single-pane-of-glass” management interface for both virtual machines and Dell servers within vCenter Server that frees Dell and VMware customers from having to switch back and forth between multiple consoles to accomplish server element management. Our latest edition: 1.0.1 Update 1 shipped in September of 2011 and adds support for vSphere 5.

Working with our counterparts at VMware, Dell engineers ensured that DMPVV had the tightest possible integration with vCenter Server:

• Simple deployment into vCenter Server: DMPVV leverages the open virtualization format (OVF) to ensure simple deployment into vCenter Server.
• Deep integration leverages native vCenter capabilities: DMPVV leverages multiple vCenter integration APIs including UI, Integrated Security, vCenter Role based access, Tasks, Events, and Alarms. Unlike some other products, DMPVV uses the native vCenter capabilities and does not trigger a “Link and Launch” to an external management suite.
• Delivered as a virtual appliance, with no external framework dependencies: DMPVV integrates with Dell hardware using a zero-touch mechanism, avoiding the need for manual creation of multiple connections to the managed platforms.

Beyond capabilities like hardware monitoring, failure alerts, server information, and detailed reports, the Dell Management Plug-in offers several powerful and compelling features, all natively within the vCenter Server console:

• Profile-based host deployment: DMPVV provides profile-based host deployment without complicated or proprietary hardware. When connected to the network, a Dell server appears in the vCenter Server console without requiring PXE. Upon answering a few questions, the hardware is configured, the hypervisor is installed, and added to the appropriate vCenter instance ensuring consistent and compliant server deployments, reducing the steps in deploying virtual infrastructure from 50+ to a few mouse clicks.
• Maintains hardware currency and mitigates risk: Provides wizard-driven utilities enabling you to update the BIOS and firmware of your PowerEdge servers from within the vCenter Server console. These updates can automatically put the host in maintenance mode, or be staged to coincide with the next server reboot.
• Automated remediation with Phone Home: All hardware events are added to the vCenter Server event stream. Specific events can trigger a host to be put into maintenance mode and have a service call placed for hardware repair.
• Server lifecycle management: Warranty expiration reporting and the ability to renew the server warranty to ensure uninterrupted service and support.

With all the complexity in today’s IT environment the duo of the Dell Management Plug-in and VMware’s vCenter Server takes a few small steps in making life just a bit easier.  DMPVV is an excellent example of the tight integration between Dell and VMware driven by our strategic partnership, and is one of the compelling reasons for Dell and VMware customers to come to Dell for their VMware-based infrastructure needs.

To learn more, visit the Dell Management Plug-in website. You can download a trial version of the Dell Management Plug-in for vCenter Server at http://marketing.dell.com/software-download.

We also encourage you to watch the following video demonstration of the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter Server in action:

About the authors:
Matthew Paul has been with Dell for over 11 years and is currently a Sr. Product Manager in the Dell’s Virtualization Solutions domain.
Rishi Manocha is a senior member of the Product Marketing organization in Dell’s Virtualization Solutions domain.

Posted by Shobhana Viswanathan
Senior Marketing Manager -
Global Alliances

As many organizations have already discovered, security and compliance are key issues that need to be addressed for a successful migration to cloud computing.  The benefits of cloud can be dramatic—including increased  agility, greater end user empowerment, and dramatically reduced costs —but enterprises need to pursue these goals while maintaining IT control, protective safeguards, and regulatory compliance.

These concerns have slowed cloud adoption at many organizations.  In a recent Tech Target survey of over 700 IT and business professionals, 70 percent claimed that they were already leveraging or considering cloud services, but the same percentage also believe the cloud is inherently insecure. An astonishing 60 percent were unaware of the leading applications and other resources that are available to secure cloud environments.

Many of these same issues apply to virtualization, the technology that provides the foundation for cloud.  As reported by Gartner research, only 18 percent of enterprise datacenter workloads that could be virtualized had been virtualized by the end of 2009; and that number is expected to grow to more than 50 percent by the end of 2012.  As more workloads are virtualized, as workloads of different trust levels are combined, and as virtualized workloads become more mobile, the security issues associated with virtualization are likely to become more important than ever.

"Virtualization is not inherently insecure," said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner fellow. "However, most virtualized workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is a result of the immaturity of tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants."

Cloud Security Comes of Age

The good news for organizations with their eyes on the cloud is that proven solutions are now available to secure virtualized and cloud environments—and without  sacrificing the agility and end-user choice that are hallmarks of the cloud era.  Working in concert with our security partner ecosystem, VMware is helping businesses of all sizes migrate to secure cloud computing.

You can learn about the results of this collaboration on the new “Trust in Your Cloud” microsite from VMware. It  features the latest VMware vShield™ solutions and resources from our partners including HP Tipping Point, HyTrust, Layer 7, LogLogic, Trend Micro.  These cost-effective and adaptive security services and tools let you use a single policy framework for deploying and managing security services from VMware as well as third parties.

What you’ll see on this microsite is that we’ve arrived at a new era in cloud security.  Check it out, and discover that security issues no longer need to stand in the way of your cloud initiatives and your business.

Posted by James Lomonaco
Cisco Alliance
Marketing Manager

The introduction of VMware View 5 has us more excited than ever about our strategic alliance with Cisco. Together, we are simplifying the physical and virtual infrastructure and management associated with desktop deployments and providing a rich end-user experience on a foundation optimized for performance and availability.

Both Cisco and VMware have diligently delivered on our joint vision to regain control of the corporate desktop environment. We’ve integrated VMware View with the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). We’ve made the Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution with VMware View a core module of the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) system. Known simply as Cisco VXI with VMware View, the solution addresses today’s IT and end-user challenges: achieving scalable, high-performance desktop virtualization with media-rich communications, unified management, pervasive security and an uncompromised user experience. The integration of voice, video and virtual desktops transforms desktops into virtual collaborative workspaces. 

In an effort to simplify implementation, we are working with our ecosystem partners including NetApp and EMC to deliver Cisco Validated Designs that provide detailed technical guidance based on validated and tested configurations. Both NetApp and EMC have worked with Cisco and VMware to deliver separate validated reference architectures for shared infrastructure and virtual desktops.

Customers of VMware, Cisco and NetApp, including Metro Health (a regional healthcare provider based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan) have embraced our joint solution, achieving significant cost and efficiency benefits. Read about optimizing clinical workflows with VMware View and Cisco VXI or hear what Metro Health has to say about utilizing desktop virtualization to optimize clinical workflows and improve care.

Beyond healthcare, the integrated Cisco and VMware solution is ideal for academic institutions, as well as organizations operating call centers and those employing large numbers of customer service representatives. If your organization is a Cisco customer, what other ways would you like to see VMware technologies integrate with Cisco solutions?

Posted by Anne Catambay, Director,
Global Outbound Alliance Marketing

Hurry and get yourself to Las Vegas before all of the Michael Jackson fans do. The first ever Estate-authorized Michael Jackson fan fest will start on Dec. 3, the same day the IMMORTAL World Tour by Cirque du Soleil begins.

Mandalay Bay will be the new home to everything Michael Jackson in Las Vegas, but only after the crowds clear from CA World 2011—being held November 13-17, 2011.

VMware is a gold-level sponsor at this year’s show. We’ll be demonstrating our new cloud infrastructure suite of products, cloud application platform solutions and more.

Be sure to stop by booth #400 or visit us during one of our breakout or theater sessions where we might even be playing a little Michael Jackson music.

Posted by Wen Yu, Alliances
Staff Systems Engineer

What an exciting week at NetApp Insight in Las Vegas! Like VMware Partner Exchange, NetApp Insight brings together the NetApp extended sales force with channel partners, systems integrators and strategic technology partners. As a worldwide Platinum sponsor of this year’s event, VMware attended to both learn about and share the latest and greatest technology innovations and solutions that will benefit our joint customers.

It’s been a busy week of demos and announcements, but I’d like to share a few highlights for our NetApp customers:

Tuesday, November 1 – VMware was featured in the general session, which shows just how important our relationship is with NetApp. During the presentation, our own Dave Shroeder, Sr. Director for Systems Engineering, described the intricate technical integrations that VMware and NetApp have been working on to ensure our solutions are compatible across every layer of the IT stack—infrastructure, applications and end-user computing.  

Wednesday, November 2 – More than 150 attendees showed up first thing in the morning to learn more about new VMware vSphere® 5 integration with NetApp solutions. Specifically, we discussed:

• The full SIOC support for NFS storage
• VAAI primitives to support NFS storage in space reservation and copy offload
• VAAI support for thin provisioning LUNs to properly "stun" virtual machines during out of space conditions
• VASA integration to ease profile-driven storage management
• Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) best practices for intelligent backend NetApp storage
• VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0 SnapMirror integration for site protection, failover, re-protection and failback

We heard again and again how much the deep, engineering-level integrations between our solutions are resonating in the marketplace. In addition to the vSphere 5 session on Wednesday, VMware representatives were on hand to discuss SRM design and best practices, VMware View™ on NetApp, and vSphere on NetApp Cluster Mode scale out architecture. Each of these solutions is ultimately designed to enable our joint customers to accelerate their journey to the cloud, with agility and efficiency.

Thursday and Today, November 3 and 4 – These two days have been literally packed with information and attendees eager to hear more about design best practices for VMware vCloud® Director and how it works in conjunction with intelligent NetApp storage. We discussed integrations such as the vCO plugin for service-level agreement (SLA)-based storage provisioning and SnapCreator backup and restore for vApp. In addition, VMware Bob Goldsand gave a talk about Oracle RAC deployment with Green Mountain Power (GMP) that featured GMP’s successful production deployment. To learn more about our joint success at GMP, check our blog again soon.

With the knowledge shared this week between VMware and NetApp, there’s little doubt that existing and prospective customers' journey to the cloud will be a better than ever experience.

Posted by Felipe Payet, Sr.
Strategic Alliance Manager,
Dell Alliance

Our partnership with Dell continues to be one of our strongest and longest standing strategic alliances, but things are really heating up now.

On October 28, Dell launched the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service. This new VMware-based Public Cloud service, first announced at VMworld 2011, lets our joint Dell/VMware customers move workloads to a Dell-managed, enterprise-class Public Cloud, built on VMware’s vCloud Datacenter platform. This allows customers to address spikes in workload demand, gain operational flexibility, lower infrastructure cost, improve availability, and address disaster recovery needs. 

But the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service is only part of the story... The tip of the iceberg, if you will. The Dell Cloud, combined with on-premise VMware-based infrastructure solutions from Dell like vStart, together enable a unique, VMware-based full hybrid cloud portfolio for our joint customers.

vStart, the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service, and the Hybrid Cloud

Let’s dive a little deeper into vStart:  Dell’s VMware-based vStart solution stacks, a series of VMware-based, factory pre-configured and pre-racked private cloud building blocks, aimed at SMB to mid-market customers who are looking for a simpler path to virtualization. vStart stacks arrive on-site at a customer’s datacenter pre-racked and cabled, and are offered with Dell deployment services to quickly get the stacks up and hosting workloads. vStart solutions also deliver tight integration between VMware and Dell to simplify management of both virtual and physical infrastructure from a single pane of glass, through powerful plug-ins like the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter, which delivers deep PowerEdge server monitoring and management capabilities from within vCenter Server. Look for more on this integration and Dell’s management plug-ins for vCenter in another blog post soon.

The final piece of the VMware/Dell Hybrid Cloud puzzle is VMware’s vCloud Connector, which enables customers to easily migrate their workloads from their on-premise vSphere infrastructure deployments (like vStart) to the Dell Public Cloud service, enabling a full hybrid cloud offering:  on-premise virtualization solutions AND an off-premise public cloud service, all based on VMware, and all from a single source, Dell.  We’re excited to be part of the partnership that brought this unique full Hybrid Cloud solution and service portfolio offering to our joint customers.

A Few Parting Thoughts

On October 13 and 14, VMware was a Gold Sponsor of Dell’s inaugural Dell World customer event, where our CEO Paul Maritz was featured as a keynote speaker. Dell World gave us an opportunity to showcase many of the Dell/VMware joint offerings available to our customers, and share VMware’s vision of the journey to the Cloud.

At Dell World, VMware worked with Dell to stand up a vSphere/vCloud Director based infrastructure which hosted the vast majority of all the partner demos delivered within Dell’s Solution Showcase. So in essence, Dell World ran on a VMware Private Cloud! We’re proud to have been able to work with Dell to provide the infrastructure that ran this successful inaugural event.

Please watch this video to hear more about VMware’s presence at Dell World, as well as our joint Dell/VMware solutions, and VMware vision:

Visit this blog again soon to hear about other compelling Dell/VMware solutions, including End User Computing offerings like the recently VMware Ready certified Dell Mobile Clinical Computing solution for healthcare and Virtual Labs offering for education.

VMware and Dell are working together to help our joint customers on their journey to the cloud, and we look forward to taking you along on that journey as well.

Posted by Anne Catambay, Director,
Global Outbound Alliance Marketing

“Speed in business is everything,” says Steve Herrod, CTO of VMware, in this video with NYSE Technologies and Intel.

In financial services, I imagine the requirement for speed is intensified immensely. Speed can make or break a business.

See how Intel, VMware and NYSE Technologies, the commercial technology division for one of the leading exchange operator groups in the world, have collaborated to bring to market an enterprise-ready technology platform that delivers on the promise of cloud computing. Next time you’re considering a trade on the NYSE or Euronext, you’ll know what’s happening behind the scenes to deliver the service, speed and security you demand.

Hear directly from NYSE Technologies, Intel and VMware: