VMworld2007

More VMworld reactions and commentary

The conference has ended, and everybody is traveling home. Before we get to the wrap-up commentary, here’s what’s already been posted by attendees and analysts about VMworld:

Adam Baum: My life in Day Two

My first session of the day was on the topic of VM in gov’t and
education.  The big takeway on this one is collaboration.  The panel
members’ project were very successful because they collaborated with
other gov’t (or educational) entities.  A great example is DR.  Two
counties got together to act as each other’s DR site.  Vm is a great
enabler of this since the hardware outlay is small compared to the cost
of a full data center.  There is a sessions about two univerisities
doing exactly this. One is on the East coast, the other on the West.

Each
of the panel members discussed how VM came to be used in their
organization and it’s benefits to them.  I am guessing that these
reasons and benefits are just universal truths.  What does that mean?
Think about VM selling/maerketing points: Consolidation, efficient
utilization of resources, less real estate needed, etc.  We all
listened and now we have VM.  I’m sure there are a few companies out
there who are running vm just so that they can say they are running it,
but I doubt there are very many.

Rene Vester: ESX Server 3I

From speaking to the engineers at the VMware booth it seems obvious
that is new approach is most of all an attempt to once again deliver
something that Microsoft, XenSource and the others cannot. From what i
have learned the development of the products will continue and we are
not going towards Embedded ESX only in the near future. It appears
there are several reasons for this:

– ESX 3I has no service console, so no third party solutions using the service console will work with 3I.
– ESX 3I will only be supported by a limited number of hardware vendors and few models(atleast for now).

Rene Vester: Looking back over VMworld 2007

VDI for me seems to be where the battle is going to be the next year.
There seems to be alot of VDI brokers available, most of them with
different attention and which way it is going to go is sure to be an
exciting battle. I think it is gonna be hard to have this many brokers
being mainstream, so for the benefit of bringing VDI to the customers i
hope a few good brokers will get ahead and make a product that covers
the needs to the most customers.

Tony Asaro: VMworld – It’s a Big Virtual World After All

Sung to the tune of – It’s a Small World After All

It’s a virtual world that is growing
Because the value is clear
VMware is on top
Their competition is nowhere near
VMware is ablaze
We are truly amazed
It’s a big virtual world after all

Brian Madden: VMware OnDemand streaming technology will challenge Citrix’s Ardence platform

Details are very light at this point, but during one of the keynotes at VMworld this past week, VMware presented a feature called “VMware OnDemand” streaming technology.
This technology will allow a VM player to prefetch disk blocks from a
disk image file across a network, allowing the VM to boot from that
disk image before the image is 100% copied to the player machine.

This is VERY similar—at least in concept—to Citrix’s Ardence OS streaming technology.
This can be huge in the virtualized desktop / VDI environment since it
means that a user could start using a local desktop VM without having
to wait for a multi-gigabyte disk image file to copy to their client
device.

Dave Hitz: VMware’s Founder Helped To Inspire WAFL

In the early days of NetApp, when we first started
developing our WAFL file system, we drew inspiration from three main file
systems: FFS, Episode and LFS …

The graduate student who actually designed and
implemented LFS was Mendel Rosenblum. It took me quite a few years to figure
out that this guy whose work I admired 15 years ago was the same guy who
started VMware. Imagine my surprise!

Given that a VMware founder helped inspire WAFL, it
seems there’s a sort of poetic justice that so many VMware customers use it for
their data.

Dave Hitz: Why Run VMware Over NAS?

At VMWorld
yesterday, I was surprised how excited customers are about using NFS to access
VMDKs, even for virtual machines hosting Windows. (A VMDK is a VMware Virtual
Disk, and it holds the boot image for its virtual machine.)

Since a VMDK is a
virtual disk, I had assumed that block-based protocols like iSCSI and Fibre Channel
would make more sense than NAS, so I asked several customers why they prefer
NFS.

The answer is
simple: Managing .vmdk files is much
easier than managing LUNs. If you have 20 or 30 virtual machines, then VMFS
is great for consolidating the VMDKs into a single LUN. But NAS is much easier
and more scalable if you have hundreds or thousands of virtual machines.

Pete Lindstrom:  VMworld 2007 – Best Virtual Security Product

Here it is, fresh from the VMworld exhibit hall:

An antivirus scanner built into the hypervisor. Created by Georgia Tech student Mukil Kesavan.

Okay, this isn’t really a product yet. It was created by a VMware
intern and exhibited in the academic poster area. In any case, I
thought it best demonstrated the potential for practical security
benefits in a virtualized environment.

Pete Lindstrom: VMworld 2007 Observation

I have been at VMworld this week (because Hoff said so)
and I have a simple observation: it is really strange hearing network
companies talk about systems management and systems companies talking
about networking.

Virtualization is shuffling the deck even more than that.

Sal Capizzi: Storage Is a Key Aspect of Server Virtualization

These announcement examples illustrate the ongoing trend of tighter integration between server and storage virtualization.
Without a doubt, more of these types of announcements will follow – not
only for VMware, but for other server virtualization implementations as
well. From a technical standpoint, there are certainly differences in
implementations of virtualization for servers and for storage. However,
from an end user or IT administrator perspective, the expectations are
not set in terms of server or storage virtualization, but rather in
such terms as cost savings, simplified monitoring, management, and
automation. Virtualization is not a product per se, but actually a
means to an end. Virtualization simplifies other tasks. Rather than
speak of server, storage, and I/O virtualization, the discussion will eventually center on such areas as consolidation, data migration, security, and disaster recovery.

James Rogers: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad VMworld!

How much virtualization can a person take? After 72 hours of
VMworld, I’m starting to unravel. The last three days have been a blur
of keynotes, press conferences, briefings, and press room sandwiches surely made out of cardboard. (The food here in the press center was "virtualized.")

Scott Lowe: (just the latest — make sure to catch all of Scott’s items)

Mike Laverick: (Check out Mike’s quite detailed notes and predictions on Storage VMotion, and again, just go and check out everything)

Thomas Bishop:

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