VMworld – Day One (Partner Day) – Monday 17th October

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In the week of VMworld, Monday is traditionally Partner day and Partner day always starts with the Partner keynote.

This years keynote was presented by Andy Hunt, VMware’s VP Channel, Alliances and SMB. 1800 partners registered for VMworld Partner day and tomorrow another 7000 visitors are expected which is 15% more than last year.

After a brief introduction on stage Carl Eschenbach, co-president VMware Customer Operations. Carl thanks all the partners for making VMware successful. Despite hard economic times VMware and Partners showed a strong growth in revenue (37%) and 85% of all revenue is done through partners.

Today VMware will publish the Q3 results after markets close in the US, and it looks to be very promising.

Next topic is the ecosystem for cloud computing. Moving from mainframe, to PC/Client-Server, Web to Cloud. These platonic shifts only happen every 10 to 20 years. The cloud is such a platonic shift and will drastically shift the way we deliver IT services. According to Gartner ‘Virtualization is a modernization catalyst and unlocks cloud computing‘.

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Today at VMworld Europe 2011 Partner day, VMware released a new version of their vSphere client for the iPad. Just in time for the real start of VMworld Europe 2011 in Copenhagen.

New in version 1.2 of the vSphere client for the iPad is:

• vMotion. The feature is available via Host & VM action menus. Virtual machines can also be two-finger flicked/dragged from the Host detail view to enter vMotion mode;
• Ability to email vMotion validation error details to others;
• View task progress reporting on VM cards;
• Ability to refresh vCenter host list;
• Support for ESX 3.5;
• Support for VMware vSphere 5.0.

Of course the vSphere client for iPad requires iOS 4.0 and vCMA, also version 1.2 in this case.

For a lot of people VMworld starts tomorrow. For the VMGuru.nl crew VMworld started today, with Partner Day. Take a look at the following movie for an impression of Partner Day.

VMworld – Day Zero – Sunday 16th October

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After last years success of our vRoadtrip to VMworld Copenhagen it is time for v2.0.  Watch our journey to Copenhagen to enjoy VMworld Europe 2011. The madness starts when we leave home.

At this years VMworld in Las Vegas, VMware introduced project AppBlast. AppBlast enables you to use remote applications of any type and platform and deliver them to any HTML5 browser or device. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS. You don’t need to install any client, it’s all pure HTML5.

AppBlast will provide the universal delivery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any off-the-shelf browser or device supporting HTML 5, enabling instant remote access to non-HTML based applications. It enables you to utilize multiple types of applications from your  client devices in a transparent and cross-platform manner, which is vital to the post-PC era we are entering.

At VMworld in Las Vegas, VMware’s chief technology officer for End-User Computing, Scott Davis showed a demo on his MacBook, running AppBlast in Google Chrome. In my opinion, ground breaking technology which will change the end user computing landscape! How? Read on….

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It’s a release party at VMware today. After VMware Workstation 8 and Fusion 4, VMware now released VMware View 5.

VMware View 5 will deliver better PCoIP performance, more supported client devices and integrated persona management.

The biggest differences are the media services, integrated persona management, several PCoIP enhancements and extended client support.

View Media Services for 3D Graphics
This enables basic 3D applications in View desktops without like Aero, Office 2010 or those requiring OpenGL or DirectX without the need for specialized graphics cards or client devices.

View Media Services for Integrated Unified Communications
Which enables and integrated VOIP and View desktop experience for the end-user with an architecture to provide optimized performance for both the desktop and unified communication.

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This week we already reported on Project Octopus but at the same time VMware announced the the long anticipated web based HTML5 application delivery tool called AppBlast, which will be available soon.

I don’t know where VMware gets it’s project names. With Project Octopus I picture IT meets James Bond and Project AppBlast sounds like IT meets Battlestar Galactica. But again, like Project Otocpus, it’s very cool.

For those that don’t know about AppBlast, it is a web based delivery model for delivering ThinApp applications to any end user device compatible with HTML5 and Java. App Blast integrates with VMware Horizon App Manager and will allow IT organizations to entitle users to access ThinApp applications directly from the web to any device such as Apple’s iPad or Android based devices.

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As I said yesterday, VMworld is always the time and place for VMware to announce new products and technologies.
Today was not any different.

VMware announced the next version of their virtual desktop solution, VMware View 5 which will become available in the coming weeks.

VMware View 5 will deliver better PCoIP performance, more supported client devices and integrated persona management. Also, VMware’s Horizon App Manager application broker will get a mobile version with ThinApp and View integration.

Persona management
VMware finally integrated the Virtual Profiles management tool which they acquired from RTO Software last year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support XP to Windows 7 profile compatibility. Probably because of the RTO Virtual Profile problems VMware encountered with  Windows 7 compatibility.

But the integrated View Persona Management feature does provide a basic way to manage user data and settings, application data and Windows registry settings. By doing so, the user profile is now independent of the virtual desktop, so the end user can log into any View desktop and see his profile.

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IToday VMware revealed Project Octopus at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas. VMware stopped being a virtualization-only company a while ago and now it continues to develop technologies and infrastructure that improve the way people work in this post-PC era.

Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra and Mozy to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Project Octopus will enable users to access files from any device and share them with people both inside  and outside their company in a completely safe and secure way.

Project Octopus integrates with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service.

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Today VMware’s VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas has started and VMworld is THE place for product announcements and releases.

This year VMware is announcing vFabric Data Director, a product which powers database-as-a-service for your cloud, reducing database sprawl and drastically accelerating application development cycles with a self-service database provisioning and operations platform.

The new product offers policy-based automation to manage those diverse databases. vFabric Data Director allows for self-service provisioning of databases for developers so they can quickly grab the database service they need to create new applications. vFabric Data Director is an enterprise solution that extends the benefits of VMware’s leading virtualization platform to the database tier and lets administrators securely automate and delegate routine tasks, including database provisioning, backup, and cloning.

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With the release of service pack 3 for Simpana 9, CommVault adds full support for VMware vSphere 5. Many organizations struggle with  rapid data growth, expanding virtual server deployments and increasing data center consolidations because legacy backup and recovery solutions just can’t cope with the demands of new virtual infrastructures.

With vSphere 5, VMware raises the bar again and pushes the limits of performance and scale. Virtual machines can now be up to four times more powerful than previous versions. With full vSphere 5 support, CommVault claims it can keep up with VMware’s pace.

CommVault Simpana 9 with service pack 3 delivers the ability to protect hundreds of VMs in minutes, scale to protect thousands of VMs and provides an off-host backup approach that ensures even the most performance intensive “Monster VM” can be easily backed-up.

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After the release on July 12th, you can now download VMware vSphere 5 and enjoy the 150 new features.

You can find the downloads here.

For more information visit:

• VMware ESXi and VMware ESX Info Center
• VMware vSphere 5 release notes.

If you want to upgrade your existing VMware vSphere installation, check out my previous article on how to upgrade to vSphere 5.

Want to know more regarding VMware’s new licensing model? Check out the latest changes here.
Hint: Read carefully and calculate the impact on your environment before forming your opinion!

Now, don’t let me keep you, GO and try out vSphere 5!

Since the announcement of VMware vSphere 5, the attention for the great new features has been swapped by the discussion on the new VMware vSphere 5 licensing model.

Because of the processor association it looks complicated and expensive but if you do the math, most of the time pricing remains the same. Gabrie van Zanten wrote an excellent article on that.

In short, with traditional virtual infrastructures used for server virtualization, the host servers seldom exceed the 96GB per host. This matches with a dual socket server licensed with VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus. In that scenario the number of vSphere 5 ‘processor’ licenses will equal the number of physical sockets, so the total cost for this environment will be equal with the new vSphere 5 licensing model.

But how about the new licensing model with memory dense servers/blades like we use in VDI solutions. When housing 100-200 VDI desktops on a single server you need immense amounts of memory and with the new vSphere 5 licensing model this would cost much much more that with the old licensing model.

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With the introduction of VMware vSphere 5, VMware introduces a new licensing model. VMware will retain a per processor model but they  removed some restrictions which were in the vSphere 4 licensing model. This is mainly regarding the number of cores per processor and the amount of physical memory in a host on which vSphere 4 could be deployed. With vSphere 5 it does no longer matter how many cores or amount of memory a ESXi hosts has.

Instead of the physical restrictions, VMware introduces a single virtualization based entitlement of pooled virtual memory (vRAM). According to VMware, this will simplify the process of purchasing deploying and managing vSphere while facilitating the move to shared infrastructure as a service.

vSphere 5.0 will be licensed on a per-processor basis with a vRAM entitlement. Each vSphere 5.0 CPU license will entitle the customer to a specific amount of vRAM, or memory configured to virtual machines. The vRAM entitlement can be pooled across a vSphere environment to enable a true cloud or utility based IT consumption model.

The vSphere 5.0 licensing model is per processor with pooled vRAM entitlements. According to VMware, this should offer customers the following benefits relative to the previous vSphere 4 model:

Simplicity – Removes two physical constraints (core and physical RAM), replacing them with a single virtual entitlement (vRAM). Customers now have a clear path to license vSphere on next-generation hardware configurations.

Flexibility – Extends the concept of resource pooling from technology to the business of IT by allowing aggregation and sharing of vRAM entitlement across a large pool of servers.

Fairness – Better aligns cost with actual use and value derived,rather than with hardware configurations and capacity.

Evolution – Allows customers to evolve to a cloud-like “pay for consumption” model without disrupting established purchasing, deployment and license-management practices and processes.

In all fairness, with this VMware introduced the much criticized virtual machine based licensing ‘with a twist’. Because they now license based on the amount of allocated vRAM, you’re much more limited in the total number of deployed virtual machines than you where when you were limited by physical memory and processor cores.

I’m afraid this may backfire on VMware, especially when in competition with Microsoft or Citrix.

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Today VMware had planned a webcast named ‘Raising the bar. Part V’. It was a public secret that they were going to announce VMware vSphere 5 and indeed they did. But on top of that VMware also new released new versions of vCloud Director (1.5), vCenter SRM (5.0) and vShield (5.0).

To accomplish this VMware has spent more than a million hours engineering and two million hours of quality assurance to deliver hundreds of additional capabilities which eventually became VMware vSphere 5.

VMGuru.nl is verry proud to announce that for the third year in a row, we can proudly wear the VMware vExpert logo on our site.

Alex, Anne Jan and myself have been given the vExpert award 2011 for our contributions to the VMware virtualization community. This is an acknowledgement of our work and we will continue to share our knowledge and expertise with others.

The vExpert program is a way for VMware to acknowledge and help those who ‘go the extra mile’ and give back to the VMware user community by sharing their expertise and time. vExperts are bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, event organizers, speakers, tool builders, forum leaders, and others who share their virtualization expertise.

Edwin is still waiting for the second batch of vExpert e-mails to go out tonight and I’m confident he will be a 2011 vExpert too.

Special thanks go out to John Troyer, who had to endure our abuse but in spite of that spent very much time in the vExpert program. Thanks John!

For a list of 2011 VMware vExpert check out the list on the site of Arnim van Lieshout.

Update:2/7/2011 As the second batch went out, Edwin also received his vExpert 2011!! VMguru.nl is vExpert all the way!