Mike D’s Blog

Calling all coding hacks!

Back in December, VMware launched the VMware Script-O-Mania contest. The goal of the Script-O-Mania contest is to help our wider community adopt ESXi by providing useful, fun and powerful scripts to manage the ESXi platform. But this isn’t just fun and games – there’s real prizes!

• 1st Prize $2,500
• 2nd Prize $1,000
• 3rd Prize $500

So polish off those scripting skills and get coding. The contest ends on March 15, 2010. You can find full details and submit your entry here.

Recently, Fujitsu submitted their cloud API to the DMTF for consideration in the standards process. The news caught my eye a long time ago and I read up on the effort a long time ago but just never got around to blogging about it. Well, here I am with time to blog so let me give you a quick run down of what’s going on and then link you to a great post by William Vanbenepe for more detailed information.

VMware had submitted our vCloud API to the DMTF a while back. This was an effort to get the conversation and process started on creating a standardized cloud API for all to use. We don’t expect that ours will be the end result of this process. We really just did the submission to spark the discussion (although we also think ours is a good start). Fujitsu was the first to follow with a submission although there are others out there with an API (Amazon, Rackspace, Google, SUN, etc). Hopefully the others will submit their thoughts and participate in this process.

So what is this Fujitsu API? It’s actually less of an API and more of a definition of interconnects. I mean there are no functions per-se. Nothing to program against. It’s really interesting to see what they wrote up. I think if you combine their submission with the VMware submission you get some overlap in definitions but they really do provide a good synergy.

Anyhow, I just thought I’d make everyone aware of what’s going on. This will be a long process and we probably won’t see the first draft until the end of 2010 at the earliest. If you happen to work for or work with one of the other companies that has an API out there then encourage them to work with this process so we can get something the ISV ecosystem can really get behind. I’ve said it once and will say it 1,000 times – standards is the only way this cloud thing is going to work and stick around.

Read more on the details of the Fujitsu API at William’s blog.

As I stated on Tuesday, I was speaking on a cloud panel at a TMForum event last week. It was a really great event. One of the things that TMForum announced the day that I was down there was the Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council. It’s a really interesting group that combines leading Enterprises in the cloud space with leading Service Providers/Telcos in the cloud space to figure out what Enterprises really need from a cloud. This is something that nearly everyone I’ve talked to in the cloud vendor world has struggled to truly understand. Sure there are some base requirements out there:

• Fast provisioning


• Security


• Support for enterprise apps and operating systems


• Etc

To date though people have pretty much taken a “build it and they will come” approach. While that’s fine it’s really hard to get to the commodity type of pricing that consumers want when you have to put out a lot of CapEx in order to stand up capacity on services you hope the market will consume. It’s much easier for the business to have a set of requirements to operate against. It’s the aim of this new council to work on those requirements.

Just looking through the press release on the first vendors to sign up I see a lot of familiar names:

• Alcatel-Lucent


• Amdocs


• AT&T


• BT


• CA


• Cisco


• EMC


• HP


• IBM


• Microsoft


• Nokia Siemens Networks


• Telecom Italia


• Telstra


• Deutsche Bank


• Commonwealth Bank of Australia

I’ve been working with pretty much everyone on that list to build up their cloud service so I know for a fact that all are advanced enough in cloud that we should get a good list of requirements from this group. More will be coming into the fold soon from the enterprise side to join the two enterprises already on the list.

What’s even better is this organization is also working with the DMTF. The DMTF seems to be the one common group that all of the standards orgs and bodies are working with. They already have a formal relationship with CSA (the Cloud Security Alliance) and an informal one with OCCI (the Open Cloud Computing Initiative).

Make sure you follow this org closely and sign your own organization up to help with the effort if you’re getting into cloud. Of course I’d really like to see more enterprises in this group than vendors in order to get good material out. Right now it’s too heavy on the vendor side of the house.

Here’s a list of things they are currently working on to keep your eyes on:

• Common Cloud Services Product Definitions


• Cloud Security Issues


• Cloud-to-Cloud Interoperability, Data Portability and APIs


• Service Provider Benchmarking


• Buyer-demand Forecasting


• Federated Cloud Stores


• Cloud Service Level Agreement Process Management


• Cloud Network Performance and Latency Issues

I’d be interested to hear other’s thoughts on this new buying council and the impact to the industry.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now but just in case – this one is hillarious.

I’ve had a lot of people ping me lately asking where the heck I’ve been. My last post was back in July and wasn’t very cloudy then either. The truth of the matter is I’ve been working completely on cloud. The market has taken off and everyone wants to launch something ASAP and thankfully VMware has been the centerpiece for every single cloud out there (except Microsoft, Google, and Amazon).

I was recently just at an all day cloud track at TMForum where most of the major telcos, service providers, and enterprise cloud players from around the world had all gathered together. It was interesting to sit there and listen to every single one get up and talk about what they were doing with VMware to launch their cloud. So many exciting things that I really wish I could blog about but NDAs and a complete lack of time have prevented me from doing so.

So here we are at the end of the year and some people are going into change control freeze so I’m starting to get a little more time to catch up and sleep. 7 months with only 4-5 hours sleep each night can really drain you. So what do I do with this new found time? Well, for one I’m going to start blogging about all of the great stuff that’s happening in cloud from the eyes of someone that’s been out there launching customers. For another thing I’m working with our strategic partners out there to develop our joint cloud story so I’ll write about what we’re doing there. The main point is that I need to write and get all of these thoughts out of my head and onto paper.

My first set of topics is going to be all about the vCloud API – what it is, how to use it, etc. I’ve been the main guy behind a real-world implementation of the vCloud API so people can actually consume it. I’m also writing the self-paced lab for the vCloud API and the VI Java API at VMware Partner Exchange 2010. This will help me get some of those ideas out and talked about before they go into the lab.

Well, that’s it. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am around and kicking. A lot of hard work later and some 190,000 air miles and this market is really moving forward. So look for more posts from me very soon. Until then…

As many of you know I’m an aviation nut. I know I haven’t been blogging lately here and it’s not for lack of trying. It’s also not because I’ve just been busy flying (although I would love for that to be the case). Cloud has just really taken off more than I ever thought it would and I’ve been extremely busy with customers all over the world. That’s not why I’m writing today. I’m going off topic to honor a real hero and to blast the media nuts for not picking this up. Instead we’re stuck with 24×7 for 25 days of Michael Jackson’s death. I’d like to honor someone else instead. Someone I’m not related to but I wish I was – Ed Freeman. Here’s Ed’s story…

You’re a 19-year-old kid. You’re critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn’t seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He’s coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

Thanks to the media for not picking this up. Someday I wish you all would report on something other than gossip or whatever got you ratings.

In 2008, VMware launched the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP). This program allows service providers to pay for VMware licenses on a per VM per month usage basis. This aligns better with the monthly charges that service providers give to their customers and reduces the upfront Capex spend for service providers.

Today VSPP has over 700 service providers in the program. That’s a pretty large presence. What’s more is that nearly all of these service providers are in the middle of adding VMware-powered cloud service to their existing managed hosting environments. That is the power of the VMware vCloud initiative – choice of several hundred different providers to get you exactly what you need and compatibility between all of those various cloud providers.

For more information on the new milestone of VSPP read this press release. For more information on VSPP go here.

Previously I have talked a bit about OVF and how great it is for the industry. VMware’s implementation of OVF is called vApp and it’s fully OVF 1.0 compliant. The tool used for creating vApps is called VMware Studio and it can be found here.

The new version of VMware Studio (2.0) is now in beta. One of my favorite features of VMware Studio 2.0 is the Eclipse plug-in. Now developers can develop their apps, test them out locally with VMware Workstation, and then build them into a vApp and inject that vApp directly to a VMware Virtual Infrastructure or vSphere environment or even a VMware powered cloud. The ability to go straight from the development environment through to the cloud from within your IDE is pretty powerful – especially with how popular the cloud is for a development platform. Just another way that VMware is showing its leadership in the cloud space.

Here are some more highlights of VMware Studio 2.0 beta:

• Build vApps and virtual appliances (with in-guest OS and application components) compatible with VMware Infrastructure, VMware vSphere 4.0 and vCloud.
• Use an Eclipse plug-in version in addition to the stand-alone form factor. A Web Console and Command Line Interface are also furnished.
• Ability to accept existing Studio-created VM builds as input
• Support for Windows 2003 and 2008 Server as guest operating systems in addition to major linux distros.

ISV partners:

• Author and build virtual appliances optimized for VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere 4.0: Support for OVF 1.0 and 0.9
• Publish patches to update deployed virtual appliances
• Extensible in-guest management framework
• Automatic Dependency resolution (static)
• Support for 32 bit and 64 bit versions of SLES 10.2, RHEL 5.2 and 5.3, CentOS 5.2 and 5.3, Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 as guest operating systems

Studio 2.0 also provides general purpose features enhancements in provisioning and user experience

• VMware ESX Server, VMware ESXi, VMware Server 2.0, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 enabled as provisioning engines
• Infrastructure enhancements in the GUI and builds

The public Beta is accessible now from http://www.vmware.com/appliances/learn/vmware_studio.html.

It seems every time I’m in an account and finish talking about VMware’s cloud strategy and ecosystem Oracle comes up as a discussion point. Customers ask why Oracle seems to be going in the complete opposite direction of their strategic directions and cloud in general. I don’t have a good answer for that one other than to agree with them. Take the announcement from earlier last week that Oracle is killing off Virtual Iron shortly after the acquisition. It’s yet another virtualization technology they bought and have subsequently killed (SUN xVM being the other). This is just one of the many reasons customers are seeing SUN running against their strategic directions (virtualization is somewhat crucial to getting the cloud going). You add in Oracle’s licensing practices and disjointed vision and you can see the puzzle pieces falling into place. Meanwhile you have people like VMware, Intel, Cisco, and EMC (VICE) all aligning with customers’ strategic vision and taking them on the path to better days.

OK. So maybe you have to be in sales to really understand the humor in this one. Still, in this economy this is only getting worse. Enjoy the humor post and I promise to start blogging more about cloud soon. I just got back from 18 days in EMEA talking to a lot of our hosting partners that are now getting into the cloud game. Exciting times!

On April 27, the DMTF launched the Open Cloud Standards Incubator. The goal as described by the DMTF press release is as follows:

The work of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aims to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability and provide management consistency across cloud and enterprise platforms.

The Open Cloud Standards Incubator was formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, which enables like-minded DMTF members to work together and produce informational specifications that can later be fast-tracked through the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements the DMTF mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards.

Winston Bumpus, current President of the DMTF and fellow VMware employee has blogged a lot about cloud and the need for standards. His latest blog entry continues to highlight this push for VMware and the industry at large. VMware has had a lot of success in collaborating with others in the industry through the DMTF. The first successful example of that is the OVF (Open Virtualization Format). I’m sure the incubator project will yield similar (if not better) results.

I came across an interesting site today for an event called “Shutdown Day“.

Shutdown Day announces the Annual 2009 Campaign. Just like in years past, Shutdown Day 2009 calls on every net obsessed, computer–addicted individual to SHUT DOWN their computers for 24 hours on May 2, 2009 and do something else!

New, Shutdown Day 2009 will be promoting several organizations that help young people suffering from computer addiction. A bunch of events are also organized for May 2, 2009, so stay tuned and watch this space.

I find this to be an interesting concept. Personally on May 2, I’ll be on vacation in a place where I get no cell reception and my wife would throw my laptop into the ocean if I start using it. But what about the rest of you? Do you have what it takes to shut stuff down for a day? I think it would help everyone to spread this around. It may actually help some of our fellow geek friends save their marriage. What are your thoughts about shutting down for a day?

So you’ve recovered from rolling on the floor laughing at the launch video for vSphere. You know, the one with the engineers running around the world with the gold CD. I thought it was awesome. You also finished reading my pumped up blog post to convince you to upgrade to vSphere. What’s next. Well, now it’s time to do some planning and see what’s involved in this new major release. Thank goodness we have some awesome SEs in the company and one of them created a whole bunch of upgrade videos to walk you through the process. There’s even an entire site dedicated to the upgrade process. You can start your training with the first of the videos below. Enjoy!

Step-by-Step Migration Videos

It’s probably been one of the worst kept secrets in IT but now the news is officially out. Today, VMware is launching the next generation of their products – collectively called vSphere. vSphere is comprised of the stuff you already know (VMware ESX Server and VMware Virtual Center) plus new and existing management products. All of that together is vSphere.

vSphere is a major launch for VMware and lays the foundation for the next generation of how companies do computing. It builds on top of everything customers already have and gives them even more power. It also provides the foundation to build internal and external clouds. There are three main take-aways from today’s launch event that you should know about:

• If you’re a current customer then go out and upgrade NOW. There are so many things that have been put into this product at the direct request of customers that you should start taking advantage of these things today. The upgrade is fairly painless and the features you get with this release will help you get back even more of your precious time.
• VMware vSphere is the best value for money for every customer segment.
• The competition debate is over. Pricing was the only argument for the competition. With the new packages, VMware delivers the best value and best ROI at every pricepoint, starting from free all the way to $3500/CPU, from small customers all the way to global enterprises.

1) Upgrade NOW!!! If you are a current enterprise customer, you get 30% better consolidation, 50% additional storage savings, 20% additional power savings just by upgrading to 4.0. And to top it all, you get amazing new capabilities – Fault Tolerance for mainframe-class availability, automatic security zoning for apps, blazing performance for Tier 1 apps, etc. No extra charge – it is all free. The business value could not be more compelling.

2) VMware is delivering the best value for the money for all customers.

• For SMB – The SMB value proposition is unique. VMware is delivering Enterprise-class, ‘Always-On’ IT without requiring enterprise-class, expensive IT staff at prices SMB can afford. In addition to savings on servers, memory and power, VMware is enabling 50% storage savings through built-in capabilities like thin provisioning that SMB could never previously afford. VMware is delivering virtualization manageability starting at as little as $165/CPU. VMware has also taken the Virtual Infrastructure Standard SKU which was oriented at the enterprise with its performance and high availability and are now offering the same capabilities for $1500. No one else offers the combination of savings, ‘always-on IT’, manageability, performance that VMware does.
• For mid-market and commercial customers, vSphere Advanced is the new SKU and it offers a groundbreaking combination of consolidation, high availability, security and management at mid-market prices. Advanced SKU provides Fault Tolerance, security zones, one-click data protection and of course VMotion, all integrated with best-in-class virtualization management. When you combine these capabilities with the 30% additional consolidation ratio and 50% storage savings, you get a solution that is not only unrivalled but a fantastic value.
• The bottom line is, folks – VMware has the best product at every pricepoint for every customer, whether you are enterprise or mid-market or small.

3) VMware is blowing away the competition and extending their lead in terms of unique vision for the future as well as unique capabilities for the present.

• VMware has the strategic message and vision for large customers, i.e. enabling them to transform their datacenters into highly efficient, agile private clouds. VMware also has a unique and compelling offer to SMB, i.e. enterprise-class, ‘always-on IT’ at SMB affordability.
• VMware offers the best economic value at every pricepoint. VMware is already the leader in cost per application virtualized. VMware is extending on their lead by delivering amazing new savings to customers – 30% more consolidation, 50% storage savings, 20% power savings.
• If the competition wants a feature comparison, bring it on!! VMware is delivering groundbreaking new capabilities for both large and small customers – VMotion is old news folks; it’s about Fault Tolerance, it’s about application security, it’s about integrated data protection, integrated power management, it’s about Storage VMotion, it’s about DRS and many new capabilities.
• If you’re out there wondering about if Microsoft or Citrix is catching up then you can end that conversation right now, once and for all, with the vSphere release. VMware has dramatically distanced themselves from the competition. The competition debate is over.

So don’t wait another minute. Go check out the new vSphere release today. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

This is one of the more interesting videos I’ve seen lately. It’s a short 2 minute 30 second clip that shows the inside of the Facebook datacenter but more importantly talks about the tasks they’re up against like having to store 2,000 photos a second or 40 billion a month. All that with a handful of engineers. It’s pretty incredible actually. Enjoy the video.