Mike D’s Blog

Amrit Williams, the CTO of BigFix, has an interesting blog on all sorts of topics. Recently he posted about some of the myths in virtualization. This sparked a very interesting conversation between Amrit and myself. I agree with the myths he brings about but felt some of them really should be busted rather than confirmed. At any rate it’s worth a read to see the different viewpoints for sure. Go here and make sure to read the comments.

Thanks, Amrit for being open and opinionated!

Tags: myths, VMware

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on virtualization at iCoast in Ft Lauderdale. Myself, Mick Hollison from Citrix, Rene Alamo from Microsoft, and Jay Kruemcke from IBM talked to a packed room about virtualization. What was interesting to me is Rene kept saying Hyper-V was “the Windows you know and love”. I say it’s interesting not because I’ve never heard it said before (it’s Microsoft’s main point to customers these days) but rather because Microsoft is still going down that road. Actually what shocks me even more is the mindless nodding of heads in the audience as if they’re stuck in some borg trance. Time to snap out of the Microsoft trance people. Hyper-V is anything but the Windows you know and love.

Recently the competitive team from VMware did a run down of some basic virtualization tasks between VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. I don’t think the results will shock you. When watching the videos pay close attention to the actual commands being typed on the Hyper-V side. I’m pretty good with the command line in Windows and yet all of these commands are net new for Server Core in Windows Server 2008. This isn’t the Windows I grew up with. Heck, I’m a MCSE and I still don’t recognize that stuff. So much for “using my existing skill sets” – another phrase Microsoft likes to tell their customers.

The point is, if you’re going to do virtualization at all then you’re going to need to learn new skill sets. You’re going to have to learn what’s actually happening with your workloads and how to troubleshoot them. I know, there are a few out there that actually do know that, but the masses generally have no clue what their workloads actually do or how they do it. Trust me, I get the calls to help troubleshoot the problems. There are new commands to learn as well. Server Core and Hyper-V weren’t around before. You don’t have existing skill sets with these technologies. Yo have to learn new stuff. So it’s time to debunk this myth: The Windows You Know and Love – BUSTED.

DISCLAIMER: I work for VMware as a Systems Engineer. I have worked in the virtualization industry for over 6 years. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent views of my employer or of anyone else. This blog is written on my own time and with my own energy. I am not commenting in this blog on behalf of my employer or anyone else. If you would like official statements about VMware you can contact my employer’s PR firm. I always welcome and encourage open and constructive conversations and will not block any comments from appearing on this blog other than obvious SPAM or threatening hate mail.

Tags: hyper-v

A few posts ago I was replying to some FUD from a new competitor of VMware’s called Marathon. You can read the first post and second post on the blog. These two posts generated a lot of comments. A few of the comments were from a poster called TopGun. In his first comment he leaves the following at the end:

“And I agree with the previous poster, my site was one of those that were done do to the license “foul up”. Not sure I’d want to trust my most critical apps to this software, especially version 1.0.”

I want to say it really is bad that people got screwed up by what’s called the “time bomb”. If TopGun were an actual customer I would feel even worse. The only problem is he’s not a customer. He works for Stratus – another VMware FT competitor (sort of).

Continue reading »

Tags: VMware

I’ve been working a lot lately with some people from Veeam on a demo for my Deploying VMware in a Microsoft Shop session. Veeam recently acquired nWorks who makes this great plug-in for Microsoft Systems Center so it can see VMware environments. Alec King from Veeam put together a great demo of what is possible with the plug-in. I’ve included that demo below.

VMworld Veeam Demo

You can learn more about the plug-in by visiting Veeam’s site here. While you’re there you might just want to look at all of the other great stuff they have for a VMware environment. They’re one of my favorite technology partners. What’s really been amazing to me is how these guys were everywhere at VMworld last week. They were on my room key for the Venetian. They were mentioned in the partner day keynote. They had a session during partner day. They were actually in a lot of sessions throughout the week. And they had a great booth. Definitely an interesting company to keep an eye on.

Tags: VMware, VMworld

I’m not sure why this is but every year after VMworld I get a head cold and a sore throat for a couple of weeks. I thought I had escaped the trend this year but low and behold I woke up this morning sick as a dog again. Maybe the delayed reaction came from walking around Vegas on a broken foot all week. Who knows. For those of you that did attend I hope you really enjoyed the show and aren’t sick now. For those that didn’t attend the show you missed what I think was the best VMworld ever.

I got a lot of comments about the demos during my sessions so in between naps and cold medicine shots and trips to the Orthopedist this week I’ll be posting the source and documentation for all of my demos on the blog here. Hopefully some of you will find this useful – especially the PowerShell stuff.

Thanks again for everyone’s support during the show and moving forward as customers and partners. If you have any questions or comments on the stuff I’ll be posting please don’t hesitate to comment or email me directly.

Tags: VMware, VMworld

After reading and responding to a horribly inaccurate article from Marathon about VMware FT I decided to look through the rest of their site now that I have some time during my 5 hour flight delay home and see what else they may have missed a little. I came across the following information from this page of their site where they try to compare VMware HA versus Marathon everRun. It shows further that either they have never used VMware’s products or they are having real trouble checking a single checkbox to enable HA in a VMware environment. Here are the corrections.

Continue reading »

Tags: VMware

It’s the last day of VMworld and boy does my head hurt. Way too much information out there. Only 5 more sessions to present at today and then I’m done. I did get a small break to check email and such today and ran across a rather interesting blog posting from Marathon. In this posting they try to tell customers why VMware FT (fault tolerance) is so horrible. I’m fine with people talking bad about VMware as long as it’s accurate. In this case it’s nowhere close and obviously was written by someone that just doesn’t understand VMware or virtualization. I thought I’d take a second to make some corrections here. Go read the source article first. Most of it is quoted here for reference.

Continue reading »

Tags: marathon, VMware

It’s finally here – VMworld 2008. I made it into Vegas last night. Let me pause and say the airlines need to get MUCH better on how they treat people with disabilities. I have a broken foot so my disability is only temporary but air travel while you’re disabled (especially when you need to stretch out your leg) is NOT fun. OK. Enough complaining about getting here.

Today is Partner Day/TAM Day/Lab Day at VMworld. You can tell the event has kicked off since the AT&T network is now down. No sending or receiving email. No browsing the web. Nothing. Why does the AT&T network crumble under these conference loads? It wouldn’t be too bad if you could actually get on the wireless network here. That’s the other thing. I’ve never been to a technology conference of any decent size where the wireless has worked. I really think conferences should stop paying these providers for their services.

So far the event is great. Steve Houck got up first to talk about our commitment to Partners and recap the VMware Affiliate program where partners get paid by our partners to sell their products in conjunction with VMware. Paul Maritz spoke this morning to the partners about our future direction. It was great to hear the feedback from partners. It seems we’re heading in the right direction. Carl Eschenbach spoke as the clean up hitter and got everyone energized about the opportunity that’s in front of us. Even though it was a dawn patrol (it started at 8 am) there was a LOT of energy in the room.

I’ll try to fill everyone in on things happening during the conference but it’s a very busy schedule for me. The big news should hit tomorrow during the official Keynote from Paul to the world.

Tags: VMware, VMworld

I’ve been heads down this week working on some last minute stuff for VMworld 2008. I get a day off today before I fly out this afternoon and so I’m just catching up on all of the news in the virtualization space from last week and boy was there a lot! While reading through some articles to get more details on Microsoft’s new Hyper-V 2008 Server offering I found a good blog post here. It’s pretty much in-line with what everyone else is saying, but that’s not the purpose of this post. What struck me as odd was this comment:

Hyper-V server is not open source or free software. It’s downloadable at no cost.
Microsoft is dedicated to providing an open and interoperable platform strategy as an alternative to VMWare’s closed strategy. I guess making Hyper-V open source is a bridge too far…

Closed strategy? How exactly does VMware have a closed strategy? This is something I’ve heard thrown out there before but it’s very puzzling for the following reasons:

1) VMware was the first (and the only right now) to support the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Note – this is on Citrix’s roadmap as part of Kensho. I do have to give Kudos to them for (a) participating in helping make this standard and (b) getting it into their products quickly. This does nothing but help the IT world as a whole and hopefully drive the adoption of more virtual appliances. Most of the appliances on VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace site have been converted to OVF. VMware Workstation 6.0.5 supports opening these appliances – so does the free VMware Converter – so does the free VMware ESXi. VMware was also on the committee that came up with the Open Virtualization Format helping to drive that standard. So how is that closed and proprietary?

2) VMware has a Community Source Program where you can just sign a piece of paper and bam – you’ve got access to the source code so you can develop deep integrations into the product (which a lot of people have as you’ll see at VMworld this week). How is that closed?

3) VMware has the broadest ecosystem of partners and products in the whole virtualization industry. At last count I believe VMware has 130 times the number of list partners as Microsoft – the topic for this article. This is all thanks to our free and open SDKs and APIs. For the Windows people out there you can even download and use the awesome PowerShell interface which I’ll be doing a demo of during my talk on “Deploying VMware in a Microsoft Shop” at VMworld this week. These same APIs are what’s allowing Microsoft and Citrix both to manage VMware environments. Again, how is that closed?

So all of you FUD slingers out there – it’s time to pick something else to lie about. VMware is the most open virtualization vendor that’s out there to date. I guess it really is time to start my “Debunking the Myths of Virtualization” series of blogs I’ve been meaning to do. This post is definitely in that category. If you’ve heard other rumors you’d like me to drill into and put some facts behind just let me know by commenting here.

Tags: standards, VMware

In true XenSource – I mean Citrix – fashion the next release is now XenServer 5. This from a company that started the commercial release at version 3. I can kind of understand doing this since they’re at 4.1 right now and they are putting a lot of stuff into the next release. They also just released XenApp 5. Of course does this mean they jump from XenDesktop 1 to XenDesktop 5?

All of this brings up the question of do version numbers matter anymore? Is this something you actually look at when determining the maturity of the product?

You now have a case where VMware’s competing Virtual Infrastructure line is at 3.x after being on the market for over 7 years (mid-2001) and then XenServer at version 5 after being released less than 2 years ago (the end of 2006). At this pace perhaps VMware should reversion to release 18?

I’d be interested to hear some feedback on how version numbers influence your decision to use one product or another.

Tags: Citrix

A while back the world learned that Microsoft was going to spend $300 million to produce some new ads to counter the Apple ads out there. Personally I love the Apple ads. So off they went and enlisted the help of Jerry Seinfeld. I also love Seinfled so I couldn’t wait for the new ads. Well, here’s the first one with Bill Gates buying some shoes. Yup. It’s an ad about nothing. And here’s where I have to hope that Microsoft keeps this up.

Let me know what you think about the new ads. Do they have a hope?

Tags: Microsoft

Edward Haletky has posted an “article” over on CIO.com about Hyper-V security. I put “article” in quotations since it’s more like a list of questions to ask Microsoft about the security of their new solution. You should give it a read if you’re concerned at all about security in your virtualization environment. While the list of questions is specific for Hyper-V it brings up some good thinking points that can be asked to any virtualization vendor. It’s worth 5 minutes to go give it a read.

Tags: hyper-v, Microsoft, Security

It’s official – VMware was the first to actually certify a hypervisor under Microsoft’s new Server Virtualization Validation Program. There was some confusion when the list of participants in SVVP was announced earlier in August. Originally VMware wasn’t on the list. Later that day that ommission was corrected and VMware was on the list. However, what most people didn’t realize was 2 important things:

1) The list only included people that had signed an agreement. No one on the list had yet passed the tests needed for SVVP support.

2) SVVP support didn’t even start until Sept 1 (this past Monday).

The bottom line is today VMware is the first one to get full joint support from Microsoft under SVVP. I have no idea at what stage the others on the list are at with the tests but I can’t imagine they’re too far behind. For more on the great news just go here: VMware ESX is the Industry’s First Hypervisor to be Validated by Microsoft, Offers Customers Expanded Support Options for Microsoft Applications – VMware.

Tags: Microsoft, Support, svvp