Stratus Technologies, one of the leaders in hardware fault tolerant platforms, has acquired its main competitor, Marathon Technologies in a move that consolidates the best of hardware and software fault tolerant computing systems into a single entity. Stratus’s claim to fame came from its hardware fault tolerant servers that were built in pairs, with duplicate hardware, to ensure that no single component failure will cause any system downtown. Stratus built very solid and reliable systems but on its own proprietary hardware and this acquisition now expands Stratus’s ability to provide software fault tolerance to any industry-standard physical or virtual server. This opens opportunities for new customers no matter what physical hardware the customers uses and prefers.
Stephen Beaver is the co-author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center and Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration as well as being contributing author of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and How to Cheat at Configuring VMware ESX Server. Stephen is an IT Veteran with over 15 years experience in the industry. Stephen is a moderator on the VMware Communities Forum and was elected vExpert for 2009 and 2010. Stephen can also be seen regularly presenting on different topics at national and international virtualization conferences.
Microsoft and VMware: Two Different Paths to the Future
Now that VMword 2012 San Francisco is over and I have some time to reflect on my virtualization thoughts in general before getting ready for VMworld Barcelona. One thing I took noticed with the recent announcements about vSphere 5.1 and Hyper-V 2012. Microsoft and VMware both released a specific new feature to each platform respectfully at basically the same time. Is this a sign that Microsoft is really closing the gap on VMware? I think we are getting there but I have also made some other personal observations on how I think both see virtualization in the future and I foresee a completely different method and mindset for the future between these two companies.
VMworld 2012: First Thoughts and Observations
Now that VMworld 2012 is well underway I wanted to share some of my first thoughts and observations about the conference. At the start of the conference, during the first General Session, the virtual passing of the torch from the outgoing CEO, Paul Maritz to the new incoming CEO, Pat Gelsinger took place with Mr. Gelsinger getting his opportunity to say hello to a crowd of around twenty thousand people that are present at the show.
2012: The Year of Software Defined Networking
The start of VMworld 2012 and the biggest Virtualization conference of the year is less than two weeks away and the surge of marketing emails have started to arrive about all the new and exciting offerings that the venders and 3rd party companies are planning on showing off at VMworld. This is one of the things I enjoy the most about attending these conferences, seeing what’s new and to see the direction of the trends in virtualization. At last year’s show, VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, the trend that I saw was the advancements in storage and storage virtualization. My prediction at the end of VMworld 2011 was that 2012 would be the year for the network virtualization and or software defined networking.
Type 0 Hypervisor – Fact or Fiction
While looking around the web for anything new with virtualization, I kept seeing more and more posts and articles about the new type of virtual hypervisor. Type 0, now this sounds interesting and I found these definitions for each type of hypervisor.
VMware’s Executive Shuffle! Maritz Out and Gelsinger In
VMworld 2012 is right around the corner and the time leading up to the conference is usually the time major announcements are made about new technology and/or new products to strike interest in different technologies that will be presented at the conference. Today a different kind of announcement has been made, in that Paul Maritz is no longer VMware CEO, and he is being replaced by Pat Gelsinger, President and COO of EMC’s Information Infrastructure Product division. Mr. Maritz will become a Vice Chairman at EMC, although I am still up in the air on whether that means Paul is on his way out of EMC or looking to lead somewhere else? Maybe one could speculate Cloud Foundry? What do you make of VMware’s Executive Shuffle?