Reflex VMC — The First VMsafe Certification

Reflex Systems announced today that they have the first VMware VMsafe Certification for their Reflex VMC product.   This announcement brings two things to light. The first is that VMware has made a very smart move to certify VMsafe drivers for their hypervisor, which is a much needed step I have written about previously. The second …

Measuring Hypervisor Footprints

There have been several interesting posts in the blogosphere about virtualization security and how to measure it. Specifically, the discussions are really about the size of the hypervisor footprint or about the size of patches. But hypervisor footprints from a security perspective are neither of these. The concern when dealing with hypervisor security is about Risk not about the size of the hypervisor or the size of a patch it is purely about the Risks associated with the hypervisor in terms if confidentiality, availability, and integrity.

Going to vSphere — The Need to Upgrade

I have been preparing my virtual environment for a VMware vSphere upgrade. Specifically I have been going over my existing hardware with an eye towards running all aspects of vSphere including VMware Fault Tolerance (FT), NPIV, Cisco Nexus 1000V, and well everything.

What an SMB wants – VMware Take Note – Microsoft Understands

There is this misconception that an SMB wants everything for Free or nearly Free. This is simply not the case. SMBs are willing to pay for products, it is just they want a great return on their investment. It is not be about “bells and whistles”, but it is about getting more bang for their …

Virtualizing High Performance Computing

There have been a recent set of VMware Communities questions that have got me thinking about the prospect of virtualizing high performance computing (vHPC) and whether or not this is even practical, reasonable, and would give any gains to HPC. I think there are some gains to be made but with everything there are some concerns as well. This is of interest to me as at one time I was deep into High Performance Technical Computing and marrying Virtualization to HPC/HPTC would be a very interesting option.

VMsafe Firewalls, Are They Real Firewalls or Something More?

The biggest question I ask myself when I see VMsafe appliances is: will it replace my current virtual firewall setup? Replace my Anti-virus? or Both? I am seeing a trend that gives me pause. That is a VMsafe appliance being more than one thing. For example, Trend Micro is an Anti-Virus company that bought Third Brigade (a firewall company) and are now in the mix of merging the two technologies into one. What has happened to one tool that does one thing and does that one thing very well?