In the fog of the datacenter virtualization war, it is difficult to see clearly who will end up on top, and yet the outcome is almost certainly determined, and the victorious generals are even now moving on to fight new battles. Here at the Virtualization Practice we too would like to think we can see through the fog to work out who has won, so here are our thoughts, take account of them as you wish. They concern, primarily, the big four protagonists: Microsoft/Hyper-V, Citrix /Xen, VMware/vSphere and Red Hat/KVM.
TVP Tag Archives
VirtualBox OSE 3.0 – Still a viable Open Source option?
In trying to re-use some old server hardware I re-vsisted VirtualBox/Ubuntu, a viable and completely free Open Source option for non-virtualization-enabled hardware. It is a neat solution, simple and well-supported, but the open source version of VirtualBox is nobbled to make it extremely awkward to use, in a different way to VMware’s nobbling of the non-Open Source (but also free) ESXi.
Now is the time, for Oracle/Sun to put all the features of VirtualBox into the Open Source version, and let it live on, perhaps not for use on Linux servers, but as free virtualization platform for other operating systems on Windows. If Apple ever loosens up the licencing on MacOS, it could turn 15 million PCs into Macs – overnight.
vCloud Express
The launch of vCloud Express came with little detail on its features and functions with many confused as to what type of solution it was. Is it a product, a service, a program or a certification?
KVM in RHEL 5.4 – Red Hat leaps out of the virtual shadows.
The Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) has been available for some time in, for example, Ubuntu 8.0.4 LTS (Released April 2008). KVM is widely used and stable and it is high time that Red Hat who acquired KVM when they purchased Qumranet in September 2008, started to move their customers onto it – at least to remove the uncertainty in the customer base.
Is VMware trying to remake itself? To Compete with Microsoft?
With all the rebranding going on with VMware, I find it interesting that the new logo for VMware is similar to Microsoft’s logo. A single name instead of the cool boxes they used to have. Did VMware’s brand loose its focus while we were not watching? Is this why VMware is rebranding everthing? Is VMware really trying to remake itself to be more like Microsoft?
VMworld 2009 San Francisco
TVP was at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco. While there we we published a running dialog on a forum that has since disappeared. Look for our twitter streams at a future VMworld!