In January 2008 VMware, a hardware virtualization company, acquired an application virtualization startup called Thinstall.
The plan is to use the Thinstall technology to stream virtualized applications on the virtual desktops that VMware spawns through its connection broker: the Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM).

So fare VMware has been pretty fast in rebranding the Thinstall Application Virtualization Suite: the beta program for the new version is open since end of February and the testers can already download the beta 2.
The final version of the product, temporarily called Project North Star, is expected for the H2 2008.

The only information missing so far was the final name that VMware wants to use.
Now Micheal Keen, Director and Senior Solutions Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Alliance Technologies, reveals that the final name is ThinApp.

Duncan Epping further validates the news reporting that a former Thinstall employee confirmed.

The choice is interesting considering that Citrix just renamed its Presentation Server product in XenApp.

Microsoft just opened the beta program for a new tool, the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool, which aims addressing a concrete challenge: keep updated a large amount of virtual machines stored in a VM library and acting as templates for cloning operations.

Since these virtual machines are not supposed to be powered on the task is challenging.

To solve it, the new Microsoft tool uses PowerShell, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2007 and a patch management product between Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007.

Thanks to PowerShell scripts, each VM is powered on by SCVMM and temporary deployed on a virtualization host available. At that point the patch management procedure is started and the VM is powered off as soon as it completes.
The last step implies moving the patched VM back to the Library.

This process is identical to the one performed by the new VMware Update Manager (VUM) included in VI 3.5.
Unfortunately, in both cases, there are major issues in case the administrator has applied the Sysprep to the VM: as soon as the virtual machine starts the Sysprep mini-setup starts as well, customizing the VM.

Enroll for the beta program here.

Yesterday, opening its new conference for partners, the Partner Exchange 2008, VMware announced a new technical certification for VAC partners: the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX).

The VCDX targets virtualization architects who already achieved the VCP certification and it's made by two exams:

• the VMware Enterprise Administration Exam (which include live labs)
• the VMware Design Exam (which includes simulations and questions about design scenarios)

Additionally, the candidates have to present and discuss a VMware design and implementation plan (it's not clear if this one must be a real-world, already implemented one).

To have an idea of which kind of challenges this new certification implies candidates may want to check the blueprint that VMware just published online.

The exam will go live later this month.

On April 22 the application virtualization firm Endeavors Technologies announced that was about to offer a streamed version of Office according to the new Microsoft Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) that allows 3rd party vendors to do so.

Unable to find a confirmation in the available SPLA, virtualization.info contacted Microsoft asking for a clarification.

The answer was surprising: while the SPLA allows the streaming of Office (as announced in January 2008), Microsoft doesn't authorize any 3rd party to do so, and was completely unaware of the Endeavors announcement.

The Endeavors attempt joins the Fasthosts one, a UK hosting company which started to offer a streamed version of Microsoft Office using AppStream technology in February.

If any of the two companies release an official statement about this story this post will be updated accordingly.

Proxmox Server Solution GmbH is building an open source management tool for virtualization platforms: Proxmox Virtual Environment.

The product, still in beta (0.9), has some interesting capabilities:

• Bare-metal installation (based on Debian Etch 64bit, which includes the supported virtualization platforms)
• Support for KVM and OpenVZ
• Web-based management console (AJAX based)
• Host-level backup (OpenVZ containers only)
• Support for host-level clustering (Proxmox VE Cluster)

Additionally, the developer is implementing also a live migration capability.

Since both KVM and OpenVZ don't have a GUI it's worth a try even if it's still in early development.

Download it here.

A new startup enters the virtualization market today with a soft launch: Neocleus.

The company, founded in 2006 and based in US (with the R&D center in Israel) received a first round of investments in 2007: $5 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel.

Neocleus has a strong focus on security as testified by the management team: its co-founder and CTO, Etay Bogner, comes from SofaWare (the historical partner of Check Point, leader in enterprise firewalls), its Vice President of R&D, Yair Tor, comes from BeeFence (a startup focused on intrusion detection systems) and its Chief Security Architect, Yoav Weiss comes from Entercept (acquired by McAfee) and Check Point.
Ariel Gorfung, coming from Intuwave, is the co-founder and CEO.

The company didn't launch any product yet, limiting itself to pitch the new concept of endpoint virtualization, which implies the goal of security physical desktops through virtualization.
The reality is that most of the informations provided at the moment implies that Neocleus is about to market a new architecture to bring a bare-metal hypervisor to the Windows desktop (probably the term desktop virtualization was already too abused by VDI vendors to be used).

• The hypervisor mentioned above should be a variant of Xen with additional pass-through drivers for memory, display, networking and USB, called NativeDom, so to not negatively impact the end-user experience.
• The product will support hardware with or without the Input/Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU). In the former case multiple native operating systems (guest OSes with pass-through drivers) will be supported.
• The product installer will integrate a P2V migration tool to move an existing Windows installation inside the first virtual machine (NativeDom).
• Security monitoring and enforcement will happen at the hypervisor level through the Neocleus solution deployed as virtual appliance.
• Neocleus will create an open source framework API to allow 3rd party virtual appliance to plug-in (similar to what VMware is doing with its VMsafe).

The company didn't provide any timeframe for the first product launch or details about its feautres but it seems that the solution is already in beta phase.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.

According to the news that virtualization.info broke yesterday, Dell announces today its new server for virtualization: the PowerEdge R805 and 905 (two sockets the former, four sockets the latter).

The hardware comes with an interesting configuration (AMD Quad-Core, 16 DIMM slots, integrated quad-ports NIC with TOE, up to 292GB local storage, etc.) and the option to pre-install a couple of hypervisors: VMware ESXi and Citrix XenServer Embedded Express (renamed XenServer Dell Express Edition).

The VMware lightweight hypervisor, which was supposed to be free, is priced $99.
The Citrix hypervisor for OEMs, which already made its way into HP machines, is priced $299.

Both are loaded at boot from an integrated SecureDigital card slot but could also load from an internal USB port:

In the coming weeks Dell will offer the two products also with other PowerEdge series like the new R900 (Intel-based), the dear old 2950 and the M600 blabe systems.

Some virtualization vendors have an online ROI/TCO calculator that prospects and customers can use to justify the purchase of their hyperivsors: VMware has one, Parallels has one.

Microsoft, which is preparing to release Hyper-V 1.0, now has one as well: the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool.

Compared with the others above, this calculator requires an impressive profiling of the company's current situation for three different areas: production server, development and test lab, and desktop virtualization.
From that data and for all these scenario, the tool provides a very deep analysis of the TCO, the entity of the investments (up to 3 years) and the ROI.

Another interesting aspect is the comparative calculation between Microsoft products (both Hyper-V and Virtual Server) and competition, with consideration for all the software licensing, the storage space cost, the third party backup software and more.

But probably the biggest selling point of this product, which is free of charge, is that the model, the methodology and the statistical data to define the average values is provided by IDC.

Everybody assume that each vendor's TCO/ROI calculator analyzes the numbers to confirm that virtualization is a desirable investment and that its own technology offers the best quality/price ratio.
Nonetheless it would be interesting comparing the VMware and Microsoft calculators to see if their reports match on some aspects (like the As Is TCO) and which one is the most near a real-world scenario where all the data is known.

Qumranet, the US startup that supports the development of KVM (the hypervisor included in the Linux kernel), announced its first product in September 2007: Solid ICE, an all-in-one VDI solution (the virtualization server based on KVM, the management console, the connection broker and the accelerated remote desktop protocol) for KVM virtual machines.

The company is finally releasing its product which immediately jumps to version 4.1.

This first version has some interesting features to offer, like:

• Support for Windows 2000 and XP virtual machines
• Self-service web portal
• Active Directory authentication support
• Virtual machines pools provisioning
• Fault-tolerant connection broker
• Optimized remote desktop protocol (SPICE) with support for bi-directional audio/video (+30 Fps)

The price per concurrent virtual machine is to $200.

Download a trial here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Dell is expected to launch tomorrow its new servers supporting VMware ESXi.

The first two products will be the PowerEdge R805 and R905 which features some interesting (and surprising) hardware components:

• AMD Opteron Quad-Core CPUs (up to 2)
• 16 DIMM slots (up to 128GB RAM DDR2-5300)
• PERC 6/i SAS Controller
• Quad-Port 1Gb NIC with TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (IOAT)
• 32MB SecureDigital with VMware ESXi pre-installed

Still no words on the price that Dell will ask for the VMware lightweight hypervisor. In March a VMware representative reported that the OEM may offer the product for free.

Anyway the new servers will provide support also for other hypervisors like the Citrix XenServer and the new Oracle VM.