Live from VMworld 2008: Day 2 – VMware Keynote
Second day at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas.
Today VMware’s CTO, Steve Herrod, will give the opening keynote, introducing the upcoming ESX 4.0.
virtualization.info already revealed some of the biggest features coming with this new major release (and some readers unveiled more in the comments).
Yesterday Cisco finally announced its virtual switch for ESX, so Herrod may show it in action today for the first time.
Steve Herrod on stage.
He starts from the new Virtual Data Center OS (VDC-OS) introduced by Paul Maritz yesterday, covering all the layers that makes it.
At the infrastructure layer, the capability to manage the physical hardware (vCompute) will get major improvements compared to what’s available today:
- 8 virtual CPUs
- 256GB per VM
- 40 GB/s network throughput
- up to 64 nodes per cluster
- up to 4096 cores to manage
- full support for Distributed Power Management (DPM), which saves 50% Watts consumption during VMwark benchmarks
The capability to grant available and reliable virtual machines (vStorage) will extend VMFS and Storage VMotion with new features :
- storage thin provisioning
- linked clones
The capability to abstract and manage the networking (vNetwork) will get the biggest boost in terms of features:
- virtual distributed networking (same virtual switching configuration across the virtualization hosts, supporting VMotion)
- 3rd party virtual switches (Cisco Nexus 1000V is the first)
Now Herrod moves to the Application layer of the VDC-OS.
Here VMware, as announced yesterday, enhance the concept of virtual appliance in the new vApp: a virtual machine that has metadata describing its properties in terms of availability, security and SLA.
Talking about the availability Herrod introduces the much expected Continuous Availability feature that Mendel Rosenblum, the former Chief Scientist, previewed last year at VMworld.
The feature is now called VMware Fault Tolerance but its amazing behavior doesn’t: a VM hosted on a physical machine and protected by FT is copied over the wire (isn’t clear at the moment if this will be supported over WAN) and synchronized on another host on continuous basis, granting no downtime in case of hardware fault.
Demo time: A single right-click in the VirtualCenter 4.0 user interface on any virtual machine activates the Fault Tolerance.
A physical server hosting a VM with a gambling game on it is powered off on stage. Despite that the VM continues to work, as its copy on a secondary host was in sync and ready to take over.
Herrod continues its presentation of the application layer and moves to security capabilities: ESX 4.0 will feature the much expected VMsafe APIs, integrating with the new vNetwork Distributed Switch.
No demo here, and not much more informations.
Herrod now moves to the third key layer of the VDC-OS: the vManagement.
There are big news here: VirtualCenter becomes vCenter and is about to get a number of modules to accomplish almost every task in the virtual infrastructure: orchestration, chargeback, application performance optimization and more.
This last module is called AppSpeed: it controls the performance of a workload and when it goes below a certain SLA) vCenter can automatically provision more instances to address the demand.
More than that, AppSpeed is able to breakdown the different aspects of a virtual workload telling exactly where the performance bottleneck is (network, storage, etc.).
This allows vCenter to suggest what action to take to recover the performance (example: add a new virtual CPU).
Herrod says that VMware is working to make vCenter more available: the server component will run on Linux as virtual appliance (big applause on this one) and the client UI will be available for multiple platforms (an iPhone appears in the slide).
Time to clarify how this new VMware Infrastructure 4 will fit the new cloud computing strategy.
VMware will release vCloud APIs, providing to 3rd parties plugs for image management, user accounts management, chargeback and virtual machines mobility.
On top of that VMware is working with several partners on federation, as announced yesterday, to allow vApps different clouds implementations compatible and .
Herrod is near the end of his keynote and closes talking about the new vClient initiative (which extends the current VDI approach) and the upcoming VMware View technology.
Here VMware will work on user experience, by co-developing a more efficient remote desktop protocol with Teradici.
More than that, VMware will bring the hypervisor on workstations and taking care of local peripherals (like the GPU) virtualization.
Demo time: Through the new VMware View and its management tool called Composer, a single VM is cloned 25 times (linked clones) with a single script in few seconds (one each 2 seconds).
Now the new Google Chrome browser is pushed to all the just created virtual machines, by just adding it to the original, master VM.
The update propagates to all VMs including one hosted by the new client hypervisor installed on a laptop.
The client hypervisor informs the user inside his VM that a new update is available and requires to reboot the desktop. Once done the new Google Chrome is there.
The demo continues with another task: centrally manage the virtual desktop access.
The Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) allows to define which security policy to apply to any deployed virtual desktop. Once defined it, the VDM communicates with the client hypervisor and obliges the user to shut down his virtual machine.
Nothing new here: VMware took the features included in its existing product ACE and merged with VDM and the client hypervisor, but the audience seems much impressed.
The session is over. The amount of features announced is remarkable and makes the upcoming VMware Infrastructure 4.0 much ahead of the competition.
VMware FT, vNetwork Distributed Switch (and the Cisco virtual switch), VMsafe and AppSpeed may really justify the investment (as long as VMware doesn’t go too far with the pricing) for many enterprises.
Herrod didn’t provide any timeframe but virtualization.info knows that ESX 4.0 is already in beta 2.
After this preview many companies evaluating other platforms may want to extend their trials and wait to see how they compare to the new VMware offering.
There are many points in the strategy that need clarification anyway: the capabilities that vCenter is getting for example put in serious discussion the current relationship that VMware has with many partners.
Of course they may be able to innovate on top of the new platform (like Citrix does with Microsoft Terminal Services) but the entry cost for doing so will become very high, and many companies may find easier to jump on other bandwagons where the lack of features give them more chances to sell.
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23 Comments
Anonymous
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 5:30:00 PM
By the way: the guy is called "Steve Herrod".
Will the Linux version be equally $5000 expen$ive as the current Windows-based VirtualCenter??
At the end of the day it comes down to your time and how much that's worth -- downtime, time in the evenings, etc.
Few companies in IT wow me. VMware is one of them. The competition is great and it drives them to innovate but let's be realistic about the competition and realize you're paying for the value VMware adds.
(disclosure: I was 6 minutes late to the keynote .... damn free margaritas)
ESX was 4% faster on SQL Server workloads as tested here:
http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/99218/pg/2/2.html
Free, and 4% slower, will win it for many people. For some it won't.
Performance is only one parameter here. Put Vmware HA in the mix and you have failover for your SQL Server without the need for Microsoft clustering. Including all other VMs on those ESX servers.
But granted, the IT landscape won't change over night. That is the market VMware needs to think about their strategy seriously.
So now you want double the ESX servers and double the licenses?
I think if you are an SMB consolidating 5 - 10 servers on 1 larger server, you won't be buying a SAN and another server so can run HA.
If you haven't got failover for your SQL box now, why add it immediately to your virtualization plans.
If ESX server is the same price has hyper-v and has the same features as hyper-v at the free cost. Why would someone use hyper-v right now (or in the next 6-12 months), SMB or not?
There are significantly more people knowledgeable about ESX than hyper-v so you don't have a knowledge base.
ESX is proven faster than hyper-v
Hyper-v is a FIRST RELEASE product from Microsoft, ESX has been out for years and years.
What is the compelling reason to use hyper-v over ESX for a SMB? At the same cost the features are basically the same; but you get a much more proven stable, proven consistent product. That and if in the future you want to add features you can with ESX, with hyper-v you are basically stuck there, no vmotion, no HA, etc. Since hyper-v doesn't beat ESX on price (free), doesn't beat ESX on features what is the reason other than they want to jump onto a .0 release of a product they are going to run their critical business on?
1. VMware is more expensive than any other solution - just compare the prices.
2. The basic hypervisor functionality is what most companies need to get started and they will not pay the top $$ for Vmware - they can use Hyper-V for things like lab/testing, QA, desktops for training rooms, task workers, etc.
3. Microsoft is in 100% of SMB server rooms. Relatively few people outside of early adopters know or understand ESX. All of them know Windows. Microsoft will get market entry into virtualization VERY EASILY.
4. Once Microsoft has V-Motion (this is THE ONLY thing that differentiates VM from MS. all the high end features of V are based on V-Motion), it will penetrate the top layer of the market
5. I was looking to Vmware to provide some proof it will engage in fight with Microsoft at VMworld, but they are ceding the SMB market (where MS hopes/needs to establish a beachhead) to MS.
6. VMware is coming up with grandiose plans of vCloud and vClient that will at best take years to materialize and most likely will fizzle away into obscurity like all the previous incarnations of ASP.
In my mind, Vmware is gone as a serious powerhouse and will now be a niche player.
UNLESS someone with greater vision acquires them (best suitor in my mind - Cisco).
Hyper-V runs on any box Windows Server 2008 runs on. ESX runs on a very small subset of servers.
Windows admins can get up to speed on Hyper-V quickly. ESX is a very different product than most Windows products.
Microsoft support is actually quite inexpensive ... 230$ an incident I think. And that means hours or days of help with multiple teams available. We've used it for other products.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN1951286120080919?rpc=44
Have some faith in VMware's engineering, they will continue to surprise you with innovation. Trust me, the company has world class engineering.
CitiSiva
Monday, September 22, 2008 9:32:00 AM
I gave a presentation at VMworld titled "Running Real-time Applications on VMware Infrastructure". I used Cisco Unity, which streams call using VoIP, as a case study.
In my testing neither Xen nor Hyper-V could maintain acceptable voice quality. ESX was the only product that could. ESX essentially provided bare metal network latency performance. It's impressive. And Microsoft openly acknowledges their product doesn't lend itself well to time sensitive media processing. The architecture of Hyper-V is such that there is no quick fix.
This might appear to be a corner case but I suspect that customers will not want to use ESX for some latency sensitive applications and Hyper-V for others. Customers like to standardize. I think the top tier will want to standardize on one that can support all of their applications, and that is ESX.
Any chance of putting the data/slides or whatever from this online somewhere?
Chad Sakac
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 6:55:00 PM
First of all - Microsoft has indicated to expect their live migration feature in 2010. That's a long ways away for someone to wait.
Second, it's not a true statement. Quick list of advanced (and important) features that have nothing to do with vmotion under the covers:
- Storage Vmotion (anyone who has managed a Virtualized datacenter knows that if you can't manage significant infrastructure changes - including storage - non-disruptively, you're missing a big piece of the equation).
- Site Recovery Manager - simplified DR is one of the primary rationales for virtualizing (after consolidation savings). There is no SRM equivalent.
- the B-hive (now AppSpeed) functional pieces.
That's a short list - there are far more.
I'm not being a VMware fan-boi here. The point of "VMware needs to watch out in the SMB space" I totally agree with. I also agree with "never underestimate Microsoft", they are an incredible competitor.
What I am saying is that hyperbole either way - is just that - hyperbole.
Nothing specific about WHICH platforms (apart from iPhone)? Both Linux and MacOS presumably?
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