virtualization.info

One of the biggest enhancements expected with the next version of VMware Infrastructure (possibly called vSphere 4.0) is the new pluggable virtual infrastructure, which will allow customers to replace the standard VMNet virtual switch with 3rd party software switches.

The first company to offer such product will be Cisco, which announced the Nexus 1000V at VMworld 2008 last September.

After seeing the virtual switch command line for in action and its architectural diagram, we now have extensive details about its features, thanks to an exclusive virtualization.info interview with Paul Fazzone, Product Manager of Nexus 1000V at Cisco.

Fazzone also provided a key information about the release date of the virtual switch: H1 2009.
This date makes very likely that both ESX 4 and Nexus 1000V will be released at the imminent VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes.

Labels: Cisco, Interviews, VMware

Last week Gartner published a great interview with Ian Pratt, CTO of Xen, Vice President of Advanced Products at Citrix (formerly co-founder of XenSource) and Chairman of Xen.org.

During the interview Pratt answers several questions about cloud computing and next steps for virtualization. Some answers are specially interesting:

Q: How real is the vision of cloud computing for the average organization today? Are we set to see a mass migration of IT functions toward external suppliers?

A: These things never happen as the people who are selling them propose, but I think there will be a movement over time. There are already plenty of startups whose entire IT infrastructure is cloud hosted and so they don't have any physical infrastructures. Clearly, companies such as Amazon are providing a service that is useful.
But it's a far bigger deal to take things that are working and running well in a data center and then try to push them out into the cloud. There are obviously going to be a lot of concerns around security, and you have to do a good job of convincing people that you're going to look after their data in a secure fashion. I think the clouds that we have today are capable of evolving to do that. We have hypervisors. We know how to do a lot of these things, and I think that kind of strong isolation will evolve and be built into these cloud computing farms over time so they can provide those kind of guarantees: You can really create virtual data centers within a cloud and have confidence your data is being looked after, both when it's on disk and flying across the network, as well as when it's actually sitting in memory.

So while VMware believes that the transition to cloud computing will happen in the next two years, Pratt seems more cautions despite his Xen is the only hypervisor used today to power a really large general purpose cloud computing infrastructure: Amazon EC2.

He says it would take probably 10 years:

Q: If I'm a CIO, then should I be looking to move functions out to the cloud now or next year? Or should I sit back and watch?

A: I think we're in the pilot phase. Many CIOs can identify applications that are candidates now, particularly applications that are external network-facing – where the point of the application is to communicate with customers or partners. Those are the kinds of things that probably make sense to move out first, or to look at moving out because the end-user experience will actually be better as a result.
It's a process, just as with virtualization. There were certain applications that people picked first, but you still have databases and things like that running on their networks. I think it will remain like that. At least it's still within your own data center. It's a leap of faith to push this out to the cloud. Although I believe it will happen eventually, it's going to take time. I think we're talking a decade. One of the analogies being used by various folks is power generation. A lot of people had their own generators for a long time and there are still reasons to have your own generator for backup so as not to rely on the grid. Ultimately, it's cheaper, makes more sense and is more reliable to use the grid than to have your own generator in most cases.

Labels: Interviews, Market Trends

Announcing the company’s cloud computing strategy at VMworld 2008, the new CEO Paul Maritz, didn’t convince everybody.
Part of the skepticism comes from sales channel where some VMware partners don’t recognize many opportunities to add value and instead feel that they could lose control of their customers.

About this topic, CRN published an enlightening interview with Carl Eschenbach, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at VMware.

First of all, one of his early answer confirms the impression that the VMware cloud computing is not something that can go beyond certain enterprises:

Q: Where do you see the biggest opportunities for solution providers in the virtualized data center space? I ask because right now it seems to have a big focus on the service provider and how they can get into that market, but that doesn't always sit well with the solution providers who, if they work with a service provider, might find that customer control becomes an issue.

A: …So what we see is, the first-generation of cloud computing will be done in the enterprise. So they will build an enterprise cloud. And when someone builds an enterprise cloud, it's still in their data center

In our solution, our solution provider partners still gotta help them do it. There's still significant drag on services around virtualization. The reason for that, and it hasn't changed in the last few years, is because as people virtualize their data centers, it means they need to re-architect their networks, their storage, their server environment, and their security environment. And there's not a lot of even enterprise companies that have all of that knowledge and skill sets internally. They look for our solution partners to help do that. Even down to the SMB.

In fact, in the SMB and commercial sectors, our customers need more help than in the enterprise because they don't have the ability to implement a truly virtualized data center unless they go to a solution provider.

So we think that this notion of cloud compute in the enterprise, the enterprise cloud, cannot really be achieved unless you have a solution provider that knows how to implement it…

Even more interesting, another answer reveals how VMware is evaluating to change the channel program to address the fears of its partners:

Q: They'll look at that. But they will be worried about the service provider taking over the customer account and the fact that the service provider gets all the recurring revenue, if it's not set up the right way.

A: That could potentially be the case. But it's not a lot different from a solution provider today selling into an account a VMware license that's perpetual. Now, if you're selling a perpetual license and you're moving away from that and [your customer is] buying capacity on demand from the cloud, every time they need to do that, if they have an arrangement through a VAR or a solution provider to get access to that capacity, and they're buying the SKU from them, they're still engaged…

Be sure to read the entire interview as it’s worth the time.

Labels: Interviews, Sales Channel, VMware