Oracle

Will Oracle kill Sun virtualization too?

Oracle has stopped selling Virtual Iron products, terminated its Virtual Iron reseller agreements and seen the departures of two top Virtual Iron execs.

We still don’t know what Oracle’s plans are for the Virtual Iron technology it acquired in May, but in light of these developments, a much bigger question is arising about a much bigger acquisition: Will Oracle kill off Sun Microsystems’ virtualization line too?

Continued »

VMware bristles at suggestions of lousy IOPS performance

When it comes to IOPS performance, VMware has its proverbial panties in a bunch. Plagued by the public perception that IO-intensive workloads don’t perform well in a virtual machine, the company is on a mission to prove otherwise, throwing tremendous amounts of engineering resources at the task.

With vSphere 4, VMware is publicly stating that a single virtual machine can drive an outlandish 300,000 IOPS, up from 100,000 IOPS with ESX 3.5. Then, at the vSphere launch last week, VMware CTO Steve Herrod told the audience that his engineers had just broken the 400,000 IOPS mark that very morning.

Clearly, VMware cares about IOPS.

Continued »

Open source hypervisors face an uphill battle

VMware vs. Microsoft is the hot debate in virtualization these days, but what about proprietary vs. open source hypervisors?

Forrester Research has an interesting take on that topic. The firm’s new report, “Are Open Source Hypervisors Viable for You?” says the recession will drive more businesses to consider open source virtualization. I’m not sure I agree.

In most other technology markets, the “open source is free/cheap, and more people want free/cheap things when the economy is bad, so more people want open source” argument holds up. But to paraphrase Allen Iverson, we’re talking about virtualization! Not other markets. Not other markets. We’re talking about virtualization!

Continued »

Oracle-Sun: A threat to VMware?

You may have heard this morning that Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems. Like Ron Burgundy, it’s kind of a big deal.

Most of the early reaction to the news has focused on the fallout in the database market. Oracle, the market leader, now owns the biggest thorn in its side, Sun’s open source MySQL.

But the real legacy of the Oracle-Sun acquisition could be its effect on the virtualization market — particularly on VMware.

Continued »