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VMware adds ODM relationships with Tyan, ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec

At Computex Taipei 2008on June 3, VMware, Inc. announced new relationships with original design manufacturers ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan, adding to VMware’s current relationship with Supermicro announced in February 2008.

The relationships lets channel partners and system builders make virtualization available to a broader range of customers by certifying various one-, two- and four-socket servers and blade servers for the VMware virtualization platform.

The vendors are certifying their server systems for the VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor, with availability expected by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

VMware acquires performance management software company B-hive Networks

VMware, Inc. today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire B-hive Networks, Inc., a privately-held application performance management software company with headquarters in San Mateo, California and principal R&D facilities in Herzliya, Israel.

By acquiring the company, VMware will add B-hive’s technology for performance management and service level reporting for applications running within VMware virtual machines on both servers and desktops. In addition, B-hive’s R&D facility and team will be the core of VMware’s new development center in Israel.

The terms of the B-hive acquisition, which is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2008, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed. This is VMware’s seventh acquisition in the past year.

VMware’s President and CEO Diane Greene said during a JP Morgan technology conference in Boston last week that VMware will continue acquiring companies as a growth strategy. The company grew 69% last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2007.

“We are always looking for technologies we don’t have. In the past year we have bought six small companies; we look to grow organically and through acquisitions,” Greene said at the conference.

What is B-hive?

Founded in 2005, B-hive developed a technology that gives visibility into application performance in virtual environments, such as end-user transaction response time, virtual machine utilization and cross-virtual machine dependencies. Unlike operating system-based performance monitoring products, B-hive’s product is designed to measure performance across multi-tier or service-oriented architecture applications that are distributed across clusters of ESX hypervisors and virtual machines.

B-hive’s flagship product, an agentless virtual appliance called B-hive Conductor, which was a “Best of VMworld” finalist at VMworld 2007, monitors end-user performance and issues service level reports, and also proactively resolves application performance problems by automatically triggering actions such as dynamically allocating more resources, migrating the application to a different server, provisioning additional virtual machines, changing transaction routing, or system reboots, accoridng to VMware.

For example, if B-hive identifies degradation in application response time, it can remediate the problem by automatically instructing VMware Infrastructure to adjust the resources allocated to the application or provision an additional virtual machine with an additional instance of the application, according to VMware.

VMware’s Virtualization Forum 2008 in New York vendor centric

When attending a vendor sponsored conference, you expect that most - or all - of the sessions will focus on that vendor’s products along with partner products. So, I wasn’t all that surprised when I found that to be the case at VMware Inc.’s Virtualization Forum 2008 in New York, NY on May 8.

But I felt a tad cheated when I left.

You see, the agenda I received from VMware prior to the event looked great. There would be analysis from Gartner’s Distinguished Analyst, Thomas Bittman, about virtualization technology adoption and trends. Also, Quest Diagnostics was scheduled to talk about their specific pain points and challenges and how virtualization saved the day. Good, and good.

Other sessions included Introduction to Server Virtualization, Datacenter Management and Automation, Business Continuity, Application Virtualization and Remote and Branch Office Management.

The agenda I received in my inbox before the event also included three afternoon sessions scheduled from 2:15 to 3:15 for Platinum Sponsor / Customer Story; the latter being of most interest to me.

So, I got up at 5 a.m. on Forum day and drove from Rhode Island to New York City - a lovely four and a half hour trek with traffic.

I registered, got my Conference Guide, ID badge, marketing package full of VMware ads, and headed to hear Bittman talk. It was interesting enough. Then Quest Diagnostics did a quick talk about their VMware implementation. Cool.

Then lunch. Which was free. Which is awesome.

After that, I hit the Datacenter Automation and Management Session, where John Suit, CTO and co-founder of Fortisphere, discussed how their product,Fortisphere Virtual Forsight, helped Duke University Hospital set policies for virtual machines. Then John Brock, senior product marketing manager at VMware, stepped up to bat to talk about all the wonderful things Virtual Infrastructure can do for IT.

Fine.

Now for the 2:15 session - Platium Sponsor/ Customer Story. Much to my chagrin, the Customer Story portion of those sessions were not included in the eight page guide. All I see listed are Platinum Sponsor EMC Corp., Platinum Spronsor HP, Platinum Sponsor Dell/ Equalogic Corp., Platinum Sponsor NetApp. Brows furrowed, I flipped the pages looking for the customer stories. Were the times changed? Confused, I asked the nice VMware marketing representative if VMware mistakenly ommitted the customer stories from the guide.

“No, there won’t be anymore customer stories this afternoon,” she said.

“Oh, but the schedule I received last month had customer stories as part of the afternoon sessions,” I said.

Uncomfortable silence.

“The sponsors will probably talk about some customer stories,” she said.

What the *%#@?

But, I was not too surprised by this program change. It happened at the last VMware event I attended as well.

The VMware Virtualization Seminar Series in Providence, RI in February was the same way - customer story on the schedule, but not at the podium.

I complain about this not because of the horrid commute I made expecting to hear from more than one real user, but because I can safely assume that, like me, data center managers want to hear about virtualization implementations from their peers–the folks who manage virtual environments in real data centers every day. You know, the people who don’t have the word “marketing’ in front of their name. I’m sure that attendees would have like perspective from the system engineers and architects who can give honest, detailed descriptions about pitfalls to avoid, the real costs and ways to deploy virtualization successfully.

I understand users also want to learn about products that can solve their IT issues, and I am sure that some of the information vendors provide is very useful. But, VMware, I beg of you–please include real users in your future seminars, and if you don’t, then don’t put it in your agendas.

VMware’s convenient truth; virtualization lowers greenhouse gas emissions, power costs

VMware, Inc. released a statement today pushing the point that consumers can significantly reduce CO2 emissions and data center power consumption using virtualization. The company reports that consolidating 10 or more physical machines onto a single server can reduce power consumption and costs by 80-90%. VMware customers that have moved from a 1:1 application to server ratio to 60:1 or higher have achieved millions of dollars in capital and operational savings.

Of course, 60:1 is a very high ratio, and most users report a 30:1 or 40:1 application to server ratio. That said, it can be done; a VMware case study on the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group shows the UK based company was able to consolidate 120 servers on two host machines, with two machines for disaster recovery purposes. VMware estimates that for every server virtualized, customers can save about 7,000 kilowatt hours (kWh), or four tons of CO2 emissions, every year. The virtualization giant has virtualized more than 6 million server workloads since 1998, resulting in an estimated energy savings of nearly 39 Billion kWh, or roughly $4.4 billion. This is roughly equivalent to the total energy consumption of Denmark for one year.

VMware reduces power and related costs by increasing server utilization rates and with power management capabilities that can power down servers when not in use. By powering down idle servers and desktops during inactive times, consumers can reduce power consumption by about 25%, according to VMware.

UK-based Sheffield Hallam University, for instance, implemented VMware Infrastructure 3 to reduce power and cooling requirements in the datacenter. Using VMware, they created 170 virtual machines, virtualizing over half of their servers. The virtual infrastructure at Sheffield Hallam runs 170 virtual machines at only 60,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh); this compares to the power required to run 170 physical machines, estimated at 686,000 kWh per year. In all, the company cut 269 tons of CO2 and saved £43,000 ($85,006.62 USD) on their annual power bills.

More information on how other companies have gone green and reduced costs using VMware virtualization is available on VMware’s website.

In addition, VMware works with utility companies including Pacific Gas and Electric and Austin Energy to provide cash incentives based on the amount of energy savings achieved through virtualization - which few data centers have taken advantage of so far.