On Monday, June 9, Symantec Corp. of Cupterino, Calif., announced the release of Veritas Virtual Infrastructure (VxVI), a server and storage virtualization product built on Citrix Systems Inc.’s XenServer technology. By exploiting Veritas’ block storage management model, VxVI hopes to compete with VMware-Infrastructure-3-in-production environments by offering increased capabilities for storage and availability-critical systems.

The new Xen-based virtual infrastructure platform from Symantec provides storage management and high availability with cross-platform connectivity for the virtual data center. It’s essentially XenServer with the Veritas storage management layer on top — all wrapped in a Symantec management console.

According to Symantec Senior Vice President of Storage and Availability Management Rob Soderbery, the time is right for a product that addresses the needs of testing and development, needs that have been underserved by VMware. “Users understand the storage management challenges with VMware,” he said. Symantec has delivered something “fundamentally new” in how server virtualization works with storage management, he noted.

The key difference between VMware and Veritas is in how each handles virtual machines (VMs). Soderbery argues that the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) file-based system that VMware uses can’t compete with the block storage system of Veritas VxVI.

As enterprises build out the x86 data center, Symantec’s product seeks to serve those who want to bring physical capabilities into the virtual environment. Veritas Virtual Infrastructure brings dynamic storage layouts, enclosure and array mirroring and storage-area network (SAN) multipathing/load balancing to server virtualization, adding features such as shared VM boot images with which Symantec hopes to lure VMware customers that are not satisfied with the storage capabilities of the leading server virtualization platform. 

Soderbery says that VxVI will work well with Microsoft’s forthcoming Xen-inspired hypervisor, Hyper-V. “Microsoft has done something pretty interesting here in being open to the Xen community and encouraging the Xen community to be open with Microsoft,” says Soderbery. “Veritas Virtual Infrastructure is technology that we can apply across the Xen ecosystem and Hyper-V as well.”

With another Xen-based virtualization product on the market engineered to be more compatible with the forthcoming Hyper-V, VMware may feel the pinch as users see more options with the other big players in the server virtualization market. But will the $4,595 per two-socket server for Veritas discourage VMware users from even running a demo?

What do you think? If you plan on deploying Veritas VxVI, we want to hear from you. Send us your thoughts via email.

If Hyper-V doesn’t convert the VMware faithful as soon as Microsoft makes its hypervisor generally available later this year, it may get a little help from its friends: Xen-based virtualization platforms.

Some like IT consultant Ardalan Dlawar believe that Microsoft will leverage support for Xen-based platforms to increase competition with VMware. “And Xen will have more third-party support and fewer compatibility issues,” according to Dlawar.

Despite user arguments that ;Hyper-V will have to deliver more than a lower price tag to win users, Hyper-V will certainly get consideration from many VMware customers. While organizations want to maximize their VMware investment, especially enterprise customers which deploy tens or hundreds of VMware virtual machines, Hyper-V evals will most likely be deployed, according to Andi Mann, the research director at Boulder, Colo.-based Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

Based on a survey of more than 600 enterprises, EMA found about 30% of enterprises have already planned a Hyper-V deployment even with Hyper-V’s general availability several months away. In addition, Microsoft is actually within 10% of VMware in current and planned enterprise deployments according to EMA’s data. Also consider this EMA finding: Xen-based platforms already account for more than 40% of current or planned deployments, the data suggests that the market demand for VMware alternatives won’t disappear.

“VMware is still way out in front in server virtualization,” said Mann, “but both Microsoft and Citrix Systems are definitely catching up.”

Of course, VMware and Microsoft aren’t the only options available. As managers continue utilizing toolsets available from Xen-based products such as Citrix’s XenServer and Virtual Iron Software, VMware and Microsoft are both working on tool sets that enable users manage their virtualization counterparts respectively.

“Both VMware and Microsoft understand that they are not going to be the only players on the market, they recognize that customers are leveraging their competitors’ technology in different parts of their businesses,” according to Adnan Hindi, the VP of operations at ScienceLogic in Reston, Va. Hindi said that companies like his, which produces cross-platform appliances, will benefit from multiple-platform virtual landscapes. As shops continue to see benefit in the utilities that Xen-based products offer, Hindi sees a universal virtualization tool set ultimately working itself out; these tools would essentially equalize platforms in the market and dilute decision making in choosing a virtualization platform largely down to cost.

Over the past year, there’s been a lot of talk about VMware’s cost of VMware. But the price of VMware Server is right for small businesses, said Brett Riale, an IT consultant in Pittsburgh, who feels “truly blessed that programs as functional as VMware Server have been released for free.” Riale is hesitant to trust another Microsoft virtualization product after “the debacle” that was Virtual Server 2005. “Unless it absolutely outperforms VMware,” Riale said that he won’t consider Hyper-V in the near future. And Dave Baughman, a systems administrator for Muncie, Ind.-based Ontario Systems, thinks that his ESX system is “a consistent platform” and that the price of support is worth their investment. “Most of the cost is for support and (VMware’s) support is very good,” says Baugham.

But what will happen when all the Microsoft customers with enterprise agreements get a taste of Hyper-V support? Or if Microsoft offers more third-party support for Xen?

Howard Holton, a system engineer, said that market share will shift in Hyper-V’s favor.

“Hyper-V is an excellent solution for many of those that cannot afford the steep cost that ESX server requires,” says Holton, who has already has a positive experience working with the release candidate and points out that for most data center operations, VMotion’s High Availability (HA) is overkill. ”Hyper-V fits into the market below VMware for hosts that do not need true HA.” 

Holton said that in the long run Hyper-V might win out over VMware because Citrix’s XenServer has finally given Xen a roadmap. XenServer is the spoiler, with a lower TCO than VMware. Although price hasn’t deterred Holton from delivering VMware to his customers in the past, he predicted that Hyper-V will only increase in value.

“As a value-added reseller in the small to midsized space, VMware is the leading virtualization product that I offer. That is changing.”

VMware Inc. Senior Director of Enterprise Desktops Gerald Chen visited our office on Tuesday morning to discuss the different types of desktop virtualization and answer common questions about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), for example, how it differs from terminal services and cost issues.

Here’s how VDI works: each end user gets a virtual machine (VM) that is deployed from a server in the data center directly to a PC, laptop or thin client computer. Each VM is customizable, so all of the user’s settings are saved and re-booted each time the user signs in, Chen said.

When a user logs off for the day, their VM goes idle, and wakes back up when the user logs into their system again, according to Chen. Chen believes that the advantage of VDI is that sensitive data is not being stored on desktops, which can easily be lost or stolen, and these virtual desktops are easier to manage than physical ones.

“VDI is great for industries like health care that are really concerned about information security and compliance. The real value though, is in management. All of the information is safe in the data center, and centrally managed through Virtual Infrastructure,” Chen said. “For instance, if you have 100 new employees who need desktops, you can deploy a VM for each of them in just minutes, and manage all of them centrally.”

VDI is different from Sever Based Computing (SBC) systems like Citrix Systems Inc.’s XenApp in that VDI is connects a single user to a single operating system (OS), instead of having multiple users share one OS.

“Not every application likes to share an OS, and there is also bad isolation; if one application crashes, everyone sharing that OS crashes as well. Those desktops can’t be customized either. It is a locked environment.”

Chen went on to explain that with VDI, four to ten VMs per server core are supported, so a server with one quad-core processor can, theoretically, house 40 VMs. Of course, that varies depending on things like workload, applications and memory. If the VMs become too heavy for the server to handle, management features in VI3 intervene. VMotion can move live VMs from one server to another when capacity issues arise, as can Dynamic Resource Scheduler, which allocates and balances computing resources as needed using VMotion.

Desktop virtualization case study
As VMware announced customer case studies in February, including one at Huntsville Hospital in Huntsville, Alabama.

The hospital needed to implement a new medical information application throughout its network while protecting HIPAA-related data. Deploying hosted desktops on VMware, the hospital could lock down sensitive patient data and reduce the cost and complexity of desktop management.

They used combinations of thin clients and blade servers to access the centralized virtual desktops, and in turn, reduced power consumption across the hospital by 78%, improved longevity with lower hardware maintenance needs and made wireless thin clients on wheeled carts available to hospital staff. Also, doctors can remotely access their VMs through the Internet using a web browser when necessary.

The downside to desktop virtualization
While the benefits are clear, there are some downsides to desktop virtualization: extra storage and initial cost.

Chen told SearchServerVirtualization.com that VMware is working on reducing image sizes and has designed a way to keep only one copy of files that are identical among many users, like icons and other graphics, to reduce the amount of storage necessary.

The cost of implementing desktop virtualization turns users off. According to Ars Open Forum blogger ‘Bright Wire,’ the cost and the magnitude of system upgrades required is not worth the benefits.

“The cost of deploying virtual desktops is massive,” Bright Wire wrote. “You will need to re-gear your existing desktops to run the virtual or you will need vendor equipment that costs twice as much as a new desktop. Either way, the cost is big in manpower. On top of that, your infrastructure will need serious review.”

According to VMware’s product specifications, local desktop virtualization requires a 500 MHz or faster processor with recommended 256 MB of memory, though Forrester reports that PCs must be faster and have more RAM to work efficiently.

“In addition you need to look into the server infrastructure,” Bright Wire said. “You are talking about needing a lot of iron on the backside to handle the needs of the server to supply two to 16 desktops. All this adds up quickly and can easily swamp a datacenter.”

As for pricing complaints, VMware is used to hearing them and holds firm to the ‘you get what you pay for’ mantra, saying the management benefits are worth the price.

The company charges $150 per concurrent user plus additional costs for support, either Gold or Platinum levels. Both bundles include VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition for VDI (which consists of VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5) and the VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2. The VMware VDI Starter Edition, which enables 10 virtual desktops, has a list price of $1,500. The VMware VDI Bundle 100 Pack, which enables 100 virtual desktops, has a list price of $15,000.

The market indicates a demand for desktop virtualization, as a number of other vendors also entered the desktop virtualization space including Sun Microsystems Inc., Citrix., Pano Logic Inc. and Symantec. Chen would argue that many customers come for reduction in hardware but stay for the management applications.

“Reducing hardware costs is not a reason to use VDI, it is management. We have customers who have seen 40% to 50% ROI in terms of management costs and the amount of time it frees up.”

Citrix Systems, Inc.’s XenServer hypervisor is now shipping in Dell PowerEdge servers, following the partnership accouncement in October 2007.

With Dell, initial products available worldwide include the Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition and Citrix XenServer Dell Enterprise, both of which include Dell’s management software, Dell OpenManage System Management. Express Edition is a free download that can be upgraded to Enterprise edition. 

By factory-integrating the Citrix XenServer hypervisor into Dell PowerEdge platforms, users can deploy virtual machines (VMs) when they start up their systems for the first time. Also, the XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition does not require additional management licenses or hardware. Also, upgrades for features like live migration on Dell’s MD3000 direct attached storage arrays can be made easily, by imputing a license key.

In March, Hewlett-Packard began shipping XenServer embedded in ProLiant servers. HP’s servers also have specific versions of XenServer called HP Select Edition, which differs from traditional XenServer in that it is tied into HP management tools, like HP Insight Control and HP Integrated Lights-Out for remote server management, according to a Citrix spokesperson.

In light of its partnerships with HP and Dell, Citrix simplified its licensing model recently to per-server, instead of per core, as reported on SearchServerVirtualization.com. This way, users can deploy an unlimited number of virtual machines or guest operating systems on each physical server for a single price, regardless of whether it has one, two or four CPU sockets.

The following is a guest blog written by Schorschi Decker, an IT professional specializing in virtualization and enterprise-level management with over 25 years of experience in the industry.

Operating system isolation or hypervisor-based virtualization remains popular, but are we settling for less than what we should? Hiding its limitations in modest incremental effectiveness, hypervisor-based virtualization persists because it continues to hide an ugly secret: poor quality code.

Many who have worked with hypervisor-based virtualization may already knows this, but anyone who has attempted implementation of application instancing undoubtedly see where hypervisors fail. Replication of the operating system within a virtual instance is waste, waste driven by bad code. Faster cores, more cores per package, limited improvement in memory and device bus design, marginal increases in mechanical drive design and shared storage models have all contributed to mask how hypervisors inefficiently utilize processors.

If customer adoption rates are an indicator of success, past attempts at application instancing have not been successful to any consistent degree (there are no buzzwords for an application instance method.) To be clear, homogeneous applications have benefited, such as Microsoft SQL and ISS, Oracle and even Citrix. However, in the case of Citrix, application instancing has been environment-dependent to a degree.

Resource management within a common operating instance has not significantly changed since the introduction of mainframe logical partitions (LPARs). Solaris zones is a container-based model, whereas AIX micro-partitions follow a truer application instancing model. Even Apple computer introduced simple memory partitioning in the Macintosh Operating System 7.x. DEC (yes, Digital Equipment Corporation) leveraged Microsoft Job Engine API, effectively a processor affinity layer, in a ground breaking concept product that Compaq buried. Does anyone remember that product?

The hypervisor foundation resulted from heterogeneous application partitioning failures. For Windows, application instancing has stalled at times or has otherwise been over shadowed by operating system instance isolation techniques. Windows SRM is a weak attempt to crack the hypervisor foundation, but it is so immature at this point it is useless. Microsoft SoftGrid, now Microsoft Application Virtualization has a greater potential but is just not well accepted at this point. Should Microsoft provide it for free to drive acceptance?

The technology industry has attempted some rather interesting implementations to offset the impact of operating system instance isolation, for example, thin-disking and image-sharing which are based on eliminating disk partition under utilized space. Several attempts at addressing the DLL and .Net issues (e.g. Microsoft SoftGrid as well as Citrix) have been implemented to support heterogeneous application instancing but have masked the true issue that has always existed, the lack of quality code.

Why do I make this point? Because the hypervisor is essentially a band-aid on the boo-boo of bad coding. Quality code makes for stable environments. With a stable and predicable environment, applications can be run without fear of crashing, and it is this fear that gives hypervisor virtualization its strength.

Did someone just say “operating system isolation”? Case in point, the recent Symantec Antivirus issue with VMware ESX OS. Code quality is going to become a green issue, just as watts per core and total power consumption has in the data center. Enterprise customers who purchase significant code-based products will demand better code as a way to reduce non-hardware oriented costs. Just how many lines of executed code is redundant processing when hypervisor-based virtualization is leveraged? Billions? Wake up and smell the binary-generated ozone! Those cycles cost real money and introduce a very big surface area for bug discovery.

Poor software quality makes hypervisor-based virtualization more expensive than it should be and the publishers of operating systems love it. After all, the total number of operating system licenses purchased has not gone down with hypervisor virtualization. The industry has known for years that poor quality software has been an issue. One radical solution is to hold software publishers to a higher standard, but that idea has not gained enough grassroots support – yet. When it does, the hypervisor will be history.

Atlanta-based virtualization pro Mark Dean shares his thoughts in a guest blog for SearchServerVirtualization.com

One of the more popular products in the growing virtualization market is Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. Virtuozzo Containers provide a stable, high performance virtualization platform. However, this same technology also has some drawbacks in restricting the operating systems that can be used for both hosts and VMs.

I deployed Virtuozzo for a customer that wanted to leverage virtualization but was uneasy about the performance of their database server. I suggested Virtuozzo since it straddles the physical-virtual line with OS containers, it is similar to the technology that Sun Solaris uses.

The strengths of Virtuozzo Containers are really in that blurred line between the physical and virtual platforms. Instead of a hypervisor between the OS and the hardware, Virtuozzo Containers virtualize the OS by sharing OS code, files, memory and cache from the root OS, which is called the Hardware Node (and is represented as Container ID 0) in Virtuozzo terms. This means that the VMs are using the hardware directly rather than having calls to the hardware trapped by a hypervisor and then executed which translates into better performance for I/O workloads. This increase in performance is one of the main reasons companies will deploy Virtuozzo. High I/O workloads such as heavy transaction based databases benefit from the shared code nature of the containers.

But as hardware advances with the option of CPU hardware assistance from the CPU manufacturers (AMD-V and Intel-VT), I see Virtuozzo’s technology becoming irrelevant. Since I can now run unmodified VMs using Xen or KVM on Linux and no longer have the (over-exaggerated) performance hit of the binary translation hypervisor (as in ESX), why go with a limiting technology?

Virtuozzo imposes some limitations on what you can run in your farm. Since the VMs are basically sharing code form the root Container OS, you can only run that type of VM on the host. Virtuozzo Containers currently only supports Windows 2003 Server and main Linux distributions. You cannot run Solaris, BSD or NetWare. Now, for some IT shops that may not be a problem but just about all the places I’ve seen, there is a mix of Unix, Windows and for many government places, NetWare.

If a virtualization vendor does not enable live migration, host/VM isolation or embrace the concept of a farm, it is not good for production workloads. Virtuozzo does have some of them, but their isolation is not as good as I like to see. I find that right now only VMware VI3 ESX 3.5 Server has all those concepts down. Xen Enterprise, when coupled with CPU assisted virtualization is the best contender to challenge VMware’s space right now.

Mark Dean is a VMware Professional Partner and a Microsoft Certified Partner with certifications in VMware, Microsoft, Novell, Citrix, IBM and HP along with HP and IBM hardware. Dean has his own virtualization consulting company, VM Computing.

Citrix Systems, Inc. today announced a development and distribution agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) to integrate an HP-specific version of Citrix XenServer into 10 models of 64-bit HP ProLiant servers.

Citrix worked with HP to develop a version of XenServer called HP Select Edition, which is different from XenServer in that it is tied into HP management tools, like HP Insight Control and HP Integrated Lights-Out for remote server management, a Citrix spokesperson explained.

Existing ProLiant server users can upgrade and virtualize their servers with XenServer with a license key and USB drive, according to a Citrix spokesperson.

Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition will be available and supported by HP starting on March 31, 2008.

As previously reported on SearchServervirtualization.com, HP started reselling XenServer back in October, but hadn’t agreed to pre-install the virtualization technology into its servers until today. At that time, Dell announced plans to resell and pre-install the OEM edition of XenServer into its PowerEdge servers.

Earlier this month, Lenovo also announced its plans to use the OEM edition in its servers and distribute it in China.