As new vendors enter the x86 virtualization space, pioneer VMware, Inc. is moving on to the next frontier, cloud computing, said VMware President and Chief Executive Officer Diane Greene in her keynote address at the JP Morgan Technology Conference in Boston on May 21.

“The dream of cloud computing is fast becoming reality,” she said.

With cloud computing, workloads are assigned to connections, software and services, which are accessed over a network of servers and connections in various locations, collectively known as “the cloud.” Using a thin client or other access point, like an iPhone or laptop, users can access the cloud for resources on demand.

Greene told the event attendees that the evolution of virtualization begins with users deploying VMs for testing and development, then easing into server consolidations for production environments. The third phase is resource aggregation, with entire data centers being virtualized, followed by automation of all of those aggregated workloads. The final “liberation” phase is cloud computing, Greene said.

“We now have competition going after the first two phases of virtualization evolution with 1.0 products, but we are very much in the aggregate, automate and liberate phase,” Greene said.

Other vendors have their sights set on cloud computing as well. IBM Corp. and Google announced plans to promote cloud computing in October by investing over $20 million in the hardware, software and services at universities, and Reuters reported this week that Microsoft expects companies will abandon their own in-house computer systems and shift to cloud computing as a less expensive alternative.

While VMware moves towards cloud computing, the company is in the thick of the automation phase and has released a number of virtualization automation products recently, including VMware Site Recovery Manager for Disaster Recovery, VMware Stage Manager and VMware Lifecycle Manager for lifecycle management and VMware Lab Manager, as well as product and service bundles.

The company is also focusing on desktop virtualization with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and has introduced services and products to move that inititive forward.

“Desktop virtualization does require a major change in the infrastructure, so it could be 2011 before we see desktop virtualization adoption in the millions. We do have hosted desktop virtualization customers with large deployments…but [adoption] will happen at a measured pace,” Greene said. “I do think someday everyone’s desktop will run in a virtual machine, whether it be on PCs or MACs, thin clients or phones. With the advantages from a security, manageability and flexibility standpoint, it will become mainstream.”

The cost of desktop virtualization is a barrier to adoption, but Greene said the price per user of desktop virtualization will come down steadily over the next few years. It is in the $800 per user range today, she said.

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.”

Austin, Texas-based ClearCube announced today that its desktop virtualization software business is being spun-off into its own company, VDIworks.

VDIworks will provide the VDIworks Sentral Virtual Desktop Platform for desktop computing and virtual desktop management, which includes connection brokering, virtual machine, host and thin client management, load balancing, health and asset monitoring, inventory management, disaster recovery and support for back-end hardware and user access devices.

ClearCube will continue providing desktop computing products, including desktop virtualization software, PC Blades and thin client terminal servers.

VDIworks and ClearCube will operate seperately but under an OEM agreement whereby ClearCube will continue to market and promote the VDIworks software under the Sentral VDI Management Software brand, and the Sentral management software will still be part of ClearCube’s centralized desktop computing offerings. ClearCube customers will still get support in their current license agreements with ClearCube, and VDIworks will add OEM relationships with third-party vendors, said Rick Hoffman, former president of ClearCube and now president of VDIworks.

“Users should not notice any changes, because the support, features, benefits, etc. will all be the same,” said Hoffman.

VDIworks will receive seed funding from current ClearCube investors and will seek additional funding to support growth. About 35 research and development employees in the U.S. and Pakistan will also move to VDIworks.

Because ClearCube’s Chief Executive Officer is taking over VDIworks, ClearCube’s Chief Operating Officer Randy Printz has been promoted to president and CEO. Rick Hoffman will be joined on the VDIworks side by Chief Technology Officer Amir Husain.

Desktop virtualization is a popular vendor offering right now, with companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc., Citrix., Pano Logic Inc. and VMware Inc all offering a flavor of desktop virtualization, but users report hesitation in using it due to cost.

Today, Ericom software announced the availability of Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect for Oracle VM desktop virtualization (VDI) software as a free download. This announcement of an Oracle VM for the PowerTerm VDI product extends Oracle VM’s footprint to the VDI space with an Ericom product that has excelled over the years in products based on terminal services.

Ericom currently offers support for the 14 largest hypervisors including Oracle VM through products such as WebConnect. In this configuration, the Oracle VM virtual host is managed by Ericom’s WebConnect instead of Oracle VM Manager. This configuration of Oracle VM is the base product without modification. WebConnect provides the address and credentials to the Oracle VM virtual host to start the configuration and management process.

I had an opportunity to hear from Oracle and Ericom about this release. Eran Heyman, CEO of Ericom said that his company “wants to remove the barrier of entry for a VDI solution,” as many organizations are considering implementing VDI, but do not know where to start in the selection process. “The cost is minimal, licenses will be zero and the equipment can be reused if another solution is chosen” when choosing a Oracle VM, according to Heyman.

The Oracle VM hypervisor and the Oracle VM Manager suite deliver template virtual machines, which model a virtual appliance for database products such as Oracle Database 11g.

For organizations with an established server virtualization environment, future virtualization projects are looming on the horizon. Whether it is desktop or application virtualization, much deliberating will undoubtly be given to the best product for the new virtualization endeavor — as it should.

The next wave of virtualization projects should always be best of breed for the requirements and functionality you require for your particular environment. For example, say you’re an organization with a successful VMware-based server virtualization environment using VirtualCenter and ESX 3. Does this mean that VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the default selection for a virtualized desktop project? Don’t be fooled into thinking that a single-vendor environment is going to translate into an efficient one.

Identify the best solution, even if you can’t afford it. That also includes your host environment hardware for the next virtualization project. Your next virtualization project may require a decision between blades versus general purpose servers for virtual hosts. Taking the time and effort to identify the best solution after making full comparisons for of potential environments will also prepares you for any unforeseen element in post-implementation inquiry.

Make no mistake, there are plenty of advantages to going with what’s familiar: Price discounts, vendor relationships and non-disclosure access are all strong reasons to select the same vendor, but only after due diligence in your decision process should you make another commitment.

I have a confession to make: When it comes to Citrix’s XenServer/Presentation Server/MetaFrame/WinFrame product line, I’ve always been biased. I simply love it. I remember giving people JDE software in a midsize manufacturing company (that has since been swallowed by a large imperial juggernaut.) When I was a server admin there, I had only to deploy the Citrix client and some configs and the desktop admins loved me for it. At my prior company, I remember going desktop to desktop putting nasty, frequently-updated-due-to-crappy-design applications on hundreds of clients’ desktops. Thanks to Citrix, I was the office hero because staff could work at home when they needed to.

Then I discovered VMware and fell in love all over again. Now, I could deploy rich desktops without granting server access to the desktop. I could consolidate hundreds of servers, roll out emergency desktops in half the time, deploy servers from cloned templates with ease and backup entire systems without any agents. The only problem was that I never had Citrix run well on ESX 2 and 2.5, even though I was being told that Citrix and VMware go together like PB and J. If I were to anthropomorphize the whole thing (and I will) I’d say the two were jealous of each other and vied for my love and affection.

Putting Citrix on VMware
I had been advising people against using Citrix and VMware together; but should one insist, I have always recommended that they do some serious testing first. Then one day I broke down: After having read the VMware Performance Study and a great VMTN post, I figured it was about time I did my own testing. And like the aforementioned references, I got great results.

I officially rolled out Citrix Presentation Server on VI3.5 and the performance has been stellar. I don’t have a lot of users on the Presentation Servers, but I run them alongside other production servers hosting the server side of some medical applications (billing applications, etc.), effectively putting the client and server on the same hosts. I’ve done this for my own office and for a couple of clients now. You could say that I am officially backpedaling now and embracing Citrix on VMware.

Here are my suggestions if you decide to try this for yourself:

Disaster recovery services (DRS) - Use anti-affinity rules to keep your Citrix servers from bunching up together if you allow automatic allocations. While it’s unlikely that a large farm will wind up with all of its Citrix eggs in a few baskets and then lose all of those baskets, it’s a possibility that should be planned for.

Storage - Use the fastest storage you can use. Citrix directly affects the user experience and shouldn’t be skimped on. Slow Citrix equals unhappy masses, which equals poor perception of IT, which equals job troubles for you. If you have multiple storage area networks (SANs) to connect to, or even multiple logical unit numbers (LUNs) on the same SAN in different RAID groups, separate out the virtual machine disk files across your storage infrastructure to minimize the amount of disk I/O that Citrix boxes can generate (this is a good thing to do in any Citrix environment, not just a virtualized one.) Granted, I’m talking out of the side of my head here, since I run one of my Citrix farms on an iSCSI SAN, and it performs very well, but scalability may be an issue I don’t have to address to the same degree as the largest enterprises.

Benefits of a Citrix on VMware system
The net result I’m seeing is an average of 18-20 users on each Citrix box before performance starts to tank. I was getting the same performance on my physical boxes. I don’t need to schedule a reboot as frequently due to memory leaks (though we also redid the base Win2K3 install for R2, so I can’t definitely point to virtualization as benefactor here), and when I do reboot, the reboot time is, like any virtual system, much faster than a hardware reboot.

Since I now can put my Citrix disk on the SAN, I can do block-level backup of data stored on Citrix servers (which, as any Citrix admin can tell you, happens no matter what you do since users always find a way.) Having templates makes it easy to roll out new Citrix boxes as well, especially since PS4.5 makes adding a new Citrix box to your farm a breeze. Then there’s my favorite: snapshots. I’d take a lower user/server ration if I had to just to have this feature. Luckily, I don’t have to. I can take snapshots just before and after every new application is installed for publishing; before and after every app is patched; before and after updating Windows; and before and after updating Citrix. Being able to roll back with such ease is what makes me truly, deeply happy with Citrix on VMware.

So, same user/server ratio, shorter downtime periods, quicker deployment and snapshots: I call this a win-win.

System administrators can’t seem to stop gushing about virtualization benefits. Data center folks reduce hardware footprints and lower power and cooling costs by consolidating servers. When IT pros take virtualization to the next level, such as implementing desktop and application virtualization, the benefits seem to expand exponentially.

However, system admins beware: some management issues cannot be glossed over, such as what to do about multiple OS images. In this video, virtualization expert Barb Goldworm discusses some potential risks when extending virtualization to the desktop and how to avoid them.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced this week it has added new features to its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure software, originally released at VMworld in September 2007, including Sun’s Virtual Desktop Connector (VDC).

Sun’s VDI 2.0 provides interfaces to PCs, mobile devices, and thin clients including Sun’s own Sun Ray thin client offering. With it, centralized desktops can be delivered through the LAN or WAN to Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Solaris or Linux on the desktop, which is fairly unique in the Windows-centric desktop market, said Chris Kawalek, Product Line Manager, Desktop & Virtualization Marketing, Sun Microsystems.

Sun’s VDC, meanwhile, is is more or less a connection broker that interfaces with ESX 3.5 and 3.0.x and Virtual Center Server 2.0.x and 2.5 (VMware infrastructure 3) to create pools of virtual machines that can be defined based on templates.

With Sun’s updated VDI offering, administrators can statically or dynamically assign users to specific VMs, either for a set number of days or indefinitely. Another feature is the ability to ‘reset’ end users’ virtual machines (VMs) if problems arise. For instance, if the user contracts a virus while on the web, the VM can be reset to a date before the issue occurred and operate as it did on that date, Kawalek said.

The tight integration with VMware virtualization software can be attributed to the OEM agreement Sun signed with VMware Inc. in February. Thus, with VDI 2.0, users can actively manage VMware virtual machines, but VMs from other vendors like Virtual Iron can only be statically created and assigned, Kawalek said.

Kawalek said Sun moved into the VDI space last year because it embodies Sun’s ‘the network is the computer’ message. Another reason? It’s the popular thing to do. “Everyone is very interested in centralizing their desktop environment, which is why vendors like Hewlett-Packard and VMware are in this space,” he said.

Sun’s VDI Version 2.0 became available March 18 at $149 per user, including one year of support. Sun Ray thin clients start at $249. Directions on how to install VDI 2.0 are available online, and a free trial can be downloaded from Sun’s website.

With virtualization adoption teetering on mainstream, I am sure it is difficult for VMware to find the balance between what to explain about the technology and what is considered common knowledge.

Judging by a show of hands, a lot of what the 40-or so IT admins who attended VMware Inc.’s Virtualization Seminar Series at the Hilton Hotel in Providence, RI Tuesday morning heard was the latter. The seminar was a low-level look at VMware technologies on the market and those coming down the pipeline. It also had some case studies supporting virtualization, and a snore-inducing spiel from their sponsor, data networking company Brocade.

The case study that seemed to be of most interest to attendees was about the technology team at IntelliRisk Management Corporation (IRMC), a company with call centers and clients all over the world, deploying VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

Using VMware’s VDI, IRMC was able to centralize its global data center operations by giving their employees access to applications, operating systems, etc. via virtual desktops.

One unimpressed system administrator at the seminar asked, “And this is different from Citrix how?”

Peter Marcotte, VMware’s Systems Engineering manager, said the good old server based computing (SBC) environments from Citrix Systems, Inc., where each user connects to a remote desktop running on a Microsoft terminal server and/or a Citrix Presentation Server, doesn’t offer the kind of flexibility VDI does. He also said applications don’t run as well in SBC environments as they do in isolated virtual desktop machines.

Independent Technology Analyst and Blogger Brian Madden wrote an analysis of VDI and SBC that weighs their pros and cons and when to use each.

Madden wrote that VDI offers better performance from the users’ standpoint, it doesn’t have application compatibility issues, and offers better security than traditional SBC.

In the case of IRMC, they deployed virtual desktops and can add a new PC image in less than 10 minutes. All of the virtual desktops can be managed from one location through VirtualCenter. After deploying VDI, IRMC saw an annual return on investment (ROI) of 73%, with a payback period of 1.37 years, the case study shows.

On the flip side, Madden wrote that SBCs have the maturity advantage — it’s been around for a decade — and it is easy to manage.

“With SBC you can run 50 to 75 desktop sessions on a single terminal server or Citrix Presentation Server, and that server has one instance of Windows to manage. When you go VDI, your 50 to 75 users have 50 to 75 copies of Windows XP that you need to configure, manage, patch, clean, update, and disinfect. Bummer!” Madden blogged.

Of course, VMware’s Marcotte didn’t mention that Citrix announced its own VDI product, Citrix XenDesktop back in October 2007 to compete with VMware’s VDI offering.

The seminar was helpful to some people I am sure — there were questions here and there - but overall I am a bit annoyed because by definition, seminars are supposed to teach us something and I’m not sure this one accomplished that.

Additionally, I, unlike most attendees, who either left or used the time to catch up on emails via Blackberry, sat through Brocade’s commercial for their Advanced Fabric Services, expecting a “Live Customer Testimonial” to follow as scheduled, but that part of the program never happened.

Hearing an actual user talk about their experiences with virtualization is far more helpful to other users than seeing vendor slide presentations. Users could have asked about snags during deployment, positive results and gotten some good advice.

Hopefully other VMware seminars include the Live Customer Testimonials; it would make the time more worthwhile for attendees.

I’ve recently been through a number of operating system upgrade experiences on the small network I maintain to learn about new technologies, and it’s really made me hunger for an all-virtual future. I just installed Windows Server 2008 in a VM (VMware Server) and contrasting that with the pain of upgrading several machines to Vista, let me just say that I have seen the future, and it’s vastly superior to the present.

The ideal scenario, IMO:

Every machine ships with a virtualization layer, or at least that’s what you install on bare metal.

Every operating system comes as a VM, in a file, with a script to customize it as needed.

Every application comes in a virtual application machine — I’ll call it a virtual application component (VAC) to avoid confusion. Adding it into a VM CANNOT kill the base OS or paralyze other apps in the odd ways that apps sometimes do.

Every OS or app installation is instantly reversible and recoverable.

We’re not very far from that, eh? You can almost see Nirvana over the horizon. I’m sure I’m missing some key ingredient that will stop it all from happening (greed, maybe?). What do you think? Can we get there?

It does make me wonder what Microsoft’s Hyper-V strategy will be. Will Hyper-V be a candidate for that bare-metal layer? Or is that just going to be ESX or Xen, not that there’s anything wrong with them. Well, ESX is a bit much for desktops. Will Microsoft, in a short-sighted attempt at making sure you buy at least one copy of WS08, force you to install Hyper-V and the OS together?

Why I say short-sighted, among other reasons, is that if today’s computers had a Hyper-V layer, Vista would be having a different life. Or at least the possibility of one. There are many reasons why Vista hasn’t taken off, but at least one is the difficulties of upgrading. Here are some I’ve experienced:

1. If you had partitioned your hard drive for XP and created a boot partition with, say, 20GB, you couldn’t directly upgrade to Vista. Vista wants something like 19GB of free space to do an upgrade even though it doesn’t take up nearly that much space. If you had unallocated space on the drive, you probably couldn’t expand the boot volume into it, because for reasons I don’t  understand, most XP boot volumes can’t be grown. Nor does the Vista install routine have any special mojo to accomplish that. So you had to blow away XP and do a clean install, and then reinstall all your apps. Such fun!

2. Then there’s the strange upgrade policies for Vista itself. Now I admit that I haven’t tracked down all the ramifications of enterprise licensing, but at the retail level, it sure is screwy. Let’s say you have a machine with an OEM copy of a  lower version of Vista and you discover you need some of the features of Ultimate (oh yeah, I can’t live without BitLocker). You might think that buying the retail version of Ultimate would allow you to upgrade. Not a chance! Only buying a special upgrade version will do that — the full retail version can only be used to install a clean copy, once again forcing a reinstall of all apps. Who thought that was a good idea?

In both cases,  wouldn’t it have been so much nicer to snapshot your VACs to a network drive, install the new VM appliance, assigning it disk resources from anywhere, reconnect your VACs and go?  Maybe in the near future, your VACs would live on the network, either public or private, and the distinction between locally and remotely hosted apps would be somewhat transparent to the user.

Yes, I know there are all these nasty little issues of hardware compatibility and so on.  And then there’s the occasional “change in the driver model” that renders half your hardware obsolete. But if these problems are sorted and isolated into the right layers, I have to believe life will be easier. Call me a cockeyed optimist.