VMTN, VMware’s support forums are an excellent resource: You will find a very high level of participation in the forums from users all over the world with many experienced and talented users who volunteer their time to help others, not unlike our own IT Knowledge Exchange.

The forums are a free resource for anyone to use with many users using the forums as an alternative to contacting VMware’s technical support. It’s not unusual to get an answer to your question or a solution to your problem within minutes of posting to the forums. Most new users are surprised by the speed, quality and number of answers that they receive to their posts. The forums are also a great place for users to share experiences, build relationships and strategize with other members. Many VMware employees also regularly participate in the forums by lending their expertise.

Like the IT Knowledge Exchange, the VMware forums tend to be a little competitive with users competing to collect points for posting responses to questions. Six points can be awarded by the person who asked the question for up to two helpful responses and ten points can be awarded to one response that is deemed correct. The point system allows people to gain status levels as their points increase. There are nine status levels ranging from Lurker (0-5 points) all the way up to the elite Guru level (20000+ points). As of today, there are currently 442,452 forum members with an average of about 20,000 new members being added each month. The chart below shows the breakdown of users by status level.

I would like to recognize a few of the talented VMTN members that consistently take time out of their day to help others with their only reward being recognition points and the satisfaction of knowing they helped out a fellow VMware user. Much thanks and appreciation to: Oliver Reeh (Oreeh), Dave Mishchenko (Dave.Mishchenko), Tom Howarth (Tom Howarth), Steve Beaver (Sbeaver), Edward Haletky (Texiwill) and Ken Cline (Ken.Cline).

Of course, these are just a few of the many forum members who help the VMware community. Judging from the numbers in the chart above, there are over 500 people at the Hot Shot level or above who answer the most posts from other forum users.

If you use any VMware product, I highly recommend that you check out the VMTN forums and check out the IT Knowledge Exchange. You’ll undoubtedly find that reading posts on the forums is a great way to expand your own knowledge.

Scott Adams isn’t the first to create a cartoon about virtualization (see VirtualMan helps IT pros explain virtualization’s benefits). Even so, his short comics that grace yesterday and today’s Dilbert.com homepage highlight a simple truth: for IT managers, getting the green light to virtualize is a lot easier if the higher ups have the idea first. Here’s a thought: If you want to virtualize, and your C-levels aren’t quite paying attention, maybe you should put a virtualization insert in one of his (or her) trade journals?

Yesterday’s Dilbert.com comic strip:

But, as today’s comic points out, even if your company approves a virtualization project, you still may not get to partake in the fun!

VirtualMan blog posts co-authored by Hannah Drake and Matt McDonough.

Trying to grasp the basics of server virtualization? Or, do you face the even more challenging task of explaining and/or pitching server virtualization projects to non-IT execs? Definitions from WhatIs.com or Wikipedia may help, or you could call in VirtualMan.

AccessFlow created an amusing and informative virtualization-based comic series to explain virtualization as a technology. In the first installment, superhero VirtualMan helps frustrated data center manager Ivy Green explain the complicated technology’s benefits to a resistant executive in layman’s terms, saving her from trying to fit yet another physical server into her data center.

Check out this week’s comic and learn how to defeat execs who harbor “a hardware-centric view of the world” with VirtualMan Powers Down.

VirtualMan is not only an amusing diversion that IT professionals will appreciate for its tongue-in-cheek look at the problems that are inherent in today’s data center, but it’s also a valuable educational tool for those that aren’t as familiar with virtualization as they would like. So whether you’re looking for a quick laugh at your desk during work or want to learn more about virtualization with cartoon art accompaniment, AccessFlow’s VirtualMan is definitely worth a peek. Stay tuned; we’ll review more episodes in the coming weeks.

I was crusing the Web just now, trying to find some interesting blogs that aren’t chock-full of code that an associate editor simply does not understand. I clicked on Roudy Bob’s blog (see our blogroll for his link) and low and behold, my boredom was alleviated!

To read the following analogy of the virtualization game and the boardgame RISK from the source, visit RoudyBob’s blog.

Enjoy.

“I somewhat miss the days when virtualization was at the fringe of the market and just about everything that came along was new and exciting. Now, it’s a high-stakes game - with hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars of software and services to be had for the company that plays it right. Along with maturity comes incremental, conservative product releases aimed to grow cautiously while nurturing the existing customer base. Also involved now is the politics and strategy of mergers and acquisitions - not the typical fare for your standard geek. The more I thought about my last post, the more I realized what we’re seeing in the market today is a lot like the RISK game most of us played as a kid. Take for example, the game board: 

Microsoft, VMware, SWsoft, XENSource and other smaller players are trying to carve out their piece of the total virtualization pie. The company that claims the most territory (share of the market) wins. Sure, it’s probably a bit of an obvious analogy to make - but it does provide a little different perspective on things.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that the virtualization RISK map is laid out like this:

“North America - Data Center Virtualization
South America - Development and Test
Africa - Virtual Infrastructure Management (a.k.a., utility computing)
Europe - Linux Virtualization
Asia - Virtualized Desktops
Australia / Pacific Rim - OS X Virtualization“Each time we observe the likes of Microsoft and VMware (EMC) opening the war chests to dole out large sums of money for smaller companies doing interesting things, the map shifts a little more in the favor of one or the other. New entrants also shake up the dynamics of the map.“Take the Microsoft acquisition of Softricity for example - having the ability to virtualize applications on the desktop would significantly advance Microsoft’s position in the Virtualized Desktops arena - a place that has seen little traction to date. Previously, VMware’s ACE product was really the only large player in that game. When VMware acquired Akimbi this month, they definitely made a further push in two areas they are already strong in - Development and Test as well as Virtual Infrastructure Management.“Continuing the RISK analogy, then, which players occupy the most territory and where should a company like Microsoft (amazingly the underdog, for once…) focus its efforts?

“I think it’s safe to say that the North American continent, er, the Data Center Virtualization space is occupied in a big way by VMware. The fact that they were first to market with an enterprise-class virtualization product (ESX Server) made it easy to make headway in IT organizations who made the early move to virtualization. The ESX Server product is fairly well positioned to satisfy companies’ urge to consolidate and rationalize their physical servers onto virtual machines. Microsoft’s Virtual Server product, despite the company’s efforts, has made little progress in getting into these larger-scale virtual machine environments. Remember, though, that the first player to advance isn’t always the winner.

“Development and Test is a different story. I think Microsoft has an amazing opportunity to leverage the Windows platform and its broad developer tools offering to really win this part of the market. And, if you want my opinion, that’s a much better strategy for going after Data Center Virtualization than trying to fight an uphill battle against ESX Server. A large presence in this space and some strategic offensive moves to the north (remember the analogy, right!?) could turn the tide away from VMware. Everyone is waiting with eager anticipation the release of the Windows-based hypervisor due sometime after “Longhorn”. But in a year and a half - the market will have likely left Microsoft behind. I think it’s a very large bet on their part that will most likely not pay off.

“Virtual Infrastructure Management is where all of the major players (and other folks like Altiris, BMC, Acronis, etc.) seem to be focusing these days. And rightly so. Being able to manage a large virtualized infrastructure easily and bring the concept of “utility computing” to reality is a guaranteed way to differentiate yourself. Again, I think VMware has the early lead as its VMotion and VirtualCenter solutions have helped them to garner mindshare in this area. But, products like System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Systems Management Server and Operations Manager from Microsoft give that company at least a way to make inroads.

“This is undoubtedly the biggest portion of the virtualization market (the greatest customer need) and would be the place where I would choose to play if I were an up-and-coming company that wanted to focus on the space. The reason management is so appealing is that there are all sorts of interesting problems to solve - management, monitoring, backup, restore, provisioning, auditing, asset management, etc. And for the most part, they’re problems that customers are willing to spend some money to address. Startups can grow quickly by providing something customers need and folks like VMware, Microsoft and SWsoft can easily differentiate themselves from one another by leveraging the management “story” around virtualization.

“Linux Virtualization, analogous to the Europe of RISK, is where companies like SWsoft with their Virtuozzo product and XENSource with their Xen product have dominated. Sure, VMware Workstation and VMware Server both run on Linux and the ESX Server hypervisor is based on it. But, in terms of catering to the needs of the open source community and the requirements of large-scale hosting providers running Linux, the Virtuozzo and Xen products have the most traction. SWsoft used their Virtuozzo for Linux product as a foothold into the broader Windows market when it released Virtuozzo for Linux. And Xen is scrambling to provide Windows guest OS support based on the new virtualization support in the latest generation of Intel processors. Your starting position on the game board doesn’t dictate the outcome, just the strategy.

“The biggest untapped market for virtualization has to be leveraging virtualization as part of the end user experience on the desktop. VMware’s ACE product was the first to focus on this, but no one company - even VMware - has seemed to get any traction. The potential opportunity for an interesting solution to problems like mobile workforce empowerment, workstation security, etc. is enormous. The shear numbers dictate that a successful solution could yield impressive financial returns.

“Ironically, Microsoft is probably best positioned to do something in this space and hasn’t. There are plans for providing VirtualPC capabilities to enterprise Vista customers but in reality this is just more of the same. What if users could run their browser in a seamless window running as part of a background virtual machine that was isolated from the corporate network? What if the applications and user date for a workstation PC were somehow virtualized so that users could move easily between different pieces of hardware? These are some of the possibilities that Microsoft could start to address by leveraging its Windows monopoly on the desktop and the pervasiveness of centralized management solutions like Active Directory and Group Policy. And their “innovation” in this area is to bundle a couple of license together and calling it Virtual PC Express.

“Lastly, there’s the OS X Virtualization market. In the game of RISK, completely occupying Australia is one way to gain an advantage early - leveraging the additional armies provided by controlling the entire continent. As far as virtualization is concerned, I don’t think owning the Mac market is going to yield any huge advantage in areas like Data Center Virtualization or Virtual Infrastructure Management. It’s still an interesting space - especially with the switch to Intel-based Macs. What was once dominated by Microsoft’s Virtual PC product is now up for grabs again with products like Parallels Workstation for OS X gobbling up earlier adopters who bought new intel-based machines and want to virtualize Windows. Apple may also have a play here as well if rumors are true that they are looking to integrate virtualization into the next version of the OS X operating system.”

Well done, Roudy Bob!

Virtualization.info, Gridtoday, the eGenera website, and a lot of other sources reported that eGenera has received a patent for an all-in-one N+1 tiered disaster recovery solution that combines grid technology and virtualization to provide a hardware-neutral Disaster Recovery product that takes your entire data center and encapsulates it. This is an awesome product because it can greatly improve DR and perhaps make DR more accessible to smaller businesses, but it’s not patent-worthy. It smacks of a way to stifle competition and generate revenue via patent suits over product sales. Or it may just be that patent itself is just pointless. I’m not sure which case is more true, honestly. It all depends on if it’s challenged, and how.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a lawyer. In fact, I don’t ever even want to be a lawyer. I’m happy as an IT Director and SysAdmin, and don’t want to ever be a source of legal advice. The below is informed opinion, not legal advice. Tell it to the Judge. Under the recently-relaxed “Obviousness” rule that governs patents, a patent is useless if the idea behind it is only an obvious improvement over an existing idea. eGenera’s patent seems to fall squarely under that rule, from the language in their patent application. Just for kicks, I read it, and will quote it. Under the quotes I’ll comment on what this means, in my not-so-humble and not-so-attorney opinion.

It starts out with a SCREAMING cry of obviousness in section 1…

“A method of providing processing resources to respond to a fail-over condition in which a primary site includes a configuration of processing resources, comprising: generating a specification that describes a configuration of processing resources of the primary site; providing the specification to a fail-over site having a configurable processing platform capable of deploying processing area networks in response to software commands; using the specification to generate software commands to the configurable platform to deploy processing resources corresponding to the specification; wherein the processing resources at the primary site include a plurality of independent processing area networks and wherein the specification describes only a subset of the plurality of independent processing area networks. “

That, my friends, is commonly known in the IT field as a failover cluster.  The link even defines the N+1 method that eGenera is using in its product. The short of it - You have multiple boxes on a network that are mirrors of one another. One fails, another takes over its role. There’s usually hardware or software in-between that keeps things synchronized and detects the failure. This part of the patent is worded to be host-, network- and processor-inclusive, which would be obvious because most clusters are situated on networks, don’t necessarily need to run the same processors, and are hosts. The “big” improvement is in the use of the term “site” - where the product is meant to restore an entire data center’s configuration. In the press release, this means that if you have four data centers and one disaster site, if any one data center fails, the disaster site takes on the complete configuration of the failed site (i.e., all nodes, network configurations, etc.). This is a huge step forward in disaster recovery, but it’s not patent-worthy because there are a zillion ways to do this.

Here’s one - If you put 100% of your data center(s) onto VMware’s VI3 with shared storage, and had a huge WAN pipe between each site to cover the overhead, you would have this “network in a box” N+1 approach because ESX provides virtual network switching and virtual guest machines, without having to worry about the value of N except in scalability terms. The same is true of most Xen-based products, like Virtual Iron. I’ve been doing this for years on a much smaller scale. If my main data center drops off the face of the earth, I’ve got all of my critical systems in VMware, with snapshots and backups of the machines and the storage they’re on, as well as configuration of the virtual switches. If the worst happens and my data center goes down, my staff and I drive over to a remote office, restore, and have exactly what eGenera is talking about - a complete restoration of all configurations at a remote data center. The method - backing up virtualized systems. The process - recovery to virtualized systems. It’s not as slick as an automated system, but we’re getting to the point that eGenera talks about in its patent (thanks to an Open Source project called Openfiler and some extra bandwidth on our WAN to handle sending snapshots between sites rather than driving tapes around).

Soon, the site backups will be automatically done over WAN links, meaning that when something fails, I switch over to the DR network and everything comes back online from the virtual machine snapshots / backups. It won’t be long after that until we automate that switchover, and have exactly what eGenera is describing. It’s been a long process because that deep a level of DR isn’t a critical requirement to the business, but it was obvious where we wanted to go, and obvious how we needed to get there - through the use of virtualized host and network environments.This brings me to the next few sections:

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of using the specification to generate commands to deploy processing resources is in response to the receipt of a fail-over condition.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of generating includes specifying data specific to device configuration at the primary site.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of generating includes specifying management information relevant to the primary site. “

Summary - we’re patenting how we’re going to do what we claim, how we’re going to encode the configuration, and how we’re going to send notifications when it kicks off. All irrelevant if the concept of the patent is obvious. Also these are all in themselves obvious - any virtualized system has to have information on configuration of the underlying virtualized hardware. Any cluster sends notification on a failure of a node. Any mirrored port has awareness of the cache in its partner port. Outside of the patent office, and in the IT office, this stuff goes without saying.

Next up, section 5… this is identical to section 1, except the last few words: “wherein the specification describes all of the independent processing area networks.”. There’s no significant difference as to obviousness here - it’s just the parts of the patent which are different from each other that are referenced. This is a matter of scale - rather than a “subset of the plurality” (English: part of the whole) this is a “master file” of the entire environment being monitored. It adds grid technology into the mix, another obvious case for virtualization.

Section 6 changes the plurality part to “a minimum configuration of processing resources at the primary site”, which is just saying that the system will use the most efficient (i.e., minimal) configuration possible to get the job done. Duh. Do I have the same number of VMware hosts at my remote sites? No, I don’t. I don’t even always have the same builds or even the same versions! Do I have all of the same configurations? No. Can I really bring up 100% of my data center at a remote site? Sure. And eat a performance bullet on the servers.

So what would I do? I would bring up critical systems only - Active Directory, DNS, Email, mission-critical apps. My Jabber server would stay down. My dev environment would stay down. I would run the minimal configuration I need to get the business working. Can it get any more obvious than “if I don’t have the all the resources I need, I’ll get by with what I have, the best that I can”?

The seventh section tacks this part onto the end: “…wherein the primary site includes a configurable processing platform having a pool of processors and wherein the act of generating includes specifying information descriptive of how the processors are pooled at the primary site. “A pool of processors. Also known as a computing grid. And it goes on to describe having a documented system for how that grid works, and tying that to the application. This is truly obvious. If you have a system, you document it. If you have an automation system, it’s documented, and it uses documentation on how the system it automates functions. This sort of thing has been around forever.

On a non-grid level, Detroit has been outsourcing human labor to robots using this exact methodology for decades. On grids, this is how they work… regardless of distance. Each node is aware of each other node, and so the grid has an internal documentation of the pool of resources that are available.

Section 8: “The method of claim 7 wherein the act of generating includes specifying data to describe logical partitioning of processors and interconnectivity into logical processing networks. ” This is the virtualization component. In virtualized systems and virtualized DR products like VMware’s VMotion, this is a core component of how the systems work to provide fault tolerance. The service console knows what virtual machines are out there, and what host systems are out there. It has descriptive information about the resources, how they’re pooled, and how they’ll be moved in the event of failure. eGennera’s idea is obviously a small improvement to the process, applying it towards a virtualized grid concept, but it’s not a huge leap forward (again). Virtualized grids have already been in the works for some time. See here and here.

Section 9 states:

“A system of providing processing resources to respond to a fail-over condition in which a primary site includes a configuration of processing resources, comprising; a computer-readable specification that describes a configuration of processing resources of the primary site; a configurable processing platform capable of deploying processing area networks in response to software commands; logic to generate software commands to the configurable platform to deploy processing resources corresponding to the specification; wherein the processing resources at the primary site include a plurality of independent processing area networks and wherein the specification describes only a subset of the plurality of independent processing area networks. ”

In other words, the systems to the methods described above.

Section 10 is similar, switching plurality for totality like sections 1 and 5 did. So they’re going to build a computer system to do what DR specialists and Virtualization specialists have been doing for some time now, only under a commercial brand. Seems obvious to me.

The next sections reference art that I won’t reprint or link to here, as they’re not very original. In fact, the art is as obvious as the concept for this patent. I won’t need the art to describe the obviousness of some of what is printed in the text. Here’s my favorite example so far:

“To date, a considerable body of expertise has been developed in addressing disaster recovery with specific emphasis on replicating the data. Processor-side issues have not received adequate attention. To date, processor-side aspects of disaster recovery have largely been handled by requiring processing resources on the secondary site to be identical to those of the first site and to wait in standby mode.” 

Processors have not received adequate attention because in virtualized environments, they are largely irrelevant as long as you’re not mixing widely different types (such as AMD and Intel). You do not need to maintain identical processors, or quantities of processors, or anything like this. I can restore the virtual machines running on my Intel dual core Xeon servers on my Intel single core Xeon machines with a great deal of flexibility amongst processor family types. Does it matter if one is 2.8GHz and another is 1.6GHz? Not really. The processors at my remote sites aren’t sitting in standby mode, either. They’re running apps on the local servers. They are live, running, and chugging along. They’re ready to load up more virtual machines and take over the load at any time.

So, considering the giant logical fallacy presented here, I’m left wondering if there’s even a need for this patent. I could get REALLY brave and open up a huge pipe to the remote sites and run shared storage and VI3 over my WAN… assuming I had unlimited funds for a 1+gig WAN pipe, and then I could get away with having no other process beyond VMware’s built-in recovery with VMotion, CB, and HA.

And yes, I recognize that not everything can be virtualized, but in all honesty, what eGenera proposes is no less disruptive and impactful to a data center than that of virtualization. The rest of the document gets into specifics and details that are very patent-sounding, detailed diagrams, how the parts of the product will work, a definition of PAN (processor area network, as opposed to personal area network), how control nodes manage the environment, etc.

Here’s the summary: We’re going to build a set of interconnected boxes that will virtualized your environment down to the tiniest level. Then when something fails, we’ll load up resources at a remote site and make it all come back online.

Can it get any more obvious than this? It seems like eGenera is using patents to block competition. It strikes me that the folks as eGenera collectively went “Oh, I have an idea to improve this and this and this. It seems kind of logical, but we should patent it so nobody else with the same idea can compete with us without licensing from us”. It’s a great product, but it uses existing technology and existing ideas about how to use technology to provide a product that is already out there, just not in a commercial pacakage. I personally don’t think the patent will stand up to challenge, given the recent changes to patent law.  

Alessandro Perilli, SearchServerVirtualization.com contributor and owner of virtualization.info, has a fantastic virtualization-related jobs section on his site. At the time of this post positions are mostly for VMware gurus, but a few are for sales. Locations range from coast to coast in the US.

Check out the virtualization.info job board now — but not while your boss is watching…

Another great site if you’re looking for virtualization-related jobs is indeed.

If you’re still not convinced you should switch jobs, vi411.com has a post from January 22, 2007 that says VMware salaries are 115% higher than average data center salaries.

I found another blog post-worthy blog. Rightfully called ”Documenting a virtualization project“, it’s pretty darn cool. Read about one company’s experience with virtualizing their servers from the start. Most recently, the author, (Martin?) reported that they company (which remains namelesS) has 75 servers virtualized at approximately a 20:1 ratio, and 25 servers to go. They seem to be doing a lot with VDI and VMware, so if that’s your forte I highly suggest becoming a frequent visitor to this blog (after ours, of course.)

Throughout the blog, he talks about migrating Oracle servers, their VDI project, their first production HA failover:

“A quite unexpected event yesterday was the very first HA failover in production.”

The day the Oracle servers froze:

“I shoudn’t be writing that all is well on the Oracle front.

“Just now two of the Oracle servers froze with database problems. The DBA tells me that they have had block corrupts which he hasn’t seen in five years of running the things.”

Then he goes on to blog about what they learned from the Oracle freeze:

“…memory settings turned out to be highly critical in relation to the performance of the VM.”

…I guess he should have been paying more attention to his SearchServerVirtualization.com Virtualization Advisor e-newsletters.

I was surfing the virtualization blogs recently and came across a gem of a Webpage. Virtualization Daily has put together a virtualization bookstore of sorts — the books link to Amazon, but it’s a great way to get a fast glance at the books and decide what you want from there. Check out the book store here.

Unless you live under a rock, by now you’re probably heard about VI3. But have you seen it in action? This “short” (ha) 20-minute long video I found on YouTube shows you exactly what it does.

It features a VMware “guru” and a virtualization “newbie” who asks every possible question you could think of.  It’s actually a pretty decent video. Check it out here: VMware Infrastructure 3 demo. (I was going to try to embed the video, but this blog won’t let me… yet.)

While we’re on the subject of videos, I found another good VI3 video-this time about upgrading. Why should you upgrade? Find out here:  VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Upgrading. The speaker is a little dry, though.