While Intel prepares to launch its first octal-core CPU (codename Nehalem-EX ) , which will potentially trigger a price increase in vSphere licensing, VMware publishes a new benchmark on current Xeon 5500 servers. This time the company focuses on high throughput web performance, running the SPECweb2005 benchmark against a HP ProLiant DL380 G6 machine equipped with two quad-core Intel Xeon X5570 CPUs @ 2.933GHz and 96GB memory. The system above, powered by vSphere 4.0, run four virtual machines with 4 vCPUs and 21GB vRAM each, hosting a copy of paravirtualized 64bit Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 plus Rock Webserver and Rock JSP server. Such system, thanks to paravirtualisation drivers, the VMware NetQueue technology, the Intel VMDirectPath technology (part of VT-d) and the Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AF network interface cards, recorded a benchmark score of 62,296, equal to 85% of native performance. The four VMs were able to serve

Last week Pano Logic announced its third round funding, equal to $20M and led by Mayfield Fund. As result, Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha will join the company’s Board of Directors. With this investment, the startup raised more than $40M. The previous round , $18M, was led by Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs.

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At the end of January VMware released a couple of minor updates for its desktop virtualisation platforms for Windows and Linux: Workstation and Player. For some reasons we missed this product update, so we are reporting about it now. The new build (227600) is primarily for bug fixing but it also introduces support for a number of guest and host operating systems: Windows Server 2008 R2 (host and guest) Windows Vista SP2 (host and guest) Ubuntu 9.10 (host and guest) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (host and guest) CentOS 5.4 (guest only) Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 (guest only)

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Stratavia announced today the public beta of Data Palette Express, a downloadable version of their data center automation technology that can be deployed for free on up to 10 servers. Data Palette Express includes many of the features offered by Data Palette Enterprise including point-and-click application provisioning, code deployments, and maintenance for enterprise-class application servers and… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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During its annual Summit ( see virtualisation.info live coverage here ) Parallels announced the upcoming availability of Parallels Server for Mac Bare Metal Edition (PSfMBME ???). The name is a little confusing: PFfMBME is a type-1 hypervisor which doesn’t need any host operating system to run. So the “for Mac” in the title just means that this specific version of the product supports Apple Xserve hardware, and thus allows customers to run Mac OS X Server virtual machines. Parallels offers a version of this hypervisor that supports other enterprise class x86/x64 hardware since October 2009 but of course the Apple EULA prohibits to run Mac OS X Server guest OSes on it.

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Skytap today announced breakthrough network automation capabilities that simplify and accelerate the creation, migration and deployment of multi-tier enterprise applications in the cloud. These features empower IT organizations to create virtual data centers with advanced network topologies and enable functional users to deploy them with an easy-to-use, self-service interface. This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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Lanamark today announced that they are working with Oracle to enable partners to use Lanamark Suite to perform capacity planning and deliver enterprise-class desktop and server virtualisation solutions based on Oracle VM across x86/x64 and SPARC architectures. As part of this effort, Lanamark has joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork as a Gold level partner. This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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Citrix and Novell today announced a collaboration that expands choice for customers through increased virtualisation interoperability and new assessment tools to help pinpoint the economically most advantageous approach to virtualisation. Through this new partnership, Novell has certified SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a “Perfect Guest” running on Citrix XenServer and both companies will provide… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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At the end of January Microsoft silently updated its Linux Integrated Components package to version 2.0, introducing the long awaited support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) guest operating systems in Hyper-V. Microsoft announced future support for Red Hat operating systems in July 2009, since the open source vendor joined the Server virtualisation Validation Program (SVVP). Customers had to wait no less than seven months to finally have a version of Hyper-V Linux Integrated Components that supports RHEL 5 (including 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 versions, both 32 and 64bit). Like for Novell SUSE Linux, Microsoft doesn’t include in the package the optimized drivers for mouse.

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The VMware | Cisco | EMC coalition is waiting for Acadia to start its business and begin the implementation, administration and delivery of their new datacenters-in-a-box. Meanwhile the three companies prepare and publish key documents to understand how the VBlock computing stack is designed and how it can be used. Specifically, the documents published online are: The Deployment Guide Deploy a full Vblock (for delivery) as an integrated whole The Rapid Provisioning Guide Simplify Rapid Provsioning across the entire stack whether you are a service provider or an enterprise customer The Reference Architecture Guide Detailed configuration specification, how it is tested, etc. Only the Reference Architecture is available for public access . It includes information about Vblock configuration type 1 and type 2.

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