While Hyper9 continues to build features on top of its search engine for virtual infrastructures, it also keeps R&D resources busy on parallel projects. The last one, released a few days ago, is SimDK , an open source tool able to simulate the vSphere behavior. Users can connect to the SimDK service with VMware clients, like the PowerCLI or the standard vSphere Client. It’s primarily aimed at developers that want to do QA and testing, verify APIs compatibility or perform load and scalability testing, but it can be used to test, for example, 3rd party scripting tools like the Quest/Vizioncore virtualisation EcoShell Initiative (VESI) .

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At the beginning of 2010 the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) published the first revision of the OVF standard , released for the first time in February 2009. OVF 1.1 includes some clarification and new components: Capability for file system-based images to increase flexibility at deployment time A property attribute to hide password values at the user interface Joliet extensions for ISO transport image DMTF has also submitted OVF to the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) “Fast-Track” process to develop it as an American National Standard at American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Once it is approved as an ANSI standard, OVF will be submitted to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for consideration as an international standardization. The list of contributors to this revision is quite interesting as it includes includes representatives from Citrix (still listed as XenSource), Dell, IBM, Microsoft NEC, Sun (soon to appear as Oracle), Symantec and of course VMware: Simon Crosby, XenSource Ron Doyle, IBM Mike Gering, IBM Michael Gionfriddo, Sun Microsystems Steffen Grarup, VMware (Co-Editor) Steve Hand, Symantec Mark Hapner, Sun Microsystems Daniel Hiltgen, VMware Michael Johanssen, IBM Lawrence J. Lamers, VMware (Chair) John Leung, Intel Corporation Fumio Machida, NEC Corporation Andreas Maier, IBM Ewan Mellor, XenSource John Parchem, Microsoft Shishir Pardikar, XenSource Stephen J.

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Microsoft just published the beta version of a new Infrastructure Planning and Design guide. Titled Dynamic Data Center , this 43-pages blueprint on what Microsoft defines “a combination of automation, control, and resource management technology with a well-defined topology of virtualisation, servers, storage, and networking hardware”. The guide is divided in five main parts: Determine the Dynamic Data Center Scope This part helps to define the scope and determine the workloads that will be included in the Dynamic Data Center project. It’s divided in three steps: Determine the proposed initial workloads for the Dynamic Data Center.

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Exactly one year ago the Quest subsidiary Vizioncore made clear its decision to extend the focus to hypervisors from Microsoft and Citrix. At that time the company announced the upcoming support for Hyper-V and XenServer in the new vControl enterprise management console. Twelve months later, according to ComputerWorld , Vizioncore is getting ready to further support VMware competitors and unveils that its performance monitoring product, vFoglight, will support Hyper-V by mid-year and XenServer within the end of 2010.

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Now that both Virtual Iron and Sun acquisitions are complete , Oracle owns three hypervisors, a couple of virtualisation-friendly enterprise management consoles and a connection broker. What the company is missing is everything else around the hypervisor, from capacity planning to VMs backup. Oracle may decide to own the missing pieces, trying to rival the impressive VMware portfolio, or work to build a reach ecosystem, trying to convince several third parties to become virtualisation partners. And while it’s true that the VMware aggressive expansion is pushing its partners in new directions, most vendors are mostly looking for deals with Microsoft or Citrix. For these firms, focusing the limited R&D resources on Oracle VM is a risky move considering its scarce adoption after more than two years on the market.

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NComputing today announced that the company’s full product line will support the new Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 operating system from Microsoft. NComputing virtual desktop kits are based on the company’s vSpace desktop virtualization technology and are available in three product lines which are designed to bring ultra low-cost computing to customers ranging from enterprises to small… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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TechTarget just published an article about the upcoming VMware View 4.5, expected later this year (virtualisation.info heard unconfirmed rumors about this summer). The most interesting part of that piece is that ThinApp will be released as part of it, and that it will support server-side applications. So far no company except the US startup AppZero (formerly Trigence) has claimed capability to virtualize multi-tier, mission critical server workloads through application virtualisation technologies. Besides AppZero, the only other company that is known for working in this area is Microsoft, which disclosed its plan for a server-side version of App-V in January 2008 and showed a first demo in May 2009 at its MMS conference. So far Microsoft didn’t disclose any release date for such version of App-V

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Paragon technology Group, provider of data security and data management solutions, has released Paragon virtualisation Manager 2010 Personal. The program provides the user with the complete set of tools to easily perform any migration operation to the majority of virtual machines, including Sun Virtual Box, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual PC 7, VMware Player and Workstation 4.0-7.0 and… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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A number of things can be said about virtual appliances (VAs). For a start, they can be a powerful vector to quickly deploy applications without the burden of setting up a possibly complex environment, giving a kick-start to a project or testing new products in a timely fashion. Virtual appliances are being also marketed as a mean to reduce hardware proliferation for uni-tasker machines, something small and medium enterprises are quickly growing tired of. However, since in this column we’re addressing security issues in the virtualisation domain, that’s where we’re going to focus.

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This Tuesday Microsoft released its first security bulletin for Hyper-V . The vulnerability, which could lead to a Denial of Service (DoS), consists in a malformed sequence of instructions that a locally authenticated user has execute on a guest operating system.