The new version of vSphere may be released earlier than expected according to some changes in the VMware’s website. And the virtualization platform may be indeed called vSphere 4.1 rather than 4.5 as virtualization.info suggested so far. An attempt to browse the URL http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=ESX41 in fact redirects to the default login page for non-public downloads, and on this page the product name used is ESX 4.1: Of course a similar attempt using the ESX45 code doesn’t redirects to the download page. Over the last two months virtualization.info reported about the list of features that will be part of vSphere 4.1 and a list of performance improvements that VMware will publish once the product will be released. On top of that VMware published a video demonstrating one of the new features: the Storage I/O Control. Thanks to our anonymous tipster for the news.

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Less than three months ago the Spanish startup Abiquo was preparing to release version 1.5 of its management console for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms. The company is back with a new beta program for version 1.6 which is fully focused on programmable interfaces. Abiquo 1.6 beta in fact comes with a Cloud Service API, to automate the migration of existing virtual machines into the cloud platform of choice through the VMware vCloud API standard, and a Cloud Operator API, to automate the workload balancing inside the cloud platform through capacity rules. Plus, Abiquo 1.6 introduces support for Citrix XenServer as backend hypervisor, support for Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and support for a number of networking technologies, including: 802.1Q VLAN trunking multiple vNICs per virtual machine multiple Virtual LANs (VLANs) per virtual datacenter named networks Allocation Policy management based on VLAN availability physical NIC customization DHCP Relays

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tuCloud is a UK startup that entered the cloud computing market in September 2009 . While the world was waiting for top players like Verizon and IBM to launch their desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) cloud computing offerings, this little company came out of nowhere and started offering Windows Vista and 7 virtual desktops (with VMware/Teradici PCoIP remote protocol, preloaded Windows applications and 100% uptime SLA) before anybody else on the market. While it’s not exactly clear how tuCloud is able to do so without breaking current Microsoft licensing, the company seems to have made interesting progress in the last six months. So far in fact tuCloud closed deals with Virtual Computer and Kaviza, two promising startup in the virtual desktop management space. Thanks to the deal with Virtual Computer, on-premises virtual desktops across multiple continents will be centrally manageable by NxTop on tuCloud servers. Kaviza VDI-in-a-box instead is used as the primary VDI architecture to keep the offerings costs as low as possible. Anyway, the most important achievement so far definitively is an agreement with EMC Consulting to use their workforce when the demand for virtual desktops is too big for their own staff. tuCloud in fact doesn’t offer yet a self-service provisioning portal where customers can order, customize and purchase their virtual desktop. So far they guarantee a virtual desktop delivery within 24 hours since order is placed. The fact that EMC trusts the company will definitively give customers a lot more confidence in the startup capability to deliver promises.

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The adoption of cloud computing implies facing and solving a number of remarkable challenges. The security aspect is probably the most discussed ever but another key point that ISVs, cloud providers and customers have to agree on is licensing. Licensing of guest operating systems and their applications in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms is a critical aspect to consider when evaluating the economics of this technology. And really a few players are actively discussing it. So it’s with a lot of interest that virtualisation.info reports about the activity around Amazon and its Xen-based EC2 IaaS cloud. Last month Microsoft and Amazon announced a new pilot program that allows their customers to extend their existing Windows Server Enterprise Agreement (EA) licenses, plus technology Assurance (SA), to the instances they have inside EC2. Last week Red Hat announced something similar with its Cloud Access initiative . Basically, those customers that have a minimum of 25 active subscriptions and a direct support agreement with Red Hat, can apply unused Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform Premium and/or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server to their EC2 instances. Those licenses must remain attached to EC2 instances for at least six months.

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Tomorrow Microsoft will kick off its Management Summit (MMS) 2010 in Las Vegas and while there is no information about the keynotes content, we may have some important announcements related to virtualisation and cloud computing. The conference tagline this year in fact says “Manage the Future – Desktop to Cloud”. More importantly, Microsoft specifically advertised the April 20 and 21 keynotes live streams on its virtualisation blog, which is something pretty unusual, with hinted about “demos of new and upcoming products”. Microsoft is expected to unveil its plans to compete against Amazon with a portion of Azure able to work as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud. Or at least this is what the company’s Chief technology Architect Ray Ozzie suggested five months ago . Ready or not to deliver such facility, Microsoft may want to counter the big announcement that Salesforce and VMware are about to make on April 27. Very likely, the company will at least announce its private cloud toolkit, which was expected for March .

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Three months after the previous release, Quest announces version 7.1 of its VDI connection broker vWorkspaces. The new build introduces a number of new features including: Microsoft RDP acceleration for WAN links (EOP Xtream) Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop (RD) Connection Broker Support for Remote Desktop (RD) RemoteApp for Hyper-V and Session Hosts/Terminal Servers Support for Hyper-V Differencing Disks through System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Support for virtual desktops load balancing across multiple Hyper-V hosts Support for Microsoft App-V 4.6

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As expected , after seven months in beta, the vCloud Express implementation offered by BlueLock, one of the five hosting providers selected for this program by VMware, has been declared GA expected to reach GA yesterday, has been postponed. Despite that, the company moved from a free beta to paid service and published the price list , which is rather interesting compared to the Terremark one , the company where VMware invested $20 million in June 2009, and the Amazon EC2 one . It’s worth to note that the Terremark implementation is still in beta (at least looking at their website). Prices may change once the cloud infrastructure is declared GA as well. Update: After a careful review of the announcement BlueLock released yesterday, this post and its title have been corrected. The vCloud Express GA has been postponed, and the hosting provider just moved from a free beta to a paid beta.

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Capacity planning has always been a key phase in most virtualisation projects . Unfortunately, just a limited number of customers sees a real value in this activity as it requires expensive products, skills to use them and a significant amount of time to produce results that sometimes are only partially useful. While the adoption of capacity planning tools still is very low, their importance is higher than ever as virtual infrastructures grow in complexity and add more dimensions to be considered. virtualisation architects don’t have to deal anymore with well-known problems like the virtual machine density per host (VM / core) and proper storage capacity for basic server consolidation vs VDI use cases. Here’s three good examples:

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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One of the biggest assets VMware has, excluding of course its product portfolio, is its VMTN Forum facility, which hosts a large and incredibly active community of professionals that quite often are more knowledgeable, faster and way more efficient than the company’s paid support. Any new customer that wants to learn VMware technologies inside out, well beyond what the official training class can provide, should consider investing at least 6-9 months just to follow the threads on the VMTN board in passive mode. There’s a large number of VMware employees that contributed the success of VMTN. The first one that comes to mind for sure is John Troyer , Senior Social Media Strategist, who definitively is the VMware front man for everything related to the community. Behind the scenes there’s at least another one: Robert Dell’Immagine , Director of Community Program, who just left VMware after almost six years.

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