The imminent launch of Intel octal-core CPUs (codename Nehalem-EX) and servers with up to 48 cores (powered by AMD codename Magny-cours CPUs) will dramatically increase the virtualisation hosts density but will highlight how the network layer is becoming one of the weakest point of high-capacity virtual infrastructures. Anandtech just published a very interesting article on this topic, testing the performance of a couple of copper cable 10GBase-CX4 network interface cards against the popular quad-port gigabit NICs we use today in most virtualisation hosts. The benchmark measured dual-port Intel PRO/1000 PT Server adapter (82571EB) against a Supermicro AOC-STG-I2 dual-port 10Gbit/s Intel 82598EB and a Neterion Xframe-E 10Gbit/s. Both NICs were tested with VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1 and CentOS 5.4 guest OSes with appropriate drivers. While NICs tested by Anandtech are not the lastest available on the market, the research still is a valuable reading for most virtualisation administrators.

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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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Just in case the entrance in the server market and the alliance with EMC and VMware were not clear enough, Cisco decided to clarify even better that taking over HP market share is the primary goal: And it’s not a secret that EMC and HP compete in the enterprise storage space. The only problem is that HP is one of the strongest VMware partner today. The two could move from partnership to fair “co-opetition”, as the Industry likes to call it today, but for how much time?

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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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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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Double-Take Software is releasing Double-Take Availability for Linux Version 4.6, which now provides businesses with continuous full-server protection and allows users to protect not only data and applications but also the entire Linux system including operating system and application files. This product conducts real-time, full-server replication, which protects OS, application and data files… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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SolarWinds, a provider of IT management software , today announced that it has acquired certain of the assets of Tek-Tools, a privately-held company with offices in Dallas, TX and Chennai, India, with a combination of cash and stock for up to $42 million. Tek-Tools’ Profiler suite of products gives users visibility into the performance of storage and virtualized server infrastructures. The… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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Symantec has announced NetBackup 7 to help enterprise-level organizations protect, store and recover information with greater efficiency and reliability through a single, unified platform. The latest release of NetBackup enables organizations to simplify information management while reducing data stores and network traffic by integrating deduplication everywhere — at the client, media server… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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Yesterday Microsoft and HP announced a 3-year agreement to spend $250M on several fronts: Hyper-V and System Center, Windows Azure, Exchange, SQL Server and more. The problem with such announcements (see the 3-year alliance with EMC for another example) is that just a few (to not say nobody) really understand what’s the difference between before and after the deal. The language used in the press announcements never helps. Microsoft and HP already are very good partners.

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“Big tech companies bought hundreds of smaller players from 2000 to 2009, but to my mind only one acquisition stands out as the smartest purchase of the aughts. My pick is EMC/VMware, because of the sheer impact that server virtualisation is having on the software industry. And because VMware currently owns this market, it gets credit for much of this impact.” This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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