Vmware has been touted as the next big thing comparable to the Internet boom. Virtualization is supposed to transform the computer industry.

Who thinks this will boom as several recent articles mentioned?

It already has in corporate environments...

Virtualization allows businesses to run multiple applications and operating systems on one server. As a result, they can use fewer servers, use less power, and better manage their data.

Did you guys know that VMWare, a little known company has already joined the ranks of Microsoft in terms of market cap (Forbes article says that it is in the top 5 in terms of market cap)?

What do you think about virtualization technology? Is it going to transform the computer world? From what I have read so far, it sure seems promising especially since some of the major players do feel that it is the next big thing in computing.

I see a lot of my customers not taking on VMware as its just a waste in some enviroments.

I'd be interested to know why you think it's a waste?

Realistically it delivers nothing but advantages, not only do you have the obvious ability to run multiple environments on the same equipment, you can create much better complete system backups and move VE's between machines without downtime to perform hardware upgrades and maintainence. You can also migrate to new completely different hardware without any issues inside of the VE.

To give you an example an enterprise client of ours has approximately 50 servers running ~ 200 VE's on VMWare, they have a disaster recovery site which has approximately 30 servers and SAN storage space to store backups of the 200 or so VE's. We were able to simulate a disaster recovery exercise and had all 200 VE's back up and running within one day at the DR site.

Had we not been using VMWare, we would have had to rebuild all of the machines to add them to the domain, restore individual data to locations, recreate individual shares, etc, the recovery time would have been at least a few weeks with the same staff resource.

So to answer the OP's original question, yes it's making a huge difference to businesses, mainly enterprises. However I think the hosting market (or at least the low end hosting market), is too competitive to be able to justify the outlay for the likes of ESX, VMotion, etc.

Dan

BTW "VMWare" is not a company, it is EMC, and yes they are huge but virtualization is not their own market :)


Edit: Hrm I guess I am behind, EMC seems to have spun-off VMware now as its own company

Ah, VMware is very much a company... they are owned by EMC, they weren't spun off, they were bought.

no, just 2 months ago they were spun off as public company with a new IPO

Ah, VMware is very much a company... they are owned by EMC, they weren't spun off, they were bought.

That means they went public, not spun off. They were bought by EMC at the end of 2003.

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/emc2.html

Care to read:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/08/HNemcspinoffvmware_1.html


When a company such as EMC is already public, making a division public is by definition spinning off a company.

That means they went public, not spun off. They were bought by EMC at the end of 2003.

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/emc2.html

The following is an article from Forbes which may clarify how EMC is involved with VMWare:

"VMware continued to climb in its second day on the market Wednesday, putting it in rarified company.

Following a 76% rise in its debut session Tuesday, VMware (nyse: VMW (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=VMW) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=VMW)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=VMW)) jumped another 13.2%, or $6.71, Wednesday to close at $57.71, giving the previously little-known company a market value of about $22 billion. Only four other publicly traded software companies — Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=MSFT) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=MSFT)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=MSFT)), Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=ORCL) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=ORCL)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=ORCL)), SAP (nyse: SAP (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=SAP) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=SAP)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=SAP)) and Adobe Systems (nasdaq: ADBE (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=ADBE) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=ADBE)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=ADBE)) — are currently worth more.

The stock's meteoric debut illustrates the excitement over the market potential for virtualization software, VMware's specialty, which enables clients to more efficiently manage data and software, allowing them to use fewer servers.

James Gilman of Cross Research speculated that VMware shares may have also gained a lift from the announcement by Citrix Systems (nasdaq: CTXS (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CTXS) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CTXS)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CTXS)) Wednesday that it will acquire the 3-year-old virtualization startup XenSource for $500 million.

Reflecting the intense interest in VMware, the IPO price of $29 for the EMC (nyse: EMC (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=EMC) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=EMC)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=EMC)) spinoff was a 20.8% premium above the $24 per share target set before management gave a series of presentations to money managers during the past two weeks. EMC is retaining 87% of the company.

Caris & Co. analyst Shebly Seyrafi initiated coverage of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware on Wednesday with an “Above Average” rating, along with a target price of $60.

"We forecast VMware to grow over 90 percent this year and by 50 percent in 2008 as server virtualization is now in the 'tornado' phase with VMware as the dominant vendor," Seyrafi wrote in a note to investors.

Seyrafi estimated that only 5% of the potential market for virtualization has been exploited, meaning the industry is ripe for growth.

Seyrafi also noted that VMware parent EMC could sell more shares in the future.
Gilman anticipates the stock will trade down in the coming sessions."

This article shows that EMC owns 87% of VMWare. EMC is lucky...I would say.

The link to the full article is as follows:

http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/15/vmware-citrix-stock-markets-equity-cx_cg_0815markets38.html?partner=email

Did anyone get a chance to go to VMWorld 2007 in San Francisco recently? If you or a friend had the pleasure of going, please share with us the vibe from the event.

Here is a link that explored the event: http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmworld2007_recap.html

Talking about "nothing but advantages" I would like to show opposite opinion to make it straight.

First - there's performance overhead in virtualization (no doubt!).
Second - virtualization itself based on software that requires security patching, bug fixing and proper administration (staff training).
Third - virtualization isn't completely compatible and adopted, so there's another source of problems.
Fourth - if you use the same processing power for application with and without virtualization, then there's no good of having more VEs packed on more powerful server. It's the same.

More complete system backups? Guys already use SAN or NAS for that.
No downtime? VE's can't be moved without downtime (even Virtuozzo have "zero-downtime" in brackets) and accordingly to software complexity can't be done easily.
Migrate to different hardware? VEs limited to hardware supported by virtualization software. And this adds another performance overhead (as more hardware/platforms supported, the more is overhead).

I'm so sad that you can't find any automatized backup software on the market so you must "add them to the domain, restore individual data to locations, recreate individual shares".

PS: Virtualization is good. I love that and have a sufficient expirience, but in fact it's just a piece of software that have problems like any other. Everything needs right tool - universal tools it's like eating in restaurant with swiss-knife instead of spoon.

I'd be interested to know why you think it's a waste?

Realistically it delivers nothing but advantages, not only do you have the obvious ability to run multiple environments on the same equipment, you can create much better complete system backups and move VE's between machines without downtime to perform hardware upgrades and maintainence. You can also migrate to new completely different hardware without any issues inside of the VE.

To give you an example an enterprise client of ours has approximately 50 servers running ~ 200 VE's on VMWare, they have a disaster recovery site which has approximately 30 servers and SAN storage space to store backups of the 200 or so VE's. We were able to simulate a disaster recovery exercise and had all 200 VE's back up and running within one day at the DR site.

Had we not been using VMWare, we would have had to rebuild all of the machines to add them to the domain, restore individual data to locations, recreate individual shares, etc, the recovery time would have been at least a few weeks with the same staff resource.

So to answer the OP's original question, yes it's making a huge difference to businesses, mainly enterprises. However I think the hosting market (or at least the low end hosting market), is too competitive to be able to justify the outlay for the likes of ESX, VMotion, etc.

Dan

And there's no boom. It's another right tool for right things. Not everybody needs that now. Not everybody will have advantage with that. But it will definitely change something in this world.

Honestly, I have to disagree with you when judging whether VMWare and its virtualization technology is booming or not. Instead of waiting for the next earnings guidance and watching JP Morgan and others get excited about this company to reveal their numbers and how well the company is doing, I do a simple common sense check to guess demand.

I go to Alexa.com and check the traffic ranking for vmware.com and I see that it is around 3000. That in itself tells me that there are millions of people viewing the site each month; and so, I am guessing this company will one day be a common household name.

I will continue to track this company and its achievements and will post more when I learn more. This is definitely something interesting to at least follow, if nothing else.

Did anyone get a chance to go to VMWorld 2007 in San Francisco recently? If you or a friend had the pleasure of going, please share with us the vibe from the event.

Here is a link that explored the event: http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmworld2007_recap.html

Yep... I was there with a few of my folks. The event itself sucked. Very poorly organized, but the information received was fantastic. The classes were pretty good and the few labs that we participated in were top notch.

The new embedded v3i is very cool... we actually got to unbox a server, rack and get a VM running, in less than 10 minutes.

I can't tell you how much free stuff we walked away the exhibit hall with... unbelievable.

Sirius

Talking about "nothing but advantages" I would like to show opposite opinion to make it straight.

First - there's performance overhead in virtualization (no doubt!).
Second - virtualization itself based on software that requires security patching, bug fixing and proper administration (staff training).
Third - virtualization isn't completely compatible and adopted, so there's another source of problems.
Fourth - if you use the same processing power for application with and without virtualization, then there's no good of having more VEs packed on more powerful server. It's the same.

More complete system backups? Guys already use SAN or NAS for that.
No downtime? VE's can't be moved without downtime (even Virtuozzo have "zero-downtime" in brackets) and accordingly to software complexity can't be done easily.
Migrate to different hardware? VEs limited to hardware supported by virtualization software. And this adds another performance overhead (as more hardware/platforms supported, the more is overhead).

I'm so sad that you can't find any automatized backup software on the market so you must "add them to the domain, restore individual data to locations, recreate individual shares".

PS: Virtualization is good. I love that and have a sufficient expirience, but in fact it's just a piece of software that have problems like any other. Everything needs right tool - universal tools it's like eating in restaurant with swiss-knife instead of spoon.

[First] While there is a preformance hit for virtualization there is way more resources being wasted in datacenters across the world from Idle servers.

[Second]
While the argument is understood about security patching and administration its all about planning. If your staff is trained well both patching and administration is far easier for VM's as it is for physical boxes. Having a stable image platform or other form of VM template which gives you complete e2e control of your enviroment is easier to do in a virtual enviroment.

[Three]
Compatibility is still a probmlem for most OS types but remember the Hardware is not. With the industry including virtualized solutions in hardware over time there will be little to no compatibility issues.

[Four]
While true as you would still use the same processing power if you had vm's on a server plus additional for the virtualization stack. You forget that in most cases average and even depending on the client peak usage of most servers spread across the globe is less than 50% of capacity. If you can fit 2+ Virtual servers in that same spec machine you just reduced CAPEX spending. Over time this costs less than having multiple server. Not to mention the cost of power and space will only increase not decrease over time.

I have yet to fully deploy virtual solutions across my hosting base as I do more enterprise and small enterprise installs the case is made its just cheaper. Sure 15 admins managing boxes is great but 10 admins or less even costs less when your management tools save you time in managing your infrastructure.

It appears to me the nay-sayers are not very experienced with Virtualization.

It is fantastic. I wish VPS environments were more common years ago.

I have experience with ESX/GSX, Workstation, and the various Virtual Server products in extremely large environments.

I have personally /never/ encountered hardware that did not prove to be compatible with all selections.

Virtualization is definitely here to stay and is growing extremely fast. With hardware assist becoming more prevalent in every system component, any overhead by the virtualization layer will be barely noticeable soon. Management tools continue to sprout and become more intelligent.

Something people often forget to mention is the ability to snapshot virtual machines. Not only disks, but memory too. We perform live quiesced snapshot backups with no downtime. Customers also perform snapshot rollbacks for testing and demos... an invaluable feature that is literally done with a click of a mouse.

With a few quad-proc quad-core machines with 128GB (soon 256GB) of memory, a typical Enterprise can run hundreds of highly-available virtual machines with easy departmental separation. That's pretty close to a data center in a box for most companies.

Anyone who has dealt with highly-available systems will most likely vouch for virtualization. We certainly can. A recent demo of running the same VM on 2 physical hosts "in sync" so a non-distruptive fail-over is a pretty amazing feat, but will be commonplace before long. Doing this in the physical world is pretty tough, although some very expensive system vendors have done it.

I'm not sure what GARMTECH was referring to here:
VE's can't be moved without downtime

Our ESX cluster moves VMs around all day long as load changes on the various hosts... all automatically, and all without downtime.

Eric

Vmware has been touted as the next big thing comparable to the Internet boom. Virtualization is supposed to transform the computer industry.

Who thinks this will boom as several recent articles mentioned?
I'd say VMware and virtualization in general has enough legs to say the boom has already started. VMware in particular has become hugely popular in corporate environments, though the hosting industry has proven to be an innovator by using Virtuozzo and now Xen so have seen the value of virtualization years ahead of the corporate world.

I work at place that has about 50 Vmware ESX servers worldwide and they are hugely valuable both to migrating old physical hardware and for rapidly deploying servers that don't require a dedicated physical server.

It certainly seems as if WallStreet is treating VMWare well as of late. I can hardly wait for earnings to be delivered so that we can really see where this company is financially and where it is going. Also, I'm sure we'll get more juicy information which I am thirsty for.

Does anyone know when VMWare reports earnings? I hope this company one day is looked upon as a Microsoft. I really love what they have done so far.

This crossed PR Newswire today:

"Virtualization has become a mainstream technology force, influencing IT architecture decisions for companies of all sizes," said Gary Chen, senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "For SMBs, this means evaluating the A-to-Z benefits of virtualization such as server consolidation, business continuity and disaster recovery for use on current IT assets while planning for future growth. The new VMware Infrastructure 3 Acceleration Kits provide a cost-effective way for SMBs to get started with virtualization quickly while enabling the organization to scale as their business needs evolve. We see virtualization adoption as a trend in the SMB space that will continue to aggressively grow over time."

Check out this article regarding VMware. It looks like Microsoft wants to get a piece of the pie. This article says it all. Virtualization is truly where the action is in IT right now.

"ORLANDO (MarketWatch) -- Fewer technologies in recent years have been able to generate more interest for the corporate market than virtualization, a technology that promises to change how corporations will run their data centers and other business operations.

But in an industry where hyperbole is kind, virtualization may just live up to its hype, according to Gartner Inc. (IT (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/quotesandresearch?qmenu=2&prod=IT:US:EQ), Trade (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/applogic/OrderForm?Symbol=IT) ) analyst Thomas Bittman.
Although Bittman says the virtualization market is immature, the changes it can deliver are going to be pervasive throughout the tech industry and lead to a battle for the market between upstart leaders and sector behemoths all wanting to get in on the virtualization action.

"It is the hottest trend in IT," Bittman said while speaking at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2007 in Orlando. "Ultimately, the changes in virtualization are about improving value to customers."

Virtualization is basically a software-based technology that allows software applications and operating systems to be separated from their hardware systems and shared over servers and storage infrastructure. The technology helps corporations manage large pools of data more easily over fewer pieces of hardware by separating software and operating systems from their hardware devices.

Once the sole domain of techies, virtualization was pulled into the mass market spotlight with the public offering of VMware Inc.(VMW (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/quotesandresearch?qmenu=2&prod=VMW:US:EQ), Trade (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/applogic/OrderForm?Symbol=VMW) ) two months ago.
After going public on Aug. 14 at $29 a share, VMware has been on a tear - jumping nearly 250% from the opening price to cross the $100 mark this week. The shares closed up more than 5% Wednesday at $107.04 after UBS bumped up its price target on the stock.

VMWare is still majority owned by EMC Corp. (EMC (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/quotesandresearch?qmenu=2&prod=EMC:US:EQ), Trade (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/applogic/OrderForm?Symbol=EMC) ), and the spinoff has been a boon to the storage technology giant, which has seen its own stock rise more than 23% to a multi-year high since the VMware IPO.

Bittman said there is no doubt that VMware is the market leader in virtualization with "good, broad management tools." He also said that with 94% of the market for virtualization technology still untapped, VMware has a strong opportunity to build up its already solid customer base.

However, the analyst warned that lurking in the corner of the virtualization market is the ever-present, 800-pound gorilla of the tech sector, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/quotesandresearch?qmenu=2&prod=MSFT:US:EQ), Trade (https://us.etrade.com/e/t/applogic/OrderForm?Symbol=MSFT) ). The software giant is planning to launch its own virtualization platform called Viridian, in late 2008.

"The market is led and dominated by VMware, but that is going to change," Bittman said. "Microsoft is going to launch Viridian and that could be a severe challenge on VMware's growth."

Bittman said the opportunities for Microsoft's Viridian should come as no surprise, as the company already has an enormous installed base of clients using the Windows operating system.

However, Bittman said that while the battle for the virtualization market is in its infancy, VMware still has a six-year head start on Microsoft. Such a lead puts Microsoft so far behind VMware that unless it gets Viridian right out of the gate, and without distractions such as the security bugs that often accompany the early releases of new Windows operating systems, Microsoft might not make up the gap between it and VMware.

"Microsoft was asleep at the wheel, Bittman said. "Nothing in their history have they missed for so long. If Viridian isn't rock solid from day one, people will continue to roll out VMware.""

M$ Viridian is old news... It was revealed in may 2006

At the small community/jr. college i work at we have migrated just about everything over to 14 blade servers running ESX connected to a san. VMware has been wonderful.


We had an extension built onto the datacenter about 6 years ago because of space issues. We have plenty of room now. Once the handful of older servers drop out we will be down to about 4 racks.

Dominating the corporate datacenter was easy. If vmware decides to compete for the hosting market it will be more of a challenge with the competition out there.

H

Viridian is old news, but still not seen the light of day very much. I do believe it was included in one of the CTPs a few months ago (didn't try it myself), but other than that, hasn't seen the public much. MS's virtualization blog is sadly quiet. Having the Viridian released pushed 120 days after the Windows 2008 release was a bad blow, IMO. I was interested in Viridian, but it is going to slimmed down until it is basically Virtual Server 2005 R3.

I have reams of input on this subject but I don't want to bore anyone. Here's the best way to look at it: Just think about how much time a given, average server is sitting idle doing virtually (heh, a pun) nothing. This is much more common in corporate networks but it applies to many other Internet facing applications as well. Virtualization maximizes the use of hardware, and Intel/AMD are contributing big time in terms of hardware advancement.

Best,

Mike

We would love to hear more from you. Give us as much input as possible. Trust me, you won't bore us...at least not me.

I may plan on investing heavily in virtualization technology one day and want as much info as possible. The best way to get this info is from people with actual experience dealing with it.

I have reams of input on this subject but I don't want to bore anyone. Here's the best way to look at it: Just think about how much time a given, average server is sitting idle doing virtually (heh, a pun) nothing. This is much more common in corporate networks but it applies to many other Internet facing applications as well. Virtualization maximizes the use of hardware, and Intel/AMD are contributing big time in terms of hardware advancement.

Exactly... it's amazing the give backs you get by moving to a VMWare like platform. I've personally been able to collapse more than 60 servers in to 5 VMWare servers (Well, 5 plus 1 hot standby server for vmotion to fail an entire node over to).

I've also seen tremendous gain in provisioning VMWare Desktop 6 to some of our developers, rather than providing them with tons of hardware to develop, test and stage against.

Sirius

Here's some good points when looking at virtualization:

- Disk I/O is a paramount factor. Think about it; if you are reducing (in our case) 30 servers into one, then you need some serious disk. Lots of spindles, lots of cache (1-2GB) on the RAID controller, and good quality, fast drives. Also, defrag during low usage periods.

- CPU is just as important; go with quad-cores; it will pay for itself.

- You need more RAM than most would think. The busier your host is, the more cache the O/S needs. Extra RAM provides more swap space and reduces disk I/O.

- Feedback / monitoring: You need to know what is going on inside of both your host and guest systems; if a machine starts acting up by using too much disk and/or CPU, you need to be alerted. This requires basic "baselining" of each server so that you can tell when things are problematic. If a server spikes, it probably has a problem, is compromised, our you blew it when you were planning for usage.

- Be prepared to move guests (VMs) off of one host and move to another less busy host. You have to kind of "load balance" the VMs so that any given host isn't full of heavy use machines. It's kind of like an all you can eat buffet; you pray that the fat families don't all show up at the same time, so you seat some skinnies in between. (sorry, that was lame but it gets the point across.) That way, everyone can eat.

- Use fast NICs; your host O/S is handling tons of tasks over the network; the high-end Intel and Broadcom NICs do a better job at handling the load.

- Cooling / Power; go heavy duty and go redundant. Why be cheap with such an important box?; 99% of hardware problems are related to power/cooling and you can spend a few more $$$ to make this problem go away. This is real important if you use 12-16-24+ hard disks.

- Keep a "hot" spare server available if you can afford it; it can reduce a catastrophic host failure downtime to a few minutes if you plan right. Also, have the RAID arrays formatted ahead of time; that can save you 4-6-10+ hours.

- Schedule a fair amount of maintenance / downtime at least once a month. This lets you get complete images of the servers and allows you time to perform host O/S patches and disk defrags.

- Standardize on one vendor if possible. This goes for Mobo's, chassis, drives, everything. You will have to swap/upgrade/fix eventually, so having a predictable platform that doesn't vary much is a great plus.

Finally, if you are just starting, then "play" as much as you can with a test box. This will give you the feedback you need to plan a successful solution.

Best,

Mike

Our setup makes some of those points a non issue. If you have the money. :)
We use ESX3 servers on a dell/emc san solution. The VMs sit on the SAN, the only thing on the blade servers is ESX. We run 5-10 VMs per blade. I would never think of consolidating 30 servers down to one physical box in our setup. Nice thing about ESX3 is that you can have it move VMs between physical boxes automatically depending on system load.



We don’t have a hot spare server, but we keep the load on the servers low enough that we could move the VMs around easy enough. We don’t take anything down once a month for maintenance. If VMware comes out with patches for ESX we move VMs to another blade and take the free blade down for patching. The only time we take the VMs down to clone them is when we do something big, like when we moved from version 2 to 3 of ESX.

Mike made some great points, all of which we have also done. Lots of spindles, CPU cores, and RAM makes for a great virtualization environment. We use Nimsoft's NimBUS for monitoring for both our own environment as well as remotely for customer on-premise equipment, and it's extremely valuable to know exactly what is going on from the hardware-layer up through the virtualization layer and finally the OS and application layers. It's amazing to see how well things perform when all the bugs are worked out of an environment, many of which can't be seen without a good monitoring tool.

We use VirtualCenter's Distributed Resource Scheduling which automatically moves VMs from host to host based on the current load of each host so each VM performs its best. Works great.

We only use HP hardware for our environment including switches, servers, and storage, so the blame game is pretty much eliminated. It's hard for support people to blame a config with all hardware components on the hardware compatibility list and all from the same manufacturer. The bigger the environment, the more important this gets since it's the little things that will drive you nuts if things don't work just right.

All of our servers, switches, and storage have dual-power supplies, each side on their own data center UPS and on their own generator. Pretty tough to bring it down. Very good idea for high-availability environments with a high concentration of VMs on hosts. Disk corruption because of power failures/outages is "not" fun when it affects 100+ servers (or more).

We also have enough capacity in our ESX cluster so if a host fails, all VMs on the failed host get started on all of the remaining hosts. With "Maintenance Mode", you can force this scenario and maintain the down host, whether it be physical upgrades, firmware upgrades, ESX upgrades/patches, etc. all with no downtime to the VMs.

Finally, we use esXpress for backups, so server images are made live, which has worked well for us so far. esXpress uses spare CPU resources in the cluster to perform the backups, which are usually available in the middle of the night, so it works well.

Eric

ESX is getting even more interesting with ESX 3i... before, I though VI3 starter was pretty good at $1000, but not they have the VI3 Foundation for 3 starters + Virtual Center for $3000, and then they now have ESX 3i which basically boots off a flash drive for $500 for 2 cpus.

I need more Superblades. :-) Its time to test VI3 for hosting.

"VMware Infrastructure Wins “Best Software” Award

PALO ALTO, Calif., October 18, 2007 — VMware, Inc., the virtualization leader, today announced VMware Infrastructure was named “Best Software” at the CMP XChange Tech Innovators conference last week in Miami. The recognition adds to other recent accolades from attendees of CMP Channel-focused conferences. In August, VMware products won CMP XChange XCellence awards in four categories: Best of Show, Best Software Solution, Best Business Technology and Most Innovative Technology. "

Check out the complete article at http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/cmpchannel2007.html

This a great award to win.

I read a couple of articles on how Cisco and Intel made over 100-200 million in paper profit in two weeks. Whoo Hoo...that would be nice huh?

"It is a good deal if you can get it: an 80% return for a two-week investment.
That is the paper profit on Cisco Systems’ $150 million investment in VMware on July 27. With shares of VMware nearly doubling in its market debut today, the investment ballooned to about $270 million, for a $100-million-plus profit. Intel hasn’t made out too badly either. The chip maker plunked down $218.5 million on July 9 for a stake in the producer of virtual-infrastructure software that now is valued at some $425 million."

My company uses VMWare extensively for test environment. We have had relatively few issues using it - we use it on both Linux and Windows platforms too. In fact, we offer VMWare demos of our server software for customers to download. Pretty cool!

Just like I had anticipated, VMWare earnings were awesome. The company is growing at a phenomenal rate. Read the press release below:

"PALO ALTO, Calif., October 24, 2007 — VMware, Inc., the virtualization software leader, today announced financial results for the third quarter of 2007:

Total consolidated revenues were $358 million, an increase of 90% compared to the year-ago quarter.
GAAP net income was $65 million or $0.18 per diluted share compared to $19 million or $0.06 per diluted share in the year-ago quarter. GAAP operating income was $66 million compared to $28 million in the third quarter of 2006.
Non-GAAP net income was $85 million or $0.23 per diluted share. Non-GAAP operating income was $91 million, which represents 25% of third-quarter revenues and is an increase of 71% over the year-ago quarter.“VMware had a strong quarter by several measures,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “Increased customer-adoption of VMware Infrastructure was a significant driver in growing our revenues 90%. We completed our IPO. Our annual VMworld conference drew more than 10,800 attendees, including more than 1,800 people representing our partners. And we introduced four brand new products to the market, including our next-generation server-embedded hypervisor VMware ESX Server 3i.”
“We believe customer appreciation for the quality and functionality of our products is driving our business,” continued Greene. “Companies large and small are moving to a VMware Infrastructure architecture for their data centers and, in many cases, for their desktops. During the quarter customers continued to standardize on our third-generation VMware Infrastructure suite of virtualization software. We also saw increased adoption of VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), backed by the VMware Infrastructure architecture, to centrally manage and secure enterprise desktops.”
GAAP operating cash flows, on a trailing 12 month basis ending September 30, 2007, were $514 million compared to $230 million for the twelve months that ended September 30, 2006.
“We had solid growth during our first quarter as a public company,” said Mark Peek, chief financial officer of VMware. “In particular, we were pleased with our ability to grow operating income while continuing to invest in the business, increase our footprint in the market, develop new products, and meet the high expectations of our customers and partners.”"

Yeah, I am wishing I bought VMware stock when it opened.

Even free virtualization from vmware rocks.

More complete system backups? Guys already use SAN or NAS for that.
No downtime? VE's can't be moved without downtime (even Virtuozzo have "zero-downtime" in brackets) and accordingly to software complexity can't be done easily.


Somebody obviously hasn't used VMWare to its full potential then! using several VMWare ESX servers and the VMWare infrastructure it is possible to create a 100% uptime system using what vmware call V-Motion, which allows the live moving of VMs between servers with no downtime, although this requires a SAN and several ESX systems to achieve.

First - there's performance overhead in virtualization (no doubt!).Yes doubt!, check out ESX Server 3i :)

I have to say, vmware infrastructure is one of the greatest pieces of technology I have ever worked with. We are in the process of virtualising our entire environment at the place I currently work for. Implementation has been such a breeze so far and we have been able to run our entire environment from only 40 machines running at 50% capacity, compared to the 400 machines we had previously.

We currently operate in an Active -> Passive state between sites, and the failover is pretty much instantaneous, as tested on numerous occasions.

You really can't beat vmware for enterprise level scalability.

>> You really can't beat vmware for enterprise level scalability.

Ditto. ESX is the next best thing after sliced bread.

How does Xen compare?

~~hostbyr

How does Xen compare?

~~hostbyr
It doesn't :).

OK, but why? What makes VMware better?

~~hostbyr

Once you see P2V in action and feel the sheer power of ESX with it's 5-9% maximum overhead, you'll be in love. Seriously, try it sometime.

Once you see P2V in action and feel the sheer power of ESX with it's 5-9% maximum overhead, you'll be in love. Seriously, try it sometime.

VMWare is awesome, vmotion (http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/vmotion.html) is the main thing I think is great about it, then there is the being able to control all the vmware systems from a central console - vmware infrastructure. It's just excellent, Xen doesn't stand a chance at the moment... BUT there are major improvements on the way to the Xen system that could change all that, so keep watching :)

Xen actually has live migration now, though I don't think they have an equivalent HA offering, where it can start the VM on another server if the server it was on goes down. The management software of Xen pails in comparison to VirtualCenter too. There is no comparison.

I'm looking forward to ESX 3i supporting VMotion/HA/DRS. Heard they were working on it.

3.5 and 3i are out already. A cool new feature of 3.5 with HA is that it will detect a hung OS (via the VMTools heartbeat) and cycle the VM to get it back up.

I sat through a presentation this morning with sales rep and field engineer - the desktop stuff they are doing now is some neat stuff too.

OK,

How does enomalism stack up with VMotion?


Thanks again for the replies.

~~hostbyr

Enomalism is a control panel for Xen, V-Motion is part of VMWare. Xen-Motion is the xen version of this although it is not in the free version.

I think one of the things that people love about VMware's ESX is that it is rock-solid and well-supported. The last thing you want is "any" potential problem with a large cluster of virtual machines, and I can say, from personal experience, that ESX works very well. I'm not very familiar, however, with Xen other than what I've seen other people run and what I've read. Many have had good experiences with Xen, but the management, as others have said, is somewhat limited so you'll see a lot of people doing their own thing as opposed to using a well-known toolset like VMware's products. Of course, you get what you pay for.

Once you see P2V in action and feel the sheer power of ESX with it's 5-9% maximum overhead, you'll be in love. Seriously, try it sometime.

What 5-9% overhead are you talking about?

I've tried VMWare server on dual quad core system which scored about 960 in WHT Benchmark (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=308055). Same test inside the virtual environment(with only 1 virtual machine running) reported 110 points or so.
Automatic Linux installation via PXE boot took few mins for that server. Inside the virtual machine it took more than 30 mins.

Granted, it wasn't ESX and it wasn't optimized in any way, but the numbers can speak for themselves.

I use it on my home workstation, have done for a while. I'm not so sure the average user will need to run multiple OS's side by side so this will always be relegated to the business's that need it.

Originally Posted by Webcart: Granted, it wasn't ESX and it wasn't optimized in any way, but the numbers can speak for themselves.

I don't believe you can judge the usability nor performance of all workloads from your test. Running a benchmark on an 8-core system versus a single CPU virtual machine running on top of another operating system is certainly going to show major performance differences.

Virtualization definitely adds overhead, no matter which way you look at it, but the benefits, in some cases, definitely outway the disadvantages. Like any technology, you have to take the good with the bad. Physical servers have just as many disadvantages as virtualized servers.

We have both virtualized and non-virtualized environments based on the workload, availability, performance, storage, and cost requirements.

Eric

I don't believe you can judge the usability nor performance of all workloads from your test. Running a benchmark on an 8-core system versus a single CPU virtual machine running on top of another operating system is certainly going to show major performance differences.
I realize this is not a fair comparison in terms of CPU utilization, however, I do think that for practical purposes it gives somewhat realistic assesment of overall virtual machine performance. Keep in mind that not CPU bound tests contributed a great deal to a low final score.

Either way, I didn't mean to bash VMWare, I merely asked to elaborate on the method used to obtain these "maximum overhead" numbers. May be it was intended to be used in the context of full utilization, that is, when 8 virtual machines are running on 8-core system. I thought I would rather ask than keep guessing ;)
We have both virtualized and non-virtualized environments based on the workload, availability, performance, storage, and cost requirements.
I would be most interested and appreciative of any details you can provide on the subject, especially benchmark results.

I think the "maximum overhead" numbers are definitely bogus. There isn't any way to accurate give a single percentage or percentage range that provides realistic comparisons of all workloads between most physical machines much less physical versus virtual machines.

I think this tends to "bug" people when they can't compare apples to apples, but it's really the truth that you can't when it comes to virtualized environments since there are so many variables. This is probably why VMware had various clauses in their EULA that indicated benchmarks would need to be reviewed by VMware before being published. I'm not sure if this is still the case.

When we review workloads, we don't look at CPU as the primary variable, since most CPU-bound workloads can be distributed among multiple physical machines. If they are long-running, we'll usually suggest physical servers. Networking and storage are already distributed, so they don't necessarily come into our equation, unless network and/or storage requirements are extreme. Memory speed goes hand-in-hand with CPU performance.

We find that any workload that isn't "super" performance sensitive, which actually includes a large percentage of daily workloads, is a candidate for virtualization. For instance, many web, application, mail, database, domain controller, and DNS servers have very low utilization levels where a single "modern" CPU core can actually provide all of these functions. Each service, however, might be more manageable under its own OS, and may even have different versions or manufacturers of an OS, which makes machine virtualization a very handy thing.

If someone wants high-availability, but can't necessarily afford a clustered system, virtual machine high-availability may be a good fit.

Regarding cost, it usually ends up being cheaper in the long-run for the virtualized systems for the right workloads, especially if a hosting company doesn't charge per VM (hint).

VMware is also pretty useful in the hosting business.

vmware is like 7grand per node, Xen Enterprise like 2gran per node. Xen kicks VMWare's behind.

There is one weak link that I can think of in the whole Virtualisation trend we're seeing.

Virtualisation is creating a more complex environment to deal with emergencies and a greater dependency on hardware. What do I mean? I mean now more than ever server hardware reliability is of extreme importance, particularly in the hosting industry. If a drive fails, or Network card, or power supply, or motherboard, or cpu...etc etc a whole group of virtual servers (operating systems) will be affected. Previously just a single operating system would be affected. It just means we are looking now at greater complexity when dealing with emergencies. I guess thats the trade off.

Its great technology, I would just like to know more about the possible downsides.

vmware is like 7grand per node, Xen Enterprise like 2gran per node. Xen kicks VMWare's behind.
If "like" means $1545 (the current 2 CPU VMware foundation license including gold support) then it doesn't seem that different to me.

With HA, DRS, and consolidated backup you are looking at $5750 for a 2 socket license, but then you get DRS, VMotion, HA, and consolidated backup, which you don't get with Xen Enterprise (exception for their Live Motion solution).

Apples to apples comparison on the high end there's no question VI3 is spendy compared to Xen Enterprise. Basically you're looking at $13K for the entire suite - VI3 Enterprise + Virtual Center + gold support vs. $3K for Xen. But you don't get the performance and feature set that VI3 has, which isn't always worth it. Once you purchase VC you can control your entire infrastructure so you only have to buy that once.

On a per node basis though and looking feature competitive - e.g., VI3 Foundation vs. Xen Standard - pricing's not that different.

From experience, Xen isn't all that happy after a power failure, where as you can button a VMware host box and normally all the VMs come back up fine. Advantage? Yes.

Plus you are all looking at ESX not VMware server, VMware server is free, so $0 per node, as an equal to the Xen or VZ installs that most in this industry use it is the best option, if only someone would write a nice client side control panel for it...

if only someone would write a nice client side control panel for it...
Get the VMware Server 2.0 beta 2. Very nice and solid web interface. Quite a bit faster and improved over the first beta.

I kind of wish they'd just basically port VC to a web interface that is identical in appearance to Server 2.0 but with the VC features. Who knows, they may be doing that.

From experience, Xen isn't all that happy after a power failure, where as you can button a VMware host box and normally all the VMs come back up fine. Advantage? Yes.

Plus you are all looking at ESX not VMware server, VMware server is free, so $0 per node, as an equal to the Xen or VZ installs that most in this industry use it is the best option, if only someone would write a nice client side control panel for it...

VM Ware server is easy to write automation for. We did it all in-house in a few days. No control panel needed.



Regards,

"The cloud" will contain virtual servers that are a utility - it is getting close to this now with the rapidly expanding vps market. However I predict the vps market will be absorbed into the Amazon or Google machine who will provide offerings at a price (or free) that no-one can compete with.

Ok, I am not predicting the death of the small - medium hosting industry just yet. The future will be interesting though. ;)


On a side note another reason Virtual Servers are becoming so popular in the enterprise is the savings in energy consumption from reduced power and cooling.

Get the VMware Server 2.0 beta 2. Very nice and solid web interface. Quite a bit faster and improved over the first beta.

I kind of wish they'd just basically port VC to a web interface that is identical in appearance to Server 2.0 but with the VC features. Who knows, they may be doing that.

What I mean is something so clients need not request reboots for their servers and can just do it from a web interface, it's just an idea I have only just really thought of although I don't think we'd actually use it since we manage the client's server so it is generally us asking them if we can reboot the server rather than the other way round...

"The cloud" will contain virtual servers that are a utility - it is getting close to this now with the rapidly expanding vps market. However I predict the vps market will be absorbed into the Amazon or Google machine who will provide offerings at a price (or free) that no-one can compete with.

Ok, I am not predicting the death of the small - medium hosting industry just yet. The future will be interesting though. ;)


On a side note another reason Virtual Servers are becoming so popular in the enterprise is the savings in energy consumption from reduced power and cooling.
Reduced power, maybe. Reduced quality, definitely. Most hosts put multiple Virtual Servers on one server, which means the server has to be more powerful than one used for just one client. More hardware = more power usage. Heaven-forbid if someone maxes out their alloted resources. Slowdown for everyone.

Reduced power, maybe. Reduced quality, definitely. Most hosts put multiple Virtual Servers on one server, which means the server has to be more powerful than one used for just one client. More hardware = more power usage. Heaven-forbid if someone maxes out their alloted resources. Slowdown for everyone.

Actually, even if you create 1 VPS per physical server, you still get a small fraction of physical server's performance when it comes to VMWare. We've been experimenting with VMWare server for the sole purpose of improving manageability and abandoned the project due to unsatisfactory performance.

Actually, even if you create 1 VPS per physical server, you still get a small fraction of physical server's performance when it comes to VMWare. We've been experimenting with VMWare server for the sole purpose of improving manageability and abandoned the project due to unsatisfactory performance.

If you're experiencing such a drastic performance hit it's likely a tuning issue. Virtual servers don't react like physical hardware, for example the way virtual servers use SMP you're better off using 75% of one virtual processor then 25% on three. You want to allocate as few resources as necessary. Also the experience you get on a SAN backed ESX cluster is very different from what you get with GSX (vmware server).

I agree. ESX virtual machines is a completely different environment. Even with our SANs and ESX, we generally see disk I/O becoming the bottleneck before CPU and Memory.

I agree. ESX virtual machines is a completely different environment. Even with our SANs and ESX, we generally see disk I/O becoming the bottleneck before CPU and Memory.

switch to raw device mapping.. and your disk IO bottleneck will go away. and its a whole new breath of life..

We haven't really used RDM, but will definitely look into it. I knew in the past that there were some limitations. So, to fully understand the implications of using RDM, I thought I'd point out the VMware document describing the benefits and disadvantages of RDM:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx25_rawdevicemapping.pdf

We also haven't seen "too" many disk I/O issues, but when I said that it's the bottleneck usually, it's actually more due to the speed of the SAN than anything. Physical disks just aren't fast enough. :) I can't wait until SSD becomes the standard and affordable for large storage requirements. Probably going to still be a while unfortunately.

We haven't really used RDM, but will definitely look into it. I knew in the past that there were some limitations. So, to fully understand the implications of using RDM, I thought I'd point out the VMware document describing the benefits and disadvantages of RDM:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx25_rawdevicemapping.pdf

We also haven't seen "too" many disk I/O issues, but when I said that it's the bottleneck usually, it's actually more due to the speed of the SAN than anything. Physical disks just aren't fast enough. :) I can't wait until SSD becomes the standard and affordable for large storage requirements. Probably going to still be a while unfortunately.

Basicly RDM let you access a lun directly without using VMFS. VMFS is a shared file system so every VMware node gets its "turn" to write to the disk so you have have a few boxes accessing the same datastore with a bunch of VMs.. your going to lose alot of disk IO. RDM is more involved in setting up because you have to create a lun on the san then map it to the Vmhosts then rescan the FC cards to see the new lun then you map it and done where traditional VMFS is do it once put a bunch of VMs on it and we are on our marry way. There is a dramatic disk IO improvement.

If you have alot of fast disks in a 4+1 or 7+1 raid5 set or just a big raid10 set you can carve up luns as you need disk space and map how you need spreading the IOPS across all spindels without the VMFS overhead in place.

I'll definitely try this and see what kind of performance improvement we get! We use entry-level SAN equipment to keep the cost relatively low, which limits us in the number of LUNS we can have, so we do tend to share LUNs across multiple VMs. Obviously, we try to keep this VM:LUN ratio low so the VMFS locking doesn't kill us, but it does have an impact as the number of VMs rises.

I'll send some results once we have some testing time with this.

Thanks!

Eric

I'll definitely try this and see what kind of performance improvement we get! We use entry-level SAN equipment to keep the cost relatively low, which limits us in the number of LUNS we can have, so we do tend to share LUNs across multiple VMs. Obviously, we try to keep this VM:LUN ratio low so the VMFS locking doesn't kill us, but it does have an impact as the number of VMs rises.

I'll send some results once we have some testing time with this.

Thanks!

Eric

Even low end sans like IBM DS4200's allow upt o 256 luns.. which is .. alot for one san.. even though it can scal up to 112 drives.

We use HP MSA1500cs controllers, which only allow 32 per controller. :( Of course, it scales only to 56 drives, and with hot-spares, that drops. Cost is always an issue and the MSA1500cs has hit the right price and performance point. We do plan to virtualize our storage soon with DataCore's solution. Not to change subjects, but have you used their software or other storage virtualization solutions?

Never tried to use datacore and/or any iscsi. We like having the ability to run 8Gbps back to the disks via FC. Our Unified storage gateway will be able to present iscsi via 10GE in the near future as well but its not there yet maybe then we'll try again.. but a 10GE ISCSI backed by 48 some 15k SAS disks would beat FC at that point and ISCSI might be valuable :)

We looked at the HP 1500 MSA to start and went with a IBM DS4200 which was a great investment on our part as a first san.

I'll keep you posted on DataCore. We're looking at it more for front-end "large" (16GB+) high-speed caching and potentially thin-provisioning. I see many use NFS for thin-provisioning, but then I see articles talking about when a VM is converted to a thick-provisioned VM in so many cases that it almost eliminates the benefit. I'm trying to find out if the same situation occurs with DataCore.

Regarding FC versus iSCSI, there are advantages and disadvantages related to cost, performance, CPU utilization, etc. It's a tough call when comparing 8Gbps FC to 10GbE iSCSI. They're both extremely fast! :) I tend to prefer spreading things out over multiple SAN controllers, even if they are slower individually. That way, it's cheaper, uses proven older technology (we've seen too many poor first-generation implementations), and scales horizontally instead of vertically. Most applications we run into don't need the vertical scaling since high-performance apps are distributed anyways.

Found an article from VMware comparing RDM versus VMFS. They don't do a very good job comparing many VMs per VMFS volume versus multiple RDMs though, which would show the benefits of RDM except maybe compared to individual LUNs with a single VM per LUN:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/performance_char_vmfs_rdm.pdf

Absolutely love VMWare, have an iMac use it religiously.

Wow VMW was up to $120.00 at one time... now back to their regular $60(ish) mark.


The following is an article from Forbes which may clarify how EMC is involved with VMWare:

"VMware continued to climb in its second day on the market Wednesday, putting it in rarified company.

Following a 76% rise in its debut session Tuesday, VMware (nyse: VMW (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=VMW) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=VMW)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=VMW)) jumped another 13.2%, or $6.71, Wednesday to close at $57.71, giving the previously little-known company a market value of about $22 billion. Only four other publicly traded software companies — Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=MSFT) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=MSFT)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=MSFT)), Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=ORCL) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=ORCL)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=ORCL)), SAP (nyse: SAP (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=SAP) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=SAP)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=SAP)) and Adobe Systems (nasdaq: ADBE (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=ADBE) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=ADBE)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=ADBE)) — are currently worth more.

The stock's meteoric debut illustrates the excitement over the market potential for virtualization software, VMware's specialty, which enables clients to more efficiently manage data and software, allowing them to use fewer servers.

James Gilman of Cross Research speculated that VMware shares may have also gained a lift from the announcement by Citrix Systems (nasdaq: CTXS (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CTXS) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CTXS)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CTXS)) Wednesday that it will acquire the 3-year-old virtualization startup XenSource for $500 million.

Reflecting the intense interest in VMware, the IPO price of $29 for the EMC (nyse: EMC (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=EMC) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=EMC)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=EMC)) spinoff was a 20.8% premium above the $24 per share target set before management gave a series of presentations to money managers during the past two weeks. EMC is retaining 87% of the company.

Caris & Co. analyst Shebly Seyrafi initiated coverage of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware on Wednesday with an “Above Average” rating, along with a target price of $60.

"We forecast VMware to grow over 90 percent this year and by 50 percent in 2008 as server virtualization is now in the 'tornado' phase with VMware as the dominant vendor," Seyrafi wrote in a note to investors.

Seyrafi estimated that only 5% of the potential market for virtualization has been exploited, meaning the industry is ripe for growth.

Seyrafi also noted that VMware parent EMC could sell more shares in the future.
Gilman anticipates the stock will trade down in the coming sessions."

This article shows that EMC owns 87% of VMWare. EMC is lucky...I would say.

The link to the full article is as follows:

http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/15/vmware-citrix-stock-markets-equity-cx_cg_0815markets38.html?partner=email

Wow VMW was up to $120.00 at one time... now back to their regular $60(ish) mark.
Such is the honeymoon phase for virtualization companies for Wall Street. VMware has very solid growth and financials but its P/E ratio is quite high still. It has a lot of room to settle at a reasonable P/E still.

Sorry to bump up this thread, but I found it immensely interesting. We're considering hosting a series of high-availability sites in a shared esx cluster as opposed to multiple physical Web, database servers with load balancers and the lot. From a theoretical perspective it's a nobrainer.. Have one vmware image run in an environment geared to never going down, for a fraction of the cost of multiple expensive high-end servers.

Only downside is that it's still very early times for shared esx solutions. I've found only one host doing this, or at least advertising it (one who also participated in this thread). Is it too soon to consider shared esx clusters as an alternative to a typical clustered server setup?

Of course, I'm a little biased, but I personally think that shared ESX is viable for highly-available projects, but it isn't a replacement for clustered servers such as clustered Exchange, SQL Server, etc. where rolling-updates to the application without downtime to the application.

ESX is good for rolling updates of the ESX environment itself though. We literally click a few menu items and VirtualCenter's Update Manager will update all physical nodes one at a time, VMotion'ing VMs to other nodes during the updates, rolling the VMs around the cluster while hosts are updated and rebooted, completely hands-off. At the end of the process, we have hosts abiding to a configured baseline of updates, with no downtime to VMs.

The same isn't necessarily true of an application running in a VM. If that application is not clustered itself, and it fails, you will have downtime. In a clustered application configuration, you could have one node fail and the application continue to work.

In short, ESX provides highly-available "infrastructure", and can simulate the uptime of a clustered application, but only if the stability of that application is extremely good in itself running with a single instance.

If you need 99.95% "application" uptime, ESX can provide this quite well with a stable application. If you need 99.999%, clustered application servers is still the way to go.

Clustered virtual machines is a different discussion, and isn't typically practical due to the lack of clustered software support on ESX (for instance). It's possible, but there are many limitations to consider.

Eric

Wow, people, how many information in one post! I am so glad I came across with this forum :)

anyone feeling difference between 5x and 6x?

I haven't played around with 6.x too much yet, are you seeing anything better or different?

Also just to add my 2 cents for the esx hosting, I believe it is a great opportunity to get more options and the infrastructure available is great. I have used esx/virtual servers for a while now and they are great; I haven't had a complaint about them yet..

What 5-9% overhead are you talking about?

I've tried VMWare server on dual quad core system which scored about 960 in WHT Benchmark (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=308055). Same test inside the virtual environment(with only 1 virtual machine running) reported 110 points or so.
Automatic Linux installation via PXE boot took few mins for that server. Inside the virtual machine it took more than 30 mins.

Granted, it wasn't ESX and it wasn't optimized in any way, but the numbers can speak for themselves.
ESX runs "bare-metal". vmware server runs on top of an OS. In one, the virtual machines are passing only through the ESX hypervisor and then to hardware. In the other, they pass through the vmware server software, then the OS, then to hardware.

The difference in performance is huge - trying to get even an idea of ESX performance based on vmware server performance is very flawed.

There is one weak link that I can think of in the whole Virtualisation trend we're seeing.

Virtualisation is creating a more complex environment to deal with emergencies and a greater dependency on hardware. What do I mean? I mean now more than ever server hardware reliability is of extreme importance, particularly in the hosting industry. If a drive fails, or Network card, or power supply, or motherboard, or cpu...etc etc a whole group of virtual servers (operating systems) will be affected. Previously just a single operating system would be affected. It just means we are looking now at greater complexity when dealing with emergencies. I guess thats the trade off.

Its great technology, I would just like to know more about the possible downsides.
Yes and no. A properly setup virtualization solution makes downtime pretty much nonexistent - all VMs will be moved to working machines instantly.