Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : VMWare

[emailhosting]

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?

[SBHS-Scott]

It already has in corporate environments...

[emailhosting]

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.

[LoganNZ]

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

[dkitchen]

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

[(Stephen)]

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

[SBHS-Scott]

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

[(Stephen)]

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

Originally Posted by sbhs

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

[SBHS-Scott]

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

[(Stephen)]

Care to read:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/...fvmware_1.html


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

Originally Posted by sbhs

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

[emailhosting]

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 - news - people ) 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 - news - people ), Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ), SAP (nyse: SAP - news - people ) and Adobe Systems (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people ) — 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 - news - people ) 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 - news - people ) 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/vmw...?partner=email

[emailhosting]

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/r...007_recap.html

[GARMTECH]

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.

Originally Posted by RazorBlue - Dan

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

[GARMTECH]

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.

[emailhosting]

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.