Microsoft Now Supports VMware (so does SAP)

The authoritative MS article is here:
Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615

The authoritative VMware article is here:
http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/ms_support_statement.html

VMware Announces Support from SAP of VMware ESX Server for Production Environments
Today this was announced – VMware and SAP Establish Global Technology Partnership; VMware Infrastructure Supports SAP(R) Solutions with Both Windows and Linux on Industry-standard Hardware

Tools for VMware – Easy to Use, Inexpensive = Virtual Appliances

Vkernel is about to revamp their product line with new virtual appliances that start at $199 per socket and their roadmap for 2008 is quite interesting.
What makes Vkernel interesting ?

a) they have done it before – their CEO and founder, Alex Bakman, led Ecora to a prominent position in the area of change control & patch management , etc

b) their software will be delivered as a virtual appliance – so there is really no installation to speak of and a client can be using their software in minutes

They look as if they will model their pricing and product offerings similar to what Vizioncore has done – a) inexpensive pricing b) solves a common issue for most VM shops and 3) the products that they offer work together

While the term “charge back” doesnt appeal to all , since many firms dont employ chargeback now (an accounting function) – it is critical for IT to understand what are the real costs associated with these virtual resources, so having “costing visibility” can be huge. Doing this via a spreadsheet is time consuming , static , and inaccurate.
With “costing visibility” ( no accounting transaction) you will now have a way to help budget properly and even if IT doesnt charge thier users – it is paramount that
your clients understand the value and the costs of a virtual environment.
If users believe it is free, you will not be able to get the accolades deserved and a true understanding of the business value delivered with VMware

The killer app for iSCSI , Dell-Equallogic and Site Recovery Manager

The killer application for iSCSI vendors has been virtualization.

The company that has leveraged this the most has been Equallogic; they were the first iSCSI (only) company to get certified for VMware Vi3 and VMware customers have flocked to iSCSI and EQL in particular. There are several technical reasons why iSCSI and virtualization are a great marriage..

At VMworld – nearly every client that spoke about virtualization and DR was an Equallogic customer.
The $1.4 billion acquisition of Equallogic by Dell, validates for all that iSCSI and virtualization are leading the pack.

Also a quick note which I think is pretty interesting regarding high end FC SAN and iSCSI SANs and what VMware (an EMC company) is working on and supporting during the first phase of a new product release ; the word on the “street” is
that early next year when VMware releases VMware Site Recovery Manager (a new product that uses virtualization to provide end-to-end disaster recovery management and automation ) it will initially support two products – high end EMC DMX & SRDF and Equallogic iSCSI PS Series SANs and replication software suite which comes free with their hardware.

Equallogic will also make for an even more interesting VMware-DR bundle when VMware SRM is released – EQL will not charge to add for the SRM plug in software (they include their software suite for free – replication, cloning, etc and dont charge when new software features are added) while other vendors , EMC, etc will charge for this new feature set

Today I was listening in on a “town hall” meeting which involved Equallogic’s CEO Don Bulens and high end channel partner managers from Equallogic and Dell . That’s right I said Dell channel – a lot has changed since Michael Dell came back and found that the market has changed for certain products.

My take away, is that partners should embrace the Dell buyout of Equallogic and more importantly that Equallogic customers will be better served in the future from this new alignment . While it makes sense to be guarded , so far it seems like a win win for clients and partners alike.

Computer servers ‘as bad’ for climate as SUVs ?

From the NewScientist.com news service’s Catherine Brahic :

Computer servers are at least as great a threat to the climate as SUVs or the global aviation industry, warns a new report.

Global Action Plan, a UK-based environmental organisation, publishes a report today drawing attention to the carbon footprint of the IT industry in the UK.

“Computers are seen as quite benign things sitting on your desk,” says Trewin Restorick, director of the group. “But, for instance, in our charity we have one server. That server has same carbon footprint as your average SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. Yet, whereas the SUV is seen as a villain from the environmental perspective, the server is not.”

The report, An Inefficient Truth states that with more than 1 billion computers on the planet, the global IT sector is responsible for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions each year – a similar figure to the global airline industry.

The energy consumption is driven largely by vast amounts of customer and user data that are stored on the computer servers in most businesses. The rate at which data storage is growing surpasses the growth in the airline industry: in 2006, 48% more data storage capacity was sold in the UK than in 2005, while the number of plane passengers grew by 3%.
Unknown cost

The group ran a survey of some of the largest businesses in the UK in an attempt to find out how aware the industry is of its carbon footprint.

The survey revealed that more than half of the IT professionals surveyed believed their environmental impact was “significant”, however:

• 86% of them do not know the carbon footprint of their activities

• two thirds of the departments they work for are not responsible for paying their own energy bills

• more than half do not even see those bills

The bottom line is that IT departments “are buying lots and lots of kit that they have to run and cool without knowing what the energy cost of that kit is”, says Restorick.

The survey also revealed that considerable amounts of electricity could be saved by more efficient data storage: 60% of the departments said they were using less than half their storage capacity and 37% said they are storing data indefinitely.

Restorick told New Scientist that simply increasing the efficiency of energy use and data storage could easily cut 30% of power use in businesses. “In theory, this could happen overnight,” he says.