Virtualization

The debate over single-function server appliances versus general-purpose servers is a long-standing one.

Appliances first came onto the scene in the late 1990s during the first Internet boom. They focused on a particular task, such as Web serving, and were designed to be ready to install with minimum muss, fuss, or skill. This assembly line approach to server farms was to be the secret sauce that made possible infinite growth without infinite IT staff.

Cobalt Networks was perhaps the best known and most sophisticated of the companies to offer appliances. Sun Microsystems later acquired Cobalt and then failed to successfully … Read more

NEW YORK--It was a larger and cheerier crowd that attended this year's Red Hat's analyst day at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

That shouldn't be surprising. At last year's meeting on October 7, Red Hat management had the dubious honor of ringing the closing bell on a day that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop over 500 points.

This meeting took place in a time of what's probably best described as cautious optimism about the state of the economy. And in the context of Red Hat financial results that have continued to … Read more

I visited my dad in Maine over the weekend and, as is often the case, part of the weekend was devoted to "IT administration," aka attending to PCs and associated gadgetry.

While some of the time involved transferring photos among various devices, a decent chunk was devoted to working on a PC whose operating system had decided to irretrievably corrupt itself somehow, requiring a fresh rebuild. And, yes, it was Windows--Windows XP to be precise--but please don't try to tell me that this sort of thing never happens with your favorite OS of choice.

This story isn'… Read more

VMworld, which took place last week in San Francisco, was hopping.

In fact, the number of attendees appeared to overwhelm many of the conference's educational labs in the early going. And the many vendors I spoke with at the event were happy about their booth traffic and the show in general. Now that I've had a bit of time to digest and distill three days of whirlwind activity, five points stick with me:

1. We're seeing virtualization--as technology, products, and solution sets--start to mature in many respects. Or at least the current phase of it. Fellow analyst … Read more

As human beings we like analogies. Admittedly, we sometimes overextend them and end up obfuscating rather than clarifying. Such is arguably the case with cloud computing and the electric grid. However, a good analogy can not only make the new and unfamiliar more comprehensible but can even bring fresh insights based on history and past patterns.

Many of you are probably familiar with the computing-in-shipping-containers theme that Sun most popularized but that a variety of vendors has picked up on in various forms. The idea is that a shipping container is the largest thing that can be easily transported around … Read more

[Update: Additional commentary from Stephen Hemminger added.]

Microsoft set off a barrage of commentary earlier this week when it released three drivers under the GPL v2 to be part of Linux. The main purpose for doing so appeared to have been to make Windows Server and Hyper-V more effective as a virtualization foundation for Linux guest operating systems.

I was less shocked by the news than some. It struck me as a smart business move by Microsoft to further dispel both the reality and appearance of not playing well with other operating systems and tools. From a practical perspective, offering … Read more

VMware's financial results from the second quarter of 2009 are out. They beat revenue and income estimates but those estimates were far less euphoric than during VMware's spectacular growth days of a few years back. Second-quarter revenue was $456 million, flat from the second quarter of 2008. Operating income on a GAAP basis was down 38 percent from the year-ago quarter and down 14 percent non-GAAP.

International revenue saw about 3 percent growth but this was counterbalanced by a similar decline in the U.S. International revenue is now almost equal to those in the U.S.--$… Read more

We most associate hypervisors and virtualization with servers from their beginnings as tools for development and testing, through their widespread adoption as a means to reduce the number of physical servers needed, to their current stage as a foundation for dynamic IT architectures. Virtualization on the client side has been more of a niche  although application virtualization continues to grow in importance and some specific uses, such as running Windows applications on Macs, have proven quite popular.

As for embedded devices, special-purpose computers, virtualization has had essentially no impact.

That's beginning to change. Wind River, one of the … Read more

Microsoft's Server and Tools Business did the virtual conference thing for industry analysts last week. Fellow analyst Judith Hurwitz ably describes the limitations of this format. I concur with much of what she writes.

That said, I give Microsoft props for trying. A lot of companies have canceled or decided not to hold in-person events this year without making any real effort to put together an alternative. Limited interactivity and engagement aside, some of the pre-recorded videos were informative, STB President Bob Muglia was in typical energetic form, and I had good telephone discussions on a variety of topics. … Read more