Virtualization

Survival skills for CIOs

Judi Hasson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:09:27 -0400

Having a full grasp of technology is crucial for every CIO, but these days it's not enough. Hans Brechbühl, executive director of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, tells Forbes.com that CIOs "need to be deeply rooted and connected to all aspects of the business.'' He says this means not leading with technology and compliance requirements, but understanding company and business needs, and then getting out in front to help shape them.

Moreover, Brechbühl said CIOs must be ready to move with the shift in technology, including Web 2.0 and virtualization, and be prepared to handle all of the inevitable demands of globalization that include a widely scattered workforce. And then there's security, a task he said involves dealing with a hostile environment while maintaining appropriate access.

For more advice:
- see this Forbes article

Microsoft working on Windows replacement

Paul Mah — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:32:09 -0400

Indisputably the dominant computing platform of choice, the Windows Operating System looks set to remain that way for many more years to come. Microsoft is certainly not content to take things sitting down though. Already, its own research lab is cooking up a new operating system that is nothing less than a radical departure from the current paradigm. Called Midori, it does away with dependencies tying Windows to a single PC, with a design that centers on the Internet. Many believe that the idea behind Midori is to create a lightweight operating system that can easily be mated to serve as a portable host for compartmentalized applications. If that is true, it sounds like Microsoft's answer to the threat posed by the increasing use of virtualization on the desktop.

For more about Midori:
- check out this BBC News article

Red Hat eyes virtualization

Paul Mah — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:22:14 -0400

The Red Hat summit in Boston last week saw Red Hat open a beta of its Linux-based oVirt hypervisor that weights in at less than 64MB. oVirt is based on the KVM, or kernel-based virtual machine, and supports both Linux and Microsoft's Windows operating systems as hosts. In addition, it also supports live migration to allow applications running on one virtual machine to be seamlessly migrated to other virtual machines without any downtime. Live migration can be done even if the target is on a separate physical server.

Overall, observers present at the Summit were impressed by Red Hat's virtualization strategy, which also involves building management tools that will eventually allow thousands of virtual machines to be created and managed on Red Hat's platform.

For more on Red Hat's virtualization strategy:
- check out this NetworkWorld article

HP to work with VMware to manage virtual servers

Paul Mah — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:22:42 -0400

HP will increase its partnership with VMware in a joint attempt to develop software to manage the top virtualization vendor's hypervisor technology. At the moment, HP's systems management software connects to VMware's systems via an external interface made available by the company. This represents a huge step forward for both companies, as ties between the respective software will now be built into the core of each product.

Sharmila Shahani, chief marketing office for HP's Business Technology Optimization unit, noted that customers can henceforth expect to perform more "dynamic capacity management" of virtual environments as well as policies that can be set in HP software and enforced in the virtual environment that places restrictions on the provisioning of new virtual servers.

For more on VMware and HP:
- check out this InformationWeek article

Study: Some virtualization works

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Forrester Research has found high value in some virtualization technology, but believes not everything makes business or technical sense. It has found server and client virtualization mature enough to pay off in the short term, but suggests that the value of application storage virtualization is questionable.

Forrester also thinks some other virtualization technologies aren't quite ready for prime time, but lists some that it says are in the "survival phase" that could develop in the next few years. These include network performance services, virtualized network security and out-of-band storage virtualization.

To read more:
- see this CIO.com article

For more tech articles from the FierceCIO network:
> Yahoo goes with Google. Article
> Web browsers put to the test. Article
> Apple unveils 3G iPhone. Article

Parallels adds Leopard Server support

Mehan Jayasuriya — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:47:38 -0400

Virtualization has led to huge energy and hardware savings in a number of large enterprises and that includes Mac shops as well. After all, OS X applications like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion have brought the benefits of virtualization into the home, so it's not surprising that Macs are seeing a lot of virtualization action, as of late. The latest news on this front is that Parallels has just released a new beta of Parallels Server that allows a single Xserve machine to run multiple copies of Leopard Server, alongside Windows and Linux. While Leopard Server VMs were removed from previous versions of Parallels Server, the company was forced to briefly remove support because of performance issues. "We worked out the technical issues, optimized performance and stability and now we're ready for our community to take a look at us and help to make it perfect," Parallels' Ben Rudolph told Ars Technica.

For more on Parallels Server:
- see this Ars Technica article

The top challenges to compliance in virtualization

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:59:55 -0400

Chris Farrow of Fortisphere, in a recent News.com article outlined some challenges for achieving IT compliance in the field of virtualization. For example, the discovery and inventory of virtual machines can be tricky, given that virtual machine resources cannot be tagged physically. Also, what is the company's policy pertaining to rogue virtual machines? Closely related to this would be the importance of maintaining a chain of custody in which an audit trail of approved changes is documented. Farrow also discusses the importance of segregating low-risk virtual machines from high-risk or mission-critical ones, and the need to track software licenses for violations. Because virtualization is relatively new, he advocates that companies ensure they retain the appropriate expertise in their technical personnel.

For more on the challenges to IT compliance in virtualization:
- check out this ZDNet article

ALSO NOTED: Gartner: 80% of apps to use open-source by 2012; Flash drives get serious about security;

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:59:50 -0500

> Gartner: 80% of apps to use open-source by 2012. Article
> Motorola CEO takes helm of handset division. Article
> Lenovo ThinkPad power adaptor charges phones, PDAs too. Article
> Apple bumps iPhone to 16GB of storage. Article
> Linus Torvalds blasts Sun, Microsoft, virtualization. Article
> Flash drives get serious about security. Article
> Remembering failed Apple buyout amid Microsoft/Yahoo speculation. Article

And Finally... A brand-new computer from 1984 gets unboxed. Article

ALSO NOTED: Virtualization management on rise; When best practices are not followed;

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:59:58 -0500

> Virtualization management on rise. Article
> When best practices are not followed. Article
> Growing India's software market. Article
> Give thanks that you are in IT. Article

And Finally... The top 10 IT disasters of all time. Article

Fix your security before it breaks

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:00:00 -0500

If you break it, you own it. That's an old saying for anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time. For CIOs, the trick is to take the lead in dealing with security issues, fixing them before they break. There is no lack of products out there with which to assess a risk and prevent it. But where do you go? And how do you pick the best product for your firm? "We're finding security is the forgotten stepchild in the virtualization build-out," said Stephen Elliott, IDC's research director for enterprise systems management software. Is that true for your firm? Have you figured out the cost of putting up the best security or are you still in a never-never land of keeping your fingers crossed that you will never be attacked? "That's scary when you think about the number of production-level VMs," Elliott said. In 2008, CIOs will have to find a new balance to their work, resetting their priorities and making sure their systems are protected from every kind of attack even before they work on operational excellence. -Judi