Virtual Servers

VMware apologizes for ESX bug

Paul Mah — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:41:16 -0400

Users who have updated to the latest version of VMware's flagship ESX product found themselves in a quandary when they could not power up their virtual servers earlier this week. The culprit proved to be leftover code from beta versions that slipped in through the most recent update in late-July.

Implemented in order to better control beta releases, the "time bomb" code was designed to stop the virtual machines from being powered up past a certain date, which in this case was August 12. The company has since issued a patch that allowed enterprises to start up affected virtual servers, with VMware CEO Paul Maritz apologizing for the "disruption and difficulty" in an open letter.

For more about the VMware ESX snafus:
- check out this Computerworld article

Microsoft to unveil new licensing policies for virtual machines

Paul Mah — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:40:23 -0400

Earlier this week, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company will announce licensing changes with regards to server virtualization next Tuesday. Indeed, current Microsoft licensing rules have been problematic for proponents of virtualization, in part because software hosted on a virtual server is licensed based on the physical server.

When using technologies such as VMware's VMotion, which is able to shift running virtual machines between physical servers without downtime, each VMotion move is actually considered a license transfer. However, customers are not allowed to make more than one "license transfer" every 90 days, effectively negating much of VMotion's benefits. At the moment, the opinion from analysts is that Microsoft will remove the 90-day restriction.

To learn more Microsoft's licensing policies:
- check out this Network World 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