Skip to main content

VMware User Group & The Next VMworld

I attended the second VMware User Group meeting here in the Bay Area last week.

The VMware User Group meets quarterly with monthly "Chalk Talk" sessions that include a much smaller (about 20) and more interactive audience. Check out the Forums as well.

Mehrdad Amir, Sr. Systems engineer for VMware, kicked things off with a quick overview of the VMware DRS, VMware HA, and VMware Lab Manager products:

  • This stuff, when combined with VMotion, is IT candy. So sweet.

  • Certainly makes me wonder why the vast majority of organizations are still running their data center on non-virtualized infrastructures.

  • So, the good news here is that this will all change in the next 5 years, as the underlying virtualization infrastructure becomes commoditized, and even starts coming "in the box".

  • I especially appreciated hearing about the success of the VMware Lab Manager product. I was/am an advisor and an investor in Akimbi, the company that was acquired by VMware, and it is their Slingshot application that is now branded as VMware Lab Manager.

  • Finally, the VMware Consolidated Backup product was discussed, which allows for server-less backups to be done, directly within the SAN, and without the need for SAN-based snapshots. Very cool.


It was also announced that the next VMworld conference will be in September 2007 and will be held somewhere in San Francisco, likely at the Moscone Center.

Faan DeSwardt, Director of Enterprise Architecture for Wyse Technology, talked about their success with server consolidation using these VMware products:

  • Getting a 15:1 ratio: 15 physical servers consolidate down to 1 physical server

  • The server reduction allowed for fewer network switches, reduced cooling, fewer UPS, reduced power consumption

  • Also achieved greater reliability, availability, and load balancing using VMotion

  • Reduced complexity achieved by using just 3 standard VM images instead of 30+ Ghost images, which greatly reduced the amount of time it takes to keep these reference builds up-to-date with Microsoft security patches

  • Estimated a direct $265K reduction in CAPEX and $20K/year saving in OPEX


Frank Arroyo, Account Services Account Manager for PG&E, presented an overview of the PG&E Virtualization Incentive Program:

  • Basically, if you can show a reduction in servers through the use of virtualization technologies, PG&E will give you a one-time CASH incentive to put the virtualization in-place within your data center

  • You will need to decommission the old servers (this is about power reduction, after all)

  • Example cited: One customer consolidated 92 server down to 8 and received a $22,586 check as their incentive

  • Based on typical power use of servers, incentives can range from $150 to $300 per server removed through a virtualization project. Incentives are capped at 50% of the total project cost, or $4.0M, whichever is less.

  • Not really appropriate for startups, as the incentives only work if you are removing servers.

  • This is unfortunate, as startups should receive an incentive to put a virtualized infrastructure in-place before they get big! Is VMware (or their competitors) listening?


I hope to see you all at the next VMware User Group meeting!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bill Coleman Joins 3tera Advisory Board

I think this move surprised a number of people, since Bill recently wrapped up Cassatt Corproation, getting the technology and people  acquired by Computer Associates . However, I was not surprised at all. The announcement, via  3tera Welcomes Bill Coleman : You may or may not have seen the recent press realease.  Bill Coleman, IT/Silicon Valley luminary, Founder and CEO of BEA Systems, has joined 3Tera’s Advisory Board. Yes, this alone is a great testimonial to what we have accomplished in our field.  Getting dignitaries such as Bill does not come easy.  But here’s the best part - this has a lot more than just marquee value and I doubt that Bill would have joined us if that was the case.  Bill, especially since his most recent stint as Founder and CEO of Cassatt Systems, is an extremely knowledgeable visionary in the area of utility and Cloud Computing; and, data center automation. So, Bill will be extremely valuable, reviewing and tweaking both our business plans and techno
Post a Comment
Read more

Big In Japan Open Sources Their Ruby On Rails Tools

The kind folks over at Big In Japan have graciously decided to Open Source the code they used to build their demo web sites . It's all Ruby on Rails code, and it's being released with a GPL license. The code trees being made available include: elfURL ~ URL Shortner FeedVault ~ OPML file storage FrankenFeed ~ RSS feed merger InstantFeed ~ RSS feeds via email QwikPing ~ Ping Server SocialMail ~ RSS via email Very cool. I just love the Open Source community . I have actually been writing some code of late, and it's great to have some reference code to check out. Not sure if I'm going to go with Ruby on Rails yet, however. And, for the record. I have no idea if this is big in Japan. Tags: Open Source , GPL , Ruby On Rails , Big In Japan , Brian Berliner , brianberliner
Post a Comment
Read more

CA Acquires 3Tera – It’s About Time!

I started tracking 3Tera in August 2005. They made some amazing progress with their AppLogic release in the next 12 months and things were really starting to look good, so I wrote my first article about them in September 2006 . A couple weeks later, ReadWriteWeb called them out as well . Time passed. 3Tera was early. The market was maturing. Keep pounding away at it… Meanwhile, Cassatt Corporation, the company I co-founded in April 2003 with Bill Coleman and Dave McAlister, sold its technology assets and people to Computer Associates in June 2009 . The Cassatt team was all over scalable “cloud” computing architectures and the management thereof. CA’s acquisition, combined with some of their other aggressive moves in this space (the similar acquisitions of NetQoS, Oblicore, Orchestria, Platinum Technology, and Netreon) made it clear that CA saw some white-space for them to expand into cloud management in a big way. Next, I reported how Bill Coleman joined up with 3Tera as
Post a Comment
Read more