Over in the forums, goolj10 asks:

"It seems to me that if your management server goes down, then there is no way to a) start new VS's, b) restart a VS that failed either due to an internal error or because the hardware it was running on has failed. Is this true? If so, what recommendations do people have for overcoming this single point of failure?"

cbarclay responds that Virtual Iron recommends running an Active/Passive cluster to protect against these types of issues. He continues with:

I'm curious how many virtual machines everybody is running? If you wouldn't mind, please leave a quick comment here on the blog and let me know.

Thanks.

We released Virtual Iron 3.5 today, which includes iSCSI support and user management/authenication using LDAP and Active Directory. From the press release (which you can read in full here):

"The new release provides for more simple and cost-effective shared storage to facilitate the mainstream adoption of virtual infrastructure management capabilities such as LiveMigration, LiveRecovery, LiveCapacity and LiveMaintenance of virtual servers. The new release also adds single server installation to simplify deployment and configuration."

This release is the result of a lot of people's hard work. I won't mention them by name but would like to thank them all (they know who they are!). I'd also like to thank everyone who continues to support Virtual Iron.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article on virtualization (right there on page B4). The article, also available online, discusses virtualization in general, how people are using it, some of the benefits of virtualization technology and a bit about how virtualization is affecting server sales (or not, depending on your perspective).

Click here to read the full article (registration is required but they do provide an excerpt).

If you haven't seen it yet, here is the full virtualization article from today's Wall Street Journal. It's a good read.

With the release of Virtual Iron 3.5 earlier this week, we are now support iSCSI storage.

A lot of customers have been asking for iSCSI which has quickly become very popular (and becoming more popular every day, it seems).

The following iSCSI storate solution are supported:
- DataCore SANmelody
- Dell AX150i
- Network Appliance

Computron, our Dutch Channel One Partner, has provided a free solution for importing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 machines into Virtual Iron. In order to do this, you need a working Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (which is a free download) and your Virtual Iron installation properly configured.

To import, follow these steps:

The press has extensively covered our 3.5 release. Here's a sampling of articles and blog posts that are out there. And if you haven't tried 3.5 yet, click here to download it for free.

Wall Street Journal: 'Virtualization' is Pumping Up Servers

Virtualization.info reports on Virtual Iron 3.5 release

SearchServerVirtualization: Virtual Iron supports iSCSI with virtualization suite

VMblog on the release of 3.5

Byte and Switch: Virtual Iron Dangles iSCSI Savings

Two from Network World: PGA Tour article and Virtual Iron Streamlines Deployment with iSCSI Support

That's just a sampling of the good press we've received on this release -- a release which, as I mentioned before, we are quite proud of.

We've been asked a few times (including in the forums) how to import VMware virtual machines to Virtual Iron. The question comes up more and more as people look for a cost-effective virtualization solution that has all the features they want.

To answer the question: yes, there is a way to do this and it's very easy. I blogged on this back in December: Converting VMware Virtual Appliances for Use with Virtual Iron.

It's easy and free!

This is funny. One of my colleagues here at Virtual Iron showed me some info coming from VMware that claims that VMware is less expensive that Virtual Iron. It's insulting that VMware would think customers would believe this. Let's look at this at a high level:

- Virtual Iron is $499 per socket.
- VMware is, well, pricing is somewhere in this 16 page PDF.

You must be wondering how VMware can claim to have a lower price than Virtual Iron. They claim that can produce more virtual machines per server. Which, in the right environment, may be true, however nowhere near what they claim (over double any other competitor). How many virtual machines you can have on a server depends on so many different factors - such as CPU and memory.

After mentioning it in yesterday's post, requests started coming in for more information on our just-announced VMware Upgrade Program.

Essentially, this upgrade program provides a low cost, easy-to-migrate solution for VMware 2.5 and VMware Server customers to move over to Virtual Iron 3.5 (comparable features to VMware, less cost, it's a win all around). I won't rehash the program details word for word here in the blog (you can see the details here) but I do want to point out that the program is limited to the first 100 people who want to take advantage of it, so if you're interested, go now!

The program was recently mentioned in Search Server Virtualization's article: VMware ESX 3.0 Upgrades Stall on License Costs, VAR Says.

The press release and a PDF on the program are also available.

Alessandro Perilli, of the always enjoyable virtualization.info blog, recently posted his top virtualization trends for 2007 (the article also appears on Search Server Virtualization).

Here are a couple of his predictions:

- A single eight-core host will easily accommodate 32 virtual machines on average, which is more than enough to build a complete datacenter for many SMBs. And if this is not enough Intel is already working on an 80-cores prototype, available in production within five years.

- To reduce costs and be ready to scale up, cheaper iSCSI models with modular architectures will be the preferred choice.

Read the full article here.

Here are a few things I've come across this week that was of interest:

- From, of all places, a Corvette Forum: Why VMware sucks (no, that's not my title for the article, it is the actual forum thread, which discusses issues with VMware's support and pricing)

- From CNet: Red Hat hopes to solidify lead with new Linux

- From VMblog: Brian Madden Helps Introduce VDI

- From virtualization.info: PlateSpin named fasted growing technology company in Canada for 3rd year (Congrats to PlateSpin -- a Virtual Iron partner and the people who make it easy to upgrade from VMware to Virtual Iron.)

eWeek had an article on virtualization last week "Competition Heats Up" - and Virtual Iron was featured prominently. In general, the article talks about many of the new options in the virtualization space. Among other things, such as talking about the current competitive landscape, eWeek quoted my colleague Mike Grandinetti, who said, "...the company sees enormous opportunity for growth, especially if VMware finds itself in a battle with Microsoft over agreements." (Remember that from a few weeks ago?)

This Thursday, at 11:00 am Eastern, Chris Barclay (Virtual Iron's product manager) will host an installation demo of Virtual Iron 3.5 tomorrow via webcast. Click here to register.

Chris has done these periodically, though I think this is the first one for version 3.5. This demo will cover the basics of Virtual Iron 3.5, from installation to new features, and also field some questions.

Registration info is here.

We just announced today that EqualLogic iSCSI storage is certified on Virtual Iron. Specifically, it is the PS Series storage arrays that are certified. The combination of Virtual Iron and EqualLogic provides you with a very affordable virtualization solution.

From the press release: "The combined solution delivers enterprise-class server and storage virtualization capabilities to the mainstream market and enables more users to take advantage of the significant benefits of advanced virtual infrastructure management capabilities such as LiveMigration, LiveRecovery, LiveCapacity and LiveMaintenance of virtual servers."

And: "By deploying EqualLogic virtualized iSCSI SANs with Virtual Iron, users achieve a simple, flexible and cost-effective virtualized infrastructure that easily adapts to changing business requirements. An EqualLogic SAN provides simple storage consolidation, which enables a virtual infrastructure environment to increase storage utilization, enrich corporate data protection methods, facilitate disaster recovery and enhance virtualized server availability and workload migration. In addition, EqualLogic's fully redundant infrastructure provides an easy-to-use and disaster-tolerant consolidated storage solution. The combined capabilities enable companies to apply virtualization more readily for cost-effective high availability, disaster recovery and capacity management."

Read the full press release for more information.

Byte and Switch has an article up on our EqualLogic announcement from yesterday (see: EqualLogic iSCSI Storage Certified on Virtual Iron).

The article notes early on that iSCSI is growing in popularity as a less expensive option to Fibre Channel, specifically noting: "The big selling point of iSCSI virtualization is that users can link storage into their virtual infrastructure without buying additional kit. Firms looking to connect a Fibre Channel SAN, on the other hand, would have to invest in Fibre Channel HBAs, which can cost around $2,000 a pair."

As is evidenced by our pricing (just $499 per socket -- which is one-fifth the cost of a comparable solution from VMware), Virtual Iron is all about making virtualization available to everyone at a fair price. Our EqualLogic announcement follows our line of thinking: if you want virtualization, it is available at price you can afford.

Here's the type of thread I like to see in our forums. A customer has a question and it is resolved quickly by Virtual Iron's support staff and the community. Very nice!

As a side note, the forums really are a great way to have your questions answered, help others with their questions and to see what new ideas can be sparked.

Earlier today, we announced that Virtual Iron has joined two HP partner programs: the HP ProLiant Partner Program and the BladeSystem Solution Builder Program. The same announcement points out that Virtual Iron customers Priceline.com and PGA Tour Superstores are using Virtual Iron's virtualization software with HO BladeSystem and ProLiant servers. You can read the press release here. A white paper is also available on HP's site.

Here are a few quotes from customers using the Virtual Iron and HP solution:

- Priceline.com's Ron Rose says, "HP and Virtual Iron minimize configuration complexity and increase the efficiency of both their solutions. That's good for Priceline.com and god for the industry as a whole."

- Gentry Ganote, from PGA Tour Superstores, says he "can strongly recommend Virtual Iron on HP c-class blades as the platform of choice for delivering advanced capabilities for virtualizing larger server environments."

Virtual Iron has been validated in HP's Test Lab on the HP ProLiant DL140, DL320, DL360 and DL365. See our HCL for a full list of HP servers that we have certified Virtual Iron on.

eWeek just posted a review of Virtual Iron 3.5 and they called us "a flexible, low-cost fix with impressive provisioning capabilities."

I'll let you read the full review for yourself (and it is a good read). eWeek provides a very detailed review, discussing the Virtual Iron management console, the hardware they tested on, some comparisons to VMware and more.

In addition to the eWeek review, here are a few other good reads from this week:

Another eWeek article

HP adds ProLiant Virtualization Offerings

HP Grabs Virtual Iron for Virtualisation Solution

It's been a busy week so far and in catching up on some reading today, I realized that Virtual Iron has had some excellent coverage this week. In addition to what I posted yesterday, there is:

InfoWorld: Virtual Iron Joins HP Partner Program

Network World: Virtual Iron Kicks off Virtual Spat: "Virtualization software vendor Virtual Iron (VI) is looking to undercut established player VMware saying that the cost of VMware's software is hindering the virtualization market. VI hopes that its cheaper offerings will attract new users."

InfoWorld Virtualization Report: Virtual Iron Offers a Cheap Upgrade Solution for VMware Customers

I just noticed that the March issue of our newsletter has been posted online.

There are lots of topics in the newsletter, covering everything from our VMWare Upgrade Program to current industry articles to Virtual Iron-specific news (such as the recent HP announcement where Ron Rose, who is well-regarded in the industry, said that HP and Virtual Iron working together is "good for the industry as a whole.").

You can also sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox.

Techworld recently posted a review of VMware's VirtualCenter for VMware Server. As you know, VMware Server is the freebie from VMware and VirtualCenter is, as TechWorld says, "an expensive add-on for an otherwise free virtualisation platform" and that -- even at $1,500 -- there is "no live migration; no re-allocation of virtual machines; no snapshot."

Now, I'm not discounting the VirtualCenter product. I haven't used it yet and it's probably a fine piece of software, I just agree with Techworld that $1,500 seems a bit high for a product that doesn't even have all of the features that should be included. After all, with Virtual Iron, you receive these enterprise-class features with the software. You're not getting something for free only to have to pay more to receive the features you should already have.

That's because Virtual Iron 3.5 is free for a single server or just $499 per socket for multi-server environments -- and that includes LiveMigration features and more (see what Virtual Iron includes). No matter how you looks at -- free or $499 -- that's a lot better than paying $1,500 for something that should be free.