I came across this this tidbit earlier today:

Virtue In Virtualization

Enough with distributed servers. Going virtual can reduce software and maintenance fees, boost operational efficiency and agility, cut data-center costs, and improve provisioning time - especially for companies with global offices, varying support environments, and large storage requirements.

In one Nucleus Research case study, virtualization saved an insurance company several million dollars annually in operational, hiring, and storage costs.

There was a bit more to the article, but that number is astounding and I want to repeat it: virtualization saved a single company several million dollars annually. That's recurring savings and is a very nice chunk of money being saved, which goes right to the bottom line. With virtualization being so affordable ($499 per socket from Virtual Iron), the return on any virtualization investment is rapid and, as mentioned above, can be quite substantial.

Virtual Strategy Magazine is currently running a poll on their site asking the question, "Which topic is of greatest interest to you?" The choices are:

P2V - V2P Migration
iSCSI Storage
VMware Alternatives
Test and Development
Charge Back

I'm pleased to see that VMware Alternatives is currently the top choice with a fairly large margin (over 1/3 of all votes). Of course, we know that people are interested in alternatives to VMware -- the market has wanted this for a while now -- and that's why we're here. It's nice to see this vailidated by a third-party. (And, if you're a current VMware user looking for an alternative, you can't do any better that our VMWare Upgrade Program.)

If you want to vote in the poll, it's in the right column on Virtual Strategy Magazine's website.

Chris Barclay, Virtual Iron's Director of Product Management, will be hosting a webcast next Tuesday (April 10) at 11am eastern time. Chris will review Virtual Iron 3.5's new features (such as single server installation and iSCSI), go through an installation of Virtual Iron 3.5 and take the time to answer any questions you have.

To register, click here.

From the Virtual Iron forums:

---
All Opteron CPUs support 64 bits. But not all Opterons support AMD-V. This is what the AMD team advises as to how to tell if a processor supports AMD-V:

The simple rule is "if it is a DDR2 and is not a Sempron, then it has AMD-V".

Any Rev F2 processor that is not a value branded Sempron supports has full virtualization capabilities. Since we have multiple versions of the Rev F2 core, depending on the type of machine they go in, they are branded differently. The one constant factor is all Rev F2 are DDR2, so that is the easiest way to check.

For servers, we brand these "Next Generation AMD Opteron". These also use the socket F-1207 or the AM2 socket For desktops, these are multiple brands and use the AM2 socket. For mobile, these are all branded "Turion 64 X2". The X2 is key designating dual core with socket S1.

For Opteron, we have a link that does list out AMD-V support at http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8796_14266,00.html---

Network World recently featured our partnership with HP in their Servers Newsletter:

[...]But last week, Virtual Iron got a boost in that area: HP invited Virtual Iron to be a charter member in its ProLiant Partner Program and BladeSystem Solution Builder Program.

That means that Virtual Iron will get access to a new customer base through HP. HP will rigorously test Virtual Iron's software on its ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and buyers will be able to get HP systems pre-installed with the x86 server-slicing software. Enterprise buyers also can still buy the hardware and software separately and will get support through Virtual Iron.

Chris Barclay, our Director of Product Management, has provided SearchServerVirtualization with some Virtual Iron performance benchmarks. You can see the full details here. The bottom line, as noted in the article, is that "overall the Windows Server 2003 VM was able to perform at or below a 3% performance degradation.

SPECweb2005 was used for one of these benchmarks. If you're not familiar with SPECweb2005, here is a brief description from their site:

SPECweb2005 emulates users sending browser requests over broadband Internet connections to a web server. It provides three new workloads based on analysis of web server logs and studies of sites from the web browser side. (click here for more)

While the benchmarks are out there, and they are good to look over, I do encourage everybody to evaluate their own particular virtualization needs and to run their own benchmarks. Environments will vary and that can influence the results that you will see.

Earlier today, we posted a bunch of new pages focusing on Virtual Iron customers and how they've used Virtual Iron to solve their business problems. There is an overview page, as well as more detailed pages for these six customers:

- The Charlotte Observer
- Mobius Management Systems
- Flexible Lamps
- PGA TOUR Superstore
- ServePath
- XCalibre Solutions

Maybe you're trying to solve a business problem similar to one of these companies and their solution may help you.

Just a reminder that tomorrow (April 10) at 11am (eastern time) we will be presenting a free webcast that will review all of Virtual Iron 3.5's new features, including single server installation and iSCSI. During this webcast, we will go through an installation of version 3.5, as well as leave some time for Q&A. Hope you can join us. Register here

The LinuxInsider posted a story today -- The Nuts and Bolts of Virtualization -- that gives a nice overview of virtualization. Topics in the article inlude "why virtualization?" and "who uses virtualization?"

The article finished with a quote from our own Mike Grandinetti: "Virtualization will only continue to grow in enterprises," predicted Grandinetti. "Essentially, virtual servers will become the new physical servers. We are already seeing it as analysts like IDC and Gartner (NYSE: IT) cut their server shipment forecasts as companies replace physical servers with virtual servers. Going forward, companies will need the tools and expertise to manage this virtual infrastructure," he noted.

Click here for the full article.

Yesterday, we made two announcements which I wanted to briefly mention here.

The first announcement talks about our new agreement with Arrow Electronics to offer an integrated, Intel-based appliace with Virtual Iron pre-installed on a white box server. This announcement is in conjunction with the news that we have joined Intel's ESAA program (ESAA stands for Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance). Click here for more information.

The second announcement talks about our expanding channel program -- which now includes HP as an authorized reseller as well as more than 100 worldwide partners. Click here to read more about this.

Our recent installation webcast generated a lot of great questions from the participants. There were so many, I've broken up the Q&A session into two lists, the first of which is below. I'll post the second half early next week.

Q: Is there an SDK or API into the management server that allows Virtual Machine management? (for example: Microsoft VMM uses PowerShell, Virtual Center has it's SDK)
A: Virtual Iron provides both Java and Python APIs to manage all aspects of virtual infrastructure.

Q: What are the Host configuration requirements for LiveCapacity / LiveRecover to function?
A: LiveCapacity and LiveRecovery require networked storage such as SAN or iSCSI.

Here is the second half of Q&A from last week's installation webcast. If you have any questions, post them to our forums and we'll answer them for you.

Q: It seems you beat VMWare on cost pretty easily. So, is performance close...if so...how close?
A: See the performance benchmarks published by Chris Wolf: http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/04/05/virtual-iron-offers-up-performance-benchmark/

Q: What about 64 bit os's?
A: Virtual Iron supports 64-bit operating systems.

Q: Would you speak more about virtual recovery? Is there any downtime associated with this process?
A: LiveRecovery does have some downtime consisting of the amount of time it takes the operating system to reboot. The virtual server is automatically moved from the physical server that failed to a running physical server.

Yesterday, Virtual Iron and Provision Networks announced a joint VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) solution that is available immediately.

As an overview, this VDI solution lets you host individual Windows desktops inside of a virtual machine. This graphic sums it up nicely:

For more information, visit our VDI page, view the demo or read our "Future of Desktop Computing" white paper.

Our VDI solution has been getting some coverage in the press. If you want to learn more about what Virtual Iron and Provision Networks are offering for virtual desktop infrastructure, give these articles a read:

ComputerWorld: Suddenly, Virtual Desktops are a Real Contender
TechWorld: Virtual Iron Virtualises the Desktop
eWeek: Virtual Iron, Provision Networks Take On Desktop Virtualization

If you have a question about Virtual Iron (how to do something, what a feature is capable of, etc.), post it in our forums (the Q&A forum is particularly active).

We've got a few demos and videos up around on the web site. I thought it'd be helpful to list them all in one place:

Virtual Iron Demo: See Virtual Iron in action

VDI Demo: See how the Virtual Iron and Provision Networks solution works

The Charlotte Observer talking about their use of Virtual Iron

Using Citrix in a virtual machine

We're constantly updating our hardware campatability list with more servers, SAN hardware, RAID controllers, iSCSI storage options, etc.

If you don't see your hardware listed, ask us about it in the forums -- it might be something we're planning to support soon or have some additional info on.

Virtual Iron 3.6 has just been released. The major new feature in 3.6 is VLAN support, and iSCSI has some additional enhancements. Give the new version a try here. If you haven't tried Virtual Iron yet, give it a try now. Each version just gets better and better.

If you're an existing customer, you can get directions for downloading the new version here (you'll need your customer login to access the page).

Over on the forums, it was asked what NIC's Virtual Iron 3.6 supports. Chris Barclay, our product manager, notes that most Intel and Broadcom controllers work with Virtual Iron 3.6, but sometimes a release cycle is needed to account for new driver versions.

Specifically, these NICs are supported:

Intel Pro/1000 family PCI cards
Intel 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Intel 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Intel 82544GC Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Intel 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Intel 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5705 Gigabit Ethernet
Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet
Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet
3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]