In November and December, Virtual Iron will be hosting a three-city road show with PlateSpin, DataCore, Provision Networks and Virtual NGenuity. Removing the Barriers of Virtualization will be held in Denver, Houston and Atalanta. For full details (including an agenda) and to register, click here. Since these are live events, space is limited -- register early if you'd like to attend.

I came across an article from Express Computer today on environmentally friendly data centers. I forget exactly what I was searching on when I came across it but it caught my eye an was a good read.

On the topic of virtualization, the author notes:

Virtualization and adoption of multi-core processors may also significantly affect the type and quantity of equipment to be installed in a data center.

and

Consolidation/optimization: Optimize by consolidating as much as possible. Virtualization can be used to consolidate servers/applications; use a quad processor server than two separate dual CPU machines (think of cost and simplicity before virtualizing). Use power management tools. Use the hardware to the maximum since the same power is consumed even if server is running at lower utilization levels.

The top forum posts for last week were:

VM Doesn't See Multiple Processors

Installing VI Manager on Drive Other than C:\

SANMelody iSCSI Target for VI

On November 14 (next Wednesday) at 11am EST, Virtual Iron and PlateSpin will be hosting a free webcast on how to extend the use of server virtualization. Here are the details:

Learn how PlateSpin and Virtual Iron reduce the cost and complexity of your data center operations by helping you quickly and easily deploy server virtualization and create virtual infrastructure. The combination of PlateSpin and Virtual Iron enables users to easily migrate workloads (data, applications and operating systems) in any direction across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures. Anywhere-to-anywhere workload migration provides users with the ability to quickly move workloads between physical servers and virtual machines to achieve the benefits of large-scale server consolidation, rapid provisioning, high availability and capacity management.

Register here

Do you need to move your Virtual Iron management server to a new physical node. The Virtual Iron KnowledgeBase has an article to show you exactly how to do this.

The full article is here, but the basic steps are:

- Backup your existing management server installation and shut down the virtualization manager service.

- Disconnetct the management network cable.

- Install the management server on the new physical node (be sure the IP address on the new node is the same as the IP on the old node).

- Copy the backup from the first step to the new management server (the full article has details on this).

- Go to the /opt/VirtualIron/VirtualizationManager/etc or Program Files\VirtualIron\VirtualizationManager\etc directory. You'll need to edit a few files as detailed here.

- Start the new virtualization manager service, which will auto-discover your managed nodes.

Earlier this week, JumpBox announced that they have a line of virtual appliances for Virtual Iron, including Twiki Wiki, PunBB, Drupal CMS and Sugar CRM. For a free list and to try these virtual appliances, visit the JumpBox site.

From the press release:

JumpBoxes allow for quick and simple deployment of Open Source server-based applications. The JumpBox platform bundles the entire application stack into a turn-key, pre-configured unit that runs on top of virtualization software such as Virtual Iron. Where typical deployment of a server-based application would take a technician several hours or even days, a JumpBox takes just minutes.

For more on JumpBox virtual appliances and Virtual Iron, register for our joint webcast: Delivering Open-Source Server-Based Application Deployment in Minutes, which is being held Dec. 12 at 2pm (Eastern time).

TheStreet.com posted an article yesterday questioning VMware's continued dominance of the virtualization market:

In a discussion on virtualization Wednesday, Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar posed the question of whether VMware, the "big gorilla," has an unbreakable hold on the market.

"It's not a foregone conclusion that they're the gorilla forever," said Edward Walsh, CEO of privately held virtualization competitor Virtual Iron.

Full article here.

Earlier today, we announced that we are joining Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program, which means that Microsoft will support anybody running Weindows Server on a Virtual Iron virtual server.

From the press release:

“Microsoft has worked with industry partners, such as Virtual Iron, to create a technical support model that will meet customers’ growing demands,” said Mike Neil, general manager of virtualization at Microsoft Corp. “As more customers deploy and virtualize Windows-based applications on Windows Server 2008, Virtual Iron or other server virtualization software, this program ensures that customers receive a joint support experience for their virtual infrastructure deployments.”

24/7 Wall Street published an insightful article based on recent interviews they conducted with new Virtual Iron CEO Ed Walsh. A number of great points are made:

Walsh makes the point that his company is the only real obstacle to VMWare moving into an entirely dominant position in the server software business. This could hurt other tech companies in the pocket book.

Another by-product of virtualization is that it allows companies to operate with fewer servers, and more functions may run at the desktop level. Why does the movie-inspired term “Skynet” come to mind where applications are teaming simultaneously on millions of computers rather in servers and mainframes? Over time, perhaps three to five years, this should start to cut into the server revenue at companies like Dell, HP, and IBM if these companies do not fully line up their partnerships upfront. It could also be devastating to operations like Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) because of the reliance on high-end servers.

Read the full article here.

The Virtualization Conference & Expo 2007 West is being held in San Francisco today and tomorrow. Virtual Iron will be represented by our own Sinu Jonnavithula, who will be speaking about Virtualization for the Rest of Us:

While server virtualization promises great advantages and ROI, to date, available solutions have been too expensive and too complex, especially for organizations with tight budgets and limited staff. Today, with the help of emerging industry standards and open source technologies, all the benefits of server virtualization are available to organizations of all sizes. This session will discuss how these technologies are changing the price/performance equation and helping organizations of all sizes take server virtualization to the next level. The presenter, one of the pre-eminent experts in the industry, will highlight how companies of all sizes are leveraging the latest server virtualization technologies to:

• Improve the utilization of their x86 systems and hardware
• Optimize their development and test processes
• Provision new systems in minutes instead of hours
• Automate load balancing and capacity management
• Leverage policy-based capabilities for automatic system failover
• Conduct system maintenance without disrupting running systems
• Support business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios with less hardware

Sinu is speaking today at 6:25pm as part of Track 4 at the event.

Virtual Iron CEO Ed Walsh (who says that VMware's dominance is bad for all of IT) will be speaking at the UBS Global Technology and Services Conference tomorrow at the Grand Hyatt in New York.

The conference runs November 13 through the 15.

Tomorrow at 11am EST, we are co-hosting a webcast with PlateSpin on how to extend the use of server virtualization. Register for this webcast over at the PlateSpin web site -- here are the details:

Learn how PlateSpin and Virtual Iron reduce the cost and complexity of your data center operations by helping you quickly and easily deploy server virtualization and create virtual infrastructure. The combination of PlateSpin and Virtual Iron enables users to easily migrate workloads (data, applications and operating systems) in any direction across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures. Anywhere-to-anywhere workload migration provides the ability to quickly move workloads between physical servers and virtual machines to achieve the benefits of large-scale server consolidation, rapid provisioning, high availability and capacity management.

Here are last week's top forum posts:

How to Shutdown Node

Node Has Stopped PXE?

iSCSI Not Showing

Have a question about Virtual Iron? Post your question in the forums.

Tomorrow, we are hosting a webcast geared towards current evaluators of Virtual Iron. This webcast will provide a demonstration of Virtual Iron 4 from a more technical perspective (this isn't a sales-oriented webcast at all) and will also offer some time at the end for open Q&A.

To register for tomorrow's webcast (at 2pm EST) or to register for one of the other upcoming demo webcasts, click here.

We have a bunch of white papers available on our web site and they are free for the taking.

Our most popular paper is the Virtual Iron Technical White Paper, followed by The New Economics of Virtualization (though, of course, they're all worth a quick read).

From the forums:

Q: I have setup some templates for Virtual Machines and would like to know how long it should take to make copies of these templates for use. We have an iSCSI San on its own network as well as a dedicated managment network and it can take 30 minutes to copy a template or make a copy of a virtual disk of 30GB.

A: Clones on your storage server should take only a few minutes... faster if you use thin provisioning. Likewise, clones using Virtual Iron take a few minutes (use the clone feature in the virtual storage tab) when you're cloning on the same array. Of course, if you're cloning across arrays, you have to use the fabric (FC or iSCSI) and the time depends on a lot of factors, such as bandwidth and latencies.

Have something to add? Here's the original thread.

More from the forums:

Q: I am trying to figure out a backup plan and I am trying to figure out what the options I have are. We use an iSCSI SAN that has snapshot ablility so I was hoping to be able to take a snapshot of the Lun with the Virtual Hard Drives on it and then mount the snapshot in windows to backup the Vdisk. When I try to do this windows loads the sanpshot but only displays a blank drive. If this is not possible any other ideas would be great.

A: You'll want to use direct (i.e. raw) storage when snapshotting Windows VS from your iSCSI storage. The reason is logical disks use a Linux logical volume manager, which Windows cannot read. Alternatively, you can mount a snapshotted disk group using Linux, and then you'll see the volumes. Please see this forum post for backup options.

The original thread is here.

Our APAC team sent a few photos over from a partner event they held in South Korea. Here they are:

They also sent over a few photos of IBM's Blue Wagon -- basically, a server room on wheels:

InformationWeek has named us the startup of the week:

The heat is on server virtualization startup Virtual Iron to move from emerging player to market mover.

It's hard to point to a hotter IT market than server virtualization. The technology promises to transform the data center and unseat the operating system as the foundation of server software. For Virtual Iron Software, a 4-year-old startup, the heat is on to transition from an emerging player to a market mover.

InformationWeek's profile goes over the basics of our business and also includes a quick timeline of where Virtual Iron has been from start through today.

In an article at Search Server Virtualization on VMware Server, a VMware customer had this to say:

"I would say VMware Server is a great way to get your feet wet with virtualization," Villalta said. "Where I see the server product kind of lagging is with products like Virtual Iron, where you can run higher-performance virtual machines. That's where I've seen the server product fall behind. Not on the utilization standpoint, but on the high-performance standpoint."

and

"You can run Virtual Iron and XenSource at the kernel level and they provide a higher level of performance," Villalta said. "That being said, VMware Server does give you flexibility. You can install it on any hardware and make that the virtualization host."

The full article is here.

SearchServerVirtualization sums up much of our recent news in The Little Xengine That Could:

As reported in a number of other places, Virtual Iron has been making some great deals lately. They’ve picked up a new CEO, received a large sum (13m) in their most recent round of financing, and have been releasing products fast enough to keep the buzz going even though some (including me) have questioned their viability in light of the Xen/Citrix merger. While there’s no clear word on VI’s strategy for dealing with the merger’s consquences to the codebase, it’s clear that they’re doing the rigjht thing - focussing less on the merger and more on continuing their campaign against VMware. Namely, they’ve been forging ahead with their partnership with Platespin. This partnership has interesting benefits - for those few unhappy VMware customers who are happy with virtualization but not with VMware itself, it’s quite easy to make the change to Virtual Iron VMs using Platespin. It also lends VI an enterprise-credibility because of Platespin’s pervasiveness in the enterprise P2V / V2P / P2P / V2V market.

Full article here.

Just posted on our web site is a case study about the Emanuel County School District in Georgia.

In brief, the Emanuel County School District had recently consolidated their architecture from seven locations to one but quickly found that they were outgrowing this new data center. One option for Emanuel County was to physcially expand the location, which was an expensive proposition. Instead, they wisely invested in a virtualization solution using both Virtual Iron and LeftHand Networks.

The end result? Servers were cut in half, a disaster recovery plan was put in place and money was saved.

Some of the applications running in their new virtualized environment (which runs both Windows and Linux on the same servers): an e-mail archive system, Zenworks Configuration Management, eDirectory services, Novell OES2, SASI Student Information System and Novell GroupWise.

For more information, see the case study. A more complete case study is available in PDF here.

SearchServerVirtualization followed up last week's The Little Xengine That Could article with another on Virtual Iron: The Xengine Keeps on Chugging Along.

This one's about our recent agreement with Dell. A few quotes from the article:

This little train is starting to sound more and more like a serious contender to the Triad of Virtualization

I really expect to see a big bump in their sales numbers, maybe even an IPO someday.

Putting their prices in their with VMware’s prices on a web-based server configuration tool is sure to make any manager pause and think.

It is possible to run a silent install of Virtual Iron from the command line. To do this, use the following syntax:

installername [-options]

There are two options that you can use for your silent installation:

-i mode
Triggers the following modes: gui | console | silent

-f propertiesfile
Calls the properties file. You can use the direct or the relative path to the properties file.

Here is a sample properties file:

As shown in this forum thread, it is very easy to use a USB device in any of your virtual servers.