This week, I was the guest on a new weekly virtualization podcast called This Week in Virtualization. In this episode, we talked about the next version of vSphere and its features - to be released at an unspecified date. You can watch on a webpage or you can subscribe to an iTunes RSS feed and watch in iTunes or on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Click on the video below to bring up the webpage to watch:

Brad Hedlund over at Internetwork Expert.org made a really amazing post about the Cisco UCS, Nexus 1000V, and the Palo Adaptor. With UCS, there are a couple of network adapters designed just for virtualization. There is one for the blade UCS and one for the rack-mount UCS. These adapters allow the virtual machines to gain access to virtual fibre channel and virtual ethernet adaptors - amazing stuff!

Checkout this diagram from Brad’s post:

Read the full post at:  Cisco UCS and Nexus 1000V design diagram with Palo adapter

I was a guest on the VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast this week where I covered my new vSphere Pro Series Volume 1 video. After that quick promo, VMware’s ESXi product management discussed the upcoming release of ESXi and what it will look like in the future. It was really amazing info! You can listen to it on the web, or subscribe to it in iTunes.

Here’s a graphic from the podcast:

List to the VMware Communities Roundtable here

This week, VMware announced an acquisition of certain pieces of EMC management software to expand the VMware vCenter Management Product Family. By doing this, they “hope to address critical management needs as customers advance on journey to cloud computing.”

Basically, the pieces that they are purchasing are pieces of EMC’s Ionix. Here is a quote from the the Yahoo Finance Press Release:

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will acquire all technology and intellectual property of FastScale, Application Discovery Manager, Server Configuration Manager and Service Manager and will maintain engineering, marketing, sales and support operations in the United States, Europe, Israel, India and Australia. As part of the agreement, EMC will retain the Ionix brand and have full reseller rights to continue to offer customers the products acquired by VMware.

I was recently reading comment’s from EMC’s Virtualization Evangelist and Vice President, Chad Sakac from his blog post “Insider’s Perspective: Ionix and VMware“. In that post, Chad’s conclusion is this:

This is a move where VMware in an instant, makes a quantum increases the depth of resources, tools and capabilities in things that are focused on server-layer and up.   This expands the vCenter family of management capabilities, and the teams that develop them, and the teams take them to market.

This is a move where EMC, in an instant, can focus ongoing management M&A and R&D and go to market on the things that focus on UCS, networks, and storage - the server layer and down.  This accelerates EMC’s management efforts.

Hi post explains each of the different technologies acquired, what they do and how they will help VMware. I encourage you to check it out.

Want to manage a Hyper-V server remotely? Perhaps you want to manage your Hyper-V servers from your desktop PC…

To do this, you need to install Microsoft’s Hyper-V remote MMC. You can find all the instructions to download this MMC and get it installed at:

TechNet - Install and Configure Hyper-V Tools for Remote Administrators

In 2009, VMware published a lot of knowledgebase (KB) articles. However, there were 10 that stood out and were the most popular of 2009. Those 10 are:

vSphere-Land.com has performed their annual survey and named the Top Virtualization Blogs of 2009.

For the complete list, visit vSphere-Land.com or click on the graphic below.

And yes, I hope to make the list next year

Have you watched VMware TV? Well, no, it’s not a real TV channel but it is a channel on YouTube where VMware has posted a lot of great videos. There are videos covering VMware View, Cloud Computing, Fusion, technical vSphere videos, and VMworld. You can see them all at VMwareTV

.

I created short new 5 minute video that details the hardware used for my VMware vSphere home lab. Click on the video graphic below to bring up the page with the video, then click play:

Unlike so many other companies, Hyper9 of Austin Texas (my home state) had an awesome 2009! Why?

• Record quarterly profits in the 4th quarter
• Named one of the 10 virtualization vendors to watch in 2010
• New Products - Virtual Environment Optimization Suite and Virtualization Mobile Manager
• Other accolades such as being named to Gartner’s Cool vendor in IT Operations and Virtualization for 2009

Besdies these achievements, I think that you will find the guys at Hyper9 great to work with.

Here is their latest press release:

Hyper9 Named One of 10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2010

AUSTIN, Texas – Jan. 20, 2010 – Despite a tough economy and increased competition
in the virtualization market, Hyper9, Inc. today announced the close of a banner year in
2009, capped off by a fourth quarter that was the company’s strongest quarter to-date.
Demonstrating positive momentum across all areas of the business, Hyper9 won
numerous industry accolades in 2009, most recently landing on CIO.com’s third-annual
list of intriguing innovators in virtualization management, 10 Virtualization Vendors to
Watch in 2010.

“Virtualization is no longer a buzzword that people just talk about,” said Bill Kennedy,
CEO of Hyper9. “In 2009, more enterprises embraced virtualization as an effective way
to optimize IT operations. As organizations continue to face the challenge of doing more
with less, virtualization will play a strategic role in enhancing the performance and agility
of key business initiatives.”
Hyper9 attributes its success to several key factors, including new product innovation, an
expanded customer base across numerous industries, strategic partnerships and
industry accolades. Recent accomplishments include:
Sales – 4Q09 was the company’s largest quarter to-date, with bookings fourtimes
larger than the previous quarter. New contracts came from both private and
public sectors across multiple verticals, including travel, sports and
entertainment, consumer goods and technology. Key customer wins included:
HomeAway, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and Whole
Foods, among others.
Product Innovation – Product innovation continued with the launch of Hyper9’s
Virtual Environment Optimization Suite, a second-generation virtualization
management solution that provides enhanced business insights to address the
growing demands of virtualized applications. The company also unveiled an
open-sourced version of its Virtualization Mobile Manager.
Strategic Partnerships – Alliances with key services providers extended
Hyper9’s reach in Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, while providing
expanded integration and service capabilities for customers. New partners
include: IGI, INX, IVOXY Consulting LLC, Softchoice, Righttrac and DNM.
Industry Accolades – Several industry analyst firms published reports
highlighting Hyper9’s virtualization innovation, including Gartner’s Cool Vendor in
IT Operations and Virtualization and Taneja Group’s whitepaper, Business-
Driven Virtualization: Optimizing Insight and Operational Efficiency in the
Dynamic Datacenter. Additionally, the company kicked off 2010 being named
One of Ten Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2010 by CIO.com, and being listed
as a featured vendor in Gartner’s report Virtualization is Bringing Together
Configuration and Performance Management.
Virtualization has quickly evolved into a strategic enabling technology now widely
deployed at all levels of the IT stack – from servers and desktops to networks, storage
and applications. Hyper9’s flagship product, Virtual Environment Optimization Suite,
helps organizations virtualize more resources, faster, to meet today’s sophisticated
business requirements.
About Hyper9, Inc.
Hyper9 is a privately-held company backed by Venrock, Matrix Partners, Silverton
Partners and Maples Investments. Based in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in
2007 by enterprise systems management experts and virtualization visionaries. Since
then, Hyper9 has collaborated with virtualization administrators as well as systems and
virtualization management experts to develop a new breed of virtualization management
products that leverages Internet technologies like search, collaboration and social
networking. The end result is a product that helps administrators discover, organize and
make use of information in their virtual environment, yet is as easy to use as a consumer
application. For more information about Hyper9, visit www.hyper9.com.
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