I know it’s been a long drought of round ups out here on the range…which means I have a rather larger backlog of items to share, some of these might be items you came across earlier but I thought were worth repeating.

With all the projects and activities I have going on (and unfortunately for the blog, too many VMware related ones being the kind I can’t talk about…yet), I’ve found it more difficult to post these Virtualization Round Up’s on a regular basis.  I anticipate it will only get more difficult moving forward, especially with the arrival of Baby Mini-G in about 3 months.

So, this will be the last regular round up for the foreseeable future (I may sneak one in now and again when big things happen).

To get more regular pointers to virtualization items of interest, follow me on Twitter as I will be switching to posting these types of links there during working hours with the hashtag “VRU”.  Note: I am crossing the streams in my twitter feed…

VMware Specific Links

• Recent New Releases
  • VMware Fusion 3.1: release notes (zoom, zoom)
  • VMware Workstation 7.1:  release notes (New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems)
  • VMware ThinApp 4.5:  release notes (relatively recent release…)
• Gartner issued their first ever Virtualization Magic Quadrant recently, and while they get upset when people steal their thunder and show you the graph I can say that VMW is the only one in the upper right Leaders quadrant…way up and to the right!  Gartner explains how the Magic Quadrant evaluation works.
  • Update 20100610: VMware has made the reprint of the Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure publicly available through Garnter!
• Steve Ballmer made it official today, VMware Now On Microsoft’s Enemies List last in line behind Oracle, Apple, and Google. (Thanks for the market cap bump Steve!)
• VMware Customer Surveys (from our Product Teams)
  • SRM customers, please provide your feedback to SRM Product Managers. Survey open until June 10th.
  • How you are using Snapshots in your environment.
• Psst…want to see an upcoming feature sneak peak?  Check out Storage IO Control (SIOC)
• Who’s using Wyse’s PocketCloud on their iPad?  I have had limited uses to date, but handy tool to have in the tool box. (I feel so dirty with my fingers all over the windows desktop… 🙂 )
• Every one of my client’s is interested in transparently moving a running workload from one data center to another.  MikeD recently posted about F5’s Long Distance vMotion solution.
  • Are you interested in Long Distance vMotion? Love to hear if you’re doing it or why you’re can’t implement it today…leave a comment and share your thoughts…
• I recently learned that EMC has a Community forum covering Everything VMware at EMC.  Loads to great stuff in there!
• VMware environment took the top spot in a TPC Performance comparison, see the third table for 1,000 GB results.  Who says you can’t run high IOPS in a VM?
• VMworld 2010
  • Want to go to VMworld 2010 in San Francisco but can’t swing the cost this year?  Win A Free VMworld Pass From boche.net and Airfare from Gestalt IT.  The contest entry deadline is Noon Central Time on Thursday, June 17th…so hurry up and enter…Good luck!
• The Developer Cloud
  • Steve Herrod talks about VMforce and VMware’s “Open PaaS” Strategy and Rod Johnson, from SpringSource, discouss how VMforce Provides Spring Cloud Platform.
  • Steve Herrod talks about Google and VMware’s “Open PaaS” Strategy as well as a the acquisition of RabbitMQ.
  • Infoworld’s Neil McAllister shares his thoughts on VMware’s master plan for portable Java in the cloud
• Virtualization Security
  • Back in March RSA Announced Collaboration with VMware and Intel to deliver proof of concept for Business-Critical security, compliance, and control in the cloud. This was a future looking statement that flew a bit under the radar…
  • Few months back VMware published the final version of vSphere 4.0 Hardening Guidelines
• Desktop Virtualization
  • ClearPath posted the details on using scripts and View’s Group Policy ADM files to Location Based Applications with ThinApp and View
  • The ThinApp team describes Using ThinApp MSI’s to Replace a Native App
  • I’ve been running the VMware View Open Client on my MacOS for a few months now and love the native access from the Mac.  Yes, it doesn’t support PCoIP but it works as a great stop gap measure for the time being…
  • Andre Leibovici provides some great tips on How to troubleshoot PCoIP performance
• Recent VMware-ians who started blogging:
  • Performance Specialist Mark Achtemichuk’s Virtualization Eh (yes, he’s Canadian… 🙂  )
  • Senior Consultant Frank Denneman’s FrankDenneman
  • VP of Desktop Products Vittorio Viarengo’s Virtualization Journey

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

• Massimo Re Ferre’ recently talked about the Public Cloud adoption curve and how history repeats.
• It may come as not surprise that EMC’s IT team is working toward 100% virtualization (VMware’s IT team is at about 98%  😉 ).  But did you know that EMC’s IT team is blogging about their Journey to the Private Cloud?
• Vittorio Viarengo has some More Best Practices for running IT Production virtualized.

I know that it has been rather quite here at the Labs for the past few months.  Not only has 2010 started off with a bang of activity, but I have also been preparing for my new long term project (details at my photography blog).  So lots of exciting stuff for 2010, just need more hours in the day.  Below is an abbreviated list of virtualization links that have come out over the past 2 months that caught my attention:

VMware Specific Links

• Recent Releases
  • VMware Labs was recently launched, a place for VMware engineers to share the cool internal tools they build with the rest of the world as technology previews.
  • VMware View 4.0.1 was released mid-February with some issues being addressed and enhancements to the PCoIP protocol
  • Site Recovery Manager 4.0.1 was released mid-February addressing a number of issues.
  • vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0.2 was released mid-February addressing a number of report related issues.
  • vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 was released end of February addressing an issue related to the upgrade of Cisco VSM modules
  • Fusion 3.0.2 was released mid-February addressing an issue so that Mac OS X 10.6 Server can run as a guest.
  • Technology Preview – VMware Guest Console (VGC) an application to manage the Guest Operating Systems installed on VMs. Eric has the links on the latest leaks around VGC.
• One of the biggest desktop related announcements recently was the VMware Acquiring RTO Software. A deeper analysis of this acquisition (including why some parts of RTO Software was not acquired) by Brian Madden.
• Another big VMW announcement recently was that VMware to Acquire Several Management Products from EMC Ionix.  (Interesting thought experiments abound on the future of management tools within VMware and an Insider’s Perspective from Virtual Geek.)
• VMware’s Mike Colman describes The Art and Science of Remote Display Protocols after the release of a recent desktop virtualization report funded by Citrix which posted some confusing and questionable statistics.
• VMware recently released a white paper discussing Anti-Virus Deployment for VMware View, a key issue with anyone considering virtual desktops.  Many of my clients looking at View are also looking at VMsafe based Anti-virus solutions to overcome per desktop anti-virus performance issues.

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

• Gartner had a number of recent posts that talk about Windows kernel-level vulnerability, which also affect Hyper-V and shed light on the value of a dedicate hypervisor versus one that is extended from the Operating System.
• Steve Kaplan has a few months old but pertinent comparison of Cisco UCS vs. HP Matrix: strategic vs. tactical approach to virtualization. Both an interesting analysis/comparison of virtualization computing platforms as well as a between the lines look at the future of our enterprise computing market.  Make sure to browse thru the comments as well.