Virtualization Automation – A Proper Virtual World

VMworld This Week! What Will The Wizards Have For Us This Week?

September 15th, 2008

Virtualization Critical Evaluation – Chapter 08

This week, 09/15/2008, is VMworld 2008! VMworld is always fun, sometimes more hype than fact, other times lots of facts, and minimal hype, you just never know which you will get. This is a good thing, it keeps everyone guessing, at least to some degree. I have been at every VMworld event, in the US, so far, and always enjoyed hearing the discussions in the hallways. For example, VMworld in Los Angeles, every one was talking iSCSI, the very first VMworld event, in San Diego, everyone was talking VMotion and ESX 2.5.0. VMworld 2008 should be no different, some thing will be buzzing. The question is what? ESXi? I do not think so. After the initial flop of ESXi, or ESX 3i, I should say, VMware needs a few winners, to freak out Microsoft, if for no other reason that it is fun to freak out Microsoft.

Microsoft has still missed the target on a number of issues, but they will address these. The question is can VMware exploit, oh, bad pun, these before Microsoft eliminates them? The issues I see with Hyper-V are as follows:

• No VMotion function, yes, quick migration exists, and that is fine if you don’t need transparent migration, but most server virtualization does need this feature, as transparent as possible. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), can survive without instance migration, no?
• Hyper-V, due to its design, has a different performance model, the VMBus will never quite be as good as a dedicated Hypervisor, such as ESX. Microsoft strategy is, get it as good as we can; which is worth the effort, but close is not better.
• Security is an issue with Microsoft, more so than VMware, not because there are so many instances of Windows out there, but because a generic operating system can never be as secure as a dedicated appliance or structured solution such as ESXi or ESX full. I don’t believe hyper-jacking is are threat yet, but it will be a threat for Microsoft sooner than VMware ESX, duhe.
• Is Microsoft worried? Of course they are, why else did they certify VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2, finally? Microsoft is looking like for the 3rd time, in about 5 years, they are a dollar short and day late, more than that, really.

As I am traveling to VMworld 2008 I will be thinking about what my expectations and what my wishes for this VMworld will be. There are things I believe I will be expecting:

• We need ESXi to be identical to full ESX installation, in reference to monitoring, and alert status reporting. Complete features set, such that ESXi installation with traditional agents must be identical to full ESX. Everyone at an enterprise level is struggling with this one, so ESXi will never grow to its potential until this is resolved.
• We still need better archival/disaster recovery solutions. VCB is not living up to its potential, I liked the idea of VCB, but it still does not scale. Array based snap solutions like Avamar from EMC or the similar solution from NetApp, are still complex, hard to manage, and just a pain to implement. This is insane, and I believe the key issue for 2009, we have larger and larger VMs, but no realistic way to archival them.
• We will need USB support in VMs on ESX. Security/License dongles of course. KVM dongles, yes KVMs, since new KVMs continue to add USB features, this is becoming an issue where key sites standardize on a type of KVM, the operational teams want the VMs interface to be identical, emulated in software but same look and feel. Maybe VMware should join forces with Avocent?
• We still need IDE and SATA, emulation in VMs on ESX. How about SAS for VMs on ESX? Are any of these realistic? Maybe not, but to show clients a one-to-one emulation, is still requested over and over. VMware workstation does it, so ESX should too.
• VMware Thin-Disk support in GUI for VirtualCenter? Better yet, Disk Imaging as well, were we can use a core OS volume, and VMs actually run delta off the core OS volume? Windows 2008 is going to drive this requirement; a full Windows 2008 install for server, Microsoft recommends 40GB just to start? Oh, never happen on VMs. More realistic for static VMDKs? Maybe 20GB.
• VMware SRM (Site Recovery Manager)? We already know what this is, and how it works, but is anyone but every large enterprises going to implement this technology? Only time will tell. The real power of SRM is on a WAN scope, disasters in the same city are not the issue, it is mega events, storms, terrorists, etc., that will impact an entire city complex, lets get disaster recovery and load balancing of datacenters 1000s of miles away, not 10s of miles. Doing this is cross country, cross nation, that is the realistic need, but this is not cheap or easy. How will VMware solve this one?
• What is VMware doing to block Xen or Solaris, as they emerge to run INTEL, x86, 64bit VT, etc., and run other operating systems other than their native OS?
• What is VMware doing to improve its Application Instancing? How about a brand new product? VDM, and appliance VMs are not going to offset application streaming or Citrix next generation solutions.

I have one last question for VMware, before VMworld 2008 is official, and powered up…Where are the cheerleaders at? If you don’t understand the reference, look at my discussion in this blog of VMworld 2007, where I state that ESX 3i is nothing but hype, where I discuss some disappointments about ESX 3i, or, sorry, ESXi.

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