On May 14, VMTurbo announced the availability of its free product, a Virtual Health Monitor tool, a monitoring and reporting tool which is an evolution of the community edition of its control system for cloud and virtualized data centers, VMTurbo Operations Manager.

VMTurbo’s Virtual Health Monitor would allow  monitoring and reporting across vSphere, Hyper-V, XenServer and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, collecting metrics and providing insight to risk and efficiency issues identified across the environment. The solution automates decisions for resource allocation and workload placement in software to ensure applications get the resources required while maximizing utilization of IT assets.

Among the features of VMTurbo Virtual Health Monitor:

Derek Slayton, vice president of marketing at VMTurbo said:

As more organizations expand their use of virtualization to include different hypervisors and more applications being run in VMs, new performance challenges are arising. While this shared resource model improves utilization, it also increases the likelihood for interference and resource contention across workloads and applications, monitoring and reporting are important capabilities to understand health and performance in the environment, and they should be fundamental and free on any hypervisor. Our tool focuses on delivering that in an unlimited fashion across any hypervisor with instant time-to-value – and providing unique insights to risk and efficiency improvements that should be made to our users.

From China a new wind of changes came to stay, Beijing-based cloud startup focusing on “IDE” for Amazon Web Services MadeiraCloud developer of a graphical monitoring and management product, has just been awarded with a new round of funding.

MadeiraCloud’s product provides a self-service interface to create a graphical scheme of the architecture and resources used by an application, that allows IT Administrators to design and deploy AWS based architectures with an intuitive visualization.

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Amazon last week released a management pack for use with System Center 2012 Operations Manager (OpsMgr). By importing the management pack into OpsMgr, customers can monitor their EC2 instances (Windows and Linux), Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFormation stacks, Auto Scaling groups, and Elastic Beanstalk applications using OpsMgr.

The Management Pack also provides CloudWatch integration, allowing customers to watch performance counters and get alerts when their AWS resources exceed alarm thresholds. Also resources are mapped to AWS Availability Zones so customers know which resources are in which zones to make understanding your high availability and disaster recovery easier.

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Since its announcement Google Compute Engine is in the spotlight as a potential competitor of Amazon AWS.

Up to now Compute Engine has been based on customized versions of Ubuntu and CentOS but after the release of Debian 7.0 “wheezy” on May 4th, Google has officially chosen Debian as the default OS, a reasonable move, from a technical point of view, as wrote Jimmy Kaplowitz (Site Reliability Engineer and Debian developer) on Google App Engine Blog.

From a business perspective the choice of Debian is more complex to understand.

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On May 7, Wipro Ltd. a consulting and outsourcing company, announced the release of VirtuaDesk, an IP-based offering from its Advanced Technologies practice. Wipro collaborated with HP for the first Advanced Technologies IP-based offering.  Wipro desktop virtualization solution enables customers to secure, provision, and share applications and data, for a collaborative and mobile workforce. VirtuaDesk is available as an on-premise or off-site private cloud deployment. For on-premise deployments, organizations receive VirtuaDesk through a pre-configured appliance that comes with integrated hardware and software.

Furthermore VirtuaDesk leverages desktop virtualization technologies from Citrix, and Microsoft. VirtuaDesk uses HDX technology in Citrix XenDesktop. The solution relies on Microsoft Hyper-V for running the Windows desktop in guest virtual machines, and incorporates Microsoft’s comprehensive infrastructure management software.

Shaji Farooq, Senior Vice President, Advanced Technologies and Go-To-Market Transformation, Wipro said:

We introduced the Advanced Technologies practice to position Wipro as the partner of choice for our customers focused on leveraging social, mobility, analytics, cloud, sensor technologies and high performance computing. VirtuaDesk is a packaged offering that includes Wipro IP and best-in-class Wipro services, combined with industry-leading partner technologies, VirtuaDesk represents a flagship and differentiated offering from Wipro’s cloud-based Workplace Transformation Suite that we intend to expand over time.

Stephen DeWitt, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, HP said:

Cloud, mobility, social and big data are transforming organizations, requiring them to change the way they use technology in order to remain competitive, VirtuaDesk is the result of the long term collaboration between HP and Wipro that expands our joint offerings to provide customers with greater mobility and increased productivity.

Dell today announced that it has acquired Enstratius, which used to be known as enStratus. Enstratius delivers a private and public cloud management product either available via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or on-premise. Dell states that the acquired technology of Enstratius will complement the technology which Dell acquired from Gale Technologies in November last year which is now called Active System Manager (ASM) offering multi-cloud management and application configuration capabilities. CONTINUE READING ON CLOUDCOMPUTING.INFO…

Microsoft has released a paper titled: "Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Management Architecture Guide". The paper which contains 69 pages provides guidance to develop solutions for a Microsoft private cloud infrastructure in accordance with the IaaS PLA patterns that are identified for use with the Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1). This paper also has an accompanying paper titled: ”Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide” which covers the development of the associated fabric architecture.

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Microsoft has released a paper titled:”Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide“. The paper which contains 112 pages provides guidance to develop solutions for a Microsoft private cloud infrastructure in accordance with the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) product line architecture patterns that are identified for use with the Windows Server 2012 operating system. This paper also has an accompanying paper titled: ”Infrastructure-as-a-Service Fabric Management Architecture Guide” which covers the development of a fabric management architecture.

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On May 1, VMTurbo, provider of management platforms for cloud and virtualized environments  announced to have raised  $25M in Series C funding from Globespan Capital, and previous investors Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

Among VMTurbo recent success, the company has reached more than 150 percent YoY growth in Q1 revenue, tripled its customers and secured partnerships with VCE and NetApp. Furthermore VMTurbo appointed Chris Reisig as the vice president of worldwide sales.

N. Louis Shipley, president and chief executive officer at VMTurbo said:

Bringing a world-class partner like Globespan on board enables us to be even more aggressive in capturing the huge market opportunity in front of us, the new funding will help accelerate our sales and marketing efforts, and ongoing product innovation. We continue to solidify our footing in the industry by delivering unique solutions that change the way companies operate cloud infrastructures and virtual data centers – driving down operational and capital costs by providing intelligent automation and control.

On May 1, Canadian Embotics Corporation announced to have joined the OpenStack community.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Embotics focuses on virtualization and private cloud management software and it has committed to integrate with OpenStack in future Embotics vCommander releases. CONTINUE READING ON CLOUDCOMPUTING.INFO…

Login VSI has released version 4 of its vendor independent Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) benchmarking utility. Login VSI measures the performance and scalability of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) and Server Based Computing (SBC) environments by simulating unique user workloads. Eventually developed as a free tool by Login Consultants to benchmark systems for use with Project Virtual Reality Check, Login VSI evolved into a company of its own and has become a commonly used benchmarking tool used by different vendors nowadays. Login VSI is provided for free as an Express Edition, there is also a Pro edition which is supported by Login VSI.

Version 4.0 provides the following new functionality (among others):

• 90% test image footprint reduction
• Centralization of management, updates and logging
• Direct Desktop Launch mode allowing larg scale testing with minimal infrastructure
• New user interface offering wizard based test configurations
• New workload editor
• Improved test realism, adjusting duration of standard workloads from 14 to 48 minutes loops.
• A new dashboard offering real-time test feedback, including progress, launched and active sessions, elapsed time and time left of the test in progress
• Further refinement of the VSImax index

Microsoft is building a Desktop as a Service offering running on top of its Cloud platform Azure, Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet reports. The Desktop as a Service offering is codenamed Mohoro and will be the cloud version of what Microsoft currently offers with Remote Desktop and Remote App. Mohoro can be compared with how Microsoft currently offers Windows Intune, its device management solution hosted by Microsoft which offers similar functionality to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, and now also offers integration between both products.

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The Pivotal Initiative, a single virtual organization created by the partnership of EMC and VMware, now have a new entry in the join venture, General Electric, which announced to have invested $105 million in the company.

As announced in December 2012, Pivotal is a reality, based in San Francisco and its offering is an enterprise-ready data analysis platform as a service (PaaS) based on software from both companies, the investment received from GE is supposed to be part of a plan to use Pivotal’s technologies as part of its own set of analysis services to industry. CONTINUE READING ON CLOUDCOMPUTING.INFO…

Citrix has released version 3.1 of its Secure Type-1 Client Hypervisor platform XenClient XT. Version 3.1 is the follow up of version 3.0 which was released in October last year. XenClient was first introduced in May 2011 offering XenClient in a version supporting advanced levels of security, isolation and performance with extreme client computing requirements. XenClient XT runs on selected Intel vPro desktop and laptop hardware from Dell, HP and Lenovo.

Starting with version 3.1 Citrix now offers a trial download allowing customers to test the functionality for 90 days.

XenClient XT 3.1 offers the following new functionality:

• Support for HP Folio 9470m Ultrabook, AMD FirePro V5900 GPU graphics card, AMD FirePro V7900 GPU graphics card and Lenovo Tiny M92p (Intel) wireless adapter
• Support for Ubuntu 12.10, Windows 8 guest VMs
• Enhanced Linux support with an in-guest VM switcher bar and improved support for USB devices in Linux VMs
• Improvements to the Software Development Kit (SDK) for service VMs
• Additional centralized management capabilities in the Synchronizer such as
  • Deployment and configuration of Service VMs in the Synchronizer
  • Delivery and booting of VMs from ISO images
  • Policies to prevent users from changing VM properties
  • Policies to manage VM disks (read-only VM disks and non-persistent VM disks)

On April 24, Citrix announced its financial results for first quarter of fiscal 2013, ended March 31, 2013.

Citrix announced a total revenue of $683 million, for an increase of 14% compared to Q1 2012

Net income registered a decrease of 13,3% compared to 2012 while Non-GAAP results raised from $111 million for Q1 2012 to $117 million for Q1 2013.

The stock market reacted with a fall of nearly 10 percent for Citrix Systems shares after the release of the earning report that showed decreasing profits.

Net income for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 was $60 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, compared to $68 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, for the first quarter of fiscal year 2012. Net income for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 includes net tax benefits of approximately $9 million, or $0.05 per diluted share.

In reviewing the results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013, compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2012:

• Product and license revenue increased 8 percent;
• Software as a service revenue increased 14 percent;
• Revenue from license updates and maintenance increased 19 percent;
• Professional services revenue, which is comprised of consulting, product training and certification, increased 2 percent;
• Revenue increased in the Americas region by 17 percent, increased in the Pacific region by 15 percent and increased in the EMEA region by 9 percent;
• Deferred revenue totaled $1.2 billion, compared to $983 million as of March 31, 2012, an increase of 25%;
• GAAP operating margin was 8 percent and non-GAAP operating margin was 20 percent, excluding the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets and stock-based compensation expenses;
• Cash flow from operations was $249 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013, compared with $243 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2012; and
• The company repurchased 1.2 million shares at an average price of $71.51.

On April 23, VMware released the results about its growth for Q1 2013.

VMware, announced a total  revenue growth of $1.19 billion, for an increase of 13 percent compared to Q1 2012.

Operating Margin registered a decrease of 26%, as reported in the official news, reflecting a $63 million realignment charge.

The non-GAAP Operating Margin registered an increment of 26% from Q1 2012.

The stock market over-reacted to the results and several analysts downgraded VMware rating from Market Perform to  Underperform consequently re-aligning the price target of its shares.

• Revenues for the first quarter were $1.19 billion, an increase of 13% from the first quarter of 2012.
• Operating income for the first quarter was $160 million, a decrease of 26% from the first quarter of 2012, reflecting a $63 million realignment charge. Non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $388 million, an increase of 13% from the first quarter of 2012.
• Net income for the first quarter was $174 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, down 9% compared to $191 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2012. Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $319 million, or $0.74 per diluted share, up 11% compared to $287 million, or $0.66 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2012.
• Operating cash flows for the first quarter were $676 million, an increase of 17% from the first quarter of 2012.  Free cash flows for the quarter were $599 million, an increase of 10% from the first quarter of 2012.
• Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were $4.94 billion and unearned revenue was $3.49 billion as of March 31, 2013.

On April 18, Microsoft Corp. announced quarterly revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013.
Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.61 billion, $6.06 billion, and $0.72 per share.

These financial results reflect the net recognition of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer, Office Upgrade Offer and Pre-Sales, and the Entertainment and Devices Division Video Game Deferral, partially offset by the European Commission fine. The following table reconciles these financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to non-GAAP financial results. We have provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance.

Dell has released a paper titled: “Top Seven Networking Concepts Every Virtualization Administrator Should Know“. The paper which contains 7 pages and is written by Scott D. Lowe, Founder and Managing Consultant, The 1610 Group. The paper discusses concepts that today’s modern VMware virtualization administrator needs to know to maximize overall system performance while controlling costs, some of the tips relate to other Hypervisor platforms as well. The paper is available for users after logging in with their Quest account, or by creating one.

Top Seven Networking Concepts Every Virtualization Administrator Should Understand:

1. Networking in a Virtual Environment is Different from Networking in a Physical World – Networks in a virtual environment operate like those in a physical world, but as you start peeling back the virtualization layers, you find a shift in how network traffic itself flows around the network. A variety of mixed network traffic makes its way around the network and virtualization has fundamentally shifted the way traffic flows around it.
2. The Type of Applications and Chosen Hypervisor Features Help Determine How Many Physical Network Interface Cards (NICs) are Enough – One question often asked by fresh virtualization admins is, “How many physical NICs are required to support the workloads and services necessary for high availability and workload migration?” The number depends on the types of applications being run, the hypervisor features chosen to deploy, and the desired level of redundancy.
3. Understand the Different Network Adapters Available and Which Should be Used – There are feature benefits of the three available vSphere network adapters – E1000, VMXNET2 and VMXNET3 – yet the VMXNET3 network adapter provides best performance and require fewer resources from the vSphere host.
4. Know The Basic Layers – Virtual admins should understand the basic concepts behind how the first three layers of the OSI networking model operate – physical layer, data link layer, network layer – and know what devices operate at each level. Additionally, in order to effectively troubleshoot network connectivity a virtual admin must be able to ‘subnet’ – identify when an IP address is local to a vSphere host or VM.
5. The Role VLANs Play in a Virtual Environment – Often used to segment networks, VLANs have become more important for improving the overall security of an environment and for reducing the size of a network’s broadcast domain in order to improve the overall performance of the network.
6. How VLANs extend into the Virtual Environment – Administrators can mimic the physical network by dedicating a single VLAN to a single network adapter in the host server, a method that doesn’t scale very far. A more common way to extend VLANs into the environment is through VLAN tagging and ‘trunking’ which offers significant flexibility to the virtual environment.
7. The Difference Between the Standard Virtual Switch and vSphere Distributed Switch – The virtual environment can add administrative complexity to the technology management equation. The virtual switch (vSwitch) is a necessary part of the environment but must be individually configured on each vSphere host, resulting in a lot of effort. The new vSphere distributed switch (vDS) is a cluster-level object shared across all hosts that is easy to manage and significantly reduces administrative network burden.

Savision, a company providing added solution on top of Microsoft System Center has released an extension which customers using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manager Microsoft Hyper-V environments can install. The extension which can be downloaded for free will analyzes your Hyper-V environment for problems, and then provides specific and detailed recommendations to tune virtual machines and hosts for better performance and availability. Later this year, Savision plans to update the plugin with the ability to also apply the recommendations given by the tool.

The free plugin is released in order to make users acquainted with Vital Signs. Vital Signs is Savision’s paid product which can be installed on top of System Center providing an enhanced Hyper-V management pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and it provides several dashboards for Capacity Management, Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server which integrate with System Center Operations Manager and System Center Service Manager. Vital Signs is provided in two editions, a standard edition offering monitoring functionality and the Enterprise edition offering dashboards as well.

Oracle has released a maintenance release for its virtualization platform VM VirtualBox. The release can be installed on top of VM VirtualBox 4.2 which was released in September last year.

Some of the fixes which are described in more detail in the change log are:

• Support for multimonitor. Dynamic enable/disable of secondary virtual monitors. Support for XPDM/WDDM based guests
• Debian Linux kernel 3.2.0-4 (3.2.39) compile fix
• VM settings: fixed crash on machine state-change event
• Multi-screen support: seamless mode: fixed a bug when empty seamless screens were represented by fullscreen windows