SAP+VMware=?, 10G NICs And A Little Jumpbox

It's Press Release Wednesday. First up, SAP and VMware are getting their groove on. This is big news for both companies, driven by customer demand and a prudent partnership to leverage a couple of rather large installed bases. SAP's formal support of ESX on 64-bit Linux and Windows as a hosting platform for enterprise SOA is a door-opener for VMware to SAP shops of all sizes. The new certification partnership program already has vetted hardware solutions from Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM, and Sun, so customers should be able to fly with their favorite mainstream hardware. To minimize pain and suffering, SAP and VMware have a cooperative support program in place, which should reduce the he said/she said frustrations that occasionally arise during enterprise-level issue resolution. Need to burn surplus budget money? Value-added support consultants are on hand from a new Virtualization Competency Center (VCC) for SAP solutions.

If you want or need to run SAP on VMware, sign up for a 12/13 Webinar to see what's shakin'.

From industry giants to a, well, nonindustry-giant. Jumpbox keeps cranking out small, nifty open source solutions.

Its latest: turnkey virt appliances for running Alfresco (content management), OTRS (ticket tracking), Bugzilla (three guesses), and Mantis (another bug tracker). Why the mention here? All are preconfigured for VMWare, flavors of Xen, Parallels VirtualIron, and Microsoft Virtualization platforms. Open source = platform agnostic, as it should be. Also of note, these four appliances are the first out of the gate from the company's "proving ground," an invite-only beta sandbox for adventurous customers. The Jumpbox folks make open source less scary for the Windows-addicted; virtual appliances make trying their goods a relatively painless experience.

And, last but not least: a hardware announcement. Did you happen to stop by the NetXen display at VMworld? Are you itching to stress test that new 4-port WS-X6704-10GE blade in your 6500? Want your very own certified 10-Gigabit NIC to clear bogged ESX I/O pipes? Your wait is over. NetXen is now shipping the "first 10G Ethernet NIC with native VM Infrastructure 3 support." iSCSI, anyone?Perhaps they'll send us a couple 10G NICs for the lab. And yes, this is a shameless plug to anyone at NetXen HQ in Santa Clara who happens to be listening.