VMware Product Blitz Launched in Europe

Disaster recovery, storage, and server-embedded hypervisors were all high on the agenda as VMware kicked off its first-ever European user conference today.

The vendor used the event in Cannes, France, to unveil a gaggle of products and partnerships, stretching from business continuity to de-duplication to virtual desktops.

Following is a quick summary:

Disaster recovery & data center automation

Underlining the current trend of harnessing virtualization for disaster recovery, VMware took the wraps off a set of data center management products this week, including Lifecycle Manager and Site Recovery Manager.

Site Recovery Manager essentially creates a virtual version of physical data center systems. By using virtualization to "match" physical hardware, VMware claims to offer a more efficient and less risky approach to disaster recovery testing, removing the need for users to fiddle with their production systems.VMware is not the only vendor pushing this approach, as evidenced by Novell's acquisition of disaster recovery specialist PlateSpin yesterday for $205 million. Stonesoft is set to unveil a series of virtual appliances for security and management of VMware this week.

VMware also fleshed out its automation strategy at VMworld Europe, announcing its Lifecycle Manager product. Based on technology from VMware's acquisition of automation startup Dunes last year, Lifecycle Manager automates the approval, provisioning, updating, and retirement of virtual machines.

Pricing for Site Recovery Manager and Lifecycle Manager has not yet been released although VMware says that the products will be available in the second quarter of this year.

Embedded virtualization

In a clear shot across the bows of virtualization rival XenSource, VMware will now embed its flagship ESX 3i hypervisor on servers from HP, IBM, Fujitsu-Siemens, and Dell.

First up is Fujitsu-Siemens, which revealed today that ESX 3i is already shipping on its Primergy servers. Fujitsu and VMware say that the deal, aimed specifically at small and medium-sized firms, enables users to begin using virtualization as soon as the server is booted.The other server vendors are expected to start shipping ESX 3i embedded hardware within the next 60 days, providing VMware with a massive foot in the door at a time when users are ramping up their use of virtualization.

Today's announcement also highlights the growing competition in the virtualization space.

It is not coincidence that rival XenSource, which was acquired by Citrix for $500 million last year, has also been busy attempting to extend the reach of its own hypervisor technology.

Last year, for example, Sun threw its weight behind XenSource, revealing that it will use source code from the Xen hypervisor within its Solaris operating system.

XenSource has also clinched deals with HP and Dell, which plans to offer the XenServer embedded hypervisor on its products sometime this year.With today's deals, VMware may have stolen a march on its rival, although XenSource has also inked an OEM deal to embed Symantec's Storage Foundation product line, which includes its Volume Manager software, into its XenEnterprise server virtualization product.

Storage

Jumping on the disaster recovery bandwagon, EMC announced today that VMware's Site Recovery Manager will be integrated into its family of remote replication products, including RecoverPoint, MirrorView, and SRDF.

The storage vendor also announced tighter integration for applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, and SAP running on EMC hardware and software using VMware's virtualization products.

EMC, which spun off much of VMware last year, also revealed that its Avamar product has been optimized for "advanced data-duplication backup" with VMware Consolidated Backup.

Other storage vendors making a song and dance at VMworld Europe this week include Double-Take, which launched a disaster recovery solution for protecting virtual machines and Emulex, which integrated its HBA technology with ESX 3i.Neterion has also been busy in the south of France, taking the wraps off its X3100 Series of 10-Gbit/s adapters, which it is touting as the first to support the SR-IOV 1.0 (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) standard.

"The intention is to establish a standard that will govern how I/O virtualization is handled on a virtualized server," says Dave Zabrowski, the Neterion CEO, explaining that SR-IOV is an extension to PCIe that lets a single adapter behave like multiple physical adapters in a virtualized server.

Others hawking their wares at VMworld Europe include DataCore, which previewed its SANHarmony virtualization product for managing NAS and SANs, and Catbird, which launched a security solution for VMs.

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