Deadline is September 16 — if you want to support VMware and have a chance to win $250 at the same time, head over and vote today!

Voting Guide

For those party members seeking official VCritical recommendations, the following voting guide is offered.

VMware appears in many of the various categories — if so, the correct choice is obvious.  However, in some categories there are multiple VMware products listed.  To improve the effectiveness of your votes in those categories, please concentrate fire on the following:

Best Virtualization Product (Question 31):

VMware vSphere 4.0

Best Free or Open Source Tool (Question 32):

VMware ESXi

Best Microsoft Product (Question 21):

Microsoft  Windows 2000 Server (just for Fun)

Related posts:

1. Nice Windows VM you’ve got there…
2. Dear Red Hat…
3. Hyper-V Market Share Lies
4. My VMworld 2009 Experience

Maybe next year I will do some live blogging from the show, but this time I decided to assemble a summary of my week instead.  I did fire off an unusually high number of tweets during the week, thanks in no small part to Rich Brambley’s #vmworld3word game.

Day 0 — Monday

Monday morning I drove up to San Francisco — nice thing about VMworld being local to VMware HQ.  Along with others on my team, presented to the Partner Technical Advisory Board (PTAB).  Somehow, one of my key slides did not make it into the final consolidated presentation deck there, which was unfortunate — had to wing it.  Got to meet Scott Lowe and Rich Brambley face-to-face for the first time.  Also met some other partners who liked our presentation content and were interested in follow-up sessions for their teams.

During lunch at Chevy’s with some of my teammates, we ran into a former coworker who had joined the dark side.  He is a really nice guy and I wish him the best — even if he was wearing a fluorescent yellow shirt all week.  This is business, not personal.

Monday evening I wandered the solutions exchange during the welcome reception — it was very crowded.  Hung around the Community area and met some of the bloggers and customers like Jason Boche, Eric Siebert, Colin Steele, Joep Piscaer, Lars Trøen,and Mark Ylvisaker.  Joined the tweetup organized by John Troyer on Monday evening, after the welcome reception closed.

Day 1 — Tuesday

Opening keynote from Paul Martiz.  Plenty of others have already summarized the keynote; I won’t do it again.  I’ll just say that it’s great to have Paul Maritz at the helm of VMware.  I thought the hardware integration demos from server partners were excellent.  IBM demonstrated detailed monitoring of power consumption — including power per virtual machine.  HP’s Insight Control that integrates with vSphere is nothing short of awesome.

Spent a lot of time walking the solutions exchange floor.  Really enjoyed talking to VMware partners that offer deep integration with vCenter, such as NetIQ and eG Innovations.  I also see a lot of promise in the vCloud Express partners — got a nice demo from Terremark which started me thinking…  Then, at the Tripwire booth, Steve Beaver and Ted Gary were both there, so I stopped in to say hi.

In the afternoon, I rehearsed a few times for the session I had to deliver on Wednesday.  I wanted it to go as smoothly as possible for the attendees that would allocate a portion of their valuable time to hear what I have to say.

Tuesday evening there was a team dinner with my coworkers at Espetus Churrascaria.  In an interesting coincidence, the cabbie that drove me to the restaurant was from Brazil — he said I definitely had to try the chicken hearts.  They were not so bad.

Day 2 — Wednesday

The keynote from Steve Herrod was cool, with great demos delivered by some of the other VMware guys like Mike Coleman.

Delivered my session (VM3085 — Top 10 Reasons Why vCenter is the Best Platform for Virtualization Management) in the afternoon.  It went off without a hitch, and I enjoyed fielding questions from customers afterward.

Later in the day, HyTrust CEO Eric Chiu gave me a demo of their security appliance. It is an impressive product, and that’s not just my opinion — it won Best of Show this year.

Also got to meet Gabrie van Zanten face-to-face in the VMware Communities area.  Almost met everyone listed on my blogroll now.

The VMworld 2009 party was Wednesday evening and Foreigner put on a great show — despite the criticism leading up to VMworld, it appeared to me that most people were having an excellent time.

Enjoy it again for just 99 cents: Juke Box Hero

Day 3 — Thursday

Ears still ringing from the concert, started off the day with a proper breakfast at Mel’s.  Sorry, VMworld planners, those muffin-and-banana breakfasts just do not provide the nourishment a person needs for a grueling day of walking around Moscone.

Decided to head over to the Marriott first thing and take a shot at the VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) exam.  While I was there I bumped into Duncan Epping — finally got to chat with him face-to-face.  He gave me the idea to review the vSphere Configuration Maximums document before taking the exam — that was time well spent.  Passed (hello 400) the VCP4 with flying colors.  Literally — check out the flashing glasses.

Back at Mosone, I stopped by the VMworld Book Store to meet PowerShell guru Hal Rottenberg — he was there signing copies of his book on managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell.  I was one of the reviewers for that book last year, so it was good to meet him in person.  After that I went to a couple of sessions and took one last walk through the Solutions Exchange looking for must-have schwag.  I picked up some USB flash drives from HP (hello 2GB), Dell, and eG Innovations — thanks!

Conclusion

The highlight of VMworld for me this year was the chance to meet so many people face-to-face for the first time after getting to know them online via blogging and Twitter — the reason I decided to mention so many individuals in this post.

In addition, I am impressed by the vibrant community that has grown up around VMware, especially the management products that integrate deeply with vCenter — on both the back end and in the vSphere Client.

Enjoy the long weekend, we’ll resume regular VCritical programming soon.

Related posts:

1. How to get to VMworld 2009
2. Developer Day at VMworld 2009
3. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
4. 140 vSpheres/hour

As you can see, there are minor changes to the font — well, if you are a graphic designer you probably don’t think the changes are minor — but the biggest difference is the removal of the “three boxes.”

The old logo is dead!  Long live the new logo!

Not quite –from what I hear, the new logo will be phased in over time in a cost-effective way.  I’m sure the shareholders appreciate that.

For comparison, here is what the old logo looked like:

What do you think of the new logo?

Related posts:

1. When does your “free” Hyper-V Server cost $1304?
2. Get a better font for PuTTY
3. Exclusive: Hyper-V 2013 Product Roadmap
4. Need $57,000?

Since VMware launched vSphere 12 weeks ago there have been over 350,000 downloads — 140 per hour!

And that’s not all:  in the first half of 2009, VMware acquired twenty-one thousand new customers — 121 new customers per day!

Can’t wait for more great news in the coming week — see you at VMworld.

Related posts:

1. What is Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization?
2. Microsoft tries deception, gets caught
3. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
4. My VMworld 2009 Experience

I first read of this particular issue on Network World today.  But unlike the official Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog, NW actually includes some details about this supposed ban — like this quote from an official VMware spokeswoman:

Yes, competing vendors are allowed to exhibit, including exhibiting competing products.

The VMworld contract was big news — back in May — but since then, like it or not, most competitors and industry watchers have conceded that the fine print in the VMworld contract is industry standard.  Just read the comments in that Virtualization.info article referenced by MSFT.

While it does make for pretty good drama, you should know that VMware has not banned Microsoft from exhibiting SCVMM 2008 R2.  I do admit, “Try the virtualization manager that VMware doesn’t want you to see!” does sound a lot more intriguing than “Here’s SCVMM R2, it does mostly the same stuff as the first release, and it can manage vSphere now — if you count VI3 feature parity.”

See you at VMworld.

Related posts:

1. Hello, SCVMM 2008 R2
2. How to get to VMworld 2009
3. What’s New (and What’s Vapor) in SCVMM 2008
4. Wild SCVMM 2008 R2 rumors and speculation

Last week Microsoft COO Kevin Turner made a shocking proclamation in this Dow Jones article:

“We launched our first product in October of this past year. from then till now, we gained 24 points of market share against a very, very formidable competitor,” Turner said.

There are at least two problems with Turner’s statement:

1. Hyper-V 1.0 was released in June 2008, not October
2. There is absolutely no data available to support the fictitious “24 point gain”

Microsoft is still scrambling for a convoluted explanation of this lie — I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.  Please note, however, that the part about VMware being a “very, very, formidable competitor” was independently verified to be true.

Virtualization.info just published a short article on the topic and mentions some previous market share numbers — helps put things in perspective.

Between the “million Hyper-V downloads” and this new fabricated market share statement coming from the highest levels of Microsoft, it raises the question:

What else is Microsoft Virtualization making up? Customer wins?  Price comparisons with VMware vSphere?

Smells like desperation to me.

Related posts:

1. The Million Hypervisor March
2. Which 50% will you virtualize?
3. IGT Part 2: SAN Misers
4. Even GPL can’t make Hyper-V Linux VMs well

Deadline is August 17 — check it out.

Related posts:

1. Support VMware: 2009 Community Choice Awards
2. Developer Day at VMworld 2009
3. Win $2500 with your 1337 VMware ESXi scripting skillz
4. Hyper-V Market Share Lies

What if such an event was conveniently scheduled with VMworld 2009 in San Francisco on August 31st?

Too good to be true?  Not at all — it’s called Technology Exchange Developer Day and is just $249.

Check out the VMware Developer Center Blog for more details.

Related posts:

1. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
2. My VMworld 2009 Experience
3. How to get to VMworld 2009
4. Book Review: VMware VI and vSphere SDK

There seems to be a problem with this highly-inflated claim;  the casual observer may even infer that over a million system administrators have downloaded and installed Hyper-V in order to run virtual machines.

Let me assure you that this is impossible, and here is why:

• Windows Server 2008 shipped with the beta version of Hyper-V
• Hyper-V is just another component of Windows Server 2008
• Windows Update is used to automatically download updates for all Windows components
• In July 2008, the RTM version of Hyper-V was made available on Windows Update
• After installation, all Windows Server systems automatically download the Hyper-V update — whether they intend to ever run virtual machines or not
• Hyper-V download count++

What’s that?  Hyper-V downloads occur whether or not a system is even being used as a hypervisor?

Yes!  Update 950050 is automatically downloaded to all Windows Server 2008 hosts — the standard Windows Update process.  Actually, the Hyper-V update is even downloaded to virtualized Windows systems (which are certainly not even capable of running Hyper-V):

With that new understanding, you can decide for yourself whether or not it is honest to claim that there have been one million Hyper-V downloads, or if it is statistically significant to use that number to compute the reliability of Hyper-V (“.02%”).

Market Share

While we are on the topic, at the Microsoft Management Summit David Greshler also reminded us of the IDC Virtualization Tracker stats, crediting Microsoft with 23% of the market — which is by units, not revenue.  Please refer to the slide at the top of this post.

It’s interesting to see the label “Momentum” and the “now has” statement, both of which imply progress.

Last year IDC released market share numbers that caused quite a stir.  You can read all about it from a VMware perspective at Mike D’s blog, but to quickly summarize: IDC stated that in Q2 2008 Microsoft had 23% market share (when Hyper-V had been actually shipping for less than a week).  Here we are — quarters later — Microsoft has increased their share to… 23%.  That’s some momentum.

I find it ironic that the whole point of the Microsoft blog post referenced above is to provide “facts” and dispel alleged VMware FUD.  It’s safe to say that this battle is far from over.

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V deployments suddenly drop to zero
2. Humble… but dishonest
3. Hyper-V Market Share Lies
4. Have you seen “the IDC report”?

Every so often, VMware hears from a customer that has just spoken to Microsoft Product Support and has been erroneously told that Microsoft software is not supported on VMware products.  That’s just about the last thing you — and your management — want to hear in the middle of a significant server virtualization project.

Fortunately, these problems usually go away as fast as they appear.  A quick visit to the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) website is enough to assure all parties involved that recent VMware ESX releases are absolutely a supported virtualization solution for your Microsoft workloads.

This confusion is often initiated by a Microsoft KB article that states, in part:

Except as described in this article, Microsoft does not test or support Microsoft software running together with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.

At first glance, one may quickly draw the incorrect conclusion that VMware is not supported.  That’s unfortunate, and until more people — including everyone in Microsoft Product Support — know about the SVVP, this is likely to continue.

I was curious to know why Microsoft support would often not know about the SVVP and the official Microsoft stance on VMware ESX support, so I sent one of my spies to Redmond to dig a little deeper.  It turns out that the Hyper-V marketing team arranged for a special Outlook email filter to be added to every support mailbox:

So there you have it — if Microsoft would just get the word out about SVVP, it would go a long way in satisfying the Microsoft/VMware customers in need of support.

By the way, Ryan Russell recently wrote about an experience he had when trying to get Microsoft to support an application on ESX, you might want to check it out.

Related posts:

1. vCenter for Linux article disappointing
2. Even GPL can’t make Hyper-V Linux VMs well
3. Yes, NIC teaming is not unsupported
4. Dear Red Hat…