VMWorld 2008

After four fulls days at VMWorld 2008, actually after the very first keynote, it has been made clear that VMWare is and will continue to be the leader in the virtualization space. The list of new VMWare product announcements for 2009 is as long as my arm and they include but are not limited to:

VMWare Fault Tolerant VM's - This is the next natural extention of VMWare HA where and admin can now protect individual VM's by enabling fault tolerance with a click on a button. Once enabled a secondary VM is created on another host with DRS ensuring that it doesn't cause any resource contraints. This secondary VM is up and running and leveraging the same technology as VMotion is kept in perfect synchronization with the primary VM. This vLockstep technology literally creates a zero downtime environment for the protected VM's. If the physical host that currently houses the primary VM fails the secondary VM recognizes the failure and because it has been kept in vLockstep can then becomes the primary VM and becomes active on the network with minimal distruption to service. In addition to that the new Primary VM then spawns a new secondary VM on another host and synchronizes the instruction logging to achieve the vLockstep state.

vNetwork Distributed Switches - This is the ability to define a distributed vSwitch at the data center level and then apply that switch configuration to all of the connected ESX hosts. This eliminates the need for the admin to configure each ESX host individually and ensure consistency in the virtual infrastructure.

vNetwork third party vSwitches - Cisco in conjunction with VMWare have announced the first 3rd party vSwitch for the virtual infrastructure. The Cisco Nexus 1000v will extend the same level of granularity, control, and visibility that network administrators enjoy in the physical infrastructure to the virtual infrastructure. Controls like QOS and port monitoring are new being extended to the VM's.

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) - VMWare is continuing to evolve this product and based on what has been demonstrated here are poised to reshape the desktop environment. New levels of control and flexibility are going to change the way administrators manage the desktop.

Virtual Center - Is being rebranded as vCenter and most if not all of the new products that have been announced have incorporated into vCenter. A couple of new announcements that are really exciting include a Linux based vCenter ,WOW, and a vCenter virtual appliance, they are also working on creating versions of the the VI client that will be compatibile with Blackberry's and iPhones. How cool is that!!!!

Site Recovery Manager - This product was actually launched in June 2008 and introduces a level of data center redundancy that is quite simply amazing. The product provides the framework to develop, test, and implement disaster recovery plans, it provides the ability to failover to a secdondary data center in advance of a disaster and then failback to the primary after the disaster has passed i.e. a Hurricane wipes out an entire city.

ThinApp - Yes they are now virtualizing applications as well, I guess if Citrix can buy Xen and play in the server virtualzation space then why can can't play in the application space. ThinApp gives administrators the abiltiy to package individual apps or multiple apps into a single package and deploy those apps to the desktop. Combined with VDI and linked clones an administrator can deploy an app to multiple desktops in the time it takes to reboot.

Linked clones - This feature provides the ability to have a single master VM template and then spin off new virtual desktops as linked clones of the master using only a fraction of the disk space of the master VM template. The an administrator can add a new app to the master and the linked clones desktops will be informed of the change the VM will reboot and the virtual desktop will now have the new application.

This is just a sample of the new products offerings announced by VMWare, there will be more to come.