vmware

Survey: IT's key role in global economic recovery

information technology is expected to play an important part in the global economic recovery, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

Some 72 percent of business and information technology executives say their "organizations place greater value on the IT function today than they did before the economic crisis" and that they "view IT as an important part of their economic recovery efforts," according to Accenture's Global Survey on IT Investments.

This is not an unfamiliar sentiment and is one we've heard from United States CIO Vivek Kundra as he's attempted to use IT to kick start a variety of programs on the federal level that will set the pace for innovative new uses of technology across the globe.

The results of the Accenture survey are similar to last week's Goldman Sachs cautiously optimistic survey results that suggested IT spending would trend upward in 2010 and normalize to pre-recession levels with the majority of countries represented planning to increase investment selectively next year.

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Observations from an EMC analyst day

On the one hand, vendor analyst events are a good opportunity to spend focused time diving deep into individual products, roadmaps, and corporate initiatives. On the other, they're a useful forum for getting the feel of a company's overall zeitgeist in a way that narrower discussions don't. EMC's event, held last week in Franklin, Mass., was no exception.

Perhaps the single thing that struck me most about the event as a whole was the full integration of VMware into the discussion as a whole. I've been following both companies since before EMC acquired VMware in 2003. … Read more

Rename a virtual machine in VMware Fusion

When I upgraded my VMware Fusion virtual machine image of Windows Vista to Windows 7, all went smoothly, except updating its name. Trouble was, it was still called Windows Vista in the Library. Here's how I changed that annoying little issue.

First, make sure your virtual machine is powered off, not suspended.

Then, find your virtual machine's folder, most likely in Documents. Right- or control-click on the virtual machine file you want to rename and select "Show Package Contents."

Find the VMX file, right- or control-click it and open it with Text Edit or your favorite … Read more

Security considerations for virtual environments

The cost benefits of virtualization are well-documented, allowing enterprises to significantly reduce the space and electrical power required to run data centers and streamline the management of an ever-growing number of servers.

Virtualization also provides means for expedient scalability. Given today's economic climate and cost-cutting mandates, it is not surprising that analyst firm Gartner recently predicted that 50 percent of workloads will run inside virtual machines by 2012.

What many organizations fail to understand, according to Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO of virtualization security provider Altor Networks, is that collapsing multiple servers into a single one with several virtual machines inside eliminates all firewall, intrusion detection, and other protections in existence. Physical security measures literally become "blind" to traffic between VMs, since they are no longer in the data path.

This echoes comments made by Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, who wrote in a recent presentation titled "Securing the Next-Generation Virtual Data Center" (subscription required), that "most virtual machines you deploy will be less secure than the physical systems they replace," and that "virtualization will radically change how you secure and manage computing environments."

VMware recently launched a partner program to help ISVs develop solutions certified as "VMsafe." VMsafe provides API sharing through a secure container, enabling partner companies to access virtual environments. This virtual security technology provides fine-grained visibility over virtual-machine resources, including monitoring every aspect of the system with the ability to address previously undetectable viruses, rootkits, and malware before they can infect a system.

I spoke to Ben-Efraim to better understand the issues around VM security and for what users should be on the lookout. According to him, there are two common approaches that use existing methods to secure virtual-network traffic: using VLANs to separate and control communication between VMs; and taking software-based firewalls and running them as agents on each VM. Unfortunately, both of these approaches fall short.

VLAN segmentation extends the notion of LAN resource segmentation to include VMs. The approach essentially requires that VMs, which can naturally be grouped (i.e. by function or user base), be isolated from other VMs by use of virtual switches and routing (i.e. the human resources VLAN contains HR-serving VMs). However, VLAN segmentation is not a permanent solution to securing environments because of networking complexities, performance degradation, and security limitations of the approach, Ben-Efraim said. … Read more

New York hospital revives ailing computer network

It's no secret that the installed base of technology at large medical facilities needs refreshing, especially as hospitals work toward digitizing medical records.

At St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in New York, a nonprofit with 42 facilities across five boroughs, the constant accessing and updating of patient records through the hospital's shared-bandwidth MPLS network resulted in unacceptable lag time pretty much all day, every day.

So Kane Edupuganti, director of IT Operations & Communications, convinced the higher-ups to retire the hospitals' hundreds of five-plus-year-old desktops and buy more than 600 zero client cubes from Pano Logic.

"… Read more

VMware elevates its desktop virtualization view

Although VMware got its start with a desktop virtualization product aimed at developers, the company today is best known for bringing server virtualization to the mainstream.

Creating multiple virtual servers on a single physical system lets IT departments consolidate applications onto fewer computers and thereby cut costs. Over time, server virtualization has also enabled a variety of products and approaches that can simplify IT operations and generally make data centers more flexible.

VMware has continued to invest in virtualization aimed at the client. This includes client-side hypervisors such as its original VMware Workstation product. However, products and technologies associated with … Read more

State of virtualization: Parallels 5.0 released, VMWare Fusion performance

Despite being a Mac fan for as long as I can remember I have always been intrigued with the ability to boot multiple operating systems. When Apple came out with the Quadra 630 and PowerMac 6100 models that had optional DOS cards in them, I was awed at the notion of quickly being able to switch over to Windows with a keystroke, and have since tackled many options for running other operating systems on my Macs, including emulation and the now popular virtualization solutions enabled by the current Macs' Intel hardware. There's something just fun about being able to boot and use multiple operating systems on a computer.… Read more

Cisco, EMC, and VMware make alliance official

Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware announced Tuesday a joint venture to sell a new integrated data center product.

The venture will sell and provide maintenance and service support for the product, which is called V-Block. It will combine EMC's storage equipment, Cisco's virtualized servers and networking equipment, and VMware's virtualization technology.

The deal had been rumored since September, when the Wall Street Journal reported the companies were working on a collaborative effort code-named Alpine. Talk of the deal heated up late last week and early this week.

The joint venture will market and provide maintenance for the … Read more

Report: Cisco, EMC, VMware to announce venture

Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware are expected to announce this week a new joint venture to sell data center products and services using virtualization technology, according to report in the Wall Street Journal.

The new products called "V-Block" combine EMC's storage equipment with Cisco's new virtualized services and networking equipment along with VMware's virtualization technology.

In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cisco and EMC were in talks to form a new services venture code-named Alpine. V-Block may be this same service.

The products will either be sold as an end-to-end solution that companies … Read more