Today Lanamark announced availability of Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition which enables IT consultants, managed service providers, system integrators and value-added resellers to offer subscription-based capacity management and optimization services. Here is a summary of the two editions:

Professional Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Professional Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver project-based assessment, planning and design services across desktops, servers and storage. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Application Delivery Planning
• Desktop Virtualization Planning
• Server Virtualization Planning
• Storage Optimization

Managed Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver subscription-based capacity management and optimization services across physical and virtual infrastructure. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Capacity Management
• Hardware Lifecycle Management
• Continuous Server Consolidation
• Virtual Infrastructure Optimization
• Software Asset Management

Rather than resell complex capacity planning software such as Novell PlateSpin Recon, solution providers can instead deliver capacity planning and optimization as a service. This allows customers to focus on their core business rather than purchase expensive software and maintain in-house expertise for using it.

On November 3, Red Hat announced general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers. How does the server virtualization offering from Red Hat compare to the one from Oracle?

As part of the launch, Red Hat did a comparison of its virtualization offering versus ones from Microsoft and VMware. In reality, the closest competitors are actually Citrix and Oracle, especially if Citrix does indeed release Citrix XenServer as open source. This means that both Red Hat and VMware would get squeezed by

• Oracle VM and Citrix XenServer on the Linux side of server virtualization
• Microsoft Hyper-V on the Windows side of server virtualization
• Citrix and Microsoft on the Windows side of desktop virtualization

What's more interesting is that Red Hat pitches its offering for "heterogeneous servers and clouds." With a subscription-based licensing model and without a freely downloadable, re-distributable software, this strategy is going to be rather challenging to execute.

As speculation looms around plans from Citrix to release Citrix XenServer as open source, it's worthwhile to analyze how such a move would impact other leading software vendors in the virtualization space.

On February 23, 2009 Citrix announced that it will give away the full version of Citrix XenServer for free. Since Citrix is not generating any revenue from XenServer, open sourcing it seems like a logical step. But how will such a move impact the marketplace? Why would Citrix spend $500M on XenSource and then make Citrix XenServer open source?

As a Microsoft partner, Citrix understands that it's better to cooperate than to compete with the software giant, particularly in the server virtualization space. By open-sourcing Citrix XenServer, Citrix would:

1. Expand Citrix XenServer market share and drive additional revenue through virtualization management software such as Citrix Essentials.
2. Offer enterprises an open-source alternative to Microsoft Hyper-V with feature parity and high degree of interoperability.
3. Increase community-based support for development and maintenance of Citrix XenServer, rather than funding R&D completely.
4. Enhance adoption and survivability of Citrix XenServer by getting other software vendors such as Novell and Oracle to support it.

Microsoft

Microsoft benefits the most from this move because there would be an open-source server virtualization alternative that would isolate two other Linux-based virtualization platform vendors: Red Hat and VMware. In other words, Microsoft is squeezing these vendors from one side with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and from the other side with the help of Citrix XenServer.

Novell

As a company that already has good relationships with both Citrix and Microsoft, Novell has an opportunity to provide virtualization management capabilities across these two platforms. It already does this with the PlateSpin family of products. Novell may also do a port of Citrix XenServer to Novell SUSE but this is probably not a trivial effort and would take quite a bit of time.

Oracle

Oracle VM is already based on the Xen hypervisor. Whether Oracle decides to adopt Citrix XenServer depends on whether Oracle wants to give away its intellectual property to the open source community or to build dominance in the server virtualization space on its own. However, given its active participation in the Xen community, support for open source development model and antagonism towards Red Hat, Oracle may just throw its weight behind an open source Citrix XenServer.

In a nutshell Citrix, Microsoft, Novell and Oracle have a lot to gain from an open source Citrix XenServer, while Red Hat and VMware have a lot to lose from such a move. Perhaps Citrix will also rename Citrix XenServer back to XenSource Server?!

Update (November 2, 2009)

According to an interview with Simon Crosby, CTO at Citrix, XenServer will be open-sourced but the following components will not be:

• Citrix XenCenter
• Citrix XenConvert
• Drivers for Microsoft Windows

Novell recently launched Novell PlateSpin Recon 3.7, claiming that it "...Delivers New Capacity Tool to Give Deep Insight into...Storage".

First, PlateSpin got so excited about the new capacity planning tool that it actually forgot to post the press release on its own website. However, the parent company, Novell, did the honors.

Second, there is a mention of a "new capacity tool" for storage. There is no new tool - storage planning is a feature of an existing Novell PlateSpin Recon product.

Finally, PlateSpin published a KB article stating the following limitation:

"Another exception to this function is the inability to list attached SAN disks as fiber Channel (FC) storage type for Windows 2003 server platform. This is because Windows 2003 server doesn’t have the required file (hbaapi.mof) which is responsible for identifying the disk type as FC. Therefore, in the properties of inventoried Windows 2003 server, the SAN disk type is listed incorrectly as "Local" under "Storage" tab. This file exists on Windows 2008 server."

The best part is the workaround:

"The work around to address this issue is copying this file from a Windows 2008 server to the Windows 2003 server which has attached SAN drives."

This makes users wonder what other manual work they will have to do to perform storage capacity planning.

If you are looking to get deep insight into storage infrastructure, products like Quest Storage Horizon (formerly MonoSphere) provide excellent capabilities in this space. If you are a solution provider designing storage infrastructure for virtualized environments, then the Storage Design Module in the Lanamark Suite is worth taking a look at.

After releasing PlateSpin Recon 3.6 in April, Novell announced PlateSpinRecon 3.7. The new version includes the following enhancements:

• Support for IBM AIX 5.2, 5.3 and 6.1
• Collection of additional disk performance metrics
• Identification of disk type attached to the workload (local, iSCSI, FC)

Unlike Lanamark Suite, PlateSpin Recon continues to use agents that can affect the security, performance and compliance of target systems. However, the user guide seems to contradict itself:

• PlateSpin Recon does not require the installation of agent software, eliminating the need to physically touch data center servers. All performance and inventory data is collected via standard OS instrumentation capabilities. (p. 11, 16)
• Windows: PlateSpin Recon copies an executable onto the machine being inventoried to the a directory within ADMIN$. PlateSpin Recon runs the executable through WMI or a remote service. (p. 165)
• Linux/Solaris: PlateSpin Recon uses the SCP protocol to transfer a platform-specific inventory binary and libraries to the /tmp directory of the machine being inventoried. (p. 164)

An agent, such as the one deployed by Novell PlateSpin Recon, can set off intrusion detection systems and void compliance of locked down target systems in enterprise environments. Furthermore, if a malicious third-party gains access to the host running Novell PlateSpin Recon and substitutes the executable/binary with malicious software (malware), then the malware can be launched on all systems accessed by PlateSpin Recon with administrative privileges. This single point of attack makes the enterprise particularly vulnerable to a security breach.

To avoid a slap on the wrist from customers, most solution providers would opt-in for an agent-less approach.

Alessandro Perilli wrote an interesting blog post about how Novell is moving PlateSpin Recon development to India. The PlateSpin Recon development team working on the product in Toronto, Canada is very talented and this change is not likely to be well-received by members of this team. There is also a question of how the product will be managed and how Novell is planning to channel feedback from customers and partners to the product development team.

That said, a number of virtualization companies have built phenomenal teams and products with development centers offshore. Lanamark with design and development teams in Latvia, Romania and Ukraine, Parallels with development centers in Eastern Europe and VMLogix with a stellar team in Bangalore, India are good examples of such companies.

PlateSpin will be hosting a webinar to review new capabilities in PlateSpin Recon 3.6. Here are the webinar details:

• Date: May 14, 2009
• Time: 1:00 pm EST
• Length: 1 hour

Click here to register

With VMware continuing to dominate the marketplace and other competitors emerging, Microsoft is skillfully playing virtualization chess. How can Microsoft build a dominant position in the virtualization marketplace while showing goodwill towards the Linux community and completely isolating its competitors? Here is how

1. Provide (selective) support for Linux. Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the only Linux distribution officially supported by Microsoft Hyper-V.
2. Offer an alternative virtualization platform for enterprises using Linux that is interoperable with Hyper-V. This is where Citrix XenServer comes in, partially because it provides much broader support for Linux guest operating systems.
3. Build virtualization management applications that span the two. This is where management applications such as Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V come in. Microsoft System Center and Novell PlateSpin family of products will also provide cross-platform support.

To maximize its grip over the virtualization marketplace, Microsoft wants customers to choose between a Linux- and a Windows-based hypervisor that it endorses and supports. The strategy code looks like something this:

if customer(running primarily Windows & wants Windows-based hypervisor) then return Microsoft Hyper-V + Microsoft Windows Server

else if customer(running primarily Linux & wants Linux-based hypervisor) then return Citrix XenServer + Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

else return Microsoft Hyper-V + Microsoft Windows Server

This approach gives customers choice and essentially isolates all the other Linux-based virtualization platform vendors: Red Hat, VMware, etc... This approach is also sound from an anti-trust perspective because it would ensure that Microsoft is not perceived as a monopoly in the virtualization space a few years from now.

After releasing PlateSpin Recon 3.5 in December 2008, Novell announced PlateSpin Recon 3.6. The new version includes the following major enhancements:

• Support for Sun Solaris Containers
• Support for Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
• Enhancements for including virtual clusters in virtual infrastructure reports

In its announcement, Novell clearly underscores that PlateSpin Recon enables "data center managers to gain new insight into their virtual infrastructure." This direct focus on the enterprise is quite different from the focus at Lanamark for enabling solution providers to deliver IT infrastructure assessment, planning and design services for enterprises using Lanamark Suite.

Comparison of Lanamark Suite versus Novell PlateSpinRecon and VMware Capacity Planner

VMware Capacity Planner is probably the best known tool for planning VMware Infrastructure deployments. But what about other tools and how do they differ from VMware Capacity Planner? Below is a summary of two alternative solutions compared to VMware Capacity Planner:

Lanamark Suite

Learn more about Lanamark Suite

Novell PlateSpin Recon (formerly PowerRecon)

Learn more about Novell PlateSpin Recon

VMware Capacity Planner

Learn more about VMware Capacity Planner