Lanamark announced a partnership with Oracle that will enable Oracle channel partners to leverage Lanamark Suite to design and deliver desktop and server virtualization solutions based on Oracle VM. Lanamark will be presenting at upcoming Oracle VM boot camps and created a calculator for comparing Oracle VM vs. VMware vSphere.

Lanamark Suite enables Oracle partners to accelerate design and delivery of Oracle VM virtualization solutions. Solution providers can gather vital information about x86/x64 and SPARC environments, identify most suitable candidates for virtualization, and then design complete, high-performance virtualization solutions with Oracle VM. Lanamark Suite supports application, middleware, database, operating system, server, storage and thin client components from Oracle and Oracle alliance partners.

Learn more about the partnership between Lanamark and Oracle. 

Scott Lowe recently did a feature comparison between Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and VMware vSphere. The comparison is definitely worth taking a look at. Here is a tabular summary of the comparison:

On March 30, 2009 Citrix opened the floodgates and started offering Citrix XenServer Enterprise for free. However to get some of the enterprise features such as High Availability it is necessary to purchase Citrix Essentials for XenServer. Here is a comparison of enterprise virtualization offerings from Citrix and VMware:

• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 per server with one year Subscription Advantage.
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $2,875 per CPU (up to 6 cores) + VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995.

Price Comparison

• N two-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $3,000
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $5,750 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

• N four-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $8,750
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $11,500 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

  Examples

• 5 two-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $3,000 = $19,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 5 four-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $8,750 = $48,745 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 two-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $3,000 = $34,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 four-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $8,750 = $92,495 savings with Citrix XenServer

To take full advantage of VMware vSphere Enterprise six-core licensing limit, it may be worthwhile to consider the following servers with six-core AMD and Intel processors to maximize VM density:

• HP ProLiant BL465c G6, BL495c G6, BL685C G6
• HP ProLiant DL385 G6, DL585 G6, DL785 G6
• IBM BladeCenter LS22, LS42
• IBM System x3755
• Sun Blade X6240, X6440
• Sun Fire X4140, X4240, X4440

• HP ProLiant BL680c G5
• HP ProLiant DL580 G5
• IBM System x3850 M2, x3950 M2
• Sun Blade X6450
• Sun Fire X4450

Of course software licensing costs are only a component of the total cost of ownership and a number of other factors such as performance and management applications available must be considered when choosing a virtualization platform. This is exactly what solution providers using Lanamark Suite try to accomplish when presenting enterprise customers with side-by-side comparisons across end-to-end virtualization solutions that encompass hardware, software and service components.

On November 10, 2009 Lanamark announced Lanamark Suite 2009 R2. The new release dramatically extends scalability to 50,000 systems and adds support for the latest OS and virtualization platforms, including: Citrix XenServer 5.5, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Windows 7, VMware vSphere 4.0 and VMware vCenter. Lanamark also introduces aggressive pricing for virtual machines and enhances the Lanamark Storage Design Module to provide deep insight into current and historical usage of local and networked storage resources.

The new release is a culmination of more than nine months of close collaboration with our alliance and channel partners. Many thanks to everyone who helped us push the envelope of innovation and deliver a world-class product.

Read the official press release

Learn more about what's new in Lanamark Suite 2009 R2

Today VMware announced VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0, a capacity management product for virtual infrastructure. The new product is rough around the edges. For example it still does not support VMware vSphere (VMware should have a policy for not launching new products that do not support its latest platform) nor does it provide enough emphasis on storage capacity planning.

In a nutshell, VMware CapacityIQ allows customers to reduce costs by right-sizing resources allocated to virtual machines. It also helps customers model the effect of capacity changes and forecast future capacity needs.

One particular company that will be severely impacted by VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is VKernel. At present, all VKernel products only work with VMware ESX and VMware vSphere, putting the company in a bit of a vice until support for other platforms is added. Each major VMware vCenter CapacityIQ feature competes with a product offered by VKernel:

• Capacity Awareness competes with VKernel Capacity Analyzer
• Capacity Optimization competes with VKernel Optimization Pack
• Capacity Prediction competes with VKernel Modeler

While VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is a fairly new product, it does have a critical mass of capabilities to spell trouble for VKernel and any other vendor offering capacity management software to the enterprise on top of the VMware platform. VKernel does seem to have a superset of capabilities available in VMware CapacityIQ such as support for vSphere, but it's just a matter of time before VMware closes the necessary product gaps.

VKernel announced its plans to support other platforms such as Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V later this year. Now the pressure is on VKernel to deliver.

Update (October 21, 2009)

David Marshall wrote the VMware tries its hand at capacity planning article on InfoWorld, quoting Alex Bakman, CEO of VKernel, saying "CapacityIQ may be good enough for some but our Capacity Analyzer and Optimization Pack provides many more features and functionality and delivers our users the answers and actionable information to make them successful in managing and optimizing their environments."

Indeed, VKernel does have more capacity management capabilities - after all, this is all VKernel has been focused on as a company for the last two years. As much as Alex would like to "thank VMware for validating the market need for capacity planning, management, and optimization," VMware is going to sell CapacityIQ as part of a complete vCenter stack and injecting a third-party (VKernel) appliance will not be an easy sell. Even if VKernel manages to get into the sales cycle and go up against CapacityIQ, the sales cycles will become longer and more expensive - not particularly favorable for a startup.

Update (November 9, 2009)

David Marshall followed up with another article on VKernel, detailing how VKernel is making Capacity Modeler free until December 31, 2009 in response to VMware CapacityIQ. VKernel Capacity Modeler 1.0 was released on March 31, 2009 with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket.

The move only validates the frustration VKernel must be experiencing as it starts to see VMware in its sales cycles. And no matter how much VKernel and other vendors discount VMware CapacityIQ, the product is obviously "good enough" to force VKernel to go on the defensive. It's ironic that VKernel initially discounted VMware's offering and then actually had to discount its own.

With the launch of Parallels Server Bare Metal, Parallels is expanding its value proposition in the crowded virtualization marketplace. But how is its approach different from other virtualization vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft and VMware?

First, Parallels offers a differentiated approach to virtualization that includes both hardware virtualization with Parallels Server Bare Metal and OS virtualization with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. When the OS environment is heterogeneous, Parallels Server Bare Metal provides flexibility for hosting workloads with different operating systems on the same physical server. This approach is similar to Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VM and VMware vSphere. However when the OS environment is homogeneous, Parallels provides capabilities to consolidate workloads with much lower virtualization overhead and much higher consolidation ratios. This is particularly useful for desktop virtualization.

Second, Parallels is clearly positioning itself for cloud enablement. Changes in messaging from "Automation and virtualization leader" to "Cloud enablement leader" clearly speak to that. And while other vendors are getting ready for cloud adoption, Parallels is already there with major market and mind share from service providers. Starting from its position of strength, Parallels can now go to all its partners using Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and help them expand their value proposition to customers with the addition of Parallels Server Bare Metal.

Finally, Parallels provides Parallels Virtual Automation for comprehensive management of both physical and virtual environments. Because of its strong expertise in enabling services providers, these capabilities push self-service and automation to levels that dramatically reduce the cost of implementing and managing virtual infrastructure.

In the last six years, leading vendors made significant investments to capitalize on opportunities presented by virtualization technologies:

• EMC acquired VMware in 2003 for $635 million
• Citrix acquired XenSource in 2007 for $500 million
• Red Hat acquired Qumranet in 2008 for $107 million
• Oracle acquired Virtual Iron in 2009 and is finalizing acquisition of Sun Microsystems

Now the big question is, who else wants to have a strong play in the virtualization and the cloud space?

Regardless of what happens, Lanamark Suite will enable the IT channel to design and deliver desktop and server virtualization solutions across all the leading virtualization platforms.

While most analysis around Citrix XenServer has been focused on enterprise customers, the new product pricing and packaging from Citrix is going to have a profound impact on solution providers:

• Premium pricing of VMware vSphere is causing more enterprises to ask solution providers to compare VMware vSphere to other platforms. Citrix XenServer is a natural candidate given its aggressive pricing.
• VMware-centric solution providers will need to diversify their portfolio of supported virtualization platforms or face the risk of walking away from opportunities that require a vendor-neutral approach.
• Because Citrix XenServer pricing is more competitive, solution providers have more flexibility in pricing professional services.
• Convincing enterprises to move forward is much easier when the cost of a potential virtualization solution makes economic sense.

Using Lanamark Suite, solution providers can deliver services and build desktop and server virtualization solutions across all the major virtualization platforms: Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Virtual Iron (Oracle) and VMware vSphere. Lanamark Suite factors in the cost of hardware, software and services, ensuring that solution providers can offer customers the most choice and flexibility when selecting a virtualization platform.

During its announcement of vSphere on April 21, 2009, VMware highlighted the tremendous performance enhancements in VMware vSphere. To illustrate this, VMware compared performance of an Oracle database workload running on

• Physical server with Intel Xeon 5100 Series dual-core processor
• VMware vSphere virtual machine hosted on a physical server with Intel Xeon 5500 Series quad-core processor with hyper-threading

The issue with this experiment is that it is impossible to evaluate the performance improvements of vSphere because not only was the original workload running on a physical machine, but it was also running on a machine with a different processor. Furthermore, the workload selected heavily leverages multi-core and hyper-threading technologies. So is performance improving because of enhancements to hardware or software?

To answer this question, the following experiments with different types of workloads should have been setup to measure

• Hardware Improvements: Physical machine with Intel Xeon 5100 Series processor versus a physical machine with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor
• Hardware Improvements for Virtualization: VMware vSphere virtual machine on a host with Intel Xeon 5100 versus the same virtual machine on a host with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor
• Software Improvements: VMware vSphere virtual machine versus a VMware Infrastructure virtual machine on identical underlying virtual machine hosts with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor for each platform

Based on internal comparison of the two processors at Lanamark, the Intel Xeon 5500 Series is an order of magnitude superior compared to the Intel Xeon 5100 Series. It has four cores and up to eight threads versus only two cores without hyper-threading in Intel Xeon 5100 Series. Intel Xeon 5500 Series offers 6X-8X higher raw performance improvements in terms of operations per second. It also makes a huge leap forward in I/O processing thanks to

• Intel QuickPath Technology which provides speeds of up to 3.5X higher (25.6 GB/s) among processors and the I/O hub
• Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (VT-c) which provides up to 2X throughput compared to non-hardware-assisted devices
• Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) which eliminates a significant amount of virtualization overhead by giving virtual machines their own dedicated I/O devices

By taking a close look at the "substantial leaps in virtualization performance" announced by VMware, it is clear that these performance leaps are overwhelmingly driven by the hardware improvements highlighted above. Obviously VMware worked closely with Intel and vSphere takes advantage of the above hardware features. But if these hardware features enable the majority of virtualization performance improvements then Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and other virtualization platforms will reap similar benefits.

Intel Xeon 5500 Series is now supported in Lanamark Suite and support for VMware vSphere will be offered within two weeks of the general availability announcement from VMware.

Here is the comparison of licensing and pricing for VMware vSphere announced on April 21, 2009 versus VMware Infrastructure 3.

• $995 for 3 servers OR $165 per processor
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit: $2,995 for 3 servers
• Savings: $2,000 (67%)

Essentials Plus ($2,995 for 3 servers)

• $2,995 for 3 servers OR $499 per processor
• Includes High Availability and Data Protection
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit: $5,995 for two 2-processor nodes
• Savings: $3,000 + $2,995 for VI Standard + $2,495 for VI HA Add-on = $8,490 (74%)

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Standard ($795 per processor)

• Up to 6 cores per processor
• Includes High Availability and Thin Provisioning
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Standard: $2,995 for two 2-processor nodes
• Savings: $1,405 per 2 processors (47%)

Advanced ($2,245 per processor)

• Up to 12 cores per processor
• Standard Edition + Availability (Live Migration, Continuous Availability, Network Security Zoning, Data Protection)
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Standard: $2,995 for two 2-processor nodes plus features above 
• Price Difference: $1,495 per 2 processors (50%) for features in the Availability package

Enterprise ($2,875 per processor)

• Up to 6 cores per processor
• Advanced Edition + Automated Resource Management (Dynamic Resource Allocation, Power Management, Storage Live Migration)
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Enterprise: $5,750 for two 2-processor nodes
• No price change per 2-processor nodes

Enterprise Plus ($3,495 per processor)

• Up to 12 cores per processor
• Enterprise Edition + Simplified Operations (Third-party Multipathing, Distributed Switch, Host Configuration Controls)
• Closest ancestor: VMware Infrastructure Enterprise: $5,750 for two 2-processor nodes plus features above
• Price Difference: $1,240 for features in the Simplified Operations package

Overall it looks like VMware is making pricing more aggressive for SMBs where it has the most price pressure from the free Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Hyper-V. To learn more, please see the official VMware vSphere 4 Pricing, Packaging and Licensing Overview.