Virtualization by Davis: “Technotes: Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package” plus 4 more

Technotes: Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package
Hotlink SuperVISOR for VMware 1.5 allows management of Hyper-V, KVM and XenServer through vCenter
Citrix releases CloudStack to Apache
VMware announces changes to its Executive Management Team
The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty - Webcast - 4/12/2012

Technotes: Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 02:16 PM PDT

Technotes: Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package

Hotlink SuperVISOR for VMware 1.5 allows management of Hyper-V, KVM and XenServer through vCenter

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 03:54 PM PDT

In recent times many companies are in the condition to plan the introduction of a second virtualization platform or even to have already the need to manage more than one.
Causes may be the most disparate: licensing costs, independence from a single vendor, processes optimization, etc.

Approaches to cross-virtualization also can be of different types.

There are three approaches that you can take to having one cross platform virtualization management strategy:

Assemble as management stack from best of breed third party solutions that support both of your virtualization platforms. For example, performance and capacity monitoring vendors like VKernel (now part of Quest Software), SolarWinds, VMTurbo, and Zenoss all support multiple virtualization platforms. Application Performance Management vendors like AppDynamics, New Relic, BlueStripe, Correlsense, and ExtraHop Networks tend to be agnostic of the underlying virtualization platform. Most backup vendors like Veeam support more than one hypervisor as well.

Standardize upon Microsoft SCOM as your management console, and then use plug-ins to SCOM (management packs) to support other virtualization platforms. For example you can use the Veeam nworks product to manage your VMware environment from within Micrsosoft SCOM. You can use the BlueStripe plugin to SCOM to manage all of the applications deployed across both VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms.

Use Hotlink, to extend the reach of vCenter to Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer.

Hotlink SuperVISOR allows you to manage vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat KVM and Citrix XenServer all through a single vCenter console. Version 1.5 adds the following functionalities:

Snapshot Manager – Administrators can create, utilize, and manage cross-platform snapshots inside the VMware vCenter console – providing a single point of management for heterogeneous virtual machines

Template Manager – Users are able to create and deploy a single template across all target hypervisors, eliminating the time-consuming and inefficient process of building and maintaining platform-specific virtual machine templates

Homogenous Live Migration – VMware vCenter is now extended to provide live migration (e.g. vMotion) of Hyper-V, XenServer, and KVM virtual machines within homogeneous clusters – enabling the robust VMware management capabilities to be utilized for cross-platform, critical workloads

We recommend further reading of Bernd Harzog's article.

Labels: HotLink, management, vCenter, VMware

Citrix releases CloudStack to Apache

Posted: 04 Apr 2012 09:23 AM PDT

Citrix System has submitted for approval its CloudStack Software to the Apache Software Foundation to become, in the end, a fully certified open-source platform.

Assuming it gets traction with developers, CloudStack should present a formidable competitor for primary targets OpenStack and VMware, as well as fellow open-source cloud vendor Eucalyptus. The software already claims thousands of private IaaS clouds running atop it, including large production clouds at Zynga, Bechtel and GoDaddy. Those big names help explain why Citrix paid more than $200 million for Cloud.com in July.

Citrix has abandoned its Olympus OpenStack project that was its main cloud infrastructure project since May 2011.

Via: http://gigaom.com/cloud/theres-a-new-open-source-cloud-in-town-meet-apache-cloudstack/

Labels: Citrix, cloud, CloudStack, OpenStack

VMware announces changes to its Executive Management Team

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 11:19 AM PDT

Today VMware announced changes to its executive management team:

Carl Eschenbach has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer and Co-President. Eschenbach previously served as VMware's Co-President, Customer Operations.
Raghu Raghuram has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure and Management. Raghuram previously served as VMware's General Manager and Senior Vice President.
Mark Peek, VMware's Chief Financial Officer and Co-President, Business Operations, has decided to take a new opportunity as Chief Financial Officer of Workday, where he currently serves as a member of their Board of Directors. Peek will stay with VMware until June 1, 2012. VMware announced the start of a selection process for a new CFO.

VMware also announced that financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 are expected to broadly meet or slightly exceed the range of financial guidance it provided January 23, 2012.

Labels: Executive, VMware