There's a real battle in the virtualization market as VMware positions itself as cloud computing's operating system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is gaining traction and players like Citrix and Red Hat are also a threat. Virtualization's main selling point - the ability to use more computing capacity and save on servers - resonates for obvious reasons.
Amazon Web Services' Lambda is a powerful serverless computing tool, but it's AWS only. TriggerMesh wants to expand its reach beyond AWS.
Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop service still has yet to hit public preview. But its longtime virtualization partner Citrix already is building on top of it, in anticipation of its Q1 2019 debut.
Navigating "the pit of death" and hydraulic oil, a team of tinkerers renders a stunning point cloud in this challenging virtualization.
Microsoft's coming 'Windows Sandbox' feature is a lightweight virtual machine that allow users to run potentially suspicious software in isolation. It could debut in Windows 10 19H1.
Protecting your live data on the cloud is a real worry. IBM suggests, "Why not encrypt it?"
Kubernetes is hotter than hot? Why? A big reason is because many companies think it's the way to the future of the cloud.
Few companies know what's in their unstructured data, who created it or where it's stored. DataGravity for Virtualisation can reveal all this and more, and use that insight to better protect and secure...
Want a trustworthy, full-featured Kubernetes package that's not tied to a specific vendor? Then you should talk to Bitnami.
A vital part of the Kubernetes stack, etcd, is moving from Red Hat to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
Canonical wants to make it darn clear that, besides being the leading cloud Linux distributor, it's also a major Kubernetes player.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a packaging system for cloud native applications? Docker and Microsoft thought so, as they've created one: Cloud Native Application Bundle.
There's now an invisible way to hack into the popular cloud container orchestration system Kubernetes.
The company said its net income includes a loss of $161 million from its investment in Pivotal Software.
Kubernetes makes managing containers on the cloud easier, and Istio makes it even stronger by adding a network services mesh to it.
Microsoft is buying its former partner FSLogix and plans to use its technology to improve the virtualization of Office 365 applications.
The next major RHEL update is on its way with more container friendliness than ever.
The next version of Windows Server is at an early stage of development, but some of the new functionality for orchestrating virtualised compute, storage and networking resources on commodity hardware is available for early adopters to test. Here's how it's shaping up.
Did you know that Windows 8.1 Professional and Enterprise has built-in virtualization capabilities? Here's how to run multiple operating systems on a single PC.
Its Indian R&D center is playing an increasingly important role in the company's software development and IP creation, and the company has invested more to maximize its potential.
The best way to try out the Windows 8 Consumer Preview beta is with Oracle's VirtualBox virtualization program. Here's how to do it step-by-step.
VMware's vSphere 5 is the most intelligent, most scalable and most promising hypervisor yet.
The Australian Navy's officers-in-training are using an advanced virtual-reality training simulator to replicate combat missions on a 3,500-tonne warship
Greg Shultz shows you how to use Disk2vhd to move your Windows XP installation into Windows 7 and then run it with Windows Virtual PC.
Rick Vanover takes a look at the stories behind tech company names and logos.
As part of the course called "Cloud Computing in the Commute," students from the University of Michigan developed apps for a Ford Fiesta research vehicle.
Astronauts on the International Space Station are using virtualisation to increase the speed of communications to Earth
For the past few months, Microsoft has been touting the same handful of new Windows Server 2008 R2 features: DirectAccess, BranchCache and live migration with Hyper-V. But there are more than 100 new features in this 'minor' update to Windows Server. Here are 10 that IT pros might not know about -- but should.
VMware Player 3.0 has hit the Release Candidate (RC) stage and is available for public download. This latest release brings with it some neat new features.
Sun Microsystems' latest Open Source desktop virtualization software.
Virtual PC 2007 is a handy tool for running multiple operating systems. However, it's not without its limitations when running an older OS like Windows 3.1. Here's what it takes to get everything working.
ProxMox KVM/OpenVZ Virtualization Distro
Henry Lin, virtualization lead for Match Group, explains the company's process for thinking through virtualized compute.
Where the world's network operators debate what benefits there may be from relocating network functions from their base stations to cloud data centers. NFV can achieve many goals, yet stakeholders are far from agreement over which goals take precedent.
The innovation challenge highlights how companies are increasingly holding contests to garner ideas and potentially future talent.
Virtualisation has many advantages, but its use seems to be inconsistent. ZDNet UK speaks to four experts to learn their views on the subject
VMware chief technology officer Stephen Herrod shows a Visa mobile application on a Microsoft Windows CE device that is also running virtually on Google's Android OS
At the VMworld conference in San Francisco, ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz tours the exhibition floor to see what is happening at the show. Diaz also talks to David Bricker of IBM about the company's XIV substorage system, which works in the VMware environment, and to Tripwire's Michael Reznick about how the company's software helps IT managers audit and control their systems inside a data center.
At VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, Praveen Asthana, Dell's VP of storage and networking, talks about the company's virtualization strategy and how it plans to optimize the data center with fewer tools.
At VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, Doug Fisher, Intel's VP of software and services, talks about experimental work VMware and Intel are collaborating on to reduce overall power consumption inside Nehalem EX.
At the CloudWorld event in San Francisco, panelists question whether cloud computing, quickly gaining mainstream adoption, could replace system ownership entirely. Panelists include Joe Weinman of AT&T Business Solutions, Sam Charrington of Appistry, James Urquhart of Cisco Systems and the CNET Blog Network, and Timothy Chou of Ming Holdings.
Third-party switches offer more features
Monitoring and managing virtualization
By 2011, there could be more than 660 million virtualized desktops. John Whaley, CTO and Founder of MokaFive, talks about the issues surrounding current infrastructures and says that organizations deploying new systems need to think about four things--management, offline use, cost, and the user experience.
Research carried out by ZDNet.co.uk has revealed that although virtualisation is not a priority for many companies at the moment, it rates highly in plans for the next five years
Red Hat, Novell and VMware representatives discuss ZDNet.co.uk research, based on reader responses, that reveals systems management is not as easy as it should be
From secure containers to Docker support, to abstracted networking and storage, the most interesting features in the next version of Windows Server will come next year with a later preview and System Center beta.
This new version of the 2X ApplicationServer XG will blow you, and the competition, away. Price, ease of use, rapid deployment, and small size make XG the perfect application and desktop delivery system.
<p> The seventh generation of VMware's venerable desktop virtualisation platform, <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/">VMware Workstation</a>, includes support for Windows 7 hosts and guests as one of its key features. However, that's not all it has to offer, as we discovered when we downloaded the new version and put it through its paces. </p>
<p> The mid-term R2 refresh of Hyper-V Server 2008 sees Microsoft's free bare-metal hypervisor enhanced to match the capabilities of its full <a href="http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,1000001098,39671447,00.htm">Windows Server 2008 R2</a> implementation. In essence, that means greater scalability, plus the inclusion of VM migration tools left out of the original release — including live migration with minimal downtime. However, management tools remain an extra so, by itself, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx">Hyper-V Server 2008 R2</a> shouldn't be considered a self-contained virtualisation solution. </p>
<p> Launched in April, VMware's <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/">vSphere 4</a> is the latest major release of the company's ESX server virtualization platform. Highlights of the new suite are Thin Provisioning, Data Recovery, Fault Tolerance and Distributed Power Management, all of which we'll look at in more detail in this review. </p>
<p> <a href="http://www.parallels.com/">Parallels</a> (formerly SWsoft) has a 'bare-metal' server hypervisor in development, but this remains in <a href="http://www.parallels.com/products/server/wl/">beta testing</a> and is only properly available for the <a href="http://www.parallels.com/products/server/mac/">Apple Mac</a>. However, it does have a hypervisor alternative, in the form of <a href="http://www.parallels.com/products/virtuozzo/">Parallels Virtuozzo Containers</a> which takes a somewhat different approach to compared to VMware, Microsoft and Citrix products, yet delivers very similar results. </p>
<p> The open-source <a href="http://www.xen.org/">Xen</a> hypervisor has been around for a while now, mostly notably bundled with a variety of Linux distros, but has never had much impact. Even when the software was released as a commercial product and subsequently acquired by Citrix, it failed to win many hearts or minds. That could change with the launch of <a href="http://www.citrix.co.uk/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=683148&ntref=hp_nav_UK">XenServer 5</a>, which addresses many of the shortcomings of previous versions, putting the Citrix hypervisor firmly in the production-quality ranks. </p>
<p> <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/esx3i.html">ESXi</a> is the latest version of VMware's industry-leading hypervisor. Although you can still buy its big brother, <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/">ESX Server</a>, ESXi is now the main front-line VMware hypervisor. Rather than choosing between ESX Server and ESXi, people should probably install ESXi and pick a suitable license. More detail on the differences between the two products are available on <a href="http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006543">VMware's web site</a>. </p>
Innovation
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Microsoft officially announces 'Windows Sandbox' for running applications in isolation
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