Archive for April, 2008

Or are they just playing for stupid???

Today I was reading a blog post on the Windows Virtualization Team Blog, on their 3rd story about Microsoft’s Quick Migration and VMware’s VMotion. It is just too funny to see how Microsoft is dealing with a lack of functionality. According to their research customers are not changing their patterns, even when they have the option to manage physicals hosts in their environments during the day without any form of downtime for their Virtual Machines, they (according to Microsoft research) still want to delay physical server maintenance till the evening hours. Thanks to this research Microsoft is claiming that being able to move virtual machines around physical servers is really not something useful to have. The thing that really amazes me is that I see Microsoft (and others) often make assumptions based on the old-fashion one-app-per-one-physical-box time era. Please wake up! Virtualization is a Disruptive Technology… You shouldn’t be working in the wonderful world of IT is you are not willing to move forward (at least in my opinion). I do know for a fact lot’s of customers are using VMotion (or live migration) in production… sometimes helping them to do server maintenance… and really daring and probably red bull drinking extreme sport IT managers even try this during the middle of the day…

But guess what… the ability to move virtual machines while running without downtime solves MORE then just silly hardware maintenance!!! It creates an environment where workloads can actively be rebalanced so you can better serve your application needs and the end-users using them. And I am sure this new innovative (well at least 3 years ago when it came out) technology is being welcomed by many extreme sport red bull drinking IT managers  It is even better to see that technology is not sitting still again… Storage VMotion, a recent released technology, now-a-days also allows you to dynamically balance storage across different tiers of storage as well (No, Microsoft, this is not just a feature to help prevent storage hardware maintenance). With a bit of patient we will get our hands on the continuous availability technology VMware has demonstrated at VMworld events where a VM can be continuously replicated across a simple network cable, so that when a server does die on you, the VM will keep on running without a hickup… Long live innovation… for the IT people preferring to maintain their hardware in the evenings… I guess you must not live in a neighborhood like mine with a nice strip club 

P.S. Just to clarify, before everyone flames me, yes I work for VMware… But I work for technology, not for a company, so I choose to work for VMware because I like their technology (I am free to switch jobs any time I like). No one in VMware asked me to write this and feel free to comment if you disagree or agree  you might even convince me to apply for a job at Microsoft 

The Microsoft Article