VMware vows to overhaul data center with "cloud operating system"

Page 2 of 3

New fault tolerance capabilities will guarantee failover with zero data loss and zero downtime in the case of hardware failure, Balkansky says. This is an improvement over today's VMware high availability software, in which failing over requires about a two-minute service interruption, he says.

VMware also collaborated with Cisco to develop a Distributed Switch, a software switch that standardizes server security, storage and network settings, allowing the automation of configuration management and reduction of errors related to manual processes, according to VMware. (See related story, VMware partners line up for vSphere launch)

Pund-IT analyst Charles King says VSphere, coupled with a new EMC Symmetrix storage system designed for virtual data centers, is a big step forward in cloud computing technology.

"Frankly, the cloud is something that cannot exist without virtualization," King says. With EMC's new system highlighting the importance of mapping virtual servers to the supporting storage environment, "that's a place where the two companies working together can provide a very interesting and very powerful value proposition," he says.

In conjunction with VMware's announcement, Unisys is releasing a line of servers with vSphere embedded. "The VMware software allows greater scalability, more virtual machines you can put onto one server," says Rod Sapp, Unisys director of marketing for enterprise servers.

Among Unisys' new line of servers is the ES7000, a high-end machine with as many as 96 Intel-based processing cores. Previously, VMware was able to scale to 32 cores, but with vSphere it will scale up to 64 cores and enable 256 VMs per server, Sapp says. Citrix can also scale its virtualization technology up to 64 cores but the limit for Microsoft's Hyper-V is 24, according to Sapp.

256 is lot more VMs than will fit on most servers. But in general customers can expect to place about 30% more VMs on each server with vSphere, Balkansky says.

As with any new IT product, there are limitations in vSphere. The ability to federate the internal data center with those of cloud providers will not be available until later this year. This federation will let customers manage internal and external resources from the same pane of glass, but it will only work with the products of vendors who are using vSphere.

VMware's cloud partners include more than 500 services providers such as Terremark, Savvis, Telefonica, T-Systems, SunGard and BlueLock. But the list does not include Amazon, one of the most popular vendors offering storage and compute services over the Internet cloud.

Additionally, vSphere will not be capable of managing the hypervisors of other vendors, raising the potential of vendor lock-in. Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager, on the other hand, is capable of managing VMs created with VMware's ESX hypervisor.

Microsoft has criticized VMware for making its products too expensive, an issue VMware addressed with vSphere by offering additional pricing options to lower the point of entry. Packages for small IT shops start at $166 per processor. Last year, VMware made its basic hypervisor free, but still charges for the management tools that help data centers realize all the flexibility benefits of virtualization.