In plain English: Today VMware outlined a service where you can pay a 3rd party host your VMware guests. They also released an API that would make it so you wouldn’t have to switch management suites when you switched providers. Or decided later on to host your VM’s yourself. The hosting service is called vCloud Express, and it currently includes 5 providers, expected to grow to hundreds (thousands ?). The API is part of their vCloud universe, which includes a lot of other stuff besides vCloud Express.

The most exciting part of this is independence. A customer shouldn’t have to switch software when they grow. Or when they shrink. When they’re focused on agility. When they’re focused on performance. When they’re focused on security. So many software vendors can only have one kind of customer. Though there’s room for improvement, this move by VMware suggests that they’re creating a platform for people to use no matter where’s they’re at.

Industry articles are saying vCloud Express competes directly with Amazon’s EC2 service, and though there is an overlap (you can now pay somebody, not VMware, to host VMware-powered virtual servers), VMware’s strategy is a bit different. They don’t want to be the service provider. They either want to sell you the bits OR sell the provider the bits. But they’re creating a flexible space for the customer, where we don’t have to change technologies or management tools, no matter how much/little involved we are in managing the low-level infrastructure.

I see vCloud Express as more akin to a combination of the open-source/ EC2 API-comptible Eucalyptus and EC2 itself.  Users can grow management process, in-house tools, and 3rd party tools around either a behind-the-firewall Eucalyptus environment or Amazon Ec2, because it’s basically written for the same API.  And if all goes according to plan, VMware vCloud API can achieve the same thing.  A mixed environment with common tools written against the same platform.

I have a million bones to pick with VMware’s cloud approach, and the standard corporate hubris involved in being a late-comer to an established market, and submitting a proprietary reality as a new standard

But for this week, I want to just say, “right on” to VMware.  Though they don’t see it this way, it’s a major course correction, and a great example for other enterprise software vendors.

vCloud Express is off to a great start, and I hope to see its vision of customer freedom truly realized.  If so, its success wouldn’t even be tied to VMware hypervisors…

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit bummed by VMware’s deprecated Linux experience, and Windows-centric mentality. If VMware gets too Windows-centric, it’ll only be competing with Microsoft. I want VMware to do well against Microsoft! And I believe that to do so, it needs to deliver an experience that doesn’t marginalaize Linux users.

Here’s how VMWare can improve the Linux experience:

1. Improve the vmware-tools install on Linux guests. (All VMware products, all host OS’s)
   On a Windows guest, you run a binary (by clicking it!), and you’re done. On the Linux side, you run a binary (most likely via command-line), and then visually, you‘d think you were done. but you’re not. You installed it, now you configure it. Seriously, whenever I train or help users with this part, I feel guilty/embarrassed about how idiosyncratic it feels. The output of the rpm/install script never tells you “now you configure it.” Sure the docs do. But on Windows you don’t have to do all that. VMware, I won’t hold you responsible for the command-line parts, that’s (mostly) in Linux’s hands. But you could longterm do away with the configure, and short-term, announce at the end of the install that, “Now it’s time to configure.”
2. Make a Virtual Infrastructure client for Linux.
   You made one for Windows. I think you love Windows more than you love Linux. (And yes, I am aware of the web client. I’ll pretend you didn’t suggest that.)
3. VMware Converter is way more difficult with Linux than Windows.
   • The VMware Converter program itself only runs on Windows
   • Converting Linux physical-to-virtual VM’s is a more burdensome process for Linux guests, with more rules and hoops than Windows guests have.
4. I feel like you’re slowly taking away ssh/ “service console”/ file system access to your ESX-based products. You’ve only done this to 3i so far. And there is a workaround. But the vibe I get (I hope I’m wrong) is that you’re trying to wean us off of standards communications and file-system access to this stuff.
5. Give VMWare Server 2.0 a Linux client.
   I know you took away the non-web client from both Windows and Linux, but since Windows people can use the new VI client to access VMWare Server, I’m still counting this as a ding against Linux users.

Real talk.

Now below you can see the web-ui get even more inconvenient when you want “console.” By default, when you select a console view of a guest, you get only a partial view of it, ensconced in scrolly bars. You do have a fullscreen option, but nothing in between, let alone the “fit to screen” option available in the VMWare Server 1.x console client.

To be continued!

VMware Server 1.x felt whole, right off the bat. With VMware Server 2.0, I have this “well, this is just the beta, surely there will be radical improvements” vibe.

While there are a million good and bad features here, what will save us both a lot of time is for you to know that as of now, VMware Server 2.x administration is totally web-based, and that is almost all you can think about or notice when you’re working with this tool. I will give to credit to VMware, they’ve enabled a lot of functionality (rebooting, creating VM’s, etc) on a web-client that somehow doesn’t involve a giant, slow Java applet. That said, there are many situations when you feel the web pain. The web page has to “think” and rebuild itself a lot. Console access requires a plugin in your browser (which kinda kills the whole “all-you-need-is-a-web-browser” spirit). People in the forums are missing the fit-to-screen feature you got with the “regular” console in VMware Server 1.x, as am I.

VMware is taking a big risk here. The next version of the (regular) VI client will be able to manage VMware Server guests, somewhat softening the blow of not otherwise having one. But this will only help people who have the (not free) VI. I see the “strategy” here… entice VMware Server users to jump up to VI. However I don’t believe it will work, and will actually turn people off of VMware.

Despite supporting more OS’s and architectures, I feel VMware Server 2.0 is “less” of a product than VMware Server 1.x.

To be continued.

VMware Fusion 1.1 and VMware Importer (Parallels to VMware) beta are out!

Looking over the release dates, it looks like this is the first post-Leopard release of VMware Fusion, so if you have Leopard, you especially want to grab this.

Then there’s VMware Importer, a new, beta tool for converting your Parallels guests to VMware (Fusion) guests. The docs say it works with Windows guests (Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista), and that because enough info about your (virtual) hardware will change during the conversion process (just in terms of identifiers I assume, not actual profile), you’ll probably need to reactivate you Windows license upon conversion.

While we’re talking about Macs, VMware Fusion, and Ben Gertzfield, I might as well link to a pretty cool (video) Google TechTalk Ben gave about VMware Fusion. It’s about an hour, and the first 10 minutes are the standard talking points VMware gives about “it’s about apps,” etc, etc. But at about minute 11 it gets very interesting as Ben talks about how VMware approached certain Mac-specific problems.

Aside from the ridic soundtrack, this video is compelling.

Yes, VMware Fusion is already available for free (in Beta). But this video shows features not currently available in the beta that you can download right now. Most notable is that VMware Fusion has responded to and one-upped Parallels Desktop’s ability to have each Windows application be its own little window in OS X, rather than have one “parent” window host all guest applications.

Parallels calls this “coherence.” VMware Fusion calls this “unity.” They’re pretty much the same, except that VMware Fusion can have each window appear individually in OS X’s Expose feature, something Parallels does not.

That said, Parallels is fully released, and VMware Fusion is not. And the unity feature doesn’t exist in the beta that’s out. Add to that the fact that VMware hasn’t announced how much/ if it will charge for VMware Fusion (its features are positioned between the free VMware Player, and $189 VMware Workstation).

Related: Comments from the Digg people.

• Parallels Desktop out of beta! (Mac-tel users rejoice, and read pstam’s review)
• You can hack your VMware .vmx file to enable experimental 3D support (very cool of VMware to talk about the semi-underground video making the rounds)
• using MySpace for a VMware/NetApp blog ? (of course!)
• Did you know there is a “major” virtualization conference? It’s called “Virtualization Conference.” really.
• As of February 27th, 2007, 8 of the top 8 vote-getting initiatives on Dell’s IdeaStorm website are about getting Linux pre-installed, other open source software pre-installed, Windows software not-installed, and improving Linux support (sheesh, can the drum beat any louder?)

Click To Play

Wowza… So… Parallels for Mac OS X has been out a for a bit. But it’s previously been best described as “…like VMware Workstation for a Mac.” In other words, cool, but nothing beyond VMware, and if VMware actually had a product out for OS X, then you’d probably grab that.

But last Friday Parallels released a new feature that is pretty compelling, and raises the bar for the concept of “abstraction.” Rather than having a parent window that hosts all of the guest OS’s windows, there is a “coherence mode” option that has each window of the guest OS appear as an individual window in the host OS, making itSO the experience of using an application in the either guest OS or host OS, is pretty darn similar. Certain keyboard commands and drag and drop is supported between the two environments. The video above demonstrates this better than all these words. Check it out!

I’ll let the video do the talkin’.