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I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of  various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will  Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday is the final day of Microsoft TechEd NA 2011. I’ll be back at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA one more time with live session notes, comments pics, and other bits of audio and video along the way.

07.25.11 – moved the CoverItLive widget after the page break

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Wednesday’s CoveritLive widget from Microsoft Teched North America 2011 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. Tune in for a combination of live comments and session summaries.

05.19.11 – moved CiL Ticker after page break
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I’m headed back to MSTechEd NA 2011 at the GWCC in Atlanta, GA again, and here’s another CoveritLive Ticker for Tuesday’s live comments, pics, videos, etc. I also regularly add other attendee’s tweets to get a bigger perspective on things as they happen.

05.19.11 – moved CiL Ticker after page break
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MSTechEd 2011 kicked off this morning from the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, GA. I attended the Keynote session, and the following are my summary impressions and thoughts.

If you would like to follow my live Monday CoveritLive stream of comments, tweets, photos, videos, and audio tune in here:

http://vmetc.com/2011/05/16/msteched-2011-live-monday/

Cloud Power
There is no doubt that the primary message for today and the rest of this week is Microsoft’s private and public cloud offerings, tools, and integration. Whether from a phone, tablet, notebook, or desktop, and of course in the datacenter, Microsoft plans on a future dependent on cloud applications and services.

By the way, Microsoft mentioned that Apple IOS and Android based devices would be supported in the MS cloud. We listened to hints about using System Center via an iPad and Office via a phone, but I did not get an impression that anything actually exists for these devices today. Personally, I’d be happy with IOS or Android Apps for the Office Suite, but we’ll see where this ends up soon enough.

Just like VMware’s messaging, Microsoft spoke for a brief period about the future of server deployments and viirtualization’s impact on server hardware sales and implementation. The gist of this part of the talk was that virtualization leads to more server deployments without significant impact to server hardware sales, and that IT Pros will eventually shift to either higher level functions while their physical infrastructures are no longer as important or even in their own control. This line of speaking has always made the guy in the trenches shutter, but it is a reality of the cloud. SLAs and contract guarentees will soon become the new configuration tweaks for today’s private datacenter admins who migrate to the hybrid cloud of the future.

Cloud Manager Read the rest of this entry »

Tune in for Monday live coverage from TechEd 2011 in Atlanta, GA

05.19.11 – moved CiL Ticker after page break
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Join me as I wander around the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC), the site of Microsoft TechEd NA 2011, today. Even though the official conference does not start until tomorrow, there is plenty happening between the Georgia Dome, Phillips Arena, and the GWCC

I will occasionally ad some live comments, audio, video and photos throughout my day.

Experience Sunday at TechEd 2011 vicariously through VMETC.com!

05.19.11 – moved CiL Ticker after page break
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