Data Center Strategies

Meet me on the Gartner Blog Network

2010-06-10T12:18:27-07:00

Hi Everyone: As part of Burton Group's integration into Gartner, we are moving to the Gartner Blog Network (affectionately known as GBN).

You can follow me here: http://blogs.gartner.com/richard-jones/

New Readers Begin There!

2010-05-18T12:08:22-07:00

Just to let everybody know, this will be my last post on the DCS blog.

Ok, don’t panic, I’m not disappearing from the blogosphere, just moving my blog onto the Gartner Blogging Network effectively immediately. So if you want to continue to see my thoughts, musings, and general ramblings on topics such as server design, blades, benchmarks, I/O virtualization, operating systems, cloud computing etc, just point your feed reader to:

http://blogs.gartner.com/nik-simpson.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

Understanding the Ways of the VMforce

2010-04-29T08:58:45-07:00

On Tuesday VMware and Salesforce.com announced their joint venture - vmforce.com. Both vendors offered informative blog posts about the announcement, and I recommend reading the following:

VMforce and VMware’s “Open PaaS” Strategy (Steve Herrod)
VMForce: Why? What? How? (Anshu Sharma)
VMforce Provides Spring Cloud Platform (Rod Johnson)

These posts are also worth reading:

Analyzing the VMforce announcement and PaaS portability challenges and the VMforce example (William Vambenepe)
Duncan Epping’s wrap up post

The move makes sense for both vendors. VMware understands that existing as a virtual infrastructure platform for Windows applications – where Microsoft is a direct competitor – is a losing battle. Many vendors have tried and failed in their efforts to take down Microsoft. In the end, the problem for Microsoft’s competitors was always the same – integration across the Microsoft stack would always win out. Paul Maritz realizes this and understands that without challenging Microsoft’s dominance in the application space, VMware will eventually succumb to Microsoft as the preferred virtual infrastructure platform for Windows applications. Partnering with providers such as Salesforce.com is a logical move for VMware. The more VMware can help Salesforce.com and Force.com pick up customers, the more they may see Microsoft’s dominance in the application space erode. This isn’t a strategy that plays out overnight, but over the next 10+ years. Along the way, I expect VMware to partner with key Microsoft rivals such as Google. Such a move is too sensible for both companies not to happen at some point.

For Salesforce.com, the VMware partnership and integration with VMware’s SpingSource Spring Framework offers the potential to bring in a large number of new customers. In addition, the combined VMforce.com solution utilizes VMware vSphere backend infrastructure. As standard cloud API and data models emerge over the coming years, close alignment with VMware should remove concerns of VMforce.com being perceived as a niche solution, and will be one that leverages known and trusted back end virtual infrastructure. This is important when you consider factors such as regulatory compliance. Large enterprises turning to the cloud are wary of lock-in, and the more providers can offer secure solutions that are compatible across numerous cloud solutions, the more likely enterprises are to invest.

While I like the move, there are still many unanswered questions. For starters, making it easy for Java developers to run complex application stacks in the cloud is a good start, but what about the .NET developer ecosystem? If VMware and its competitors want to take market share from Microsoft, they’re going to have to entice .NET developers to come their way. I have said for some time that I see Azure evolving to be both a cloud and on-premise solution. So in time Microsoft will be offering even more compelling reasons to to come their way or stay with them, and Microsoft’s competitors will need a very good answer to counter. If VMware succeeds with “Open PaaS",” they may have the answer – a Java-based PaaS platform with choice on par with VMware’s vCloud ecosystem (1,000+ providers).

It’s also important to note that VMforce.com is not a pure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) play. You can’t package any app as a VM and deploy it to VMforce.com. Instead, the solution is positioned to support Java apps, a Force.com backend database, and leverage VMware vSphere plumbing. As a joint venture, VMware couldn’t get into IaaS for the simple reason that it would position VMware as a competitor with the providers in its vCloud ecosystem.

Finally, if you go back to Steve Herrod’s original post on the VMforce.com announcement, I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that “Open PaaS” was placed in quotes. In the past, I have asked vendors if some of their “features” should be in quotes, insinuating that a particular feature was a bit misleading. If you’ve been in IT long enough, you already know that “open” is a relative word, with openness subject to the number of supported vendor or provider alternatives out there. In the case of VMforce, “open” does not have to imply open source, but rather a defacto standard for PaaS with a large choice of provider solutions.

The following statement from Steve Herrod’s post alluded to VMware’s plans for Open PaaS.

One thing in particular mention here should strike you … we will wholeheartedly enable deployment of these cloud portable applications to clouds that are not based on our underlying vSphere virtualization technology. This support is a key aspect of openness and will enable a broader and more competitive ecosystem of compatible Spring PaaS offerings. And this in turn will be the reason why developers will bet on Spring-based applications for maximum flexibility. Stay tuned as you’ll see many more announcements around this very soon.

Steve is implying that apps deployed to VMforce.com can be moved to non-VMware infrastructure without a Force.com backend, which I mentioned earlier when discussing Open PaaS. If VMware succeeds with VMforce and gets numerous other providers to support Open PaaS along the way, they will have a serious alternative to Azure, and one that is devoid of provider lock-in.

As James McBride once said, the details always tell the story. Right now, we have a story. Whether or not the story will be remembered depends on the details. Give us standard APIs, application models, metadata sets, security frameworks, and modernized service-level definitions that apply to emerging cloud-based architectures, and we have a very compelling story. So far, the book on VMforce.com has a nice cover, but the meaningful content remains a mystery.

Digesting the MMS 2010 Keynotes and Announcements

2010-04-23T09:35:26-07:00

With the postponement of Catalyst Europe, I had the opportunity to virtually attend the Microsoft MMS conference keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. MMS has long been one of Microsoft’s best conferences, and this year didn’t disappoint. I’m not going to rehash the major announcements, but you can read the full details in the following Microsoft System Center team blog posts:

As I had done in previous conferences, I commented throughout the keynotes via twitter. Here is a summary of my take on Bob Muglia’s Tuesday keynote and Brad Anderson’s Wednesday keynote.

Tuesday Keynote – Bob Muglia

Bob opened by stating that Microsoft’s has been building dynamic IT management for the last seven years as part of their Dynamic Systems Initiative. Microsoft is essentially underlining the fact that they are not newcomers to dynamic IT and cloud and is playing on its strength in systems management.
Bob highlighted the need for standard service models, and I agree. I started discussing this topic with vendors in 2008 and blogged about standard models in the security context early last year. I recently discussed this issue in my posts on metadata standards and the infrastructure authority. Still, vendors need to move beyond talk about standards for service delivery, metadata, and application interfaces, and deliver them. Mobility to and among cloud infrastructure-as-a-service providers requires these standard models. It’s time for vendors to show their hands, even if they’re holding proprietary service delivery models, metadata sets, and interfaces today. There are far too many competing interests to expect vendors to agree on an industry standard any time soon. Still, progress is being made on the standards front. SNIA’s Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), the DMTF’s Open Cloud Standards Incubator, and the Cloud Security Alliance’s work on standard cloud security models are three good examples.
It would be nice if Microsoft would offer a complete set of documentation on how to stage their on-stage demos. The orchestration practices that were demonstrated are of high value and Microsoft should share the configuration information with their clients.
Microsoft’s demos were Microsoft-centric, as expected. I would like to see Microsoft demonstrate integration with third party management products, which would strengthen their position on interoperability. Most Gartner clients are not homogenous Microsoft shops; demonstrating orchestration capabilities across multi-vendor management stacks would speak to the needs of the typical enterprise organization. If Microsoft doesn’t want to do this at a conference, then why not offer this information online?
I thought Microsoft made a great move in acquiring Opalis, and liked seeing the Opalis integration and System Center Service Manager 2010 shown on-stage.
Microsoft demonstrated long distance VM live migration, and in the process Muglia took a swipe at VMware, noting that moving VMs to new sites requires deep integration and validation across all management services. In the demo, Microsoft was able to show processes such as validating that a recent backup was completed before allowing the inter-site live migration to continue. While the demo was impressive, I would have been even more impressed if Microsoft validated the recent backup by integrating with a third party tool such as NetBackup.
Microsoft is talking cloud using the terms “shared cloud” and “dedicated cloud.” There are so many disparate terms out there for cloud that pretty soon Rosetta Stone will release a CD on speaking cloud. The Gartner/Burton teams have been working closely on defining a core set of cloud terminology, and its important for vendors in the space to adopt common definitions.
Edwin Yuen demonstrated System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) vNext, which will include drag-and-drop capabilities for deploying multi-tier applications. The demo was powerful, but my existing concerns about SCVMM were unanswered. Today the product is not extensible, and it does not support the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) industry standard; I’m hoping those two features make it in to SCVMM vNext.
Microsoft’s demo of cloud service management looked solid from the administrator’s point of view, but nothing was shown from the consumer’s point of view. IT service delivery requires the presentation of services to consumers using intuitive interfaces that the customer understands. Microsoft has yet to show a consumer-centric view of how consumers will interact with Microsoft cloud service management.

Wednesday Keynote – Brad Anderson

Brad opened by talking about how the Windows 7 release was the most significant event in the desktop space in a very long time. I would counter that equally significant was Microsoft’s announcement to end-of-life (EOL) Windows XP in April 2014. The XP EOL announcement put IT organizations “on the clock” to replace their existing client endpoint OS, and in many cases re-architect all major aspects of user experience and application delivery.
There was a good discussion about power management, but one interesting area of research that was not mentioned was Microsoft’s work on in-guest VM power management. Take a look at Joulemeter for more information.
I liked hearing Brad talk about the future desktop representing a convergence of services. This is a concept I recently discussed in the post “The Next Gen Desktop’s Cloudy Future.”
I saw a bit of irony seeing Microsoft discuss Hyper-V R2 SP1’s dynamic memory feature on stage. A year ago Microsoft was solidly against VMware’s memory overcommit feature, which allows VMs to share a physical pool of memory on a server. Jeff Woolsey did a nice job describing Hyper-V’s dynamic memory capabilities in the following posts:

Microsoft demonstrated the RemoteFX technology that was acquired from Calista. It will be interesting to see how quickly Microsoft’s IHV partners offer a shipping solution. Several have stated their intent to support the technology.
Microsoft demonstrated their new Windows InTune product – a cloud service for managing PCs. While I like where Microsoft is taking PC management, I’m still disappointed that they have yet to address desktop OS licensing for cloud-based desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) deployments. Device-based desktop OS licensing is incompatible with the on-demand and device-agnostic nature of cloud service delivery, and Microsoft needs to address this issue sooner rather than later.
I was disappointed by the System Center Service Manager demonstration on compliance validation. The demo included no mention of virtualization or virtual infrastructure, which is the default x86 application platform of many of our clients. If the product is not providing controls and validation capabilities for multi-tenant VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer environments, then it is not ready for prime time.

Overall I was very impressed with the conference keynotes. System Center Service Manager and Microsoft’s increasing integration of the Opalis software are two areas to watch. Muglia’s talk about standard service delivery models also leads me to believe that Microsoft is poised to aggressively go after the cloud provider space. The release of Microsoft’s Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit and growing number of partners in Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center Alliance (DDA) is proof of that. What did you think of MMS 2010? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Microsoft in Data Center ARM Race?

2010-04-21T19:23:22-07:00

Yesterday, an eagle-eyed reporter at EE Times noticed an interesting job on offer at Microsoft in its BING Autopilot group. According to the job ad, Bing Autopilot is responsible for designing the infrastructure behind Microsoft’s Bing search platform, and as part of its duties the group evaluates new technologies with solid state disk (SSD) and ARM processors specifically referenced. Microsoft looking at SSD technologies doesn’t come as big surprise (if you aren’t looking at SSD, you need to get with the program), but the mention of the ARM processor has certainly turned some heads.

In years past, Microsoft has been associated almost exclusively with the x86 server platform, yes there have been ports to other platforms (I’ve personally seen Windows on MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, and CLIPPER) but they’ve all died a pretty rapid death with Itanium being the latest casualty. There has been speculation about Microsoft doing something with ARM going back at least a year but this is the first concrete indication of their interest, so the question has to be asked, what does Microsoft want ARM for?

If you look at how search engine infrastructure is built you can get a good idea. Search engines are invariably built on scale-out principles with hundreds or more likely thousands of individual servers working in concert to deliver search results. More interestingly, these servers tend to be relatively weak in terms of CPU power, they’re not using 4-socket 128-thread monsters, for the most part it’s cheap and cheerful two-socket servers with an emphasis on power efficiency and small form factor, which is where ARM comes in. ARM may not be fast compared to the latest Intel and AMD processors, but it’s wickedly efficient in terms of power consumption which brings two benefits:

Reduced power consumption/node: if your processor operates at 10 watts instead of 50 watts, that’s a large potential saving.
Smaller form factors: low power requirements translate to small power supplies and passive cooling both of which help designers to pack more servers in given amount of data center real estate.

What Microsoft no doubt wants to know is whether using ARM in the servers that power Bing would allow them to maintain or increase performance within a given data center power foot print. For example, if ARM enables Bing to process 10% more search requests for the same amount of power, then that’s a potentially big win.

As a footnote, if you’re getting excited about the possibility of Windows running on an ARM-based netbook, don’t hold your breath. First, we know next to nothing about the underlying software for Bing, the OS platform may not be Windows at all, it could be a kernel specifically designed to support search operations, or horror of horrors it might even be LINUX ;-) Second, even if it is Windows underneath Bing, there’s no guarantee that work done to support Bing would ever make it outside Microsoft data centers.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

When All You Have is Hammer

2010-04-12T19:19:16-07:00

Everything looks like a nail, a truism that ASHRAE (The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has just demonstrated in its advice to data center operators on how to achieve greater cooling efficiency in the data center (see ASHRAE Standard 90.1). In ASHRAE’s opinion, the way to achieve data center cooling efficiency is through the use of various economizer techniques (air-side, water-side …) to reduce the amount of energy used by the cooling plant. Unfortunately, this is a rather narrow view of the problem, focused on the stuff that ASHRAE members do best, i.e. air-conditioning and chilled water plants. The ASHRAE standard has now drawn a universal thumbs down from some of the largest data center operators (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros Technology and Nokia) who issued a joint statement urging ASHRAE to re-think it’s position.

The truth is that economizer are just one approach to achieving more efficient energy usage and the best approach will vary based on a host of factors. For example, one company might favor widespread adoption of server virtualization as a way to reduce energy consumption, while another might be able to scavenge energy from the waste heat produced by the data center and use it heat buildings. Both approaches lead to more efficient use of energy without requiring the use of economizers. The problem with ASHRAE’s approach is that there is a danger it will get built into building construction codes and potentially restrict innovation in the data center. James Hamilton’s blog entry on the subject (see here) does an excellent job of describing the problems of such a restrictive definition.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

A Busy Week (Part 2)

2010-04-06T14:47:44-07:00

Funnily enough, the week turned out to be so busy that I never got around to talking about AMD’s Opteron 6000 series. The main changes vs. the previous high-end Opterons are:

Twice as many cores: The 6000 family tops out at 12 cores/socket, a feat achieved by taking two 6-core modules and putting them on the same chip.
Memory: The two channel DDR2 memory controller is replaced by a four channel DDR3 memory controller to improve both memory capacity (12 DIMMS/CPU) and memory throughput.
2- and 4-socket support: Vendors can build both 2- and 4-socket servers using the Opteron 6000 family.
No 8-socket support: Anybody waiting for 8-socket Opteron 6000 server should prepare for a disappointment. Existing users of 8-socket Opteron servers will have to turn to Intel if they need 8-sockets in the future.
Direct Connect 2.0: Previous generations of 4-socket AMD-based servers had the sockets connected to each other in a ring configuration, so that accessing memory attached to another socket might involve two hops. The new architecture connects the sockets in a mesh, with each socket connected directly to the other 3 sockets. The net result is reduced memory latency for access to memory attached to another socket.

All this adds up to a rather different view of the how the commodity server market will develop. AMD is putting it’s faith in sweet spot of the market, large 2-socket servers and cheaper 4-socket configurations, with an emphasis on power efficiency. Given AMD’s desire to get a larger percentage of the commodity server market this makes a lot of sense, A few extra percentage points of market share in the 2-socket market will do much more good for their bottom-line than complete ownership of the 8-socket and above market.

The wisdom of AMD’s decision to cede the 8-socket and above market to Intel’s Xeon 7500 series remains to be seen. On the one hand, historically this market has been tiny, for several reasons:

Reliability: The market for applications that require large servers has always required high levels of reliability as well. Put simply, any application that demands tens of processors and terabytes of memory is almost by definition “mission critical” since it usually serves an important function in the IT infrastructure.
Cost: Systems that have offered 8 or more sockets have required specialist chipsets to deliver the required scalability and availability. As soon as you start needing proprietary chipsets, the cost goes up dramatically.
Scale out: Many applications that used to require large socket-count systems have been redesigned to scale out across many smaller servers.

On the other hand, Intel’s Xeon 7500 removes at least two of the reasons, reliability and cost, by borrowing the reliability features of Itanium and enabling OEMs to build “cookie-cutter” 8-socket configurations that can support 1TB of memory with 8GB DIMMs.

Footnote: At launch, AMD didn’t offer any VMmark numbers, leaving that job to their OEMs who will no doubt have something to say on the matter when they officially launch their AMD-based offerings later this quarter.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

Microsoft Pulls The Plug on Itanium

2010-04-02T12:34:10-07:00

Microsoft will not support Itanium processors with future releases Windows Server according to the Windows Server Division blog. So Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last release of Windows on Itanium, with support ending in July 2013 (extended support continues to 2018). It’s no coincidence that this announcement comes in the same week that Intel announced the Xeon 75xx family which brings the Itanium’s reliability features to the x64 commodity server platform (see here for more information). For Microsoft, reliability was the only thing that Itanium had going for it, the number of Windows licenses sold on Itanium is negligible compared to the x64 business. So the decision to drop Itanium was probably a relatively easy one.

For the Itanium platform, the news is bad, but not disastrous, at least for now. The vast majority of Itanium processors go into systems running HP-UX, so losing Windows support isn’t the end of the world. The problem is that Microsoft isn’t the only vendor abandoning the Itanium platform, Redhat made a similar decision at the end of 2009, announcing that it would not support Itanium on the 6.0 release of Redhat Enterprise Linux (see here). That leaves only Novell (Suse Enterprise Linux), HP (HP-UX, OpenVMS), and Groupe Bull (GCOS) in the operating system business for Itanium. There are other LINUX distributions that support Itanium, but none of them have much in the way of enterprise ready credentials. Of those operating system platforms, only HP-UX and OpenVMS actually require Itanium. GCOS and SEL are both supported on x64 processors, which will probably hasten the end of support on Itanium now that x64 can match Itanium for reliability.

So HP is likely to be the last man standing in the Itanium systems business, but the new features and scalability of the 75xx Xeon beg the question, “will HP adapt its Itanium hardware to support the Xeon 75xx and port HP-UX or OpenVMS to the x64 platform?”

Technically, adapting the Integrity Superdome server platform probably isn’t that hard. The 93xx Itanium and 75xx Xeon processor families share the same memory controller and quick path interconnects, simplifying the task considerably, and porting HP-UX and OpenVMS to new architectures is nothing new. Right now, I expect that HP is at least taking a look at this and talking to some of their larger customers and independent software vendors to gauge their reaction. The big question for HP is whether those customers and ISVs would find jumping ship to Power or SPARC to be a more palatable alternative than following HP to Itanium-less future?

Posted by: Nik Simpson

What if Novell said YES?

2010-03-31T21:11:17-07:00

In my previous post on Novell’s answer to Elliott Associates unsolicited offer, I indicated that I’d talk about Novell’s assets that many may not be considering.

For those of you following the (yet another) SCO vs. Novell UNIX copyright trial, the verdict came down in Novell’s favor yesterday (again). Novell’s ownership of the UNIX copyrights is just one asset of many to discuss. A comment to my blog came from Otto: “The big problem, IMHO, is that Novell owns the Unix patents. If Elliott Associates sells those to, let's say, some hyper-aggressive monopoly it could cause the Linux community still more pain.” It’s not just a hyper-aggressive monopoly to be feared, it’s any company looking to make a buck. This brings up the subject of patent trolls.

Elliott Associates would be interested in recouping its investments in Novell, and would sell assets to the top bidder – regardless of who that was. Novell not only owns the UNIX copyrights, but has a number of patents that prove very important in the software industry. It must be noted that with patents, it’s not the number, but the quality of individual patents. It only takes one extremely good patent to inflict a sales halt on a multi-billion dollar product line if that patent were to fall into the wrong hands. There are individuals and organizations that make their business in collecting patents from failed companies and then using those patents to extract royalties from deep pocketed vendors. These are patent trolls.

Novell has key patents in many areas, but most importantly in the areas of directory and identity services, operating system kernels, file services and systems, document management, and collaboration. You can bet that the large software and hardware vendors in the IT market have their legal departments watching closely what is transpiring with Novell. They would all prefer that Novell remain an independent company that they can partner with. Savvy vendors have already struck partnerships with Novell and understand the value and protection it brings to their businesses.

For the sake of the IT industry, let’s hope that Novell stays independent, or is acquired by a friendly vendor.

[Posted by: Richard Jones]

A Busy Week (Part 1)

2010-03-31T19:59:30-07:00

Apparently Intel and AMD don’t care about poor analysts trying to get their content completed by the end of the quarter, as evidenced by their decision to launch major server processor refreshes (AMD, Intel) on consecutive days this week. Needless to say there has been a vast amount of coverage from web pundits already, so I’m not going rehash it in detail.

Instead I’m going to focus on things that should matter to anybody buying servers this year. First, lets look at Intel’s Xeon 75xx and 65xx processors with respect to:

Virtualization performance
Memory subsystem
System reliability
Scale up

I’ll look at the AMD Opteron 6000 in a later blog.

Virtualization Performance

Virtualization is one of the few workloads that really make sense on these new processors, and judging by the numbers, they really do deliver. Using VMware’s VMmark benchmark, Intel claims a top score of 71.85 @ 49 tiles using 32-cores (4 x 8-core processors) on an IBM System X3850 X5. To put that in perspective, the previous best 32-core result topped out at 31.56 @ 21tiles on HP ProLiant DL785 using 8 x 4-core AMD processors. The result also trounced a 64-core result (48.23 @ 32 tiles) using 16 of the previous generation Intel XEON processors. That’s a hugely impressive result for a 4-socket system!

Memory Subsystem

This release drives the final nail into Intel’s aging “Front Side Bus” (FSB) memory architecture that dates back the mid-1990s. The FSB architecture had all the processors connected to a common memory controller (AKA “Northbridge”) so that each processor competed with its peers for access to a common pool of memory, thus becoming a bottleneck for performance. The new processors have integrated memory controllers supporting up to 16 memory DIMMs for a total of 64 DIMMs on a 4-socket server (512 GB with 8GB DIMMs), or 32 DIMMs on a 2-socket server ( 256 GB with 8 GB DIMMs).

System Reliability

In the past, x86-based servers have have used a unsophisticated approach to error handling; tell the operating system that something horrible happened and keel over in a heap on the floor. The new Xeons take a very different approach that allows the hardware and operating system to react in a much more flexible way to errors. For example if an unrecoverable memory error occurs, the operating system can look at the error and simply map that memory location out of use, or kill the process (or virtual machine) that is using the affected memory location. In effect, Intel has blurred the line between it’s own high-end Itanium architecture and Xeon, which is good for Xeon, but not so good for Itanium.

Scale Up

The new Xeon architecture can be used to build 8-socket servers with off-the-shelf components (sometimes referred to as a “glue less design”). But they don’t stop at sockets, the Xeon 7500 family in combination with third-party developed memory hubs is designed to support configurations as large as 256 sockets (4096 threads) with 16 TB of memory! The combination of a highly scalable architecture and high system reliability has the potential to put commodity server architectures into direct competition high-end RISC architectures. For a glimpse of where the future of scale up architectures may lie, see SGI’s Altix UV announcement.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

Novell Says NO! - No Surprise

2010-03-22T12:23:45-07:00

Novell officially turned down the purchase offer of $5.75/share from Elliott Associates in a letter and press release this past Saturday. So what does this mean for the software company?

The rejection comes as no surprise. Any board would value their company more and would want top dollar. Note in the letter that: “Novell's Board is committed to enhancing value for Novell stockholders and believes that an exploration of alternatives is in the best interests of the Company and its stockholders.” And that the paths they are pursuing to enhance stockholder value “include, but are not limited to, a return of capital to stockholders through a stock repurchase or cash dividend, strategic partnerships and alliances, joint ventures, a recapitalization and a sale of the Company.”

In short, Novell is saying: “Come on Elliott – or anyone else out there – you can do better than that!” However, I think this is exactly what Elliott was hoping would happen. Start a bidding war. But most people would think that Novell isn’t worth that much, but that’s where they are making a mistake. Novell has more assets and than most people realize – and most importantly, in ways that most people don’t realize. I’ll blog about those in an upcoming blog.

Novell is open to any tactic to increase shareholder value, but they know not to jump at the first opportunity. Most of these negotiations and possibilities will occur under the covers. So what do I think should happen to Novell? I’ve told Novell executives on a number of occasions that they need to find the right technology company (not investment firm) to merge with or be acquired by. Novell continues to produce great technology, but they have never been able to market themselves out of a paper bag. Even during the years I was there, each new chief marketing officer (CMO) came with glorious plans to improve Novell’s image. That was the root of the problem, the Novell brand isn’t bad, it’s just become irrelevant. The analogy I like to make to help people understand is that they need to think of how the IT world regarded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the mid 1990s. It was known as a great technology company with excellent mini-computer systems, but the needs of the market shifted making them all but irrelevant. The same thing has happened to the Novell brand: regarded with thoughtful awe from a past era. The company needs to surface its technologies under a different more relevant brand today. Note: Novell has done this with some products (eg Platespin Orchestrate was originally going to be called Zenworks Orchestrator but they latched onto a more modern relevant brand for that product) – but the crux is they need to lose the Novell name for new technologies and products. The name needs to go down in the history books and remain revered for its past legacy.

Tell me what you think should happen to Novell?

[Posted by: Richard Jones]

Is That a Graphics Card in My Server?

2010-03-21T19:32:24-07:00

For many years, one of the common factors in x86 servers has been a graphics subsystem characterized by the cheapest graphic chip the vendor could find to put on the motherboard. The logic (if you’ll forgive the pun) behind this was simple; you don’t buy servers to run graphics intensive applications, that’s what workstations are for! However, 2010 is shaping up to be different with two applications for graphics cards helping to make the case for graphics in the server.

The first of these; high performance compute clusters with graphics cards used to accelerate math calculations applications is not entirely new. NVIDIA has been pushing it’s CUDA program language graphics cards for at least 18 months with ATI/AMD expected to join the fray this year. However, the second application; accelerating graphics for virtual desktops is very new, with Microsoft’s announcements related to it’s RemoteFX protocol setting the stage for the use of high-performance graphics in servers (see here for more on RemoteFX). One of RemoteFX’s capabilities is the ability to use host-based graphics hardware acceleration to offload the graphics processing needed to support hundreds of Windows 7 virtual desktops (RemoteFX may support Vista as well, but I’d be surprised if they back-port the capability to Windows XP).

If Microsoft is successful with RemoteFX, then the real question will be how will graphics cards be integrated into today’s server platforms, and it’s not as simple as you might think. Today’s hi-end graphics cards have a number of requirements that largely rule them out for use in servers:

Power requirements: Typical graphics cards require 150 watts or more of power, and that’s not going to be easy to satisfy in typical server designs where the power supplies tend to be small, and limited by the server form factor. It’s also quite common for the graphics card to require it’s own dedicated connection to the power supply, a feature not found on server power supplies.
PCIe slot requirements: Graphics cards typically require a PCIe x16 slot on the motherboard, and these are rare on server motherboards where a pair of PCIe x8 slots is a more common configuration.
Physical size: Graphics cards are big beasts, NVIDIA’s Tesla C2050 card is a full length, double width PCIe card, and that’s a lot of space to find in most servers.

So off-the-shelf graphics cards aren’t good fit for servers, and have components that aren’t needed at all such as the ability to send graphics out over VGA or DVI connections. If things are difficult for conventional rack mount servers, they are much worse for blades where the restrictions on power and physical space are even greater.

My bet is that we’ll need something a bit different if this type of hardware acceleration is going to take off. Here’s what I think we’ll see:

A PCIe card designed for servers, with lower power requirements,a more reasonable form-factor, and a PCIe x8 (or even x4) interface.
External, dedicated graphics engines connected via a PCIe ribbon cable to the server. NVIDIA has already gone down this path for HPC applications with products like the Tesla S2050. This approach may work for blades as well as rack mount servers.
Graphics cards in a blade form factor, i.e. a graphics card that takes up a blade slot and connects via PCIe over the blade chassis backplane.

The external graphics engine may also be a good place to make use of multi-root I/O virtualization that can share the graphics engine between multiple servers. Anyway this is certainly going to be an interesting space to watch as desktop virtualization becomes a mainstay of enterprise desktop strategies.

Posted by: Nik Simpson

the sleeping giant awakes - more on Microsoft's desktop virtualization announcement

2010-03-19T13:38:00-07:00

Yesterday's other big news was that Microsoft’s investment in Calista is finally paying off. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP 1 will see the introduction of Calista technologies. Now renamed RemoteFX, Microsoft has taken Calista and remade it as both a new graphics engine to power RDP and a major incentive for customers to look to Hyper-V for as the foundation for any future desktop virtualization project.

The key to understanding RemoteFX is to know that it is being implemented as a graphical extension to RDP that provides host based rendering of 2D/3D graphics and not a complete new rip and replace protocol. The RemoteFX codec will be delivered in three different implementations; a software only engine, a GPU/CPU-based encoder that can share off-the-shelf GPUs between multiple VMs, and a custom hardware encoder (much like that employed by Teradici) that can be implemented either on a plug-in mezzanine board or placed direct on the server motherboard. This was very much in-line with expectations, what caught quite a few people by surprise was the announcement that RemoteFX would only be available on a Hyper-V based virtualization stack. By burying RemoteFX within Hyper-V Microsoft have shutout VMware but at the same time have left the door open to all Hyper-V ready desktop virtualization vendors making a very effective double-edged sword to use against VMware. Also of note is that Microsoft and Citrix are reaffirming their partnership by announcing an agreement to work together to integrate RemoteFX with HDX in Citrix XenDesktop (and I presume XenApp as well). This will extend the capabilities of the Microsoft RemoteFX platform out to the broader range of endpoints that Citrix supports. A RemoteFX ready XenDesktop release is expected to be released to production within six months of the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. What was missing here was any kind of announcement about integrating RemoteFX with XenServer. This leaves me wondering was this a marketing decision not to share this until Synergy in May, or part of a bigger decision by either Microsoft (possible) or Citrix (unlikely) not to head down that road.

Update

One point that was not clear to me to start with is the role that Quest continue to play here. While Quest was not mentioned during Thursday's webinar, Quest continues to work closely with Microsoft and is likely to release a RemoteFX ready version of it's own RDP implementation shortly after Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is released. Given both Quest's track record of support for Hyper-V and greater agility afforded by a smaller number of client platforms (and possibly a simpler integration path, although I admin I don't know the details here) Quest could well have a RemoteFX ready version of vWorkspace out in advance of Citrix.

The other big step forwards is that Windows 7 XP mode and MED-V no longer require hardware virtualization technology. This is clearly big news from a technical perspective but I’m not sure that it will make a huge difference to adoption. I can’t say that I’ve had many people tell me they are looking at MED-V and XP mode is nearer to being a last desperate grasp than it is to being a tactical solution so I can’t see many people willing to invest the time and effort of implementation unless they are in deep trouble. Having said that though, I've been in enough tight spots to know that this kind of change can be a lifeline for some people.

Finally Citrix and Microsoft have joined together to respond to VMware’s New Year marketing initiative that offered potential customers the opportunity to exchange XenApp licenses for View, by announcing a counter offer to “rescue” failed View implementations. Whether you consider this a desperate act to gain attention, as some would have it, or an aggressive move to gain market share depends very much on how you view VMware's current market dominance. Personally, I welcome the move as it reduces the cost of implementing desktop virtualization while driving innovation at all levels.

A User-centric Microsoft Licensing Model? Not Yet, but Getting Closer

2010-03-19T12:55:33-07:00

There are some physical things in life that I like to associate with as part of my identity. My Jeep Wrangler is one of them. My laptop is not. How I live and work is not defined by a physical compute device, but rather by my online identity. Email, Twitter, accessing documents and meeting notes on SharePoint, tracking client engagements in Salesforce, evaluating and testing virtualization solutions in my lab – those are all part of my day. My PC? It’s just what connects me to my online work space and personal space. Sorry Latitude D820, but you mean nothing to me.

From talks with colleagues and clients, I know I’m not alone. My device doesn’t define me, and certainly doesn’t hold all the data and applications I need to do my job. So what does all this have to do with Microsoft licensing? Well in my opinion, they’re getting it.

I’m not going to rehash much of the excellent commentary already out there on yesterday’s Microsoft announcement. See these posts for more background information on the Microsoft announcement:

The sleeping giant awakes - Microsoft gets desktop virtualization right (Simon Bramfitt)
Microsoft announces changes in desktop/server virtualization and VDI strategy – UPDATED (Alessandro Perilli)
Microsoft VDI Inertia (J. Tyler Rohrer)

As Simon noted in his blog, VECD licensing is going away and the right to run a desktop OS as a server-hosted virtual desktop is now included with Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA). For devices not covered by SA, organizations can purchase Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) licenses at a cost of $100 per device per year. Furthermore, Microsoft’s license transfer restrictions still apply. So if you want to license a virtual desktop for external contractors, you can assign a VDA license to each contractor system. If a contractor completes a project and leaves, you can re-assign the license to another contractor’s device (you just can’t reassign the license more than once per 90 days).

Simon also mentioned that “extended roaming rights” is the big deal in the announcement, and it is. While not perfect (Simon describes the issues), it’s a step toward licensing a desktop for a user and not a device (sure technically we’re still talking about device licensing, but the user can access his desktop from a myriad of personal devices). So let’s call it an alpha release of per-user licensing. Does a per-user model solve all of our problems? No. But organizations want it offered as a choice, and it’s good to see that Microsoft is listening to their customers.

Looking past the good news that came out of yesterday’s announcement, considerable work remains. Microsoft has still not addressed the service provider market. Considerable clarity is still needed for licensing virtual desktops on shared infrastructure. For example, if a user needs a Windows desktop for a week, he essentially has to pay for 90 days worth of licensing. Why? Even with VDA, the service provider technically has to associate the VDA with the subscribers physical device and can’t transfer it for another 90 days. The result is that desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) is far more costly than it should be. This problem will grow once companies like HP, IBM, and Dell offer client hypervisors, and look to offer services where user desktop VMs are automatically replicated from their personal system to the cloud. Again, this takes us back to a physical device not defining the user. For the IHVs, they get the opportunity to sell additional services to make up for the low margins they see on hardware sales. Sooner or later Microsoft will have to address this issue, and let’s hope it’s sooner.

On the support side, Microsoft’s internal application teams need to step up and offer clear support statements for the leading client and application virtualization platforms. Officially supporting App-V would be a nice first step. The push for Microsoft client applications to fully support the major client virtualization solutions must come from the top. I’m hopeful that Microsoft’s key executives will make that push.

Finally, let’s not forget that even with SA, Windows Server OS licenses cannot be virtualized (without mobility restrictions). Instead, most large enterprises have to upgrade to Data Center edition licenses (for practical purposes) for the sake of virtualizing. I talked about this issue extensively in this post, so I won’t repeat the details here. If lifting licensing constraints for client virtualization is good, I’d argue that doing the same for servers would be even better, especially if you look at the amount of servers already virtualized today.

Microsoft customers – you’re voice is being heard. Now’s a great time to pat Microsoft on the back. However, it’s not time to back off. Keep communicating your licensing needs to Microsoft. It’s clear that they are listening, and taking steps to make your life easier.

The sleeping giant awakes - Microsoft gets desktop virtualization right

2010-03-19T11:12:26-07:00

Yesterday was a huge day for desktop virtualization. Microsoft shared it's vision for the virtual desktop, corrected its past mistakes, and showed off its bright new future.

Right from the start Microsoft showed that it had been listening to its customers’ feedback. As of July 1st Microsoft is rolling Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) into the Windows Software Assurance (Windows SA) program. This means that anyone with Software Assurance can deploy desktops locally or in the data center at no additional cost. At the same time Microsoft is extending the remote access rights so that remote isn’t tethered to a single PC in the primary users’ home. This awareness of the fact that users want flexibility around when and where they work is the key element that has been missing from Microsoft’s virtualization strategy since day one.

If this wasn’t enough, Microsoft is introducing a new desktop virtualization license called Windows Virtual Desktop Access (Windows VDA) costing $100 per year per device and aimed at organizations who are using endpoints that do not have a Windows SA license – Contractors PCs, devices that are do not run Windows (e.g., thin-clients, smart phones and Apple Macs) and yes, PCs with OEM licenses. Hang-on, isn’t that just the same as the old non-SA VECD license? More or less, yes; it’s certainly cheaper, although at $100 per year not by much. What’s more important is that Windows VDA is now a first-class citizen in the Microsoft licensing hierarchy with all the benefits of Software Assurance (e.g., 24x7 support, upgrade/downgrade rights), and as a desktop virtualization license it gets the same extended roaming rights offered to the a full member of the SA club.

While dropping the VECD tax will draw the headlines, it’s that second change from offering remote access from a single home PC to offering extended roaming rights from any non-corporate endpoint that is the more far reaching change. Aside from the flexibility this change offers the thing that I think is most important is that this is Microsoft’s first step to user based licensing of the desktop operating system. One OS license, one user, and as many (remote) desktops are you want.

Admittedly there are still a few kinks to iron out with the VDA licensing model. Most notably there is a problem with the way that Microsoft handles the difference between “corporate” and “non- corporate” devices. Microsoft defines a corporate device as one that was bought by the organization. Any non-SA eligible endpoint owned by the organization that needs to access a virtual desktop must have its own Windows VDA license. Which, kind of makes sense until you start to move away from desktop devices and down to smart phones; at which point it gets ugly fast. This isn’t anything to do with functionality; you can do a lot with the right smart phone today. It’s more a matter of the intersection of policy and accounting.

Looked at from a personal perspective, my iPhone is MY iPhone (it’s non-corporate), but my colleague's Blackberry was bought by Gartner (it’s corporate). They both do the same job more or less; I get better apps, he can type faster. But when we look at using them for remote access it gets very messy. I will be able to take advantage of my laptop's Windows SA license to access my desktop virtualization from my non-corporate device, but my colleague can’t use 'his' Blackberry to access that same environment, without an additional VDA license. Of course we could avoid this by giving him $100 and telling him to go and buy his own phone but that’s not the point is it? Still, with a couple of months to go before the July 1st launch it’s possible that we will see further changes to address this flaw.

Microsoft is also looking at extending this roaming usage rights policy to MS Office. This is huge and in more ways than one. Microsoft has been very slow to act to do anything to acknowledge that its applications will be deployed on desktop virtualization platforms. By acknowledging this, Microsoft would be taking a big step to address concerns about the current lack of support by application vendors for desktop virtualization. If Microsoft licenses Office so that its licensing terms match those used in a desktop virtualization environment, we can reasonably assume that formal support will also be offered, and where Microsoft leads others will follow.