VMware Reveals New Offerings At VMWorld 2006

Nirav Mehta writes to mention a Techworld article about this past week's virtualization announcements at VMWorld 2006. VMWare had several new offerings in the event's third year. From the article: "VMware has released details of ACE 2.0, which is due for release towards the middle of 2007. The product, which was demonstrated in alpha at VMworld this week, allows administrators to distribute pre-packaged virtual machines to users in a secure manner. This means, for instance, that contractors can be allowed to attach to the enterprise network using their own laptops but only via the ACE VM. The new version was created, according to VMware, because users asked for greater control over the VMs, especially when, for instance, large numbers of remote users need to attach to the enterprise network. Other areas due for improvement include security and integration with enterprise management tools. "

Re:Still Waiting...

[Wesley Felter]

He said "affordable".

(It depends on your perspective; enterprisey customers probably think ESX is cheap, while whiteboxers think "OMG it costs more than the server".)

Re:Still Waiting...

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm pretty sure his "ESX server" comment was aimed at the grandparent's second sentence - you know, the sophomoric comment about host-based virtualization being dead.

In the enterprise, host-based virtualization is pretty much the whole market.

Re:Huh?

[tgd]

Its a lot tricker than it seems... You need to get the images to the user either pre-customized for them, or you have to have a way to take a generic VM and provision it for that end user automatically, including getting it joined as a unique machine into the enterprise domain. Add to that keeping that up to date, secure and making the virtualization experience end-user-friendly and a slew of other issues, its far easier to use a product that manages that for you than to DIY, unless you're doing it for a small number of fairly technical end users.

Its like anything related to desktop management -- you can of course do it on your own, but a tool can make it a lot easier and save a lot of time and money in the long run.

Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies building the competing products I think the AC was refering to.

What's the point?

[chris_7d0h]

This means, for instance, that contractors can be allowed to attach to the enterprise network using their own laptops but only via the ACE VM

For all clients I've worked with, they either:

1. Allow me to use my laptop on their network and allow me to connect to my company's network through their corporate network or through a dedicated network they've set up on the side, using a VPN client.
   
2. Allow me to use my laptop on their network, but do not provide me with a network for reaching my company's network.
   
3. Do not allow me to use my laptop on the corporate network, but instead provide a "standard laptop", same as the rest of the workforce is using or a desktop to use.
   

In the first case, I'm always more productive and cheaper per unit of delivery than the other options, because I've got all my tools setup and on average all software (except perhaps one or two apps) I need to perform my work already licensed. I'm also able to harvest the information, knowledge and assets available through my company's network. Some clients realize the benefit of this and instead regulate which tools I may use and what I may do while connected to their network by making me sign an agreement (along with the standard NDA).

In the second and third scenario, clients still require me to sign the same "usage agreement" and NDA, so there really is no benefit for them from a liability standpoint. The risk is the same for all three cases and mitigated the same way (through agreements). On the downside, each unit I deliver costs more because I don't have my toolbox and don't have the software configured for optimal productivity. However I still deliver reasonable value per dollar spent because I am still able to leverage resources from my company by using my own laptop on the side (either through a client provided network or a 3G card).

There is really no benefit that I've witnessed from a client perspective in not allowing me to use my own machine and tools.

Now, the quoted statement of having me use my own machine coupled with the limitation of not having my tools available and also not being able to use the resources available through my company's network for the client's benefit seems like a worse situation for a client than any of the previous ones.

No matter from which angle I try comparing the three typical scenarios with using ACE for the suggested purpose, I fail to see the bottom-line benefits for a company relying on consultants / contractors.

Re:Still Waiting...

[eno2001]

Well... I like to be extremely hyperbolic in my statements as it gets a rise out of people. And Slashdot is admittedly a little too boring these days. No more massive flamewars, or death threats going around. So yeah, host-based virtualization is here to stay for a couple more years. But, I speak of hypervisor because I'm already using it with Xen. I ditched VMWare for QEMU because of cost concerns. (Remember when you're dealing with me, you're dealing with a guy who does this stuff at home) I could no longer afford VMWare and QEMU, while not anywhere near as good performance wise, still did the trick for me to have access to Windows as needed. ie. Almost never. But, when I found Xen, I moved all my home servers to it because you can do some damn incredible things with it even if you don't have hardware virtualization support. I have an old P II era Celeron 400 with 384 megs of RAM running three VMs and doing everything it did before + more. It handles DHCP, Internal DNS, External DNS, DBMail for the IMAP portion of things, Postfix for SMTP (Internal and External instances), NTP, NFS, etc... So, that's more what I'm talking about.

Still no Firewire support?

[PingXao]

My company is doing driver development for IEEE 1394, i.e. Firewire, devices. Not having 1394 support in VMware is a show stopper for us. Unless and until they get around to including it we'll be sitting here experiencing BSOD crashes several times per day, and sometimes per hour. We've heard the reasons VMware has not virtualized Firewire and, quite frankly, they don't hold water.

I do this myself.

[Ymerej]

I have to VPN in to work from home. I built myslef a virgin, pristine, virtual VM under Parallels with exactly what I need to get in to work, and nothing more. More secure for everybody. Sweet.